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

[billd91]

So, as a player, putting me on the spot and saying, "You must come as a blank slate, and do all your character creation right now," is a great way for me to end up with a character I'm not really interested in playing, and that probably won't be all that interesting for others to play alongside, either. If you aren't going to give me much time to think about it, how about you just hand me a pre-generated character, and be done with it?

I think coming to session 0 with most of the character already built is a problem. Do you know it's going to be compatible with the outcome of the session 0 discussion? You may have wasted your time or, if you insist on forging ahead with the character, risk being a disruption to the campaign you and your fellow players agreed to.

Having a few concepts floating around is one thing, many of those can be tailored to the campaign decision that come out of session 0, and you probably haven't invested a ton of time in the ones that couldn't be made compatible yet.

I usually don't consider a session 0 to be a one-and-done affair. For us, session 0 may be more than one actual meeting, a meeting plus some away-from-table communication, whatever. But it should mark the START of full-on, formal character development, not a midpoint. For us, session 0 is where stat arrays are rolled by agreed method, where we decide on the campaign type to be played (home brew, AP, etc), what types of characters are allowed/disallowed, what rule sets (core, options, etc) we're using, and people start to talk about their PC ideas so that other players can coordinate. But PC building usually continues on afterward after everyone goes home.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I think coming to session 0 with most of the character already built is a problem

I guess that depends on how you organise your “session zero”. These days ours takes the form of a WhatsApp discussion over several weeks. I don’t think it’s viable to use valuable in-person time for character creation, and I prefer to get backstories in a couple of weeks ahead of session one so I can start putting in connections.

For myself I consider character creation as an activity that takes weeks.

 

[Kurotowa]

For myself I consider character creation as an activity that takes weeks.

Same. Basic mechanics I can dash out quickly, but the personality and backstory? In a formation that has story potential and is fun to play? I need to kick those ideas around in my head for a while. See how they feel, see if I can get a handle on the persona, try out different variations. If I rush it I get a blandly generic Fighter McFighterson.

 

[Zeromaru X]

I think people has said this many times enough, but Session Zero is key. That and a mini document explaining the setting you want to play. It can be a single page document explaining the limitations and feeling of the setting.

In my experience, I know a lot of old guard GMs that complain about the "circus party composition", but their session zero was "I'm mastering a D&D game, do you want to play?". You can't blame the player who brought his dragonborn or tiefling character, or something even weirder, if you didn't specify what kind of campaign you wanted to play.

And yes, this only happens with the old guard GMs. The new gen GMs are more open minded in this regard, in my experience.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

But metaphorically, if it’s a PC species, it is.

“Human” in this context, denotes personhood, not Homo sapiens sapiens.

no.

orc and elves can interbreed with humans thus they would taxonomically still be human as Neanderthals and denisova are human in most of the ways that matter, save vocally (there gene for vocals all died out it seems very odd genetically and says something about how we speak was very well like)

where does human start and where does it stop?

by this logic any beast, humanoid, giant, or monstrosity is actually a dragon because dragons can interbreed with them (see the half dragon template). is this what we're doing? seriously?

 

[Incenjucar]

They're all people. Biology isn't even required.

 

[Gradine]

but a human-like creature...literally isn't human.

 

[W'rkncacnter]

i already separated humans from human-like creatures earlier by giving them an exception. i guess i could have clarified that, but this really isn't that deep.
EDIT: and before you ask, i didn't clarify because i thought that separation was obvious, especially based on responses i got shortly after.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I tend to either run settings where that diversity isnormal, or i base the world on what the player's choose and have them help me author the places they come from. Sometimes that means a world with no humans. When you have Wood Elves, Gnomes, Dwarves, and Goliaths, who needs humans anyway?

 

[Bae'zel]

As an aside, I do find it amusing how many people in TTRPG communities insist that humans are BORING when literally other media we consume is about humans or made up by humans, including the races, gods and myths we've made up over millenia.

Humans are so booooring. My blue skinned, scaly, winged tiefling (who acts like a human, lives like a human, has the same biological needs as a human) is so much more compelling LOL