First, I hate posting here, but I'm going to because this is an interesting discussion for me (at least right now), let's take this to the next step, shall we?
I question whether or not humans are even a legal PC race. The rulebook certainly does not clearly support Humans as a playable race for its PC's.
While humans are vaguely referred to in the rulebook, it is as a common and boring race, there is no section dedicated to them in the rulebook; even the part of the book that deals with the different races of Fortannis does not have any information on them, nor are they listed in any of the racial graphs and charts.
Further, there has been a great deal of discussion recently about how out-of-game or real world terms and thought processes effect the game as a whole, and how it's generally seen as a Bad Thing™. Why then do humans in this game not have their own culture as defined within the game world itself, instead of relying on other games, game worlds, and the real world, to define how they look and act, or what sort of "racial traits" define (or not) the group as a whole? PC races must have a race packet for players to read and adhere to, right? But humans do not require this, why not?
One can say, "you are a human ever day", but what does that have to do with the game and the game world? We don't live on Fortannis, humans don't necessarily have the same influences and history on Fortannis. For example, the Persians, Romans, and Greeks never existed on Fortannis as far as I know. So how did this so-called "medieval" culture come about? FOIG? Why should a human player have to do that, while a Biata or Barbarian or Elf player can simply read their race packet for more basic information about the game world? Why are new players punished in this way if they choose to play a Human?
When I first started playing (9ish years ago), I had to make up my own background/history/homeland (something that's basically against the rules) because there was literally no information available to me about the local in-game world, nor was it readily available to me in-game because I was new. I feel that it detracted from my ability to role play, to feel as though I had been living in the world.
So really, why are PC's allowed to play humans? And why are they allowed to given that there's so little thought, input, rulebook information, and guidelines about them? It seems rather arbitrary to me to dismiss this as a case of "that's just how it's always been", and is a horrible reason not to try and change things to improve the game and its world. If I am playing a D&D human, then the rulebook should say that. The rulebook should say something about humans, if humans are a legal PC race. It doesn't. So I question their validity as a PC race.
