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

[Paul Farquhar]

This is a trope common throughout literature of all genres and all ages.

Broken people are generally more interesting than folks with little to no trauma in their background.

And IRL, everyone has trauma. Different kinds and to different degrees, but it allows us to empathize with the broken hero trope.

If that guy can overcome his demons, maybe I can too! My family wasn't murdered by a flight of dragons while I watched, we just grew up poor!

That is the shtick of Inspector Barnaby in Midsummer Murders: a police detective with a happy home life!? Radically different!

 

[Mecheon]

or the monotony of a safe village and 9-to-5 with the same people every day could be exactly the kind of thing to drive someone to drop everything, pick up a sword and chain shirt and run straight out the gates to stab some wolves.

edit, or alternately: fame and fortune, you don't get remembered for running your family's inn or relaxing in your parent's mansion.

Plenty of other ways to handle that. Mercenary work and guard duty, to start.

Adventuring's a job where the standard risk factor includes 9 ft troll predators who hunger for man flesh and can pull a man apart, to say nothing of the building sized, flying, fire breathing dragons. Some of that's got to factor in

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.

We may joke about Australian critters, but the average D&D monster list is far more threatening than anything Australia throws at us IRL.

What kind of circus troupe are folks going to complain about in 20 years from now? :O

In my campaign, I only allow goliaths, tieflings, tabaxi, tortles, aasimar, dhampir . . . none of that new-fangled weird stuff!

The funniest thing is like... Half of the ones folks complain about are legacy races anyway.

Orcs have been playable longer than I've been alive. 36 years, that's how long they've been a playable option.
Goliaths? Goliaths are just setting neutral half giants. If someone's setting is so constrained half giants are an impossibility, I got questions.
Aarakocra? Complete Book of Humanoids

The only stuff unique to 5E are Tabaxi, who date back to 1E and just weren't playable, Grung (another 1E import), the MTG batch and Harengon, who are the only 5E original race that wasn't introduced or playable in past editions

 

[Deset Gled]

That is the shtick of Inspector Barnaby in Midsummer Murders: a police detective with a happy home life!? Radically different!

Part of the schtick of Cagney and Lacey was the "odd couple" pairing because one had a family, kids, and home life, while the other was a typical no-strings cop.

The other schtick being that they were both women, of course.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Part of the schtick of Cagney and Lacey was the "odd couple" pairing because one had a family, kids, and home life, while the other was a typical no-strings cop.

The other schtick being that they were both women, of course.

Cagney’s (?) home life was strained though, whereas Barnaby’s family (both) is always happy and supportive. That’s the joke (if you have read the original author, you will know that they are intended as a send-up/deconstruction).