Lago PARANOIA wrote:... is a cliche...
That doesn't automatically make it bad, but I admit the second some dumb fan boy started off with 'In Mass Effect Humans..." I growned, and not just because I hate Mass Effect as a dull uncreative cliche ridden derivative piece of shit that it is, but indeed because I knew what would come after that in that sentence (because mass effect is so predictably lame) and didn't like it (because it was predictably lame).
Mind you the thing where you then go on to say people will defy your stereotype is stupid of course. And thats about all the mention that deserves.
So anyway there are some other human traits you could pull off.
Humans Suck
Actually humans ARE the boring vanilla race. They ARE the jacks of all trades. But in this variation that DOESN'T make them awesome, it makes them the "Masters of None" and EVERYONE kicks their ass within specialty fields and everyone wonders why they keep humans around at all. Humans are threatened economically, socially and physically, they are a threatened species and they really ARE underdogs. They get sympathy interest as a species purely by being underdogs. And they suck as PCs, so maybe a bad idea for an actual game, unless you are prepared to give up on humans as PCs since players rarely want to play as humans ANYWAY.
Humans are brutal savages
Almost as cliche as our "all round awesomeness" thing. But slightly more interesting with it's filthy violent barbarian aspect. Everyone wants human mercenaries. And Orcs feel a bit miffed, but fuck it, screw orcs, they are even less popular and more cliched than humans anyway.
Earth Girls Are Easy
Humans are good at something. Producing sexy sexy busty girl humans. Human, and maybe half human, girls are the sexiest thing in town. (I mean sure maybe there are even hotter Nymphs or Succubi, but they are rare and somewhat powerful, while human girls breed like rabbits and have the ability to fight off superior demi-humans that is also similar to a rabbit's) All the elves and dwarfs want to kidnap a human concubine or 100, and all the orcs and tentacled terrors want to devour the tender flesh of human maidens. Humans are constantly under siege as they fight off constant waves of non-humans with no special powers other than the best factory outlet bulk supply of boobies in the universe. If they weren't breeding so fast what with that bottomless supply of abnormally attractive human girls they would long since have gone extinct. And if everyone didn't know that "free range" human girls were better they would long since have been properly domesticated in demi-human captivity, and indeed probably large percentages of the human population ARE even despite the popularity of the wild game version.
Humans Aren't In The Old Boys Club
Run with the David Brin uplift variant here. Everyone else is in the awesome club, they've long ago all found their specialties and developed awesome powers (or rather, technologies). Humans didn't get the invite the day the awesome tech and civilization specialties were being handed out... and they completely missed out, rocking up thousands of years late to the party without an invite and with nothing much to offer anyone other than a bit of a surprise and some mild offense. Human tech/powers are second rate home made hodge podge that may have some minor advantages here or there and because humans actually know how their own tech works, but the aliens all just go to their alien specialist friends for each of their tech needs and no one but the Toaster Oven race even knows how the hell Toaster Ovens are made, but the Toaster Ovens are AWESOME to the point of being beyond human understanding. This is sort of a variant of the "humans really suck" angle, except since it's largely about technological gaps being a human in this setting is to a large extent about struggling with an equipment gap and then trying to steal everyone else's cool items and item making secrets. edit: Also if the Refrigerator Race needs to secretly stock up on Toaster Ovens without the knowledge of the Toaster Oven race or their allies the Comfy Chair alliance, then they COULD make a shady bargain for some second rate human toaster ovens, and it's not like the humans won't be forced to give them VERY favorable exchange rates for their superior alien refrigerators. Hell those foolish naive humans will think the Refrigerator Race is doing them a favor, even as they are being framed.
Humans are the Humans from Guyver
Humans turn out to be the base stock of all the other races. It isn't just that elves and dwarfs were BRED from humans (another fine option), it's actually the case that humans are sort of a mature larval stage thingy a bit like an Axolotl. Pretty much every single humanoid monster in the world (and maybe some of the less humanoid ones) used to personally BE a human before their metamorphosis into a Gregole or whatever, maybe they can even cosmetically turn back to pull the full shirt ripping werewolf routine. Players pick the human race because it is compulsory, then they pretty much always turn into a monster as part of their character advancement or find themselves a Guyver unit, which may as well be the same thing really.
What Non-Humans?
Screw you, why do you need non-humans again? You want to be an elf. You can just be a gay human. You want to be a dwarf? You can just be a hairy gay human. You want to be a Gnome? You are a short, also gay human. You want to be a halfling? You are a short AND hairy, but still alarmingly gay, human. You can do this literally and just
not do other humanoid races for a setting, because really you don't need them, and they are sorta silly. Or you can do this mechanically and just not give out mechanical racial differences for elves, dwarfs, or orcs and have everyone mechanically identical to human as long as they are, let's face it, close enough to physically identical. You don't get funky mechanical racial powers until you have four arms, wings, or gills. And those may or may not exist in the setting.
Humans are Space Dragons
There are legends among the races of the largely cold and icy universe of a deadly and unique race from the blazing hot inner worlds of a distant sun that would be uninhabitable by normal life forms. They are fast moving, short lived, brutally violent, always hungry and angry due to their boiling metabolisms, so hot they not only CAN drink LIQUID water in order to survive, but MUST, and indeed the burning hot stuff spurts out of their bodies when they are injured. They are infested with countless deadly parasites and microbes from the disease ridden tropical swamp worlds they call home and they are masters of mysterious technologies that heat things up and make things explode, often as a byproduct of whatever else the technology is supposed to do. They rarely venture to the civilized cold worlds of the majority of the universes' races, but when they do it is impossible to tell whether or not it is a scouting mission, a diplomatic mission or a military invasion, they seem to end up melting and exploding everything they come into contact with regardless.