Don't Make Humans

A few days ago in somehow actually a Farmer Gadda's discord we discussed the idea of humans in your typical fantasy games, especially seeing as it is, largely a D&Dism. I can't find the exact thread, but around the time of the Orc City debacle a few months ago someone pointed that out; mainstream fantasy fiction has largely moved on from the idea of someone just randomly being an orc unless the story is about that, leaving things like Dark Elves and Gnomes who do artificing to the domain of Pink Slime Fantasy. But within that milieu, things have calcified. Orcs are no longer a representation of the horrors of industrialized warfare and its dehumanising effect on those who go through it, they're essentially green Klingons, and (depending on your inclinations) muscle mommies. Reading through Joe Abercrombie's The Devils, I was gobsmacked to realized I had no idea what the fuck an elf even was in this world. Do they eat people? Interact with material space differently? Are they a species-wide scapegoat? I don't know! (I haven't actually finished the book). But I found myself surprised by the fact that my expectations were being challenged. Isn't the point of fantasy, after all, to be transported into an unfamiliar world?

I love memes that just uncritically accept eugenics

    This brings us to humans, who have gotten locked in as "The versatile ones." 200 proof had a great thread on Bluesky about it, and how it's origins are in old eugenics logic about how only white humans have that versatility, while "other races" lack the capacity to imagine the full breadth of the human experience. This has obviously gone on to affect Dungeins and Dragons, where originally only Humans could unlock the class ability to manifest their destiny. You still see sentiments like this in games where either a)Humans can occupy the full range of the planet in a myriad of cultures, while elves and dwarves and stuff don't, or b) Humans only exist in certain parts of the world (traditionally the European analogue) and other areas are controlled by nonhumans/demihumans flavored after non-white cultures. 

This sort of thing has been discussed to death, but I'd like to offer a new reason, aside from all the racism stuff, to avoid just making the humans the generic ones, the young race who's just good at everything; it's fucking boring. 

This one doesn't connect to my larger point I just like Dross

Its boring from a mechanical perspective because it means humans are either the most boring option, or so good you'd need a lot of incentives not to go human (hello, bonus feat).

It's also boring from a narrative perspective, because it sets expectations. Dragon Games have, as an industry, allowed themselves to get far too comfortable with What Things Are and What They Do. Reading through games ranging from modern neotrad affairs like Daggerheart and Draw Steel to more Old School stuff like, say, OSE (the modern OSR scene seems to be moving to all-human because of this general paradigm shift in fantasy), its just different kinds of memberberries all the way down. And that limit to your initial palate limits what you put on the canvas later. It's artistic permission to do the easy thing. The safe thing. The boring thing.

For an example of this done well, Josh "Orcs are the larval form of Dragons" McCroo's His Majesty the Worm has some great humans! They come from a clan-focused honorbound culture that feels like something out of Beowulf and not Faerun. The culturally-enforced Great Deeds one must perform to unlock your potential are wonderful little bits of mechanical hyperdiegesis (and goals for munchkins like me!)

In conclusion, don't make humans. Don't just say "They're like us." Take this as an invitation to be weird. Whether they're the endurance hunters of our earliest days, the Tallfolk of Dungeon Meshi, or the "They're actually homo sapiens from Earth" of the Witcher, put a little something extra in your humans, to help set the tone for the experience you want to create.