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

[DEFCON 1]

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.

Either way works. Really depends on the DM and what their desires are for the games they wish to run. If a DM is open to all kinds of possible games, then yeah, the group of players all working together to come up with a theme for the campaign will work great. But if the DM changes themes with each subsequent campaign they run so as to make sure they are each different every time, then they are good to makes the decisions in my opinion. And if the players don't like a particular theme then they can choose not to play in that particular game and wait for the next one.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Hot take, I think a much bigger influence on modern fantasy snd thus dnd, than anyone gives it credit for, is Wizard of Oz. And that adventuring party was a human, a lion, a scarecrow and defenitely-not-a-robot

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Hot take, I think a much bigger influence on modern fantasy snd thus dnd, than anyone gives it credit for, is Wizard of Oz. And that adventuring party was a human, a lion, a scarecrow and defenitely-not-a-robot

And the little dog too!

 

[Bravesteel25]

I just play with similarly minded people (who like Pratchett, Star Trek and Monty Python). I’m afraid I would tend to avoid playing with a group whose tastes were very different.

This I find strange, in that I prefer Science Fiction to Fantasy, and thus I prefer an array of diverse aliens to boring old elves and dwarves.

I guess, for me it all comes down to genre expectations and the milleu therein. Science Fiction has a greater ability to explain diversity (thousands of inhabited planets in the Third Imperium for instance) while also providing a higher level of believability in why such diversity exists (FTL, Jump Space). Whereas in a fantasy setting travel tends to be much more restricted so "others" outside the spread in a particular region jumps out at me more.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I guess, for me it all comes down to genre expectations and the milleu therein. Science Fiction has a greater ability to explain diversity (thousands of inhabited planets in the Third Imperium for instance) while also providing a higher level of believability in why such diversity exists (FTL, Jump Space). Whereas in a fantasy setting travel tends to be much more restricted so "others" outside the spread in a particular region jumps out at me more.

For me the variety of sentient species in D&D (and I include the contents of the monster manual) cannot be taken seriously, so I don’t. It sounds like you are looking for a more grounded game than fits the standard 5e rules. It’s OTT high fantasy, so it attracts players who like OTT high fantasy.

 

[Epic Meepo]

I guess, for me it all comes down to genre expectations and the milleu therein. Science Fiction has a greater ability to explain diversity (thousands of inhabited planets in the Third Imperium for instance) while also providing a higher level of believability in why such diversity exists (FTL, Jump Space). Whereas in a fantasy setting travel tends to be much more restricted so "others" outside the spread in a particular region jumps out at me more.

If we're talking D&D magic levels, I'm not sure travel is much more restricted in fantasy than in sci-fi. Portals and long-distance teleportation spells both appear in the latest core rules. Both of those options allow for FTL travel.

And even if we assume portals and teleportation aren't widely available, there's no reason fantasy settings can't have long-distance trade routes. The Forgotten Realms setting, for example, includes several long-distance trade routes that facilitate a steady exchange of goods (and people) between distant lands.

 

[CreamCloud0]

if you have an issue with circus troupe parties, how much better do you find it when the troupe is an accurate sample of the setting's populations? like, if the world is filled with harengon, firbolgs, genasi, autognomes and centaurs as the majority of population, does that take the edge off the party also being composed of that eclectic group of species?

 

[Sorcerers Apprentice]

I see the appeal of playing an oddball character, but when everybody is odd, nobody is odd.

 

[Xethreau]

I play RPGs partially to escape the homogeneity of RL, so I think that diversity in party composition is desirable. But to make this work, it requires either a certain level of narrative hands-off-ness or otherwise strong narrative cohesion. Put another way, my question is mostly a matter of "How do you know each other?" and "How do you present your shared identity?"

Answers like "We are Vox Machnia" don't make much sense to me; it gives "secretest club" vibes, which is not what I am going for. But saying stuff like "We are Harpers" or "We are Expedition 33" DOES make a lot of sense to me because it situates the characters, no matter how diverse, directly into the narrative and faction play of the world.

On the other hand, having a rag-tag group of characters from several different guilds, I think, is deeply confusing without context. For me, you'd have to have them all participate in the same introductory storyline that defined the campaign, like in BG3.

 

[Scribe]

Its harder to encounter the 'weird and interesting' when to your left is Bob the Green Ooze Sorcerer, and to your right is Frank the Orc Bard.