The Gaming Den

Humans: They're Everywhere You Want To Be

So just about every damn campaign setting is humano-centric. They have most of the land, especially the normal recognizable earth land, most of the population, and life and history generally revolves around them. Plus they're good at every character class, so you can have an all-human party. This is boring and it needs to change.

But there are reasons for humanocentrism. Some people--including myself, most days--are really only interested in roleplaying humans, and in every group you're going to have one. So you need to make sure that no matter where your campaign is set or what its premise is, humans are viable characters.

Another thing with humans is that they tend to turn up as European analogues, even if other races don't. For white players, that makes it really hard to look at the setting in a balanced way. So we're not going to have any white humans.

Humans: Those Guys Turn Up Everywhere

So we compromise. Humans turn up everywhere, but they don't run anything. The most notable human culture was a feudal, Manchurian state that lived on the surface of the earth. They had lamellar armor and horse cavalry and shit. And their whole place got wrecked by the Zombiepocalypse. They relocated to some low-flying islands, then got conquered by the halflings.

Fortunately, humans are good at airship technology. Really good. So the solution they devised was to take a couple of islands, break them into village-sized chunks, strap massive engines to them, and then fly entire villages from place to place. The mages who originally set this all up happened to be spiritualists of vaguely Taoist bent with Zen trappings because those are recognizable, and Wu Xing.

So these flying human settlements were actually set up as monasteries, and each one is run by a Taoist or Buddhist sage. Aboslutely anybody is allowed to join ship wherever they stop. When they roll into a settlement, they sell whatever they have, buy whatever's cheap, put on an acrobatic show and steal everything that's not nailed down, plus any kids who decide to run away and join them. Also they repair airships. So people have decidedly mixed feelings about them.

Basically you get every gypsy stereotype and every martial arts stereotype in one convenient package.

Human Campaign Hooks

Homecoming: The humans had cities on the surface. Cities still full of good stuff. And undead. Do I need to spell this out? It's like a dungeoncrawl, except outdoors.

I don't even know if that's "for the humans" or "against the humans." Actually, a big flaw in this concept is that they don't really have anything actually *going on*. I'll fix that, I guess. Or someone else could suggest something.

One thing to keep in mind is that the humans are 2-3 times bigger than the halflings, dwarves and gnomes that make up the bigname powers of the setting. As such, humans are basically equal to a race of 9 foot tall supermen that can benchpress a truck. Humans are giants.

Halfings, gnomes, dwarves, goblins (once they're written up) and any other small folk are going to be very proactive in recruiting humans if possible, as human knights make for quality elite troops compared to halfings (who are smaller and weaker) or giants (who are too stupid to follow orders).

The human shtick should not be that they steal baby halfings or some shit (which makes them unambigiously evil), but rather that convince the children of non-nomadic human disporia to join them, rather than signing up for the local militia or something that the state would approve of.

Humans can also run fast and far compared to anybody else in the setting. Not only are they the only commonly-available Medium creature without a con penalty, they're all competent martial artists from birth. If you have the money and they can fit through the doors, humans are probably pretty good for limited use positions that require physical talents.

Vebyast, Grek, good points all. I think you're overstating the case a little bit, in that the halflings have orc servants, the dwarves have drow allies, and there's the constant threat of aasimar. But Humans are probably the most "civilized," omnipresent Medium, so I'm sure the do work as mercenary special forces all the time.

I appreciate the effort to avoid a humano-centric setting and applaud how you've managed to do so while still allowing any and everyone in the setting to conceivable be a human. As far has Zombiepocolypse goes, was the setting humano-centric before it happened? Are the broken human civilization on the ground destroyed or are there pockets of life left?

I like the idea of nomadic humans. While it just seems like a role-reversal between Halflings and humans in OCS, it works well.

For exactly the same reason as Halfings are easier to arm, it should also be said that humans are light foot soldiers. Or even big ewoks. But the problem with big ewoks or foot soldiers is that because of that extra feet, you have a much more generalized populace in terms of skills than say Halflings or Gnomes.

The Halflings are born soldiers because of their stat block. Humans are born nothing. There is something very tabula rasa about humans in d&d.

Every other race falls for the color trap. A grey elf is different from a dark elf not just in looks but in ability. Svirnebelin are different from Rock gnomes. But humans -- a black guy isn't different from a white guy or a chinese guy. Aside from just stat block, if you even stat up a black guy as different from a white guy, you get into serious problem. I agree with why. I mean, that's one reason why I have never been comfortable with color-wheel racial differences in d&d.

So how is tabula rasa developed and represented in a setting?

Re: The ancestral human homelands, you can go wild with that. They don't even have to be Chinese if you don't want, as long as their (brief) sky kingdom is. I've thought about the homeland little if at all, and there are serious questions to answer.

--How did the surface humans grow anything, since there is very little sunlight on the surface?

--For that matter, the other surface races (dwarves, orcs, drow) all have darkvision; how did humans get by?

I only really thought of this because I needed some medium-sized ruins on the surface to explore, and I needed an explanation for why humans have no home. But those don't have to overlap, if we want to make the surface ruins some other race and give humans a different backstory. To answer the actual question, "are there any humans left on the ground" I'm inclined to say, "yes, but only because the vampires need something to eat."

ETA:

The Big Picture

For convenience, I like to thing of everything going on in the setting in three vertical layers.

Ground And Low Sky

The notable thing about this region is that it is very dark and full of zombies. Also Ghosts and Shadows, but if you have an accurate sky chart and stick to your schedule you can stay in sunlight indefinitely. The Zombies have killed everyone except the (Human) Vampires, Dark Dwarves, and Dark Gnomes, who control them, the Orcs who hide in monster-filled forests, and the Dwarves and Drow, who fight them with foreign aid from the Hobgoblins and Bright Gnomes. Meanwhile, Kobolds try to kill the gnomes and sometimes everyone else.

Deeper still, Illithids hide from the wrath of the Gith and possibly war against the dwarves with psionic slaves, if people have psionic classes they actually like. You could add Kalashtar as your good guy psions on the lower islands.

Middle Sky Most of this region is controlled by Halflings, with Humans and Genies competing for mercantile power. Elves, Orcs, Goblins, and stationary Humans are scattered around the fringes of the Imperium and slowly being brought in line. Dragons and their sorcerous allies mark the borders of the "known world", while the Aasimar scoop up land where they can.

High Sky The Hobgoblins came here to be as close to the sun as possible. The Empress' agenda is focused on keeping the Gith out of the prime and on religious purity, but individual clans sometimes raid or conquer the lower lands for wealth and prestige. The Aasimar empire is also based in the high sky, and has gone to war with the Hobgoblins several times in the past.

Answer: The Sun is blocked off from the surface from clouds of dust and shattered islands from the catacylsm that destroyed the original human homeland and scattered them to the for winds. Prior to that happening, the sun actually shined on the surface, plants grew, and vampires didn't come out of their underground caverns during the day.

Dwarven towers penetrate the dust layer and are the major docking points to get down onto the surface. Some mountains are tall enough for doing that as well. All surviving humans live on top of these mountains (with the elves, orcs and anything else that likes trees/animals), or as nomads.

E: Did not see above post. As such, here is my schema:

Sun: It's the Sun. Positiver Energy Plane.

Upper Sky: Hobgoblins trying to reach heaven, Aasimar Janissaries trying to keep them out. Lots of angels, none of whom are friendly with the hobs.

Middle Sky: Halfling Empire, smattering of other races who've claimed land. Most "outer" planes are here.

Borderlands: Surrounds Middle Sky, 1 element per direction. Dragons, Elementals and Genies are natives. Also, kobolds.

Low Sky: Human ships, tall mountaintops, tips of dwarven towers.

Dust Layer: Blocks light from reaching surface. Nothing lives here.

Surface: Full of zombies and dwarven strongholds.

Subsurface: Anima mines and undead. Drow too.

Subsubsurface Vermin hives that try to steal Anima.

Subsubsubsurface: Illithids.

Core: Negative Energy Plane.

Orion wrote:The ancestral human homelands, you can go wild with that. They don't even have to be Chinese if you don't want, as long as their (brief) sky kingdom is. I've thought about the homeland little if at all, and there are serious questions to answer.

If you want run with the diaspora theme for humanity there's one way you can go. Maybe humanity has its own ancient language kept largely the same throughout the generations since the zombie apocalypse destroyed that nation ages ago. Granted every human settlement, tribe, or nomadic troupe might have their own derivation of it based off of local languages but the original is still spoken to harken back to the "good old days."

Perhaps some weren't content to consign those days to memory and spread the word that they were going to return to the surface and reclaim the homeland. Word has it that there is a civilization of humans on the ground that retook one of their ancient cities and is fighting a never-ending war with the undead in an effort to rekindle the spark of an independent human nation.

Maybe humans speak Hebrew.

@Big Picture, thanks for this. It gives me a much better idea of the setting as a whole before going into each individual culture.

How big is the surface for players? Not literally but in the scope of gameplay, is it like Undermountain or is it like the Underdark? Or is it even bigger or smaller?

Necromancer, that *is* an intriguing thought. I was really attached to making the setting's humans non-white (the other human faction was going to be Ethiopians or something). I tend to think Jewish = White, but that may not be true depending on where we go with this.

I *am* committed to getting representation for Asia. China was going to go to Humans and Japan to Hobgoblins. I actually hadn't found a place for India yet. Was thinking perhaps Dwarves, perhaps Aasimar.

They can be judaic in culture without being judaic in appearance. There are black jews.

True, you can even combine it with your original idea for Ethiopian influenced for a culture like oh, say: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethiopian_Jews_in_Israel

Granted, including any sort of African culture in your setting will automatically set it apart by virtue of not being mainly European with the token Asian and Arab civilizations.

unfortunately, europe and asia are the only parts of the world I know anything about, hence the ethiopian faction not being written up yet.

I'm so ignorant that I can't tell the difference between actual region-appropriate African cultural tropes and racist caricatures of African culture. So I'm no help.

Humans are the linchpin, our point of connections to the game. It lets more people readily adapt to the world in which humans exist. They are also the body type most other things are built off of. It only makes sense they would be there, and if they weren't someone might question why so many human-looking things exist, but not humans. What to things have two legs, two arms, etc but humans don't exist?

Maybe they didn't but some magical construct or event created them in the game. Elves of old testing out magic on themselves produced an elf-like creature that is stronger but at the cost lost a lot of elven features, became taller, less attuned to magic, and live a LOT longer form the loss of magic.

Heck maybe drow were experimenting on being better surface dwellers and the experiments led to humans, but once on the surface they were allowed to break free from the drow and became their own societies. The closeness to drow at the start gave them a chance to grow on the surface to numbers before actually expanding to other areas to get away form the drow. So in early stages they were protected by drow that would come to the surface at night to hunt down those who were attempting to destroy their creations.

Maybe that is too much for a human plot-hook though?