Encouraging Players to Play Humans (Without Just Saying No)

I missed out on this video (and was only in a bit of the "Let's Battle a Useless TTRPG SJW" livestream) but wanted to add in my two cents after the fact.

In case you forgot the title of this post and don't want to click on the link (it's a really lengthy video), the topic was--in the context of D&D and D&Dish games--how to encourage players to choose humans over demihumans, without simply telling them, no, they cannot play a demihuman.

Among the many suggestions I can recall were imposing XP penalties, racism, and even penalizing elves when underground and dwarves when above ground. While I think these could work, to a point, the solution I would have pitched had I remembered to show up is far simpler than that: just give humans something that makes them actually worth choosing in comparison to or even over everything else.

In older editions of D&D humans could choose any class, and attain any level. The issue is that barring some actual in-game justification, the former doesn't make any sense, and we rarely if ever hit one of the racial level caps (which would be 8 at the earliest, assuming a gnome fighter): the highest level character I got in 2nd Edition was level 12 (human fighter), which is the average demihuman cap.

While I mostly played humans in 2nd Edition, I think this had more to do with me not wanting to note down a bunch of situational racial features and/or wanting to just speed through character creation. But nowadays I'd want something that both makes sense and provides an immediate benefit, as opposed to perhaps kicking in a year or so down the line.

4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons of all things accomplished this by giving humans a floating +2 to any ability score, as well as a bonus feat and starting skill. This plays up the idea that they are both flexible and adaptable (especially when compared to other races), while also making them easier to work with: no having to remember situational abilities and modifiers, just pick a few extra things and you're done.

For something like 2nd Edition, I'd give humans +1 to a stat, either their choice or rolling a d6 to make it random. Another option is a passive bonus to XP gained. Something like 5% to make it pretty easy to calculate. You could even do both if you think it's worth the collective features other races get, or just want to make humans more appealing than the rest.

(Note that with either or both of these benefits, I'd remove the racial class limits and level cap.)

Now that's if you want players to be more inclined to choose humans of their own volition. If you want to reinforce humans being the most commonly encountered race, you could create a table for players to roll on to determine their race.

I did this in Dungeons & Delvers as an optional rule, creating two tables. One was setup so that you could pick whatever you rolled, defaulting to human if you didn't like the result, while the other had more flexibility, letting you stick with what you rolled or go up the table and choose any of the races along the way (human was at the top, so that was always an option).

It doesn't encourage the players to pick human, but it does reinforce racial demographics without giving them an outright no. That said, I'd be inclined to do both: make humans more worthwhile and restrict races, but develop custom tables that represent your campaign world (or region). I'd also just outright ban races that I really don't want in the game.