A lot of fantasy settings have only humans as PCs - like sword-and-sorcery, or more authentic medieval, and others. But in terms of game design, this means that in race-and-class systems like D&D, the characters are less differentiated.

I've thought about this on-and-off for a while, but mostly I've just not tended to use race-and-class systems in human-only settings. I've seen some alternatives, though. In the sword-and-sorcery setting World of Xoth, they have types cultures as a replacement for race. The cultures are:

Savage: +2 Str; +1 AC; advantage on Perception; disadvantage when attacking spooky monsters
Nomadic: +2 Dex; advantage on Wisdom saves; temporary skill once per day; 20 foot walking speed
Civilized: +1 to any two stats, one extra skill, one extra feat, disadvantage against poison and disease
Enlightened: +2 Wis; reroll 1s; History bonus; disadvantage on initiative
Decadent: +2 Cha; advantage on Deception & Stealth; advantage on poison saves; disadvantage on Wisdom saves
Degenerate: +2 Con; night vision; extra critical damage; disadvantage on Deception and Persuasion

I liked it, but I think the traits aren't very distinctive - at least compared to standard races. I'd lean towards making the traits even stronger.

7th Sea has something similar, where nationality had a huge effect on character generation - though since it isn't a class-based system, nationality is arguably closer to class than to race in D&D.

---

As another option, I've thought that for a game closer to medieval history, PCs might have traits based on their Horoscope. With the strong belief in astrology, it could draw players in to thinking that their party could really use a Taurus to balance out the Aries and Virgo, say. If someone's astrology made a big difference to how they operated in play, it would highlight that part of medieval belief.

You could just give them different personalities.

Gneech's Sword & Sorcery Saga has different stats bonuses, weapons, feats, and favored classes for barbarians (hardy folk of the wilderness), common men (default, includes the peasantry), high men (sophisticated city folk), easterlings (orientalist stereotype, exotic and subtle), horse lords (nomads), and sea people (rocky shores, seems to favor pirate motifs).

I don't think it's necessary to do much. Either the game has enough mechanical widgets to make for interesting mechanical differences between characters or it doesn't, and adding or removing non-human characters is unlikely to do much to change that. However, what is available is making the characters distinct through entirely non-mechanical means. You should be able to take the exact same character sheet and play two (or more) entirely different characters using the same mechanical content. Low Charisma? Could mean shy and reserved, or irritating smart-aleck, or someone who just puts their foot in their mouth constantly. High Constitution? Could be someone who works out constantly and leads a very active lifestyle, or someone who just has a naturally good immune system and never gets sick. High Strength? Could be built like an ox, or small but very wiry. A Warrior could be a mercenary veteran, a tribesman from a more primitive society, a deserter from the regular army, the fourth son of a poor knight who can expect no inheritance or maybe just a local tough who has more guts than sense and a natural instinct for fighting. And completely disconnected from the stats (most of the time) you can vary your character's hair color, skin color, hair style, clothing style, gender, height, weight etc.

Quote from: Blankman on December 29, 2021, 07:43:44 PM
I don't think it's necessary to do much. Either the game has enough mechanical widgets to make for interesting mechanical differences between characters or it doesn't, and adding or removing non-human characters is unlikely to do much to change that. However, what is available is making the characters distinct through entirely non-mechanical means.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that one can have non-mechanical differentiation.

But I think mechanics do help for differentiation - particularly in a campaign. I've done some one-shots in D&D where all the characters are the same race *and* class, and while they were fun and playable -- I don't think they'd work for a long-term campaign. Having more mechanical differentiation between characters helps the game along, in my opinion. After all, this isn't just acting class, it's a game where characters have different parts of the action that they do.

In a skill-based system, it's easier to have something like a party of all fighters because there are more options to differentiate. But my premise is that in a race-and-class system, it loses an important aspect if you make all characters the same race.

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 08:23:53 PM

Quote from: Blankman on December 29, 2021, 07:43:44 PM
I don't think it's necessary to do much. Either the game has enough mechanical widgets to make for interesting mechanical differences between characters or it doesn't, and adding or removing non-human characters is unlikely to do much to change that. However, what is available is making the characters distinct through entirely non-mechanical means.

Yes, I'm perfectly aware that one can have non-mechanical differentiation.

But I think mechanics do help for differentiation - particularly in a campaign. I've done some one-shots in D&D where all the characters are the same race *and* class, and while they were fun and playable -- I don't think they'd work for a long-term campaign. Having more mechanical differentiation between characters helps the game along, in my opinion. After all, this isn't just acting class, it's a game where characters have different parts of the action that they do.

In a skill-based system, it's easier to have something like a party of all fighters because there are more options to differentiate. But my premise is that in a race-and-class system, it loses an important aspect if you make all characters the same race.

And what I'm saying is that either there's enough mechanical differences in the game without race, or race is unlikely to make much difference. A D&D group of all humans with different classes is going to be way more mechanically varied than a D&D group composed of all Fighters but different races. As for why the list you posted in the first post doesn't feel like it fills the same role as races is that the big mechanical differences have never been the stat bonuses and always stuff that is almost impossible to justify based on culture alone. Things like elves being immune to charm and sleep spells, or dwarves being naturally magic resistant or gnomes being able to talk to animals. That's the stuff that is actually noticed by other players and is obvious when it comes up, while something like a bonus to attributes could easily just be because of the die rolls/choices you make during point buy. Advantage and Disadvantage are also fairly easy to come by in 5e, so those don't do much. An extra feat will, because most feats in 5e are actually fairly big deals, but on the other hand if a group is all Fighters, chances are they'll be going for the same feats to start with, so less differentiation there.

If I wanted to replace race with something else that gave weird but noticeable and actually differentiating mechanical effects, I'd use something like various rules for star signs you get in stuff like Goodman Games' Adventurer's Almanac, or various OSR zines or the like, rather than cultures. Makes it seem less obviously a replacement for races.

I like the Xoth approach a lot. I think I like it better than the OGL/d20 Conan approach, which had stat mods by ethnicity - giving Cimmerians -2 INT seemed a little unfair, begorrah.  I think that works better in 5e D&D where by default you only get bonuses, not penalties. In my Wilderlands game I gave various human ethnies different stat mods than the default +1 to all, eg mighty-thewed Altanians had +2 STR & +2 CON, but +0 INT and I think +0 CHA.

Quote from: Blankman on December 30, 2021, 06:05:28 AM

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 08:23:53 PM
I'm perfectly aware that one can have non-mechanical differentiation.

But I think mechanics do help for differentiation - particularly in a campaign. I've done some one-shots in D&D where all the characters are the same race *and* class, and while they were fun and playable -- I don't think they'd work for a long-term campaign. Having more mechanical differentiation between characters helps the game along, in my opinion. After all, this isn't just acting class, it's a game where characters have different parts of the action that they do.

In a skill-based system, it's easier to have something like a party of all fighters because there are more options to differentiate. But my premise is that in a race-and-class system, it loses an important aspect if you make all characters the same race.

And what I'm saying is that either there's enough mechanical differences in the game without race, or race is unlikely to make much difference. A D&D group of all humans with different classes is going to be way more mechanically varied than a D&D group composed of all Fighters but different races. As for why the list you posted in the first post doesn't feel like it fills the same role as races is that the big mechanical differences have never been the stat bonuses and always stuff that is almost impossible to justify based on culture alone. Things like elves being immune to charm and sleep spells, or dwarves being naturally magic resistant or gnomes being able to talk to animals. That's the stuff that is actually noticed by other players and is obvious when it comes up, while something like a bonus to attributes could easily just be because of the die rolls/choices you make during point buy.

I think the bolded part is our disconnect. I think that particularly in a fantasy world, it's quite possible for culture or other influences to make a huge difference. It's not at all a disconnect that a human could talk to animals based on his culture, for example - i.e. the wise hunter-gatherers of a mystic island can speak to animals because they learn it as children. Many fantasy stories have humans who talk to animals. I agree that minor stat shifts don't make as big a difference as major abilities like these -- but major abilities are possible for humans in a fantasy world.

Even without fantasy elements, I think it's reasonable that a human from a hunter-gatherer culture should have major differences with a human from a big medieval city, for example, regardless of class. i.e. A hunter-gatherer rogue and a big-city rogue shouldn't be interchangeable. Add in fantasy elements, and I think humans can be much more differentiated. The Xoth system has significant traits like advantage on poison saves, Deception and Stealth -- but other systems could go farther than that.

In a skill-based fantasy system, even characters who are primarily non-magical (i.e. equivalent of fighters or rogues) can have magical or fantasy traits associated with their background. Lots of fighters had bits of magic from a cult in Glorantha, for example.

Quote from: Blankman on December 30, 2021, 06:05:28 AM
If I wanted to replace race with something else that gave weird but noticeable and actually differentiating mechanical effects, I'd use something like various rules for star signs you get in stuff like Goodman Games' Adventurer's Almanac, or various OSR zines or the like, rather than cultures. Makes it seem less obviously a replacement for races.

Thanks. I'm not familiar with the Adventurer's Almanac. I'll try to look it up.

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 07:03:33 PM
A lot of fantasy settings have only humans as PCs - like sword-and-sorcery, or more authentic medieval, and others. But in terms of game design, this means that in race-and-class systems like D&D, the characters are less differentiated.

I've thought about this on-and-off for a while, but mostly I've just not tended to use race-and-class systems in human-only settings. I've seen some alternatives, though. In the sword-and-sorcery setting World of Xoth, they have types cultures as a replacement for race. The cultures are:

Savage: +2 Str; +1 AC; advantage on Perception; disadvantage when attacking spooky monsters
Nomadic: +2 Dex; advantage on Wisdom saves; temporary skill once per day; 20 foot walking speed
Civilized: +1 to any two stats, one extra skill, one extra feat, disadvantage against poison and disease
Enlightened: +2 Wis; reroll 1s; History bonus; disadvantage on initiative
Decadent: +2 Cha; advantage on Deception & Stealth; advantage on poison saves; disadvantage on Wisdom saves
Degenerate: +2 Con; night vision; extra critical damage; disadvantage on Deception and Persuasion

I liked it, but I think the traits aren't very distinctive - at least compared to standard races. I'd lean towards making the traits even stronger.

7th Sea has something similar, where nationality had a huge effect on character generation - though since it isn't a class-based system, nationality is arguably closer to class than to race in D&D.

---

As another option, I've thought that for a game closer to medieval history, PCs might have traits based on their Horoscope. With the strong belief in astrology, it could draw players in to thinking that their party could really use a Taurus to balance out the Aries and Virgo, say. If someone's astrology made a big difference to how they operated in play, it would highlight that part of medieval belief.

Civilized disadvantage against poison and disease is strange; many native Americans died in contact with the "civilized" conquerors because they did not have the same antibodies. People living in cities are more prone to infection, I think. But overall, this civilized/savage etc. is a good divide for S&S games (although it makes me think why there are no civilized nomads, say The Mongol Empire).

Astrology is a good one too, DCC RPG does something like this. You can add lots of details in one single table.

I'm not a fan of nationality-based traits. Every nation has its soldiers, tinkers, etc. "All elves know how to use longbows" feels a bit odd, but "all englishmen (and woman) know how to use longbows" feels completely off. In addition, every archer will choose to be English for optimization reasons, etc.

Maybe each nation has a list of common traits and you can pick one or two.

Other than that, there are endless options on how to customize characters. FWIW, I wrote a small book on that myself, including appearance, behavior, sins, equipment, backgrounds , etc., but no nation/ethnicity difference.

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/279519/Dark-Fantasy-Characters

I generally don't think that there needs to be mechanical races (whether they are humanoid species like elves or Klingons or human cultural/ethnic groups) to give characters more versatility. Some of these issues can be handled with classes that provide options. If you have a class or classes that can differentiate between someone who is good at sneaking in the woods and someone who is good at sneaking in the city, then you don't need to make your character from a nation famed for huge cities to be a city rogue or a character from a region known for wild forests to be a nature rogue.

In one regard, bonuses for savage humans and bonuses for civilized humans seems cool, but it actually recreates a problem that has long existed with humanoid species in fiction - the planet of hats. If big Norsemen get +2 Strength, social Parisians get +2 Charisma, and big city Byzantines get +2 Dexterity: then the fighters and barbarians will all be Norse, the bards will all be from Paris, and the rogues all from Byzantium. Choosing class, especially if the class is customizable, should account for those differences just fine and also allow for people who don't fit in the mold as well.

I do think that it would be cool to incorporate the ethnicity/culture/etc. of a human into the mechanics, but maybe in a more flexible way. Barbarians of Lemuria does something like this, where there is a long list of traits a character can choose from that befits their ethnic origin.

Quote from: jhkim on December 30, 2021, 04:03:37 PM

Quote from: Blankman on December 30, 2021, 06:05:28 AM

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 08:23:53 PM
I'm perfectly aware that one can have non-mechanical differentiation.

But I think mechanics do help for differentiation - particularly in a campaign. I've done some one-shots in D&D where all the characters are the same race *and* class, and while they were fun and playable -- I don't think they'd work for a long-term campaign. Having more mechanical differentiation between characters helps the game along, in my opinion. After all, this isn't just acting class, it's a game where characters have different parts of the action that they do.

In a skill-based system, it's easier to have something like a party of all fighters because there are more options to differentiate. But my premise is that in a race-and-class system, it loses an important aspect if you make all characters the same race.

And what I'm saying is that either there's enough mechanical differences in the game without race, or race is unlikely to make much difference. A D&D group of all humans with different classes is going to be way more mechanically varied than a D&D group composed of all Fighters but different races. As for why the list you posted in the first post doesn't feel like it fills the same role as races is that the big mechanical differences have never been the stat bonuses and always stuff that is almost impossible to justify based on culture alone. Things like elves being immune to charm and sleep spells, or dwarves being naturally magic resistant or gnomes being able to talk to animals. That's the stuff that is actually noticed by other players and is obvious when it comes up, while something like a bonus to attributes could easily just be because of the die rolls/choices you make during point buy.

I think the bolded part is our disconnect. I think that particularly in a fantasy world, it's quite possible for culture or other influences to make a huge difference. It's not at all a disconnect that a human could talk to animals based on his culture, for example - i.e. the wise hunter-gatherers of a mystic island can speak to animals because they learn it as children. Many fantasy stories have humans who talk to animals. I agree that minor stat shifts don't make as big a difference as major abilities like these -- but major abilities are possible for humans in a fantasy world.

Even without fantasy elements, I think it's reasonable that a human from a hunter-gatherer culture should have major differences with a human from a big medieval city, for example, regardless of class. i.e. A hunter-gatherer rogue and a big-city rogue shouldn't be interchangeable. Add in fantasy elements, and I think humans can be much more differentiated. The Xoth system has significant traits like advantage on poison saves, Deception and Stealth -- but other systems could go farther than that.

In a skill-based fantasy system, even characters who are primarily non-magical (i.e. equivalent of fighters or rogues) can have magical or fantasy traits associated with their background. Lots of fighters had bits of magic from a cult in Glorantha, for example.

Sure, you can do that if you want to, but I was commenting on the list you posted in the first post and that ... didn't. Nothing in there will be particularly mechanically differentiating in an interesting or noticeable way in game. If you want to let characters from the Nikvo forest to be able to speak the languages of the forest animals, and people from the Toydar area to be immune to charm and sleep and other mind control effects, go nuts. But that's what it's going to take to make these cultures mechanically interesting.

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 08:23:53 PM

Quote from: Blankman on December 30, 2021, 06:05:28 AM
If I wanted to replace race with something else that gave weird but noticeable and actually differentiating mechanical effects, I'd use something like various rules for star signs you get in stuff like Goodman Games' Adventurer's Almanac, or various OSR zines or the like, rather than cultures. Makes it seem less obviously a replacement for races.

Thanks. I'm not familiar with the Adventurer's Almanac. I'll try to look it up.

The Star sign parts are very vague ruleswise in that particular product, as it is made to be somewhat system neutral. But the general idea is there, and can be found in other things as well (I've seen it in a few zines for instance).

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 07:03:33 PM
A lot of fantasy settings have only humans as PCs - like sword-and-sorcery, or more authentic medieval, and others. But in terms of game design, this means that in race-and-class systems like D&D, the characters are less differentiated.

I've thought about this on-and-off for a while, but mostly I've just not tended to use race-and-class systems in human-only settings. I've seen some alternatives, though. In the sword-and-sorcery setting World of Xoth, they have types cultures as a replacement for race. The cultures are:

Savage: +2 Str; +1 AC; advantage on Perception; disadvantage when attacking spooky monsters
Nomadic: +2 Dex; advantage on Wisdom saves; temporary skill once per day; 20 foot walking speed
Civilized: +1 to any two stats, one extra skill, one extra feat, disadvantage against poison and disease
Enlightened: +2 Wis; reroll 1s; History bonus; disadvantage on initiative
Decadent: +2 Cha; advantage on Deception & Stealth; advantage on poison saves; disadvantage on Wisdom saves
Degenerate: +2 Con; night vision; extra critical damage; disadvantage on Deception and Persuasion

I liked it, but I think the traits aren't very distinctive - at least compared to standard races. I'd lean towards making the traits even stronger.

Looks good to me. I like this approach for humans-only games. What traits are you thinking of adding?

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 07:03:33 PM7th Sea has something similar, where nationality had a huge effect on character generation - though since it isn't a class-based system, nationality is arguably closer to class than to race in D&D.

Yeah, 7S immediately came to mind, as Spycraft 1E's departments (which were a bit off, conceptually.)

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 07:03:33 PMAs another option, I've thought that for a game closer to medieval history, PCs might have traits based on their Horoscope. With the strong belief in astrology, it could draw players in to thinking that their party could really use a Taurus to balance out the Aries and Virgo, say. If someone's astrology made a big difference to how they operated in play, it would highlight that part of medieval belief.

I don't know, it sounds too New Age-y to take seriously.

They made "race," astrological sign, and class all work together okay in Morrowind.

Quote from: Pat on December 29, 2021, 07:20:27 PM
You could just give them different personalities.

Gneech's Sword & Sorcery Saga has different stats bonuses, weapons, feats, and favored classes for barbarians (hardy folk of the wilderness), common men (default, includes the peasantry), high men (sophisticated city folk), easterlings (orientalist stereotype, exotic and subtle), horse lords (nomads), and sea people (rocky shores, seems to favor pirate motifs).

I agree. You really dont need to essentially make a race system in effectively a raceless RPG/setting. Both TSR Conan RPGs and the historical settings they did that were humanocentric or human only even did not. And do perfectly fine without having to worry about such needless clutter that is bound to attract min-maxers and the like.

Quote from: Omega on December 30, 2021, 11:45:28 PM

Quote from: Pat on December 29, 2021, 07:20:27 PM
You could just give them different personalities.

Gneech's Sword & Sorcery Saga has different stats bonuses, weapons, feats, and favored classes for barbarians (hardy folk of the wilderness), common men (default, includes the peasantry), high men (sophisticated city folk), easterlings (orientalist stereotype, exotic and subtle), horse lords (nomads), and sea people (rocky shores, seems to favor pirate motifs).

I agree. You really dont need to essentially make a race system in effectively a raceless RPG/setting. Both TSR Conan RPGs and the historical settings they did that were humanocentric or human only even did not. And do perfectly fine without having to worry about such needless clutter that is bound to attract min-maxers and the like.

I think there's some miscommunication here. Gneech's Sword & Sorcery is very much a race system - they even use the term "race" to describe the choice of barbarians, common men, high men, easterlings, horse lords, and sea people. Here's the link for the free rules - it's an adaptation of Star Wars D20 for sword & sorcery.

http://www.gneech.com/swordandsorcery/downloads/saga_players_guide_web.pdf

That said, I agree that there are plenty of RPGs that are human only and don't need race. But most of those -- including TSR's Conan RPG -- are skill-based, not class-and-level. By having a variety of mix-and-match skills, it's easier to get a variety of human characters. But in most class-and-level systems like D&D, I think race is an important part of the design to differentiate PCs.

Quote from: Aglondir on December 30, 2021, 11:12:13 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 29, 2021, 07:03:33 PMAs another option, I've thought that for a game closer to medieval history, PCs might have traits based on their Horoscope. With the strong belief in astrology, it could draw players in to thinking that their party could really use a Taurus to balance out the Aries and Virgo, say. If someone's astrology made a big difference to how they operated in play, it would highlight that part of medieval belief.

I don't know, it sounds too New Age-y to take seriously.

It's certainly a matter of taste. I would note that astrology can be authentically medieval rather than modern / New Age reinvention of the concept. I'm familiar with Chivalry & Sorcery, and Fantasy Wargaming - which both take star sign into account, but more as shifting stats around than a major difference in character. I don't know enough about real medieval astrology to do a historically accurate version - but I'd be curious.