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

[Remathilis]

Completely disagree. For a new game (according to the game developers I know), things like character classes (or archetypes) and the setting are the things that gets buy in by buyers and new players. For D&D, limit it to such a bland, creativeless future and I think people will just wander away as they have done before and it will lose players. There are a lot of world builders out there. Also, lots of people with favorite setting that is a published one for D&D, and they never seem to agree on which one that is.

Its a problem D&D needed to solve 30+ years ago. Its too late now. But the side effect of TSR deciding D&D didn't need a default setting is that everyone will have different ideas of what D&D is, and that will forever be a source of player/DM mismatching expectations.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The strength of not having an identity is that everyone paints there own identity on it.

Indeed. D&D is about making the fantasy game you want.

Every DM doing things differently means there is no sense of overarching continuity.

Yes. Good. “Overarching continuity” is a liability. You are telling all those players who don’t like the official line to take their money and walk.

You can't just tell me "make a character" and direct me to the PHB and expect me create a full fleshed-out, well integrated character like you can in Pathfinder or most other RPGs. At the very least, I'm going to given additional homework, ranging from house documents to wikis to whole $60 setting books just to make a well-rounded elf character. That's the downside to D&D's strength: the DM may pick whatever lore they want, but the player's do too.

Or you could just turn up with an elf fighter and smack a few monsters with a sword. All this “lore” and “backstory” stuff is entirely optional, and really not part of D&D as originally intended.

But sure, if players want to shell out a fortune on optional stuff then WotC (and others) are happy to take their money.

 

[bloodtide]

The strength of not having an identity is that everyone paints there own identity on it. Every DM doing things differently means there is no sense of overarching continuity. You can't just tell me "make a character" and direct me to the PHB and expect me create a full fleshed-out, well integrated character like you can in Pathfinder or most other RPGs. At the very least, I'm going to given additional homework, ranging from house documents to wikis to whole $60 setting books just to make a well-rounded elf character. That's the downside to D&D's strength: the DM may pick whatever lore they want, but the player's do too.

Except where there is cross over. The player can not expect to force lore on the DM, any more then the DM can force lore on the players.

Its a problem D&D needed to solve 30+ years ago. Its too late now. But the side effect of TSR deciding D&D didn't need a default setting is that everyone will have different ideas of what D&D is, and that will forever be a source of player/DM mismatching expectations.

This is a good thing. To many games are only one very limited thing.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

But the side effect of TSR deciding D&D didn't need a default setting is that everyone will have different ideas of what D&D is, and that will forever be a source of player/DM mismatching expectations.

Tailorability of the setting (and even the rules) is one of the major strengths of DnD design and why it remains the most popular TTRPG. Excellent decision by TSR.

 

[Epic Meepo]

The strength of not having an identity is that everyone paints there own identity on it. Every DM doing things differently means there is no sense of overarching continuity. You can't just tell me "make a character" and direct me to the PHB and expect me create a full fleshed-out, well integrated character like you can in Pathfinder or most other RPGs. At the very least, I'm going to given additional homework, ranging from house documents to wikis to whole $60 setting books just to make a well-rounded elf character. That's the downside to D&D's strength: the DM may pick whatever lore they want, but the player's do too.

I'd argue the benefits of not having a baseline setting will never be fully realized in D&D until the PHB is written with modular design in mind. The DMG includes rules modules that can be switched on and off in different campaigns, but the player-facing rules don't really expose new players to that aspect of the game. There's no shared language DMs and players can use to discuss D&D as a toolbox.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Tailorability of the setting (and even the rules) is one of the major strengths of DnD design and why it remains the most popular TTRPG. Excellent decision by TSR.

I'd argue that once you've got D&D's highly specific magic system (even more specific pre-4e) and D&D's class and level structure you aren't that flexible. And that D&D was a bad fit for both Planescape and Dark Sun because of this.

 

[DrJawaPhD]

I'd argue that once you've got D&D's highly specific magic system (even more specific pre-4e) and D&D's class and level structure you aren't that flexible. And that D&D was a bad fit for both Planescape and Dark Sun because of this.

Well I suppose the "tailorability" of the rules in DnD is more of a culture/expectation thing and not that the rules are particularly well designed to enable it.

Any game design has infinitely tailorable rules if you simply throw out what you don't like and replace it with something else, which is probably a better description of how DnD homebrewing works. It's still a big strength of the game though that the standard expectation is that DMs will tailor the setting and sometimes even the rules to fit the particular table

 

[Fenris-77]

I don't even need to read the thread. I hates it my precious.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I don't even need to read the thread. I hates it my precious.

Well. That kind of makes posting in it a bit odd, doesn't it? Why participate in a conversation you have no interest in actually doing even the smallest effort to engage with? Just seems like a waste of your time (not to mention others').

 

[Fenris-77]

Well. That kind of makes posting in it a bit odd, doesn't it? Why participate in a conversation you have no interest in actually doing even the smallest effort to engage with? Just seems like a waste of your time (not to mention others').

Not at all. I hate the 5E circus troupe model of what a group of adventurers should look like. I think that's a cromulent but of critique on the issue at hand, don't you? Are we not striving for consensus?