An Experiment

Last Thursday I took over DMing for my long-running in-person game group. We'll be starting this Thursday with a fresh 5e campaign and I'm going to try something that I've not done before: An all human setting.

This world will have no humanoids except humans. Not as playable races or monsters. None.

There were once elves, dwarves, orcs, etc; and there are still humans with maybe 1/32 or 1/64 non-human ancestry, but currently there aren't any full-blooded humanoids around except humans.

The humans don't know exactly what happened to them. Some species had mysterious slow declines, others just vanished. Whatever happened, it wasn't a war or human action. (And that's true, not just human historical revision.)

Humans still use the other species' languages (with linguistic evolution over time) as everyday languages. It's a cultural artifact from when the other humanoids were around and is treated normally. A human's first language might be dwarvish or gnomish or ettin, it all depends on where they grew up.

My goal with this is to:

1) Avoid fantasy stereotypes. If a player wants their character to be a cheerful farmer-turned-reluctant-adventure who loves good food, great! They certainly can, but they'll be playing it because they want to, not because they're a hobbit halfling and that's what Tolkien said they're like.

2) Avoid fantasy racism. If two characters have a beef, it'll be over their deeds, not because one's a dwarf and one's an elf. (This could really be item 1.1)

3) Let the characters have equal experiences of terror. Everyone will be spooked by the things prowling in the dark. Everyone will be exhausted after being on the run for days and unable to sleep. There won't be the one elf with darkvision who can see just fine and doesn't need to sleep so they're fresh as a daisy.

4) Let there be mysteries. The mysteries of the past, magic, and the underpinnings of the world are actually unknown. Lost to time or only vaguely recalled in folklore, not a living part of an active contemporary culture. You can't pop back home to Elfington and ask your grandma what words were used to sing the world tree into being at the dawn of time, you need to adventure to learn it.

I'm curious to see how it turns out. The probabilities that it'll go as intended or mutate into something bizarre seem about equal; and it'll likely take a few sessions before I can get a solid idea of how my players will respond to the idea. My suspicion is that it'll be more of an exercise for me in remembering to not reflexively add dwarves (it's a habit) and that my players will adapt just fine.