In a recent episode of Fear the Boot, the hosts posed a question: Why does every alien or being of another race in fantasy and sci-fi (or “syfy“) have to be exactly the same as everyone else of their race?

Here is my proposition: This isn’t simply a lack of imagination on the part of the writers, but serves a distinct purpose.

Open up any RPG book in which you can play a race besides human, but still allows you to be human if you so desire. What is the trait that all humans share? More often than not, it’s adaptability. Most often, humans are given the choice of a few different stat boosts, more points to spend in skills of their choice, etc. In both D&D and Star Wars, adaptability and versatility is the name of the game on humans’ parts. In Savage Worlds, you have the ability to choose a new Edge. Any edge. This allows for a large level of adaptability and customization on the part of your human character. All other races give you specific bonuses to specific things.

Why is this? If you look at humanity, we’ve spread across the planet and adapted to any environment, our appearance, mannerisms and attitudes changing as well, leading to a vast variety of cultures and societies. In a word, we are adaptable.

We are also frail.

Compared to the hardiness of dwarves, the dexterity and knowledge of elves, and the brute strength of orcs, we have nothing that would keep us alive in a fantasy world except for our ability to adapt to situations. So it stands to reason that other races would be designed to be less flexible, to be much more similar to one another.

Another reason, I think, is because we look at other cultures from our own perspective. When we look at the Middle East, we see a group of people whom we all view as the same as everyone else in that part of the world. We don’t usually consider that each person has different views and thoughts. We look at Japan, and think that all of them think alike. We’re on the outside looking in, creating broad clichés with which to interact with people different than us. Why wouldn’t it be the same with fantasy races?

Perhaps many elves and dwarves think differently. But for humans looking from a distance, it wouldn’t appear so. Perhaps it’s something you can work into your campaign, showing a different side of the other races.

And perhaps we can do the same with others in the real world as well, looking past the clichés they seem to fall into and see who they truly are: Individuals worthy of getting to know and understand.