In the old books, Gary Gygax suggests that the world should be human centric. I forget his logic for it, but it does make things interesting. Elves in LOTR are very interesting and amazing, elves in DnD are just pointy ears humans.
Flavor-wise, it's heavily Tolkien inspired. By playing a human, you keep the fantasy races mysterious and rare.
Mechanically, demi-humans had lower level caps and were generally not as good as human equivalents (elves are sorta fighter/mage multiclasses; dwarves are weaker fighters with gold sense; etc.). Their function was to be played when you rolled bad stats. A bad statted character wasn't likely to survive to high levels anyway, so either way, they exit early and you roll a new guy.
If I remember correctly in AD&D humans did not have any advantage while the non-humans had all sort of bonuses unlike in 3.5, so Gygax gave them level caps in order to keep the world human centric. Why would you play a boring human if elves had sleep resistance, dark vision and could spot hidden doors without searching for them.
If you did not plan for a long campaign then playing as an non-human was not only ok but desirable.
Accidentally based. You shouldn't be playing as anything other than human.
In the old books, Gary Gygax suggests that the world should be human centric. I forget his logic for it, but it does make things interesting. Elves in LOTR are very interesting and amazing, elves in DnD are just pointy ears humans.
Flavor-wise, it's heavily Tolkien inspired. By playing a human, you keep the fantasy races mysterious and rare.
Mechanically, demi-humans had lower level caps and were generally not as good as human equivalents (elves are sorta fighter/mage multiclasses; dwarves are weaker fighters with gold sense; etc.). Their function was to be played when you rolled bad stats. A bad statted character wasn't likely to survive to high levels anyway, so either way, they exit early and you roll a new guy.
If I remember correctly in AD&D humans did not have any advantage while the non-humans had all sort of bonuses unlike in 3.5, so Gygax gave them level caps in order to keep the world human centric. Why would you play a boring human if elves had sleep resistance, dark vision and could spot hidden doors without searching for them. If you did not plan for a long campaign then playing as an non-human was not only ok but desirable.