Staff Blog: On the Value of Being Human

Let’s be frank, you and I. Generally speaking, humans in role-playing games are boring. They suck. They’re usually the median for whatever other species/races are presented at best, or the weakest of what’s available at worse. You look at things on paper and you think to yourself, Self, how exactly did such a pathetic species come to dominate the planet?

And there’s the thing. For better or worse, humans do dominate the planet. If evolution is a war – and it can easily be viewed as such – we have to face facts. We won. No species has flourished and conquered as much as we have. We can be found in every possible environment. But what is it about us, as a species, that allows us to thrive in any environment? It’s not our tool using, our opposable thumbs, or even our supreme adaptability. Other creatures sharing this world with us all exhibit this ability and have a plethora of natural advantages that say that they are, in the strictest sense, fitter than we are.

Still, we somehow manage to thrive. We bend the world to ourselves, invent laws and theories and philosophies and apply them to a greater understanding of the universe as a whole. Perhaps more importantly, we do so with ourselves. As individual minds we subscribe to the rules of civilization and culture and through our submission to those ideals we become greater than we might otherwise be. It’s out culture and the strength of culture to overwrite reality that gives us our real strength, the complexity of hierarchy and belonging. We convince ourselves that our moral codes are intrinsic to the cosmos itself and because we believe it, so it is.

That’s our power. That’s the real source of our strength. We create and cultivate a complex interplay among ourselves, conjuring magic and miracles through one another. What one of us lacks, another can do. In our multitudes there is nothing that we cannot do, nothing that we cannot accomplish, and there is no other species, fictional or real, that can make that same claim. No matter how fantastic, strong, brave, or capable another species is, if we’re able to suck it into our world we can make of it whatever we want. There’s nothing that can stand against us except ourselves.

In other words, humans rule.

No other game has really examined the strength of human culture, or expressed that strength the way that we have chosen to do in the Triune Legacy. Yes, there are other creatures and worlds. Elves and demons, werewolves and vampires, ghouls and stick-breakers. A wide variety of monsters that are playable. The difference is that in this game humans can do more than hold their own – they dominate one world outright and exercise significant influence in both of the others.

Take pride in the human race. Take responsibility for the chaos in this world and try to change it. We give you a world very much like out own, a world where humans rule, a place where the only real enemies humans possess are another group of humans that act as a parasite culture, a vile civilization that has corrupted humanity’s strengths and cycles by being the very worst that humanity can offer. Create a human, yourself or someone else. Enter this world and save it, damn it, curse it or change it as you will. Do it as a human and come to appreciate the power that you possess. The simple power of humanity itself.

We are this world and the world is what we choose to make of it, which begs a question – what do you want to do today?

Aaron is the principle author and creator of the Triune Legacy mythos and the 8Fold Soul System. Find out more about Aaron and the rest of The Triune Legacy Team. This Staff Blog entry was posted on September 1st, 2009.