DF World: Do non-humans have their own countries?

[khorboth]

Other examples:

In Krynn (Dragonlance), the human lands all have minorities of the non-human races, but the non-human lands are basically void of humans. In a few cases, this is explained by xenophobia or by extreme border defenses, but mostly it makes no real sense. It's just The Way of Things in dungeon fantasy.

In the fantasy world I've put the most time into, Cosmia, my halflings have an innate magic which allows them to run atop grass if they desire. This makes them uniquely suited to defending the grasslands in the broad river valley they call home as they can combine stealth and maneuverability like no other troops. Still, their vastly inferior numbers would be no match for either of the human-led kingdoms on their borders. Fortunately, both kingdoms also acknowledged that the halflings are superior farmers and they don't want to tangle with each other. Clever halfling were able to negotiate a treaty guaranteeing the existence of the independent halfling state and generous trade with both human kingdoms.

In a segment of Forgotten Realms I'm much less familiar with, the Shining South, I understand there's an entire kingdom of half-elves. Half-drow even. If the non-humans can breed with humans and breed true, there's no reason why they couldn't form a population of their own.

Another idea is to look at the racial template and think about where they might be most suited to live. If a race has Darkvision and lives underground, then humans won't get along well in their cities. Likewise, a race with Perfect Balance which lives in high mountains is unlikely to have cities comfortable to outsiders. The standard DF templates have nothing so extreme (that I remember) so this approach might just give them countries where their armies have distinct advantages in defense, but foreign traders still come to ply their trade.

[martinl]

Usually I stuff DF into an existing fantasy property like Greyhawk or FR or whatever.

When I play DF on it's own, there are not really countries, just "Town," which has enough of each allowed PC race to become new PCs of that race as needed. Geopolitics is an unnecessary tangent from finding holes in the ground full of monsters, murdering them, and taking their stuff.

NPCs are probably human by default, but that's just laziness on my part.
...
I'm now imagining a weirder than usual DF campaign where "Town" is dominated by Dung-beetle-variant Coleopterans. It works just like normal DF town, but default NPCs are Giant Beetles and all the buildings are giant balls of hollowed out and re-enforced dung. Non coleopterans are fairly common of course - they are generally doing various tasks the Beetle-folk consider too disgusting.

Don't ask what's on tap at the Tavern.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It is surprising and probably unrealistic that they don't have hobbits. It's self-consistent, but a (humanoid!) species that inhabits a single smallish country and essentially never leaves despite there being no barrier is absurd.

Lots of primates have a relatively limited range. And of course outside of primates it's absolutely normal for unrelated species to fill the same niches in different places - to the extent we need a technical vocabulary for their tendency to be similar despite the lack of close relationship - "convergent evolution" .
Even despite how weirdly homogenous humans are (recent genetic bottleneck, remember) human sub-populations can be concentrated in smallish areas long enough to show detectable differences. Nobody wonders particularly why pygmies are mostly confined to central Africa, and there are lots of genetics studies that make a big deal of the relative isolation of the Basques.

As is so often true, humans, and especially the "modern" human cultures people are likely to be most familiar with, are probably the exceptional cases rather than the likely norm.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

It is surprising and probably unrealistic that they don't have hobbits. It's self-consistent, but a (humanoid!) species that inhabits a single smallish country and essentially never leaves despite there being no barrier is absurd.

Orcs are recognized as the Enemy Species at best, and depending on what origin you take might verge on being undead. Regardless, having kill-on-sight status is a good reason not to be present.

Elves and dwarves keeping to themselves as they do works well enough largely because economics are ignored. If there were motivations for things in the world other than operatic or soap-operatic ones, there would almost certainly be dwarves in a lot more places at least. Maybe elves too, though elves being immortal, scarce, and actively on their way out huddling up with their kind seems...well, not the least plausible thing, for sure.

Hobbit isolationism is not without precedent. It is not unknown for human groups to be hardly ever seen outside their own turf. How many people saw a Tibetan before the Chinese invasion?

The mundane features of Elven economy are not dealt with in Tolkien any more then anything else about elves. It is pretty well implied that Dwarves have a number of economic interactions with men often trading technology for produce.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Even despite how weirdly homogenous humans are (recent genetic bottleneck, remember) human sub-populations can be concentrated in smallish areas long enough to show detectable differences.

Not just recent genetic bottleneck, but population dispersal that is pretty much unprecedented. Not many other species have spread around the entire globe in such an evolutionary eye-blink.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Lots of primates have a relatively limited range. And of course outside of primates it's absolutely normal for unrelated species to fill the same niches in different places - to the extent we need a technical vocabulary for their tendency to be similar despite the lack of close relationship - "convergent evolution" .
Even despite how weirdly homogenous humans are (recent genetic bottleneck, remember) human sub-populations can be concentrated in smallish areas long enough to show detectable differences. Nobody wonders particularly why pygmies are mostly confined to central Africa, and there are lots of genetics studies that make a big deal of the relative isolation of the Basques.

As is so often true, humans, and especially the "modern" human cultures people are likely to be most familiar with, are probably the exceptional cases rather than the likely norm.

"despite there being no barrier" is important. Populations that don't expand out of their range generally indicate that when individuals try to they die.

Is something killing off hobbits everywhere but the Shire?

Human populations can be mostly sedentary, sure, but not completely so.

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Hobbit isolationism is not without precedent. It is not unknown for human groups to be hardly ever seen outside their own turf. How many people saw a Tibetan before the Chinese invasion?

Unlike a hobbit, a Tibetan would tend to breed into the local population and in a few generations their descendants won't necessarily stand out at all.

(Also, the answer would be quite a few considering that there was a considerable Tibetan empire in the 7th and 8th century that often controlled, among other things, parts of China.)

...Of course, if hobbits in human-majority areas have in fact been breeding back into the human population all along, as it seems to be suggested is the eventual fate of the hobbit subspecies, that would explain things.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by RyanW

Not just recent genetic bottleneck, but population dispersal that is pretty much unprecedented. Not many other species have spread around the entire globe in such an evolutionary eye-blink.

I don't know; humans stayed in Africa evolving while others of the Homo genus and even a few others wandered out into the "old world". We exploded onto the global scene but "Borg-mated" with other species when we did arrive. That probably helped our survival immensely.
We assimilated their hard earned immune system adaptations then likely outcompeted them with our unique advantages.
At least one gene that helps greatly with low oxygen environments common in Himalayan populations is known to have come from Denisovans. (The sister species to humans and neanderthals.)

It's why one of my non-human species are actually a hybrid of three small vaguely hobbit like hominids. Some populations more strongly resemble the two less represented species in form and ability. 60/20/20 ratio if we wanted to average their genetics. For gaming purposes it also allows one of a few odd physical abilities that would otherwise seem unrealistic.