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I've always been interested in wholly alien settings like Talislanta without any trappings of a human culture among the people, but I've seen numbers that humans are the most-played race in D&D over the years and have heard word of mouth that some players flatly refuse to play a non-human character.  Plus Talislanta's never been a commercial success to the best of my knowledge.  So I'm curious about folks' opinions on whether a setting must include humans in it to have a hope of doing well.

Quote from: Valatar on March 30, 2025, 06:45:07 AMI've always been interested in wholly alien settings like Talislanta without any trappings of a human culture among the people, but I've seen numbers that humans are the most-played race in D&D over the years and have heard word of mouth that some players flatly refuse to play a non-human character.  Plus Talislanta's never been a commercial success to the best of my knowledge.  So I'm curious about folks' opinions on whether a setting must include humans in it to have a hope of doing well.

I don't think that a setting needs to be human or have humans.  However I think that there is a couple of difficult problems in making a no-humans setting work.  The first is that you need to have some way for the audience to connect with the characters but not be so like people as to just be seen as humans in costumes.  Disney and Dreamworks movies with anthropomorphized animals are not no-human but in fact very human centric.

The other issue I've seen with no-human settings is that they get stuck on a single theme.  Being set around a single theme is great for exploring the subject, excellent for examining a nebulous concept from another point of view, but this limits role play quite a bit.  This isn't unique to no-humans settings but nearly all no-human settings are designed like this that I've seen.  I think a great example of single themed material shunting the RPG experience is Free League's Bladerunner game.  It's excellent for a couple of one-shots but it will wear thin very quickly.

I've outlined challenges as I see them but I don't really have any solutions.  However, it's a really cool thought experiment.

I don't think games absolutely need humans for a setting to work and I personally prefer to play non-humans in RPGs myself and always have.   That said... I don't think it's a good idea for a setting where humans *could* be included but specifically aren't simply because it limits your potential audience for what seems to be an arbitrary reason even if it isn't.   That's not an issue in games like Mausritter or Household where playing a human isn't possible.  Are there visually "near-humans" ala elves, dwarf, and halfling equivalents for people to play that traditionally humans to use as close enough stand ins or is the setting going full alien with people playing whisps of air and blobs of goo?   I think the problem is compounded the further away from humanity visually/asthetically you get for some players... and I say that as someone who wants to play a gasbag with tentacles if I ever return to Starfinder with their upcoming 2e.

Thinking about it, I have participated in a no-human Spelljammer campaign that lasted a bit over a year. That was just how it played out and I never even noticed until reflecting just now.

So for the length of that campaign at least, a no-human setting worked just fine for us.

The only settings I can think of that are always non-human are Transformers, Ritter Mouse, and that kiddy one about playing stuffed animals that come alive to protect their human child from monsters/bad dreams at night. 

Quote from: weirdguy564 on March 30, 2025, 09:57:29 AMThe only settings I can think of that are always non-human are Transformers, Ritter Mouse, and that kiddy one about playing stuffed animals that come alive to protect their human child from monsters/bad dreams at night.

All of those settings have humans, they're just not available as PCs.

By that standard, Vampire: the Masquerade and almost all of the World of Darkness games don't have humans as a PC option. V:tM is one of the few RPGs that came close to rivaling D&D in popularity. There are a huge number of similar monster-playing games around as well, from Whispering Vault (where you play vigilante-ish monsters) to Spookshow (where you play ghosts who work as spies).

There's also the Amber Diceless RPG, and a genre around that. Pundit's Lords of Olympus is a variant of that. Again, there's technically humans in the setting, but they're too puny to be PCs.

Humans serve as a baseline for regular people with good reason. All players are human and can thus relate to the "normal" behaviors of the general population. Without that familiar frame of reference it becomes more difficult to define other races. Even if no one plays one, humans in a setting provide that backdrop by which other races are compared.

I prefer settings with diverse human cultures over settings where aliens are funny looking humans.

Humans are 100% required for a setting to have commercial success.  Generally speaking they must be available as player characters as well.  Games where your character was born a human, raised as a human, and then became a superhero / found out he was from planet Vegeta or Krypton / was bitten by a vampire or turned into a werewolf- in all these cases you are still playing a 100% a human.

I think the only example in this thread of a game where you actually aren't a human is Transformers.  And I'll actually argue with this example:
1- The transformers seem to basically be humans, aside from the fact that they are robots.  They aren't alien, mentally speaking, even in the slightest.  When an autobot reminisces about his lost world, it's the same emotion and thoughts as a human in his place.
2- Transformers isn't actually a commercial success as a roleplaying setting, at all.

As far as "can you have a good plot, setting, and roleplay, in a world like Talislanta that went through some effort to actually not quite have humans", I think you definitely can, but I think these places are at the edge of the genre in part because of this.

I never played it but I think Jorune had no humans and the ads in dragon made it look a bit unapproachable. Like you have that much more to learn just to get to a sort of base knowledge required to play.

Although I can see this working well if it were all Dwarves or all Emlbesr something.

Quote from: Valatar on March 30, 2025, 06:45:07 AMSo I'm curious about folks' opinions on whether a setting must include humans in it to have a hope of doing well.

Yes.

No.

Isn't Mouseguard a thing?

Quote from: Fheredin on March 30, 2025, 03:44:31 PMIsn't Mouseguard a thing?

Unless I'm mistaken, Mouseguard is basically just medieval fantasy with mice who act just like humans.

The closest I've gotten with any success among players was a setting where all the pureblooded humans (and most of the pureblooded demihumans) had gone extinct, but what remained were nations of half-elves, half-dwarves (non-sterile muls), tallfellow halflings (canonically halfling/human hybrids in at least some settings), and half-orcs who had ethnically distinct kingdoms in a cold war.

Basically, humans with a few exotic features around the edges.

Quote from: Venka on March 30, 2025, 12:30:10 PMI think the only example in this thread of a game where you actually aren't a human is Transformers.  And I'll actually argue with this example:
1- The transformers seem to basically be humans, aside from the fact that they are robots.  They aren't alien, mentally speaking, even in the slightest.  When an autobot reminisces about his lost world, it's the same emotion and thoughts as a human in his place.
2- Transformers isn't actually a commercial success as a roleplaying setting, at all.

The Transformers RPG allows you to play a human as a component of a two-part "Binary-Bonded" (e.g., Headmaster) character.

Didn't Palladium's TMNT After the Bomb feature a world without humans? IIRC, all surviving inhabitants were mutated animals of some sort.

As a GM I have zero interest in running a setting that doesn't feature humans. As a player, I have never played anything but humans.

Quote from: Ruprecht on March 30, 2025, 02:13:06 PMAlthough I can see this working well if it were all Dwarves or all Emlbesr something.

One of the best RPGs I ever played in was Burning Wheel where it was all Dwarves.  If anyone has not tried it, an all the same species game is great for doing a deep dive on that culture and society.

Quote from: BadApple on March 30, 2025, 07:09:15 AM

Quote from: Valatar on March 30, 2025, 06:45:07 AMI've always been interested in wholly alien settings like Talislanta without any trappings of a human culture among the people, but I've seen numbers that humans are the most-played race in D&D over the years and have heard word of mouth that some players flatly refuse to play a non-human character.  Plus Talislanta's never been a commercial success to the best of my knowledge.  So I'm curious about folks' opinions on whether a setting must include humans in it to have a hope of doing well.

I don't think that a setting needs to be human or have humans.  However I think that there is a couple of difficult problems in making a no-humans setting work.  The first is that you need to have some way for the audience to connect with the characters

That's it right there.  Players need to connect with their characters, and the less human the characters are the harder this is.  Without actual humans or something really close I don't think a game can become popular.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 30, 2025, 04:42:05 PMDidn't Palladium's TMNT After the Bomb feature a world without humans? IIRC, all surviving inhabitants were mutated animals of some sort.

IIRC After the Bomb had a human "empire" that was basically a couple cities' worth of surviving humans in it that served as an antagonist group, so humans were around, just not really suitable as PCs.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 30, 2025, 04:42:05 PMDidn't Palladium's TMNT After the Bomb feature a world without humans? IIRC, all surviving inhabitants were mutated animals of some sort.

Yes, it does. However, there are still humans in the form of the technological Empire of Humanity that have power armor, tanks, and jet fighters.  They're just numerically outnumbered by mutant animals.

I had forgotten about that one.

Quote from: Venka on March 30, 2025, 12:30:10 PMHumans are 100% required for a setting to have commercial success.  Generally speaking they must be available as player characters as well.  Games where your character was born a human, raised as a human, and then became a superhero / found out he was from planet Vegeta or Krypton / was bitten by a vampire or turned into a werewolf- in all these cases you are still playing a 100% a human.

World-of-Darkness werewolves were not born human and raised as humans, and then turned into a werewolf. They are generally born into their tribe and raised among a society of werewolves hidden among humans. Werewolf society has their own traditions and structures. The same is true of the different types of World-of-Darkness Changelings.

Also, regarding vampires... Technically they were born and raised as humans. But say I'm playing a centuries-old Nosferatu that feeds on blood and lives in sewers. The experience of play is significantly different from playing a typical human.

A dwarf or half-orc is more relatable as a character than such a character.

Quote from: Mishihari on March 30, 2025, 07:56:41 PMThat's it right there.  Players need to connect with their characters, and the less human the characters are the harder this is.  Without actual humans or something really close I don't think a game can become popular.

The big question is what counts as "close to human"?

Are humans mandatory for a setting to succeed? Well no, unless the setting only has humans, which is possible. If the setting has other sapient species then humans are not really needed, if the referee is somehow expected to run goblins, giants and dragons in a believable manner, why not the players? It is escapism and I am not sure that it is impossible for a human to think in another mindset, writers do all the time.

Quote from: Chris24601 on March 30, 2025, 04:01:10 PM

Quote from: Fheredin on March 30, 2025, 03:44:31 PMIsn't Mouseguard a thing?

Unless I'm mistaken, Mouseguard is basically just medieval fantasy with mice who act just like humans.

The closest I've gotten with any success among players was a setting where all the pureblooded humans (and most of the pureblooded demihumans) had gone extinct, but what remained were nations of half-elves, half-dwarves (non-sterile muls), tallfellow halflings (canonically halfling/human hybrids in at least some settings), and half-orcs who had ethnically distinct kingdoms in a cold war.

Basically, humans with a few exotic features around the edges.

I think that this argument drives us way past useful discussion and into semantics because you could describes every fantasy race in an RPG out there as, "basically humans with a few exotic features." Elves are humans with pointy ears and usually some sort of elitist background. Dwarves are short and strong humans with beards. The list goes on and on.

The only solid thing about non-human races is the flavor.

I haven't played them but aren't Mutant: Year Zero and the other game(s) in that line devoid of humans? IIRC every character is a mutant animal of some kind.

Quote from: Valatar on March 30, 2025, 06:45:07 AMI've always been interested in wholly alien settings like Talislanta without any trappings of a human culture among the people, but I've seen numbers that humans are the most-played race in D&D over the years and have heard word of mouth that some players flatly refuse to play a non-human character.  Plus Talislanta's never been a commercial success to the best of my knowledge.  So I'm curious about folks' opinions on whether a setting must include humans in it to have a hope of doing well.

Well, depends on what you mean by "include humans."  I would argue that humans are not capable of thinking in any way other than like "humans," which is why these kinds of discussions always degenerate into a discussion of what "human" means.  I'll approach the problem from a slightly different angle.  Can a setting be successful if it requires players to think outside of their normal comfort zone or cultural context.  And the answer to this, for several reasons, is a hard NO.

First, most players will need some kind of touchstone or starting point to allow them to internalize whatever differences are present in non-human behaviors and cultures.  This is why Star Wars and Star Trek aliens are mostly just people with funny heads and one specific "alien" trait (and why most anthropomorphic games feature animals that act pretty much just like humans).  A shout out here to one author I think did aliens pretty well, C. J. Cherryh.  Her Chanur series had anthropomorphic cat-people who were protagonists (and pretty much human), but also methane-breathing aliens who communicated in matrices read in multiple directions and were completely unpredictable... which would be far more like the challenge of truly "alien" thought.  I've often said a person or GM who wanted to play a truly alien mind should just get a set of random behavior tables, as it would best simulate the difference in thinking between truly alien intelligence and humanity (we'd probably never be able to make sense of what they did and why).  So, without the touchstone of a mostly "human" species, you're going to have trouble with players knowing what to do.

Secondly, popular (as in "well-selling," which seems to be implied in your "doing well") games must be... popular.  They must appeal to a broad range of people.  And most people are lazy.  There has always been that one guy in every gaming group I've ever been in who wants to do the bare minimum to get by.  And these folks need to buy your game in order for it to be successful.  So, if the average person would have to work really hard to play in your setting, it'll always be a niche product.  The most you'll ever be able to ask of this type of player is to pretend to have no emotions, or pretend to be aggressive and warlike.  To speak in nothing but iambic pentameter and think in terms of spontaneous division as a reproduction strategy...good luck!

Quote from: jhkim on March 31, 2025, 01:09:54 AM

Quote from: Venka on March 30, 2025, 12:30:10 PMHumans are 100% required for a setting to have commercial success.  Generally speaking they must be available as player characters as well.  Games where your character was born a human, raised as a human, and then became a superhero / found out he was from planet Vegeta or Krypton / was bitten by a vampire or turned into a werewolf- in all these cases you are still playing a 100% a human.

World-of-Darkness werewolves were not born human and raised as humans, and then turned into a werewolf. They are generally born into their tribe and raised among a society of werewolves hidden among humans. Werewolf society has their own traditions and structures. The same is true of the different types of World-of-Darkness Changelings.

Also, regarding vampires... Technically they were born and raised as humans. But say I'm playing a centuries-old Nosferatu that feeds on blood and lives in sewers. The experience of play is significantly different from playing a typical human.

A dwarf or half-orc is more relatable as a character than such a character.

Most players ignore that stuff anyway, and even the most recent editions have unilaterally forced you to start off as a newbie who was only recently recruited. In the case of werewolves, their initiation rituals typically involving locking the new werewolf in with groups of innocent people to force a massacre in order to break their sanity. Sound like really unlikable assholes that nobody would actually want to play.

Quote from: Hague on March 31, 2025, 08:41:39 AMI haven't played them but aren't Mutant: Year Zero and the other game(s) in that line devoid of humans? IIRC every character is a mutant animal of some kind.

Later books seem to allow other character types, including humans and robots.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 31, 2025, 09:52:07 AMthe most recent editions have unilaterally forced you to start off as a newbie who was only recently recruited. In the case of werewolves, their initiation rituals typically involving locking the new werewolf in with groups of innocent people to force a massacre in order to break their sanity.

Source?

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 31, 2025, 09:54:31 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 31, 2025, 09:52:07 AMthe most recent editions have unilaterally forced you to start off as a newbie who was only recently recruited. In the case of werewolves, their initiation rituals typically involving locking the new werewolf in with groups of innocent people to force a massacre in order to break their sanity.

Source?

https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/horror-in-games-is-there-a-line.9733/post-459454

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 31, 2025, 10:00:48 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 31, 2025, 09:54:31 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 31, 2025, 09:52:07 AMthe most recent editions have unilaterally forced you to start off as a newbie who was only recently recruited. In the case of werewolves, their initiation rituals typically involving locking the new werewolf in with groups of innocent people to force a massacre in order to break their sanity.

Source?

https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/horror-in-games-is-there-a-line.9733/post-459454

To zoom in on the list, it looks like I have to register for their forums. OK, that shouldn't be too hard. After that, since I have the 5e book, I'll look through it and see how what's in the book compares to that list.

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 31, 2025, 11:20:02 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 31, 2025, 10:00:48 AM

Quote from: HappyDaze on March 31, 2025, 09:54:31 AM

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on March 31, 2025, 09:52:07 AMthe most recent editions have unilaterally forced you to start off as a newbie who was only recently recruited. In the case of werewolves, their initiation rituals typically involving locking the new werewolf in with groups of innocent people to force a massacre in order to break their sanity.

Source?

https://www.rpgpub.com/threads/horror-in-games-is-there-a-line.9733/post-459454

To zoom in on the list, it looks like I have to register for their forums. OK, that shouldn't be too hard. After that, since I have the 5e book, I'll look through it and see how what's in the book compares to that list.

I don't have the 5e book, just 1e. Here's the text from the image, which is said to be from Werewolf 5e character creation.

Quote10 Dramatic Turning Points

If you want a First Change for a character that has lasting consequences, use these suggestions either as inspiration or verbatim:

1. They kicked you while you were down one too many times. Their laughter turned to screams as you rose as something much bigger, and much deadlier than a bully.

2. It was a horrible car wreck. You only survived because you instinctively changed the moment before impact. The other passengers did not.

3. Everything came down to this moment: your grades, your future and more. The first slide was in the wrong place and everything went wrong from there until all you heard were screams and all you saw was red.

4. The feelings were too intense. You suddenly knew you had to run away from them even though you were willing to share your bodies with each other. You never saw your first love again.

5. You didn't expect to walk into a robbery when you hit the corner store at 2am. They weren't expecting you to turn into a howling beast when they smashed you in the face with a gun.

6. For a week you dreamed you were a wolf running through the forest. One morning you woke up thirty miles from home from your family on the side of the road and never looked back.

7. You weren't expecting them to lock the doors at the wedding. It was at that moment the long line of Garou in your family bloodline revealed their strange tradition about the First Change. To prove you were worthy of the wolf, you had to kill your way out of the room after they triggered the change. After that, nothing the Wyrm can do fazes you.

8. It was just supposed to be a summer job. But then you began to smell the blood of the butchers everywhere. You gorged yourself on raw meat one day and transformed when your boss found you.

9. They tricked you into thinking it was a camping trip. They drugged your food and water, put a bag on your head and then left you in the wilderness. They said it was for your own good, to help you become the wolf, but you quietly seek your revenge someday, even though you survived.

10. It was obvious what they were doing to the young people put in their care and that nobody in power would take action. You bottled up your rage until you convinced them to do the same thing to you. You let it all out in the secluded spot, covering the car in their blood and your claw marks.

So it looks like BoxCrayonTales is talking about #7 in the list of optional First Change experiences if the player wants a First Change with lasting consequences. So this is not typical (as BoxCrayonTales suggested) but it is possible.

EDITED TO ADD: To the bigger question, I own Werewolf 1e and played in one campaign in the 2000s, and two or three one-shot games since then. I'd never heard of such a ritual, but it was understood that werewolves were brutal and that there were a few who thought little of killing humans in the cause of fighting the Wyrm. PCs were generally more humane.

Quote from: Valatar on March 30, 2025, 06:45:07 AMSo I'm curious about folks' opinions on whether a setting must include humans in it to have a hope of doing well.

Doing well commercially? Yes, humans are required - or non-humans who are so "human" as to make no difference, i.e. stocky bearded humans, hairy-footed short humans, pointy-eared nimble humans, humans with lycanthropy, etc.

No matter the game, humanity remains the baseline and non-humans are defined in terms how they differ from that baseline. The further all of the character options deviate from that baseline, the weirder and more uncomfortable that game will be for many potential players. Doesn't make it a bad game but it limits its appeal.

Quote from: Ruprecht on March 30, 2025, 02:13:06 PMI never played it but I think Jorune had no humans and the ads in dragon made it look a bit unapproachable. Like you have that much more to learn just to get to a sort of base knowledge required to play.

Jorune has regular humans as a player race option. 

Quote from: Exploderwizard on March 30, 2025, 11:26:23 AMHumans serve as a baseline for regular people with good reason. All players are human and can thus relate to the "normal" behaviors of the general population. Without that familiar frame of reference it becomes more difficult to define other races. Even if no one plays one, humans in a setting provide that backdrop by which other races are compared.

I agree.

I only like settings with white males as the protagonists.

But for a real role-playing challenge try a setting of inanimate objects. Just use GURPS to stat up a circa -1000 point character (all disads including lack of limbs and lack of bodily functions).

GM: "What do you do?"
Player: "..."
GM: "Excellent role playing. 1 character point awarded."

Quote from: Spooky on April 01, 2025, 01:35:29 AMBut for a real role-playing challenge try a setting of inanimate objects. Just use GURPS to stat up a circa -1000 point character (all disads including lack of limbs and lack of bodily functions).

GM: "What do you do?"
Player: "..."
GM: "Excellent role playing. 1 character point awarded."

Bonus xp if you don't try to cheat by using some sort of psychic/magic/super powers to affect the world like a minmaxer.  I'd only do this in a campaign though where you get automatic xp just for attending so I could take a nap for full character/RP immersion.

Quote from: RNGm on April 01, 2025, 09:09:59 AM

Quote from: Spooky on April 01, 2025, 01:35:29 AMBut for a real role-playing challenge try a setting of inanimate objects. Just use GURPS to stat up a circa -1000 point character (all disads including lack of limbs and lack of bodily functions).

GM: "What do you do?"
Player: "..."
GM: "Excellent role playing. 1 character point awarded."

Bonus xp if you don't try to cheat by using some sort of psychic/magic/super powers to affect the world like a minmaxer.  I'd only do this in a campaign though where you get automatic xp just for attending so I could take a nap for full character/RP immersion.

GURPS doesn't have XP.

I'd play Maggie Cheung's scooter seat in 1984..

No you do not need humans.

Bunnies & Burrows?
Albedo?

I don't understand the question.

Yes you need humans for it to be commercially successful. From personal experience for *decades* of pimping and writing Talislanta... *on this very forum*... everyone says the same thing.

"Still no Elves... but look at all the elves." (with a hurr hurr) when in reality if we assume it's true (it's not), then you can't even have a game with all Elves and no humans and win commercially.

Or "It's too weird." When in reality the narrative constraints of Talislanta were effectively replicated in Forgotten Realms (Netheril) where there was a magical apocalypse that reshaped the order of things and the *only* functional difference was the fact that Netheril was expressly human. Now this doesn't mean that is the reason that people don't play Talislanta, I'm merely pointing out the irony that Talislanta has all the elements of "human" institutions, so much so that I simply said Cymrillians are "humans" and nothing else, the game would not be affected.

Something about the visual presentation of the races seems to matter that *humans* seems to be a wall for engagement. I'm not saying it can't be overcome, I've certainly converted every player that has sat at my table over these many years, to Talislanta, but there has never been a time where the "eyebrow raise" hasn't occurred when trying to "get into" the game.

I've even tested this out, by running a "home-brew" with standard D&D races in the *exact* same setting with the usual Talislanta races replaced by D&D familiar races - they arrived via Spelljammer, and *NO ONE NOTICED* and they were saying "This planet is kickass! we should live here." Then eventually I told them "IT'S TALISLANTA you FUCKHEADS!"

Even here on this forum, lots of peoples say "Oh yeah, Talislanta. I'd love to play it, never got around to it." or the usual "It's weird" etc. But ultimately it's the same thing. There is *something* about it, and my contention is that there are no overt *HUMANS* in it, despite the fact the primary race are humans with greenskin and slightly pointed ears, and all of their cultural institutions are *standard* things seen in high-fantasy settings. Kingdoms, Empires, Mageocracies, S&S motifs. Nothing here is new, it's just Talislanta did a lot of it early on in the RPG sphere.

Most of the games that are fantasy that people are citing as examples are not really "successful" in the commercial sense. WoD doesn't count, because you start as a human and one of the goals is dealing with your condition from the context of being human.

Talislanta is a red herring. The game bills itself as more strange, unique, and alien than it actually is. This imposes an artificial barrier to entry which limits its success.

Then, when I read the Player's Guide, I got up to 4 human subraces and 2 elf subraces before I finished the letter D. In a way, that makes the product a little dissatisfying, because it's not really living up to the "alien fantasy" hype. Once you get your head wrapped around how these races which totally aren't humans even though they look like humans are actually humans, you realize that these other races are elves.

It's like that South Park episode with the hippie infestation, where the college know-it-all hippies are trying to explain their revolutionary post-capitalist communist utopia.

I remember playing ElfQuest as a kid, and I don't recall any humans in that setting.