D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties

[Xamnam]

I do think that the title of the thread is more likely to entice people who already agree with your position, and make those who are on the other side of it more likely to walk in defensive about they enjoy.

I can honestly say I've never once thought about how out of place or not the composition of an adventuring group has been. I've always played in the Forgotten Realms, and that is generally cosmopolitan enough that it would take something monumentally eye-catching to grab my attention. Sure, they're not the average group of people, but there are non-average groups I run into every day in real life.

In addition, the line that stable, normal people aren't generally drawn to a life of dungeon delving does do a lot of work for me, and 'tourists' are almost always going to look out place.

 

[Bravesteel25]

I was a bit disappointed because I thought this thread would be talking about circus troupes as a framing device for an adventuring party. I did play in a game once where we were part of a circus troupe, and it was a lot of fun! Ironically, as a part of the setting we all had to play humans too

I changed the thread title to be a little more illuminating. Sorry!

You ninja'd me by about 30 seconds. I was also thinking this thread was going to be about using a circus troupe as a framing device.

Which would be my advice to the OP. If the table wants to field a party that feels like a circus troupe, you could always lean into it and say they literally are a circus troupe. Eclectic circus troupes exist in the real world, so it's not much of a stretch to say the fantasy equivalent would exist in a generic fantasy world.

That's certainly not a bad idea. Obviously it's good to lean into what the players want to do, but player agency can't just completely supplant the campaign or world that the DM wants to run just because someone wants to player a flying rat wizard with a superiority complex.

This is one of the advantages of playing in a game with a DM who takes a more active hand in establishing setting expectations. If they care about species proportions and likelihood of appearance in the various adventuring parties, they will restrict options for players as part of their setting pitch. At which point the players can decide whether or not they wish to play in the game under those restrictions.

But I do agree that it can feel a bit off-putting when the DM gives a starting scenario for the campaign that would insinuate a certain type of character, but then doesn't actually restrict the options players can choose. And the players then make up wildly off-brand characters that have little to nothing to do with the starting scenario.

"You are all former member guardians of a Baron's security detail and your Baron has been kidnapped."
"Great! I'm going to play a Psion Sprite with the Sage background!"
"Why exactly would a psionic fairy sage be working as a bodyguard and why would the Baron have actually hired you in the first place?"
"I don't care! That's what I want to play!"
"I have made a terrible mistake."

You're right, a lot of these things can be avoided by having a proper (and firm) understanding of what the game is going to be from the DM's perspective.

What you outlined by the psionic fairy sage is another part of this that I have a problem with where players just want to throw anything and everything at the wall, in-universe logic ignored.

It's a play style, or genre within fantasy. Nothing wrong with enjoying such a diverse adventuring party, but nothing wrong with preferring a human-centric campaign either. Only problem is when there is a disconnect between the players and the GM.

Certainly, D&D has shifted from a more human-centric play style to the "circus troupe" of diverse species, but hey, things change!

If your player group enjoys the diverse troupe style, you should lighten up and enjoy the fun along with them!

If you are the DM, and your group is open to a more traditional, human-centric party, more power to ya!

Maybe I didn't state it clearly enough, but it's not about being human-centric, but rather ecleticism in party makeup that often seems to be just for the sake of diversity and a players making their character as special and different as possible in every conceivable way.

I realize I may come off as a little curmudgeonly, but it doesn't mean I don't want players to have fun and be special, but I feel like the trend where those boundaries are pushed to the very limit and beyond has only become more and more common. shrugs

 

[Dire Bare]

Absolutely, I feel this is a thing.

I attribute a lot to the 5e rules, where every race is just a human with a different rubber forehead. We've got everything from humans, demons, undead, near-giants, orcs, and ankle-biters all meeting up in a tavern with barely the slightest mechanical difference between any of them. Personally, I can get stuck at figuring out how they can all physically sit at the same booth without major structural redesign of the chairs and tables. Meanwhile, the narratives proceed without a care.

This isn't exactly new to 5th Edition. We started to see an increase in race/species types in both BECMI D&D and AD&D 2E back in the late 80s and 90s. Certainly it's increased since then, but that really got going with 3rd Edition and was carried through to both 4E and 5E.

 

[Dire Bare]

This is one of the advantages of playing in a game with a DM who takes a more active hand in establishing setting expectations. If they care about species proportions and likelihood of appearance in the various adventuring parties, they will restrict options for players as part of their setting pitch. At which point the players can decide whether or not they wish to play in the game under those restrictions.

Eh.

I think a better framing than having a "DM establishing setting expectations" is . . . having a session zero where campaign style and theme is discussed. If the play group decides on the circus troupe, great! If the play group decides on a mostly human-centered campaign, great! If they all want to play dragonborn (like my middle school students), great! And, of course, the DM is part of the play group! And if they're doing a lot of prep work, their vote should probably carry a bit more weight, but also shouldn't ignore what the other players want out of the game.

 

[Dire Bare]

Maybe I didn't state it clearly enough, but it's not about being human-centric, but rather ecleticism in party makeup that often seems to be just for the sake of diversity and a players making their character as special and different as possible in every conceivable way.

I realize I may come off as a little curmudgeonly, but it doesn't mean I don't want players to have fun and be special, but I feel like the trend where those boundaries are pushed to the very limit and beyond has only become more and more common. shrugs

Okay, but that doesn't really change any of what I said.

You don't care for "eclectic" adventuring parties. Okay, shrug. What do your players want? If they are enjoying playing anything and everything, then lighten up and join the fun! Or find a new group. Have you talked to your players? Maybe they would be game for a mostly human party, or a mostly dragonborn party, or what-have-you.

 

[Deset Gled]

This isn't exactly new to 5th Edition. We started to see an increase in race/species types in both BECMI D&D and AD&D 2E back in the late 80s and 90s. Certainly it's increased since then, but that really got going with 3rd Edition and was carried through to both 4E and 5E.

It's completely fair to say it's not new to 5e, but I would say it feels like exponential growth.

2e kept a lot of things reigned in with settings; different settings provided different guidelines on how how fantasy races interacted, how to handle social stuff, generally giving look-and-feel guidelines, etc. 3e leaned heavily into mechanical limitations; hard coded size rules, LA rules, modifiers for everything from racial CHA to situational penalties.

5e, OTOH, basically takes the "hold my beer and watch this!" approach.

 

[Distracted DM]

But I do agree that it can feel a bit off-putting when the DM gives a starting scenario for the campaign that would insinuate a certain type of character, but then doesn't actually restrict the options players can choose. And the players then make up wildly off-brand characters that have little to nothing to do with the starting scenario.

"You are all former member guardians of a Baron's security detail and your Baron has been kidnapped."
"Great! I'm going to play a Psion Sprite with the Sage background!"
"Why exactly would a psionic fairy sage be working as a bodyguard and why would the Baron have actually hired you in the first place?"
"I don't care! That's what I want to play!"
"I have made a terrible mistake."

Yup. I've had that often enough- except the player(s) generally try to justify it, forcing that square peg into the round hole, they don't just say "I don't care." But their justifications are clearly only there because this is the character that they wanted to play.

 

[Bae'zel]

I mean, it depends! If the campaign has a high fantasy, sci-fi or gonzo feel, I'm all for it!

Planescape? Numenera? Adventure Time? Something out of a surreal Alejandro Jodorowski / Moebius collab? Bring it on!

Gritty pseudo-historical take on the Rose War? Ummm...

It all comes down to setting expectations during the campaign pitch, right? Session zero etc...

 

[Dire Bare]

It’s kind of relatable in a way, if you belong to any obscure or outcast subculture. At least in my experience as an LGBTQ person, we societal outcasts tend to be drawn to each other. The rest of society pushes us to the margins, and we end up finding each other, because we all share that common experience of not fitting in with the rest of our peers. So, we band together for community and solidarity, and we form little bands of weirdos and freaks. Who among us hasn’t been on some outing with their friends and caught a stray “is the circus in town?”

Framed that way, it doesn’t seem so strange to me that adventuring parties would be similarly conspicuous within common society. Indeed, perhaps it is this very ostracization that drives them to become adventurers in the first place. The goblins, kobolds, Tabaxi, and Shadar-Kai have a hard time finding honest work because nobody trusts them, so they end up taking on dangerous mercenary work to make their way in the world, and through that work end up meeting others who are there for similar reasons, and decide to look for the next job together.

I haven't really thought of adventuring party composition in this way before, but I think you nailed it! This is the perfect way to "justify" (not that it needs justification) a diverse, eclectic adventuring party.

I've spent a lot of time in the theater community in my area, another community that tends to attract outcasts, misfits, and others who struggle to fit into "normie" society. When I was watching the animated "The Legend of Vox Machina" and now "The Mighty Nein" on Amazon, I was reminded of this, as the adventuring parties in both stories are pretty diverse and eclectic!

And . . . tabletop roleplaying is another community that attracts a lot of "outsiders", and it's understandable if many of them prefer to create fantastical, "unique" characters of all sorts of colors, ear-shapes, and species!

The fiction that inspired D&D in the first place was more human-centered, the more fantastical races/species tended to be side-characters, background characters, or antagonists rather than "player hero" protagonists. So, I also get when folks want their D&D game to model that fictional inspiration, but . . . that was 50 years ago!

 

[Remathilis]

I have a player who has played D&D for almost 30 years and is sick of elves dwarves and humans. He will play the weirdest thing you can offer every time. He's not a bad player, but he's always going to be the odd man out. Some players are just like that.