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

[Remathilis]

My first D&D party was a minotaur, a grung, 2 gnomes, a lizardfolk, and a human child (I think literally 8 years old). The DM had given us some website that was NOT the phb to pick our characters from. He did have a ban list, but it was based on mechanical abilities he didn't like (aaracockra) rather than lore. Grung was actually on the ban list, but I was already looking at the website when he posted that and I asked him if I could play the little frog because it's cute and he said sure.

So yeah, I don't have a formative experience of Only Tolkien Trio Species to hold onto.

When I started my Dragonlance game I tried giving the Dragonlance uniques (irda, kender, kyrie, thanoi, draconians) the most interesting-sounding species descriptions to lure players into playing them. I got an irda and a kender PC out of it...and a tiefling bard but isn't that in every D&D party?

My Ravenloft game was the best and worst example of player's grabbing the theme. They consisted of:

* A human blood hunter (ghosthunter)
*A Dhampir bard (lore)
*A Hexblood cleric of Ezra (twilight)
*A human artificer (reanimator, custom made before the horror UA)
*A reborn sorcerer (shadow)
and
*An awakened cat wizard (necromancer)

Five out of six ain't bad...

 

[Gradine]

Yeah, I mean this is a problem with campaign expectations, not the game itself. I've played in and run games with all kinds of specific rules for what was or was not in play. Our college 3.5 D&D group had a character who always wanted to play a centaur. I was never in favor it, but she also had zero issues with the "all-human" campaign that was the actual circus troupe. Most of my PCs from that time were humans, but I had a few "circus troupe" characters ranging from a Kobold ninja, a Warforged monk, a dwarf that was raised by gnomes, and a telepathic seven-year old with a pet cognizance crystal and who lived in a barrel (and whose name was Beril).

Good times, all around

 

[Hussar]

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.

At the end of the day, this is pretty much what you have to do.

I used to bemoan the "circus troupe" group. It annoyed the crap out of me. Now? I just shrug. The player simply do not care about your setting. Full stop. They will never, ever care enough about "setting" to stop trying to play whatever whackjob race that happen to tickle their fancy. So, your choice is to either stop running games or go along with it.

 

[Hussar]

And, as far as this being new, I remember minotaur characters, ogre characters, and various other weirdness from way back in the day. Heck, even as a player in 1ed, I remember commenting that my character was typically the only human in the group of elves, dwarves, and a couple of other oddball characters.

I cannot actually ever remember having a group, either as a player or a DM, of strictly "normal" races. I cannot even recall a group where humans were in the majority.

My current crop of PC's is: Human, half-orc/half drow, dragonborn, changeling, and goblin.

Yes, I lost this argument a LONG time ago. Why do you ask?

 

[...m...]

...for traditonal fantasy settings, my rule-of-thumb is that all players must first create and play a human character before their second core-demihuman, and must create play both a human and a core-demihuman character before any exotic race...that generally herds character demographics into a rough resemblance of the broader adventuring world, at least close-enough for race to matter, which is also how i run traditional fantasy worlds...

...cubicle 7's a life well-lived includes a table to roll for race during character creation which affords a similar demographic breakdown; i like the idea...

A LIFE WELL-LIVED
21% - Human
20% - Elf
17% - Dwarf
16% - Halfling
10% - Gnome
04% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Dragonborn, Tiefling

(personally, i prefer traditional fantasy settings in which humans are substantially more common and demihumans more exotic, so i lean something like this)
TRADITIONAL FANTASY
40% - Human
20% - Dwarf, Elf
07% - Halfling
03% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Gnome, Dragonborn
01% - Tiefling

 

[Remathilis]

...for traditonal fantasy settings, my rule of thumb is that all players must first create and play a human character before their second core-demihuman, and must create play both a human and a core-demihuman character before any exotic race...that generally herds character demographics into a rough resemblance of the broader adventuring world, at least close-enough for race to matter, which is also how i run traditional fantasy worlds...

...cubicle 7's a life well-lived includes a table to roll for race during character creation which affords a similar demographic breakdown; i like the idea...

A LIFE WELL-LIVED
21% - Human
20% - Elf
17% - Dwarf
16% - Halfling
10% - Gnome
04% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Dragonborn, Tiefling

(personally, i prefer traditional fantasy settings in which humans are substantially more common and demihumans more exotic, so i lean something like this)
TRADITIONAL FANTASY
40% - Human
20% - Dwarf, Elf
07% - Halfling
03% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Gnome, Dragonborn
01% - Tiefling

As a general rule, I dislike forced demographics. I don't get to play a PC as often as I wish, and I would hate to have to pick human because my friend wants to play a half-orc.

A long time DM I knew had a demographic rule: he was left-handed and hated when people picked left-handedness to "be different" so he imposed a rule: only 1 out of every 10 characters you created could be left handed, unless the player themselves were left handed. That rule worked fine for years, until he met me; the only other left-handed player he knew at the time. So I made it my privilege to make every one of my characters for his game left handed because I could take advantage of the loophole and because I knew it messed up his attempt at demographic control.

 

[Bae'zel]

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.

Okay, I'd still argue that if the players make a cast of characters that don't fit the DM's vision of a campaign theme, that's a communication problem (or stubbornness).

Mature adults need to be able to find a compromise. Or, if the DM won't budge, the group is obviously incompatible.

If the player insists on being an anthropomorphic cat / vampire / super sayan in a Call of Cthulhu campaign, and won't settle for anything else, they should find a group that's cool with that sort of thing. Or be more reasonable.

Only a petulant, immature person would sulk and insist on being an Autobot in an Ancient Greek campaign.

 

[...m...]

As a general rule, I dislike forced demographics. I don't get to play a PC as often as I wish, and I would hate to have to pick human because my friend wants to play a half-orc.

...there's a difference between forced demographics (where somebody else's choice affects yours) and guided demographics (algorithmic liberties which trend toward certain ratios), but you're correct that there's a big difference between rolling for race and choosing race, which is similar to the difference between rolled ability scores and standard-array ability scores...

(i suppose by that analogy, my demographic rule-of-thumb for character creation is more similar to point-buy)

...personally, i enjoy rolling for everything a person can't choose in life, and then crafting an interesting character from the remaining choices: those wild-card limitations force me to adapt in unexpected ways and explore novel character concepts, often their backstories write themselves along the way...

...i dislike race as a fashion choice; it needs both lore and mechanical bagage to make interesting fantasy, otherwise it's meaningless...

 

[Misanthrope Prime]

...for traditonal fantasy settings, my rule of thumb is that all players must first create and play a human character before their second core-demihuman, and must create play both a human and a core-demihuman character before any exotic race...that generally herds character demographics into a rough resemblance of the broader adventuring world, at least close-enough for race to matter, which is also how i run traditional fantasy worlds...

...cubicle 7's a life well-lived includes a table to roll for race during character creation which affords a similar demographic breakdown; i like the idea...

A LIFE WELL-LIVED
21% - Human
20% - Elf
17% - Dwarf
16% - Halfling
10% - Gnome
04% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Dragonborn, Tiefling

(personally, i prefer traditional fantasy settings in which humans are substantially more common and demihumans more exotic, so i lean something like this)
TRADITIONAL FANTASY
40% - Human
20% - Dwarf, Elf
07% - Halfling
03% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Gnome, Dragonborn
01% - Tiefling

I can't be the only one who thinks "traditional fantasy world" is an oxymoron right? The whole point of a fantasy world is that it's not real and draws on invention rather than tradition.


Most of what we're doing in D&D is attempting to create a simulacrum of folklore. We should embrace the absurdity.

 

[Scribe]

...for traditonal fantasy settings, my rule-of-thumb is that all players must first create and play a human character before their second core-demihuman, and must create play both a human and a core-demihuman character before any exotic race...that generally herds character demographics into a rough resemblance of the broader adventuring world, at least close-enough for race to matter, which is also how i run traditional fantasy worlds...

...cubicle 7's a life well-lived includes a table to roll for race during character creation which affords a similar demographic breakdown; i like the idea...

A LIFE WELL-LIVED
21% - Human
20% - Elf
17% - Dwarf
16% - Halfling
10% - Gnome
04% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Dragonborn, Tiefling

(personally, i prefer traditional fantasy settings in which humans are substantially more common and demihumans more exotic, so i lean something like this)
TRADITIONAL FANTASY
40% - Human
20% - Dwarf, Elf
07% - Halfling
03% - Half-Elf, Half-Orc, Gnome, Dragonborn
01% - Tiefling

Shadowdark has similar, or will when the Kickstarter is fulfilled.