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I proposed, a long time ago a setting without humans in it. Instead I'd designed a series of fairly 'alien' creatures, and I was going to set it up as Science-Fantasy (set on the moon of a brown dwarf, evolutionary trees). Something that could have existed on an exoplanet...with magic. The response I got back was that this wouldn't work, as people needed to have humans to associate with. Do people need human/humanoid characters to associate with in a setting? |
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The short answer is of course you don't need to include humans as a race in a setting. But the situation is not as simple as that. In any fantastic setting you have to remember that the during the campaign the world is filtered through you the human referee. And it can be a lot of work making sure that you give enough details so that the players can make meaningful decisions for their characters. The advantage of using ordinary or mundane details in a setting that it allows the players to make valid assumptions during the campaigns. This lessens the amount of detail you need to communicate and increase the player's confidence that their decisions are meaningful and are not the equivalent of throwing darts at a board. If you are planning to create a truly alien setting then you also need to plan how the players are going to learn about the setting while the campaign unfolds. For Tekumel's initial campaign M.A.R.Barker made the player characters barbarians from another continent. The player's lack of knowledge of the detailed alien cultures Barker created was the same as their characters. That was just one referee's solution. You may come with an alternative that works better for your setting. One thing you should avoid is the info dump. If you hand out more than one page of personal information and one page of general background then that is probably too much. |
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Someone saying your idea 'wouldnt work' is pretty meaningless in this context. Its really just a subjective question of what kind of game the players want. If they want one without humans, then how could it not 'work'? Players who are truly interested in the setting wont have any problem relating to it. Or if they do, they'll enjoy the challenge of trying to relate to it. You'll certainly have a lot of work to do to make it feel alien, of course, as opposed to just being people in rubber masks. I say go for it, if thats your vision. |
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Obviously, no. Fiction and even RPGs are full of examples of stories or settings predicated on nonhumans - for example playing animals in GURPS Bunnies and Burrows and Mouse Guard, or anthropomorphic furries in Ironclaw, or some of the White Wolf games (Sure, vampires and werewolves technically were human, but fairies and demons weren't). Or D&D, where everyone plays crazed murderous twitch monkeys instead of human beings. Quite common really. Now, not having human characters may reduce the popularity of your game with Joe Six-Pack (whatever that's supposed to mean in the RPG world...). But many games can and do dispense with it. |
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