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There is something which I have noticed and followed for some time now, about the population of Golarion. it seems (when considering the sheer amount of human NPCs in moduls and APs and PF journals etc.) that mankind are the dominant spicies on Golarion (not like we are in real life earth since there are many more civilaistions aside ours, but still). in another thread James Jacobs said that it is so (confirming my suspicion) and added that it was porpusfully so.
my I ask why? and do people like it that way? because I personally enjoy worlds where humanity is bet one of many and humans are not that important. feels more fantastic, somehow.
Creative Director
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There is something which I have noticed and followed for some time now, about the population of Golarion. it seems (when considering the sheer amount of human NPCs in moduls and APs and PF journals etc.) that mankind are the dominant spicies on Golarion (not like we are in real life earth since there are many more civilaistions aside ours, but still). in another thread James Jacobs said that it is so (confirming my suspicion) and added that it was porpusfully so.
my I ask why? and do people like it that way? because I personally enjoy worlds where humanity is bet one of many and humans are not that important. feels more fantastic, somehow.
Because the people who write the game are human, and the people who play the game are human. By focusing the game setting on humanity, we give the game a stronger connection to known values, and thus when we DO introduce the fantastic, be it an elven tree city or a mountain sized dwarf city or a fire breathing dragon, it actually FEELS fantastic and magical.
Furthermore, we the creators of Golarion are steeped in fantasy fiction that focuses on the humanity. Look at Appendix 3 of the PRPG for examples; the majority of the books there are about humans in fantastic settings. Personally, my favorite fantasy settings are VERY light on demihuman type elements; Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories, Raymond Feist's stories, Ramsey Campbell's (relatively obscure but still awesome) fantasy stories, Fritz Leiber, George R. R. Martin, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.
In fact, you can probably lay the elf/dwarf/halfling element of things more or less on Tolkein's doorstep, since it seems to me that one of the REALLY imaginative and groundbreaking and innovative elements of his stories is the fact that there a lot of non-human characters in major roles. Before him, this wasn't as much the case. I suspect that, in fact, this skewing away from humanity as a recognizable core upon which to build a fantastic setting is probably the reason I never really became a rabid Tolkein fan, and stabilized at merely an admirer of his skill and talent.
Anyway, since we at Paizo are, overall, more inspired by the pulp era and the modern era, and not as much by Tolkein... Golarion is very humanocentric. Kind of like how Gygax and friends built Greyhawk—they were inspired by the pulps as well, and since that was the game most of us here at Paizo grew up with, it makes sense that you'd see those themes carried out in Golarion.
And finally, going humanocentric with Golarion really helped us establish our own feel for our campaign world and let us get out from under the shadow of Wizards of the Coast. WotC's doing some really cool work with settings, and always have, but with settings like Eberron and the Forgotten Realms and Dark Sun and so on, the non-human elements are a LOT more front and center. Making Golarion more human-focused is one of the ways we decided to go against WotC's current philosophies of world building.
Because the people who write the game are human, and the people who play the game are human. By focusing the game setting on humanity, we give the game a stronger connection to known values, and thus when we DO introduce the fantastic, be it an elven tree city or a mountain sized dwarf city or a fire breathing dragon, it actually FEELS fantastic and magical.
Furthermore, we the creators of Golarion are steeped in fantasy fiction that focuses on the humanity. Look at Appendix 3 of the PRPG for examples; the majority of the books there are about humans in fantastic settings. Personally, my favorite fantasy settings are VERY light on demihuman type elements; Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories, Raymond Feist's stories, Ramsey Campbell's (relatively obscure but still awesome) fantasy stories, Fritz Leiber, George R. R. Martin, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.
In fact, you can probably lay the elf/dwarf/halfling element of things more or less on Tolkein's doorstep, since it seems to me that one of the REALLY imaginative and groundbreaking and innovative elements of his stories is the fact that there a lot of non-human characters in major roles. Before him, this wasn't as much the case. I suspect that, in fact, this...
I'm saving this post in my pc. I love when developers and authors 'open the hood' for a while in order to let us see the whys and hows of some design choices. Nice!
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Mr. Jacobs, thank you very much for your swift and detailed answear. details like those you shared are exactly the helpful kind of things that can help me (as a DM) and others to understand not only Paizos' way of work but also the feeling of Golarion.
I assumed from the beginning (and fully agree) that the porpuse of humanizing the world was to create familiarty and sympathy with the audiance (who are, hopefuly, at least mostly human...).
however, this approach does create some gaping holes in the inner logic of the campign setting. even though the human are dominant, they mostly treat other races as equels and the issiue of a "ruling race" is never addresed. I mean, it dosent seem that anyone living in Golarion cares about things being that way. hack, it might look like nobody even noticed.
when the european folk came to afrika, extreme xenophobia made them alienate the locals and tag them as "barely human". their technological superiority and better organizition lead to slavery. would it be so strange if humans would teat races that are actually not human like they sometime treat humans with a diffrent skin color? dosent seem far fatched at all to me... so why is there no referance to the humans being so obviously powerful over other races?
thanks again!
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Because the people who write the game are human, and the people who play the game are human. By focusing the game setting on humanity, we give the game a stronger connection to known values, and thus when we DO introduce the fantastic, be it an elven tree city or a mountain sized dwarf city or a fire breathing dragon, it actually FEELS fantastic and magical.
Furthermore, we the creators of Golarion are steeped in fantasy fiction that focuses on the humanity. Look at Appendix 3 of the PRPG for examples; the majority of the books there are about humans in fantastic settings. Personally, my favorite fantasy settings are VERY light on demihuman type elements; Robert E. Howard's "Conan" stories, Raymond Feist's stories, Ramsey Campbell's (relatively obscure but still awesome) fantasy stories, Fritz Leiber, George R. R. Martin, Clark Ashton Smith, etc.
In fact, you can probably lay the elf/dwarf/halfling element of things more or less on Tolkein's doorstep, since it seems to me that one of the REALLY imaginative and groundbreaking and innovative elements of his stories is the fact that there a lot of non-human characters in major roles. Before him, this wasn't as much the case. I suspect that, in fact, this...
Though I don't think I recognized at the time what originally drew me to the world of Golarion, I can say that what you just said was a large part of it. The more I read into Golarion, the more I want to read. Now I'm an addict.
Have you noticed the way the folk of Golarion view goblins?
Honestly, I did this as my anthropology thesis years ago.
If you take the 1st edition D&D world, and start mapping it out, you'll find the ethnographic stereotypes follow this pattern.
Assume that by "Human" you mean "White Americans." All the illustrations of that era pretty much back this up, so you don't need to argue it.
From there, "orc" is the new "black." People who are half of each race are still treated as orc/black. Add in some embarrassing issues of Dragon where the orcs are speaking African-American dialect and you pretty much have the picture.
Elves are either Asians or Native Americans depending on whether you're talking about High Elves (with their amazing magic which humans can only aspire to) or Wood Elves (who are so magically in tune with nature that humans can only aspire to this too) and need you say more? Oh, and their women are really hot and their men can't grow decent beards. Half-elves are basically treated okay by both cultures except when they're not.
Dwarves and gnomes get all the Jewish stereotypes, from the business about gold and banking, to heavy beards, privacy, and making good entertainers.
Halflings get the gypsy and Mexican stereotypes, about being wild, carefree, lazy and thieving.
It's not a perfect mapping, but it's pretty close, and you don't have to scratch the surface far to see it.
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when the european folk came to afrika, extreme xenophobia made them alienate the locals and tag them as "barely human". their technological superiority and better organizition lead to slavery. would it be so strange if humans would teat races that are actually not human like they sometime treat humans with a diffrent skin color? dosent seem far fatched at all to me... so why is there no referance to the humans being so obviously powerful over other races?
thanks again!
The thing is, while humans outnumber the other races, number doesn't equal necessarily power. Humans aren't technological superior and they aren't better organized. In fact you could make a point that it's exactly the opposite, seeing that humankind is opposing itself on various levels.
And you'll not have to look further than Cheliax and their treatment of the halfling race to see that there IS racism in the world.
But I guess the main reason is that it's not much fun to play a character at the game table the others' player characters look down upon. If the designers had decided to make this an integral part of their setting, those people who actually like to play elves, dwarves and other races would think twice about playing in Golarion where they will be punished by the setting for their character choice.
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and do people like it that way?
Yes, I like it this way. And for all the reasons that James Jacobs stated. But I'd like to add one more reason: The real world is the best place of inspiration. Thus, humans have all of the variety and flavors that can be drawn from that. Non-humans, however, pretty much have one flavor each. Yes, there is some variety (wild elves vs. high elves), but for the most part a non-human race is just a single culture/idea. Humans are ANYTHING you can think of. Any character concept or flavor works with humans.
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Ha, forgot to answer the question at hand.
and do people like it that way?
Actually yes. I love what they did with the elves in the "Elves of Golaron" companion and I can't wait to see gnomes get the same treatment, but what's a huge selling point to me is that they succeeded in making humans an interesting race again. For several years I often was the only player playing a human while all others played one of the other races.
And now I'm running two campaigns (CotCT and SD) for 9 human and 1 half-elf character. Shoanti, Varisians and Chelaxians (and best of all, mighty Qadirans) have taken their place at the game tables as nations every inch as interesting as the other races. What once seemed the blandest choice of all now seems to be the most interesting one.
I like it very much.
Because the people who write the game are human
I'm calling your bluff. That gargantuan clown's mask hasn't fooled us, mister needs-30-foot-doors-and-eats-a-cattle-herd-for-breakfast.
So, when do we get to see your homebrew, fiendish-t-rexocentric campaign world?
I had an idea once for a world where humans were a fringe race, and elves still ruled things. There, the curious age of decline elves everywhere seem to go through never happened. Similar to dark elves, these elves have that "human drive" to some degree, meaning they don't always contemplate things for a century.
Could work, would probably work quite well, but it's definetly a specific world.
What that dinosaur that tries to disguise as a human said is true: The people involved in RPGs on the real world side of things are all human. They know humans (well, some of them don't, I know, the guys who never get out of their parents' basement and all that, but let's ignore them for a second, just like everybody else), they know how they act, they know how a world where humans dominate looks like.
It's a lot easier to take that as a baseline.
Try to think yourself into a world like I described above. Sure, those elves have been (further) humanised, but there are still some big differences, like not really sleeping in the way we humans know it and living for a thousand years or so. How would that civilisation look like? How would that whole world look like?
As I said: It's a lot easier to take humans as a baseline and work your way up from there. That way, everything that isn't described as different from our world can safely be assumed to be the same, or at least similar.
I had an idea once for a world where humans were a fringe race, and elves still ruled things. There, the curious age of decline elves everywhere seem to go through never happened. Similar to dark elves, these elves have that "human drive" to some degree, meaning they don't always contemplate things for a century.
Could work, would probably work quite well, but it's definetly a specific world.
What that dinosaur that tries to disguise as a human said is true: The people involved in RPGs on the real world side of things are all human. They know humans (well, some of them don't, I know, the guys who never get out of their parents' basement and all that, but let's ignore them for a second, just like everybody else), they know how they act, they know how a world where humans dominate looks like.
It's a lot easier to take that as a baseline.
Try to think yourself into a world like I described above. Sure, those elves have been (further) humanised, but there are still some big differences, like not really sleeping in the way we humans know it and living for a thousand years or so. How would that civilisation look like? How would that whole world look like?
As I said: It's a lot easier to take humans as a baseline and work your way up from there. That way, everything that isn't described as different from our world can safely be assumed to be the same, or at least similar.
Kind of sounds like the world of Terry Brooks in Shanarra Series. The Elves were always been there from the time of fairies though the expansion growth of human and through their own destruction which brought about the races of Dwarves, gnomes, and trolls. Basically humans are reduced to a couple hundred children and handful of adults who are saved along with the elves from the destruction of the world. The remaining humans that survive with out protection are mutated into what become the trolls, gnomes and dwarves. So you end up with new world dominated off the start by elves.
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What James said are big reasons I am a big fan of the setting. But then I share his taste in fantasy as well, as being some of my fav and the ones that most influnced me. If anything I would like to see paizo push the boundry a bit more myself but doubt they do. Many of those early pulp works where racist, sexist, dark gritty, very mature and certainly not for kids.
I had an idea once for a world where humans were a fringe race, and elves still ruled things. There, the curious age of decline elves everywhere seem to go through never happened. Similar to dark elves, these elves have that "human drive" to some degree, meaning they don't always contemplate things for a century.
Could work, would probably work quite well, but it's definetly a specific world.
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I have an ongoing campaign world for the >>deleted<< system. Giants are the predominant species, and humans are their hommoculi (so to speak) The Giants are inhuman on so many levels that they are unfathomable except in the most basic of innovations.
But humans have metalworking, Plumbing, numbers and have invented necromancy, so they are beginning their struggle for ascendancy.
As a GM, I spend as much time and effort as feasable on portraying the giants as more than just 'giant humans' and the players really seem to appreciate the gameworld.
Batts