Solving Humans

 

Stop me if you've heard this one. You've just started a new game of D&D, and one of your players decides he's going to roll up a Human. What kind of human? Well, something vaguely European, probably. What does their culture value? Probably whatever the player does. This is a problem I like to call "Playing a Regular Person".

This isn't a problem unique to Humans, but it can exacerbated by blindly picking Human. In D&D specifically, cultural aspects of other races can often be picked up through their descriptions or mechanics. But Humans are made out to be intentionally vague. There are no human subraces, no flavor that indicates a culture. But as much as you can create with a blank slate, in reality, creativity thrives on limitation and guidance.

If we take a look at major works of Fantasy, this is almost never an issue. The Lord of the Rings has Northmen, Gondorians, Númenóreans, Haradrim, Easterlings, and more. Many groups of human cultures. The Legend of Zelda has Hylians, Ordonians, Lurelin, Gerudo, and more--all of which are effectively human. Despite this, both of these works have extremely iconic non-human, fantastical species as important characters. Certainly, you could ask the player to come up with these details themselves, but not every person has limitless creativity or time. Dropping a workload on a player isn't always the best way to get them invested--though it may work sometimes.

"But wait!" you might say. "It's important for Humans to be undefined, because they exist in opposition to the more fantastic elements. Because there is something mundane, the fantastic elements become more fantastic." And I agree with you, reader. Humans need to be relatable, and similar enough to us that we understand. Where I disagree is that they need to be like real humans, because there is an important detail that makes that unnecessary--We, at the table, are all already Regular People. When we talk to each other around the table, we are Regular People experiencing the fantasy. But if the players play their character's fictional culture, different from their real culture, they get the benefits of being the "mundane" race and get to engage in a fantastic, fictional culture.

What you want is to strike a balance between "Does not resemble real, modern humans", and "Is clearly a human". Typically I do this by leaning hard on human cultures with different looks. Give them each a language--don't make a conlang for every one, necessarily, but say things like "In their language, they don't have a present tense". Give them beliefs different to those of modern people from your culture. Give that culture a name. Real humans are nothing if not prideful of their heritage.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind has no supernatural races, but each human country is distinct in their beliefs and culture.

In order to make that cultural distinction meaningful, you also have to present the other races as explicitly NON-human. For instance, if you have Elves, make them not even understand the concept of not being conscious, tired, etc., because elves don't sleep or die of old age. You could make them static, unchanging, unlike a real person. As long as a player is playing a Regular Human, making decisions a Regular Human would, it doesn't matter what their character's species is--there is no meaningful difference. A non-human species that looks like a human and acts like a human may as well not exist.

It also helps if playable Human cultures outnumber other ones. If you have 200 options and only 1 is Human, and Human is the least expanded upon one, you won't get very many thoughtful humans. This causes lack of fantasy much more than any "alienation" that a fictional human culture could cause. Having more players pick Human by having Humans not be a boring, flavorless option makes the other options indirectly more interesting at the same time. 

In my current setting, as an experiment, only the Human races are playable characters. There are fey and intelligent pachyderms and even talking apes, but the players all play 3 racially distinct types of human. And yet, the players have gotten more invested in their cultural beliefs and engaged with the fantasy of being in a different land more with those 3 races than I've seen in 8 years of playing something like D&D. So this works.

If you prioritize making your humans feel real, it will work.