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

[DammitVictor]

those dm's want to write a book or other media rather than plat dnd this is a flaw...

So do the players who insist on playing a character that doesn't fit with the game's premise. At best, they want to "play D&D" without other players interfering in the experience.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'm sure it's a combination of different factors. I think there are some players who have been building a concept and want to use it in whatever next campaign they can get into. I think there are also players that have a theme (either mechanical or fluff wise) that they build around. I think the crux of the issue is that the creation and character choice is happening independently of the setting and campaign oftentimes. This isn't just my group, I see group compositions all the time on reddit that are very much what I'm describing.



Let me clarify that my use of the "crown" wasn't to be disparaging, I'm not in the business of telling people they are having badwrongfun, rather it's a feeling and something I see around the table and throughout the community; a certain level of one-upsmanship you might say.

Like I've said previously, the group as a whole should work together to make a great game, but I feel that the general sentiment in the community is that if a DM sets restrictions they are "selfish" and "aren't cooperative" when frankly, they are often the ones putting the most into any one game. I'm not saying DMs should be dictatorial, but players should cut them some slack and maybe they can DM a game with less restrictions in mind when the campaign is over? But many players don't want to do that for a myriad of extremely valid reasons (no problem!) but then they lose a little bit of the agency that is ceded to the DM by the very nature of that role.

part of the problem is no one can see settings before they show up.
assuming that what both sides of the table can even find common ground on desired settings.
was this a reason for pre made setting to exist?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

part of the problem is no one can see settings before they show up.

I usually discuss it with my players even before session zero. I usually give them a couple of suggestions about the themes and settings I'm interested in, and see what gets the most interest*. So the players have a good idea about the setting beforehand.

Doesn't always work, of course. On one of the few occasions I wasn't DM, we were running Witchlight. Four of the players turned up with comic characters, the fifth an angsty dark fairietale one.


*usually Eberron, with my players.

 

[TiQuinn]

Another reason I don't allow "backstories" in my games-- you create your character at the table, and your character's story is what happens at the table, so everyone gets to enjoy their characters being awesome at the table.

Wouldn't believe some of the names I get called for telling people to leave their fanfic at home and come play the game with the other people they're supposedly here to play with.

Whenever I hear stuff like this, I have to ask: who exactly are you playing with and in what circumstances are you playing it?

Because the way you describe it, it sounds like you’re playing with strangers at a local game store, or maybe a convention versus friends who you know and who know what the games you run. If you’re having to tell people to leave their fanfic at home and are getting called names for it…is that literally how you are phrasing their backstories? As fanfic?

It sounds like you need to put in more effort into describing your game up front prior to people joining your table so that they can opt out well in advance of it getting to the point that people are name-calling.

 

[Bae'zel]

There’s a lot of nuance regarding elaborate backstories. How much they are invested in the agreed-upon setting. How feasible they are for a low-level character. How much it will actually impact how the player will portray their character in-game. How much extra effort and spotlight time the DM will have to adjust around said character.

I love how my sister wrote her elaborate backstory for our upcoming campaign. She took our campaign premise (a gang of freelance mercenaries in Baldur’s Gate) and wove a story explaining how her very unique character ended up in that location. She covered how her species (Lolth-sworn Drow), class (Gold Draconic Sorceror) and roguish concept could have feasibly fit into this campaign pitch. That was awesome and gave me plenty of material to use.

Other times I’ve had to work harder with people to adapt their concept into a clashing campaign theme. I don’t mind the extra work but it really depends on my cognitive load at the time. “No I don’t know or care why or how my ninja were-kangaroo ended up in ancient bronze age greece, you figure it out” was a nice challenge (at the time I was really into giving players more creative world building control and I think some players either took advantage of that or were just trolling me).

 

[BookTenTiger]

I ran a modified Curse of Strahd game (I basically blew up the adventure and turned it into my own), and the players came to the table with...

A tortle bard
A Goliath barbarian
A tiefling warlock
An aasimar cleric
A kenku rogue

That might look like a circus troupe, but they could also be described as...

A bereft mother who lost her daughter to Strahd
An outsider seeking his mentor, who left to fight Strahd
A scion of a forgotten god who wishes to defeat Strahd
A scarred priest seeking revenge for Strahd's slaying of his adventuring party
A former spy who worked for Strahd and now seeks absolution

Those characters absolutely fit into a Strahd campaign! Honestly what's it matter if they have horns or tails or a shell or if they look human? It's the character motivations that matter.

Since this was a homebrew game I just adjusted things in the setting. I put in villages of tortle serfs (not surfing turtles) being oppressed by tiefling nobility. I put in a network of kenku spies and assassins. I created a guild of vampire-slaying goliaths. An abbey of aasimars.

It all fit. It was a great campaign and the characters felt like they fit in really well.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

those dm's want to write a book or other media rather than play dnd this is a flaw, like saying you want a casual relationship when what you crave is soul merging hyper commitment.

I mean, you don't need to convince me that that's a flaw, that's for sure. But this flaw, as you put it, is quite widespread.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

How on Earth do you think players create characters without defining at least some of those in the process? Especially if they've all talking to each other about their character concepts and how they fit together? When I say "no backstory before play", I'm including the character creation (and worldbuilding, if relevant) as part of play. They've called "Session Zero" because they happen before the IC portion of the game starts.

....

Then what on Earth are you talking about in terms of the problem here?

Nobody--and I mean nobody--I've ever played with has had some "fanfic", as you so derisively put it, which they want to subject everyone else to....with the sole exception of a couple of GMs...who were very clearly wanting to build a world that all too closely resembled the fiction they'd written before deciding to GM.

When you rail so adamantly against any form of backstory that did not arise "in play", something you were very specific to call out, how am I supposed to interpret that? I've spoken to numerous folks, here and elsewhere, who say that and mean exactly what I described. Nothing, story whatsoever, until the dice hit the mat. It's quite possible; you literally just pick class and race (and, in 5e, background since you have to) and then go. Don't think a thought at all about who they are or what they're like, other than what you can glean from the ability scores you chose (or, more typically, rolled).

And I have never heard of "session zero" being seen as "part of play" in this way. It's called "zero" because it happens prior to play. Play doesn't actually begin until you, y'know, play. Hence why people talk about the "character creation metagame"; character creation, and getting good at it, is one abstraction higher than actually playing the game itself.

 

[Bae'zel]

I ran a modified Curse of Strahd game (I basically blew up the adventure and turned it into my own), and the players came to the table with...

A tortle bard
A Goliath barbarian
A tiefling warlock
An aasimar cleric
A kenku rogue

That might look like a circus troupe, but they could also be described as...

A bereft mother who lost her daughter to Strahd
An outsider seeking his mentor, who left to fight Strahd
A scion of a forgotten god who wishes to defeat Strahd
A scarred priest seeking revenge for Strahd's slaying of his adventuring party
A former spy who worked for Strahd and now seeks absolution

Those characters absolutely fit into a Strahd campaign! Honestly what's it matter if they have horns or tails or a shell or if they look human? It's the character motivations that matter.

Since this was a homebrew game I just adjusted things in the setting. I put in villages of tortle serfs (not surfing turtles) being oppressed by tiefling nobility. I put in a network of kenku spies and assassins. I created a guild of vampire-slaying goliaths. An abbey of aasimars.

It all fit. It was a great campaign and the characters felt like they fit in really well.

I'm very glad that this worked out, although the idea of a vampire tortle or kenku is oddly hilarious to me.