How the heck do Humans survive in fantasy worlds?

[Shadowfirelance]

How exactly do Humans survive in Fantasy worlds? They're not the smartest, nor the longest lived, nor are they the most powerful, How can they survive?
Any Opinions?

 

[Ankari]

As the topic has no real world reference, anything listed would be conjecture, and a part of how authors build their worlds. I've moved this thread to the Worldbuilding forum.

 

[Ireth]

Sheer stubbornness, IMO. And/or resilience.

 

[wordwalker]

There's what I always say in classicist horror stories, where demons and devils are popping up everywhere with not a hint of God in sight: "Who do you think sent the heroes?"

 

[thecoldembrace]

The human condition is to survive. Regardless of what most people think, we breed like rats... maybe not to their number but you get my drift... and in fantasy most worlds are set in the time before the green revolution and families bore lots of children to make up for those that would inevitably die before they got too old.
Humans are resilient, and highly adaptable. Our short life spans force us to innovate and learn quickly... something other races find to be a flaw.

 

[McBeardstache the Hairy]

Well it depends on the setting, really. In Middle Earth, Men are the only race that isn't diminishing, and so succeed all the others. In the base DnD SRD, Humans are described as being masters of all trades. Basically, there isn't anything they can't do.
In terms of their short life-spans, that would also mean that they would mature and grow faster than other races, as well as propagate more rapidly. And even though humans aren't the smartest or most powerful, they're not the weakest or dumbest either. There's always someone worse. Humans are a nice middle ground kind of race, and can have loads of potential.

 

[Jabrosky]

Humans are creative and adaptable. Hence why we spread all over the world except Antarctica before even developing agriculture.

 

[King_Cagn]

We find strength in numbers, we might despise one another dearly as fellow humans but when you're that one race that the entire world is trying to eat or kill-off, all differences are set aside to take down a common enemy.

 

[Wanara009]

The same way we outcompete the megafauna and fellow primates and hominids: generalization combined with ingenuity and specialized social behaviour. A good reference material that I frequently refer to is Walking with Cavemen.

 

[Queshire]

Ah, I love this question. The easy answer is the adaptability and propagation of humanity. I mean the average lifespan of your regular fantasy elf is what? 200 years at least? And how old is their culture? Yet the elves are only THAT advanced? I mean just look at what we've accomplished in 200 years. Elves may be smarter than humans, but they're less capable of either coming up with new ideas or implementing those new ideas.

Similarly, on average how much cultural diversity is there among Dwarves? How often are all dwarves the same? Now compare that to the cultural diversity of humans. If there's something that would cause culture X to die out a race with only a single monoculture would be hit significantly harder than a race with multiple various cultures. They can take the hit and keep going.

The same principle applies to not being limited to just living in the forests or the mountains. In real life humans can live and thrive on every continent except for Antarctica. Should the Yellowstone Super Volcano erupt killing off all the humans on North America, there's enough humans elsewhere that the species can continue.

The same adaptability, cultural, and technological evolution ability which allows us to live in just about every biome on Earth also allows us to adapt to macrochanges in the environment. Humanity HAS survived an ice age, multiple ones if you count the little ice age during ye olde medieval times. Now we have the whole possibility of global warming to deal with. You know that thing where the huge cataclysmic event tears through the fantasy world, reshaping the land and destroying all existing continents? Humans can adapt to that.

Finally, there's also the possibility of magic. Either Arcane or Divine magic. Humans are commonly portrayed as being able to use magic and, even if they aren't the best at it, that's another arrow in their quiver when it comes to surviving.

 

[skip.knox]

The same question could be asked of the real world. We aren't the fastest, the best hunters, etc. We are vulnerable, especially before modern technology. So how did we survive? Answer that, and you will be well on your way to answering it for your fantasy world.

I'll put forward one: the ability to create and sustain complex social organization. The only other animals that can do this are certain insects, and they don't have our strength, size, etc. Our social organization (tribes) gave us the advantage over predators, big game, etc. Later, it gave us the ability to invent agriculture and not be so dependent upon game.

Fantasy worlds usually give human organization to non-human species (elves, dwarves), so that makes the OP's question all the more relevant. In Altearth I'm thinking of patterning at least one other species on insects, animal packs, pods, or other animal social groups. It could make for an interesting variation.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

I usually write my races as being roughly equal in terms of power with elves and dwarves having their own strengths and weaknesses while humans are somewhere in the middle. But I usually give them an organised military ability - i.e. armies, steel, and sometimes cannon, which makes them the most powerful of the three should it ever come to a fight. But it generally doesn't come to a fight which is the more important answer.

World wars etc are rare in my worlds. Which is why my fourth race (usually) the gnomes survive. After all they are generally weaker, not militarily blessed, and mostly survive by trading etc.

Also its useful to think about this in the context of where the races live. Elves by nature live in forests for me. That grants them certain strengths and weaknesses. On the strength side it means that their natural soldier will be a ranger of some sort. Fast moving, agile, and skilled with a long bow (pretty much the trope). But also only lightly armoured and not into formation attacks nor using heavy weapons. It also limits their population since there is only limited food production possible in a forest. Dwarves live in mountains - or under them - which gives them lots of natural rocky protectiveness. It gives them minerals to build powerful armour and weapons which with their strength they can use. But again there are no open land formation attacks, no horseback riding, and they're relatively slow over ground. Which means that archers and cannon would pick them off easily long before they could attack. And again they have limited food production in these regions limiting their population growth.

Humans are out in the middle, often literally as their lands divide the elves from the dwarves - which is good since they naturally hate one another - and they have both magic and technology, heavy armour and weapons and light, build walled cities if they need to, and have armies and tactics. If they wanderedinto a forest an fought the elves they'd lose. If they wandered into the mountains to fight the dwarves they'd lose. But out in their own lands they have home field advantage and would always win. And they have farms and orchards, harbours etc, in short plenty of food, meaning that they can grow more quickly as a population.

Lastly though, if the world is not continually at war why should any race be at risk of extinction?

Cheers, Greg.

 

[chrispenycate]

Outbreeding them. Like rabbits. With enough healing magic to bring down death in childbirth and infant mortality by a half, a human community can double it's population before a dwarf or elf has reached adolescence. Cannon fodder, but also manufacturing — your swords may not glow at orcs, or proclaim your majesty and right to lead, but you've got lots of them.

And dwarves and elves are a bit territorial, but they're not particularly aggressive. Humans, particularly with a rapidly expanding population, are.

 

[Snowpoint]

Human Beings are the rock stars of reality. We can do anything, or build something to do it for us. Until we get lazy...

 

[Jabrosky]

Also its useful to think about this in the context of where the races live. Elves by nature live in forests for me. That grants them certain strengths and weaknesses. On the strength side it means that their natural soldier will be a ranger of some sort. Fast moving, agile, and skilled with a long bow (pretty much the trope). But also only lightly armoured and not into formation attacks nor using heavy weapons. It also limits their population since there is only limited food production possible in a forest. Dwarves live in mountains - or under them - which gives them lots of natural rocky protectiveness. It gives them minerals to build powerful armour and weapons which with their strength they can use. But again there are no open land formation attacks, no horseback riding, and they're relatively slow over ground. Which means that archers and cannon would pick them off easily long before they could attack. And again they have limited food production in these regions limiting their population growth.

Humans are out in the middle, often literally as their lands divide the elves from the dwarves - which is good since they naturally hate one another - and they have both magic and technology, heavy armour and weapons and light, build walled cities if they need to, and have armies and tactics. If they wanderedinto a forest an fought the elves they'd lose. If they wandered into the mountains to fight the dwarves they'd lose. But out in their own lands they have home field advantage and would always win. And they have farms and orchards, harbours etc, in short plenty of food, meaning that they can grow more quickly as a population.

Whenever I imagine a world that has multiple species like elves, orcs, and so forth, I too assign each race a preferred habitat. Typically I place humans in the tropical regions while giving the temperate and polar latitudes to the other races. Considering that the hominin lineage that led to Homo sapiens stayed the longest in Africa before dispersing elsewhere (as opposed to the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo erectus whose ancestors left earlier), it makes the most sense to me that humans would start out as tropical creatures.

This also plays into how I physically differentiate humans from the other intelligent races. My humans tend to have leaner and more elongated physiques rather like those of Nilotic peoples in eastern Africa. This would have evolved to better dissipate heat, although I wonder if their proportionately longer legs would also give them a running speed advantage. In addition, my humans would have more robust immune systems than the other races as protection against tropical diseases.

 

[Abbas-Al-Morim]

We breed like rabbits. In most Fantasy worlds, both the Dwarf and Elf species are on the decline. They have the gift of longer life, but for some reason they're not doing very well.

For dwarfs, their troubles often come from an external source. Their holds and keeps are being overrun by beasts and monsters and lots of dwarfs die defending their ancestral homes. In LotR, you have the goblins and the balrog who took Moria and of course Smaug who took Erebor.

For elves, their troubles often come from an internal source. In the Eragon books, the elves don't have children very often. I think at one point the books mention how there are only two children in the entire capital. Is it any wonder the elves are getting close to extinction? In LotR the elves are simply world-weary and there's a mass exodus.

So humanity's main competitors are both not doing very well and they're usually allied to humanity. Enemies like orcs, goblins, skaven and such are usually stronger than humans in one aspect, but much weaker in another aspect. E.g. orcs are really strong and tough but they're dumb. So you can easily lure them into a trap (enfilading fire) and then annihalite their forces.

 

[Gurkhal]

Well, my take on is that while humans lack the magic of other races they are not limited by magic either and are good enough to compete in pretty much all fields anyway. For example if a forest would start to burn, the humans can run for their lives away from it. A nymph/huldra/skogsrå would be magically tied to the forest and so while powerful within it she wouldn't be able to get away or adapt if shit would come down.

In my world, since we seem to be making references to our worlds, magic both empowers and limits and non-magical creatures like humans are not bound by magical rules, taboos, limitations etc. and so have a much larger freedom of action.

 

[Sheilawisz]

The answer to this question depends entirely on what style of Fantasy world are we talking about.

Most Fantasy settings feature the Homo Sapiens as an important species, or even a Chosen One style of species like it happens in the Narnia world.

Humans not only survive in Middle Earth but they rise to rule that world, and in the Harry Potter world the humans are capable of both technology (muggles) and magic (wizards and witches) and rule over other species such as Goblins, Dragons and Elves.

So, humans have no trouble to live and thrive in many Fantasy worlds... but now tell me, can humans survive in the world of Pandora from the Avatar film, which is in many aspects a Fantasy world?

Simply breathing the Pandoran atmosphere is enough to cause a human to pass out and die within a matter of minutes, not to mention the many types of dangerous monsters inhabiting that world. Pandora is definitely a world where humans cannot live, and something similar would happen to humans in most of my own Fantasy settings:

In my Aylar worlds, human visitors would be affected immediately by the very thin air (even at sea level, it's like the air at an elevation of some twelve thousand feet in Earth), which would be enough to cause sickness and weakness to many humans. Add to that the severely cold weather, monsters and the Aylar inhabitants and you have a world that would be almost impossible for humans to survive and live in.

Anyway... are humans really different to Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits and others? According to some worlds they are all the same, just different races that belong to the same species.

 

[Queshire]

Yes humans can live on Pandora because, well, in the movie they did live on Pandora thanks to their technology and Avatars. That's one of the biggest things that allow humans to survive anywhere. Technology is crucial for the survival of humanity anywhere outside of the the tropics. Yes, I am include stuff like clothes or making a fire out of two sticks under the heading of technology as it counts for stuff that artificially changes the environment to suit us or artificially changes us to suit the environment.

 

[Saigonnus]

Whenever I imagine a world that has multiple species like elves, orcs, and so forth, I too assign each race a preferred habitat. Typically I place humans in the tropical regions while giving the temperate and polar latitudes to the other races. Considering that the hominin lineage that led to Homo sapiens stayed the longest in Africa before dispersing elsewhere (as opposed to the Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo erectus whose ancestors left earlier), it makes the most sense to me that humans would start out as tropical creatures.

I think restricting a race to a particular biome is silly; I always have. For any race to survive it would HAVE to be adaptable to the environment to a large degree, be able to live most anywhere, otherwise they would have died out long ago. To give an example: Imagine if elves are restricted just to forests and humans come through and burn/chase them out, driving them to the frozen north or into a desert... no trees at all... if they are not adaptable they would die.

Another example of how silly it is: The availability of food in the underground (for example) is such that there would be NO way for a clan of dwarves to survive, much less thrive without some external source of food beyond trade (unless you have them eat rocks). You certainly wouldn't want your people to be beholden to anyone for the most basic necessities of your livelihood. If they aren't adaptable; they'd not understand and use the basic principals of agriculture. What if you drove them out the mountains... they'd die just like the aforementioned elves. It just seems silly to me.

My elves and dwarves are just as adaptable as humans and can live anywhere they want to. They live longer sure, but also have a lower birth rate; every 3 to 4 years for elves, every 2 to 3 for dwarves, so the populations of elves vs. dwarves vs. humans is all about the same. I have a nation of tropical jungle/flatland dwelling dwarves that live in elevated, mud-brick huts and a clan of elves that live in the mountains that subsist on crops grown in tiered fields, much like Ancient China did with their rice patties. It just happens that they live there, not that I restrict them to that one particular biome. If the dwarves or elves get booted out for whatever reason, they'd be perfectly capable of surviving in a colder or warmer climate with only a slight disruption to how they do things.

I guess the point of this is: Without adaptability to different types of climate, your race is doomed to failure, even if they are human.