8:39 This point can apply to all D&D characters, but the issue is really exacerbated by elves and other long-lived races.

You kinda answered a bit of your problem. It takes a hundred years for an elf to reach the same place as a human does in a fifth of the time. So even with an increased fertility rate humans can produce warriors, casters, etc much faster than elves and dwarves. Humans also usually are considered to be over ambitious compared to other races. It's kinda a trope throughout fantasy and scifi. Yeah maybe there are a few power hungry elves and dwarves, but they don't have the drive to expand and grow like humans do. humans are to elves what orcs are to humans essentially Another big point is that humans are extremely adaptable compared to the other races. Elves are nimble, but not strong. Dwarves are sturdy, bit not quick. There are fast humans, strong humans, smart humans, etc. The whole idea of humans being everywhere is that they are numerous and can adapt to any circumstance

Some minor spoilers for what I’m about to talk about; I recently read Delicious in Dungeon (or Dungeon Meshi) by Ryoko Kui, which is set in a D&D inspired setting where adventurers go into a dungeon and eat monsters. It actually delves into how races with longer lifespans would affect the world One of the main characters, a half-elf named Marcille has a great fear of outliving all her loved ones due to watching her father pass of old age while she was still a child. Also while humans (called Tall-Men in this setting) aren’t subjugated, elves and dwarves have some kind of influence over most human kingdoms. With the Eastern Archipelago being one of the few places free from their influence. Overall it’s a great series, I recommend it. Bonus points for also having a take on gnomes that doesn’t make me want to commit violent conquest.

Most of the cannon Faerun lore is about these longer lived races having bloody conflicts, getting wiped out by magical super-weapons, and getting strait-up cursed by the gods. An example would be when elves cursed ALL of the dragons to go into a bloodlust and eat their own young whenever a certain commit flew overhead - which is the ONLY reason they’re not literally everywhere ruling the world. I’d believe that would hold them back enough to stop them from taking over the world.

One of the things I always thought of was humans breed 10 to 1 compared to every other race. They also can breed with almost any other race which is why there's so many halfbreeds. The way I usually run a game is it's a new age "The Dawn of Man" as they are steadily becoming the dominant race setting up settlements everywhere unlike the other races that don't venture out as much and stick to a preferred region.

"Plus, the population is all brave and courageous, which would have an _enormous_ impact considering just how much fear and anxiety hold us humans back." Fear and anxiety also have the potential to keep humans alive, my bardic friend. Natural selection is, in large part, predicated on the fight or flight response, and fear _is_ the fight or flight response.

How many times have the elves nearly wiped themselves out? Thats why they arent in charge.

I'll put it this way, in the lore dwarves have a saying "breed like a human" which is their version of the human saying "breed like a rabbit", sure their weak and defenseless compared to everyone else, but they are everywhere, and have access to magic like everyone else, so even if elves use magic to populate more efficiently, the humans could do the same thing and it would still be better, and in the lore the elves have a religion where their souls are limited and their can be so many elves at one time and if their population starts going up rapidly, it's seen as an omen meaning "elf genocide incoming" so they wouldn't want to use breeding magic out of fear.

About the idea of Elves all being brilliant, if we’re going purely by in-game stats, only the High Elves have a bonus to Intelligence, and it’s equal to what baseline Humans have. Based on that, all other Elves would be innately dumber than Humans if it weren’t for their longer lifespans allowing them to accrue more knowledge.

I only have time to go off by the description- but my take is similar to the history of chinese humiliation China, for the longest time, was technologically eons ahead of europe. And did nothing with the technology. Europe, not wanting to be owned by the french, couldn't afford conservatism. Eventually, European forces came to dominate and bully China Same thing with humans and elves/dwarves. Humans start out weaker and behind, but they never sit on their laurels. Even when they do, human civilizations stagnate for a century, while elven/dwarven civilizations stagnate for eons

You are forgetting that humans are the most ambitious and adaptable of all the classic races. All other races are mostly specialists and locked to specific environments in addition to having flaws that keep them in check. Not to mention the stagnant cultures they have. When talking about the forgotten realms: Dwarfs have abysmal fertility, most of them actually being sterile. They are optimized for one environment only, too. Elves are aloof and isolationist. Gnomes are so stuck in their inventions that they forget what's going on around them. They are also physically very weak. (I am saying that even though they are my favorite) Halflings actively seek out simple lives. It is ingrained in their nature. The adventurous ones are the anomaly among them. Also, they are small and not made for war.

So I agree with everything that you said in the later part of the video, but TBH the leveling problem applied to Humans, too. Yes, it's much more _pronounced_ with Elves, but even for a Human the "going from 2-20" part of your life is a small fraction, that part is really just a "problem" with the game in general, not so much races. But for the rest, I don't think as much mental gymnastics are required as you might think. Just take _modern Human_ society as an example. In the "first world," the people with more resources and technology at their disposal, the more comfortable they are with life, the _less_ likely they are to have children. So, think of Elves as "upper class Americans" and immediately see plenty of reasons why their birth rates might be much lower. Also, in a lot of fantasy literature, Elves and Dwarves and other races are presented as "more powerful" than Humans, but in D&D, they are not. The races are "balanced" to a reasonable degree, and for every advantage a race has over Humans, they either have a corresponding disadvantage or the Humans just have a different one. So while it might make no sense that the Elves in LotR didn't take over, but in D&D Elves aren't "better" than Humans.

All valid points worth considering, however I'll take the jankiness of the beloved classical fantasy races and having to work out these mental riddles over the new modern push to have races reduced to simply being an ever-expanding catalogue of aesthetic choices.

To defend the elemental thing, i would rule you can't SET a water elemental on fire but they can't resist fire. Usually water turns to steam when it douses intense fire (like what living flame would be), and thats the water elementals body. It's not a steam elemental, so it's essentially dissolving it's body and taking that same amount of damage

This is why I like Conan style worlds, or even worlds closer to tLotRs, where the Non-Humans are closer to Physical Spirits, rather than the Humans+ we see in modern Fantasy. There's a reason the Elves go away and the Dwarves vanish in Tolkien's works.

I think part of what let humans become empire builders in Forgotten Realms is that the largest ancient human kingdoms (Netheril, Ilusk, etc.) were built after the dwarves shut themselves away underground and the elves secluded themselves in certain areas for survival after the Crown Wars. Gnomes have always been reclusive and not interested in conquest, and halflings mostly settled in a single nation which they protect by being everybody's trading buddies. Orcs and goblins have always been a threat to humans since they breed rapidly, but dwarves and elves hate orcs and goblins more than humans do.

I think the biggest issue with your take here is that you're assuming these other races have the same ambitions of conquest as humans, many of them don't and that's part of why within the balance of the world building they were given all these amazing traits. If halflings were warmongers then they wouldn't be so lucky, if gnomes were out to dominate the multiverse they wouldn't be so technologically ahead, and so on. If conquering was all the elves cared about maybe they could be like the Kryptonians and create kids in pods, but that's not how most of them approach life. The other major thing being disregarded is that it's ignoring that these more gifted races have to contend with each other; githyanki are too focused battling the mind-flayers to conquer humanity, elves have to contend with drow, mind-flayers are the enemies of the majority of races, etc. Whilst they contend with each other, humans are out there breeding quickly and expanding their reach. The only thing I agree with in the video is that the lifespans of these races are problematic from an RP standpoint. Even if it is to be assumed that say elves are spending a good chunk of their lifespan frolicking, talking to plants, meditating, and other activities that don't improve their skills... that's still a lot of time to become skilled in many things. You can give them a longer lifespan without going to such extremes, just 150-200 range makes them fantastical whilst not breaking suspension of disbelief

We can compare reality where many developed nations have declining and much lower birth rate compared to less developed nations. The population in developed places do experience longer lifespan from better living conditions, yet often very prudent, picky or even hesitant when it came to reproducing. While the less developed populations often reproduce more voraciously, though often unable to support their population size resource wise. In D&D scenario, humans would fall in the frequently over populated 3rd world culture profile when compared to the more advanced creatures.

3.5 D&D's Races of the Wild already had a good explanation for the lvl 1 110+ year old elf, their psychology as a long lived race. Well, long lived from our perspective, normal in theirs. For them we humans are the freaky ones. What humans do to master their trade by their 20s is akin to then seeing a 10 year old child doing the same from their perspective. Thought they can learn at the same pace as a human, they choose not to due to them seeing it as "improper". To them (at least in the book) anything that they want to be learned should deserve several decades to learn. Alien race with alien perspectives, who knew?

In my games there are no gnomes. The humans are the ones good with technology.

Human can breed quickly is why they are dominant. There are more of them. Humans win my numbers.

Technically it depend on how hot is the fire, if it is hot enough it can make water evaporate or straigth up explode by separating oxygen from hydrogen and the igniting them

In the Swedish translation the line is something like "A word can change its definition faster than a snake strikes, if you're looking for snakes, you should look behind words that have changed their definition." Usually I prefer the English original but for once they managed to add a double pun that still holds up when you translate it back to English.

Another note, I notice most of your replies mention "Baseline DnD." What's baseline DnD? The races have changed SOOOOOOO much through the editions. There was a time where half elves were the only hybrid. Level caps, humans could dual class, demi humans could multiclass. Infravision vs darkvision. Heck, earlier elves had no death age, they'd just wander off and nobody would see them again. Dwarves couldn't be wizards and only humans could be paladins.

I think you are underplaying numbers and will. Historically the British ruled over India in spite of mere fragments of the population. A large part was a lack of will and tech to compete. However if the colony had a united and consistent rebellion I doubt the british could have heald onto most of it. In a fantasy world the Humans if they have numbers don't need tech and magic parity. Just enough competition ruling or conquering them becomes too difficult.

In my head canon, elves are isolationist prejudiced supremacists, dwarves are also supremacists but they’re collectivist and perfectionists, gnomes are fragile, vulnerable and are very populous but hidden from view, and halflings are just too damn content and care too much about “hygge” or “lagom” to do anything like conquer a kingdom. I think of animals that live a long time in real life like the Greenlandic shark. They’re not absolutely dominant here on earth , they simply have a slower metabolism and live in an environment which necessitates it. I could imagine similar conditions for other races in d&d.

A big part of why the Inheritance Cycle book series was so compelling to me was the, for lack of a better word, race-building. There are different races with vastly different qualities and capabilities, but basic humans are the dominant race in the setting, and for good reason. The dragons weren't really a factor anymore, despite being individually capable of altering the course of entire nations, because they had been largely wiped out by the mad emperor Galbatorix and his followers, which included renegade dragons and their Riders as well as unnatural creatures of incredible power and insatiable bloodlust. At the time the books were set, there were only two dragons alive, one in service of the emperor, and the other living in exile to ensure that the ancient wisdom the dragons had amassed would not be lost. Along with being the only race that was effectively immortal, the elves were the only race that was entirely magical, and as a rule were far stronger both physically and magically than other races. However, they were not dominant because of their reclusion, abundance of caution, and their limited numbers. The elves rarely ventured forth on conquests from their woodland home because they were more interested in subtly influencing things from afar. Instead of making any gambles or taking any risks, they would sit and plot things out for years, decades, or centuries in advance, similarly to a chess player mapping out every possible combination of moves before touching a single piece on the board. Furthermore, elven children were incredibly rare, with key elf cities only having one or two children among their populations, making any losses on the battlefield have an exponentially higher impact on their entire race than any other humanoid race. The dwarves, though also having extremely prolonged lifespans and being some of the finest craftsmen in existence, did not have much influence outside their walls because of the losses they took at the hands of Galbatorix, and because of their constant infighting. For a time, they had to entirely abandon all their surface cities and flee underground because of constant attacks from dragons that they were powerless to defeat. Entire dwarf clans were lost to the raids, and the remaining clans were willing to war among themselves about what to do about it. The urgals fell victim to their own warlike ways, having built a society in which the only way to advance was to have defeated enough opponents in battle. They existed as small tribes, with no central leaders, constantly fighting simply for the sake of fighting. On the rare occasion they did band together as a race and fight as a whole, they were terrifyingly effective, in one such event destroying an entire army so thoroughly that no one else knew what had happened to it. However, these alliances between the tribes never held very long, neither did any alliance they made with other races, due to their individual need to win fights as rites of passage. All the races had their own flaws and advantages, but it was ultimately humans, with their vast numbers and inescapable drive towards conquest and dominion, that came out on top. All the other races were too few in number to do anything, or they were too cautious or too distracted to capture and hold large swaths of territory.

Now imagining a Dark Forest (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_forest_hypothesis ) type scenario where all the intelligent species are trying to wipe each other out and your party is truly aberrant as a group of individuals of these different peoples who have learned to trust each other regardless...

Great video! In AD&D races were balanced by strict level limitations. Halflings, for example, could ONLY reach 6th level as fighters. This created a world with natural verisimilitude. Most players, not wanting to limited, would choose to be human. This desire for power drove humans to become the dominant race. It made sense in terms of lore, and made sense in terms of game balance. 5E's "lore" is designed to allow anyone to play anything without any limitations. It's lore designed to sell books, not create create verisimilitude. Not saying AD&D was better. The rules were jenky, but the world made sense. Just MHO. -Professor DM, Dungeoncraft.

Ugh! How many times do we have to go over this? Do a little research, man! - Elves have a maximum number of souls that can be incarnated in the Prime Material at any one time. Their reproduction rate is painfully slow, and are isolationist by nature. That reverie vs. sleep rule was introduced in the 2e splat books, and made no sense then, either. - Dwarves have a _huge_ fertility problem, and males typically outnumber females by 4-1. Most of them also stay in their mountains, having no ambitions to establish large settlements on the surface. - Gnomes have similar reproduction rates to elves, and have the same mentality of a lack of urgency as the other long-lived races. - Halflings have never had ambitions to expand their influence or live an adventuring life, and are content to stay isolated in their small settlements. Halfling heirlooms are handed down to their children on their _second_ adventure, because of the few halflings who go on a single adventure, most never want to go on another. Remember: _They're Hobbits!_ - Tieflings, aasimar, and genasi (who all used to be just tieflings) can reproduce with most races, but are considered cursed, and usually left exposed on the side of a mountain as infants (Yep, in a medieval, non-Christian society, that's what happens!). That there are so many on the Prime Material at all in 5e, breaks all previous canon. - Half-orcs... see above. Plus, they're orcs, so any chance of consent would be non-existent. It would also explain why so many half-orc barbarians seem to have been raised by bears or wolves! - Orcs reproduce in vast numbers (and can do so with just about anything!), but spend more time fighting among each other than expanding settlements, and their influence is nonexistent-- apart from influencing others to want to eradicate them. Plus, most are dumb as dog sh*t. - Hobgoblins are smarter and more organized than orcs, but just as savage. They also have to manage their even more savage goblinoid brethren. Goblin hordes grow, then shrink-- then disappear-- like plagues of locusts. - Gith spend very little time in the Prime Material, only establishing small settlements to reproduce. Then they head back to the Astral or Outer Planes. - Dragonborn required a global, magical, multi-dimensional event, just to justify their existence, _in a single campaign world._ They shouldn't be there at all. Again, this isn't mental gymnastics; this is D&D canon, going back even as far as Tolkien. Other humanoid races simply don't have human expansionist ambitions, combined with ingenuity, and the desire to trade. If the other races thought and behaved like humans, they would be serious competition. But they don't, and so they aren't. *If you're stopping to question why other races don't behave like humans, they you aren't playing that race. You're playing a human in a funny costume!* In the words of Olivier, "Why don't you try _acting,_ dear boy?"

I guess if you look at it from the perspective of elves would perfect fertilization and reduce infant fatalities and such you could say they would sure have a stronger population. I would say however that they couldn't just have their population run rampant. Sure in a fantasy world they could produce supplies for survival but space is still a thing. More importantly, any war a civilization of elves was involved in would likely have a stronger impact on their population than a human, or any other faster maturing race for that matter. Humans hit adulthood at 18. Elves at 100. Lets say an elf and a human are born on the same day. That human could have been born, had children, their children had children, and have all 3 of those generations ready to fight, all before they are considered elderly. The elf is is still a solid 40 or so years before its reaches adulthood. That would mean if in that time the two peoples went to war and tried to conquer one another again, the humans would still be able to produce another 2 generations worth of ready to fight people still potentially before that same first elf has reached adulthood. This is of course as long as total annihilation of a people isn't the end result of any of said war, but that is typically a rarity. That's just my thoughts on the matter though. the beauty of D&D is that any of these races can hold different levels of power varying from world to world. Interesting video for sure. Very thought provoking.

3:42 Fear and anxiety exist to protect us from danger. It's true that in the modern world that is separated from nature, these emotions are often expressed out of proportion with reality. However, in a world where dragons and beholders could be hiding around any corner, these emotions become assets rather than hinderances. Thus, while halflings' bravery may be an advantage within the context of an adventuring party, for the average commoner on the street the situation is entirely different. It is analogous to mice infected with _Toxoplasma gondii;_ such infected mice will simply will walk right up to cats, heedless of the danger, and then get eaten. Their only protection is their luck, and luck is not reliable, _by definition._ You can only encounter a slavering beast so many times before your luck runs out. 6:16 Ouch. I literally winced at this. At the rate we are going, South Korea and Japan are set to be giant graveyards within two generations, and the situation isn't much better in the Western world. The population of the developed world, for all of it's advanced culture and technology, is in free fall. Despite all of our advantages, people aren't having children and our lifespans are getting shorter, year after year. While there are several proposed explanations for this in the real world, one thing of which we can be sure is that our supposed advantages are not helping or they aren't helping enough. This is one aspect of reality that D&D gets right: whatever natural advantages you may have you may have inherited, it doesn't matter when your society is too dysfunctional to support the population. And of course, population decline isn't a problem that has only occurred in recent times. It has occurred repeatedly throughout history, around the world, and within every great empire. Not a single civilization in our history managed to get their act together without first suffering a dark age lasting multiple generations. The progenitors of the dark age have to die out before civilization can renew, and that would take a very long time for races with lifespans in the centuries.

5:50 complins about mantle gymnastics show a good argument then dismiss it with mantle gymnastics

Good thought exercise. I always thought the elf life span and leveling was strange, but you really spelled out what I couldn’t articulate. Been subscribed for a long time, always love your videos, man! Take care

A finite amount of elvish souls.

Watching this a couple of points come to mind... Firstly, having a much shorter lifespan would give humans much greater drive and energy to do things, learn things, claim new territory, make an impact on the world. Where other races have centuries to pursue their goals humans have only decades which would give their lives a lot more urgency. Elves competing with humans would be like an adult trying to run around after a young child with the boundless energy of youth, the adult would soon be exhausted and be unable to keep up! I have to say I think you are underestimating the effect a much slower reproduction rate would have on a society, while individual elves would be able to achieve wonderous things their society as a whole would not grow and expand at the same rate as humans and not have the same diversity and drive that comes from a large and energetic population. And I'm sure you are quite right, they *could* solve any perceived deficiencies in such matters, but would they *want* to? Beings who live such long lives would likely not have the same drive to reproduce and have someone to carry on the family name as shorter-living humans would. If a human has children say around when they are 20-30 years old, by the time those children are ready to have children of their own their parents will be say 50-60 and coming to the end of their own lives. Elves on the other hand, even if they are not considered adults until 100 and then have a family at that age, by the time those children are 100 and start a family the parents will be barely 200 and still young by elf standards! Carry that on, by the time an elf gets to 700 then they will have great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren being born! Humans give birth to generations that will replace them, elves would give birth to generations that would compete with them which would lead to all sorts of complications for their society. If you look at the animal kingdom you find different species of different sizes and different lifespans sharing habitats. Generally the smaller, short-lived species reproduce more often and produce more offspring which helps them compete and survive in a world containing bigger, stronger, longer-lived species. Plus of course there is evolution, a shorter life-span and higher reproduction rate would lead to faster evolution to adapt and overcome changes and problems

I always thought that 1 Elves had a limited number of souls, the number of elves doesn't grow because of that 2 They do the Reverie to remember their past lives 3 After the Corellon incident, Elves are always reincarnating because they are barred from their afterlife 'life', like, they don't live in their heaven or something that I remember reading this in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

Regarding production rates, which I think is a fair argument, they would only "solve it" if they saw it as a problem to be solved. And why would they? We don't see rats and think "how do we match their reproductive rates!?"

My reasoning in one of my first worlds for the humans being on practically equal footing with the elves (dwarves in this setting did not want to move outside of the mountains, and gnomes and halflings liked their own territories of peace more than others, in general) was that the elves were starting to die out earlier due to a magical disease that began to wipe out the people most immersed in magic, causing magic to be used less by elves. Since they relied on it so much, while they still were the cornerstone of the Empire, they were weakened, but humans were largely unaffected due to being far less magically-inclined. Gnomes were also unaffected, due to their magic generally being of a technological nature, and due to not making contact with elves often because of past grievances. That is the biggest thing I give to humans. They are industrious, persistent, and will fight harder in their short lifespans for something they believe in than most non-humans will in their entire centuries-long lives.

Yes! I just discovered your channel last week & found it to be the most enjoyable D&D channel I’ve encountered so far. I was a bit worried you had abandoned the channel because all the videos that were first displayed to me were from 3-5 years ago. So glad to see you are still active. Thanks for providing this for your viewers.

In my campaign setting, the three major races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves) are about equal in terms of how much of the world they dominate. My explanation as to how short lived humans can be on equal footing with the long lived Elves and Dwarves is that they are much more versatile, innovative, ambitious, and adaptable than they are; and because of their short lives, they also act with an urgency the others just don't have. Plus, humans mature so much faster too, while the others take more than a human lifetime to do so, which means humans can produce contributing adults to their society at a significantly faster rate than the others. Finally, humans have a much higher birthrate because, again, they feel such urgency to reproduce while the other races generally don't.

Aren't Faerun's elves limited in number because Corelion created fix number of them? I believe Jorphan made video about it. Elves exist in the circle of metempsychosis and in trance actually they recollect previous lives. But for dwarves there is no simple explanation why they are not dominant race.

I thought the whole thing that gave the humans the edge is that we breed, mature, and peak WAY faster than any other race? So while you spent the last 50 years working on your next best accomplishment, legit 100s of thousands of humans were born, made it to maturity, learned 95% of what you spent your entire life learning, then bred again and taught their kids that. It's like trying to outpace a plague that is sentient and and can learn most of what you know in ~25 years. There was a 3.5 supplement that I can't remember the name of right now that went into depth about all the race's fertility rates and mating rituals. Humans outpaced everything but orks by a huge margin. Fun topic of conversation either way tho.

So how long are elves infants? Do their parents have to change their diapers for the first 10 years of their lives? In my campaign worlds, all the races hit puberty at roughly the same time, and longer lived races hit maturity after only a little longer than humans (like 1 to 6 years depending on the race). While long lived races age slower after they hit maturity, it's not to the degree of by-the-book races. My elves live a little over 200. Since I built the world, other races have not discovered a "fix" to offset humans' fecundity. On the player side, I give human characters a 10% xp bonus. In my most recent campaign, only one player opted for a non-human.

Esper, the things you love about fantasy worlds are so well aligned with the things that I love and bug me. I can only imagine in a parallel universe we are great friends. In my setting Elves only live to about 120, though they look very similar to one of their parents, so it's really just a myth/stereotype that they live so long.

That +1 to all ability scores really helps them out

I can understand your point of view to an extent, but I would like to mention 2 points that I think are worth taking into account. 1. Most other races, especially Elves, in more or less all the worlds that I have read the lore of, have actually been the most dominant race probably for millenia, same for dragons, titans, demons, (ro even your off shoot Goblinoids, or giants). I think that idea is that we "happen" to be playing on an age where humans have taken advantage of the fall of other more dominant civilization and are coming in their own. Your Myth Drannor, Daakhanni Empire, Age of Dreams etc take your pick of epic setting and you will find that it was once ruled by a race than humans, that fell to hybris, sacrifices to stop a larger foe, got destroyed by some god or another. 2. I think that the idea behind the longer lifespans of other races is that, a longer life, does equate to more *meaningful* experiences, just more experiences. An elf might take 120 year to reach adulthood, but those years do not *mean* the same to them as a 120 years would mean to a human for example. I would compare an elven adolescent year, to a 40 year old human year, in the aspect of learning something new, or adapting to a new situation. So, for every extra decade of life, efficiency in those years drops by the same amount. I am under the impression that Keith Baker had some article on that, how an elf learning magic does simply learn a spell, they speak with the spirit of the wizard that created, learning al the intricacies, philosophy and meaning above and beyond that actual application.

I am exploring this issue with ageless characters a bit myself in the D&D group I am part of. In it I play a warforged (Battlemaster-8/Zealot-Barbarian-4/Artillerist-Artificer-3/War-Wizard-2) and while he is vastly powerful in certain aspects (predominantly sheer resilience plus melee capabilities), the fact that he is an artificial creation and has been abused for warfare before, heavily influences his interactions with those he calls "organics" Although he has emotions, he is not governed by them. So much so that (in keeping with his backstory) he still tends to see himself as disposable to a point, when it comes to preserving lives - which has on occasion resulted in quite lovely and wholesome moments in the campaign. And when this campaign is over, I plan on having him disappear to the place of his creation, leaving behind a message that if the world needs him once more, he would return, but until then he would take his destructive capabilities off the board.

The dilemma you posed of elves or other long lived races might be answered with two concepts. First, that the non-human races don't have the same psychology as humans and don't see slow reproduction rates as a problem to be solved. They're much more concerned with other abstractions, like mining the biggest gems from the deepest mines, or merely enjoying the passing moments of nature, not the ambitious spread of their race and peoples as conquerors of all! Second, the explanation for the rapid level advancement is something akin to evolution's punctuated equilibrium. For most of us, our lives are marked by periods of slow, even somewhat static existence, marked by "punctuated" achievement that stands out as the highlight of our lives. In the same way, an elf's youthful life to 100 might not be memorable or meaningful in any way, no more than a human child's. And that period where the elf went on an adventure and helped to slay a red dragon? That was the highlight of his life, his crowning achievement before he receded back into a more stable existence doing, well, the things that elves mostly do. We should not forget, too, that adventurers who keep adventuring are probably going to meet an end that doesn't lead to these sort of questions. Either they slink away with their reputation and treasure in tow, or they learn that life is short for their types.

You're missing two important points; 1) You're assuming there are no real downsides for these races. For example; a common trope is that dwarves are deeply conservative and actively reject change as they hide in their mountainholds. Elves are often portrayed as arrogant and slow to react to threats, underestimating the lesser races. Gnomes tend to be chaotic and scatterbrained, often being too distracted with their newest shiny toy. Various evil races are just flat out too destructive and constantly stuck fighting internal wars etc. These can be cultural, or some kind of inherent behaviour. But they are very important, and can relativly easily explain why humans who are usually the "average" are relativly succesfull. Or at the very least why isn't dominating the world despite being super duper magical. 2) You're assuming that if there are problems with the race, they'll immeadiatly start fixing it using their superiour lifespan/magic/etc. E.g. the lower birthrate thing. However; it's entirely possible the problem simply can't be fixed. Or that the race simply doesn't view it as a problem to begin with and never bothers to try and fix it. Also; with respect to the years of experience during which they don't achieve much. At best player characters are exceptionally talented adventurers trust into exceptional circumstances causing extreme growth in an extremely short period of time, at worst it's just a gameplay mechanic and you shouldn't take it quite that literally.

There’s also just to goddamn many of them. WotC created a race for every half formed thought or concept in existence. Also, for solving the issues you mentioned, I like to take the Final Fantasy 14 approach. All “races” are offshoots of the same base race: humans. Whether they were created by an external force or evolved naturally is another matter.

I figure in general it’s more of a society or cultural thing. Could you imagine a prolific, intelligent species that lives for over 500 years? There’s a reason why Galapagos turtles are endangered for example. If they were as prolific as roaches, they would eat out their environment too quickly. Perhaps once upon a time, some of these races actually bred similar to humans, but suffered mass starvation or overcrowding, leading to great downfalls and an eventual cultural shift.

I've had many of the same thoughts as you theorycrafting about the D&D world. I would like to mention a few other arguments for human survival, and especially for the longevity issue: -Level=Combat Power, not total skills learned. or it should be case. Some skills (like the old school thief class) are actually class features, or they are dangerous or difficult to practice and gain real world experience (points) in, but I digress. 0th level academy sages can max out their "Knowledge: Philosophy" skill without every growing past 2 maximum hit points. The local "medicine witch" has trained to identify which herbs are potent with magic, to create herbal medicine on par with simple potions, without even killing a single goblin and reaching level 3 to pick up the "Brew Potion" feat or learning a single real spell. The alchemist in the city is similar, but with the help of literacy, education, and fully stocked laboratory, he can brew, crush, grind, calcify, purify and transmute those exotic ingredients into an potion, oil, dust, or tangleroot bag you can imagine. 90 year old elf kids might have more skills than they are letting on, but unless the elf kingdom is recruiting child soldiers, they probably were not trained for real combat until they choose to become a 1st level fighter at age 100. -Incidentally, is it just me, or should Elves be the most risk-adverse humanoid species ever? Almost the exact opposite of how you describe halflings' adventuresome behavior. Even if some weirdos leave the forest to become wandering mercenaries, the individual has to worry about losing centuries of remaining life, and the collective have to worry about providing a safe and secure environment to raise children to an age that they can breed. And 3e elves have a -2 to constitution just to make the whole world even scarier.... -Humans being "dominant" in this stories might just be naked anthrocentrism, but do not overlook the racial bonuses that your game system of choice gives humans. -If you are tinkering with racial traits, more recent versions of the game Dwarf Fortress has a pretty decent solution for the paradox of human survival: all the other races are short! We got dwarves, goblins, kobolds, surprisingly small elves, and humans are the only medium sized major race. Humans are the goliaths of this world, armed with infinite short jokes if nothing else! -Speaking of goblins, all of the "one HD" PC races are also woefully inadequate in the face of all the different types of intelligent creatures, or even just monstrous humanoids. Ogres, Bugbears, Gnolls, and basically any species with a natural armor bonus should mop the floor with anything in the PHB. The other races might team up with humans not out of the goodness of their heart, but simply because THEY are in danger of being wiped out, too. Perhaps their shortcomings might be seen as a feature, not a bug "these guys don't have darkvision? Fan. fucking. tastic! That means they can't steal our provisions in the middle of the night and retreat into the underdark, like when we tried to recruit the kobolds!"

I’ve always said that in a war an army of Lizardfolk would be an incredible choice if you had to pick a race for your soldiers to be. They might not be the strongest, but they are resource saving! Let’s look at some examples. 1. Lizardfolk have a natural Armor Class, so no need to spend gold on iron breastplates. 2. Lizardfolk are happy to eat their fallen enemies, that will cut the cost of food down. 3. Lizardfolk make weapons out of bones, so you’ll always have backup options if weapons get damaged on the battlefield. They’re also aquatic, so that adds even more versatility. Essentially you can focus your extra funds on any number of things a normal army could never afford.

I wouldn't as readily dismiss the fertility argument. That making fertility magic is possible, is an assumption I wouldn't take for granted. Given the fact that in DnD souls are a confirmed fact, it is very much possible that is what prevents fertility magic, as pregnancy in DnD is not a purely biological process, but a spiritual one that either creates or reincarnates a soul. That is besides the unknown factor of how healing magic interacts with pregnancy. Given that spells like lesser restoration purge many other creatures eggs or larvae, I'd be worried about how healing magic effects an unborn child. All of this, of course, doesn't automatically explain humanitys dominance in DnD, if anything it just gives more of an advantage to more fertile creatures, like orcs or goblinoids, but regardless I wouldn't simply dismiss the point with a 'magic fix it'.

What's your intro music! I find it really fun.

This, If anything. Is a good reference video to keep in mind while world building. I actually have it written in that the humans in my world were primeval cavemen like beings that were taught everything they knew by the elves, Until the elves realized how easily corrupted they were, how petty beings with such short lifespans really are, and before they knew it the humans declared war on the elves thinking they would "reclaim their lost lands" all a paranoid "what if" that ended in the elves bringing down a magical barrage on the humans armies and feeling so ashamed they had to stoop to their level that they left them to their own devices all together and populated their own continents, barring humans specifically from entering. I see humans as very easily manipulated and corrupted beings, but very versatile, they can adapt to any climates but their short lives prevents them from really becoming a major thing. Their "home" continent is shared by other races so they have no true home, sort of the "Muts" of the humanoid realms. Humans in real life can be vile creatures, seeing the ugly through social media really influenced my depictions of them. Not to say they're evil races, they're not evil they're mostly neutral-neutral good.

11:08 Starting D&d in edition 3.5, I always thought humans were able to be so prominent due to them having access to so many different gods to aid them. That’s the work around I use in my games, that humans have the strongest United pantheon that protects and lifts up their race as a whole. A fact that has other races pissed, but not able to do a whole lot about it. 😅

Yeah, I can agree with your arguments about why a lot of the other non-human races are just better on a lore end. That is why most of the races that are not human have flaws that they need to deal with, and can only live around two times as long as a human. In my lore, humans stand out because they are more tied to chaos while letting them live in areas that no other race would dare go. This also lets them understand elemental magic and make deals with deities. I have to say very good video man.

As for the issue of the character not really gaining levels for a majority of their life and so on, that IS an issue. But there are other questions that are important. The first is what defines how a character grows? Because sure you could have an elf who’s 400. But their first 100 is them developing as an individual, first physically for the first 20 and then spiritually for the last 80. And then, well, you perceive time different when you live that long. You could have spent the next 250 working a trade, or being an artist, or so on and so on. And then things in your life change, and you spent the last few years working on your skills. Now we start wondering why you’re only level 1. But the point still stands. Elves, while they have more life than others, aren’t going to spend that life the same way a human will. Not will a dwarf, nor a gnome. Also an adventurer gaining a shit ton of experience in a short time is simply due to the sheer amount of experiences you’re having. Your average Warrior might train most of his life, which is important. But our player characters are going through life threatening experiences day after day after day. You’re gonna figure that shit out pretty quick. But those with long lives are definitely gonna be dealing with the loss of that excitement

This is why I like the Red-Wizards of Thay, its seems logical that a kabal of Necromancers and Liches who are ruthless and ambitious would be able to compete with the more long lived races, indeed there society would justify dark magic like necromancy otherwise the other races would dominate humanity, therefore we Red Wizards need to rule.

There being no true limits for what magical effects that could be created and replicated in dnd is a larger problem in general for worldbuilding. So yeah elves could solve their slow reproduction speed problem with magical potions, but by the same logic, humans could solve their limited lifespans with magic potions too. You have to draw the line on magic somewhere, so may as well be on potions that drastically change the properies of entire civilizations, as any line you draw will be arbitrary.

I didn't expect this from Esper. 😕 Fertile Myrtle of the human race 3,000 years ago didn't PLAN on having 13 children in her years from 13 to 40. Abortion wasn't a thought back then for sure. But mom and dad put those children to work early because they had to. There was no Atari or Pokemon. There were farm chores. Work or starve. You had to stay ahead as there were no 911 services and winter might be much worse than last year. No AC. No convenience store. You want heat? You MAKE heat. A bull in the barn meant you could till ground faster and feed more children or they starve. An injury could mean infection, becoming maimed or death. I know because my mother was 17 of 18 children from one grandma but 3 grandpa's (all 3 died). And who says Elves WANT a child every 2 to 3 years? Maybe the mother Elf CHOOSES to develop an egg every 10 or 50 years to focus on that child's development, arts, singing, dancing, instruments, manners, skills with a bow, short sword, attunement to the world (Reverie), etc. Maybe the mother and father must agree in a ceremony? Now that we're "civilized" most humans wouldn't live a week in the wild. 3 days without clean water and you're dead. Not so 100 years ago.

6:08 - "I'm pretty sure a highly intelligent... species would solve something like reproduction rates." - Is there actually some easy fix for low birth rates in written D&D rules or lore? Because if not, then this is a Thermian fallacy. If the creator of the setting doesn't (at least implicitly) introduce such a solution for them, then it doesn't exist. I cannot believe I actually have to explain this, but there is no law of the universe that forces a writer or world-builder to introduce some kind of easy fix for low birth rates of his elf race, that just isn't a thing. Sure, you can invent all kinds of weird random stuff that negates all disadvantages non-human species have over humans, because you can make up anything you want, but why the hell _would_ you?? Your argument actually works both ways: One can just as easily make a setting where humans dominate everything because of some factor one simply made up. Also 6:46 - "Birth rates, in the grand scheme of things, are not a very difficult problem to solve"... for a premodern society?? Are you f*ing kidding me??

Ty for the upload

this is a problem only due to the changes made since 3rd edition. previously the rules for dnd limited the classes and levels other races could take. the whole concept were the older races were in decline and stuck in their ways. and that humans were a driving force because of there versatility and ambition (being able to play any class and attain any level). since dnd 3e, all races can be everything and level up to any level, so what made humans unique was basically removed.

I agree! I debate internally about having a campaign setting with a limited selection of races that all have thorough worldbuilding and character or just opening the floodgates for rabbit people, blue people, and space people to comingle (largely as PCs) because players don't response well to limitations.

With all due respect for the old man, this phrase of Pratchett implies that Tolkien said that elves were nice. He never did. In Middle-Earth some elves, when confronted with the utmost evil, chose to do heroic deeds, not nice deeds.

The anime Freiren really hits the elf thing well, on all levels. As for dwarfs, the old lore was that they had very low birth rates. A few clans have realized that the cause is repeated exposure to contaminants from deep mining over generations. These clans have started to integrate other races like humans, as children of mixed pairings tend to come out dwarfs. So in presenting a solution to them not being populous, the designers also revealed that this solution is actually a bigger problem for humans than initially presented. As for Halflings and Gnomes, no good reason is ever given.

6:18... the dropping birthrate in 1st world nations all points to 'no, if anything the more advanced the culture, the lower the birthrate', that's not metal gymnastics, that's simple observation.

This is something I brought up in my dnd group once regarding economics, Elves would be almost impossible to compete with in a free market, as they would have so much more time to amass wealth to pass on to future generations. On a long enough timeline, they'd own almost all the land and resources and their heirs would inherit it. Pretty much every trade conglomerate or cartel would be elven run and could muscle out any competition with their vast resources. Having an Elven villain in the Forgotten Realms makes more sense than almost any other race. The sheer power they'd have over other races due to their longevity alone would make almost every corrupt ruler or noble an elf.

This is why gnomes are my favorite race, the backstory thing is mostly irrelevant because unlike elves, gnomes mature at the same rate as humans do. This actually kind of makes me want to write a location for a setting where a community of forest gnomes have started to secretly influence a human village. I mean, their most notable feature is that they like to build underground, and if you don't know their burrows are there it's exceedingly difficult to locate them... The gnomes may have started meddling in the humans affairs in order to keep them distracted from finding something they shouldn't mess with, subtly nudging them towards alternate courses of action while improving both communities standards of living. A few generations in you could then throw in a gnome with a different outlook on things that could set up his own faction, and when the players encounter the village there might be a shadow civil war going on in the background.

Humans are versatile, and we can adapt to changes more easily.

Okay so I agree actually with the premise here, and in my D&D and other TTRPGs I run humans are always the least powerful and populous race. However, all my races don’t get lives longer than 120 years with that being the top end. But the point about birth rates you have completely wrong. There’s no lore saying that the other races have an issue with giving birth, the idea is that they simply don’t want to. They’re very picky about producing offspring, so they actively choose not to reproduce faster. They don’t need any potions or magics to help them.

About magically engeneering birth, you hvae to consider that it's actually one of the most difficult things to do. The creeping doom (aka the strongest beeing in all of Feorun) has not found yet a way to reproduce, and while I can hear you say thay he doesn't even have a reproductive system, I would like to remind that he is a living magical skeleton, so that wouldn't be the limiting factor. I just thing that fertily is one of those things thst can be hardly improved without gods or 9th level spells

In the world I'm developing its mostly due to how isolated they've became after long periods of conflict and following a cataclysmic event that prevented the live birth of the elves and dwarves and started a 300 year period of dead magic humans were able to expand substantially.

Yeah, but every one of us gets a free feat because we all pick variant human.

With D&D using FR as their base campaign setting it does kind of make sense as the lore that Ed Greenwood created for the distant past. After the war between the Giants and Dragons decimated both their species, the Elves ruled the surface (where they further decimated the Dragons) and the Dwarves ruled underground, Until the Elves fought a 3000 year log civil war (Crown Wars) that destroyed most of their Empires and killed the majority of their population and forced the Drow underground, where they immediately started wars with the Dwarves decimating both their numbers, and then mind flayers captured the Deep Dwarves and when they finally killed off the mind flayers and got free they started a Dwarven civil war because they felt betrayed by the other Dwarves that destroyed the remaining underdark kingdoms that survived the Drow, then when some Dwarves rose to live on the surface, they fought with the remaining elves, and by this time the Humans and Orcs had established empires in areas that the elves/drow used to live but had been eradicated, so they were able to establish huge armies that were rolling over and taking over large areas and caused more deaths of Dwarves and Elves (who breed very slowly compared to humans and orcs) by the time that the Humans take hold and they form treaties with remaining Elves and Dwarves to push the Orcs back to the Northern Mountains the Elves and Dwarves are shadows of their once great empires and their population is tens of thousands (if not 100s of thousands) less than the humans. And with Halflings and Gnomes, Halflings were pretty secluded by mountain ranges from the other races until they started venturing out long after humans took hold and Gnomes are from the Fey realm and only came in small numbers, not enough to establish large kingdoms (by lore they are supposed to be very rare)

So the same question is brought up in Star Wars and Darth Plaguius answers it to Palpatine in one of the novels. The answer is that humans are just more ambitious than other races. We live shorter so we have so many things we want to do and get done in what is really a small time compared to other races. It causes us to do crazy and adventurous things that other races don’t care to do cause they have time to wait it out. It also gives humans a hunger for knowledge and fulfillment that we can’t wait and find the answers for. We can study as much as we want and explore but our glass will rarely be filled, we can’t be as content as other species. The other races don’t try to conquer because they’re happy with what they have while humans it takes decades to feel that way. That isn’t to say other races are not ambitious, it’s just that they can take their time and slowly get to there desires and have so much life left. Humans don’t and so humans do what they can when they can in order to fulfill there goals. I also like the idea that human will is one our greatest traits in fantasy and sci-fi. We can survive having our limbs cut off and push on or see countless horrors because we have the will to endure them.

I like the idea that the Elder Races have basically beaten themselves into seclusion to rebuild and recuperate, all the while humans have only just come onto the scene and are filling the spaces that these fallen empires left behind.

The setting my players are in is a young world recently cobbled together by the remnants of the broken predecessor by the overdeity before it died. The gods are young, the world is young, magic is barely blossoming again, and all the races are in their starting corners, much like a Risk game where the bulk of each race gets their own area.

For me its always come down to adaptability and breeding. Because of their atrocious life span ( and their weakness to disease and sickness) when compared to the other races, Humans have to have more children. Much the same way animals have massive litters of babies, if you lose half you still have a good chance of your genetic info making it into the future.

Most of your points are addressed in lore or can be explained by the fact you're looking through a human lens. Halflings - They are brave because they are lucky, and they are lucky because they are blessed by a god. Halflings are blessed by a good aligned god. If the collective Halflings went on a conquest to dominate or eradicate other races there is a good chance that god would no longer bless them which removes their luck and bravery. At that point Hafling's only advantages over humans are longer life span and agility, with humans having a strength and stamina advantage. Halflings got it good why would they risk it? Dwarves - Dwarves are too busy crafting to go on a conquest. In lore they are notably more patient due to their longer life span. Dwarves are more likely to come to the conclusion humans are a better ally than an enemy. Gnomes - Similar to Dwarves they're to busy inventing and experimenting to think about conquests. Being more inclined to intellectual or magical pursuits Gnomes probably ran the numbers and figured humans are a better ally than an enemy. Elves - Due to their long life spans elves approach problems differently than humans do. A human would be satisfied with 1 answer to a problem. For an elf they must understand not just the answers but why all other possibilities are wrong. So just like Dwarves and Gnomes they come to a conclusion that humans, who are more or less interested in surviving, are better friends than enemies. Birthrates/Populations - Look at our more technologically advanced society and those who are more intellectual or wise. Humans had fewer children per household following the industrial revolution. Fertile couples that don't have kids usually don't want to because they'd rather save money or don't want to sink the time. This shows they had time and thought out having kids. This could easily apply to the races above. Ambitious/Evil outliers - They could very well happen and could succeed. Generally that would be harder in those societies though. With smarter and wiser members of society they could better recognize and rehabilitate those individuals on average. Dwarves have a very structured society so good luck getting through the red tape. Halflings, Elves, and Gnomes have very decentralized societies so what power they could take won't be much and is going to be met with resistance/non-compliance. "Evil" Races - If they destroy the humans why don't they also destroy the other "good races"? Races with Shorter life spans - Since you didn't address these I will. Orcs have shorter lifespans but greater physique than humans. Due to this they value martial prowess over knowledge or wisdom as they don't have the time to accumulate a latter 2. Goblins have maybe have 20%-30% of a human's lifespan which leads to them breeding like rabbits to keep a population and act impulsively. Humans have ambition and versatility because it's what they need to survive given the above.

I kinda did the opposite adjustment in my campaign setting, the long living races mature and learn more slowly and have the small birthing rate for cultural preference - "I'm just 300 years old, one child is enough for now!" - or low reproductive instincts, but now prevent have sex for pleasure. Meanwhile, the majority of the short living races mature and learn quickly and have a high birthing rate. But at the time my campaign is occurring, the world is recovering from a cataclysm, and every race and kingdom is recovering. And with this, each type of race/kingdom is advancing differently; short living is going by population growth and adapting and innovation, long living they have prior knowledge and experience, and in mixed kingdoms they are combining tactics. And creatures with extremely long life, like dragons are rare, competing for territory sometimes, and the difference between benevolent, evil, or indifferent can influence the accessibility and population of their territory (from protection, demands of tributes, rule the region, or avoiding interactions). There are few ancients, and some have their domains known, be it to avoiding, dominance, or trying to interact.

I play Rolemaster in Tolkien's mythos, and 5e in a Homebrew based on it. He had detailed explanations.

My solution to long-livedd races is something from a VtM splatbook called "The Fog of Time". Essentially, the longer you live, the more you forget. Ones brain cannot hold a lifetime of memories. And the body eventually forgets skills. This process of forgetting drives longer lived beings to bouts of melancholy and dispassion. Some even stop doing things in order to unlearn them, so they can have the satisfaction of relearning them.

You know what I think we need to lean in more into? How those long lived races perceive time because when you can live about ten thousand years or 700 years a couple of months or a just a year seem like minutes to your perspective and I think that helps high light something that I think the elf is what humans should be they look like use they talk like us but their also just better than us.

I have a bit of an issue with the sheer quantity of races in DND. Fantasy world's can have multiple races, sure, but I feel like having more than 20 different races of intelligent species is too many. I don't have an issue with multiple races being in the game, but, I do think from an in game socio-political perspective it doesn't make sense to me.

It is about the birth rate in relation to life expectancy and number of conflicts. A birth rate of 3 gives a lot more to a creature that lives 100 years compared to one that lives 500 years, since it gives the same number of births in much less time.

I have seen it through the lens where wealthier societies tend toward having less children as having children no longer contributes to familial wealth and support, also with reduced infantile mortality. More kids means more hands to farm a field to feed those mouths. Clockwork means you don’t need kids and people for certain things, so you are incentivized to have less kids. Perfectly maintained forest homes with wall gardens that bloom all year don’t need to be sown year after year. Also, the longer lived a species is, the longer it requires a developmental period. A human doesn’t finish maturing mentally until 26ish, and in some eras was an adult at 15. Imagine not being fully mature until 150, or having a toddler for a few decades. They are significant burdens on a family for a long time, and that de-incentivizes having another at the same time. Innate birth rates, developmental periods, and social pressures all have impacts on population sizes. Do I think DnD race-based population statistics make sense? Nope. Do I think their far fetched given given history? Not terribly. Good video, made me think of all this again.

With the reproduction thing, I think the issue is not with the capability of elves and such to reproduce but the need for them to. They live for centuries. It makes sense they wouldn’t have as intense a reproductive instinct as humans. Humans could outnumber elves simply because our short lives require us to mate more frequently. This is, of course, not even getting into how humans and elves would interact. Elves would likely still see humans as lesser beings, assuming that they have the same tribalist tendencies as humans.

Another way to handle the problem with long lived races would be to clarify that this would be their possible age. During this long time you are bound to get sick eventually. No one said, that elves, dwarfs, etc don't get sick or have problems at child birth. If you look at the average lifespan of a human, it is always depending where and how you live your life. So in my homebrews elves can get up to 750 but the average elf dies at 150 due to sickness rather then of old age.

This is such a human way of thinking. Imagine walking up to a secluded elven settlement that just wants to live in peace and telling them that they gotta start breeding more in order to take over the world with their superior lifespans. Or explaining to a bunch of dwarves that they should leave their hold that they happily lived in for generations to build outposts on the surface so they can drive off the other races and colonize their lands.

My solution is to simply give for every race advantage disadvantage to balance things out. For example dwarfs can more easily overheat, elves are more vulnerable to diseases or poisons and gnomes more prone to become insane.

The answer to this video is actually pretty simple and it's stated in various versions that humanity is more curious, more creative and more versatile and has more ambitious than any other races because the short life that humans have. Humans also breed more can can breed with almost any other races/beings. And despite humanity's penchant for violence and war, we tend to resolve our struggles more with haggling and diplomacies first before resolve to other means. Yes, we're resilient and thanks to all that humans produce the most heroes in existence (at least in Thoril and Gygax's original world). As for the gnomes as the more magically gifted race, is simply not true, from lore perspective, Netheril humans outclassed everyone in the magical department even beating the high elves, who are more magically gifted than the gnomes.

I just wrote a Short story, it's about a group a Navy Elves who find some humans not knowing what they are.

In my dnd setting elves have a lifespan of 300 years max, and an elf of 20 years is by all means an adult. That because of their slow aging and extended lifespans elven societies tend to be very gerontocratic. Halflings have the same lifespan as humans, and their cultures tend to value humbleness and modesty. They tend to view greater geopolitical conquests as something for the tall folk to worry about. Gnomes have lifespans similar to elves, and they prefer to have their communities hidden under the shadow of other races. Dwarves live up to 150-200 years. They prefer to isolate their civilizations within their mountain territories. Now as to why are humans the most populous and widespread of the races. There's probably several reasons as to why, but I like to think humans excell at adaptavility, ambition, wanderlust and willingness to cooperate with the other races. I should also mention that chief deities of demihuman pantheons are worshipped as major deities in the human pantheons, putting further complexity to how humans are regarded by the other races.The demihuman races in my setting also don't have much of a headstart over humans, having evolved or otherwise come into being around the same time period. Elves for the longest time vastly preferred to establish their empires in the Feywild, so when they set foot back on the material plane, humans had already built theirs. And finally how come all the dragons, giants, aboleth and all these other mighty and monstrous beings haven't conquered the world? Well simply put they are stuck competing with one another.

Okay. Lets take this and place it into the real world in the perspective of countries. I think that is a fair conversion because like races in D&D, countries have a wide variety of general characteristics. With that lets look at the most powerful Country on earth, the U.S.A. The U.S.A by all means would represent the "Elves / Dwarves." The largest economy, the most powerful military, the greatest level of technology, in addition to being the only superpower on earth. Yet, America doesn't control the entire planet. Just about Half of it. North America and NATO allies, with NATO being composed of other individual countries. But half of a planet is still incredibly powerful and influential, especially when unified under a common goal. However, America and its protectorates don't make up the majority of the world population. Even with that great power, China and India have far greater numbers and a considerable enough level of technology to be considered "theats" if you became their enemies. Then there is the reality that several counties on earth today have a majority stone age population, only having access to greater technology thanks to more advanced countries being charitable or invested in them for some economic or political reasons. But how? It's simple. Cost to Benefit analysis. It is often the case that the cost of exerting influence on another group is greater than the benefit of doing so if the group is resistant to you. This is detailed in Sun Tzu's art of war, Confucius, and several roman authorities like Marcus Aurelius. This dynamic explains why so many races that are weaker by comparison to others exist and might even thrive. It is because the cost of "dealing" with them out weights the benefit especially if you consider other things a better use for your time and resources. Sure, if an ambitious Elf wanted to they could plan and prepare their entire life to wipe Goblins from the forgotten realms. But would that be logistically possible, even with half a millennia to implement such a plan? The answer is likely not.

5:12 That's part of why, as we see with other animals, the longer the life expectancy of the individuals of a species, the less they reproduce, these other races are not dominating in part because humans are having that many more young that many more times. It's only part.

Perhaps one of the things overlooked by this argument is that races that live longer may have already tried these routes to rule over all and found the folly in that pursuit. Or maybe because they live so much longer they learn much much more slowly. Maybe their society moves slowly b3cause they have so much time.