D&D 5E Humans!?

[DongMaster]

My entire group consists of human PCs.

Playing a Dwarf would almost be considered "stretching it" when they rolled up their characters. All players are between 35-45 years of age and for some reason they all decided to play their own species. Half of the, are D&D vets and half are beginners when it comes to playing levelling RPG systems.

As a DM, it works just fine by me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Would Guardians of the Galaxy have been as good or better if Starlord had blue skin and horns? (I realize he is only half human, but for the intents of the movie it counts)

I take your point, but it's probably worth pointing out that a movie and an RPG have different needs, here. A movie (especially a fantasy or sci-fi movie) has a need for a surrogate, a "baseline" character who can receive exposition and be the person voicing the audience's own views up on the screen. This isn't always the "protagonist" of the story, but it can be (it is in Star Wars, for instance, but in LotR the character that fit that best was probably Samwise). But it should be someone the audience can easily relate to. So it often is the "token human" in a cast of freakish aliens. Or the commoner among royalty. Or whatever.

In a D&D game, each character is the surrogate of a player, so there's no need for such a role. I'm going to view the game through the lens of my gnome, Paul's gonna view the game through the lens of his elf, etc. A human doesn't give you any real advantage there - your character is your surrogate, and what they understand, so do you. You enter a place where a "normal human" might be seen as something alien and exotic and exceptional for one reason or another, from the perspective of your character.

So rather than being the default audience surrogate, a human is just one more option among several, that needs to kind of stand on its own merits or fall on its own merits. It changes the calculus a bit!

 

[Skyscraper]

As DM, my next campaign will have exclusively humans as PC races. Although, mechanically, almost all PHB races will be represented as human sub-races (native american, persian, etc...)

I find the humans fascinating in the diversity of personalities that players will give them. Dwarves, elves and halflings all seem to be destined to follow the tolkien-esque stereotypical furrow that exists for these races. Sure, some people manage to step slightly aside of it, but mainly dwarves are all burly beer-drinking toughs, halflings are light-hearted agile thieves, and elves are haugthy forest-loving archers or mages. It gets old. And boy, did I work hard as DM to counter those stereotypes, believe me: I went to far as to play or have NPCs that were grim and dark halflings, alcoolic elves, and intellectual dwarves. It's not impossible, but you're just fighting an uphill battle where players will initially react to the atypical NPC with a comparison to the stereotype.

By removing the stereotypical races other then humans, you essentially eliminate the racial preconceptions and reset the metagame racial landscape. Hopefully, this will open new RP-ing ground by ridding the players' minds from their preconceptions.

 

[Gadget]

Most traditional fantasy heroes are 'human' so I don't find wanting to play human in a fantasy game that out there. Combine the fact that races in D&D tend to be of the 'humans-with-funny-foreheads/ears' (with a couple of minor Bonni thrown in), and it does not surprise me at all.

 

[fuindordm]

I usually play humans , halflings, and dwarves because I'm more interested in the story of a mundane person growing into power and exoticism through their travels, than a character who starts out exotic and mysterious.

But it depends a lot on the setting, and what sort of backstory pops into my head when I'm in a creative mood.

 

[Tonguez]

I've played worlds where the PC humans were an exotic minority and interact with the Sidhe and Giant majority. If humans seem mundane then your world design is flawed. The Fantasy world is not earth and humans are merely one of many races, they are adaptable which is an advantage in such a world, so humans thrive regardless of the conditions.

That said my favourite PC is a gnome and I have played a Willowisp Psion

 

[abirdcall]

I take your point, but it's probably worth pointing out that a movie and an RPG have different needs, here. A movie (especially a fantasy or sci-fi movie) has a need for a surrogate, a "baseline" character who can receive exposition and be the person voicing the audience's own views up on the screen. This isn't always the "protagonist" of the story, but it can be (it is in Star Wars, for instance, but in LotR the character that fit that best was probably Samwise). But it should be someone the audience can easily relate to. So it often is the "token human" in a cast of freakish aliens. Or the commoner among royalty. Or whatever.

In a D&D game, each character is the surrogate of a player, so there's no need for such a role. I'm going to view the game through the lens of my gnome, Paul's gonna view the game through the lens of his elf, etc. A human doesn't give you any real advantage there - your character is your surrogate, and what they understand, so do you. You enter a place where a "normal human" might be seen as something alien and exotic and exceptional for one reason or another, from the perspective of your character.

So rather than being the default audience surrogate, a human is just one more option among several, that needs to kind of stand on its own merits or fall on its own merits. It changes the calculus a bit!

I agree that the needs are different.

The differences in the characters though are shown through the other characters in the story.

If I wanted to play a weirdo elf I might be disappointed when every other character is a dragonborn or tiefling.

The peculiarities of elfness shine the most when you place the elf next to a human.

So it's not just about having something the audience can relate to (though that is a factor to. I don't want to play in a game where there aren't even any demihumans).

Having that benchmark enables other characters to shine by being different.

 

[DaveDash]

In the three groups I am in, no one plays human. Or any race without darkvision for that matter. It's for pure mechanical reasons.

 

[Hriston]

This is why I use reaction rolls with racial modifiers. It keeps the "world" from treating every race like they're human, and it encourages a diverse party to deal with whatever friendly races they run into.

 

[iserith]

In the three groups I am in, no one plays human. Or any race without darkvision for that matter. It's for pure mechanical reasons.

Out of curiosity, why would they see darkvision as more advantageous than an extra skill and a feat at 1st level? Surely those outweigh the cost of a torch? Do they rely upon darkness and stealth to get surprise as much as possible perhaps?