Human Frame of Reference.....How Important is it?

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**tre manor**

OK I am bout to climb out on a limb with a project i have wanted to launch since before founding RBG. Kickstarter has me thinkign I can pull it off after all.

The first and foremost question I have is how important is the Human frame of reference?

Is it possible ( preferable ) to totally suspend your disbelief if your frame of reference is first suspended as well. Further how far do you think you coudl suspend your human frame of reference before you lose interest entirely? What I want to do is to begin building a new fantasy world where in the are no " humans ", the races are humaniod but not entirely so. A good comparison MIGHT be the Aliens of Avatar comapred to humans....... no I am NOT making " Lord of the Trees " ( though now I type it that is nto really such a bad name....Ok maybe I AM makign lord of the trees, but not so much a hippie LSD love in as a lord of the flies type of lord of the trees ) ANYWAY!! So long as the character of humanity is there is suspending the frame of reference a good idea or bad one?

The general idea is to make something REALLY different in which painters and players can REALLY let their imaginations run wild. Maybe Wierd Fantasy would be a good term for it.

**Lightcavalier**

At the end of the day if everyone is not outwardly physically human, you will still need something with humanish thought processes to get the story across. Imagine if stranger in a strange land had been written entirely from the perspective of the boy from mars. It would be unreadable because he does not think like a normal human. The peril you face is allowing people to engage with the setting while making it totally alien.

Fantasy/Scifi needs a straight man, and if its not a human...then one of your races is going to get pawned off as humans with pointy ears or something.

**Cyporiean**

We have no issue with having no humans in Brushfire.

**Kaptajn Congoboy**

Only anthropomorphic (which directly translated means "human-formed" or "human-form") animals in a historical parody of human history?

Let me see if I find that old post of mine on humans in RPGs....

[Edit] Ah, there is was. The question was "why play humans in a fantasy world"?

Kaptajn Congoboy wrote:Now I think I'm going to be a bit contrary (and perhaps not all that serious) and turn the question on its head. Why would anybody want to play a non-human in most fantasy or space-ported fantasy settings?

My answer is that they lack imagination.

Ever since the fantasy literay genre was born, non-human species have tended toward stereotypes. Typically, fairly limited stereotypes. In an example above, somebody used the image of a fly landing on someone's hand and their response to it as a way to define difference fantasy species. All those responses are entirely applicable to humans, because they all come from different human stereotypes.

We all have an idea of what elves are supposed to be, or dwarves, or orcs, or whatever. Some fantasy works show broader aspects of the different fantasy species, some really squeeze the stereotyping over your head (D&D being one of the worse offenders here). Some stereotype for practical reasons - in 40k, the different species can all be summed up in few words, using entirely abstact concepts, without inaccuarcy. Does anyboody doubt what playable species I am talking about when mentioning "green, simple-minded war-lovers" in 40k? Or "All-consuming biotech menace"? Or "Doomed, ancient aesthetes"? No. The "aliens" represent exceedingly simple ideas, for ease of identification both in the fluff and on the tabletop. You know how Tyranids, Orks or the vast majority of Eldar are going to behave in advance when you read about them. They behave in simple, fairly predictable ways, hemmed in by their cultural pigeonholing (in the Tyranids case, they're actually programmed to behave like a virus, probably the most extreme example, but one which also has been used by anthropologists to describe human societies on their way to extinction by destruction of their natural habitat and social environment; the Marind Anim before they came into contact with europeans are one example; they were facing extinction or drastic cultural change within a few generations - the latter was what occurred). As noted, this is entirely intentional: they are, after all, just extreme aspects of human concepts stuffed into a pointy-eared (or green, or...mutable) flesh-sack.

Since humans are the baseline, the "jack of all trades" of most fantasy worlds and settings, while the other species tend toward simplifications or extremes of human behaviour, playing humans should actually be more interesting than playing yore ole Ylf or Dwarfe. They offer up an opportunity to play out your character in almost any way, branching out in any direction, going where you like. "Breaking the mold" when playing a fantasy species (think Drizzt Do'Urden) essentially turns them into fantasy humans; the "interesting" part of them is that they behave outside the traditional mold of their fantasy pigeonhole - something the humans have been doing all the while.

Playing a fantasy species is like roleplaying with training wheels. Good for the kiddies.

**Cyporiean**

Kaptajn Congoboy wrote:Only anthropomorphic (which directly translated means "human-formed" or "human-form") animals in a historical parody of human history?

Yes, but our species are not just humans with an animal head/Star Trek make up fantasy creatures.

**AlexHolker**

They don't have to be humans, but they do have to be people. There's more to it than that, but that's the key point.

**Kaptajn Congoboy**

No, your people are humans that do not look like humans. Because humans are the only frame of reference we as humans have available, really.

AlexHolker wrote:They don't have to be humans, but they do have to be people. There's more to it than that, but that's the key point.

Which basically means "They don't have to be people, but they have to be people

**Brother SRM**

I feel that it is almost always imperative to have some kind of human race equivalent in a game. For many players, myself included, it's good to have them in there as a frame of reference and a relatable aspect. The badguy you're fighting could be the strongest being in the universe, but if you don't know how strong he is compared to you, personally, outside the game, how meaningful is it? Fights between Super Saiyans or what have you are often boring because when you don't have a frame of reference, it's just noise. How scary would a Tyranid Hormagaunt be if there weren't Guardsmen it could cleave through?

You can try doing a game without any identifiable human faction, but you will have to do your best to make sure their personalities and abilities reflect those that people have. It's what we relate to, and if a player can't forge a connection between themselves and a chosen army/character, the game probably won't hold their interest. Some games get away with this, like Brushfire or (to an extent) Gnome Wars, but their models are also very cute and familiar. When I see Brushfire models I think of Redwall, which is familiar to me from my youth. Even then, the armies are based on European nations so there's a frame of reference there. Gnome Wars is in the same boat, where their models are based on familiar imagery through history but are cute and silly enough to be unique.

**Kaptajn Congoboy**

I guess the long and the short of it is that the farther you get from humans physically, the more you need to insert elements in their psychology that are easily recognizeable to us as humans.

**tre manor**

Thanks All! I knew this woudl spur a good provocative discussion.

The idea that I have is not to totally toss the human frame of reference out the window. I just want to suspend it quite a bit. To igve an example what i say i wanted everyplayavle race to be generally humaniod ( symmetrical biology 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, upright walking ) but wanted to add less human characteristics. A tail and wings to some, blue skin, longer necks and limbs, red skin with orange stripes, VERY large eyes and small mouths, no nose, spiney ridge across it's head, three fingered hands and three toed feet. Presti-digital legs ( like chicken legs. ) feathers, scaley skin etc etc.

Basicly I am think of doign somethign " alien ". Think " Sci-Fantasy" maybe or more probably wierd fantasy.

And no vikings, or knights per se, the tropes they represent but not the cultural trappings.

**azazel the cat**

Gene Roddenberry always insisted on being able to see the faces of aliens, and generally to have them being very anthropomorphic in order to allow the audience to relate to their stories.

**CT GAMER**

How many of us would be playing 40k if all the armies consisted of gelatinous ameboas, sentient gas clouds and space faring arthropods?

**chromedog**

And look where that got him...

One decent series, several mediocre ones and a bad one - and three good movies (out of 9 - Nemesis doesn't even count as a ST movie).

**Lightcavalier**

tre manor wrote:

Thanks All! I knew this woudl spur a good provocative discussion.

The idea that I have is not to totally toss the human frame of reference out the window. I just want to suspend it quite a bit. To igve an example what i say i wanted everyplayavle race to be generally humaniod ( symmetrical biology 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, upright walking ) but wanted to add less human characteristics. A tail and wings to some, blue skin, longer necks and limbs, red skin with orange stripes, VERY large eyes and small mouths, no nose, spiney ridge across it's head, three fingered hands and three toed feet. Presti-digital legs ( like chicken legs. ) feathers, scaley skin etc etc.

Basicly I am think of doign somethign " alien ". Think " Sci-Fantasy" maybe or more probably wierd fantasy.

And no vikings, or knights per se, the tropes they represent but not the cultural trappings.

Sounds like a good start. It will go better if you ensure logical consequences to their outlook/society which are rendered due to their unique physiology etc.
(IE, 3 fingers on each hand, groups of 3 and 6 become more important than 5 and 10)

You really should look at Edgar Rice Burrows' "A Princess of Mars" and its sequels from the Barsoom Series. (Published in 1912, made into the movie John Carter in 2012) His martians (of various coloured varieties) are humanoid but with subtle to extreeme departures (red skin, laying eggs, 4 arms, etc)

**azazel the cat**

chromedog wrote:And look where that got him...

One decent series, several mediocre ones and a bad one - and three good movies (out of 9 - Nemesis doesn't even count as a ST movie).

It got him a legacy of sci-fi on par with that of Star Wars (the original, proper ones), which paved the way for a ton of the sci-fi you love today being mainstream and widely accepted as not just a weird fringe culture.

The first three movies were great, and I remember the Undiscovered Country being decent, as well as First Contact.

Nemesis was the best one out of all of them, however. You got to see:
-Picard try not to violate the prime directive whilst doing doughnuts in a dune buggy with the Klingon riding shotgun and the android in the back.
-Troi finally get a turn to be the aggressor during a mind-raping incident.
-Pieces of a spaceship fall down to ...somewhere... in space.
-Data jump from one ship to another

**Douglaspocock**

If you do chose to make their hands with three or six fingers you should not only make units of three or six, but extend it to a greater effect.

I assume that if you are making a non-anthropocentric world, then your target audience is either very creative or intelligent. I would think that those two groups of people are actually one.

So,
Make your game point system in base6 or base 12.

Use a hexgrid or something equally more difficult.
And please, never dumb down the game for new people.

WoW, DnD 4.0, and Tic Tac Toe are now all on the same intellectual playing field. Make it so only the intelligent people who can think in other ways can play.

**SoloFalcon1138**

Considering its the only actual frame of reference we all share, I think the human frame is more than just moderately important... how many of us understand the perspective of a feral insectoid or a space organism? Probably very few without a comparison to humanity...

**Earthbeard**

AlexHolker wrote:They don't have to be humans, but they do have to be people. There's more to it than that, but that's the key point.

In complete agreement with this, while I adore odd and none humanoid creations and aliens. The average person doesn't seem to, the more outlandish or alien the race, the less general appeal it seems to garner, other than as an enemy to the more human/noid creations.

I'd love to see what ideas you've got cooking, as your work is fantastic.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

tre manor wrote:

Thanks All! I knew this woudl spur a good provocative discussion.

The idea that I have is not to totally toss the human frame of reference out the window. I just want to suspend it quite a bit. To igve an example what i say i wanted everyplayavle race to be generally humaniod ( symmetrical biology 2 arms, 2 legs, 1 head, upright walking ) but wanted to add less human characteristics. A tail and wings to some, blue skin, longer necks and limbs, red skin with orange stripes, VERY large eyes and small mouths, no nose, spiney ridge across it's head, three fingered hands and three toed feet. Presti-digital legs ( like chicken legs. ) feathers, scaley skin etc etc.

Basicly I am think of doign somethign " alien ". Think " Sci-Fantasy" maybe or more probably wierd fantasy.

And no vikings, or knights per se, the tropes they represent but not the cultural trappings.

Sounds fantastic to me.