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

[Hussar]

People with decent family lives generally aren't taking up the adventure of risking life and limb to delve into dungeons and ancient ruins to grab treasure. They're living with the decent family and loving home.

Adventuring, by its nature, draws a very specific crowd, and a lot of the question of why someone is adventuring is just that: what set them on that road to adventure?

But, in the real world, that's not even remotely true.

It's not like Captain Cook was an orphan. Magellan was a noble. To be fair, his parents did die. But, again, there are a horde of historical figures that aren't from tortured pasts who have become explorers and adventurers.

 

[Belen]

Only problem with that is, again, players make their characters in a vacuum and it really doesn't matter how cool you think your options are, the players just don't care. As I said earlier, I've largely given up on trying. The players are going to bring whatever to the table, so, at this point, I'm just too tired of trying to buck the trend.

Why would players make their characters in a vacuum?

This has never happened in one of my games in the last 30 years. I provide the character generation document. I am usually pretty generous and give extra options.

Do I restrict some species options? Yes. I do not allow Warforged, for example.

I have a session zero although never called it that. The players have a discussion with me and the other players about what to play and what may fit with the rest of the group. It is always a discussion.

I have even built options for players who want something different.

If people are showing up with some random character and not discussing and interacting with the group, then something has gone wrong.

 

[Mind of tempest]

But if it's D&D's greatest strength, why do we have threads like this where DMs bemoan how their player's characters are disconnected from the settings? That's my point.

A double-edged bladed can cut if both directions

 

[Mind of tempest]

I mean, one of most famous list of player hinjinks ever written starts with "I am not allowed to play a character based on the Who drummer Keith Moon".

you mean Glen's list

 

[Remathilis]

A double-edged bladed can cut if both directions

True. The consequence of that diversity is that my elf PC may not adhere to the norms of your elves because we are viewing elves from two different lens. And I think that, barring the most extreme examples, that is where most of these "entitled player" and "nightmare GM" stories come from. The players and GM are playing two different games or at least interpretations of it.

 

[Umbran]

But, in the real world, that's not even remotely true.

It's not like Captain Cook was an orphan.

Yes, but Cook had been on the seas for 20+ years before the famed "First Voyage of James Cook" started in 1768, and he didn't initiate that voyage himself - he was commissioned by the Royal Navy and Royal Society. So, that voyage was not a snot-nosed young adventurer jumping into hazard. It was a seasoned professional and military officer being ordered to do it.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Why shouldn’t that be necessary?

Setting specific classes, spells, and options are a good thing because they match the lore of those settings, make for a better roleplaying experience, and can do things that are thematically appropriate for that setting. If a DM likes an idea and wants to add it to another setting, what is necessary beyond making it mechanically feasible? Lore is always going to vary from setting to setting, not to mention the large number of homebrew campaigns.

depends on if they can only ever work there or are just front and centre there.
every block of rules should still be gameable in any homebrew would with minimal effort.

 

[Thomas Shey]

But, I think, the mistake here is thinking that you achieve coherence through subtraction. Instead of making people want to play A, B or C, you're simply saying, "You cannot play D, E, or F, so, make do with what's left over." I'm just as guilty of that as anyone. I mean, my last campaign I ran, I subtracted all full casters.

It is food for thought though. If people want to play D, E and/or F, then perhaps the carrot approach is a better solution. You can play A, B or C and this is why they are really cool!

Only problem with that is, again, players make their characters in a vacuum and it really doesn't matter how cool you think your options are, the players just don't care. As I said earlier, I've largely given up on trying. The players are going to bring whatever to the table, so, at this point, I'm just too tired of trying to buck the trend.

It doesn't help that there's a certain momentum-of-expectations that you have to deal with, and that's immensely stronger with D&D than it is even elsewhere (sometimes D&D's expectation set carries through with people elsewhere, too; back in the days when I was running RuneQuest, I'd occasionally get players coming in with D&D-like expectations of things and kind of not listen when you tried to tell them they didn't apply. That almost never went well). That's just a reality you have to engage with, unless you're playing with groups you know well and know will take the campaign you present on its own without assuming every single thing in the book is available.

(Though I do wonder how often its just the GM cherry-picking what elements they expect to be standard--not in a fashion specific to the campaign, but with the campaign taking them as standard because its what they've been comfortable with in the past and trying to carry it forward through the zeitgeist and getting grumpy because the players' expectations are different than theirs are).

 

[Thomas Shey]

That's how most fantasy writers who aren't called Tolkien work. The world starts out largely formless. As their protagonists move through it details become defined in a way that supports the narrative. If they continue to write in that world for long enough it ends up highly detailed. Doctor Who ran for six years and around 140 episodes before Time Lords where introduced.

I'm not sure that's been true for quite a long time now.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I have never mistaken ban lists for coherency, distinctiveness, or shapefulness.

That says nothing about what the GMs who use them think, however.

The vast majority of banlists are all about keeping things as generic and shapeless as they can--by making it so you only play the Extremely Traditional Options, in Extremely Traditional Worlds, using Extremely Traditional Tropes. It literally is about removing shapeful options!

Well, see my final comment in the post two up. What GMs think they're doing, and what they're actually doing aren't necessarily the same thing.