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

[Thomas Shey]

I've never gotten into Talislanta for similar reasons. Their only advertising slogan is "No Elves!"

Which was particularly funny since once you read the game and looked at the various racial groups, an awful lot of them looked like variant elves.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I think a lot of settings could benefit from just a short sidebar about what a 1st, 3rd, 5th, etc. level character means in that setting.

And it would help if that then doesn't seem at odds with the default advancement rate.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Fair, but there are ways around it. It's less of a problem if you're starting at 3rd or 5th level, which at least in my groups isn't uncommon. Or you could choose to deploy the "skill decay" trope.

The PC suffered a major injury that took months to recover from, or crawled inside a bottle after a traumatic loss, and their skills and conditioning have atrophied from their peak. At the start of the campaign they're starting on the path to recovery, but it's going to take a while to regain everything they lost. In a way I like it because it explains the usual meteoric leveling curve as something besides incredible talent.

I agree starting with the higher levels.

As to the other--that works okay for a character or two, but when it applies to a whole six character group it looks--odd--usually.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Exactly! The vast majority of NPCs in the world never achieve level one. This includes many soldiers etc.

Level "Zero" is a thing in my worlds. Leveled NPCs are very, very rare.

i think they ought to bring back proper NPC classes, town guards and the like shouldn't be wet tissue paper against player characters and the most basic monsters.

 

[Belen]

i think they ought to bring back proper NPC classes, town guards and the like shouldn't be wet tissue paper against player characters and the most basic monsters.

Tasha’s does have rules for basic classes.

 

[plecostomus]

This raises a very good point.

A lot of GMs present their settings as a laundry list of things they aren't allowed to do, aren't allowed to play, as though that is an inherently cool and inspiring thing. I still to this day do not understand that perspective.

"You aren't allowed to do X, Y, Z, W, Q, P, J, G, or M. Aren't you super excited to play now?!"

When I was first researching Dragonlance, I identified at least 2 periods in the setting's history where divine casters either lost their powers or simply disappeared off the planet. One of these periods precedes the most popularly played section of Dragonlance history, the War of the Lance. Divine casters eventually return due to specific events during War of the Lance.

I think WOTC realized that telling people they can't play divine casters is not ideal. When SOTDQ came out, they added "a god visits you in a dream and now you have powers" as an option in a War of the Lance scenario that otherwise doesn't address that original storyline of how divine casting was restored.

There's also the Wizards (Mages) of High Sorcery, who offer an interesting challenge...but only for your arcane caster. There was never a gameplay element added for other classes that might mimic that experience and make those players also feel like they are part of the setting.

But as a +1 for Dragonlance, it has an amazing canon artifact called the Graygem, which allows you to put any species you want into the setting by saying some group of people were transformed by the Graygem.

 

[jayoungr]

town guards and the like shouldn't be wet tissue paper against player characters and the most basic monsters.

Town guards don't typically use the commoner stat block. They could be anything from guards to veterans to knights.

 

[Umbran]

Yes, but it still looks odd when all the "veterans of the recent war" in the PC party are level 1 when your game has a range of levels from 1 to 20 and the experience system doesn't take forever to level.

What the game has isn't the relevant bit. What the world has is important.

I am not sure the experience system means much, in that former activity explains attaining all the knowledge required to have a PC class at all, not levelling within that class. Having a PC class at all is a lot of front loading, in effect.

Its much harder in most non-OSR modern versions, including 5e.

Perhaps it seems so, to you. I don't have any issue with, "There was a war. I was in the infantry, and came out a 1st level fighter. I have a lot of skills in fighting that most folks just don't. The war was a lot, and I don't know how I fit into just farming any more," as fitting the bill. If you want the character to have been a highly ranked commissioned officer, that's another matter, akin to the John Rambo example.

 

[Necropolitan]

Perhaps it seems so, to you. I don't have any issue with, "There was a war. I was in the infantry, and came out a 1st level fighter. I have a lot of skills in fighting that most folks just don't. The war was a lot, and I don't know how I fit into just farming any more," as fitting the bill. If you want the character to have been a highly ranked commissioned officer, that's another matter, akin to the John Rambo example.

Plus for 5E's Backgrounds you can just go with the most relevant one.

A Farmer who became a Soldier/Soldier who became a Farmer uses whichever one they define themselves as/invested more in/whichever one the player wants the mechanics for (the actually important reason).

 

[billd91]

Yes, but Cook had been on the seas for 20+ years before the famed "First Voyage of James Cook" started in 1768, and he didn't initiate that voyage himself - he was commissioned by the Royal Navy and Royal Society. So, that voyage was not a snot-nosed young adventurer jumping into hazard. It was a seasoned professional and military officer being ordered to do it.

That may be true for Cook, but there are other tales of independent adventurers out there in the age of exploration and colonialism. I did a little looking around at possible sources for Kipling's The Man Who Would be King and there are a number of people who would fit the bill for truly being adventurers - and not sponsored by Royal Society or Admiralty funds.

Most of them have military backgrounds, served overseas from their homes or in colonial empires (if empire born), and found opportunities to exploit local leadership or economic opportunities - carving out their lucrative little empires of influence and control (shades of name level fighters back in AD&D). But as far as common, broken backgrounds - there's not a lot more to go on.

Many definitely come from families - enough to undermine the idea that adventurers have to come from homes that are broken or traumatic in some way (sorry @Mecheon). I think a stronger idea than broken homes is the idea that someone from even a stable home may feel the drive to do something different from their origin and may even need to given the family's means and size. Cook was the son of a farm worker. He certainly wasn't going to inherit much from his old man, maybe a reasonably stable life though hardly comfortable. A reasonably adventurous lad has to find other work - and the merchant navy offered opportunities to do so...