Improbabilities of party make-up (an issue of race)

[Seeten]

I love changelings. I can be any race, and no one will know!

 

[Owen K.C. Stephens]

In many campaigns it's just not an issue. The races all have access to Common, so they can communicate, and all gather in large cities or live under one king (or even a group of allies nations). While having three or four different races in a group may not be the norm, it's no more unusual than seeing an American, Canadian and Mexican all working together.

In other games if you need an excuse, come up with one. I recently played in a World's Largest Dungeon game that had a gnome, a dwarf, a half-ogre, two humans, an elf, and a half-orc -- all from different cultures (from tribal barbarians to Asian-themed). However, the DM had made the dungeon a mystic place you could stumble into from many different underground portals around the world (and of course once in, you couldn't get out). The characters were the survivors from numerous different expeditions that had gotten stuck within the dungeon, and naturally gathered together as a matter of survival. This workled well, and allowed racial tension to be played out if we wished, since there weren't many options for walking away without risking your life.

If you have to force unlikely characters together to start a campaign, just steal ideas from Shogun, The Magnificent Seven, Gladiator or The 13th Warrior as needed. Once they've played through an adventure, hopefully the characters have built enough trust and friendship to stick together despite the social norms.

 

[Mallus]

D&D is a game.

Players of this game like options.

Making characters of different races is a popular option.

Therefore (most) D&D games find some way to rationalize nonsensical mixed-raced parties.

Because first and foremost, D&D is a game.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

Another topic our group discussed recently. How on Gords green Oerth do parties of dwarves, elves, and half-orcs come together so frequently to form parties. Other than in such forced situations as the "fellowship to destroy the ring" it seems just hugely improbable for the make-ups that we currently see.

I'd say that it isn't unreasonable to assume that such parties are very rare indeed in many worlds.

However, player characters are very unusual people. They already stand out by the fact that they are PC classes, and that they are actively "adventuring". So why should it be surprising that they also stand out by having an unusual mixture of races in their midst? I try not to constrain the PCs overmuch by making them resemple the population average - because the average member of the population tends to be a rural peasant.


But if you want in-game world reasons, how about this: Adventurers are misfits. Honest, ordinary folks don't go delving into dungeons, hunting monsters, or otherwise seek out trouble - they take over the family business and work in it every day until they die or retire. So adventurers are people who don't fit in.

So why shouldn't they join other people who also don't fit in - whether they are of the same race or not?

 

[demiurge1138]

I like a more cosmopolitian approach to my fantasy, so having a bunch of different races working together isn't a huge deal in most of my campaigns. That said, even in games where I emphasize racial isolationism, PCs aren't ordinary people. They're allowed to break some societal norms.

Demiurge out.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

Most games I've seen usually have mostly human and maybe one other race parties.

Though one game we had a werebear, kobold (till he died), minotaur and a dwarf. But they all liked killing stuff or liked money.

 

[phindar]

It is kind of neat when the whole group gets together and makes a themed party though, like all dwarfy-types or all elfy-types, with maybe one weirdo in the group. Me and a couple of friends of mine did that in a 2e game once, we played a trio of drow brothers of different cleric multiclasses. (It wasn't a particularly serious game, but we had fun.) I've also had a back-burner idea where the party were all sibling children from the same brothel, so even though they'd all be different races and most would have different mothers and none would know who their fathers were, they'd all be brothers and sisters. (My "Brother-from-another-Mother" Game.)

Really though, its the players' job to come up with reasons why their characters adventure together, not to think of reasons why they shouldn't.

 

[Tonguez]

I have all players discuss why they are here now and why they are working together

so that half-orc fighter just happens to be the cousin of the human cleric, the elf is a refugee from elf society hiding out amongst the humans and gnomes - well everyone likes the gnomes

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In the settings I prefer - both published and ones I've designed myself - this isn't an issue at all.

In Eberron, for instance, if you're really worried about it, there are significant minorities of elves, dwarves, gnomes, et cetera who live in "human" nations like Breland and Aundair and who consider themselves Brelish or Aundairian, no more or no less than the humans who make up the majority of the population. Why are the elf and the dwarf adventuring with the human and the orc? Because they all grew up in Sharn, and they're friends.

Eberron is a cosmopolitan setting, and there's no more an issue having elves and gnomes and half-orcs adventuring together than it is for me (an Anglo-Australian) to work for the same company as a Liberian, an Egyptian, and a Sri Lankan (which I do).

In most of my homebrewed settings, humans or races related to humans such as aasimar and tieflings are the only PC races. For example, the setting detailed in my "Limited-Resource Campaign Design" thread recently.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Most games I've seen usually have mostly human and maybe one other race parties.

Though one game we had a werebear, kobold (till he died), minotaur and a dwarf. But they all liked killing stuff or liked money.

That's funny . . . my first Third Edition game was a Planescape campaign where I played the only normal human in the party - though, since he was an alienist, he ended up the equivalent of half-farspawn by the end of the game.

The rest of the party, though? Minotaur fighter, half-fiend githyanki wizard who became a lich, githzerai monk/ranger, half-fiend human bard/fighter, half-celestial sorcerer, human werefox fighter/cleric, rogue modron psion (shaper) . . .