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?

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

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. :)

MacLeod wrote:
...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 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. :)

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Lance wrote:
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 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?

Lance wrote: 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.

chronoplasm wrote:
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.

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

I think what it boils down to is that even if you are playing a character that is decidedly non-human, it is interesting because of how it differs with a human. You want to play it because you are interested in the comparison to humanity. You want to play it because by veering away from humanity, you get a birds eye view of humanity. You can identify with the differences, and that makes it interesting.

I don't think in any of these examples we've trailed too far off of basic motivations that a human could have, but all of them differ in some way as to make them distinct.

I'm not talking about physiology at all. Physiology alters the mechanics of the game, but overall it doesn't give the character completely alien motivations.

When I say a character with almost no humanness, I refer back to another example in this thread of playing "the sun". How do you play something without motivations we cannot understand. A Hive mind seems like a proper example, or a being that can see more than 3 spacial dimensions, or in fantasy a completely "evil" being, one who's very nature is that of destruction.

As was said before in this thread, i think it's an interesting thought experiment, but in practice, as a game, it probably falls apart and you end up playing it like a human. If you end up playing it like a human, then why not just be something more human. Let the DM handle the weird stuff with some vigorous hand waving and appeals to "mystery".

::jaw drops::

You start out with what seems like a strong support to my argument, and follow it naturally into what is probably the best counter-argument so far (IMO, of course).

My only answer to your "Why not...?" question, at this point, is to jut my jaw out stubbornly, and say "because."

More seriously, I understand that we humanize things by our very awareness of them. But I also believe that there are things that we consider quintessentially human that, in the theoretical diversity of self-conscious beings (theoretical because, as far as we know, there are no others), are simply universal aspects of sentience. Curiosity is one of them. Awareness of the Other is another. There is the ability to categorize. There is the ability to reason. There is the ability to solve problems. Maybe such consciousnesses would be so alien to us that these basic aspects wouldn't be recognizable, but I believe they would be there, nonetheless.

So even if I couldn't play such an alien consciousness, that doesn't mean I couldn't have fun trying.

Just picked up a copy of Albedo the other day and, nope…no humans anywhere in it. Not even hinted at (though players may suspect humans having some place in the game world’s history).  And no, the game does not suffer at all for the lack of humans.

In fact, I was trying to think Albedo could be adapted to a different setting that didn’t use anthropomorphized animals (it has such excellent rules for small-scale military skirmishes), but came to the conclusion that the character creation system (not to mention the game setting) would actually suffer if you took out the ‘animals’ unless you did an “all alien species” kind of thing…but when you start doing that, why not simply use anthropomorphized animals (after all, we all know immediately that a dog is more trustworthy than a cat and a mouse is going to have a HUGE chip on his little shoulder).  When you start making up aliens you end up spending a lot of time explaining the difference between a Zoot and a Whatsit (in fairly human terms, usually).

So no…especially with SciFi fantasy settings, there’s no pre-requisite to include humans.  And while it can be helpful to players (who are human after all) to address alien characters in human terms, I don’t think it’s necessary…ESPECIALLY if there are no base-line humans in the game with which to draw comparisons.

But the game may be a little uncomfortable to some folks without that human “touchstone.”

I know there has been some food for thought on this subject in other threads at the Forge.  I started one myself, here:

[ftp=ftp://http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16045.0]http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16045.0[/ftp]

When you start making up aliens you end up spending a lot of time explaining the difference between a Zoot and a Whatsit (in fairly human terms, usually).