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

[Deset Gled]

A setting like Middle Earth only has a half-dozen types of non-humans (elves, dwarves, hobbits, goblins, orcs, trolls) and they are both isolated and exceptionally rare...
Contrast that with Eberron, who has several integrated societies where over two dozen different species...

To me, neither Middle Earth nor Eberron exemplify the issue in the OP, because both settings give guidelines for how different races can interact. In Middle Earth the rules are stricter and in Eberron the rules are more lenient, but there are reasons and guidelines for both that allow you to make a group that has some level of cohesiveness.

D&D 5e, OTOH, just gives you a literal demon race (tiefling) and a demon powered class (warlocks), and throws them right alongside a traditional white knight (paladin) and holy messenger of god (cleric). With no justification, guidelines, rules, or anything. 5e just shrugs its shoulders and expects the DM to accept that as a baseline level cognitive dissonance. The gonzo nature of of the "circus troupe" the OP suggests isn't inherently about diversity. It's about a lack of reason.

That being said, this does start to push into the question of "What should be the base setting for D&D?". Which, IMNSHO, is a question WotC has gone out of their way to pointedly not answer. I think as D&D gets more and more options while refusing to define a baseline setting, increasing the level of gonzo in the baseline is an inevitable side effect.

 

[Scribe]

That being said, this does start to push into the question of "What should be the base setting for D&D?". Which, IMNSHO, is a question WotC has gone ouf of their way to pointedly not answer.

I think they have.

"The Multiverse."

Sigil/Planescape + FR + Spelljammer = Default open ended assumption.

 

[Deset Gled]

I think they have.

"The Multiverse."

Sigil/Planescape + FR + Spelljammer = Default open ended assumption.

Well that's one heck of a gonzo setting!

Note: I'm going to "like" your comment. But I'm not going to like your comment, if you know what I mean.

 

[Dire Bare]

honestly, the 'they're adventurer's, they're already oddballs by the fact they choose to walk into life-threatening danger every day as their dayjob, and this justifies their license to be the most statistically bizarre collection of individuals possible' line of thinking rubs me the wrong way, because like, the latter statement just doesn't actually really have a good basis to follow on from the former IMO.

And yet, its a common trope both within and without fantasy fiction.

How many ensemble groups of characters in movies, TV shows, novels and comics are an assembly of odd-balls and misfits?

 

[CreamCloud0]

D&D 5e, OTOH, just gives you a literal demon race (tiefling) and a demon powered class (warlocks), and throws them right alongside a traditional white knight (paladin) and holy messenger of god (cleric). With no justification, guidelines, rules, or anything. 5e just shrugs its shoulders and expects the DM to accept that as a baseline level cognitive dissonance. The gonzo nature of of the "circus troupe" the OP suggests isn't inherently about diversity. It's about a lack of reason.

yeah, rereading the OP it sounds more like their issue arises when the characters seem to lack connection to the world and civilization they exist in, when the entire party seems to of originated from 'over the horizon'

 

[Scribe]

Well that's one heck of a gonzo setting!

Note: I'm going to "like" your comment. But I'm not going to like your comment, if you know what I mean.

Yeah, I don't like it as the default either, but I think it is.

 

[CreamCloud0]

And yet, its a common trope both within and without fantasy fiction.

How many ensemble groups of characters in movies, TV shows, novels and comics are an assembly of odd-balls and misfits?

yes it's a trope, but my point was more in people using the 'adventurer misfit' mindset to justify throwing reason to the wind and creating whatever without trying for a deeper reason than 'they're an adventurer, they can thus be as weird as i like', movies and other structured media at least pick their character traits with some intent of how those traits relate to how the character got where they are.

 

[Remathilis]

To me, neither Middle Earth nor Eberron exemplify the issue in the OP, because both settings give guidelines for how different races can interact. In Middle Earth the rules are stricter and in Eberron the rules are more lenient, but there are reasons and guidelines for both that allow you to make a group that has some level of cohesiveness.

D&D 5e, OTOH, just gives you a literal demon race (tiefling) and a demon powered class (warlocks), and throws them right alongside a traditional white knight (paladin) and holy messenger of god (cleric). With no justification, guidelines, rules, or anything. 5e just shrugs its shoulders and expects the DM to accept that as a baseline level cognitive dissonance. The gonzo nature of of the "circus troupe" the OP suggests isn't inherently about diversity. It's about a lack of reason.

That being said, this does start to push into the question of "What should be the base setting for D&D?". Which, IMNSHO, is a question WotC has gone out of their way to pointedly not answer. I think as D&D gets more and more options while refusing to define a baseline setting, increasing the level of gonzo in the baseline is an inevitable side effect.

I've been arguing for a while D&D needs a real default setting that defines the place of everything in the setting, like Midguard for TotV or Golarion for Pathfinder. It would solve a lot of the headaches D&D has for trying to support 11 settings.

 

[Xethreau]

5e just shrugs its shoulders and expects the DM to accept that as a baseline level cognitive dissonance. The gonzo nature of of the "circus troupe" the OP suggests isn't inherently about diversity. It's about a lack of reason.

I think this is it right here.

I've been DMing for about 20 years now, and in my experience and observation, most campaign settings are only that. They are merely bash-kits of narrative context---not the narrative itself. This can lead to situations where players bring the wrong character to the table. Regretably, good advice on "narrative concept" can be hard to find. In Raising From the Last War, all this advice is almost entirely implied but conveniently located in the chapter on different bad guys.

So yes, the "narrative concept" is the first thing you should pitch to your players. Setting isn't good enough. Not if you want cohesion with the members of the party.

 

[plecostomus]

My first D&D party was a minotaur, a grung, 2 gnomes, a lizardfolk, and a human child (I think literally 8 years old). The DM had given us some website that was NOT the phb to pick our characters from. He did have a ban list, but it was based on mechanical abilities he didn't like (aaracockra) rather than lore. Grung was actually on the ban list, but I was already looking at the website when he posted that and I asked him if I could play the little frog because it's cute and he said sure.

So yeah, I don't have a formative experience of Only Tolkien Trio Species to hold onto.

When I started my Dragonlance game I tried giving the Dragonlance uniques (irda, kender, kyrie, thanoi, draconians) the most interesting-sounding species descriptions to lure players into playing them. I got an irda and a kender PC out of it...and a tiefling bard but isn't that in every D&D party?