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

[Scribe]

It’s almost like a not insignificant population want to be non-conformist no matter what.

Within nerd culture?!

 

[DammitVictor]

I agree with the cure, but not the diagnosis. If anything, the "weird" doesn't come out of political correctness, but by a adherence to traditionalism. They want the Tolkien-inspired mentality of humans asecendant, demi-humans (elves, dwarves, gnomes and halflings) in decline or a minority player in the world, and everything else to be a monster used for villains (orcs, drow, goblins, gnolls, kobolds, etc). The problem isn't a "just like earth" issue, but a "just like Middle Earth" one.

Yeah. And... like, those totally are tropes, but they're not the only tropes. They weren't even the only tropes when they were the ones Tolkien used for reasons in his work. They're not at all present in Narnia-- which would make a dooope D&D setting with the serial numbers filed off, like Dragonlance X Iron Claw-- and I'd dare someone to do a D&D adventure with the subtext of Rogues in the House.

People should build their fantasy settings however they want, but... there's a sort of tunnel vision about what "fantasy" can or should be, and that's... like, the very opposite of fantasy. I'll die on the hill that any given setting should be its own thing, but I'll also say that any two given settings should also be two different things. I feel like those are two sides of the same coin, and it bothers me that it doesn't seem to have very much currency.

 

[DammitVictor]

I have had settings that are very far from that traditional perspective and players STILL want to buck the trend. It’s almost like a not insignificant population want to be non-conformist no matter what.

Within nerd culture?!

And then they will weep, for they will have no more envelopes left to push.

Nerds destroy their own fun.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

My understanding is that there's a shortage of games. Period. The number of folks who are willing to run games is small compared to the number of folks who want to play games.

This is definitely true online but in my experience the exact opposite is true for in-person groups.

There is a huuuuuuge number of people who have never played DnD before and say they want to try it (but don't remotely understand the time commitment required for a successful group), and then most of the people who are dedicated to playing DnD routinely want to be DMs. People who actually show up consistently as Players for a long period of time are the true unicorns who make in-person DnD possible.