dLITE: A setting without humans?

[Aegir]

We're working on a sci fantasy setting to go with the release of this dLITE system, and while we're trying to push the envelope with several factors, perhaps the biggest is the fact that we've got 8 races slated for release, and none of them are humans. I'm curious about how this will sit with many players: is a world without humans (as a playable race, they do exist, or, they *did* anyway) perhaps a bad thing?

[chronoplasm]

Are there any races similar to humans?
As long as they have some features that are close enough to anthropomorphic you will be fine.

[MacLeod]

Agreed.
I like playing anything that closely resembles humans... tails, horns, tentacles in addition to normal limbs, talons, multiple eyes, pincers, hooves, scales, beaks, claws, etc... are all fine with me. I just want to be able to manipulate things and talk to folks, ya know?

Reminds me... Sort of a random tangent, go!

One game I wrote used several unconventional races (at least they seemed that way). The most normal of them resembled humans but with skin colored like stained glass with wings hovering off of their backs. Another was a black scaled race of humanoids with red horns, hooves and tentacles that grew out of their backs. Another yet were the water elemental humanoids with mostly solid forms, imagine a creature made of fleshy transparent glass filled with water. The last of the weird races was this species of four-armed, eyeless creatures with leather-like skin and four wings that grew off of their necks but operated more like capes.

...I think people would only have a problem with non-human races if playing one required a specific sort of personality. You always want to note in any description of a specie that what you have presented is standard... thus not required.

[Aegir]

...I think people would only have a problem with non-human races if playing one required a specific sort of personality. You always want to note in any description of a specie that what you have presented is standard... thus not required.

That was one of the goals, yes, that the various races had what could be considered a "stereotypical" personality, but its by no means the *only* option. And yes, all of the starting races are humanoid, just none are human. In fact the backstory contains a cataclysm caused by the humans that effectively wiped out most of the known galaxy, and in many ways they took the worst of it.

[MacLeod]

That seems like a good springboard for human PCs, actually... the last of a dead species. Go genophage style and claim that the remaining humans can no longer bother with procreation due to 100% probability of stillbirth.

[Vulpinoid]

There are a decent number of games out there without humans as playable characters, I don't think this is a bad thing at all.

This is roleplaying, give players the benefit of the doubt that they'll want to imagine being something a bit different to their daily human lives...

V

[zmobie]

I agree with some of the previous posters in that as long as each race has something "human" about them you'll be fine. Playable races should have understandable goals and desires. Maybe they are more beautiful and less patient than humans; maybe another race is more warlike but less deceptive; maybe another race is less inventive, but more long lived. As long as you can relate it to how a human behaves, lives or looks, not having humans will be a good thing. You're forcing the players to play a different role than themselves, and that is always fun.

The thing I don't like about some races in various rpg's is when they are too far removed from being human. This is just a personal preference of mine, but whenever someone tells me about their 3rd edition D&D Half Ogre Mage half dragon cleric of some evil god, I just don't understand why you would want to play that character. I might be alone on this one, but if I'm playing something other than a human, I need it to be similar to a human in some way so I can actually role-play it.

[Aegir]

The races don't vary *that* far from humans, though there are a couple exceptions to that. So, if thats all thats required for people to identify with them then we should be fine.

Mostly, I was concerned by the fact that I've seen many games that were very focused on humans (some not even having any options other than humans), but none came to mind that didn't have humans as an option at all.

[Lance D. Allen]

I'll be the dissenting voice and say that "human with blue skin or pointy ears" isn't really worthwhile in and of itself. If they're just "human, but..." then why bother making them non-human?

If you have a very specific reason why there aren't any humans, great. That's something a little different from your standard fantasy and sci-fi tropes, and is to be applauded.

But why are your non-human races basically (as it seems from what little bit I'm reading here) humans, but...?

If you have an equally good reason, awesome. I don't even need to know it, unless you want to share.

I understand the motivation to make sure that the non-human races are something the players can relate to enough to play.. But I'm just saying that they need to be distinct, different.. purposeful.

[chronoplasm]

Out of curiosity, how many people here would play as a creature with radial symmetry in its body rather than bilatteral symmetry like a human? You know, like a starfish in shape, but with a brain and personality that is approximately similar to that of a human.

[visioNationstudios]

I'll be the dissenting voice and say that "human with blue skin or pointy ears" isn't really worthwhile in and of itself. If they're just "human, but..." then why bother making them non-human?

If you have a very specific reason why there aren't any humans, great. That's something a little different from your standard fantasy and sci-fi tropes, and is to be applauded.

But why are your non-human races basically (as it seems from what little bit I'm reading here) humans, but...?

If you have an equally good reason, awesome. I don't even need to know it, unless you want to share.

I understand the motivation to make sure that the non-human races are something the players can relate to enough to play.. But I'm just saying that they need to be distinct, different.. purposeful.

I've heard this argument before, but I believe chronoplasm kind of hit it on the head, whether he intended his post to be in response to this or not.  As Real Life (tm) humans, we tend to only fully be able to identify with things that are, in some way, similar to what we are used to.  That's why the entire literary use of personification is so widely used in all types of writings.  We can't begin to fathom the sun, for example, as a sentient being, until we start to attribute certain humanistic traits to it.  That is how the old religions (and most generic fantasy religions) came to understand the Sun and the Moon- they were gods, and often mother and father of creation.

Off the top of my head, C.S. Lewis uses this sort of thing quite often, whether it be Aslan representing the Christ figure, and all that that entails, or the lesser recognized stars that Caspian and crew met near the end of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

So I guess I have to ask the same question that chronoplasm did.  Would people play as a creature with no human physical characteristics, no parallel thought structure, no (or a completely different way of dealing with) emotions... the list goes on, but every one of those are things that make something "human-esque".  I would challenge someone to present a Player Race that could not be classified as such.  The argument is good in theory, but in practice, I maintain that it falls apart.

[Lance D. Allen]

I played a vine-creature that was 5 vines that joined in a short stalk with an eyeball on top of it in a game of Gamma World. It adventured out of curiosity, being the only one of its kind, and having none of the normal human drives of accumulating wealth or comfort, mating, etc. So long as it had sunlight and soil, it could eat and rest comfortably. Vindemia is still one of my fondest remembered characters.

A later Gamma World character was a sentient, 6' praying mantis named Chklthshkt. He had learned to mimic human-sounding speech to deal with the community he'd been raised in, but he'd never really was comfortable with vowels. At one point, he and his adventuring companion (a mutant crocodile) were attacked by human bandits. They ate the bandits after defeating them. The human bias against eating humans (or sentients, as it might translate into a game with non-human sentients) wasn't an issue. Emotions were foreign to him, but intellect and curiosity were a part of his makeup.

Did they have things humans could sympathize with? Absolutely. Were they humans with funny ears? Absolutely not. It was the very alien-ness that made them interesting.

Of course, that may not be a focus of Aegir's game. If it's not, it's not, no skin off my nose. But I say again.. If they're just humans, but... then why bother?

[visioNationstudios]

Did they have things humans could sympathize with? Absolutely. Were they humans with funny ears? Absolutely not. It was the very alien-ness that made them interesting.

That statement there rolls up everything else you've been saying, and sets it aside in favor of the "does it look humanoid" card.  Which is unfortunate.  I could think of a number of situations in which a straight-up human, by all physical descriptions, could be played as anything but, in speech, motivation, feelings, patterned thought, and activity.  And people could fairly easily grasp those, though the concept of each of those areas may be entirely foreign to the player.  The fact that it's happening to "one of our own" automatically pulls you in and forces you into a "what if" line of thinking.  I still am unsure if the same would be true if you stripped all human appearances _and_ removed any trace of human behavior as well.

And you're right that, while getting closer to the edge, the two examples you gave are still far from taking the leap _over_ the edge.  Curiosity, "adventuring" (whatever that term actually means is best to be left to another discussion), being able to travel across land at a moderate rate of speed (but not the air or water, and especially not _exclusively_ either of these two), and hell, even the knowledge of being the "only one of its kind" is surely a human affectation that the animals, insects, and microbes of the world don't even consider.

[GozerTC]

Out of curiosity, how many people here would play as a creature with radial symmetry in its body rather than bilatteral symmetry like a human? You know, like a starfish in shape, but with a brain and personality that is approximately similar to that of a human.

*Raises Hand*

Heck yeah I would.  Especially since I read the "Sector General" books.  There's lots of great "wierd" alien ideas to play. 

Personally I don't mind a universe without humans.  The point of an RPG is to play something you're not.  So not being Human fits just fine.

[Lance D. Allen]

That statement there rolls up everything else you've been saying, and sets it aside in favor of the "does it look humanoid" card.

No, it really doesn't. Because it's sympathetic doesn't make it even vaguely human. I can sympathize with the plight of a cricket when a kitten tears its legs off, but that doesn't humanize the cricket.

Curiosity, and self-awareness are only 'human' traits because we are the only self-aware race that we're aware of. They do not make an entity human anymore than having fur makes a bear into a dog. Being aware that you're the only one of your kind isn't even vaguely human, because it's nothing that we've had to experience.

A straight up human cannot be other than human, no matter how he or she is played.. Because they're human. An excellent exploration of this idea is Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein, where the claim is made early on that the main character is human by ancestry, but isn't human in any other sense of the word.. But by the end of the book, it's revealed that he cannot be anything but human. Taking that a step further, it's obvious that we cannot play a character that isn't humanized, because we cannot be other than human.. But the character before we give it life doesn't have to be human at all, which is the point I'm getting at.