| FanaticRat |
Forgive me if the topic title is vague, or if I appear to be rambling, but this has been a point of curiosity for me for quite awhile. Basically, I am wondering what people think of a setting that has humans in it, but humans are "just another race" so to speak--not the most populous, not the most special, but just a part of it, with other fantastic races in equal or even greater number? A setting in which humans are not anything special, or, if they are special, not in the way that the world revolves around them? Note that I am not saying a setting in which humans do not exist or a setting in which humans are seen as too puny or too powerful; humans would have to be a legit player character race.
Now, to further explain where I'm coming from, there are two things that have caused me to wonder this. Firstly, I've noticed in about any game in which humans are playable characters and not put into the weak or ignorant or cthulu category, humans are always the special can-do anything race. I mean look at Pathfinder: humans have next to no restrictions, have the most fluid points, can get more skills than other races, etc etc. Or take something like FantasyCraft: every race has race traits, except human, who gets to pick from a plethora of different traits instead. In short, Humans are always presented as the "do anything, be anything" race, with the most diversity in skill and culture and beliefs, yadda yadda yadda.
Secondly, I had been looking at some posts in another thread about exotic races and the pros and cons of the "party of freaks". I noticed one common thread of thought in the anti-exotic race camp was that such parties stretched verisimilitude since the setting, itself, is human-centric, with humans being the dominant and most populous race, with the other exotic races being really rare or even so rare many people might not even know one exists.
So this got me to thinking, what happens when you have a setting in which humans are just as common as any other race, or even if humans /are/ the exotic race? That is to say, in the grand scheme of things they're not anymore important than any other race and things don't revolve around them. A setting where multiple races being in contact with each other an intermingling was seen as pretty normal? A setting where humans have things they're good at, but aren't the "do anything" race, or at the very least, other races have as much diversity as humans do?
Would such a setting work for you? Would it stretch suspension of disbelief, or be difficult to relate to? I know one person I mentioned this to noted that the trope of humans being the dominant, multi-faceted race was probably rooted in humans being the most relatable choice (since we're, y'know, humans) and thus is better for anchoring the player. Another consideration could be possibly by making humans not special, it makes the non-human races not-special in turn, removing the incentive to play them? I don't know.
I wanna hear people's thoughts on this. There has to be a reason for this, if this is such an engendered trope in fantasy.