Flamestrike
Legend
Its not a party or adventurers.
Its a flock.
Its a flock.
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D&D 5E The All-Kenku Party: Is it possible? Would it drive a DM insane?
- Thread starter Prakriti
- Start date
First NPC the party meets, greets them with, "Hello!"
Rogue replies, "Hello!"
Fighter replies, "Hello!"
Wizard replies, "Hello!"
Cleric replies, "Hello!"
Bard replies, "Hello!"
NPC blinks once, then twice, then slowly backs away.
Rogue replies, "Hello!"
Fighter replies, "Hello!"
Wizard replies, "Hello!"
Cleric replies, "Hello!"
Bard replies, "Hello!"
NPC blinks once, then twice, then slowly backs away.
It would look like the seagulls from finding nemo. But child sized, so it's creepy...
MarkB
Legend
Somewhere between that and the Predator.
Celebrim
Legend
Whenever a person makes this sort of assertion, I can tell they don't spend much time as a DM. It sounds like a reasonable statement. I suppose some DMs would accept it as a proposition. It however falls apart under inspection.
First, as someone noted, it fails because it "defeats the purpose of the experiment". The whole point of having an all Kenku party was to try to bring to life and animate the idea of characters that only speak via mimicry. If you have players stating that they ask for a room at an inn using a weird allegory, rather than actually creating the weird allegory, the purpose of the experiment is lost. In a lesser but still very real way, this is true of all role play. Whenever a player says what his character says rather than speaks for his character, the point of role playing the character gets lost a little. It might not matter much if the interaction between the character and the innkeep is a trivial one, but the less trivial the interaction the more gets lost when actual roleplay doesn't take place. There is no substitute for being in character.
Secondly, because it involves less skillful play to give a summary of what your player is trying to achieve with the conversation rather than to perform the conversation yourself. As a craft and hobby that you spend hours of your life on, it behooves you and benefits you to hone that craft and improve your skill in it. You should always be trying to be a better player who is ever more entertaining to your fellow players. Speaking up and dramatically animating your character is difficult but rewarding. The player that actually quotes something that suggests his character needs a room at the inn is more entertaining than the one that just says he quotes something.
And thirdly, and this is the most important point, you'd never accept the same behavior from the DM. The DM is not the NPCs either, but you'd never assert that because he's not the NPCs he doesn't have to play the characters. You'll always hold your own entertainment to a higher standard. DMs are acutely aware of the challenges of their position, and they know they can't get away with that crap. Sure, a DM could say that an NPC uses a weird allegory to ask for a room at the inn, but if you as the DM did say that it would probably leave your players baffled. They'd have insufficient information to understand what just happened. They'd want to know what the allegory was. They might not understand what a Kenku is or why it was talking that way, and telling is no substitute for showing. This shows up in all sorts of ways. You as a DM can't just tell the players, "The jester is funny. He tells a side-splitting joke. You fall off your chair and roll on the floor." Or rather, I suppose that you could, but the experience of being told that the jester is funny is not nearly the same as encountering an NPC that is actually funny. It may be rather disappointing to a player to discover he can't play a PC that is funny just because he wants to play a funny character, if he is himself not a particularly witty or funny player, but I assure you that DM's with any experience at all become acutely aware of the limitations they have of achieving an effect with an NPC. You can write in your notes, "The NPCs have an argument", or the "NPC begins telling jokes", but when it comes to crunch time its not enough to write that, you actually have to invent the details. In the same fashion that a book or a movie usually needs to rely on dialogue to establish character and get a certain reaction from the audience, a DM has to rely on dialogue. And the DM's audience will demand that of him in the same way they'd demand it of the author of a novel or a screenplay. If you as the DM want your players to react to an NPC in an emotional way, it's not enough to tell the players how you want them to react. You can't tell players, "You find an NPC. He's very endearing and now you care for him a lot." If you tried, they'd probably assume some sinister spell was at work and find an excuse to kill the NPC. To make an NPC actually endearing to the PCs, you have to make the NPC actually endearing to the players. And the only way to do that is animate the NPC and provide that NPC with a voice.
What is required for the DM is also, by way of the ethic of reciprocity, generally required of the player as well. If the DM has an obligation to entertain the players, the players have an obligation also to entertain the DM and their fellow players. If the DM can't cheat to achieve an effect, the players shouldn't try to cheat to achieve an effect. If the DM must, for the sake of the players, hone skills to be a good DM, so then the players must also for the sake of everyone else at the table be striving to be a good and skilled player.
Ganymede81
First Post
I read this much.
Tinker-TDC
Explorer
Since kenku are crows wouldn't it be a murder?
Celebrim
Legend
And yet, you are oddly proud enough of that fact to tell me about it.
Celebrim
Legend
How would that differentiate them from the more usual groups of adventurers?
Ganymede81
First Post
The 80s kid in me wishes they were actually seagull folk.
