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

[Remathilis]

They could solve this, with actual setting books.

That players rarely buy and read. Especially if it's for a single game and they have no interest in any mechanical elements in said setting book.

 

[Bae'zel]

I mean, it's a fun discussion but it really gets summed up with: "have good communication with your players, establish the main campaign themes and 'feel' before everyone makes their characters, find compromises to make everyone happy, even if the pitch is 'gonzo anything goes no character development or meta plot'".

In the end it's about respect or, at least, being able to have clear conversations with your players.

Enough with the strawmen "all players ignore what the DM wants out of spite" or "the DM is a Nazi for not allowing my homebrew winged anthro-vampire ninja in their precious setting".

 

[Zeromaru X]

I think the Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes approach to elves was very useful. Actually, it’s approach to everything was useful, as it painted a standard fantasy cosmology for all major fantasy races.

I believe it is not unfair to say that most tables portray elven society in a somewhat archetypal way, influenced by Tolkien or myth. It is useful to have some guidance on how to achieve that even if a setting could deviate from this baseline entirely. Tome of Foes accomplished this while also having some very interesting, not so traditional, ideas I always play with on my tables (e.g. elven reincarnation).

The only problem with Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is that it unnecessarily ruined the Raven Queen...

 

[Scribe]

That players rarely buy and read. Especially if it's for a single game and they have no interest in any mechanical elements in said setting book.

The players dont need to. Everyone knows what an Elf or Dwarf or Hobbit Halfling are.

 

[Neonchameleon]

I have always felt it a little jarring when I am in a party that has characters ranging from a talking bird to a centaur with nary a traditional humanoid or human in between. It really feels like a circus troupe rather than a party of adventurers. I find that to be especially the case when none (or hardly any) of the Player Characters are native to the region or are even completely unique beings. I can't specifically say that it's because I prefer a human-centric approach because I would have no problem with a majority Dwarf party, Elf party, or Gnoll party.

Does anyone else have this problem or is it just me? How can I move past it? Are there ways I can frame things in my mind to make it easier to get on with?

EDIT: What I really meant by this is how I find it jarring when almost an entire group has no ties demographically or by any other means to the region or setting in which the campaign is held. I have found a large rise in players who come to a game with the intention to play one of the characters from their "stable" as opposed to creating a character specifically for the game they are joining.

This is a matter of investment - player investment and DM investment. The players are not investing in the DM's setting and the DM isn't investing in the player's characters. So there's a disconnect. Historically D&D has gone through the hierarchical method that the DM creates the setting and it is up to the players to then invest in the DM's world. Or even the writer writes the setting, the DM invests in that, and the players then invest in the setting the DM has chosen. So the investment is always meant to flow downwards.

The way I do it is the "post-Forge" way; the world is constructed lightly in session zero by all of us. I've made the big pitch but everyone gets to mark on the map where their character comes from and their character's people come from. And then we make character connections; we make the world, the group, and the cultures together. Which means that even if we have a bunch of weird looking PCs that weren't remotely what I was expecting they are a cohesive group that all came from defined places in the world. And because the world is specifically the world built for this campaign I can burn it down in ways that would feel weird to do to e.g. the Forgotten Realms.

And rare as it is for me to agree with @Remathilis, we aren't doing the thing where we pretend a Halfling is the same in Middle Earth as in Krynn or Athas or even Eberron are we? You absolutely need the players to invest in the setting in specific for many many concepts.

 

[The Soloist]

Well, a real circus travelling, which is a 'circus troupe', works for me.

I once did a circus campaign in which each party member was a different kind of werebeast. We had a werebear (strongman), werebat twins (acrobats, jugglers), a werefox (fortune teller) and a werewolf (bard). It was fun. It's all a question of your intensions as a DM and grabbing your player's imagination with your ideas.

 

[Mind of tempest]

The only problem with Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is that it unnecessarily ruined the Raven Queen...

what was so good before?

The players dont need to. Everyone knows what an Elf or Dwarf or Hobbit Halfling are.

they read the classes, and knowing your abilities is likely to help in picking an option

 

[Remathilis]

The players dont need to. Everyone knows what an Elf or Dwarf or Hobbit Halfling are.

Do they?

I started playing D&D in the 90's and even in that paleothilic era, my intro to fantasy was Final Fantasy, not Lord of the Rings. I knew more about moogles than hobbits. And when I did start playing D&D, it was through BECMI where there was exactly one type of elf.

A player today might know what an "elf" is in the general concept of fantasy, but I suspect they don't know what a sun elf, or a areneal elf, or a qualensti elf are and what the difference between them are. And the game doesn't do anything to help them. Look at the first paragraphs from 2024:

Created by the god Corellon, the first elves could change their forms at will. They lost this ability when Corellon cursed them for plotting with the deity Lolth, who tried and failed to usurp Corellon's dominion. When Lolth was cast into the Abyss, most elves renounced her and earned Corellon's forgiveness, but that which Corellon had taken from them was lost forever.

No longer able to shape-shift at will, the elves retreated to the Feywild, where their sorrow was deepened by that plane's influence. Over time, curiosity led many of them to explore other planes of existence, including worlds in the Material Plane.

A simple and succent little origin story. That is contradicted by Eberron (where elves were slaves of the giants), Krynn (where elves were made by a different god) and Athas. Not to mention Ravnica (which uses MTGs origin for elves). And I guess its true for Ravenloft, Planescape and Spelljammer (due to their multiverse elements) but so are all the other origins. And when D&D has attempted to lay down common lore (like the First World) setting purists balk how Bahamut cannot be the same on Oerth, Faerun, and Exandria, let alone be Paladine too (while also being a constellation in Eberron).

And as steeped as I am in D&D lore, I still needed a wiki to type all that out. I can't imagine most players would even give a flying fig to get that deep in the weeds!

So yeah, Bob the new D&D player might know what an "elf" is, but his version of elf is probably not going to align with what the version of elf your campaign is running. And that mis-match of expectation is where these "Bob created a huge backstory that doesn't take into consideration my world" problems come from. Well no kidding, D&D barely gives him anything to base it on and then proceeds to produce a half-dozen exceptions to the scant lore there is!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Late to the discussion, but if I may:

I do tend to play outré characters, partly because I’m somewhat of an outsider, but also partly because I’ve been in the hobby since 1977- I’ve played most of the stereotypes more than once.*

Thing is…I’m not trying to overwrite someone’s campaign setting just to be a special flower. If my oddball PC doesn’t fit, it doesn’t get used. So I do try to talk to the GM about any unusual PCs’ place in the world before the first night of the game.

And that goes for PCs with unusual builds as well as races. Years ago, I designed an “arcane Paladin” for a mid/high level campaign via multiclassing. And as I was working it out, I created a background for him that was centered around an organization for him to be part of, devoted to a god of knowledge. I asked the DM about it, and he just adopted it wholesale. If any of that had been a problem, I’d have either tweaked the background to fit or designed something else to play.



* the D&D ones, at least.

 

[Remathilis]

The only problem with Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes is that it unnecessarily ruined the Raven Queen...

The biggest problem was she was a deity who was far more popular than the setting she was created for, and she couldn't fill her role as a death goddess when every D&D setting already has a bespoke death god or goddess. So they tried to make her a planar entity and the rest was history.