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

[Paul Farquhar]

Dragonborn is only so high for BG3 because it's the default for Dark Urge playthroughs. I don't think Larian released stats on Durge vs Tav but I'd be willing to bet Dragonborn are nowhere near as high for Tav (standard PC) playthroughs

Maybe, but I don’t think it’s that common to play Durge as the default. My Durge was a dwarf.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I have a working theory that character design works on one of those triangle graphs with three poles, and a strong design either lands strongly towards one pole or hits a good mix of two. And while what the three are can vary by medium and genre, for a video game RPG we're working with Sexy, Badass, and Cute.

Githyanki are none of the above, so they're the least popular. Gnomes and Halflings are pushing the Cute axis. Dragonborn, Half-Orcs, and maybe Dwarves are all primarily on the Badass axis. And Elves and Drow and Tieflings are all leaning on the Sexy axis. It should be obvious what how the three axis rank in popularity.

There is also stats and abilities to consider.

 

[Mecheon]

Rakasta would like a word.

I mean, yeah, effectively the same thing. Buuut, technically, tabaxi were their own separate thing back in the Rakasta's heyday. I don't think anyone really did anything with them outside of a vague "yeah they're probably in Maztica", but they were around

 

[Remathilis]

I mean, yeah, effectively the same thing. Buuut, technically, tabaxi were their own separate thing back in the Rakasta's heyday. I don't think anyone really did anything with them outside of a vague "yeah they're probably in Maztica", but they were around

Rakasta were also mostly locked into Mystara/Basic era D&D. I think the only AD&D stats were in Red Steel.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, humans are undoubtedly the most common, by a long way, in the tabletop game. The news from the BG3 statistics is they are beaten out of 1st place by half elves. That, I put down to sexiness. Dragonborn are also very much more popular in BG3 than they are in the tabletop game. Mechanically, they are weak, but they look so cool.

I don't know why you can so confidently say that. Dragonborn are, by all accounts, a very, very popular choice for tabletop. Yes, the HeHe races get top billing as always, but, considering Dragonborn and Tieflings are such late comers to the table, it's impressive that they get played as much as they do. No one tries to claim that halflings should be virtually unheard of considering they are played so little. Or gnomes. Both have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for five editions and yet, apparently, they're all over the place.

 

[Dire Bare]

I don't know why you can so confidently say that. Dragonborn are, by all accounts, a very, very popular choice for tabletop. Yes, the HeHe races get top billing as always, but, considering Dragonborn and Tieflings are such late comers to the table, it's impressive that they get played as much as they do. No one tries to claim that halflings should be virtually unheard of considering they are played so little. Or gnomes. Both have been scraping the bottom of the barrel for five editions and yet, apparently, they're all over the place.

I run an afterschool D&D club for middle-schoolers . . . it's all dragonborn and tieflings.

The worst part . . . they don't often even get elves, dwarves, and hobbits (halflings), unless they have really cool parents who made them watch the Lord of the Rings movies . . .

Anecdotal, of course.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

dwarves

I don’t really see dwarves amongst any demographic, unless I play one myself.

 

[Azzy]

I don’t really see dwarves amongst any demographic, unless I play one myself.

Back in highschool, one of my friends would only play dwarves or halflings (or kender, if we were doing DL).

 

[Thomas Shey]

Hell, we know Gygax was perfectly comfortable having a freaking depowered balrog and a juvenile dragon as PCs, so long as the player was comfortable with having their power grow over time, starting from near-zero like everyone else.

People have been playing non-human options for ages.

I've got a good friend who was known for putting together advancement paths (read: race/class combos) for things like dragons, intellligent griffons and sphinxes back in the OD&D days. He didn't always get to play them everywhere, but other than the flight capability (which didn't always matter since they didn't have much ranged capability) I never saw them as particularly OP in play, and the oddness didn't stand out much on West Coast SF fandom based games of the time.

 

[Kurotowa]

There is also stats and abilities to consider.

To a degree. But my belief is that that specifically in a video game RPG, where you're spending the entire game staring at the PC you've created on the screen, the visual presentation far outweighs ability selection for most people. That's very different than a TTRPG where you're sitting around a table with a bunch of real life people and only see your character in your own imagination.