Yes, it can be done.

I ran a couple of "humans only" D&D 2E campaigns back when I was going through my own My world is humano-centric! GM phase. (15-20 years ago?) After some initial grumbling, everyone chilled out and made some awesome human characters and had a good time. Those campaigns were successful.

The important thing was, the players weren't totally hung up on playing non-human characters, and if they were just little hung up, they got over it. And eventually, I got over the whole "humans only" thing after getting it out of my system. You run a couple of games like that, it gets old.

I just tell my players what they can choose from class- and race-wise and they do. My most recent game had no dwarves, elves, hobbits, orcs, etc. Allowed races were human, human, or human. The vast majority of their foes were also human.

There really is no way around limiting player choice here.  I'm not sure what else to tell you; open book character creation results in... open book character creation.

I'll say this again...

Man some of you have some totally fucked up players, and or DMs. Really.

To date I have never had a player or gamed with a player (that I know of) who was playing a non human for the "Look at me!" element. They all choose a race because it appealed to them in some way to play or they just naturally like a certain race and want to play that.
Jan liked the idea of the AD&D half-orc, board headed, outcasts, and so on. She will play other races because they look fun to play out. Bemusingly in Star Wars she played an R2 type because she does data entry for a living.
Brian played Dragonborn and equivalents because he REALLY likes the idea of dragon people. Also likes gnolls, but rarely plays them.
Kefra likes to play Gnolls if given a chance. She also plays cool aloof elves well in nearly the opposite of her usually boisterous passionate Gnolls. Has also played a rat woman.
Dev is hard to pin down. Usually plays the same race every time in the same setting. Allways a human in D&D, allways a plant in Gamma World, allways a Vrusk in Star Frontiers, etc. He finds some element in a race and sticks to it.
Mike plays whatever fits his concept. He plays a CHARACTER and is one of my favorite players to DM for. He could be a human paladin, a dragonborn sorcerer, a wolverine warrior, etc.
And me? I usually play a human because hilariously, I like to be the lone human in a group of weirdos. aheh. I've tried other races for the challenges or just for fun to see how it goes. Like Mike. I play a character.

I've seen simmilar accusations leveld at people who play classes other than Fighters and thieves and clerics. That they are doing for the "Look at me!" element. Yeah riiiiight.

Quote from: soviet;813951Are you allowing variant humans and also allowing feats? Because if so humans are possibly the best race in the game and should normally be pretty popular. If you're just using regular humans, or to a lesser extent variant humans without feats, then they kind of suck.

I'm allowing the variant human, and to 'sweeten the pot' I even said that human is the only race for whom I'd allow feats, because I really didn't want to bother with them otherwise.

The only player to pick human was the one very concerned with the rules and character optimisation, the rest of them are not as concerned with that side of the game. (Probable correlation.)

//Panjumanju

I run a humanocentric OD&D game in a world beset by a genocidal war between Elves and Dwarves. That's the setting. My players play humans because that's the core concept, but there has been one dwarf who didn't last long.
 
Back in 2e, we played a couple all-Elf and all-Dwarf campaigns that were really fun, especially with the Kit books from back when.

Of course, we had player buy-in from everyone who wanted to play with us. Based on forum chatter, that seems to be harder for gamers today.

Chiming in with others, if you want human PCs, only allow human characters - or require something like a random roll for non-human races.

Having a level penalty for non-humans as an incentive mixes the meaning of level, with no guarantee to get the human-majority you're looking for.

(shrugs)  I've never once had a problem with saying "This next campaign is going to involve nautical adventures in an ethnically homogeneous area; please design characters who are at minimum trained sailors, and who are part of the dominant culture."  Or variations of the same: a few years back I had a we're-all-young-thrill-seeking-aristocrats, and currently I have an all-mage group.  I've also had no problem with saying, on the couple of occasions when I've needed to do so, "I'm sorry, but I really insist that you design a character in keeping with what I've outlined.  Would you like some help with that?"

If you want your players to design characters to fit in with what you want to play, say so.

And if they insist on playing characters you've already warned them will be unpopular, and you're not forcing them to do otherwise, screw them over.  Have the villagers throw stones at the drow, with a couple of them visibly stringing bows and another shouting for his daughter to run up to the castle and get Dame Sharana and her squires to saddle up.  Have innkeepers and shop owners refuse to serve a party with one of "those kind" in it.  Have the local temple decline to heal the party because the inflexible doctrine of the faith is that mountain dwarves have no souls, and the party imperils their own by hanging with one.

It's interesting, because outside of a Planescape game, my games and the ones I've played in tended to rather suffer from too little races other than humans. In last Shadowrun game, the only non - humans were elves, so the most humanesque of all metahumans.

My first group DMing for after moving was all humans. As was the first group played in after moving.

Quote from: Panjumanju;813938Suggestions?

In my Swords & Wizardry campaign granting human +15% xp bonus did the trick. There were some demi-human but the balance skewed back to what it was in my GURPS games.

I, too have this "problem," with demi-men dominating my table. While I wish it was more of a humanocentric group, I'm not going to offer a kind of character and then restrict players from taking it.

I consider this a different issue though from the contrarian player who insists on playing a water ogre half minotaur with the aasimar template. That's an easy one to disallow.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;814046I, too have this "problem," with demi-men dominating my table. While I wish it was more of a humanocentric group, I'm not going to offer a kind of character and then restrict players from taking it.

I consider this a different issue though from the contrarian player who insists on playing a water ogre half minotaur with the aasimar template. That's an easy one to disallow.

I once considered following this trend to its logical conclusion and thought about creating a setting where humans, and any other pure-blooded demi-humans were actually very rare. All the characters would be required to take some sort of half-blooded template or bloodline from the 3.5E Unearthed Arcana book. The idea was to show my players just how ridiculous it all was, but it occurred to me the result would be the exact opposite, so I abandoned the project.

Thank you everyone for your suggestions. I think in the future I'm going to go with the suggestion that many of you have made of constructing a random human/demi-human table.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: Xavier Onassiss;814052I once considered following this trend to its logical conclusion and thought about creating a setting where humans, and any other pure-blooded demi-humans were actually very rare. All the characters would be required to take some sort of half-blooded template or bloodline from the 3.5E Unearthed Arcana book. The idea was to show my players just how ridiculous it all was, but it occurred to me the result would be the exact opposite, so I abandoned the project.

Yeah. I've often thought it would be interesting for a game to have mixed bloodlines like in Tolkien and other fantasy - so someone could have just a bit of elvish blood, or Numenorian, or similar.