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).

 

[Mind of tempest]

I think the problem is, to some extent, concept splay over time; rpg elves have a number of sources (Tolkein, Nordic alfar, Celtic sidhe) and often have visual and conceptual identities that sprawl across them. As such the visual and conceptual basis of them actually absorbs a lot of ground.

Talislanta has a lot of races. If I recall when I counted many years ago it exceeded--30 I want to say? So some of them were very likely to overlap with those conceptual and visual tropes. And they very much did.

honestly elf need more compition over it's area of archtypes it has gotten to big

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Say Hoard of the Dragon Queen. I come to you with a human fighter from Beregost who happens to be in Greenest on a holiday. Is that enough? Or do I have to sit down with you and/or any of the other players and collectively collaborate on my character and background? Because if my character is okay, then, that's precisely my problem. A fully formed background created with zero input from the DM or the other players.

You are using prior knowledge of the setting and adventure though. Did you check that the DM hasn't relocated the adventure to Greyhawk, Eberron or a homebrew setting?

And yes, your character is "okay". Boring, but okay. Many players like to create more interesting characters by working with the DM and other players.

 

[Belen]

Oh, wow. What's that like?

Fun. It helps me run personalized content for the players. Not all players spend a lot of time on it. Some give me a few basics and then ask me to add some info for them.

I like making sure every can get invested in the campaign.

 

[Steampunkette]

So. coming in way late:

The circus troupe happens because if you have a menu with 20 items on it and 5 people ordering you're unlikely to see multiple people pick the same item (unless it's particularly tasty) and there's just going to be menu items people don't pick.

D&D has over 70 options.

It's just a matter of math. If there were 9 options, total, you'd see more humans. But with every new species added across every new book the odds of that shrink ever further as people try new menu items.

 

[CreamCloud0]

honestly elf need more compition over it's area of archtypes it has gotten to big

i think a few of the elven subspecies could probably just be pruned wholesale to let other species have more claim to the archetypes, like, i think we could trim sea elves to focus more on something like the triton as the 'aquatic humanoid', give it a couple of subspecies to work with at the cost of one elf type. like, we have wood, high, drow, eladrin, winged, sea and astral elves, i might even be missing some that aren't just the renamed versions, maybe put astral and/or winged elves into aasimar,

 

[Remathilis]

So. coming in way late:

The circus troupe happens because if you have a menu with 20 items on it and 5 people ordering you're unlikely to see multiple people pick the same item (unless it's particularly tasty) and there's just going to be menu items people don't pick.

D&D has over 70 options.

It's just a matter of math. If there were 9 options, total, you'd see more humans. But with every new species added across every new book the odds of that shrink ever further as people try new menu items.

It's almost like people get tired of the same handful of options and crave different experiences, even if it's just Taco Bell rearranging the same ingredients into a new combination.