Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

[Escafarc]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

Yes this is fantasy after all' date=' but I have to rain on your parade and point out that in most cases, lowering the learning curve for your fantasy milieu is a good thing. Which is why the Tolkien/Warcraft/Warhammer/D&D races have become the standard. It is much easier to play a Wood Elf than it is to play a Q'Rhullion Warsinger and the complexities of its tripartite soul.[/quote']

 

Of course going too far that way get's you the old humans in a rubber suit effect. That said I dropped non-humans from my campaign due to an adverse reaction to the "Uber-Elves" of 1 & 2E's of AD&D and I have no regrets.

[Old Man]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

Exactly. The trick is to present any nonstandard races in such a way that players can easily grasp how to play them without their being rubber humans. Warforged out of Eberron are a pretty good example, though I consider them to be a gift to powergamers. A bad example, ironically, is Tolkien, who did a poor job of characterizing elves as anything other than aloof Mary Sues. But in general you're lucky if a player is willing to read more than two sentences of background for a particular race, let alone remember it in the middle of a game.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

You can also take humans and add on environmental packages to show things like desert adaptation' date=' arctic adaptation, etc. This really expands the variety for a single race.[/quote']

 

 

Yep, I do that also. it works quite well.

[Spence]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

Of course going too far that way get's you the old humans in a rubber suit effect.

 

Now that is what I meant by humans of another flavor. Great way to describe it.

[tkdguy]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

That's how I do it. I can't seem to run a talking dragon and take it seriously. They may be smarter than a dinosaur but they don't interact on a human level.

 

Komodo Dragons aren't true dragons, but they're dangerous enough.

 

[AlHazred]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

In the Bad Old Days, I ran V&V. One of the most effective tools for outrageous superheroic adventures was a little random adventure generator at the beginning of one of the books. The first one I rolled up? "Komodo dragons escape from the zoo and run amok in the city downtown." Especially when I read up on them a little. Of course, I made them far more aggressive than the normal animals, scared, confused, partially tranquilized. Good times, man, good times.

[Karmakaze]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

It occurs to me that if you're running a campaign that allows magic-users, aren't mages demi-human in their own way? The sort of magic used in fantasy settings doesn't map well to real-world history and can easily generate cultures nothing like what we've actually seen.

[Curufea]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

They're onl demi-humans in the same way that gymnasts are demi-humans, or mathematicians are demi-humans.

They would only influence culture and history if the magic was able to, and if they were treated by non-mages in certain ways.

 

You're making an awful lot of assumptions on how mages and magic works in someones setting there.

[Shadowsoul]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

One could argue the case for mages as a subrace of humanity if their power had a genetic origin i.e. it was an inherited trait.

 

This was actually done in the Artefacts of Power series by Maggie Furey. Magefolk are distinct from mortal humans. They are also so powerful in certain areas that one of them was able to affect the weather patterns of an entire continent.

[Ragnarok]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

One could argue the case for mages as a subrace of humanity if their power had a genetic origin i.e. it was an inherited trait.

 

 

Especially if the magic somehow causes physical genetic mutations. *coughpointedearscough*

[Curufea]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

But if magic is just a matter of study in the setting - you end up with world histories like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, or The Laws of Magic by Michael Pryor.

If the users of magic are not accepted into society in the setting - you end up with world histories like the White Wolf RPG, Mage.

 

What I'm saying is - don't assume everyone handles the use of magic in a fantasy setting in exactly the same, boring, stereotypical, unimaginative fashion.

[AlHazred]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

True. However, one of the most important inspirations for fantasy literature, The Lord of the Rings, had non-human mages only. Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards) were Maiar, sort of like Tolkien's version of angels sent to the mortal realm to conquer another Maiar, Sauron. So, non-humans. Come to think of it, I believe Shannara did it the same way.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

True. However' date=' one of the most important inspirations for fantasy literature, [i']The Lord of the Rings[/i], had non-human mages only. Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards) were Maiar, sort of like Tolkien's version of angels sent to the mortal realm to conquer another Maiar, Sauron. So, non-humans. Come to think of it, I believe Shannara did it the same way.

 

You don't want my opinion on Shannara. You just don't.

 

Were there any true non-humans in the Conan stories?

[Markdoc]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

You don't want my opinion on Shannara. You just don't.

 

I think the reviewer (don't recall his name) who described Terry Brooks as "able, with just a few lines, to turn ageless archetypes into rotting, 2-dimensional hulks of cardboard" had it about right. I guess Shannara is an example of a publisher's greed triumphing over an editor's shrieks of horror.

 

Were there any true non-humans in the Conan stories?

 

Only monsters. There were human wizards, but just as many - if not more: I haven't done a headcount - non-human wizards (typically undead).

 

cheers, Mark

[Old Man]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

Boy, that reviewer sure went easy on Shannara.

 

Whether REH had nonhuman wizards is an interesting question that depends on where "subhuman" fits on the spectrum.

[DusterBoy]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

I sure wouldn't describe Thulsa Doom as human. . .

[Curufea]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

True. However' date=' one of the most important inspirations for fantasy literature, [i']The Lord of the Rings[/i], had non-human mages only. Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards) were Maiar, sort of like Tolkien's version of angels sent to the mortal realm to conquer another Maiar, Sauron. So, non-humans. Come to think of it, I believe Shannara did it the same way.

 

Yep, I'm aware of that - the wizards (and Sauron and the Balrog) in Middle Earth mythology are the equivalent to Angels (and Demons) in the Christian mythology. They're the servants of the Gods of Arda - one of whom is Melkor/Morgoth, God of dissonance in the song of Creation who rebelled against his father God - Iluvatar.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

I sure wouldn't describe Thulsa Doom as human. . .

 

Very true but he was once. a few Beast races showed up as already said they were monsters. he did hint they were inhuman civilizations hidden deep within the southern jungles but we never saw any.

[Curufea]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

Weren't the serpent people? Or was that just rumours?

[tkdguy]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

I think the serpent men were in Kull's timeline (and Thulsa Doom was actually Kull's enemy in the novels). They may have been extinct by the time Conan came around.

[Guest steamteck]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

I only remember the serpent people in Kull's time but its been years since I read the REH Conan. Now I may have to reread them. they were still mostly monsters who skulked in the dark with no large visible civilization in the present.

[Lucius]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

In Howard's Conan stories, non-human intelligent beings are not always antagonists; "The Tower of the Elephant" features a benevolent elephant headed being, the last of its kind on Earth, who allies with Conan to oppose a common enemy. But even he is not exactly a PROtagonist either.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

House of the Palindromedary

[Spence]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

I think the serpent men were in Kull's timeline (and Thulsa Doom was actually Kull's enemy in the novels). They may have been extinct by the time Conan came around.

 

I only remember the serpent people in Kull's time but its been years since I read the REH Conan. Now I may have to reread them. they were still mostly monsters who skulked in the dark with no large visible civilization in the present.

 

I'd have to dig through my Conan books, but I am sure there was at least one story where Conan comes up against a small enclave of surviving serpent men. I remember something about it being in dense forest or jungle. Forgotten ruins etc.

 

But not much more than that.

[DusterBoy]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

The snake-men aren't in the Conan stories but there are plenty of giant snakes, all of which are seriously bad news and then there's Set, the evil serpent god.

 

Guess Howard had a thing about snakes.

[tkdguy]

Re: Only Humans Need Apply: Campaigns with Just Humans

 

Maybe, but people in general have an aversion to snakes (Snakes on a Plane, anyone?), and Howard definitely used that to good effect.