I play humans because I'm not pigeonholed into roleplaying the race in a singular way.
You're not pigeonholed into roleplaying these races in a singular way. Unless you pigeonhole yourself.
Besides, human women are much more attractive then dwarf women (if they even exist) or the anorexic supermodels of the Elves. Eat a sandwich!
Don't let Merisiel hear you talk like that. She isn't called Ms Stabby for no reason...
The OP's problem seems to be that his players are incapable of role-playing if their characters are not built on established stereotypes. Also it seems, "ordering a drink and chatting up the locals" and "hitting on waitresses and working one's way over to the entertainment to relax" counts as good role-playing, while "grilling the bartender for rumors of dangerous creatures with bounties on their heads" does not.
I think the OP has a very different concept of role-playing than I do.
Seriously, the most interesting campaign I ever played in was restricted to humans only as PC races.
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I mostly play humans BECAUSE there is little to no racial baggage with them. I want to play a unkempt outback druid? Human. Pop idol bard? Human. Insufferable brit (any class)? Human. Cooky german scientist? Human. Thug/Cutpurse/City rogue? Human. Crusader monk? Human. Gypsie necromancer? Human (Varisian).
I don't see why you can't do this with any other race. No one expects my elf alchemist to be a tree hugging elf because when I play him it's not anything like that. Does it feel un-elfish? Maybe but I'm ok with that, I figure his very eccentricity is what got him kicked out of Kyonin.
Seriously, regardless of the race a character is what you bring to it.
I could play with other races, but each tends to bring baggage that makes it easier to pigeonhole or harder to express their uniqueness. When a dingy human walks over to you and says to get down, is he a Rogue, or a Paladin with a Vow of Poverty? Try the same with a halfling and you get people asking if you can disable traps, or handing you a bow if you play an elf, or an axe for a dwarf, or a hankerchief for a gnome (wadding for the blunderbuss, you know?).
I seriously doubt your fellow gamers are basing their expectation of your character solely on your race and if they are it's your job to prove them wrong.
I find humans to be much more interesting in Golorian at least. An Elf is and Elf but a Human has culture. You can pick Variasian, Ulfen, Kelshite, Chelish or what ever and each bring an interesting culture to the game. That's what I love about playing Humans.
I find the other races kind of boring. I guess too stereo typical of the fantasy genre.
I play human because I want to play something I know how to be.
I wonder how you feel about other systems where the only "race" to choose from is human? Do you think that people who play Caucasians in World of Darkness are "lazy roleplayers?"
In closing, WFRP has my back, like always:
How to Roleplay a Human-You should know how to play one of these.
Powergamers concerned with min/maxing so they can get the feat. That's who.
Seriously though, from a RP standpoint, humans have little to offer someone looking to build an interesting character. Yes you can build a human with a deep story but they simply lack the flavor that anything else has. They are generic, and very copy/paste feeling.
A Dwarf, an Elf, and a Human walk into a tavern. The Dwarf orders a drink and starts chatting up the locals. The Elf hits on the waitress and works his way over to the entertainment to relax. The Human searches for a bulletin board, and failing that grills the bartender for rumors of dangerous creatures with bounties on their heads.
My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
Your thoughts? What has your experience been?
I think you're far to much into sterotypes. Saying humans are uninteresting or generic is akin to saying that gay men are into clothes/fabrics or Jewish people are greedy misers. Its a stereotype and by definition stereotypes do not represent everyone in that group and sometimes arent true at all.
I tend to play humans the most and dwarves second. If I have a third its probably half orcs. The reason why is I identify with what it is to be human and what it is to be a social outcast (in the case of half orcs). Humans have the most deversity and versatlity in the races (especially in Golarian), when was the last time you played an elf with brown skin? or a dwarf that not only wandered the surface world but also didnt come from some long line of family?
If you have a hard time finding flavor in a human character then I think the "problem" is the player not the race
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Seriously, the most interesting campaign I ever played in was restricted to humans only as PC races.
I'm toying with having Hatheg be human only for PCs and advance the history 500 years or so and change some of the basic assumptions.
Edit: And of the two characters I play in Kirth's game, I prefer playing my human Rogue 4/ Fighter 1/ Psion 1 to my elvish Wizard 4. I feel too constricted playing the elf, due to the back story I built and some assumptions about elves in the setting.
The human, on the other hand, is a fish out of water, growing up on the streets of the Elvish capitol. I have a lot of space to work out who he is and where he fits. The campaign is human-centric, but I joined a few sessions after the campaign started, and my character background reflected what was most convenient when I started. So, the original idea I had for a back story was voided, and the character has been growing organically (role playing-wise, his personality took a 180 when the background changed.
Both characters are pretty much mechanically sound, both are a blast to play, but neither is better than the other, other than for choices I made or had to improvise that shaped how the character played.
There's nothing keeping any character from being interesting but the player.
More like playing a human encourages LAZY roleplaying is what I am getting at.Edit to prevent 1:1 post ratio-
It's like you have two plots of land to build a home on with reasonable budget. One is a flat, plain field. More often than not you will end up with a house with 4 sides, 2 floors and a basement. One will usually end up looking like another with minor differences, and the occasional outlier.
Now you have another plot of land with a cliff-face, a large hill in the middle of it, and a swampy lake. Building a home here you will end up being evoked with a whole variety of different layouts, taking advantage of the landscape or working around its unique features.
To me I see limitations as opportunities and complete freedom as a chance to just glide with whatever.
Much the same issue as players who want to play CN PC's... Swear to Iomedae if I see one more CN Human fighter or rogue I am going to snap...
I think you suffer from gaming with poor role players. Some of the most memorable characters that have appeared in my games have been human. The Mwangi VooDoo priest, the stern matronly cleric of Pharasma who could freeze the grown fighter with naught but an arched eyebrow, the list goes on. I'm afraid there are flaws in the logic of your argument sir as it can easily be turned around and doesn't have a solid foundation.
Perhaps you have a hard time expanding your view of humans beyond the Tolkeinesque standard stereotype for a fantasy world. There are so many things that can be done with all of the races it kind of makes your argument absurd.
We have a human-only campaign going, but with the variation of a typical DnD campaign.
We allow the stat mods, size rules and a few extra bits and bobs for the base race (mostly the non-magical stuff) and then apply normal human bonuses.
The idea being that humanity in the campaign has a lot of variation.
If you want a stronger but less charismatic character, you apply the hald-orc stat mods - lithe and dextrous? Elf - have a thing for midgets? Halflings.
There's no low light/dark vision/misc magical racial madness and every character is a member of the 'humanity'.
There's even half-ogres running around to represent freakishly hulking folk!
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Personally, even without our current campaign, I still roll human - Elves bug me, Dwarfs annoy me, halflings bug me. The only other race I occasionally embrace are gnomes.
I'm a speciest bastard!
My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
Your thoughts? What has your experience been?
So, if I play a human fighter (once a lumberjack) who morosely drinks himself to an early death, angry at an elven druidic cult because they chose to drive a herd of wild bison through his town (and thereby killing his wife and child) in retribution for the town's logging activities, I'm lazy and/or a powergamer.
But if I play a dwarf who drinks, swings an axe, and hates elves, I'm a great roleplayer?
As (many) others have said, there are bad roleplayers and good roleplayers. The character sheet doesn't mean squat, it's what the player brings to it that counts.
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My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
Your thoughts? What has your experience been?So, if I play a human fighter (once a lumberjack) who morosely drinks himself to an early death, angry at an elven druidic cult because they chose to drive a herd of wild bison through his town (and thereby killing his wife and child) in retribution for the town's logging activities, I'm lazy and/or a powergamer.
But if I play a dwarf who drinks, swings an axe, and hates elves, I'm a great roleplayer?
As (many) others have said, there are bad roleplayers and good roleplayers. The character sheet doesn't mean squat, it's what the player brings to it that counts.
No, you've got it all wrong! They don't hate Elves, they distrust them. Eventually, in place of actual character development (dwarves are all the same, as are elves)a bond of companionship forms between them and in the end they overcome their differences and acknowledge their friendship. The End.
"OCH! Aye'm a DWARF! I drink beeeeeeerrh and speak in a bad Scah-ish ax-ent!"
Really? This is great roleplaying? That's just...sad. Everytime someone rolls a dwarf, I roll my eyes, knowing that I'm in for some crappy acting.
Ya know, I don't think I've ever played a character, of any race or creed, that had an accent that wasn'tbad. I just can't really do good accents, but I do them anyway, 'cause it's fun.
The last dwarf I played was just gruff sounding though, didn't bother with the accent.
I dont know about you guys but the few times I play halflings I put on an english sounding accent (somtimes a bad one but usually its just ok).
However, yes dwarf players tend to try the Scottish accent, not a bad thing if it gets them into the character more although sometimes I do wonder what theyre trying to say when it comes off super thick.
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Powergamers concerned with min/maxing so they can get the feat. That's who.
Seriously though, from a RP standpoint, humans have little to offer someone looking to build an interesting character. Yes you can build a human with a deep story but they simply lack the flavor that anything else has. They are generic, and very copy/paste feeling.
A Dwarf, an Elf, and a Human walk into a tavern. The Dwarf orders a drink and starts chatting up the locals. The Elf hits on the waitress and works his way over to the entertainment to relax. The Human searches for a bulletin board, and failing that grills the bartender for rumors of dangerous creatures with bounties on their heads.
My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
Your thoughts? What has your experience been?
Who say the drawf orders the drinks and the elf hits on the waitress?!? I think sterotyping like that would limit playing those races a hell of a lot more then the human. To make better role players, ditch the sterotypes.
Powergamers concerned with min/maxing so they can get the feat. That's who.
Seriously though, from a RP standpoint, humans have little to offer someone looking to build an interesting character. Yes you can build a human with a deep story but they simply lack the flavor that anything else has. They are generic, and very copy/paste feeling.
A Dwarf, an Elf, and a Human walk into a tavern. The Dwarf orders a drink and starts chatting up the locals. The Elf hits on the waitress and works his way over to the entertainment to relax. The Human searches for a bulletin board, and failing that grills the bartender for rumors of dangerous creatures with bounties on their heads.
My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
Your thoughts? What has your experience been?
I always find it interesting to read RPG experiences so far from my own - our group is fairly insular (been playing with the same people for twenty years and some for thirty plus) so we don't experience other playstyles at all. (I've never seen a dwarf with a scottish accent, for instance although from reading these boards that's apparently the universal stereotype).
As a DM I don't see any difference between race choice of my players and how much they get into their characters - sometimes they do and sometimes they dont, but I can't discern any pattern.
As a player I'm the exact opposite of you - I usually play humans because I 'get' them. I'm not a great actor by any means and struggle to get into a character too far from me. Personally, I find myself thinking of demi-humans as a bunch of modifiers/abilities - the only reason I really play them is if their bonuses mesh particularly well with some character concept I've got. When I do that, I rarely end up really caring about the character I finish with but rather end up making decisions to eke out every last +1 in their chosen field of expertise.
My main contention with human is that because of the vanilla flavor have the players have a MUCH easier time of using that as an excuse to be lazy with them. They take the freedom and diversity as meaning that they can sit and play the system as opposed to the game.
In my experience I have had maybe 2 boring characters among elf, dwarf, gnome, etc. in my games, but I've had a dozen+ powergaming boring tofu-grey humans trying to turn the game into a battle sim.
TMS
As has been mentioned before a little, I think the issue you are facing is that the tytpe of game you are looking for may be different than the type of game the other players you described are looking for.
In my group that I DM, which has four players, I prefer the role-playing segments, which one of my players in particular really likes. Three of my players enjoy some traps and riddles and the like, while one hates them. Two enjoy making deep characters, while one isn't as good at the role-playing side of it. One of them isn't happy without one or two battles per session, and gets antsy if he doesn't feel it is moving "fast enough."
Perhaps you need to have a dicussion with your gamers all together, as I did, about what they like, what they are looking for, and remind them that certain elements of the game exist more for certain players. So what if one person only knows how to make combat oriented characters? If he and all the other players are having fun, there shouldn't be an issue. And I haven't known anyone able to sit around a table with a good role-player who hasn't developed some of those skills and tried to branch out and push themselves to try new characters.
Either way, having a conversation about what each person expects is probably your best first step.
i wanted to try a Gothic Tian-Min Loli for a while. not modern gothic, but a blend of gothic lolita and wa lolita. she adds lace trimming to the detached sleeves of her kimono, wears boots and a scarf, and wears bloomers (european bloomers, not japanese gym shorts) rather than a fundoshi (male japanese loin cloth) on her hands would be a pair of black leather fingerless gauntlets with switchbladed daggers, and a wakizashi at her hip with a compound yumi across her back. her attire would be onyx black with a hint of forest green, around her neck would be an onyx crucifix, she would be soft featured and petite (5'1") and weigh 80 lbs. she would study the sublime path (swordsage) and has to deal with having aspergers (which i have in real life). she would be silent, and not have a very strong prescence, but has somatic issues when explaining a point (i would do this part ooc too). she has a one track mind focused on enlightenment and mastery of the sublime path, she would be perpetually smiling and her eyes would have an ambery golden hue (each eye has 2 slit like pupils). her other main obscession is bringing her older sister back to the realm of the living. she is anal retentive, insightful, but not entirely right in the head. she worships irori and is intellegent, but has inconvenient moments where she lapses into her thoughts. (her refreshing method). but though she appears nonthreatening, she is quite a dangerous assassin.
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Powergamers concerned with min/maxing so they can get the feat. That's who.
For me, it's the total opposite. In my experience, most players tend to chose non-human races because it allows them to optimize their main attributes. They take elves for their +2 in INT because they wantr to play a mighty wizard and so on. The only players taking human because of the extra feat are problably those who want to play a fighter (and I would never consider someone playing a fighter as a "powergamer concerned with min/maxing" ^-^)
It's the players who are heavy into role-playing chosing humans because they feel that elves, dwarves and the other races are too much of a stereotype (and as someone said before, as soon as you don't play your dwarf according to these stereotypes, someone will probably calling you out for playing your dwarf "wrong").
At least, that's my experience.
i hate humans, i play in a fantasy world to get away from reality, whats the point of playing a game with magic and monsters and such diverse races if all i am going to do is play myself.
i just cant stand it when people constantly play human, in my group there are two players who never play anything else other than human and they always give the same reason "i can relate to humans" of course you can relate to humans you are a human.
i don't stick to one race, i jump around but one race i never play is human and i almost never play to racial stereotypes.
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i hate humans, i play in a fantasy world to get away from reality, whats the point of playing a game with magic and monsters and such diverse races if all i am going to do is play myself.
You are a sword weilding barbarian who goes into a berserker rage? Or a spell slinging sorcerer who alters reality to his whim?
Having pointy ears is just a little thing compared to this.
couldn't that argument be used the same towards humans?
couldn't that argument be used the same towards humans?
The logic still stands: your race becoems irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you are a human or an elf.
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Frankly, most of the time, unless the player is really deep into manifesting his racial features and background, the race kinda blends into the background. It's the class that defines the PC, because he manifests class-based stuff 90% of the time, while racial features get hardly a notice.
I think that's why Tieflings appeal so much (especially with the uber-cool random Tiefling features from PF24) - it's much easier to strike a pose with so distinct features.
Funny thing is that Small races are more visible, because you constantly get reminded about the size-related issues.
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couldn't that argument be used the same towards humans?
Yes, exactly. Your race is just one piece of the whole puzzle that makes it role playing. I play elfs, half orcs, humans, giants sometimes, all depends on what sort of character I want to make on a given day. None of these concepts, human, elf, or giraffe are me, they are all someone else.
The logic still stands: your race becoems irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you are a human or an elf.
Exactly.
i hate humans, i play in a fantasy world to get away from reality, whats the point of playing a game with magic and monsters and such diverse races if all i am going to do is play myself.
In case it needs clarifying. I play humans nearly all the time. I never play myself.
i just cant stand it when people constantly play human, in my group there are two players who never play anything else other than human and they always give the same reason "i can relate to humans" of course you can relate to humans you are a human.
Why can't you stand it? I'm genuinely curious, since I don't see how another player's essentially cosmetic choice makes any real difference. My answer is pretty much the same as theirs - I can't get into character with all these other alien races. Wouldn't you rather play with someone in character than someone who didnt 'get' their character?
"OCH! Aye'm a DWARF! I drink beeeeeeerrh and speak in a bad Scah-ish ax-ent!"
Really? This is great roleplaying? That's just...sad. Everytime someone rolls a dwarf, I roll my eyes, knowing that I'm in for some crappy acting.
To be fair, this is mostly because there's no way you can play a dwarf any other way. They're all the same. Even Paizo gave up on them, and they did nice things with elves and gnomes (and goblins, and dragons, and killions of other critters).
The other races like elves can be fun because playing them goes off the beaten path of humanity, but not too far (gnome goes a bit further off-shore). While you can experiment with weird behaviours, it's not so far removed from humans that you need to completely change your thinking.
Powergamers concerned with min/maxing so they can get the feat. That's who.
Seriously though, from a RP standpoint, humans have little to offer someone looking to build an interesting character. Yes you can build a human with a deep story but they simply lack the flavor that anything else has. They are generic, and very copy/paste feeling.
A Dwarf, an Elf, and a Human walk into a tavern. The Dwarf orders a drink and starts chatting up the locals. The Elf hits on the waitress and works his way over to the entertainment to relax. The Human searches for a bulletin board, and failing that grills the bartender for rumors of dangerous creatures with bounties on their heads.
My opinion, feel free to chip in but... I don't see the appeal in playing a Human past a dungeon crawler. Humans make better Roll-players than Role-players.
Your thoughts? What has your experience been?
Actually, I asked the completely opposite question.
Ironically, I believe that both of our preceptions come from the same root problem. Will all the non-human options, what is the place of humanity is such a world?
No, you've got it all wrong! They don't hate Elves, they distrust them. Eventually, in place of actual character development (dwarves are all the same, as are elves)a bond of companionship forms between them and in the end they overcome their differences and acknowledge their friendship. The End.
Ah, right. Hopefully that bond is played out in a poingant scene when the characters face hordes of evil monsters intent on their destruction. Totally not lazy roleplaying there.
I think it depends on the campaign / Adventure Path / etc.
In my Rise of the Runelords campaign, I let the players choose whatever race they wanted.
In my Kingmaker campaign, I insisted they be human. I wanted them to have a direct connection to Brevoy, and I wanted the world to feel amazing and dangerous at the same time.
Many players often choose humans because they can relate to them more than dwarves or elves.
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Perhaps you need to have a dicussion with your gamers all together, as I did, about what they like, what they are looking for, and remind them that certain elements of the game exist more for certain players. So what if one person only knows how to make combat oriented characters? If he and all the other players are having fun, there shouldn't be an issue. And I haven't known anyone able to sit around a table with a good role-player who hasn't developed some of those skills and tried to branch out and push themselves to try new characters.Either way, having a conversation about what each person expects is probably your best first step.
I think this is the closest anyone here has come to touching on the problem.
You're right, my group currently has 3 players who are underperforming in terms or ROLE instead of ROLL, and guess what. They are all humans. None of the others choose to be human. This has happened in games all about me for the last 15 years and perhaps I am jaded. The majority of the memorable characters in the games about me have been non-human humanoids.
I refuse to back down from my stance however that humans are for lazy role-players, because you are taking a block of clay to mold into an interesting character instead of solid granite or a pile of timbers. The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan.
This week I am going to sit down with my homo sapiens and work on getting them more involved in being active, 3-dimensional characters.
I refuse to back down from my stance however that humans are for lazy role-players, because you are taking a block of clay to mold into an interesting character instead of solid granite or a pile of timbers. The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan.
Ok, NOW you're definitely trolling, and using insane troll logic to boot. Are your players lazy and /or incompetent roleplayers/actors? Probably? Does that make every player who plays a human a lazy power-gamer? Absolutely not. Correlation does not equal causation, and your players are not representative of the entire RP demographic.
EDIT: "The challenge in building interesting characters should encompass their weaknesses, and as far as humans go, the only one they have is a short lifespan."
Sounds dangerously close to the Stormwind Fallacy.....
I just had a realization: real powergamers play smurfs. :)
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Ok, NOW you're definitely trolling, and using insane troll logic to boot. Are your players lazy and /or incompetent roleplayers/actors? Probably? Does that make every player who plays a human a lazy power-gamer? Absolutely not. Correlation does not equal causation, and your players are not representative of the entire RP demographic.
I really resent that sentiment actually. But thank you for thinking me so low to troll, really I appreciate it. Discussion is just that and the purpose of this thread is to try to pull out the string of commonality in the subject, not incite anger in any players, or call them out. In fact if anything I was hoping to get a representative survey of what other DM's and players have experienced in actual games. And by this attempt to get a larger picture. Apparently my ... execution was a slight bit poor however, as is apparent by the fact that so many here are so defensive on the topic.
As far as I see it, humans are the easy choice and are and quickest choice for players who don't want to think about the character, esp considering the mechanical benefits from choosing them.
In addition, one person can only take from experience what he has in fact experienced. My experience has been that the boring players who don't want to put more than a minimum amount of effort into the character choose human more often than not.
It is a fallacy of logic to assume that I am implying that by choosing human I mean that you will have a lame character.
Correlation does in fact not mean causation and I didn't imply that it did but correlation is JUST that, and yes I am implying that there is a correlation between poor role players and choosing Human as a race. It is the same violent video game vs hostile tenancy argument that gets under the skin.
i wanted to try a Gothic Tian-Min Loli for a while.
Pardon me, but I understand about one word in six out of everything you say. Please, if you're going to babble like that, at least provide a translation for those who don't speak Manga.
i wanted to try a Gothic Tian-Min Loli for a while.Pardon me, but I understand about one word in six out of everything you say. Please, if you're going to babble like that, at least provide a translation for those who don't speak Manga.
I was thinking the same thing. :) "Huh, what?"
Ok, NOW you're definitely trolling, and using insane troll logic to boot. Are your players lazy and /or incompetent roleplayers/actors? Probably? Does that make every player who plays a human a lazy power-gamer? Absolutely not. Correlation does not equal causation, and your players are not representative of the entire RP demographic.I really resent that sentiment actually. But thank you for thinking me so low to troll, really I appreciate it. Discussion is just that and the purpose of this thread is to try to pull out the string of commonality in the subject, not incite anger in any players, or call them out. In fact if anything I was hoping to get a representative survey of what other DM's and players have experienced in actual games. And by this attempt to get a larger picture. Apparently my ... execution was a slight bit poor however, as is apparent by the fact that so many here are so defensive on the topic.
As far as I see it, humans are the easy choice and are and quickest choice for players who don't want to think about the character, esp considering the mechanical benefits from choosing them.
Maybe people were defensive because you began the thread with a hasty generalization, and a very snarky one at that.
As far as I see it, humans are the easy choice and are and quickest choice for players who don't want to think about the character.
And a clear majority has pointed out that the demihumans provide easy cookie-cutter stereotypes to play, whereas humans actually require some semblance of a backstory. But you have pretty consistently ignored that point, and the consensus, instead dismissing it as "defensiveness" ... and that's generally considered to be the line between "discussion" and "trolling." If you want to be seen as engaging in the former, you'll have to try a bit harder to acknowledge the other point of view.
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I can RP a human better than I can RP and elf for the same reason I am better at playing male characters. I *am* one.
It can be hard with certain builds to put yourself into the shoes of someone who is inherently magical, lives for hundreds of years, etc.
I remember 1st and 2nd edition D&D when there was no reason to be a human, game wise. 3.0 may have gone overboard in making them more powerful, but they are supposed to be the most prolific race for a reason, right?
I understand everything Shuriken says...
Can you translate, then?