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

[Remathilis]

They could solve this, with actual setting books.

That players rarely buy and read. Especially if it's for a single game and they have no interest in any mechanical elements in said setting book.

 

[Bae'zel]

I mean, it's a fun discussion but it really gets summed up with: "have good communication with your players, establish the main campaign themes and 'feel' before everyone makes their characters, find compromises to make everyone happy, even if the pitch is 'gonzo anything goes no character development or meta plot'".

In the end it's about respect or, at least, being able to have clear conversations with your players.

Enough with the strawmen "all players ignore what the DM wants out of spite" or "the DM is a Nazi for not allowing my homebrew winged anthro-vampire ninja in their precious setting".

 

[Zeromaru X]

I think the Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes approach to elves was very useful. Actually, it’s approach to everything was useful, as it painted a standard fantasy cosmology for all major fantasy races.

I believe it is not unfair to say that most tables portray elven society in a somewhat archetypal way, influenced by Tolkien or myth. It is useful to have some guidance on how to achieve that even if a setting could deviate from this baseline entirely. Tome of Foes accomplished this while also having some very interesting, not so traditional, ideas I always play with on my tables (e.g. elven reincarnation).

The only problem with Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is that it unnecessarily ruined the Raven Queen...

 

[Scribe]

That players rarely buy and read. Especially if it's for a single game and they have no interest in any mechanical elements in said setting book.

The players dont need to. Everyone knows what an Elf or Dwarf or Hobbit Halfling are.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have always felt it a little jarring when I am in a party that has characters ranging from a talking bird to a centaur with nary a traditional humanoid or human in between. It really feels like a circus troupe rather than a party of adventurers. I find that to be especially the case when none (or hardly any) of the Player Characters are native to the region or are even completely unique beings. I can't specifically say that it's because I prefer a human-centric approach because I would have no problem with a majority Dwarf party, Elf party, or Gnoll party.

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? How can I move past it? Are there ways I can frame things in my mind to make it easier to get on with?

EDIT: What I really meant by this is how I find it jarring when almost an entire group has no ties demographically or by any other means to the region or setting in which the campaign is held. I have found a large rise in players who come to a game with the intention to play one of the characters from their "stable" as opposed to creating a character specifically for the game they are joining.

This is a matter of investment - player investment and DM investment. The players are not investing in the DM's setting and the DM isn't investing in the player's characters. So there's a disconnect. Historically D&D has gone through the hierarchical method that the DM creates the setting and it is up to the players to then invest in the DM's world. Or even the writer writes the setting, the DM invests in that, and the players then invest in the setting the DM has chosen. So the investment is always meant to flow downwards.

The way I do it is the "post-Forge" way; the world is constructed lightly in session zero by all of us. I've made the big pitch but everyone gets to mark on the map where their character comes from and their character's people come from. And then we make character connections; we make the world, the group, and the cultures together. Which means that even if we have a bunch of weird looking PCs that weren't remotely what I was expecting they are a cohesive group that all came from defined places in the world. And because the world is specifically the world built for this campaign I can burn it down in ways that would feel weird to do to e.g. the Forgotten Realms.

And rare as it is for me to agree with @Remathilis, we aren't doing the thing where we pretend a Halfling is the same in Middle Earth as in Krynn or Athas or even Eberron are we? You absolutely need the players to invest in the setting in specific for many many concepts.

 

[The Soloist]

Well, a real circus travelling, which is a 'circus troupe', works for me.

I once did a circus campaign in which each party member was a different kind of werebeast. We had a werebear (strongman), werebat twins (acrobats, jugglers), a werefox (fortune teller) and a werewolf (bard). It was fun. It's all a question of your intensions as a DM and grabbing your player's imagination with your ideas.