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

[Misanthrope Prime]

Adventuring is dangerous profession defined by the precarity of its workforce. It is precisely the kind of work that would attract ethnic minorities, immigrants and vagabonds without ties to the local community.

In real life, adventurers tended not to adventure in the areas they were born. Think of the famed condottiero John Hawkwood or the presence of Swiss mercenaries in the Vatican. IRL we have evidence of literal Japanese Ronin working as adventurers in 17th century Mexico... and also the famous Yasuke, a sub-Saharan African man who went on sword-slinging adventures in Japan. We've got the Varangian Guard hailing from Scandinavia in the court of the Byzantine emperors, we've got the English Henry Hudson working for the Dutch Republic exploring the lands of the Lenape that would later become New York.


Toss a dart on a map sometime in the early modern period and you could probably find a mercenary or sailor from any part of the world, with disparate skills, and you could assemble a party as diverse as your typical 5.5e D&D adventuring party, if you assume real-world cultures and ethnicities are an appropriate calque for D&D species (which I do).

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

In my previous game the party was "Three and a half 'lings" and consisted of 3 tieflings and a halfling. It was somewhat intentionally themed where they got together doing a covert mission to a country that used tieflings as shock troops.

The current main party is a dwarf, a goblin and a dhampir elf Joined by a living elf, a goliath, a changeling and 2 twin lesser coatls (using faerie stats) as people's schedules permit.

I let people mostly play what they want, unless there's a theme or campaign specific reason.

 

[Deset Gled]

It depends on how fantastical a world you want is.

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

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.

As a minor point of order, I don't think what the OP described is necessarily high fantasy, low fantasy, or any specific level of "fantastical". There can be single-race parties and all types of social norms in high fantasy. There can be relatively diverse parties in low fantasy.

I would describe what the OP is talking about as "gonzo gaming". The type of gaming where the "rule of cool" is more important than the social rules, world building, and consistency. And while gonzo gaming has been a thing forever, but I generally get the impression that baseline D&D has leaned more and more gonzo as time goes on. Just as I have seen good vampires go from being unheard of to an expected option to the norm over the course of my lifetime, I also feel like the "oddball" things people expect to be able to play in D&D has rapidly increased. So much so that plenty of things I would consider gonzo are now considered standard by others.

 

[Bravesteel25]

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?

I think I tried to address that in my OP. If the majority of the group is representative of the population at large in the setting/campaign's area of play then it really doesn't bother me.

 

[Dire Bare]

As a minor point of order, I don't think what the OP described is necessarily high fantasy, low fantasy, or any specific level of "fantastical". There can be single-race parties and all types of social norms in high fantasy. There can be relatively diverse parties in low fantasy.

I would describe what the OP is talking about as "gonzo gaming". The type of gaming where the "rule of cool" is more important than the social rules, world building, and consistency. And while gonzo gaming has been a thing forever, but I generally get the impression that baseline D&D has leaned more and more gonzo as time goes on. Just as I have seen good vampires go from being unheard of to an expected option to the norm over the course of my lifetime, I also feel like the "oddball" things people expect to be able to play in D&D has rapidly increased. So much so that plenty of things I would consider gonzo are now considered standard by others.

I think part of the challenge is feature creep. Over the past 50 years, options were introduced that became popular and were added to the core. The "core" options in 5E are quite a bit more than the "core" options in AD&D 2E. But features keep being added, and the game is overall much better balanced, designed, and focused right now, so the additional options aren't in some obscure setting book only a few have collected, but in major "everything" books.

Tieflings used to be the "weird" race in an obscure setting book (Planescape), but are now a "core" race, for example.

Playable dhampirs have been a thing for a while now, I think they go back to 2E, certainly 3E, but now they are more easily accessible to the whole community. They just might be added to the "core" for 6E!!

When you have tieflings, aasimar, goliath and dragonborn in the core rules, adding more "uncommon" species to the list isn't that much more to travel for most gamers today. You can have your "circus troupe" without using anything outside the PHB!

This isn't a problem, this is simply how D&D evolved. Some folks embrace it, some folks pine for earlier days. Such is life.

Nothing wrong with pitching an "old school" game to your play group, even with using the 5E rules. Also nothing wrong with every PC having a skin color not found IRL!!

 

[Remathilis]

As a minor point of order, I don't think what the OP described is necessarily high fantasy, low fantasy, or any specific level of "fantastical". There can be single-race parties and all types of social norms in high fantasy. There can be relatively diverse parties in low fantasy.

I would describe what the OP is talking about as "gonzo gaming". The type of gaming where the "rule of cool" is more important than the social rules, world building, and consistency. And while gonzo gaming has been a thing forever, but I generally get the impression that baseline D&D has leaned more and more gonzo as time goes on. Just as I have seen good vampires go from being unheard of to an expected option to the norm over the course of my lifetime, I also feel like the "oddball" things people expect to be able to play in D&D has rapidly increased. So much so that plenty of things I would consider gonzo are now considered standard by others.

I think the level of fantastical is definitely a factor, because determines how common a specific species is and how integrated they are. A setting like Middle Earth only has a half-dozen types of non-humans (elves, dwarves, hobbits, goblins, orcs, trolls) and they are both isolated and exceptionally rare. The Fellowship was unique because it was a mixture of the different peoples of Middle Earth who otherwise would have little to do with each other. Contrast that with Eberron, who has several integrated societies where over two dozen different species (several of which are commonly viewed as antagonists in other worlds) rub shoulders together in massive cities and local villages alike. In Middle Earth, a human, dwarf, elf and hobbit adventuring together is legend worthy, it barely warrants an eyebrow raise when you have shapechangers, were touched and living golems.

 

[Dire Bare]

I think the level of fantastical is definitely a factor, because determines how common a specific species is and how integrated they are. A setting like Middle Earth only has a half-dozen types of non-humans (elves, dwarves, hobbits, goblins, orcs, trolls) and they are both isolated and exceptionally rare. The Fellowship was unique because it was a mixture of the different peoples of Middle Earth who otherwise would have little to do with each other. Contrast that with Eberron, who has several integrated societies where over two dozen different species (several of which are commonly viewed as antagonists in other worlds) rub shoulders together in massive cities and local villages alike. In Middle Earth, a human, dwarf, elf and hobbit adventuring together is legend worthy, it barely warrants an eyebrow raise when you have shapechangers, were touched and living golems.

That's part of the disconnect too.

The fellowship was a unique group for Middle-Earth . . . but the baseline for D&D adventuring parties!

 

[Stormonu]

I seem to remember this first opening up when Complete Book of Humanoids showed up in 2E. But the real watershed moment seems to have been Savage Species in 3E - Anything could be made into a PC.

I'll admit that in most cases, if I have the option to play something other than human, I'll take it. Though, in my current game I am surprisingly playing a human. Maybe for the first time in 20 years.

I have to say, with the hundreds of monsters, humanoids and whatnot in the monster manuals alone, it's really not that out of place to see people wanting to try something other than the boring old human they have to otherwise be 24/7. Outside of Ravenloft (where being seen as a "monster" can get you into real trouble), I don't think it hurts. If the world's humanocentric, there's plenty of NPCs to represent that. As others have said, the PCs are unusual in the first place, often because they are the ones to race towards danger instead of flee or have otherwise been picked by destiny, fate, favor or luck to stand out from those beside them.

 

[Distracted DM]

I used to feel this way too. If it helps, I justified it to myself by saying, they’re adventurers. They’re already a rare bunch just by the nature of being the type of people willing to brave the dangers of the dungeon for fame and glory, or risk their lives for the sake of others. So, what’s the big deal if they also happen to be racially (or I guess specially) eclectic or 75% spellcasters in an otherwise low-magic world, or whatever. I even kind of incorporated it into my mental framework of the milieu that adventurers have a reputation for being so circus-troupe-like. There are probably plenty of “a tiefling, a drow, a dragonborn, and an orc walk into a bar” jokes about it.

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.

For those that like tolkienesque or humanocentric settings, I think this is the best justification- I've used it to make peace with the wide range of character ancestry options that players tend to assume "everything goes" "kitchen-sink" etc. in a game.

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?

Yes! But... if the GM wants to run a setting like that, then they may not have an issue with such gonzo/oddball groups in the first place (since they're looking at running not-humanocentric/tolkienesque in the first place).

 

[CreamCloud0]

For those that like tolkienesque or humanocentric settings, I think this is the best justification- I've used it to make peace with the wide range of character ancestry options that players tend to assume "everything goes" "kitchen-sink" etc. in a game.

honestly, the 'they're adventurer's, they're already oddballs by the fact they choose to walk into life-threatening danger every day as their dayjob, and this justifies their license to be the most statistically bizarre collection of individuals possible' line of thinking rubs me the wrong way, because like, the latter statement just doesn't actually really have a good basis to follow on from the former IMO.