So do the players who insist on playing a character that doesn't fit with the game's premise. At best, they want to "play D&D" without other players interfering in the experience.
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D&D General Wildly Diverse "Circus Troupe" Adventuring Parties
- Thread starter Bravesteel25
- Start date
Mind of tempest
(he/him)advocate for 5e psionics
part of the problem is no one can see settings before they show up.
assuming that what both sides of the table can even find common ground on desired settings.
was this a reason for pre made setting to exist?
Paul Farquhar
Legend
I usually discuss it with my players even before session zero. I usually give them a couple of suggestions about the themes and settings I'm interested in, and see what gets the most interest*. So the players have a good idea about the setting beforehand.
Doesn't always work, of course. On one of the few occasions I wasn't DM, we were running Witchlight. Four of the players turned up with comic characters, the fifth an angsty dark fairietale one.
*usually Eberron, with my players.
Whenever I hear stuff like this, I have to ask: who exactly are you playing with and in what circumstances are you playing it?
Because the way you describe it, it sounds like you’re playing with strangers at a local game store, or maybe a convention versus friends who you know and who know what the games you run. If you’re having to tell people to leave their fanfic at home and are getting called names for it…is that literally how you are phrasing their backstories? As fanfic?
It sounds like you need to put in more effort into describing your game up front prior to people joining your table so that they can opt out well in advance of it getting to the point that people are name-calling.
Bae'zel
Hero
There’s a lot of nuance regarding elaborate backstories. How much they are invested in the agreed-upon setting. How feasible they are for a low-level character. How much it will actually impact how the player will portray their character in-game. How much extra effort and spotlight time the DM will have to adjust around said character.
I love how my sister wrote her elaborate backstory for our upcoming campaign. She took our campaign premise (a gang of freelance mercenaries in Baldur’s Gate) and wove a story explaining how her very unique character ended up in that location. She covered how her species (Lolth-sworn Drow), class (Gold Draconic Sorceror) and roguish concept could have feasibly fit into this campaign pitch. That was awesome and gave me plenty of material to use.
Other times I’ve had to work harder with people to adapt their concept into a clashing campaign theme. I don’t mind the extra work but it really depends on my cognitive load at the time. “No I don’t know or care why or how my ninja were-kangaroo ended up in ancient bronze age greece, you figure it out” was a nice challenge (at the time I was really into giving players more creative world building control and I think some players either took advantage of that or were just trolling me).
I love how my sister wrote her elaborate backstory for our upcoming campaign. She took our campaign premise (a gang of freelance mercenaries in Baldur’s Gate) and wove a story explaining how her very unique character ended up in that location. She covered how her species (Lolth-sworn Drow), class (Gold Draconic Sorceror) and roguish concept could have feasibly fit into this campaign pitch. That was awesome and gave me plenty of material to use.
Other times I’ve had to work harder with people to adapt their concept into a clashing campaign theme. I don’t mind the extra work but it really depends on my cognitive load at the time. “No I don’t know or care why or how my ninja were-kangaroo ended up in ancient bronze age greece, you figure it out” was a nice challenge (at the time I was really into giving players more creative world building control and I think some players either took advantage of that or were just trolling me).
BookTenTiger
Sad Dad of the Revolution
I ran a modified Curse of Strahd game (I basically blew up the adventure and turned it into my own), and the players came to the table with...
A tortle bard
A Goliath barbarian
A tiefling warlock
An aasimar cleric
A kenku rogue
That might look like a circus troupe, but they could also be described as...
A bereft mother who lost her daughter to Strahd
An outsider seeking his mentor, who left to fight Strahd
A scion of a forgotten god who wishes to defeat Strahd
A scarred priest seeking revenge for Strahd's slaying of his adventuring party
A former spy who worked for Strahd and now seeks absolution
Those characters absolutely fit into a Strahd campaign! Honestly what's it matter if they have horns or tails or a shell or if they look human? It's the character motivations that matter.
Since this was a homebrew game I just adjusted things in the setting. I put in villages of tortle serfs (not surfing turtles) being oppressed by tiefling nobility. I put in a network of kenku spies and assassins. I created a guild of vampire-slaying goliaths. An abbey of aasimars.
It all fit. It was a great campaign and the characters felt like they fit in really well.
A tortle bard
A Goliath barbarian
A tiefling warlock
An aasimar cleric
A kenku rogue
That might look like a circus troupe, but they could also be described as...
A bereft mother who lost her daughter to Strahd
An outsider seeking his mentor, who left to fight Strahd
A scion of a forgotten god who wishes to defeat Strahd
A scarred priest seeking revenge for Strahd's slaying of his adventuring party
A former spy who worked for Strahd and now seeks absolution
Those characters absolutely fit into a Strahd campaign! Honestly what's it matter if they have horns or tails or a shell or if they look human? It's the character motivations that matter.
Since this was a homebrew game I just adjusted things in the setting. I put in villages of tortle serfs (not surfing turtles) being oppressed by tiefling nobility. I put in a network of kenku spies and assassins. I created a guild of vampire-slaying goliaths. An abbey of aasimars.
It all fit. It was a great campaign and the characters felt like they fit in really well.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
I mean, you don't need to convince me that that's a flaw, that's for sure. But this flaw, as you put it, is quite widespread.
EzekielRaiden
Follower of the Way
....
Then what on Earth are you talking about in terms of the problem here?
Nobody--and I mean nobody--I've ever played with has had some "fanfic", as you so derisively put it, which they want to subject everyone else to....with the sole exception of a couple of GMs...who were very clearly wanting to build a world that all too closely resembled the fiction they'd written before deciding to GM.
When you rail so adamantly against any form of backstory that did not arise "in play", something you were very specific to call out, how am I supposed to interpret that? I've spoken to numerous folks, here and elsewhere, who say that and mean exactly what I described. Nothing, story whatsoever, until the dice hit the mat. It's quite possible; you literally just pick class and race (and, in 5e, background since you have to) and then go. Don't think a thought at all about who they are or what they're like, other than what you can glean from the ability scores you chose (or, more typically, rolled).
And I have never heard of "session zero" being seen as "part of play" in this way. It's called "zero" because it happens prior to play. Play doesn't actually begin until you, y'know, play. Hence why people talk about the "character creation metagame"; character creation, and getting good at it, is one abstraction higher than actually playing the game itself.
Bae'zel
Hero
I'm very glad that this worked out, although the idea of a vampire tortle or kenku is oddly hilarious to me.
No. Because that's not how improv works. The person who makes the offer makes the offer. They are establishing the parameters. They are setting the scene. And thus anyone who comes in and chooses to join in to the scene under those parameters should say 'Yes, And'. But remember... no one is under any obligation to join if they don't want to. They don't HAVE to play in this game the DM is offering. They can just walk away. But if they decide to stay and join... they should say 'Yes, And'.
And look... if the players wanted to have a game where they could create whatever characters they wanted... then they should be the ones to make the offer "We'd like to play a D&D game with these characters we have made... who is willing to DM for us?" At which point, if some DM steps forward to run the game, then that DM should also say 'Yes, And' and run the game the way the players have asked of them. It goes both ways.
But again, as I said in the second half of my post... the actual, real-life action that will more often than not be taken is compromise. The DM will establish some parameters of what they'd prefer in the game they'd like to run... the players that wish to play in that game will state some of their preferences as well for what would make the game more meaningful to them... and the DM and players will then work together and compromise so that everyone can get most of what they want and be happy with the combined result. Which is exactly what happens most of the time.
The only time it doesn't happen is when any specific DM or player wants a certain thing that they are 100% unwilling to compromise on, but then can't find anyone else to go along with it. That person is basically S.O.L. But yes, that means unfortunately... when that person is a player, it is more difficult for them because the numbers aren't in their favor. A DM who takes a hard line on something that a player or two says 'No' on... has a much easier time just letting those couple players walk and then find replacements to fill in because the player pool is so much deeper. But when the opposite happens-- when a player takes a hard line and says something like 'I want to play X game or Y edition'-- there are a lot less DMs out there for that player to go to to ask to run a game. They might not have the options that the hard line DM does. So yeah... players will get screwed over more times than DMs will when it comes to bits and bobs of the game they are unwilling to bend on. But, you know... that's how things go sometimes. Players cannot take hard line stances as easily as DMs can on certain things because the replacements available are much less. Which really means that if a specific person that is a player wants a specific game to have a specific thing... then at some point they need to just bite the bullet and DM that game themselves. Because then they can 'make the offer' of the game parameters to the larger player pool, and any players who steps forward wanting to play will then be under the same social contract to say 'Yes, And'.
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