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I’m currently working away on a system of my own (pipe dream and all that) and this is a question that I’m currently grappling with. What do you do with humans in your setting?

Now at the moment, the best way I can describe how I’m approaching humans is to compare them with the eldar of 40k. They are an old old old civilisation (but not the oldest) with a great understanding of their own technology and magic, but who’ve suffered a cataclysmic set back and are thus hampered by a lack of resources and numbers.

They don’t have all the answers though, because there are eldritch horrors out there beyond their comprehension, and a great back hole exists in their history that’s given rise to myths and legends. They exist in different groups who are sometimes allies, sometimes enemies, but where they differ from the eldar is that although they are down, they are not out, and they’re determined to reclaim what’s lost. They’re rage raging against the dying of the light, because I want my setting to be a bit more opportunistic than say, 40k.

What about the rest of you? I assume you’d use humans as the ‘main characters’ and pretty much plant them in the middle of, well, everything in your game right?

You do what you do with humans what you want based on the story and setting you create. Plus you don't even need humans.


That said most stories and media and creations involve humans or very human like creatures because its often a lot quicker and easier to build a rapport with the public when you've got something that they can easily latched onto and understand - like people.

That said there are many things out there which do well without people or have them as the evil force or only as a side character/feature - Dark Crystal (film); many kids TV shows (Animals of Fathering Wood).


Also some things never quite establish it, Homeworld the game never really shows you the people you play as through the entire game (if memory serves you get one quick glance at Karen as she's put into the Mothership and that is it). Otherwise they are never identified with a face, clear body or anything - just the machines they use and the player interacts with. So the vast majority will see them mentally as humans, but they don't have to be.

If you ask my friends, they will say that I do not handle other humans well.

Most of my games are historical based, even if they are "alt" history so humans are pretty much what you see in the history books. In the Sci-Fi games I have made, the rules and setting are model and scale agnostic so "you do you" with humans.

My primary game is KOG light, a near future giant robot milsim of sorts. Humans are humans 20 years from now.

Personally I think humans should be handled at least as equal creatures to other creatures they meet and not the underlings.

As a race humanity has so far proven to be highly resilient driven with a strong survival instincts and impressive intellect, I do not see why every race in a setting must be created as superior to humans but...

There are exceptions of course but they should be that, exceptions.

Great feedback guys, thank you!

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
Personally I think humans should be handled at least as equal creatures to other creatures they meet and not the underlings.

As a race humanity has so far proven to be highly resilient driven with a strong survival instincts and impressive intellect, I do not see why every race in a setting must be created as superior to humans but...

There are exceptions of course but they should be that, exceptions.

Yeah that always bugged me. “Oh these guys, they’re 3 times stronger than humans, live twice as long as humans, have psychic powers and are just better than humans”...you know who I’m talking about.

Again, although it isn’t necessary to even have humans in your setting, if you were going to include them then I’d certainly have them as the benchmark that everything else is compared too but I wouldn’t go down that whole “everyone else is better except for that one quirk” route, as it’s so worn out.

I’ve got the beginnings of a fantasy setting brewing here, and what would you guys say to the idea of humans being the central race in it with all other races having a connection to them? In sort, the good god(s) made humans in their image as the first or near first sentient race and give them a spark of their divinity in the shape of a soul, and the bad god(s) either make crude imitations of them or corrupt them into monsterous things. Or that even the good gods have had to ‘modify’ some of them from time to time in order to preserve them. So that the elf, dwarf, ogre, giant, orc, goblin or whatever equivalents are all basically heavily modified (mutated?) humans. Is this boring, essentially just having humans in the setting?

To be fair, it wasn't until D&D 3E that WotC finally decided that humans should be broadly competitive with non-humans in terms of utility. It probably wasn't until 5E that they more-or-less got it "right" where being a human wasn't an obvious disadvantage.

I think not having humans in the background is problematic. I think it's hard for many players to decide they should help the space rocks against the space bugs because it favors the space snakes over the space jellyfish

I primarily play a point buy system so the races not being "balanced" is fine because the tougher/faster/better races just cost more.

That being said it uses attribute values from 1-6 for humans (2 being a human average and 5 being the practical human limit and 6 being the actual human limit. Something is wrong with you if you have a 6 in something). So anything 6+ is border line superhuman to low level super human.

For instance, elves have a actual limit in dex of 7 and an actual limit in con of 5. Where as a human starts character creation with a 1 in everything (and then has attributes to spend to raise things how you see fit) an elf starts with a 1 in everything but dex (where they have a 2).

Then other factors come into play like having dark vision or whatever that also adjust cost. They also tend to have drawbacks that reduce cost. Not just perks.


All said and done, in my "world" humans are not better or worse then other major nation building races. They just tend to be more diverse. Dwarven society tends to be bogged down in dwarven tradition and law which is slow moving and bureaucratic. That tends to more or less be true whether its the traditional dwarves in their mountains or nomads in a desert.

Humans however have a large variety of societies. It makes them adaptable in the fluff but also unpredictable and not always looked upon favorably by other races because of it.

I quite like to have a variety of cultures - not just among humans, but in other races too. Having monolithic cultures based on race always seemed a bit lazy to me. Not that I put a huge level of effort into going too far down that path, mind.

I also think an interesting thing to do is have cultures that are influenced by the racial mix within their population, so if you're using the more stereotypical racial traits, a kingdom with more elves might reflect that by having a more elf-influenced culture.

Probably my favourite example of this that I've come up with is the Empire of Radovicia.
So, they're a bit like if the Roman empire started in Germany - Tribal culture subsumed into a very authoritarian super-state. Their territory has a lot of Dwarven holds in it, which has influenced their military tactics - a focus on heavy armour, engineering and infantry tactics. They build in stone, and go heavily into infrastructure projects.

I should say that I do tend to see humans as the most numerous and the dominant species.

Absolutely. Within a race there should be several different cultures especially existing in different regions. I am just noting that much like typical cat behavior and typical dog behavior there should be some kind of typical "Dwarf" behavior and typical "elf" behavior.

If nothing else their longer lives place a different emphasis on their societal structures. Dwarves can stand to be super bureaucratic. When you live 6-700 years long spending a couple decades to organize digging rights and or ownership, or taking 100 years to complete an apprenticeship is just what they as a species do.

Likewise, elves have time to be contemplative and take things slow. Their structures can be grown around and within nature no mater what culture they are a part of because they live so long that they don't have a lot of reason not to. Elves in my worlds tend to have a bit stronger connection to their feywilds heritage so their link to nature is more ingrained in them. Different societies tend to trace their origins back to summer or winter courts which then diverged in the material plane into more civilized, more wood elf like, or more savage and primal. While the Drow are still exiles. But that doesn't change the fact that they all have some kind of connection to the natural world (except drow really) and all of them are more slow moving as a society simply because they can be.

I'm not sure all races should embrace diversity. Elfs, sure. Dorfs? Maybe not. Dorfs and esp Orkz are good candidates for having dominant monoculture: Orkz simply kill any divergence outright, where Dorfs ostracize (guaranteed death when alone).

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm not sure all races should embrace diversity. Elfs, sure. Dorfs? Maybe not. Dorfs and esp Orkz are good candidates for having dominant monoculture: Orkz simply kill any divergence outright, where Dorfs ostracize (guaranteed death when alone).

Yeah but then you have to be like "This race only exists on this continent and only in this region."

It's far more interesting to find out that there is another culture of dwarves that are nomads in some desert waste. They could be just as likely to ostracize and just as monolithic and draconian in their cultural traditions but yet have a different way of life.


Likewise, I like to stick a large group or orcs/goblinoids in the middle of an ash waste that exists in a large area surrounded by sharp mountains with lots of volcanoes. Those tribes are mean as all hell and tougher then the average simply because of the harsh living conditions of their homelands. But goblins from a South American like jungle would be vastly different. And there could even be some orcs from a set of plains that are more open to reasoning and discussion while still favoring and respecting strength above all else.

Sticking a race into a single small corner of the world can make them dull in my opinion. And unless you make them INCREDIBLY powerful it also means they tend to not get around too much and end up not knowing much about the larger world.


For humanity specifically I break my human cultures into 3 major groups with varieties which I guess also applies to other races but I tend to give other races over aching themes that these fit around.

1) Civilized/imperial - These guys amass big armies. Conquer and consolidate. They tend to be aggressive to neighbors. They have trade, but only when conquest isn't a better option. This isn't to say evil. Just military minded and potentially isolationist. National pride tends to take precedence over personal pride.

2) Riverlands/farmers/nomads - While the imperial civilizations will have communities like this this is more about a nation of people like this. Pirates fall under this group, but also more nomadic people like gypsies. Stationary or wandering personal freedom and community bonds are big values in the society.

3) savage/harsh environment - This covers the northmen in the frozen wastes and the desert dwellers along with those in swamps, bogs, and jungles. I think less about how their values shape their society and more about how their environment shapes their values. They tend to be tougher then the average just due to the hardships of their environments.


So outside of humans, the traditional dwarves are civilized/imperial as a nation but less interested in conquest. Still slow to pick allies and more isolationist. They trade simply for products they value highly or don't have access to. For MY dwarves I like to throw in bits of the savage/harsh environment for northmen to give them more a viking theme then most settings. Elves tend to mostly fit into the second group, but again I give them closer ties to their fey origins. There is either a group of elves that is amassing an army that fits closer to the first group usually with a xenophobic slant or at least big elvish pride, or there once was an elvish civilization that was the first group but has since been wiped out. Orcs are mostly the 3rd group, but small groups of the second exist. Some evil nation/s might conscript orc tribes to make them foot soldiers in a first group setting but it's rare for any orc to organize in such a way. Halflings are almost exclusively in the second group, but small pockets of them can end up in the other groups. Gnomes are the same. Mostly the second. Rarely or never the 3rd. Can be the 1rst if repeatedly attacked and backed into a corner (Gnomes will adapt quickly to handle the threat). etc etc...