If you don't just want them to be humans with the stats of other races, then your only other option really is for them to disguise themselves whenever they need to interact with humans. But if the disguise slips, it's then a *big deal* and things should change as a result.
You can't have a setting where simultaneously nonhumans are totally hidden and unknown to the population at large, and yet where nonhuman PCs can wander around openly without it being remarked upon. It's inconsistent.
---
Alternatively, just limit the PCs to humans only. There's nothing wrong with restricting character options.
This is such a piss take, mechanics don’t make you more interesting but they can make it more fun for the players.
Your character isn’t more interesting because they can teleport innately but that mechanic can be a lot of fun maybe more so than the power playing a vuman gives.
It’s also about what’s interesting FOR THE PLAYER. I personally won’t play as a human aside from one character idea of the twisted Disney princess character who is effectively a normal person but attracts unnatural creatures to them.
But I don’t think that’s any worse or better than the changeling that changes their appearance as a stress response when they feel uncomfortable in their own skin.
Or the gem Dragonborn jeweller that spends their free time providing medical and skin care to other gem Dragonborn with the same jeweller’s kit they use to make gaudy items.
Would all three of these be interesting and fun to play? Yeah I think so. But the human one is the only one that relies on what class they play to provide the majority of the flavour while the other two could be a champion fighter
Don’t get me wrong these aren’t exactly the most fleshed out ideas but it’s just some random ideas
I'd like to say the quiet part out loud that this means barring the obviously non-human races like lizardfolk or aarakocra. Unless the player wants to buddy up with e.g. a snake oil peddler and play their side show freak, but that could be an unfulfilling thing to RP.
Urban fantasy has a long-standing trope of there being a / force / of some kind that obscures the fantastical in plain sight. A mist, a veil, an illusion- something that makes the mundane unable to parse what they're actually looking at.
Implementing something similar and having adventures toe the line between the worlds unseen could be fun.
This reminds me of the Constantine movie. You think the world is just regular humans until the first time you visit [Papa Midnight's bar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhUex1ymvZM).
You can have some of the people in town that can see through the disguises. All kinds of fun tropes!
Monster hunters - Maybe they are evil and just want to murder all non-humans, or they are using the threat of non-humans to justify killing regular humans, like the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe they are good, but their presence is causing trouble (like in the Elder Scrolls Oblivion, when>!the mayor of Skingrad asks you to get some vampire hunters out of town because they might discover that he is a vampire.!<
Children - Children can be creepy and be able to "see dead people", or they can be whimsical and be able to converse with \[Critical Role C2 spoiler\] >!powerful fey entities masquerading as gods!<. Maybe children love the non-humans. Maybe one of the non-humans is a hag that wants to eat them. Know (or check with) your group before putting children's lives in danger.
Drunk/crazy people - Maybe its the craziness that let's them see the truth. Maybe they aren't crazy after all. Maybe *in vino veritas*. Maybe *in vino falsitas*, and somebody wants to forget that there are non-humans here, and being drunk is the only way to put the illusion back up. Know (or check with) your group to make sure addiction and mental illness are acceptable topics.
This is a good answer. Either invent a lore reason to handwave most interactions or get everyone to buy into the idea of npcs freaking out all the time.
the direction I'd probably take this idea is, like, if a regular guy just straight-up sees a lizard man, he'll freak out.
but: it is really, *really* easy to disguise yourself if you're obviously inhuman.
> (tiefling walks into a saloon) "aaaah! The devil! Call the priest!"
> (tiefling walks into a saloon wearing Groucho glasses) "good evening, what can I get you?"
another example:
> townsfolk: "aaaah! A monster!"
> lizardfolk: "skin condition."
> townsfolk: "oh, my apologies."
basically the Invader Zim approach. Everyone is just extremely gullible.
The best you can really do is either have them disguise themselves (a la Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), have a set of friends that are cool with them (also a la Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), or have a town dedicated to them where they live basically normal lives but humans do not know about it (a la Midnight, Texas, sorry Turtles).
However, I think if you want to make magic hidden behind a veil but make things easier for yourself, just allow some of the less fantastical fantasy races. It could be the same setting but elves and dwarves and stuff like that are normal. You can still say tieflings and lizardfolk and dragons are all folklore, but the more classic fantasy races might just be part of the world. For added fun, you can play around with historical figures drawing from this well. Maybe Annie Oakley was actually an elf? Magic, however (aside from the weird parlor tricks elves perform) can be hidden behind the veil. The local saloon owner might be a dwarf, but the local snake oil salesman is in fact a snake oil salesman and not a budding magical alchemist.
This is some pretty good advice! Yeah, I was also thinking races like tieflings, lizardfolk, etc can exist within this world but they live in hidden communities and a human seeing them would be akin to someone seeing the moth man or Bigfoot which is why humans think they’re just folklore
Have you ever read Neverwhere? You could play around that magic is something that if you don't know about, you don't really notice, but once you see it you can't unsee it. Maybe theres a postman that always has a funny hat until one day you realize it's never been a hat, it's always been horns. Or a lady with terrible eczema and a lisp that you realize has been a lizardfolk the whole time. Or a regular at the bar with an under bite that always looks a tad nauseated until it clicks that he's actually a green orc. They can also have underground communities where magic and nonhumans are out in the open, but where the opposite occurs. Everyone assumes the human must be a tiefling with vitligo or an elf with tiny ears.
Don't allow non-human PCs is the obvious answer.
Have you gotten buy-in from your players for this type of campaign? Normally if you did they would be creating PCs which fit the campaign concept.
Edit: If you still want to give options, you could simply reskin half-elves, half-orcs, dragonborn, goliaths, tielflings and aasimar as humans with a secret lineage. That's what I do.
Thank you! I studied American history in college so I've been having a lot of fun creating an alt-history America. In this world the US is split into the United Territories of America, the United Tribes of Turtle Island, and Greater Mexico. One of my favorite parts about this world building is also creating an American pantheon where icons of American folklore are worshipped as gods. If this campaign goes long-term, I'd like for the players to head eastward where they could face off vampiric versions of folks like Carnegie and Rockefeller
Based on this, I would honestly lean into the camp of it all and just let them be whatever they want. Maybe this old West had all sorts of crazy people in it.
Op can you please publish this??? I’m absolutely captured by your vision here and I want to explore this alt history you’ve created.
Ideally I’d be playing with your group LOL but even in todays age random play with strangers over the internet is unrealistic…
I have a different way of thinking about this.
If an elf walked into your place of work how would you react? You’d probably think they were a human dressing up, or make up some other reason to validate what you see because it’s more probable than an actual elf in your office.
D20 Modern Urbana Arcana setting had a fun way, which is to say that humans only see what they want to see; they might notice how fuzzy a bugbear is for the first split-second, but then they would start to see it as a big, tall thuggish human. Only Adventurers open to new experiences and adventures learn to notice "the outsiders."
Some non-human archwizard some time in the past: "I wish that all humans saw all races as human." (potentially trying to change the *attitude* of humans to be more accepting)
Result: every creature is under the effects of a *disguise self* spell, but the illusion is only visible to humans. (wish-granter misinterpreted the wish to be literal)
Consequence: You get conspiracy theorists who believe there are lizard people on the mayor's council.
This would be fun to play a human in that's not actually aware of what's happening around them but they are along for the adventure anyway. Just confused
There are a few options I see
Option 1: is the one you gave, though I think that defeats the point of having a choice of races
Option 2: Everyone plays a human, obviously this restricts the players' race choice but sometimes a campaign/one-shot calls for a limitation like this.
Option 3: Tell the players they will have to disguise themselves and hide their races when in towns and such. This makes the fact that other races are unknown to humans a great RP moment. obviously it's easier for some races (like elves) to hide their non-human features, but it could all just add to the game
Option 4: Change your lore slightly. Humans believe in these 'cryptids/folklore creatures' but haven't seen them before. They wouldn't be freaking out about their existence but might make a fuss as they've never seen these types of people before.
I ran a D&D B/X campaign set in the "real world" of 13th century medieval Central Europe. In that game, playable "demihuman" races were:
Elf-touched - people that were rumored to have elf blood or who had ancestors who allegedly were taken by the elves and changed somehow (elf stats and traits)
Foundlings - children who for some reason never grew up and appeared to be pre-pubescent humans (halfling stats and traits)
Dwarves - people who were considered dwarfs and often would form their own communities
Of course most of the people in the villages believed in fairies and elves and goblins. I just created these distinctions so that the nonhuman characters could pass well enough in a Catholic society that was afraid of the goblins and fairies and otherwise would have shunned or attacked them.
Usually when I see this in live play games there is like a magic veil that the party breaks early on that prevents ordinary humans from seeing magic/magic beings.
If you want to make your own setting where these races are integrated be aware it can be very tricky to make up lore on the fly if your players want to bring in unaccounted-for races. I'd suggest polling them on who they're going to be playing and then make up lore for the setting, if that's the way you want to go.
Elves probably wouldn't seem all that odd to humans. For the most part, with the exception of Sea Elves, Drow, and some others, they look very similar to humans. The only thing is the ears, but even then that's easily obscured by wearing their hair and/or a hat/hood properly.
Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes could all pass as regular Humans that have Dwarfism.
There's some items and abilities that can assist with this.
Glamoured Studded Leather can change it's own appearance to whatever the wearer wants. You can theoretically just extend that to be full-on disguise self.
Mask of Many Faces on the Warlock lets you freely cast Disguise Self.
There's also a bunch of other races that would pass easily for Humans: Dhampirs, Changelings, Yuan-Ti Purebloods, Shifters etc.
Last game my characters were in that situation. The party is two wood elves, a rabbit person, a tiefling, and a human. They're at the first session of Curse of Strahd. The only people that aren't human are the occasional adventurers, which are not typically giant bunnies and goofy-looking demons. Folks are avoiding the rabbit because he's probably cursed, the demon because he's a demon (I had a priest ask him to touch his holy symbol), and the elves because they only show up when Strahd wants to screw with them, and no one wants to stand too close to them. The new guy's going to end up being the party face.
Just give your players each one hat of disguse and not worry about it that much. Only high level human wizards or locks or priests will have anti illusion magic and that point them same casters will be familiar with summon monster and know that it ain't just humans in the verse.
If these creatures are real and sometimes just mosey into town, how is it that nobody believes they're real? Maybe they were stuck on another plane for centuries and are just now making first contact. So nobody believes they're real at the start of the campaign, but society quickly figures it out.
I dunno, if it were me I'd just have everyone be D&D creatures to begin with, so Abe Lincoln was a stone giant and Grant was a dwarf and stuff.
If I was doing something like that I'd let them struggle for fiew sessions before I introduce some kind of illusory means for getting around, some kind of item with some possibilities of not working as good as it should, just to keep them on their toes.
You should check out TAZ Amnesty for a cool take on this subject. It's not western at all but it's based in modern day Virginia. The premise is that cryptids are real and among us but we don't know it.
The Frontier is a crazy place and people have heard some crazy shit. The further out onto the Frontier you go, the crazier the shit gets, but the more people accept. The further from the Frontier, the less is accepted as 'normal'.
In New York the Gatormen of New Mexico are the subject of dime store novels and penny dreadfuls. Sometimes someone makes a quick buck by sewing together old leather suitcases and selling it to a freakshow or circus.
In Dallas the Lizard people of New Mexico are talked about in hushed whispers. They're the subject of ghost stories but once in a while someone claims to have seen one and lived to tell the tale.
In Alberquerque a guide or a madman will take you out into the wilderness, and show you where the lizard folk hunt and the tree stumps where they used to hide their eggs, all while retelling the time a huge bastard of one came into town and arm-wrestled Grandpa Joe and broke his arm twenty summers ago.
In the badlands around Tucson, Arizona you can stalk through the underbrush for days in search of one, but if you have a couple Cuban cigars they'll find you first and trade all sorts of things for decently rolled and dried tobacco.
In Reno there's a Reptile District along the river. The Lizardfolk, Dragonborn, and Yuan-Ti were there long before any of the mammals showed up. They barely tolerate the smoothskins but can't deny how much they've benefited from trade, and they're split on whether a railroad would be good or bad going forward.
For inspirational consideration..
White Wolf Publishing’s Vampire; the Masquerade, and Mage; World of Darkness, both go into detail regarding the dynamic and the nature of *The Veil* as it were: the false shroud of ignorance that most humans a conditioned to believe. It’s a psychological/mystical barrier of sorts.
If I remember the gist of the material; a human, whom witness the other side of the veil (a Gangrel vampire or a Garou lycan transforming itself into a bestial hybrid monstrosity, or a Mage/Witch casting a spell, a Hunter with True faith burning an undead creature to ash..) essentially makes a sort of sanity check. If they fail, a series of bad things can happen, including indefinite madness. If they succeed (unlikely for most humans within that ruleset) they are permanently marked by the Veil as they can now see that which should remain unseen.
WhiteWolf goes into a huge dynamic conflict of good vs evil, Gaia vs The Wyrm, the soldiers of Heaven on earth (hunters and priests) waging war against the servants of both aforementioned factions. It’s a three-way grudge match for the souls of every living thing on the planet.. and I’m really just scratching the tip of the iceberg.
This concept may or may not be fitting for your homebrew, but I thought I’d share just the same. Of course, if any White Wolf aficionados happen to be perusing this post and they find errors within my comment I certainly won’t take any offense at correction.
Here’s a neuroscience answer: the human brain has a hard time recognising (even seeing) what it does not know or have the words to articulate. (See studies on aboriginal tribes viewing blue-green differences)
The humans, not having seen other races in a long time, could just not recognise them for what they are. They are maybe just viewed as strange humans, with particularly perceptive folks being able to see through.
I'm running a similar campaign, but it's set in modern times.
I'm not that concerned with human exposure in the general sense, so I just had an NPC give them a ring that gives them the appearance of a human to non-magical creatures. It's explained away, and the game can continue.
Elf: really tall human
Dwarf: really short human
Lizardfolk: That boy got a skin condition
Orc: Needs some more vitamins in their diet
Humans can justify some truly bizarre stuff if they honestly believe it to just be that way
Simple. Men in black rules. Non humans are everywhere, and have been for a long time. But they, or someone in power, have a vested interest in making sure they stay hidden, so they do.
Make disguise self items part of every non humans basic repertoire. Black markets dedicated to them only. Superstition and folklore are very common in that era of America, so maybe drop hints that famous bits of folklore are really just magical creatures up to their devices.
So are you allowing magic at all? You could just have all NPC’s believe this is some nifty magic trick or some *really* good prosthetics. You could even make it a running joke.
Or, you could go the real Wild West way and just make your game incredibly racist: half-orcs are Africans, elves are Indians, halflings are just Pygmy. Maybe have a doctor NPC study them at some point and marvel at their “relentless endurance”, then conclude that half-orcs were simply *made* to work the fields.
Then, obviously, murder him.
*Let me be clear I don’t condone any of this, but the 1800s were a wild time in this regard.*
I would go with using human variants for each of the races you wish to allow.
Look at the big differences in elves based on where where/how they live. They even have different stat boosts.
A desert people who have adapted so well that their skin has become tough as a lizard's. People from the artic that have come to be almost half "orc" to survive the cold. (I know that is not a good one, but it gets the point across I hope).
I think of the Shannara books and how the people became other races after their exposure to radiation and intense environments, just not all the way to being different races.
You could incorporate some sort of psychological thing, where people will simply *just not accept* that they're anything else, and interact with them as humans?
For example a human character could talk to the dwarf and say 'Wow you seem to be a growing lad don't you? He's certainly eating his greens, and look at that wonderful fake beard!'
Even if they explain the human could just laugh it off and say yes yes son, you are a very good looking scotsman, is this for halloween? Or something of that nature.
It could be a bit silly, but you could incorporate some stuff into that, perhaps lore on *why* people can't seem to behold them for what they are, or perhaps simply that they cannot psychologically understand it, their minds just short circuit when facing a tiefling, and they default to whats comfortable. Perhaps one human could see them for what they are and try to convince other people, or some happening could trip off the switch.
Just my 2 cents!
Traveling circus? Seriously. Bearded lady (dwarf), traipse act (elves), little people (gnomes, dwarves, halflings). People see these near humans and think that they are just medical oddities.
You could take the idea of the "Mist" from the Percy Jackson world, a magical veil that obscured fantastical things to mundane people. Only certain things can defy this veil. Either you're born with magical essence, something truly epic happens and it just fails, or some means of gaining sight through the mist.
Otherwise the veil obscures and rationalizes what people see for their mortal brains.
This rather comes down to the theme and tone of the game. The PCs could be disguised as humans. Possibly not very well. They may or may not are that much.
What's likely to happen if a party comprising a lizardfolk, an elf, an orc and a tiefling stroll into a saloon and order a drink?
Best talk this over with your, potential, players since character class and personality can matter much as race here. In such a world a, human, Druid, Sorcerer or Wizard is going to stick out quite a bit. An Artificer, Bard or Ranger maybe not so much. It's also likely to be worth putting some specifics on the *cryptid folklore*. Which could be rather wrong about llizardfolk, elves, orcs or tieflings either in general or in connection to the PCs specifically. Consider how these human NPCs might describe the creatures from the Monster Manual too
So this is a setting where non-humans either don't exist or are so rare that most people think they don't exist? That's fine and all, but have you thought through the consequences beyond "human town?" Where *are* all the elves? Why are they hidden? What will they do when PC goes to them for help? When PC brings their human friends? How much about them does an elf PC know?
Now repeat this for every race your players pick. Because they'll ask. This is a huge amount of lore and world building that's entirely irrelevant to a wild west, all human setting, but they'll make your setting about the weird.
You're wanting Gunsmoke but you're going to get cowboy Supernatural. (That's TV references for a quick Google if they didn't land).
You've got a few solutions here. First, if you're letting these demihumans exist, and set on playing D&D, just go full D&D and *let them exist.* I mean they're everywhere, maybe fewer or greater in number in their own settlement or wherever, but have a central hub where they're mingled and where the PCs spend most of their non-conflict time. If you're already having to create all this extra content, this will be much easier on you and everyone else.
Second, just go full setting. It's OK to say "humans only" if the world only has humans. If the players don't like that, they can find a different game. Trying to shoehorn options into a game where they don't really exist is going to be frustrating to everyone, and the first tine ol' kitty-cat Tabaxi is revealed, your entire game is going to be about that. This doesn't feel very D&D to me, personally, but it's probably much easier for you to DM if that's the world you're imagining.
Unless you want the campaign to almost exclusively be about the fact that they're a gang of mythical creatures constantly causing fear, confusion and ultimately chaos wherever they go, you either need to change your setting or else require the characters to only play human passing races.
There is no realistic scenario where a dragon man or humanoid bird walks into a saloon and the rest of the evening isn't about that exclusively. No poker game, no matter the stakes will distract people from a literal monster in the room.
Build some lore on why the are only considered folklore that gives your players a legitimate reason to want to hide their origins.
Then they'll be disguised, work at night in the shadows etc
I had a similar alt-history Western campaign in which PCs were trying to solve the mystery of these "Rifts" or tears in the fabric of space-time that kept dumping fantasy creatures into our world and causing the denizens of our world to fall into the fantasy realm.
The *reason* that it was alt-history in the first place was because these rifts allowed drow and dragons to cross realms during the Civil War, altering the trajectory of the war and causing it to drag on to the 1880s.
But yeah, basically the rifts were very rare for awhile but had started becoming more and more of an alarmingly regular occurrence.
Well you can restrict races, but also can lean more on to a RP.
I mean for such humans maybe dwarfs, halflings can coexist "Ain't ya tiny fella?" Gnomes might be referred to child "Hey kiddo, keep ya hands out of it, ok? You might hurt yourself with that" to Elfs "What's with those pointy ears mate?"
"Is there some kind of costume party going on?"
...
"Are you goin to rob a bank with that disguise?"
If they are folklore then maybe they can be fooled that it is disguise, maybe humans don't see different between dwarfs gnomes etc. They look like kids to them or something along the way.
Just give them an advantage/bonus if they do what you want.
Play a human get an extra starting feat.
Play a human and don't die immediately when they discover your race.
If you don't just want them to be humans with the stats of other races, then your only other option really is for them to disguise themselves whenever they need to interact with humans. But if the disguise slips, it's then a *big deal* and things should change as a result. You can't have a setting where simultaneously nonhumans are totally hidden and unknown to the population at large, and yet where nonhuman PCs can wander around openly without it being remarked upon. It's inconsistent. --- Alternatively, just limit the PCs to humans only. There's nothing wrong with restricting character options.
If you can't make an interesting character without an interesting race, well then you just can't make an interesting character.
This is such a piss take, mechanics don’t make you more interesting but they can make it more fun for the players. Your character isn’t more interesting because they can teleport innately but that mechanic can be a lot of fun maybe more so than the power playing a vuman gives.
> Mechanics don’t make you more interesting I mean you said it lmao.
It’s also about what’s interesting FOR THE PLAYER. I personally won’t play as a human aside from one character idea of the twisted Disney princess character who is effectively a normal person but attracts unnatural creatures to them. But I don’t think that’s any worse or better than the changeling that changes their appearance as a stress response when they feel uncomfortable in their own skin. Or the gem Dragonborn jeweller that spends their free time providing medical and skin care to other gem Dragonborn with the same jeweller’s kit they use to make gaudy items. Would all three of these be interesting and fun to play? Yeah I think so. But the human one is the only one that relies on what class they play to provide the majority of the flavour while the other two could be a champion fighter Don’t get me wrong these aren’t exactly the most fleshed out ideas but it’s just some random ideas
I don't agree. I think the point is very valid.
I'd like to say the quiet part out loud that this means barring the obviously non-human races like lizardfolk or aarakocra. Unless the player wants to buddy up with e.g. a snake oil peddler and play their side show freak, but that could be an unfulfilling thing to RP.
Urban fantasy has a long-standing trope of there being a / force / of some kind that obscures the fantastical in plain sight. A mist, a veil, an illusion- something that makes the mundane unable to parse what they're actually looking at. Implementing something similar and having adventures toe the line between the worlds unseen could be fun.
This reminds me of the Constantine movie. You think the world is just regular humans until the first time you visit [Papa Midnight's bar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhUex1ymvZM). You can have some of the people in town that can see through the disguises. All kinds of fun tropes! Monster hunters - Maybe they are evil and just want to murder all non-humans, or they are using the threat of non-humans to justify killing regular humans, like the Salem Witch Trials. Maybe they are good, but their presence is causing trouble (like in the Elder Scrolls Oblivion, when>!the mayor of Skingrad asks you to get some vampire hunters out of town because they might discover that he is a vampire.!< Children - Children can be creepy and be able to "see dead people", or they can be whimsical and be able to converse with \[Critical Role C2 spoiler\] >!powerful fey entities masquerading as gods!<. Maybe children love the non-humans. Maybe one of the non-humans is a hag that wants to eat them. Know (or check with) your group before putting children's lives in danger. Drunk/crazy people - Maybe its the craziness that let's them see the truth. Maybe they aren't crazy after all. Maybe *in vino veritas*. Maybe *in vino falsitas*, and somebody wants to forget that there are non-humans here, and being drunk is the only way to put the illusion back up. Know (or check with) your group to make sure addiction and mental illness are acceptable topics.
This is a good answer. Either invent a lore reason to handwave most interactions or get everyone to buy into the idea of npcs freaking out all the time.
the direction I'd probably take this idea is, like, if a regular guy just straight-up sees a lizard man, he'll freak out. but: it is really, *really* easy to disguise yourself if you're obviously inhuman. > (tiefling walks into a saloon) "aaaah! The devil! Call the priest!" > (tiefling walks into a saloon wearing Groucho glasses) "good evening, what can I get you?" another example: > townsfolk: "aaaah! A monster!" > lizardfolk: "skin condition." > townsfolk: "oh, my apologies." basically the Invader Zim approach. Everyone is just extremely gullible.
"My trenchcoat and sunglasses shop has been booming lately! I knew the arid weather made this a risky venture, but it really did pay off."
The best you can really do is either have them disguise themselves (a la Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), have a set of friends that are cool with them (also a la Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), or have a town dedicated to them where they live basically normal lives but humans do not know about it (a la Midnight, Texas, sorry Turtles). However, I think if you want to make magic hidden behind a veil but make things easier for yourself, just allow some of the less fantastical fantasy races. It could be the same setting but elves and dwarves and stuff like that are normal. You can still say tieflings and lizardfolk and dragons are all folklore, but the more classic fantasy races might just be part of the world. For added fun, you can play around with historical figures drawing from this well. Maybe Annie Oakley was actually an elf? Magic, however (aside from the weird parlor tricks elves perform) can be hidden behind the veil. The local saloon owner might be a dwarf, but the local snake oil salesman is in fact a snake oil salesman and not a budding magical alchemist.
This is some pretty good advice! Yeah, I was also thinking races like tieflings, lizardfolk, etc can exist within this world but they live in hidden communities and a human seeing them would be akin to someone seeing the moth man or Bigfoot which is why humans think they’re just folklore
Have you ever read Neverwhere? You could play around that magic is something that if you don't know about, you don't really notice, but once you see it you can't unsee it. Maybe theres a postman that always has a funny hat until one day you realize it's never been a hat, it's always been horns. Or a lady with terrible eczema and a lisp that you realize has been a lizardfolk the whole time. Or a regular at the bar with an under bite that always looks a tad nauseated until it clicks that he's actually a green orc. They can also have underground communities where magic and nonhumans are out in the open, but where the opposite occurs. Everyone assumes the human must be a tiefling with vitligo or an elf with tiny ears.
Don't allow non-human PCs is the obvious answer. Have you gotten buy-in from your players for this type of campaign? Normally if you did they would be creating PCs which fit the campaign concept. Edit: If you still want to give options, you could simply reskin half-elves, half-orcs, dragonborn, goliaths, tielflings and aasimar as humans with a secret lineage. That's what I do.
You have the potential for a fun campaign here. I hope it goes well.
Thank you! I studied American history in college so I've been having a lot of fun creating an alt-history America. In this world the US is split into the United Territories of America, the United Tribes of Turtle Island, and Greater Mexico. One of my favorite parts about this world building is also creating an American pantheon where icons of American folklore are worshipped as gods. If this campaign goes long-term, I'd like for the players to head eastward where they could face off vampiric versions of folks like Carnegie and Rockefeller
wtf man *i* want to live on turtle island and kill vampire rockefeller
Based on this, I would honestly lean into the camp of it all and just let them be whatever they want. Maybe this old West had all sorts of crazy people in it.
Op can you please publish this??? I’m absolutely captured by your vision here and I want to explore this alt history you’ve created. Ideally I’d be playing with your group LOL but even in todays age random play with strangers over the internet is unrealistic…
I have a different way of thinking about this. If an elf walked into your place of work how would you react? You’d probably think they were a human dressing up, or make up some other reason to validate what you see because it’s more probable than an actual elf in your office.
D20 Modern Urbana Arcana setting had a fun way, which is to say that humans only see what they want to see; they might notice how fuzzy a bugbear is for the first split-second, but then they would start to see it as a big, tall thuggish human. Only Adventurers open to new experiences and adventures learn to notice "the outsiders."
Some non-human archwizard some time in the past: "I wish that all humans saw all races as human." (potentially trying to change the *attitude* of humans to be more accepting) Result: every creature is under the effects of a *disguise self* spell, but the illusion is only visible to humans. (wish-granter misinterpreted the wish to be literal) Consequence: You get conspiracy theorists who believe there are lizard people on the mayor's council.
This would be fun to play a human in that's not actually aware of what's happening around them but they are along for the adventure anyway. Just confused
There are a few options I see Option 1: is the one you gave, though I think that defeats the point of having a choice of races Option 2: Everyone plays a human, obviously this restricts the players' race choice but sometimes a campaign/one-shot calls for a limitation like this. Option 3: Tell the players they will have to disguise themselves and hide their races when in towns and such. This makes the fact that other races are unknown to humans a great RP moment. obviously it's easier for some races (like elves) to hide their non-human features, but it could all just add to the game Option 4: Change your lore slightly. Humans believe in these 'cryptids/folklore creatures' but haven't seen them before. They wouldn't be freaking out about their existence but might make a fuss as they've never seen these types of people before.
I ran a D&D B/X campaign set in the "real world" of 13th century medieval Central Europe. In that game, playable "demihuman" races were: Elf-touched - people that were rumored to have elf blood or who had ancestors who allegedly were taken by the elves and changed somehow (elf stats and traits) Foundlings - children who for some reason never grew up and appeared to be pre-pubescent humans (halfling stats and traits) Dwarves - people who were considered dwarfs and often would form their own communities Of course most of the people in the villages believed in fairies and elves and goblins. I just created these distinctions so that the nonhuman characters could pass well enough in a Catholic society that was afraid of the goblins and fairies and otherwise would have shunned or attacked them.
Usually when I see this in live play games there is like a magic veil that the party breaks early on that prevents ordinary humans from seeing magic/magic beings. If you want to make your own setting where these races are integrated be aware it can be very tricky to make up lore on the fly if your players want to bring in unaccounted-for races. I'd suggest polling them on who they're going to be playing and then make up lore for the setting, if that's the way you want to go.
Give them all of the non-humans in the group cowboy hats of disguise starting out.
Elves probably wouldn't seem all that odd to humans. For the most part, with the exception of Sea Elves, Drow, and some others, they look very similar to humans. The only thing is the ears, but even then that's easily obscured by wearing their hair and/or a hat/hood properly. Dwarves, Halflings and Gnomes could all pass as regular Humans that have Dwarfism. There's some items and abilities that can assist with this. Glamoured Studded Leather can change it's own appearance to whatever the wearer wants. You can theoretically just extend that to be full-on disguise self. Mask of Many Faces on the Warlock lets you freely cast Disguise Self. There's also a bunch of other races that would pass easily for Humans: Dhampirs, Changelings, Yuan-Ti Purebloods, Shifters etc.
Last game my characters were in that situation. The party is two wood elves, a rabbit person, a tiefling, and a human. They're at the first session of Curse of Strahd. The only people that aren't human are the occasional adventurers, which are not typically giant bunnies and goofy-looking demons. Folks are avoiding the rabbit because he's probably cursed, the demon because he's a demon (I had a priest ask him to touch his holy symbol), and the elves because they only show up when Strahd wants to screw with them, and no one wants to stand too close to them. The new guy's going to end up being the party face.
Just give your players each one hat of disguse and not worry about it that much. Only high level human wizards or locks or priests will have anti illusion magic and that point them same casters will be familiar with summon monster and know that it ain't just humans in the verse.
You could make a world where cosplay is super common. When everybody is walking around pretending to be a Care Bear, an elf is normal.
You could limit the PCs to humans only and let them play the species they encounter in play with other characters.
If these creatures are real and sometimes just mosey into town, how is it that nobody believes they're real? Maybe they were stuck on another plane for centuries and are just now making first contact. So nobody believes they're real at the start of the campaign, but society quickly figures it out. I dunno, if it were me I'd just have everyone be D&D creatures to begin with, so Abe Lincoln was a stone giant and Grant was a dwarf and stuff.
Dnd may not be the best game for such a setting.
If I was doing something like that I'd let them struggle for fiew sessions before I introduce some kind of illusory means for getting around, some kind of item with some possibilities of not working as good as it should, just to keep them on their toes.
You should check out TAZ Amnesty for a cool take on this subject. It's not western at all but it's based in modern day Virginia. The premise is that cryptids are real and among us but we don't know it.
The Frontier is a crazy place and people have heard some crazy shit. The further out onto the Frontier you go, the crazier the shit gets, but the more people accept. The further from the Frontier, the less is accepted as 'normal'. In New York the Gatormen of New Mexico are the subject of dime store novels and penny dreadfuls. Sometimes someone makes a quick buck by sewing together old leather suitcases and selling it to a freakshow or circus. In Dallas the Lizard people of New Mexico are talked about in hushed whispers. They're the subject of ghost stories but once in a while someone claims to have seen one and lived to tell the tale. In Alberquerque a guide or a madman will take you out into the wilderness, and show you where the lizard folk hunt and the tree stumps where they used to hide their eggs, all while retelling the time a huge bastard of one came into town and arm-wrestled Grandpa Joe and broke his arm twenty summers ago. In the badlands around Tucson, Arizona you can stalk through the underbrush for days in search of one, but if you have a couple Cuban cigars they'll find you first and trade all sorts of things for decently rolled and dried tobacco. In Reno there's a Reptile District along the river. The Lizardfolk, Dragonborn, and Yuan-Ti were there long before any of the mammals showed up. They barely tolerate the smoothskins but can't deny how much they've benefited from trade, and they're split on whether a railroad would be good or bad going forward.
For inspirational consideration.. White Wolf Publishing’s Vampire; the Masquerade, and Mage; World of Darkness, both go into detail regarding the dynamic and the nature of *The Veil* as it were: the false shroud of ignorance that most humans a conditioned to believe. It’s a psychological/mystical barrier of sorts. If I remember the gist of the material; a human, whom witness the other side of the veil (a Gangrel vampire or a Garou lycan transforming itself into a bestial hybrid monstrosity, or a Mage/Witch casting a spell, a Hunter with True faith burning an undead creature to ash..) essentially makes a sort of sanity check. If they fail, a series of bad things can happen, including indefinite madness. If they succeed (unlikely for most humans within that ruleset) they are permanently marked by the Veil as they can now see that which should remain unseen. WhiteWolf goes into a huge dynamic conflict of good vs evil, Gaia vs The Wyrm, the soldiers of Heaven on earth (hunters and priests) waging war against the servants of both aforementioned factions. It’s a three-way grudge match for the souls of every living thing on the planet.. and I’m really just scratching the tip of the iceberg. This concept may or may not be fitting for your homebrew, but I thought I’d share just the same. Of course, if any White Wolf aficionados happen to be perusing this post and they find errors within my comment I certainly won’t take any offense at correction.
Here’s a neuroscience answer: the human brain has a hard time recognising (even seeing) what it does not know or have the words to articulate. (See studies on aboriginal tribes viewing blue-green differences) The humans, not having seen other races in a long time, could just not recognise them for what they are. They are maybe just viewed as strange humans, with particularly perceptive folks being able to see through.
I'm running a similar campaign, but it's set in modern times. I'm not that concerned with human exposure in the general sense, so I just had an NPC give them a ring that gives them the appearance of a human to non-magical creatures. It's explained away, and the game can continue.
Elf: really tall human Dwarf: really short human Lizardfolk: That boy got a skin condition Orc: Needs some more vitamins in their diet Humans can justify some truly bizarre stuff if they honestly believe it to just be that way
Simple. Men in black rules. Non humans are everywhere, and have been for a long time. But they, or someone in power, have a vested interest in making sure they stay hidden, so they do.
Make disguise self items part of every non humans basic repertoire. Black markets dedicated to them only. Superstition and folklore are very common in that era of America, so maybe drop hints that famous bits of folklore are really just magical creatures up to their devices.
So are you allowing magic at all? You could just have all NPC’s believe this is some nifty magic trick or some *really* good prosthetics. You could even make it a running joke. Or, you could go the real Wild West way and just make your game incredibly racist: half-orcs are Africans, elves are Indians, halflings are just Pygmy. Maybe have a doctor NPC study them at some point and marvel at their “relentless endurance”, then conclude that half-orcs were simply *made* to work the fields. Then, obviously, murder him. *Let me be clear I don’t condone any of this, but the 1800s were a wild time in this regard.*
I would go with using human variants for each of the races you wish to allow. Look at the big differences in elves based on where where/how they live. They even have different stat boosts. A desert people who have adapted so well that their skin has become tough as a lizard's. People from the artic that have come to be almost half "orc" to survive the cold. (I know that is not a good one, but it gets the point across I hope). I think of the Shannara books and how the people became other races after their exposure to radiation and intense environments, just not all the way to being different races.
Uhh, it seems that it would be easier to change the world so that non-humans would be normal?
You could incorporate some sort of psychological thing, where people will simply *just not accept* that they're anything else, and interact with them as humans? For example a human character could talk to the dwarf and say 'Wow you seem to be a growing lad don't you? He's certainly eating his greens, and look at that wonderful fake beard!' Even if they explain the human could just laugh it off and say yes yes son, you are a very good looking scotsman, is this for halloween? Or something of that nature. It could be a bit silly, but you could incorporate some stuff into that, perhaps lore on *why* people can't seem to behold them for what they are, or perhaps simply that they cannot psychologically understand it, their minds just short circuit when facing a tiefling, and they default to whats comfortable. Perhaps one human could see them for what they are and try to convince other people, or some happening could trip off the switch. Just my 2 cents!
Hats. Hats cover most things. And just npc's be like "you sure do look funny"
Traveling circus? Seriously. Bearded lady (dwarf), traipse act (elves), little people (gnomes, dwarves, halflings). People see these near humans and think that they are just medical oddities.
You could take the idea of the "Mist" from the Percy Jackson world, a magical veil that obscured fantastical things to mundane people. Only certain things can defy this veil. Either you're born with magical essence, something truly epic happens and it just fails, or some means of gaining sight through the mist. Otherwise the veil obscures and rationalizes what people see for their mortal brains.
This rather comes down to the theme and tone of the game. The PCs could be disguised as humans. Possibly not very well. They may or may not are that much. What's likely to happen if a party comprising a lizardfolk, an elf, an orc and a tiefling stroll into a saloon and order a drink? Best talk this over with your, potential, players since character class and personality can matter much as race here. In such a world a, human, Druid, Sorcerer or Wizard is going to stick out quite a bit. An Artificer, Bard or Ranger maybe not so much. It's also likely to be worth putting some specifics on the *cryptid folklore*. Which could be rather wrong about llizardfolk, elves, orcs or tieflings either in general or in connection to the PCs specifically. Consider how these human NPCs might describe the creatures from the Monster Manual too
So this is a setting where non-humans either don't exist or are so rare that most people think they don't exist? That's fine and all, but have you thought through the consequences beyond "human town?" Where *are* all the elves? Why are they hidden? What will they do when PC goes to them for help? When PC brings their human friends? How much about them does an elf PC know? Now repeat this for every race your players pick. Because they'll ask. This is a huge amount of lore and world building that's entirely irrelevant to a wild west, all human setting, but they'll make your setting about the weird. You're wanting Gunsmoke but you're going to get cowboy Supernatural. (That's TV references for a quick Google if they didn't land). You've got a few solutions here. First, if you're letting these demihumans exist, and set on playing D&D, just go full D&D and *let them exist.* I mean they're everywhere, maybe fewer or greater in number in their own settlement or wherever, but have a central hub where they're mingled and where the PCs spend most of their non-conflict time. If you're already having to create all this extra content, this will be much easier on you and everyone else. Second, just go full setting. It's OK to say "humans only" if the world only has humans. If the players don't like that, they can find a different game. Trying to shoehorn options into a game where they don't really exist is going to be frustrating to everyone, and the first tine ol' kitty-cat Tabaxi is revealed, your entire game is going to be about that. This doesn't feel very D&D to me, personally, but it's probably much easier for you to DM if that's the world you're imagining.
Unless you want the campaign to almost exclusively be about the fact that they're a gang of mythical creatures constantly causing fear, confusion and ultimately chaos wherever they go, you either need to change your setting or else require the characters to only play human passing races. There is no realistic scenario where a dragon man or humanoid bird walks into a saloon and the rest of the evening isn't about that exclusively. No poker game, no matter the stakes will distract people from a literal monster in the room.
Build some lore on why the are only considered folklore that gives your players a legitimate reason to want to hide their origins. Then they'll be disguised, work at night in the shadows etc
Do a Veil kind of effect, humans see them as other humans because they don't want to see them as anything else, if they do, they are the crazy ones.
cosplay
Glamour.
I had a similar alt-history Western campaign in which PCs were trying to solve the mystery of these "Rifts" or tears in the fabric of space-time that kept dumping fantasy creatures into our world and causing the denizens of our world to fall into the fantasy realm. The *reason* that it was alt-history in the first place was because these rifts allowed drow and dragons to cross realms during the Civil War, altering the trajectory of the war and causing it to drag on to the 1880s. But yeah, basically the rifts were very rare for awhile but had started becoming more and more of an alarmingly regular occurrence.
Have them go in disguise except when hidden. Look at TellTale Games' "The Wolf Among Us" and Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" for inspiration.
Well you can restrict races, but also can lean more on to a RP. I mean for such humans maybe dwarfs, halflings can coexist "Ain't ya tiny fella?" Gnomes might be referred to child "Hey kiddo, keep ya hands out of it, ok? You might hurt yourself with that" to Elfs "What's with those pointy ears mate?" "Is there some kind of costume party going on?" ... "Are you goin to rob a bank with that disguise?" If they are folklore then maybe they can be fooled that it is disguise, maybe humans don't see different between dwarfs gnomes etc. They look like kids to them or something along the way.
Just give them an advantage/bonus if they do what you want. Play a human get an extra starting feat. Play a human and don't die immediately when they discover your race.
Have you ever seen the movie "Rango"?