No Demi-humans?

[Disemvowel]

Anyone playing/running DCC sans demi-humans? Keeping it App. N so to speak.

[Ravenheart87]

Anyone playing/running DCC sans demi-humans? Keeping it App. N so to speak.

Well, App. N has a few demihumans (see the works of Anderson, Tolkien, even Moorcock). You probably meant keeping it hard fantasy.

[Flexi]

Or classic pulp sword & sorcery fiction like REH's.

I have run DCC without any demi-humans in a Hyboria-like setting and I did not miss elves, dwarves etc at all. All very Conan-esque, with bits included from SW Beasts & Barbarians.

When I first read DCC, I instinctively disliked the dwarf character. Maybe because I was not participating in a dungeon-crawl at the time but I saw no use for it at all. Now that I have started an enjoyable dungeon crawl with a dwarf character, I must admit I quite love the class.

High fantasy standards like dwarves, halflings and so on, can pall on me a bit. It is interesting to see OSR games like ACKs and SW settings like Shaintar, have no halflings in them and if a setting has no elves, it does not bother me in the slightest. Nowadays, I find new settings like Kevin Crawford's Spears of the Dawn to be a lot more interesting to play in than another Tolkein setting imitation.

[Disemvowel]

Or classic pulp sword & sorcery fiction like REH's.

I have run DCC without any demi-humans in a Hyboria-like setting and I did not miss elves, dwarves etc at all. All very Conan-esque, with bits included from SW Beasts & Barbarians.

When I first read DCC, I instinctively disliked the dwarf character. Maybe because I was not participating in a dungeon-crawl at the time but I saw no use for it at all. Now that I have started an enjoyable dungeon crawl with a dwarf character, I must admit I quite love the class.

High fantasy standards like dwarves, halflings and so on, can pall on me a bit. It is interesting to see OSR games like ACKs and SW settings like Shaintar, have no halflings in them and if a setting has no elves, it does not bother me in the slightest. Nowadays, I find new settings like Kevin Crawford's Spears of the Dawn to be a lot more interesting to play in than another Tolkein setting imitation.

Good to hear. The problem with JRRT, well, one of the many, is that he so heavily...'borrowed' (that is a nice way of putting it) ideas from the mytho-poetics of Northern Europe, and that makes it difficult to play a game set in any verisimilitude of the same, without drawing the comparisons. Spears and Arrows of Indra are two shining examples of getting away from that, but I am not sure how gamers, predominantly WAS(P), would deal with such a stark contrast. Not crying racism, but those cultures are so outside our own that RPing them might just turn up the same as Elves; humans in funny masks.

I am commencing a campaign on Saturday, and I am inclined to not include dwarves/elves/halflings as PC possibilities. Everyone at the table always plays humans (or one half-elf), so the impact is negligible. I also think moving these races back into the prevue of the DM will add to plot and encounters.

[Skyscraper]

Thanks for the topic. I actually think I'm getting bored with elves and dwarves and all the stereotype burden they carry with them.

[smathis]

It's pretty straight-forward to "reskin" the demi-humans in DCC into another type of class. The Elf would become a "Spellsword" or a "Warlock". The Dwarf would become an Armiger/Man-at-Arms/Knight. Or the Halfling could become a Swashbuckler.

Or they could be re-raced with the Elf being something akin to a Tiefling and the Dwarf being a Half-Ogre and... well... I'm sure you get it by now.

Might need to modify a couple of class abilities here and there.

Transylvanian Adventures features 8 classes and no demi-humans. Well, that's kind of a lie. There is ONE demi-human (The Half-Breed) but we're not sure what he's half of.

To get rid of demi-humans from race-as-class D&D, it's advisable to make the old Fighting Man more interesting to play. Which requires a re-examination of the Thief. That's pretty much what TATG has done. Low magic, no demi-humans (well...) and focused around only 2 spellcasting classes (only one of which is in the first book) and 1 other class that can "Turn Unholy" but no other mojo.

Half-Breeds can't cast spells (without some multi-classing thrown in) but some of their abilities are certainly on the cusp of spellcasting.

So, yes, I've played DCC (using TATG) with no demi-humans, no healing magic and no real spellcasters in the party either. And still had a lot of fun with it. The classes aren't dependent on the setting, either. So they can be used as is in a medieval fantasy setting using DCC's spell list.

[finarvyn]

Or classic pulp sword & sorcery fiction like REH's.

Of course, REH also had a lot of pre-human or sub-human creatures running around. Mostly not as PCs, of course, but his worlds were full of them. (REH's picts were sort of a sub-human group and REH had at least one pictish hero as a protagonist. The name escapes me at the moment and I'll kick myself when I remember it.)

However, your point is well taken. REH wrote scads of stories that involved supernatural creepies but no demihumans.

[Ravenheart87]

(REH's picts were sort of a sub-human group and REH had at least one pictish hero as a protagonist. The name escapes me at the moment and I'll kick myself when I remember it.)

Brule the Spear-Slayer and Bran mak Morn are the two more heroic picts that come to my mind, but there are other less important picts here and there.

He also had serpent-men, ape-men in his stories, although they are usually monstrous antagonists. I can still imagine these as PC characters in my campaign though. Oh, and let's not forget about flying space elephantoids! Waaay before Spelljammer had space-hippos.

[catseye yellow]

topic necromancy!

are there at all demihuman npcs in gg dcc modules (besides toymaker gnomes and that eyeless dwarf in the one who watches)?

[bighara]

FWIW, I'm considering trying my hand at running a DCC game for my group, just to check it out. I am leaning toward no demi-human PCs for a more REH feel. Just re-rolling on the occupation table if one comes up or treating it as a human version of the job. e.g just "rat-catcher" instead of "Dwarven rat-catcher", etc.

[NJPDX]

If anybody is looking for inspiration in their homebrewing efforts at replacing demi-humans, I heartily recommend looking at Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

[Clangador]

If anybody is looking for inspiration in their homebrewing efforts at replacing demi-humans, I heartily recommend looking at Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

Can you write more words about this?

[NJPDX]

If anybody is looking for inspiration in their homebrewing efforts at replacing demi-humans, I heartily recommend looking at Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.

Can you write more words about this?

Sure. Mainly if you are looking to mine it in efforts to retool DCC demi-humans, it mostly would come down to flavor and roleplaying vs. mechanical tweaks. The game has nothing but humans, all centered around cultural groups: Kelts, Kimmerians, Hyperboreans, Atlanteans, Ixians (Quasi-Egyptians/Scythians), Picts, Esquimax, and Amazons.

Mechanically I think this game is one of the definitive restatements of AD&D 1st ed. with all of the Tolkienesque stuff stripped out. In terms of flavor and style the Gazetteer included in the referee's manual is one of the best I've ever read. Mostly it does a great job of evoking the fiction of Robert Howard, Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. I think you can pick up the pdf for ten bucks at RPGnow/DrivethruRPG, but if you like it the boxed sets was worth every penny I paid for it.

AS&SH and DCC RPG are my go-to OSR inspired games.

[TallGoblin]

I've thought about several things mentioned in this thread. I want to get rid of the demi-humans myself and have all unique monsters so players have less of an idea of what to expect.

This is brilliant and would be easy to do:

It's pretty straight-forward to "reskin" the demi-humans in DCC into another type of class. The Elf would become a "Spellsword" or a "Warlock". The Dwarf would become an Armiger/Man-at-Arms/Knight. Or the Halfling could become a Swashbuckler.

[Grimmer]

I just ordered DCC to do this very thing. I have no intention of having demi-human characters. I want to keep it very S&S with no Tolkienism at all.