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

[Hussar]

Another bit of information, although, again, nothing remotely conclusive, is the choice of species in Baldur's Gate 3. I found this chart:

which again, puts the hehe's in the lead three positions, but, this time the spread is FAR closer. I mean, Dragonborn and Tiefling aren't that far behind. And even half orc is still in the running.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Another bit of information, although, again, nothing remotely conclusive, is the choice of species in Baldur's Gate 3. I found this chart:

View attachment 423811

which again, puts the hehe's in the lead three positions, but, this time the spread is FAR closer. I mean, Dragonborn and Tiefling aren't that far behind. And even half orc is still in the running.

This is pretty much in order of sexiness of your characters appearance. Computer games are very visual and you spend a lot of time looking at your character.

 

[Kurotowa]

This is pretty much in order of sexiness of your characters appearance. Computer games are very visual and you spend a lot of time looking at your character.

I have a working theory that character design works on one of those triangle graphs with three poles, and a strong design either lands strongly towards one pole or hits a good mix of two. And while what the three are can vary by medium and genre, for a video game RPG we're working with Sexy, Badass, and Cute.

Githyanki are none of the above, so they're the least popular. Gnomes and Halflings are pushing the Cute axis. Dragonborn, Half-Orcs, and maybe Dwarves are all primarily on the Badass axis. And Elves and Drow and Tieflings are all leaning on the Sexy axis. It should be obvious what how the three axis rank in popularity.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This is pretty much in order of sexiness of your characters appearance. Computer games are very visual and you spend a lot of time looking at your character.

You may come up with alternative explanations if you wish, but the data we got out of DDB, before they stopped sharing it, backs this assertion up.

Human was by far the most common. After that, Elf (all collected together) and Half-Elf duelled for second place. And then Tiefling had been 4th until Dragonborn overtook them in the last two releases.

Given 5.5e has now lumped half-elf in as just another version of elf or human (depending on player choice)? This now means dragonborn are the third-most-popular player character race, based on all data available to us--second only to human and elf. Which would seem to at least weaken the argument that it's solely a matter of sexiness, given dragonborn are decidedly not attractive in the same way elves are attractive. Unless you mean to say that most people find dragonborn sufficiently human-like that their reptilian appearance isn't an impediment to finding them conventionally attractive? But that would then seem to call into question the notion that they are so radically different from humans that they would qualify as a "circus troupe", if the average video game player finds them so appealing...

 

[EzekielRaiden]

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

The Underdark is Fantasy Australia.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

You may come up with alternative explanations if you wish, but the data we got out of DDB, before they stopped sharing it, backs this assertion up.

Human was by far the most common.

Oh, humans are undoubtedly the most common, by a long way, in the tabletop game. The news from the BG3 statistics is they are beaten out of 1st place by half elves. That, I put down to sexiness. Dragonborn are also very much more popular in BG3 than they are in the tabletop game. Mechanically, they are weak, but they look so cool.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Oh, humans are undoubtedly the most common, by a long way, in the tabletop game. The news from the BG3 statistics is they are beaten out of 1st place by half elves. That, I put down to sexiness. Dragonborn are also very much more popular in BG3 than they are in the tabletop game. Mechanically, they are weak, but they look so cool.

Well, er, they really aren't? That's part of why I mentioned what I mentioned.

Per DDB, they were in 4th place behind elf/half-elf and ahead of tiefling, for the final two sets of data put out. They're in 4th place on this chart--just above tiefling, well behind elf/half-elf.

The last time we got data on this was prior to Fizban's, so the data never reflected the updated mechanics--that made Dragonborn mechanically less sucky.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

(Being pissy? Fine. 20 page necro? Fine. 20 page necro to be pissy? Pass. Sorry, folks.)

Mod Note:

Next time, how about simply not responding to a thread instead of leaving a post like this?

 

[DrJawaPhD]

This is pretty much in order of sexiness of your characters appearance. Computer games are very visual and you spend a lot of time looking at your character.

Pretty much yeah, except not entirely since then Dwarf would be #1

 

[DrJawaPhD]

Unless you mean to say that most people find dragonborn sufficiently human-like that their reptilian appearance isn't an impediment to finding them conventionally attractive?

Dragonborn is only so high for BG3 because it's the default for Dark Urge playthroughs. I don't think Larian released stats on Durge vs Tav but I'd be willing to bet Dragonborn are nowhere near as high for Tav (standard PC) playthroughs