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

[W'rkncacnter]

Dehumanising is applied to any group identified as "not one of us".

but a human-like creature...literally isn't human. it is, by its very nature, dehumanized in some way or form. that's the point (in fiction) - to create something human-like but with inhuman (as in literally not human, not necessarily inhumane) qualities and explore that. in that sense i don't see "inherent morality (whether by divine fiat, different thought processes, biological necessity, etc.)" to be any different from "lives for hundreds if not thousands of years" or "has a devil ancestor" or "reincarnates upon death with only vague remembrances of past lives" or "treats poison like salt".

i mean...i'm sorry, but an orc (as an example) is not a human. an orc should not be a human. an orc can have many similarities to a human, but at the end of the day, they are different things. if you think they're too close to be comfortable with considering giving the orc inherent morality, then you do you, i guess. but i don't, and i don't need some moral lecture about it.

Inherently good or evil? Naw that’s saturday morning cartoons. Actual evil is far more insidious and tragic than that.

done well i think inherent good or evil can be plenty insidious or tragic. and while i wouldn't exactly call skyrim's writing good, i'd hardly say paarthurnax is a saturday morning cartoon character, as an example.

The bigger problem is that in the race to the darkest-and-edgiest, it's almost always black-and-black morality, every side is villainous, one just gets to be the designated hero.

THAT'S the term i was trying to think of. thank you.

Full-on black-and-white morality is boring and usually pretty propagandist.

it definitely can be, especially if done poorly.

It can be, but I find "nobledark" has to make the world SO dark that it's a bit outside of what I'm aiming at. In most nobledark contexts, the world actually does suck, but it is possible for heroes to be part of what puts things on a path to success. I generally prefer ones where the world is actually pretty good, it just has real and serious threats, and the risk of people choosing to do some wicked things because the world is already so good nobody will really notice.

It's definitely too dark for anything but a very grounded reconstruction of noblebright, but too bright for most things I have seen as nobledark. Instead, it's sort of like "what if you added just some darkness to a noblebright setting?" or "what if you were fairly restrained about the 'dark' part of nobledark?" It sits in a vague space between them, having elements of both and thus not able to fit into either.

But it's definitely MOST opposed to grimdark. Because I am so, so, so tired of grimdark.

okay, so like...noble. just noble.

Depends. As noted, doing this with orcs is fundamentally rooted in very very crappy Orientalist racism.

if you're referring to tolkien's letter, isn't that mainly appearance linking orcs to the east (and even then mainly to the mongols)? it seems to me an intentional attempt to metaphorically link orcs to the mongol raids of europe not in a racist sort of way but as a cultural landmark, essentially - "the orcs look and fight like mongols and are as big a threat to middle earth as the mongols were to europe)" sort of thing. to then say that "orcs being inherently evil is fundamentally orientalist racism" because of a storytelling device tolkien used seems to me like a particular large stretch, especially when dnd orcs...don't really look like stereotypical mongols? like, i dunno, this seems like it's stretching a relatively minor aspect of the inspiring work and saying it MUST apply to EVERY derivative thereof even if it clearly doesn't. am i missing something here?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

but a human-like creature...literally isn't human

But metaphorically, if it’s a PC species, it is.

“Human” in this context, denotes personhood, not Homo sapiens sapiens.

 

[Scott Christian]

Of course! Succinctly touch upon 3-5 details of a scene that the adventurers can interact with - do not be long winded. And while my particular goal as DM is to have players grok the scene I’ve laid out and just tell me what their PCs would like to do next, I’d certainly rather have engagement in the form of questions than the alternative.

This is such an interesting one to me. I have had DMs who are clear and concise and brief. Sometimes they get asked a lot of questions afterwards, sometimes not. I have had DMs that are a bit superfluous, yet very detailed. Sometimes they lose players and get asked a lot of questions afterwards, sometimes they keep the players engaged and get no questions.

The scene dictates the amount of description. The DM dictates how it is described.

 

[Scott Christian]

The bigger problem is that in the race to the darkest-and-edgiest, it's almost always black-and-black morality, every side is villainous, one just gets to be the designated hero.

Agreed.

Full-on black-and-white morality is boring and usually pretty propagandist.

Disagree. There are many settings and games, including modern ones, that utilize black-and-white morality effectively. I mean, can Thanos have a good "logical" reason for wanting to rid the universe of half its populace? Sure. But that doesn't make him gray. I think people confuse this at times. Heck, Lord of the Rings, Evil Dead - Army of Darkness, Big Trouble in Little China, Dragonlance, Elfquest, etc. all made a good story using black-and-white morality. Simply because the protagonist and antagonist have "reasons" for their actions that don't specifically align to good-evil, doesn't mean the hero-villain contrast isn't clear and the known supported outcomes aren't clear to each.

 

[Bae'zel]

done well i think inherent good or evil can be plenty insidious or tragic. and while i wouldn't exactly call skyrim's writing good, i'd hardly say paarthurnax is a saturday morning cartoon character, as an example.

My exception is devils, demons, daemons, infernals etc... By their very being, they're evil and loving it.

Chaos forces, lords of decay, misery, pain etc... I'm okay with supernatural evils of course.

I see why they changed Gnolls from "just another race" to "literal demon creatures".

 

[Remathilis]

I shall leave it to you to find your own list.

Aka "I have a bunch of examples, but I'm afraid giving them would reveal my biases, so I'll just allude to them and let you try to figure out what they are." Provide examples or we can assume the answer is "none, except for the ones I made up in my head."

 

[Mind of tempest]

...are...are you implying english people...aren't human? or something? i'm not sure what your point is.

orc and elves can interbreed with humans thus they would taxonomically still be human as Neanderthals and denisova are human in most of the ways that matter, save vocally (there gene for vocals all died out it seems very odd genetically and says something about how we speak was very well like)

where does human start and where does it stop?

 

[Scribe]

orc and elves can interbreed with humans thus they would taxonomically still be human as Neanderthals and denisova are human in most of the ways that matter, save vocally (there gene for vocals all died out it seems very odd genetically and says something about how we speak was very well like)

where does human start and where does it stop?

It's an Elf game. Real biology need not apply.

 

[Umbran]

One way that I've tried to get things going is a really cool (well, to me at least) chargen mini-game using Magic the Gathering Cards.

With the right GM and players, I'll try anything once. But it still sounds like having to make decisions NOW, on the spot. Choose a card, NOW. Make up what it means NOW. Next round, next card, NOW. If I'm not particularly creative in that moment, I'm stuck with it for the months or years of the campaign?

It's not like it's a totally blank slate anyway. Before Session 0, we've already chosen some sort of campaign. So, everyone's already on board with playing Campaign X, whatever that campaign happens to be.

It is blank slate for the character is the point. The character is the only thing in the game that I have control over, and you're suggesting that we give up a chunk of that control, too, because you, as a GM, want something in the characters.

But, I am rather tired of four or five players coming to the table with fully formed PC's, none of which have any connection to each other.

And, by all means, for your table, you do what you want.

Most of my playing in the past few years has been online. Online gaming has the unfortunate feature of having single-threaded communication. Any interpersonal role-playing effectively stops everything else until its done. This, in my experience, shifts role-playing expression away from the personal space, and into the group space - the party dragonborne paladin shows who she is not by her interactions with the other PCs, but in her interactions with the environment and NPCs

In that situation, prior connections with each other don't pay off much, again, in my experience.

I mean, heck, it's not like this is a bizarre concept. FATE games work this way. You can't come to the table in FATE with a fully formed character. It just doesn't work. Loads of games require you to work as a group to create characters and campaign.

Are you saying you could never play a FATE game?

Okay, first things first - Could you please not try to corner me with hypothetical questions in which you suppose my position is extreme? Thanks.

From there. With respect, I actually play a lot of it, and you are misrepresenting FATE character generation.

Yes, Fate Core does include a player-interactive activity around character generation - the Phase Trio. However:

1) The Phase Trio only sets two out of five character Aspects. You MUST walk into that activity knowing your character's High Concept and Trouble aspects. You also set your own first story, and the Aspect associated with it. So, the player has already set three out of five - you've got a pretty good idea of who the character is, and what they do - before it gets interactive. The Phase Trio doesn't touch Skills or Stunts either.

2) Fate Core explicitly notes that the interactive form of the Phase Trio is OPTIONAL! It tells you that you can approach setting those Aspects in other ways. The Trio can be altered - Fate Core gives an example of using character Past, Present, and Hoped Future, which doesn't need to be interactive. It can be done away with entirely, and the player can just choose those Aspects. Or, you can walk into play with a High Concept, a Trouble, and one other Aspect, and just leave the rest undefined to start with!

Fate Accelerated Edition doesn't have the Phase Trio at all.

So, the game itself rejects your "just doesn't work".

 

[Remathilis]

It's an Elf game. Real biology need not apply.

D&D has canonically allowed reptilian (dragons), undead (vampires) fey (nymphs, satyrs, and hags) and all manner of planar (fiends, angels and genies) to produce viable offspring with humans. Biological compatibility in D&D is more a guideline than an actual rule...