Assigned human racial personality.

[Jharviss]

Honestly I feel like Steerpike's point is the most viable one I've heard thus far.  Writing my races, I can't differentiate my other races very well.  I worked hard to make all of my races with only slight mental differences from humans; thus, writing the human personality traits is impossible.  

Something I considered (similar to Phoenix, but less extreme) was writing my entire setting from the standpoint of "this is a gnomish roleplaying game found on our world about theirs."  Thus, the gnomes are the adaptable, standard race, and all of the other races have unique traits (including the human's unnatural height, unique range of eye colors, and frighteningly strong bodies.  Ironically, even from a gnome's point of view, humans are still kind of boring.

Maybe if I picked a really out there race... illithids!  There we go, illithids are writing the book.  Suddenly humans are the tentacle-less, hairless monkeys with tasty brains.  Such traits include "tasty brains," "somewhat stupid (-8 intellect)," "afraid of the dark," and "annoyingly heroic."  Yes, I think this will be how I present humans in the future.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Jharviss]Maybe if I picked a really out there race... illithids! There we go, illithids are writing the book. Suddenly humans are the tentacle-less, hairless monkeys with tasty brains. Such traits include "tasty brains," "somewhat stupid (-8 intellect)," "afraid of the dark," and "annoyingly heroic." Yes, I think this will be how I present humans in the future.[/blockquote]This reminds me of a bit from China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, where a character notes that to a khepri - a crimson-skinned race of humanoid females with scarab beetles for heads (the males are just beetles) - humans are khepri with the heads of hairless baboons.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Well it seems like from Steerpike's perspective that if a bunch of species are significantly different from one another to have different mindsets there's probably little point in giving them separate entries.

I actually did that once: rather than have all my humanoid forms be different species I lumped them together into one by saying their ancestral shapeshifter DNA mutated developing embryos to come out with new features or even in completely different forms from the parent.

[Polycarp]

Most of the best stuff has already been said here.  I do cringe a little at some of the more negative portrayals that people have mentioned - it seems sometimes like fantasy authors/world-builders have a tendency to define us by our worst aspects.  As funny as self-deprecating ethnic humor can be, sometimes it just comes off as strangely bitter and out of place.

A bit has been said about the importance of relative differences between species that come out in mutual perceptions.  There is, however, an "authoritative voice" that the world-builder also possesses; it's one thing to say that a race is hated by all the other races, and another to also convey that they are, objectively, evil.  Even if you want to try and remain "neutral" and define races by each other rather than by the author's fiat, you may be stymied simply by the fact that this is a game, with rules and mechanics, and eventually you'll have to objectively define those mechanics and concretely define each race (in terms of physical abilities and so on).  It's not possible to eliminate your own voice entirely, and probably equally impossible to make yourself an entirely neutral observer.  Surely you have opinions on your own work?

I think that we should be mindful of how those two voices go together.  I've read campaigns where a species is defined one way by its peers, but it becomes clear that the author has their own opinions of them.  This is not necessarily a bad thing - it allows you to create a race that is secretive or simply misunderstood.  The author can let the reader in on facts that in-game members of other races would have no way of knowing.  Still, it's possible to sabotage yourself with conflicting voices, or at least make things confusing to the readers/players.  If you tell them it's evil, they'll likely see it as evil, and any efforts you made to have in-game NPCs inject some nuance into the situation may be for naught.  They are, after all, just characters, and you're the goddamn author!

[Jharviss]

Just to throw out one idea that halfway worked for my endeavor -

When we created humans, we were looking specifically at what other races typically have that humans don't.  In common fantasy, just about the only common trait is that humans are short-lived.  That bites.  Something else to realize is that most fantasy races have at least partially pointed ears.  Dwarves and humans are the "round ears" in my fantasy setting, and all the other races are normal.

What I've done with Tephra is define them using a trait that does not change humans as they are but utilizes something that only exists in my setting - magic.  Because magic does not exist, we as humans do not know how well we'd handle magic. In my setting we work under the assumption that humans are the most magically talented.  This assumption doesn't change humans but gives humans definition other than being the "center" race.

It's a bend on the normal "adaptable" concept, but it's still works.

Find something in your setting that doesn't exist in the real world and say that humans do really well with it in your setting.  OR find something that most of your other races share in common and define humans off of that (though avoid negatives - I don't want my character defined by the fact that he's shorter than lived everyone else).  Maybe your humans are better at magic, but perhaps they're one of the strongest races, have the best hand-eye coordination, respond best in stressful situations, have a wider view of good and evil than other races (I like this one), are better at innovative buildings, enjoy the sunlight more (easy to do in fantasy settings where most races seem to live underground or under canopies), are the only race not affected by mutations, weather diseases better, or any list of a hundred things that you can give exclusively to humans.

You may surprise yourself.

[sparkletwist]

Basically my point is that to make humans unique, make the differences between races BIGGER.

I've wrestled with trying to make "truly alien" creatures, because to make something that doesn't think like a human, you have to think a little bit not-like-a-human yourself, which is difficult-- being a human, and all. ;)

[Llum]

Basically my point is that to make humans unique, make the differences between races BIGGER.

This. However I say this applies to every non-human race, not just "truly alien" creatures. Why I prefer to avoid non-humans.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

However I say this applies to every non-human race, not just "truly alien" creatures.

Unless you assume they're only non-human on the outside.

[Llum]

However I say this applies to every non-human race, not just "truly alien" creatures.

Then they aren't really that "non-human" are they? :P A fudge factor can let people get away with humanoid races (see, Elves/Orcs/etc...), we nearly all use it.

However if you have some sentient gelatinous cube race, GL convincing me they're only "non-human" on the outside, I've said it before, the way we think is directly tied to our physiology, so if you get too far away from a "humanoid" body-plan I don't think you could realistically have something that thinks like a human. This also applies to Hive Minds.

[Steerpike]

[blockquote=Llum]However if you have some sentient gelatinous cube race, GL convincing me they're only "non-human" on the outside, I've said it before, the way we think is directly tied to our physiology, so if you get too far away from a "humanoid" body-plan I don't think you could realistically have something that thinks like a human. This also applies to Hive Minds.[/blockquote]Llum, thank you!  This is exactly what I wanted to express, in a much less convoluted way than I've been doing so.

[sparkletwist]

However I say this applies to every non-human race, not just "truly alien" creatures.

Unless you assume they're only non-human on the outside.

This works fine for characters that are just humans with pointy ears or green skin or whatever, and there's no real need to assign then any sort of a "racial personality"-- because they're just humans that look different. Their physiology is close enough to human that one would assume their way of thinking would also be very close, but:

if you get too far away from a "humanoid" body-plan I don't think you could realistically have something that thinks like a human.

[SilvercatMoonpaw]

Well one thing that's especially loathsome about the "adaptable/varied" label is when it's used in some kind of "humans are teh super-special-awesome" tale.  Happens a bit too much in sci-fi, in my experience.

[LordVreeg]

Generally, I assign cultural tendencies, traits and mindsets based on the historical experiences of that cultural group first.  Most Omwo~ cultures are shaped by their lost status' or purposeful repudiation of same, Clan Kalil Humans are generally proud warriors and place a high value on organization due to their history of nation building to the south.
I don't purposely try to avoid the normal tropes, but I try to provide a sound historical background for everything.  Biology does come into it as well, such as the female dwarven heightened sex urge being driven by their racial fertility issues.
My Bugbears (Gartier) are still my favorites, driven by history into a sour, hyper-intelligent sarcasm.

This should define my feelings on this in a nutshell.

[ic=Gartier, an example of history driving a cultural trait template]
The Gartier question is a very complicated one. Of all the Ogrillite families, the Gartier are the most difficult to grasp and the most tortured. When created in the beginning of the Age of Heroes by Anthraxus, they were bred to lead. For thousands of years, almost every humanoid tribal band has been either led by a bugbear or bugbears, or they were the brains behind it.  When asked about their near worship of irony and sarcasm, they often reply with a variation of, "You spend hundreds of generations trying to tell every bloody goblin and gnoll which hand is for eating and which is for ass-wiping, and unsuccessfully mind you, you'd be a little jaded too."  Strong, smart, and hardy, they were the perfect captains and generals for the other ogrillites... except they were too smart, and too clever, and for generations they looked in at the civilized world, and hated it for not being able to be part of it. Every Gartier for thousands of years has, internally and mainly subconsiously, despised themselves for being a barbarian and being outside civilization. The Gartier hatred of culture and civilization was not the Orcash or Ograk mindless hatred whipped by priests and zealots, it was the deeper mirror of hating what they could not have but knew they were worthy of.


So, to understand the civilized Gartier, on the surface all self-reliant and sarcastic, you have to take into account what has been passed on from parent to child for years.  They have a mantra about how soft and unworthy the civilization of towns and cities is and also which they have preached to their near-idiot followers. Given that lengthy history and a scant 75 years, just over one lifetime, of being allowed to partake in this civilization, and stir in the very-prevalent racism and prejudice of beings generally weaker and stupider than yourselves and you can start to see their situation. Then add in all the tribal (uncivilized) Gartier sneering at you for 'going soft' and 'being a Hobyt-lover'...now maybe you can understand a tiny bit of the Gartier mentality. On a good day, they hate the rest of the world more than they hate themselves.

[/ic]

[Stargate525]

Well part of my ignorance is that I've never seen a hive-mind portrayed well enough that I'd notice the distinction.

Have you read Ender's Game? The Buggers are, for me, a very well portrayed hive mind; they don't even realize humans are sentient because we lack an overmind.

[Jharviss]

:offtopic:

I've said it before, the way we think is directly tied to our physiology, so if you get too far away from a "humanoid" body-plan I don't think you could realistically have something that thinks like a human.

The way we think is tied to our physiology?  Great.

I guess I need to get in shape.