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

[Umbran]

Now this I totally agree with. It's 100% not done out of malice. I'm very sure that most of the players that I've dealt with over the years wouldn't dream of doing this out of spite. I think largely what happens is that players often get a concept in their head that they want to play.

The DM announces that a new campaign is going to start up and the players start spitballing different concepts. And, often, they come up with a concept before session 0 has hit the ground. So, they're already coming in with 3/4 of a character already on the go. I know I've tried multiple times to insist that character generation be done as a group activity, only to have players come with fully formed characters pretty much every single time.

So, as a player, putting me on the spot and saying, "You must come as a blank slate, and do all your character creation right now," is a great way for me to end up with a character I'm not really interested in playing, and that probably won't be all that interesting for others to play alongside, either. If you aren't going to give me much time to think about it, how about you just hand me a pre-generated character, and be done with it?

If you're playing in Forgotten Realms, you have literally tens of thousands of pages of material to draw from.

Corollary: if you are playing in the Forgotten Realms, you have to go through literally thousands of pages before you can really grasp what's available.

 

[Umbran]

Almost every player, even very engaged ones, are going to be system and character first, with setting concerns a distant triviality in comparison unless they're specifically attached to the IP being used.

The last several times I have tried to use the setting, as presented, as a solid basis for my characters, I found that the bits I'd chosen to connect to were bits that the GM decided they weren't going to refer to, pretty much at all. My connections to the setting were relevant only to my internal thought process, and had nothing to do with the events unfolding around the character.

Have that happen a few times, and a player will get the idea that connection to the setting isn't usually going to pay off, so they may not bother.

The last D&D game I ran explicitly removed characters from their home area, and put them in a place they were unfamiliar with, and where their setting connections weren't going to be relevant. I was up front about this, so the players could build characters with that kind of disconnection in mind.

The (not-D&D) game I'm about to run is the opposite - there's basically no origin the characters can pick that won't be highly relevant to their experience of the game.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I found that the bits I'd chosen to connect to were bits that the GM decided they weren't going to refer to, pretty much at all

Statistically, this would be the most likely occurrence, given that FR has so much lore that two people are unlikely to hit upon the same bits - unless you conspire with them ahead of time of course.

 

[Epic Meepo]

Out of curiosity, has anyone here ever offered extra background benefits to characters grounded in a particular setting? Maybe something like, "Humans from Amadeusburg get Musician as an additional bonus feat," or, "Every genasi raised by a genie starts with a magic item from Column A." If so, do players turn down these bonuses and still show up with fish-out-of water characters?

 

[Gradine]

Does anyone remember that list that popped up on reddit a few years back, it was like a big long "My rules as DM" list, and the list was full of the most egregiously awful, rude, outrageous nonsense ever, like clearly nobody real thought like this and the list was really just ragebait, right? And then others started showing up like "yeah these are great rules! this is how I DM! get over it snowflake!" and it was all clearly also just ragebait?

Yeah I'm sad that I remember it too

 

[Umbran]

Statistically, this would be the most likely occurrence, given that FR has so much lore that two people are unlikely to hit upon the same bits - unless you conspire with them ahead of time of course.

One of these was in the FR, and yeah, I kind of recognized that as a likelihood for that reason. I positioned it as, "This is why I am in the area the adventure would take place in, and it is available for the GM to use, if they want."

The other cases weren't in FR, but followed the general pattern that the GM was only interested in developing things that happen within the adventure they were running (homebrew or published didn't seem to make a difference), and anything outside was not going to be relevant. In general, as a player, it isn't hard to adapt to this, but it can lead to what others were complaining about - characters built without focus on the world.

It does lead one to wonder, though. It has already been raised that GMs often don't really give as much description of physical locations as they might think, leading players to asking a lot of question. Meanwhile, the same thing can happen on the next level up - maybe GMs aren't really explicating their own worlds as much as they think they are, either.

 

[Bravesteel25]

One of these was in the FR, and yeah, I kind of recognized that as a likelihood for that reason. I positioned it as, "This is why I am in the area the adventure would take place in, and it is available for the GM to use, if they want."

The other cases weren't in FR, but followed the general pattern that the GM was only interested in developing things that happen within the adventure they were running (homebrew or published didn't seem to make a difference), and anything outside was not going to be relevant. In general, as a player, it isn't hard to adapt to this, but it can lead to what others were complaining about - characters built without focus on the world.

It does lead one to wonder, though. It has already been raised that GMs often don't really give as much description of physical locations as they might think, leading players to asking a lot of question. Meanwhile, the same thing can happen on the next level up - maybe GMs aren't really explicating their own worlds as much as they think they are, either.

This, in my opinion, is definitely a case of a DM not doing their job to create a cooperative experience witht their players, especially when they go out of their way to ground their characters in the setting. There are definitely DMs that are just as guilty of ignoring the background and setting beyond their narrow focus.

 

[TiQuinn]

Corollary: if you are playing in the Forgotten Realms, you have to go through literally thousands of pages before you can really grasp what's available.

Also, one DM's Forgotten Realms can potentially be different from another DM's Forgotten Realms. For instance, I've never used any history like the Sundering, Spellplague or even parts of the Time of Troubles in my FR campaigns. If a player is creating a character based on those events, they're not going to see much of that reflected in my games.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It does lead one to wonder, though. It has already been raised that GMs often don't really give as much description of physical locations as they might think, leading players to asking a lot of question

I’m conscious that I don’t want to bore people with long winded descriptions. And anyway, asking questions is a sign of engagement.

 

[Bae'zel]

Out of curiosity, has anyone here ever offered extra background benefits to characters grounded in a particular setting? Maybe something like, "Humans from Amadeusburg get Musician as an additional bonus feat," or, "Every genasi raised by a genie starts with a magic item from Column A." If so, do players turn down these bonuses and still show up with fish-out-of water characters?

Yes! In my current campaign, in fact, I've asked each player to choose 2 factions out of a list that they have a good relationship with, and 2 that they have a poor relationship with. We're using the Faction reputation system from the 2024 rules (with some adjustments from Blades in the Dark and Into the Cess & Citadel).

Basically they start off already with favorable rep from those groups, which can yield allies, shop rebates, protection etc... The negative reputations are more for story hooks.

Not Feats or special abilities, per se, but they will have many in-game benefits that will have a tangible effect.

I've also borrowed from Blades in the Dark to have each PC choose a Vice, along with a key NPC contact in the city (Baldur's Gate) who will frequently interact with them.

No advanced reading on their part needed.