Typically, humans in fantasy are described as the 'adaptable' race. They're not as strong as dwarves, they're not as agile as elves, but they're somewhere in between both.

Finns.

All the others perished because they couldn't handle a bit of adversity.

The trouble with doing this is, humans have always had the long-term advantage in fantasy. Elves and dwarves, not so much. This generally helps with the whole "alternate magical past" premise that a lot of fantasy originates from. The only race that can really compete with humans at the population level on a long-term basis are orcs or such "evil" races, generally.

Sorry, humanity cannot compete with dorfs. They are just too badass.

Humans shouldn't fucking exist in fantasy RPGs, since all humanoids are just exaggerated humans anyway.

Like I said before, huamns are the race more prone to defying fate and going to extremes. Humans are the only race to look at something the elder races consider 'impossible' and attampt it- often succeeding.

To rehash my example, it was considered in the past that it was impossible to run the four-minute mile, yet it was accomplished in 1954, by a man who flew in the face of established science. What if all humans had that potential? What is Fate, apart from being a nebulous concept, is an actual, quantifiable property of the universe, whose laws apply to everyone but humans?

>>2762868

Which is the point of this thread, really. Dwarves can do everything humans can, plus they're stronger, longer-lived, and are legendary craftsmen. Elves can do everything humans can, plus they're more agile, longer-lived, and are legendary mages. Even in settings where other races have some drawbacks to make up for their advantages, humans are the boring plain vanilla race.

Boost numero uno: Humans live longer by far than any other fantasy race. Elves die of old age at 30, and usually perish long before that.

>>2762868

This is gonna piss people off... but the stat spread in 4e actually makes a human-dominated world plausible.

See, each non-human race gets a +2 to 2 stats. Con and Wis for Dwarves, fer instance. Humans, on the other hand, get a +2 to one stat of the player's choice. This means while other races generally favor two or three classes, humans favor EVERY CLASS. Because of this, humans will be among the most powerful individuals of every type in the setting. The most powerful wizards? Eladrin, tieflings, and humans. The strongest fighters? Orcs, goddamn dragonborn, and humans. Every other race is specialized, which means while they have advantages they also have weaknesses.

The human advantage is that while other races tend to revolve around a type, humans are the most varied.

I think Warhammer's idea of the Empire as far as humanity goes makes a good example. Everything they do, they go waaaay overboard with it because it's just humanity's way to go to the very boundaries and give them a massive shove.

Magic? Giant exploding tower duels and the current Grand Master of the Magic College covers himself in gold. Engineering? Giant crank-turned volley-guns that fire till they explode and giant steam-powered tanks. Faith? Great stonking hammer wielding psychopaths.

GOOD TIMES.

>>2762885

How so? I mean, even if elven mages were much more powerful in the past, they're still pretty damn powerful now, and when we see elven peasants, they generally live comfortably compared to the filth-encrusted dirt farming human serfs.

>>2762917
I think he means that other races come in pathetically small numbers.

>>2762895

Here's a good starting concept. Every other race is bound by the laws of Fate, but humanity is free from it. Divination when a human is involved fails utterly or gives nonsense answers. Many magical blessings, curses, and bindings don't work on them. Perhaps other races look on them as the chosen children of Chaos.

All other races are 10+ feet tall and built like trucks, humans = halflings.

Humans breed and mature quicker

Throw enough meat at it and it'll fall

>>2762925

Okay, but we never see this really played up. Humanity as the Swarm, with an insane reproductive rate and population size, is kind of cool, but not often brought up.

>>2762917

China or Finnland, who's more important?
Now, which of those populations lives more comfortably?

But it's more than just reproduction rates. Humans might not be able to do everything as WELL as the others, but they tend to be more organized and socialized. This does not make them diplomats; quite the opposite, it tends to make them more nationalistic. For every intelligent, cunning, perfectionist elf, there are ten ignorant bumblefuck humans who will stupidly follow whatever banner looks the prettiest. This means those human banners have a huge advantage over any new cause or development that the elves come up with in terms of enthusiasm for novelty and all that stuff. Elves will go "well we knew about gunpowder for five millenia," but they would never embrace it as enthusiastically and universally as humans, because they are too smart to have tried ingesting it as medicine.

The non-human races are stronger, faster, more beautiful, more skilled, just plain better than humans. To them, humans are like roaches.

But they're hidebound. They KNOW how the world works - they have known for ages. So when the world suffers a major, paradigm-shifting change, they won't be able to react. Perhaps they won't want to react.

Humans will be up and running within the generation. They will survive anything short of world destruction (and some of them will escape even that.) Humans are, indeed, roaches to them.

Humans should be marketed as the 'intelligent swarm' race.

Our advantage is two-fold, that there are many of us and that of the many, some can rise above the norm.

Hey, guys, remember this thread?

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2645332/

I sure do. It was good times.

Why not give the other races a code of morals or honor that they stick to, while letting humans be as scummy and underhanded as they want.

Humans are good at two things, even in real life: Breeding and killing shit. We're actually DAMN good at killing shit, dedicating a large portion of our intellect to it at all time.

Elves think about magic and nature, dwarves about mining and CHEESE (apparently), giants about how the fuck are we going to feed ourselves on a regular ecology...

Humans just focus on how to fucking kill things.

Here's a concept: Humans as the only race to develop technology, or perhaps industrialized magic.

Other races are more or less stagnant, or else progress at a constant rate. Not because they're too stupid to do better, but because there's a limit to how dramatic a change their societies can take at a time and survive. Humans seem to other species to be completely unconcerned with world-shaking developments. Old jobs and skills become obsolete, whole ways of life get destroyed and created in the span of a few years, and humans barely take notice. Just a few of the things coming out of the magical laboratories and forges of humanity, applied to society as a whole, would shatter other civilizations, but humanity embraces it all, and that scares other races shitless.

Humans are already the best races in fantasy since they earn skills faster than any other race. Other races just have a few good stats in the beginning in the end it all evens out though and leaves humans with better skills than their counterparts.

some of this stuff just sounds like a more violent version of discworld

>>2763007

Mechanically, this is usually the case. Fluff-wise, not so much. See Tolkien's elves and dwarves.

In a sci-fi setting, I would play around with something like gravity or atmosphere. Perhaps earth has a peculiarly high gravity, or curiously sparse oxygen density, compared to other life-bearing planets. This, when humans go to said planets, they are super-strong (in the case of gravity) or super-energetic (in the case of increased oxygen levels) compared to the native inhabitants.

In other fantasy settings? Not so sure. Let's see, what advantages do humans have over other species in real life?

1) Throwing. Humans throw and catch better than any other species, but with other humanoids that might not be limited to humans anymore.
2) Social instincts. Humans can develop emotional directives due to social conditioning that can overpower more hard-wired directives such as eat, reproduce, survive, etc. This is part of what makes humans adaptable, since they can learn to instinctively do/accept things that a new environment might require. This is what translates into the "humans do everything" of standard fantasy.
3) Colour vision. The majority of other species on the planet have less range in their ability to see colours than humans do. If one were to bring science into it, the increased low-light/darkvision of other fantasy species should come with a tradeoff of decreased colour vision, so perhaps humans should receive some form of bonus to vision-based rolls in full light conditions.

>>2763008
Is that a bad thing?

>>2762993
Good idea, but how would this transfer mechanically?

That being said, perhaps this could be adapted into making humans more mentally resilient to madness-inducing events. Having seen Cthulhu, a human might gibber in his sleep and talk to himself, but otherwise, he's just an offshoot of To Kill A Mockingbird's Boo Radley. An Elf or a Dwarf? Fucking drooling at the mouth, man.

Dorfs: Are Prometheans
Elfs: Are Changelings
Humans: Are Hunters

>>2763012
Yeah both of them die out.

>>2763025

Taking this a little further, maybe humans have weaker magic or technology overall, but have access to bizarre, exotic powers as a result of doing insane things in the name of progress. Let the elves have their High Magic and the dwarves their steam-and-black-powder tech, humans can come away from the world's Lovecraftian horrors with enough sanity left that they can use what they learned.

>>2763014
>In a sci-fi setting, I would play around with something like gravity or atmosphere.
The microbiologist in my group went with the rest of the galaxy seeing Earth as a step short of a plague world, given most other worlds are baked by radiation with thin atmospheres. Their people are physically quite efficient, but their immune system is nothing to write home about.

Human society holds a noose on every one of it's member's necks, it uses this power to make humans do things that the society itself and the humans that make it up believe to be evil and wrong. Ask any man on the street if he thinks that killing people for your own benefit is acceptable, he will tell you it's not. However, that's just what humans do. We throw millions of lifes away for the benefit of the few, or even for no reason at all.

Humans will dominate all the other races because unlike them they care nothing for the actual morality of their society's actions, all they care about is doing what they're told.

Humans win because they'll kill off an entire generation of their men to achieve nothing but death of another group of men-or elves, or dwarfs, or orcs, and everything else that threatens their perceived dominion.

That's how they succeed even when they're all a bunch of cowards who are inferior to other races. We're like a bunch of ants or bees. Whereas the other races actually hold values and don't morally and ethically contradict themselves.

>>2763044

For no really good reason, yes. Really, if you stat out a Tolkien elf or dwarf, the race alone would require a hefty level adjustment compared to a human.

One of the advantages science fiction has over fantasy is we don't have to say "Just stop using Vulcans and Klingons". Dwarves and Elves as they exist in popular consciousness are just specialized humans. The entire setting has to be built from the ground up.

>>2763073
Not really, a Sun Elf Eternal Blade does indeed reach Fingolfin levels of awsum pretty easily, and dorfs can get like, freakin, +8 to AC vs large foes, free weapon focus and proficiency in waraxes, and so forth.

If you want to say "there are no elven commoners," that's easy, just rule that they're mostly far higher level, considering how old they are.

Humans are in love with the concept of death.

And why not? It's not like their lives are worth anything to them. A whore's as good as a wife for most.

Humans love bringing death to others, but they only come into their own particular, singular apotheosis when contemplating their own deaths. Glorious last stands are almost the only war stories they consider worth telling. It's as if victory, the true aim of war, is utterly worthless to them, that they should celebrate defeat in it's place. They have a term... "suicide," I believe it is called, when a human will end it's miserable existence for reasons entirely like the conditions that other humans face every single day. It is sheer madness for such a species to exist, let alone thrive. It seems that there is a common thread to all of their stories of death, though; though they love to die, they love most not to die for themselves, but for other humans. I believe that it is this that gives their race the tenacity to survive in the world.

>>2763106

Elves: Protect the woods! Archers to your bows! Shoot them before they can even set foot upon our holy ground! Let our wrath fall as the rain, drenching all of them with the deluge of Elven war!

Humans: Derka derka JIHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAD!

Building on the idea of human adaptability and the fate thing...

Let us imagine that, back in the beginning of the world, the various gods created their chosen races. A god of stone and metal created the dwarves, a god of nature begat the elves, and so on. Humans were created by the nameless Lord of Chaos, and granted some of his chimerical nature. Each race has talents and tendencies that are tied to their patron. Elves, for example, use a powerful magic tied to the earth, ocean, and sky that allows them to control and amplify the natural tendencies of animals, plants, and natural phenomenon. Dwarves are masters of the forge, legendary craftsmen with knowledge of metallurgy that other races only dream of. But humans are the children of a god whose domain is limitless possibility, and is anathema to laws and bonds. Humans can echo the talents of other races, but always twist them in some way. Great smiths construct mad clockwork things that shouldn't be able to function, but do. Human magic is about defying the natural order, not working with it.

Humans are really badass actually.

We are explorative, inquisitive, tough and inteligent compared to the rest of nature. some people survive bear attacks, some people manage to get stranded on the antarctic and sail back home without loosing a single person, some people break their legs horribly in a mountain climbing accident and scoot backwards on their butt over a trecherous glacier for MILES to get to base camp and help. we have gone from harnessing steam to developing the tech to reproduce the big bang in less than 200 years. We manipulate our environment like it's childsplay, because it is, even for toddlers.

>>2763133

Hugh Glass shows how fucked up balls on awesome humanity can be.

Humans have to be taught not to fight each other. Children are taught to share, to restrain from hitting each other, not to pull the cat's tail or stick a fork into a socket, just to see what could happen.

Those are the reasons why we'll win. Pic related, it's us.

Let's think about the terms Elf and Dwarf for a moment. Before Tolkien, elves and dwarves often weren't considered human-sized species. Dwarves were called dwarves because they were small, and there are plenty of stories with halfling-sized and smaller elves. Why not try a setting based on that idea? Compared to everything else, humans are giants, wielding monstrous weapons, living in fuckhuge megaconstructions, and eating several days' worth of food at a time.

Humans: We don't develop new shit because we must. We develop new shit because we can.

>>2763133

You seem to be the only one here who is not a misfit with little understanding of human society.

>>2763239
You know this thread is about how to make humans a credible species in the face of other, seemingly superior ones, right? Take your real world shit and gtfo, we are making awesome fluff here.

>>2763239

I'm not seeing the part where he even mentioned human society. Technology is not society, technological development does not equate to social development, one can be quite technically intelligent while being socially dumb and vice versa.

>>2763239
Yeah, but we've already covered most of that physical badassery in the other three threads, now we're looking for something else.

>>2763320

Aye. And in the spirit of that, let me suggest humans as the most awesome nomad race ever.

IRL, humans are basically twinked-out pursuit predators. We can amush okay with the aid of weaponry, but nothing matches our stamina over long distances. Only horses and wolves even come close, which is why they were among the first domesticated species. We can keep going and going with very little sleep, and can survive longer without food or water than anything else that doesn't have a reserve system built in. We can travel long distances faster than anything without wings, and can survive just about anywhere. We can literally just keep pushing prey until it falls over dead from exhaustion.

I'm imagining fantasy humans with a bonus to Constitution compared to other races, or whatever equivalent the system uses. They live in massive caravans, traveling all over the world as traders, mercenaries, and diplomats. If you want soldiers, you talk to the humans. If you want goods, you talk to the humans. If you want messengers, you talk to the humans. Indeed, they're so widespread that when two races get together for anything, they usually communicate with human language. Thanks to this, humans as a whole are vastly wealthy, with exotic magic from continents away, and are always well supplied with veteran soldiers armed with the very best equipment.

humans just reproduce way faster that elves and dwarfs ... = reason why humans are more dominant

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2709630

this is all you need

Humanity refuses to accept things as impossible, in part because of our incredible curiousity. A thousand year old Elf might not go into a volcanic cave because everyone who goes there dies. But humans would fucking line up to get in there because they HAVE to know what's in there.

>>2763222
For the good of all of us. Except the ones who are dead.

Maybe the human intuition could be what makes us special. Where other races might not do something because it seems incredibly risky or blindingly stupid, a human sees that certain "maybe it could work if I do this" factor that other races might be more or less blind to.

Other than that, all I can think is a slight INT boost or something, to explain our abilities to invent things. This could also explain our way to adapt to things, since we simply build something when we need it badly enough and somehow make it work. I mean, they sent people to the moon and back with no casualties, using less computing power than what you can get in a decent calculator these days, FFS.

>>2763392
I wouldn't say "veteran" soldiers... but other than that, it's a brilliant principle. Combined with the idea of our incredible birthrate and the "throw enough meat at it" principle, that's more or less a very good reason why we rule fantasy settings.

>>2763444
But there's no sense crying over every mistake.

You could also downgrade the other races to make them on par, rather than humans with all these kewl mary sue powers that have developed over time.

>>2763451

Maybe an int boost to account for us coming up with so much brilliance, and a corresponding wis penalty for being insane enough to go through with it.

>>2763451
It was mentioned before, in a Turtledove book series (can't recall the name at the moment, durr). While some alien race needs thousands of years to perfect their technologies before releasing them as a whole , some humans don't even wait for it to be legal before telling everyone about it. Sure, there might be casualties- but we've got reserves.

>>2763451
>Other than that, all I can think is a slight INT boost or something, to explain our abilities to invent things. This could also explain our way to adapt to things, since we simply build something when we need it badly enough and somehow make it work. I mean, they sent people to the moon and back with no casualties, using less computing power than what you can get in a decent calculator these days, FFS.
>I mean, they sent people to the moon and back with no casualties, using less computing power than what you can get in a decent calculator these days, FFS.
>I mean, they sent people to the moon and back with no casualties
>to the moon and back with no casualties

Someone doesn't know their history well enough.

>>2763320

Well if you take the traits that apply to the ones that we consider the worst of our kind (the liars and psychopathic murderers) and say that it is normal practice for our all humans then you must be some kind of idiot.

Posts in this thread have said that humans make no moral claims of sending their own to certain death which is untrue in most cases. I am not talking about Wh40k imperium here but the real world.


>>2763358
It was like the only post where humans shouldn't not be bigger assholes than other races that I've found in the entire topic.

>>2763486
Sounds good.

>>2763482

You are the mouthbreathing type of lardass with an inferiority complex who drool over super kewl elves.

Humans have the power of Deus Ex Machina songs, allowing them to beat any force in the universe.

Pic related.

>>2763516

Do you real have to fag it up with shitty anime?

>>2763518
4chan, 2chan, moot is an unrepentant weeaboo, etc.

>>2763468

You just keep on trying till you run out of cake.

>>2763518
Sigh, he probably didn't have too, he is just a filthy weeaboo who doesn't care what board he is on. Now lets sage bomb this thread and pretend it never happened.

A lot of the problem is that fantasy races are all offshoots of humanity, taking certain aspects of us to extremes.
So looking at humanity in light of these other races that are really just offshoots is hard to do without falling back on the idea that humans are more adaptable and more resilient.
Because humans are the base mold for every other fantasy race that's even vaguely humanoid.

>>2763518

Do you really have to fag it up by being a fag?

in b4 LISTEN TO MY SONG

oh wait...

>>2763495

Okay, granted, but consider this. We have a world populated with things that were written to be better than human. If we want humans to have some competitive edge, we have to do something. That means either emphasizing some facet of humanity and extrapolating what that would mean in a fantasy environment, or else just making up random k3wl p0w3rz to give them, which is a bit Mary Sue. Actual historically accurate reasonable humans compared to fantasy races as traditionally written fail.

>>2763539
Sigh, applying sage to taste.

>>2762940
This is lended credence by all the human/whatever hybrids in fantasy, and scifi to a lesser extent.

OMNOMNOMing the multiverse through sweet loving and cute babies.

>>2763546
>>2763539
>>2763531
>>2763516

Ssamefagm obvious troll, just ignore him

>>2763551
Because you certainly didn't.

>>2763540
Numbers, motherfucker. I remember a thread a while back that had the idea of humans sending small armies where dwarves and elves would just send a band of adventurers, using numbers and formations to counter the other races' skill. Shit was SO cash.

>>2763549

Not an idea suitable for a serious setting, but...

What if humanity's ability to breed with anything is the main reason for its survival? Humans have a short lifespan compared to most fantasy species, but a high reproductive rate and the ability to crossbreed with just about anything. Only powerful supernaturals like dragons and outsiders can come close to crossbreeding as well as humans. Combine this with the humans as the swarm race idea, and you have humans as fantasy zerg. Their base form is highly adaptable, they're vast in their numbers, and they reproduce at a frightening rate. Furthermore, when they encounter other races, they create halfbreeds, integrating the advantages of other creatures into the swarm.

Fuck yeah, human army of hybrid monsters.

>>2763540
Actually, no. Historically accurate humans will outbreed, outcrazy, and outdevelop most traditional fantasy races, and can two out of three the rest.

>>2762861

We breed like rabbits.

At least for elf / dorf standards.

Humans procreate faster than most other humanoids races combined.
Yeah goblins and ratfolk probably outstrip them by a long shot. However, they too are cowardly, weak and usually simple-minded people happy to be an evil underling race.

>>2763582


"A single dwarf fighter can match 50 human soldiers"
"Well. we have 100 for each one of you. that still gives us a 2 to 1 advantage."

>>2763580
Theoretically, that's the inevitable result of human evolution in a setting with so much cross-fertility. Evolution's a lot slower in a stable environment, but if, for whatever reason, no real civilations could develop/last, after so many hundreds of years, a hybrid race, mixed primarily of humans and any number of other races, with a wide range of useful traits from that heritage, could come out on top.

All very what iffish, but a possibility.

>>2763603
Exactly. And even all our dudes die, and that dorf fortress is still standing, we're back in fifty years with better stuff and two or three times as many soldiers, assuming we didn't find another way to win.

>>2763603
Then add in humans are not above tactics dwarfs wouldn't even consider because of their "honor".
Long bows + No regard for our own soldiers' lives = Dead dwarfs.

Guise, we have a fantastic example of exactly this concept (humans rock) in Arcanum. The dwarves let slip a bit of technology to a single human, and within a generation humans are using it to clearcut the ancient forest of the high elves.

I would focus on that, on our cultural adaptation and aggression. An elf can spend centuries contemplating a concept, its uses and ramifications on society in general. Humans play that out with each other: some internalize it immediately, fuck the ramifications; some hate it from day one; the idea seeps through the exposed population in a matter of months, filtering out the good and tossing the bad. Then we get over it and move on, something that no classical fantasy race seems capable of.

In other words, take 4chan (an ideal social filter) and apply it to the humans. We'll churn through the other races in fucking *months* leaving us as the cultural hub, able to understand and use the ideas of every race without their ridiculous inhibitions.

>>2762895
I couldn´t help thinking of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann when I read this:

>Like I said before, huamns are the race more prone to defying fate and going to extremes. Humans are the only race to look at something the elder races consider 'impossible' and attampt it- often succeeding.


Just take any roleplaying game, and assume humans ALWAYS have the chance of succeeding in doing something other races would consider impossible. If there is something you normally wouldn´t let a player do (like invent something incredibly strange and nature-defying, for example), then let the human character roll as long as he has the skill relating to it (mechanics, intelligence, whatever) and if he succeeds, everyone shits bricks.

>>2763638
Wouldn't that be a bit gamebreaking? I was thinking more along the lines of a few more Fate Points or rerolls or something.

>>2763638
Woah dude, that's exactly it. Give the humans the psychic aura that 40k orks have - when we really really think something will work, it does. Even when it shouldn't.

Conversely, when we're afraid something will go wrong, it will, as laid down in Principia Snafutum, by Sir Gordon Moore.

A bit like a toned-down version of the Coldfire Trilogy.

Humans also mature much faster. Elves don't mature until, what, 110 years? Dwarves until 40? Whereas a human fighter will be ready to go at 20, and a human wizard will be flingin' spells at about 25.

Humans are unique because they can defeat any boss by circlestrafing with guns

>>2763666

This would be awesome. Humans as a whole psychic race that can, through their collective belief, make literally anything happen while the other races stare slackjawed at things that should be impossible working flawlessly.

>>2763667
Kids as young as six, I think, can hold and fire machine guns. Make weapons that easy, you can have fighters that young.

>>2763133
saved
>>2763490
I'm thinking like the false mirror [lol only humans and the bad guys can actually fight without dieing] or john ringos aldenta series which is the sames but bigger

>>2763738

Pulling a trigger =/= swinging a sword with enough force to actually hurt something (and you'd need the endurance to do that multiple times!). And repeating crossbows are pretty heavy. AK-47s, on the other hand, are pretty light and easy to wield. But that's modern times, man. Things were totally different back then.

- Disease resistance due to them living and travelling in great numbers
- Able to grasp abstract concepts with far greater ease than other races, due to significant cultural diversification. Essentially making them better thinkers than most other races.

>>2763752
It's only a matter of time. In a D&D type fantasy setting, replace the AK-47 with a cracked-out Wand of Magic Missile.

Sure, kids are terrible front-line soldiers, but I was really saying that if weapons as simple as an AK-47 could be mass-produced in that setting, then you don't have to wait nearly as long.

The speed at which humans learn, master, and apply high difficulty skills and tactics is what does it for them.

The elves and Dwarfs they just be pissed.

How would you feel if you were some grizzled elven blademaster, practicing for 300 years..

And then some Asshole Human protogy comes along and defeats you at the age of 23?

in only 15 years of training and experience he's surpassed your 300 years of glorious service?

No wonder the elves are so fucking snotty all the time, they have the biggest learning deficiency of all the races. 150 years to learn magic? HA I did it in 4.

>>2763133
>>some people survive bear attacks

Fuck that, I've got a friend whose uncle killed an attacking grizzly with a little hunting knife. The company who made it offered him a crapton of money for the knife and story rights. Which the idiot turned down.

The problem with humans in generic fantasy settings is that most settings are designed with a mostly static medieval world in mind. But that inherently shuts out humankind's most important real-world trait: our ability to very rapidly develop new technology.

So, simply make humans the technologists of the setting. Long-lived races are simply cautious. Elves are not inclined toward invention, and consider anything that could challenge their ancient revered traditions to be dangerous. That's why it takes them so long to master their own skills--they must follow strict, highly ritualized traditions when studying magic or swordplay or what have you, and deviation is grounds for execution or exile. Dwarves are restricted by a highly communal, lawbound worldview that rewards hard, traditional work and punishes "lazy" creative workarounds. Orcs and other "fantasy nigger" races are inherently aggressive, and therefore rarely build societies that can sustain themselves long enough for any meaningful development, making them the technological scavengers of the setting. Humans, on the other hand, have little problems developing innovative new technologies that radically alter their societies within only the span of generations.

>>2763966
cont)
This is an effective way to explain human dominance, but it can't work in a setting that has to be culturally and technologically static--my biggest pet peeve with most worlds in the Tolkienesque tradition. If you REALLY want to keep your world from getting pew pew lasers too quickly, put in some sort of doomsday weapon that throws the world back into the dark ages every time society gets too technologically advanced. And you don't have to go all steampunk with it--just give humans Renaissance-era technology (early cannons and muskets, sophisticated architectural engineering, and ships that are highly advanced compared to those of other races). Dwarven and elven smiths might have the most beautiful and intricate craftsmanship, but humans equal and/or exceed their thousands of years of tradition with crude but more highly advanced inventions.

>>2762898

Human has two advantage

1) Number. We spend our free time breeding instead of doing useless things like digging holes and study poetry. This works pretty well until modern time, when our breeding rate just simply careen out of control.

2) Social intelligence. Sure our IQ may not match an elf's, but we have seen much more, living in a society much more diverse. Sure our strength may not match a dwarf's, but we have a built-in creativity and team-work skills that allow any man to rise above his own potential if he wants to.

Humans are cosmopolitan. How often do you see elf- or dwarf-dominated cities with significant populations of other races? Never. Humans are the only race with enough diversity themselves to tolerate other races as well, which allows them access to all those wonderful millenia-old skills without having to worry about following the millenia-old traditions as well. Inventive cultural scavengers!

And just for the great justice!

Humans, FUCK YEAH!

>>2763392
Moar of this. This is really good.

>>2764076

best one so far

Lets pretend you are a elf. You see a human looking dirty, and trying to start a fire with the whole stick and rock thing. You turn around for one second and then turn back. Now the human is using a better method. You turn around again and suddenly the human is using matches. you blink and he's using a lighter, then he changes as you look. He's able to light it up just by snapping his fingers, then it lights up just because he thought into existence. Then he stops changing. He looks different, but still resembles what a human should look like. But something is different, He talks to you. But he doesn't sound like a human, he sounds like a god, he talks to you about things that even you can't even fathom as if it was common knowledge to him. And now in the course of what is to an elf a few minutes that little dirty primitive human has gone from lighting fires with a rock to creating suns out of thin air.

Just repeating what others have said. Human culture constantly changes, with the best stuff (ideally) rising to the top and crap being discarded. Consider that planes were invented around the turn of the 20th century, then we landed on the moon in 1969. All of that in just a bit less then 70 years!!

A thousand year old elf would absolutely shit bricks at this.

>>2764276
Yes. Yes! Do you see now why I created Rapture?

>>2764282

>crap being discarded

america is being discarded atm

>>2764282
A thousand year old elf probably weekends in Sigil. I don't think visiting a barren rock would impress him. The method of doing so, however, might.

>>2764305
Took long enough.

>>2764276

>>2764301
so win

>>2764282A thousand year old elf would absolutely shit bricks at this.

but then they like ride dragons and walk between planes, making us brick shits

>>2764364
Then we just capture a couple of them and get them to reveal their Elfy secrets!

>>2764364
I was more thinking of how quickly humanity was able to go from heavier then air flying machines to landing on the moon.

>>2764327
>>2764346
>>2764354
>>2764365
>>2764366
>>2764370
>>2764381


SCIENCE!!!!!!!!!!

>>2764327
>>2764346
>>2764354
>>2764365
>>2764366
>>2764370
Who makes all these?

>>2764398

Not sure, but I bet there are more out there.

>>2763492
Apparently, someone needs to put some points in his "reading comprehension" skill. I said no one died during a trip to the moon and back using computers with less processing power than a modern day calculator. I didn't say no one ever died in the history of the space program.

The 3 astronauts that died before the trip to the moon, died in a fire during a test. Not on a trip to the moon and back.

>>2764398
http://wearscience.com/

>>2764377Then we just capture a couple of them and get them to reveal their Elfy secrets!

but what if the dorfs and elfs capture our scientists and take our rocket mooners?

Most of the recent posts have been talking about how humans ignore risks in favor of getting something done quickly, or being able to do things faster than the other races. That's all well and good, though I don't think that would really mean anything in the long run, as it wouldn't help your average Joe Human in the here and now. Instead, I propose a preternatural toughness, possibly an ability to resist the things that affect other races. The power to say "Fuck your shit" and spit in the eyes of the gods, should they so choose. After all, theirs is the power of Camouflage, to blend in with every other human, to look just like everyone else, or as the protagonist of the Assassin's Creed game says, to be "the knife in the crowd."

The power of the Human isn't to stand out and be awesome. The power of the Human is to be the stealthist sons of bitches in the entire medieval world.

Catch me if you can, Elf.

>>2764438
They we make a city vanish under the blazing light of a man-made star.

>>2764438
=_= They wouldn't dare.

>>2764443
Fuck you. We can do that shit with tech while you're getting Scryed by every Gray Elf Wizard in a 50-mile radius.

Humanity's strengths lie in its variety.

We shouldn't all be the diplomats and middle-of-the-road pissants, no. That idea needs to die.

The way I see it, we do have diplomats and we do work out negotiations- but we do it much more aggressively than other races/species. We're expansionist, mild-to-moderately militant, and relentless; everyone knows to listen when Humanity starts talking.

We also know that there are limits and things, processes and traditions to negotiate, and we will comply with those. But if we go to all that trouble, they had better damn well pay attention and listen well, or we'll get angry.

And there is nothing the galaxy fears more than a Human fleet on the warpath. Because humanity NEVER forgets an injustice done to it, and whether it takes a day, or a month, or a decade, they will have their revenge- tenfold.

>>2764443

Of course, that's not to say that a human can't stand up and take a fight against someone as tough as a dwarf. Quite the contrary, if the stealth doesn't seem to be working and hiding is no longer an option, the average human will take of sword or spear or shield or rock and give his final foe a fight to remember. Defiance in the face of superior forces, rage to rival that of the mightiest dwarven barbarians, and the muscle to make them a frightening opponent. The human might not be able to work nonstop in a forge for eighteen hours for every day of his life, but he can certainly bash in a skull with his bare hands.

The strength of the Human is not solely in his arms. The strength of the Human is also in his back, his legs, his mind, and his soul.

Yeah, I called your bluff, Dwarf. Wanna fight about it?

Mundane. Most (all?) other races need magic to survive, and if they somehow end up in a zero-magic area it Fucks Them Up. Humans, having a biology that works "normally", can just saunter into and out of zero-magic areas with no problems (although it might hurt magic users and anyone else with magically-powered advantages). Needs GM/author to specify which areas are zero-magic, and whether that changes over time.

Oh hi, just dropping by. Don't mind me.

>>2764528 but he can certainly bash in a skull with his bare hands.

FUCK YES I CAN!

GRAAAAA

>>2762963
Yeah, but humans in that setting cannot possibly compete for awesomeness with FREMEN KOBOLD WYRMRIDERS.

I mean, really now.

>>2764546

Renegade Sheppard.

Manliest Human to ever skullfuck the galaxy and walk away without so much as a backwards glance.

All the most powerful human psykers or casters from the ancient period performed a ritual that reincarnated their souls into one body, a super human that would be the savior and defender of humanity. A being of such increadible power that he would be like unto a god, to the point that having faith in this supreme being would grant you a measure of his strength.

Then he clones himself to create a race of super warriors, to serve and protect mankind.

I'd say with a living god on their side and an army of demigods at his command, humanity would have no problem in the future.

>>2764569
Right up til half the demigods rebel and their leader kills the main god, no problem at all.

>>2764586
Yeah well, maybe my God Emperor won't be such a fag about ripping his son apart with his mind,

>>2764566
awwwww yeah

>>2764593
And maybe your God Emperor wouldn't have been insensitive enough to the worshipful son to turn him to Chaos in the first place. Or have declared the wizard son traitor when he was only trying to help. Or rather than sending most of his armies against his traitor nemesis, he'd just have colony dropped something onto the fucker.

>>2764612
No, my Emperor probably would do all that. He's only human after all.

>>2764662

>only human

Good sir, I'm offended by your statement, which implies that being "only human" is somehow a bad thing.

personally, i think D&D did a great job with it. Bonus feat, +1 skill applied AFTER intel modifier.

To think of how many times having a few points in Climb saves your life, or min-max it and get ranks in a few different synergy skills, or... heck, Dodge feat, or Skill Focus, or even go the smart route and get a pre-requisite to a feat chain. Heck, I've seen more than a few level 1 Human casters go Improved Initiative / Combat Casting -

_OR_ a Human FTR with PB Shot, Precise Shot, Rapid Shot that crafted his own masterwork STR+2 bow at level 1 and was dealing out damage faster than anyone (seriously, got two crits in the first firing round, it was disgusting).

THAT is the sort of thing that makes humans better than other races. Our rogues are sneakier, our mages more gifted, and our fighters more tactical. Try giving every human commoner Endurance and Toughness, then tell me why we outlast them - or Skill Focus in their chosen craft or profession (even pickpockets in those big human cities you're all talking about) and Combat Reflexes so they can get that one lucky swing on that orc that jumped out at him.

Our Commoners are better than yours. Period.

>>2764662
HERESY.

>>2764662
*shakes fist* I was going to make that joke!

>>2764662
ONLY‽

>>2764671
No I mean it in the endearing "He's a god but he's still got his humanity goddamn it". If he was totally perfect then he'd be useless to mankind.

He's like any dad, he's punk ass son wants too much attention and tries too hard to impress. Then when he gets all pissy and rebells in a big way it's up to ol' papa to beat some sense into him.

Now scale that up to the level of gods and demigods and you have the horus heresy, only in my version The Emprah' takes no shit from no bitch due to the thirty years he spent in brooklyn during the 20th century.

>>2764674

>Our Commoners are commonly better than yours. Period.

Fix'd that for you.

>>2764438
>rocket mooners
"The humans did WHAT with blessed Isil, She Who Lights The Night?"
"I believe they call it a "rocket engine". Quite a large one."
"..."
"They say they'll put it back where they found it eventually."

>>2764685
Ghetto GEoM would be amazing.

Witcher route:

Humans are aggressive, expansionist motherfuckers who slaughter any that stand in their way and oppress the fuck out of nonhuman races.

>>2764706
FUCK YES THE WITCHER

They mess around with mutagens and genetic modification to create the perfect killers. Also, humans as alchemists - combat drugs ahoy.

>>2764724
BUT WHO'S THE REAL MONSTER HERE?

OMFG IS IT MAN?????

Humans
Who gives a fuck about all that other stuff? I get an extra feat!

Humanity.

What? No, fuck those dragons made of gingerbread that might be lurking over the next hill. We've got problems right here in our city.

Humankind.

Most Skilled Achievement unlocked.

>>2764746

Those green squirmy things. Just look at them, and you know I am right.

>>2764767
Fuck yeah!

>>2763198
Dwarves weren't short in the original Norse mythology.

You know those discovery channel shows where a few smarmy people go into the jungle and exploit the primitive natives for a few minutes of good television? That's how humans treat people who are less advanced than they are - and that's only if they don't have something we want. Imagine humans walking into an elven city, carrying odd technological inventions the elves can't even comprehend, and acting generally like very rude tourists. The elves might be offended that they're obviously just there on a day trip to be entertained by the 'primitive natives', but they can't do anything about it, or else they're going to have an army storming through their forest to 'pacify the aboriginals'.

>>2763014
Read some story similar to this. humans could see in colour which let them navigate the warp better than the aliens as they could read changes in its flow natrually. without having to take constant notes.
Also we had better math as the alien were using something like Roman Numerals to calculate entry points and trajectories.

>>2763569

The thread this guy is talking about was archived here:

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/2645332/

The "armies vs. adventurers" stuff starts about a quarter of the way in. The kobolds are really the outstanding feature of the setting, though.

>>2765017
>>2764561

>>2764443
Ok, what about the idea of "blanks" or whatever they're called in 40k?

Humans are a race that is almost completely invisible to magic. For some reason or another, humans won't show up when scryed, can't have their thoughts read, and cloak their gear from things like detect magic. Things like hold person would still work, since the force is being directed and controlled in that situation.

>>2765286
i like this one but how about no magic affecting humans. you can levitate a rock and drop it on us to kill us but you cant smash us with a force bolt.

>>2765306
I don't know, that seems a bit much almost.

I'd say, make them immune to anything that tries to actually affect them, but things like magic missile, hold person, fireball, etc. still affect us because we're not getting hit by magic, but by fire and stuff like that. Of course, we can't use magic either.

Ooh! When enough humans get together, they create a huge anti-magic field/dead magic zone!

Anti-magic humans are so retarded.

Bump for Human badassery.

>>2765548
What about anti-human magics?

>>2765286
What is the name for that? Those humans with no Warp shadow?

>>2767823
Nulls. Pariahs have a sort of anti-warp too.

Bumping this? Bumping this.

.....::sigh::

The advantages humans get, in the grand scheme, is their adaptability, with an increased reproduction rate.

Elves, Dwarves, and most other races live much longer, and are hard to convince of new ideas, technologies, and societal concepts.

>>2767894

Why? The answer is always the same.

Play Exalted, don't use point-ears.

>>2762861
How about this: civilization.

Out of all the races, human beings have the most rapid cultural and technological progression. While the dwarves went underground, and the elves stayed in the forests, human beings were the only ones smart enough to build their settlements next to rivers and develop advanced sedentary agriculture and thus are capable of supporting much larger populations. More stable food supply means more time for other economic activities, which means more division of labour, etc.

This eventually leads the humans to create numerous kingdoms and empires, the sizes of which the other races can't hope to match.

Of course, there are those humans who settled elsewhere, who have their own different cultures, more akin to those of the other races.

I've always liked the concept of humans (in a spacey sci-fi setting) as a pack of batshit, violent, short-lived, and xenophobic monkeys who tear through natural resources like no-ones fucking business and have hot baby making sex way to often. It's the other sentient races who are diplomats, we're just the guards.

>>2767941
But the problem is that such lifestyles are inefficient and deplete said environment. While you may say that this gives us the advantage "in the long run," to use a phrase common to these arguments, on a longer time scale, we fare no better than the Elves and Dwarves we've managed to foolishly outpace.

The problem with Humans in gaming is generally culture. People generally have their minds made up about what the standard squeaky/dorf/humie rolls are in gaming though as was stated very well above. The reason humans are often portrayed in these bland ways is because to do otherwise would require alot of background information most players generally aren't going to get all the way through. (think about it! We are lazy and overcaffinated) While you could make a human race that has some wierd drow bullshit going on or has other cultural wierdness but 1/2 of the players wouldn't read enough to get it. Grok?

>>2768622
>But the problem is that such lifestyles are inefficient and deplete said environment.

...

Wha?

If I was talking about industrial societies, then I'd see your point, but frankly those types of civilizations tend to stick around for a while. Yes, they have an environmental impact, but nothing that the local ecology can't absorb. At least not until industrialization kicks in.

And besides, eventually there's going to be some form of environmental awareness, especially with the elves around. Though it may take a couple of centuries before "green" technology becomes viable in that world.

>>2768016
For some reason, I'm thinking a slightly more individualistic form of Tyrnaid.

And I like it.

In a sci fi setting:

Have all of the other races know each other, and they all have the same creation myth (made by some elder dude long ago). We come out of no where on the galatic scene, all their higher ups are like "What the hell?". Children of chance, unafraid of change.

Have us 1.5 to 2x taller than other races, and the only ones who are carnviorous, and are capable of digesting them (tastes like chicken). We dominate because of constant innovation and cunning brutality. First alien group who finds us sends a ship to try and knock some sense into us. We kick their asses, tie em up, and shoot them back infected with alien aids.

The other advantage is we aren't afraid of modifying ourselves. Because of their idea they all came from some elder race, this is sacriledge. Humans create a whole new sort of warrior, who loses some of humanity and lives a probablisticly defined existance in exchange for power. They serve humanity partially out of hatred and spite for the xeno scum, partially out of memories of their youth that survive the process.

or have humanity BE the dominant elder race, who in their twilight since monoliths (like in 2001: space odyssey) to transform local fauna into our image.

Other races keep bumping into us in the strangest of places after thinking their treacherous alliance had wiped us out. In general we are the undeveloped race, but the one who can most rapidly adapt to changes and fuck their shit up. Like cavemen pulling on the wires of a severed cannon arm of a xeno scum, to get it to fire at them.

>>2770026
>>2769997

Holy crap, these are both awesome.

>>2764513
or a millenia. some people in former yugoslavia still hate the turks. humans remember slights through generations when they are the loosers.

why is /tg so obsessed with this autofellating clusterfuck- fest of celebrating human superiority over their literary creations? It does stir my rage when idiots try to justify human awesomeness with inaccurate information about our genetic heritage as "pursuit predators" or our disposition for glorious last stands. We are amongst all predators, the least efficient in design. The supposed endurance we manage is solely to do with our advantage in cooling due to our upright stance and sweat glands. This is only an advantage in a hot environment such as the savannah of africa where we developed such features and not so special elsewhere. Our penchant for glorious death is a myth. History is indeed full of accounts of such sacrifice but it is because so extremely rare that they are remembered so fondly. For every man that stood his ground, there were armies that broke and fled. The bulk of humanity is not heroic, but a pack of self-preserving cowards clawing its way over each other. Fantasy races and science fiction aliens are mostly embodiments of the virtues we wish we had more of, or the vices we try to hide made manifest as villains or gods. Stop sucking yourself /tg/.
whoa that was some rant:3

>>2770026

This one would have my vote. I've never heard of something having humans being the elder race, though I am sure there is something with that, it's really an untapped and appealing idea. Humanity could be gone for good, or they could be suffering what amounts to the dark ages after the roman empire fell or the dark ages of the Imperium of Man. We withdrew from having an intergalatic empire, leaving individual planets to their own devices where some endured but most perished and left are only millenia old ruins.

Either we created the humanoid species, or the planets left behind that did endure had humans evolve (would take much longer, and be more cliched) to resemble elves, dorfs, ect.

>>2771195

We do it as a response to humans getting shafted over and marginalized for other species. I've seen a friend who likes the eldar and elves being equally fanatical about elves being better as a result of feeling like they are always abused.

>>2771204
This is because your friend wants to imagine some race that is much better than all he ever could be. Seriously man, fantasy or sci fi would be very boring if we limited everyone to human mediocrity.

>>2763106

I´f anyone has ever played battle for Wesnoth they use an interesting concept there. Other magical races, being creatures born of the earth´s magic, have spells tied into the natural power of the land - They have a huge natural affinity but they can´t really use then to to anything that would pervert the natural order. On the other hand, while humans have to carefully study the magical arts the forms they are capeable of totally trancend the natural order - Necormancy (both white and Black), immortality and massively destructive magic is only possible to a race whose power derives from the raw essence of magic rather than that of the natural order.

>>2771395
That kinda sucks because HUMANS R SPESHUL DURR HURR

I liked the reasons here that didn't make us unique, just put us on equal footing.

bump

my favourite ideas are the ones with humans being the only critters with free will

Here is a random one. Every living creature can see in black and white: Except humans. They have carefully kept this hidden. This makes them superb at noticing things that others dont, and particularly spy detectors.

Dwarves from the south have red hair. Dwarves from the north have brown hair. This looks the same in black and white, but Humans can spot the infiltrator instantly. Same with eye color for elves.

Approaches to solving OP's quandry off the top of my head:

1) Berserkers
2) Superior inventions
3) Vikings
4) Imperial Guard

I haven't read through the previous threads that spawned this one, but has anyone read the Mass Effect prequel novel? You don't see it so much in the game but the other Citadel races are made uneasy by humans, we as a species are extremely aggressive and motivated, combine that with rational self interest and few moral scruples...

humans being batshitcrazy in sci-fi totally works. think of ten of your friends - one of them would be robocop if the technology was available (or wolverine, etc). I'm that dude.

As to fantasy, sometimes the archetypal "peasant turned adventurer" is all we need.

Human greed tends to be stronger than most other's, and that slightly evil part of us can create tenacity you won't see anywhere else. We are like Mace Windu amongst Jedi.

>>2771195

I think the real idea behind the "death" post is that humans should seem self-contradictory to outside races. The "glorious last stand" thing brings up the idea of winning through losing. The part about committing suicide when other humans face the exact same thing is that we both endure and do not. The species endures because the individuals sacrifice, etc. It's not really about death or courage itself, so much as that the species occupies every level of existence, whereas elves and dwarves and other fantasy races tend to be set in their cultures and climates.