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