Setting with no humans (or other fantasy races)

[Ferret]

How do people think would react/use a setting with no standard fantasy races, are there any other settings out there with this theme?

The setting I'm planning features two humanoid/human like races, and a fairly alien one.

The reason is I want a fresh start, sort of how Elves and Eldarin were split up, to separate high and wood elves.

What do people think?

 

[Byronic]

Guild Wars 2 features mostly non-standard races if that helps you.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The first Dark Sun proposal to the TSR management had no traditional fantasy races. Management told the designers to go back to the drawing board and put in the elves, dwarves, and dragons. The designers came back with hairless dwarves, 7 1/2 foot tall ultramarathoner elves, and savage halflings with an appetite for everyone else.

Sometimes it works out better when you take the familiar and simply make it very different.

Tekumel, however, uses humans but everything else is very very alien.

 

[RangerWickett]

Talislanta claimed to have 'No Elves,' and indeed had no races explicitly named human, dwarf, elf, or anything like that. But they had tons of humanoid races, some with green skin, reddish skin, small horns, full-body tattoos, swarthy Italian looks, pale Nordic looks, etc.



Edit: Tal also has three distinct bird races (one eagle-like, one vulture-like, and one that's mostly humanoid with just vestigial wings), giants, short people who communicate via musical tones, two aquatic races (one crocodilian, one shark-like), jaguar-people, human-sized telepathic fairies with butterfly wings, and sentient snails.

 

[Cadfan]

I'm sure it would work. I'm running a game with only elves/eladrin and dragonborn. Those were the only races my players chose, so I deleted all the others.

The real question you should ask yourself before doing this is, "why?" And then, "Will my players find this as appealing as I do?" If you've got a good answer to the first question, and the second question is a yes, then go for it.

 

[Rechan]

And then, "Will my players find this as appealing as I do?"

This is the important thing.

I too have wanted to run campaigns with no standard fantasy races (or no humans), but I recognize that it's going to cause some serious friction. When people come to a fantasy game, they expect elves. Some guys just want to play a dwarf fighter who drinks, and that's it.

So you're forcing people out of their comfort zone.

The second issue is the one of familiarity/relatibility. One reason that you see many "It's just human with something stuck on its forehead" is because it's easy to relate to something that way. It's easy to relate to humans, because we are humans. Once you take away that level of familiarity, then your players are not going to know where to start.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Every time I've considered running a campaign devoid of humans, at least one person has said that they wouldn't be playing in that game. Some of them almost never played humans, either- they just wanted to have that as an option.

Not having that option was a deal-breaker.

 

[jdrakeh]

Mechanical Dream is the only published fantasy RPG I know of that doesn't use any of the 'standard' fantasy races (ala D&D) or reskinned versions of them. Skyrealms of Jorune, Talislanta, and Tekumel a plethora of 'non-standard races' in addition to humans or variations of humans and re-skinned versions of the other 'standard' fantasy races.

 

[pawsplay]

Talislantan races are not simply "reskinned," there really are no elves, dwarves, halflings, half-orcs, etc. However, most of the races are, like elves, dwarves, halflings, etc., quite human-like.

 

[jdrakeh]

Talislantan races are not simply "reskinned," there really are no elves, dwarves, halflings, half-orcs, etc. However, most of the races are, like elves, dwarves, halflings, etc., quite human-like.

A matter of opinion, I guess. I find races like the Sindarin to be very 'elf-like' right down to their name (which is derived from the language spoken by Tolkien's own elves).