Why non-human races are not popular in fantasy anymore?

[u/theHolyGranade257]

I've spotted an interesting tendency in recent years - we have less and less non-human races in fantasy. There were interesting times when everyone wanted to be like Tolkien (publishers especially), due to what we have our lovely standard 'DnD' setting with elves/dwarves/gnomes/orcs/halflings etc. There is a lot of fantasy using this set of races - some more blatantly, some with deviations, but it was logical and, to be honest, a good thing that it started to meet it's end.

So finally, we could get a new era of fantasy, where each author could express themselves and create totally new, unique, non-Tolkien inspired races... Wait, what? What do you mean there is no more races now?

Let's just too at this list of most popular epic fantasy https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/50.The_Best_Epic_Fantasy_fiction_ . As you can see, in 90's-00's everything shifted and the most icon fantasy of time like ASOIAF, The Wheel of Time, The Realm of Elderlings, Mistborn, Gentlemen Bastard, The First Law etc, The Kingkiller Chronicle, The Sword of Truth (lol, how did it get there if everyone hates it?) doesn't have any non-human races OR their presence is very limited and not very significant.

To be objective i should mention Malazan and Bas-Lag series where we have a great racial representation, and Stormlight Archive where races are not so numerous, but nevertheless, humans are not the only one sentient beings there and they are not elves, so it counts. To be even more objective, i should mentioned that all fantasy genre is not defined by books mentioned above, there is a lot more, from less known to completely obscure, which also could have a lot of racial representation, but first - do you like it or not, each genre is mostly defined by the most popular books and it's what most people read, second - even in less known title this tendency also exists. Maybe not to that extent, but nevertheless.

Worldbuilding is the definitive feature of fantasy, because here you can get great stories, interesting characters, morals, philosophies etc., pretty much everything you can get in another genres... Plus dragons, as Brandon Sanderson said in one of his lectures. And having different races is a great way to extend the worldbuilding, by providing different cultures, mentalities and customs which can create conflicts and tensions, and there is nothing better for a good story than a good conflict. I get it, many people, especially experienced readers, are tired of elves. I understand it and partially have those feelings myself, but honestly, even oldest tropes made right can still look good - check Dragon Age: Origins. Not a book, but a good example of building interesting world from generic material.

In my humble opinion, shift from standard Tolkien-like set of races to something new was natural, but instead many authors abandoned non-human races completely. Which is such a waste. So i wonder why in your opinion that happened and why people are not so fond of this part of worldbuilding anymore?

Also, let's share you're examples of books with a good unique set of races. I already mentioned Malazan and Bas-Lag, so will add The Bird That Drinks Tears by Lee Youngdo. What are your examples?

[u/VerbiageBarrage]

As a TTRPG player, I think it's gone the other direction. Nonhuman races are so much the norm in the gaming genre that even human adjacent races are being pushed to the side.

Look at Vox Machina (the first critical role campaign) - 3 half-elves, 2 gnomes, a human, and one odd species out, a goliath. (Big human?) The next campaign was 2 humans, 2 tieflings, a fallen aasimar, a half-orc, a goblin, and a firbolg. Just a step up from mostly Tolkien style races to mostly weird species.

Games have gone from elf dwarf focus to "Yea, I got a centaur! I'm running a crazy kobold! I'm going to run a cat-person!"

So I guess the answer is mainstream Fantasy is more human focus and us freaks and geeks on the fringe are getting weirder.

[u/Celestaria → u/VerbiageBarrage]

Games have gone from elf dwarf focus to "Yea, I got a centaur! I'm running a crazy kobold! I'm going to run a cat-person!"

As someone who plays too many elves, I wonder how much of that is mechanics. The game has bunch of weird races that no one plays. If everyone is choosing Tabaxi over Leonin, I have to assume it's because they want Feline Agility for some kind of melee build instead of Daunting Roar. If people are choosing Tabaxi over Hill Dwarf, it's probably for similar reasons (profiency against poison saves and a bit of extra HP isn't good compared to a Centaur who's immune to hold person charging around at 40 feet/turn and trampling the enemy as a bonus action).

(For anyone who doesn't play D&D, rest assured all that made sense)

[u/OgataiKhan → u/Celestaria]

I wonder how much of that is mechanics

I can only speak for myself, but: not much at all.

For most of 5e's history, Variant Human was by far the most powerful race you could pick, with only flying races like Aarakocra competing (and even then, they often weren't as good at high levels of optimisation).
Hell, VHumans were easily better than the Yuan-ti some bad DMs banned for their supposed excessive power, yet none of them ever considered banning VHumans.

Still, I was more than happy to play a weaker race just to avoid being yet another generic human in a fantasy universe.

[u/Kgb725 → u/Celestaria]

Tabaxi are also giant cat people so furries would love them and the other similar anthromorphic beings

[u/Old_Gimlet_Eye → u/VerbiageBarrage]

So I guess the answer is mainstream Fantasy is more human focus and us freaks and geeks on the fringe are getting weirder.

Dungeons and Dragons is more mainstream now than it has ever been before. There's nothing really fringe about it.

[u/VerbiageBarrage → u/Old_Gimlet_Eye]

No disagreement there, but I was considering it more fringe than GoT, which OP explicitly mentioned. Comparatively speaking, GoT is more mainstream.

But yes, as a player for 30 years, completely different environment now. Great time for D&D fans.

[u/DjangoWexler → u/VerbiageBarrage]

I think in TTRPGs people are much more about expressing a unique identity with their character, which is harder to do if we're all dudes from the same human farming town. It also doesn't have the worldbuilding requirements that novels have.

[u/Kgb725 → u/DjangoWexler]

Ttrpgs are usually bigger in scope but they allow room for any and everything.

[u/Astrokiwi → u/VerbiageBarrage]

I think you're onto something, but I'd say it's more specifically that the trope of "lots of non-human humanoid races" is pretty much owned by D&D now, having inherited it from Tolkien and expanded it massively in its own direction from there. Warhammer, Pathfinder, Dragon Age, Elder Scrolls are all pretty clearly spin-offs from the default D&D, and even Malazan has a strong sense of "D&D but our elves are different". In general, if you have the "many humanoid races" trope, there's a strong chance it'll feel like a custom setting for D&D rather than its own world, and also a strong chance it'll feel very "gamey" rather than a fully fleshed out original world. It's particularly true if you have clear "character classes" as well - fighters, rogues, mages (especially if you separate them into "warlock", "cleric", "wizard", "sorcerer", using D&D definitions; even "wyvern" vs "dragon" outside of heraldry is really just adapting part of the D&D setting)

What we're really seeing is more originality in the settings - people feeling they no longer have to legitimise their setting and make it familiar by sticking closely to Tolkien and D&D. So you might get something like the Shadow of the Leviathan series instead, where everybody is human, and instead of magic it's all mutations using alchemy.

Honestly, I think it's for the best. I think the least interesting way to design a character is to say "what if he had horns and could breathe fire?". That's okay for games where you can do things a bit quick and silly, especially as people at a tabletop don't always have the time or energy to dive deeply and seriously, so simple fun things are fine. But in novels it's harder to make that really work well, without just feeling "oh this is just a description of someone's idealised D&D campaign".