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Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Humans Only!

I've never had a chance to play in a humans only D&D game (or any other game for that matter). For all of the human-centric world building in the various editions, no one was ever interested.

Yet it gets talked about fairly often, and really humans make great villans! I can't think of any reason it wouldn't work... Especially for the right type of game.

But would it work for out of the box D&D? Keeping in all the monsters, magic and everything?

How many of you have played or ran a humans only game? How did it go? Inquiring minds want to know...

And for those who don't want to leave a comment, there's a handy little poll off to the side.

8 comments:

  1. Right now I'm running a "humans only" game in my Expeditions in the Northland campaign. I've also run "humans only" campaigns in the past in my homebrew setting, Domikka. I just got tired of what I call "humans in funny outfits syndrome." For me, its also just more interesting to see what humans can do, rather than say, an elf with special abilities and powers.

    From my experience, only a couple people have missed the other races. But this was only in the beginning. Otherwise, the game plays like a regular campaign, really. with the monsters and magic and everything.

    Also, humans DO make the best villains. Monsters are monsters--they don't have a choice in being evil. Humans choose to be bad, thus experiencing "the fall," at least that's how I run things.

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  2. Humans only in fantasy games, yes (usually GURPS). Even in very D&D-like settings.

    In D&D, I mostly run race-as-class and end up with mostly humans (there is one player who is always a dwarf though, and if not a dwarf, another demihuman). I frequently think about just dropping demihumans though. I don't think we ever had humans-only as a rule but have had all-human parties pretty frequently. IME the more hardcore gamers usually want to play demihumans while more casual players don't care about nonhuman races.

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    1. And by hardcore gamers I probably mean powergamers/munchkins ... I guess this varies by system.

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    2. No, I totally get the whole munchkin/power gamer thing. I think that's why I couldn't ever interest my players into playing an all human game.

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  3. I actually despair of finding someone who doesn't "hate" being a human. I know they hate being human because they constantly refuse to play one in the game.

    And since most of them believe in reincarnation, maybe they should give reincarnation a try. They might just come back an elf!

    Seriously, I only play human characters and would love to game with a group of people that felt the same.

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    Replies
    1. It's not been an an issue of finding players that don't mind being human, it's that there was always a core of them who refused, so it was never worth the effort of trying to sway them. Like you, I'd love to give an all human game a shot.

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  4. A few months ago, we concluded a 4e campaign set in mythical Greece, and our party was composed entirely of humans. The events of the campaign included elves, and resulted in the creation of the tiefling and dragonborn races, and we're starting up a new campaign with their mixed-race descendants.

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    Replies
    1. Damn that sounds epic! What levels did your group get up to?

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