Mike Mearls Games
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Humans in Fantasy
🕑 Added 2025-01-03 14:00:13 +0000 UTCI've been thinking a lot about humans and their role in fantasy, thanks in part to Eva in the comments. Nailing down humans goes a long way to figuring out races. I also have a science fiction game using this engine on the backburner, and I've tried to think about what would make humans stand out in the galaxy.
I've always loved that fantasy settings resist having a god of humans, or at least they give that deity a unique role. If I remember right, the god of humanity in Pathfinder's Golarion setting is dead. I think that's a neat touch.
So, here are my initial thoughts on how to portray humans in a fantasy setting, drawing on the implied setting of D&D as available in the SRD. No mechanics yet, just some key traits and a creation myth.
Humans are Late Comers
I always liked the idea of humans as a relatively young race. Dwarves, orcs, elves, and others carved out their space. Humans came later. As a result, they have no true homeland.
Humans are Terraformers
Lacking a homeland crafted for them by the gods, the humans build their own environment. They build cities, divert rivers with dams, irrigate land with rivers, and build roads. Where they go, they leave their mark forever.
Humans are the Intersection of Everyone Else
Other races tend to avoid each other, content to fill their niche and remain aloof from others. Humans seek out other folk and see themselves in them. When an orc meets a dwarf, they see an alien who lives underground and wastes time toiling away making stuff. What's the use of stuff if you aren't using it to prove your strength? When they die, the gods will laugh as they are utterly unable to fight their way into paradise. Pathetic!
The dwarf laughs at the orc, seeing a fool who believes that strength and battle are all that matter. Everyone knows that your goal in life is to build things that last, objects and creations that carry your influence down through the generations. At the gate of paradise, the elders will ask to see your works and kick you down into the depths of roiling magma if you present them with nothing. What is a battle but a moment in time, quickly worn away to nothing by history's endless march.
A human sees a short, bearded human who likes making stuff, or a big, burly human with a bent for violence. Humans aren't dumb enough to think that dwarves or orcs are actually human, but they can shift their internal context to understand other folk.
This tendency means that other folk tend to dislike humans on reflex. They show up and start giving the young ones odd ideas about self-determination. Humans are the ultimate disruptors, and their ability to get along with just about anyone explains how half-elves and half-orcs came into the world.
Humans are the Catalyst of Change
For that reason, humans are catalysts of change in a world that would otherwise remain static. The other folk, closely tied to their gods and traditions, are slow to change, if ever. Orcs march forth to fight and prove their strength. Dwarves toil away to build beautiful objects to mark their skill. The elves hide away in their forests, rebuilding the ancient fey realm that lost so long ago.
Humans invent completely new goals and traditions each generation. They create laws, break them, revise them, then descend into complete chaos as their empires collapse.
Even religious humans pick their deities based on what they want or need, rather than on a bond forged in a race's creation.
Humans are Cosmic Free Agents
Where other folk were crafted by the gods, humans arose from the raw stuff of creation with a little help from a trio of unlikely co-conspirators.
In the ancient days as the War of Law and Chaos sputtered to an end, the world took shape. Law provided form, the nature of creatures and objects to gain identities and keep them. Chaos provided time, the force that makes change inevitable for all things.
The gods crafted their children, the folk who dwell in the world today, and gave them purpose. The world passed through the march of years, changing just enough to satisfy primal Chaos, but retaining its essential identity and changing in mostly predictable ways to hold rigid Law at bay.
The angels, devils, and demons spawned by Law and Chaos to fight their wars seethed. They had once been the center of all creation, but now the gods had other things to attend to. They sat on the sidelines, relegated to a footnote in eternity. Their battles meant little as the gods turned away from them. Their war was over, and the gods had no interest in reigniting it.
To those entities, the War of Law and Chaos was unfinished business. The Compact of Creation ended their war. The question of who was strongest would remain forever unanswered.
Or would it?
Legend states that it all began with a bet. The folk of the world follow the gods like a young child follows a parent. But what if a race could choose its parent? What if a folk walked the world who had no divine parent? What would they chose? Law or Chaos? Good or evil?
The Lords of the Nine claimed that such creatures would flock to their banner, eager to find meaning in Hell's hierarchy and gain glory and wealth in service to its cause.
The Angels of the Seven Heavens sang a wondrous song, proclaiming that the beauty of their realm and its righteous nature would serve as a beacon of hope that drew such poor, lonely creatures to their path.
The demons laughed from the depths of their Abyss and proclaimed that any thinking creature would seek power above all else, free of wretched rules and the demands of others.
Each faction claims that it created humans, though none have been able to replicate the feat since. What is clear is the first humans appeared in the world. Lacking ties to any deity and bound by no divinely-mandated culture, humans spread across the world and heralded turbulence and change that has not been seen since the primordial War of Law and Chaos.
All human souls journey to Hell, Heaven, or the Abyss when they die. The true contents of their souls is unknown until that moment. Owing to human influence, humans, orcs, elves, and other folk have begun to strike out on their own paths.
The gods sit back and wonder if these strange new creatures will be their doom or their salvation. Only time will tell.
Comments
Nystagohod
That's a really fun setup, it begs questions which adventures may answer somewhere and some time. Which is always fun. I think its really important to have of a few core things about a player race, or a particular cut of something if there is overlap at all, and to focus on those aspects. To me, the human archetypes in d&d are Individuality (in the free will sense like you portray), adaptability, and determination. This isn't to say that the other species and such can't possess these traits, but just how there is a notable sense of luck for halflings, there is determination for humans. Elven grace, Orcish brutality, Dwarven stubborness, and human determination. A mark of quality but not the sole possessor all in all. I think these core reflections of archetype of these people are where you can come up with the best features for races. It's part of why I do like the 5e24 human. The skill can reflect adaptability of humans. The bonus feat the Individuality of humans (as well as their ability ti shape themselves more easily than others), and the inspiration/reroll that reflects their determination and ability to push beyond in those moments ofneed/those twists of fate. Your presentation of humans aligns nicely with my own preference. I'm very curious to see how you reflect them (assuming you haven't already and i didn't miss it in the prior posts.) As always, very nice work and fun ideas!
clawforce
This rules, thanks Mike!
