Quote from: Will;814383But you're telling a group 'ok, a few of you might be nonhuman' with no real structure. What do you expect?

Everyone is going to pick what they feel like playing, shrugging and assuming other folks might make the choices to round things out.


What you need to do is get the group to make THE PARTY, I think, not just go off and make isolated characters.

Normally as a DM and a player I prefer a group of individuals rather than an organized unit as it were.

But asking the players to come up with a cohesive unit might be a way to go.

The only possible problem might be that one player will dominate the decision and essentially everyone else is an extension of him or her. Very very rare , but can happen. (least I hope its rare.) Then again that can happen in normal group chargen so proceed as you may.

To me it can feel a little... bland? You end up with the fighter, the cleric, the thief, and the wizard sort. Or they are all interchangable near faceless pieces of a unit.

But could also be interesting to play with the right group.

Quote from: Panjumanju;814376Instead what I get is, as you put it: "another motley crew ambling through the backwaters and expecting egalitarian bliss". It seems to be that for 5e RAW there is no way around the party being constructed of all uncommon and strange combinations.

I don't think this is a clash of GM/Player expectations. We've talked about the setting and my expectations in great detail. Just, during character creation players make character choices as individuals, it does not matter if they rulebook says: "drow have almost no reason to leave the underdark" or "sorcerers are very rare", the player says: "Neat, I get to be rare!" and so does every other player, apparently.

This isn't something that can be dealt with by bans, because on a selective basis there's nothing wrong with a single drow or a single sorcerer. And I understand how random tables could upset some people. But so long as players are making individual character choices - and all races in 5e are getting 'equal billing' - the party is going to be a miss-matched mish-mash, entirely divorced from setting or context.

I'm just wondering what I can do to bring the party more in alignment with purpose.

//Panjumanju

Ahhh. Thanks for explaining it better.

Here is my take on it then.

Part of the problem is you are not reading the whole sentence in the drow example.

QuoteDrow adventurers are rare, and they may not exist in all worlds. Check with your DM to see if you can play a drow character.

The other problem is that all the PHB race descriptions are utterly useless fluff text because it is a mish-mash of various settings takes on each.

If the DMs setting doesnt include drow, or dragonborn, then it doesnt include them. Or the example in the DMG of replacing Halflings with talking mouse people. Explain it at the start so the players know.

The other track is to look at what the group ends up as and play up on that. Use it as plot hooks.

Say there are two Drow in the party. Why are they in the party? What are they doing both together and on the surface. What made them so different from the average? Or why are there two Warlocks in the group? THAT is really suspicious. Moreso if they are working for different powers.

Work with what you have rather than against.

Yet another track is to just not make the supposedly rare races rare. Dragonborn and drow both went from fairly uncommon, to kinda common. To pretty much everywhere from one iteration to the next. Drow havent been rare since AD&D. And even there not that rare if you use modules as a indicator.

Quote from: Opaopajr;814392Demographics Random Table - gives a clean limiter of up to what may be played. You create the table, you allow dice to arbitrate. Some players will be willing to play the common races anyway and may likely skip the table experience altogether.
There are two main ways of reading it:
a) What you roll is what you can only get. Roll equals sole value.
b) What you roll is up to what you can get. Roll equals value and all previous.

And make sure to present it to the players up front that this is based on the settings demographics youd like to work with. Rather than just because you want XYZ.

"There are no (or really few) clerics in this setting because the gods took them all away after a terrible event in the past. Roll 1-5 on percentile if want a chance to play one."

rather than

"There are no (or really few) clerics because you play too many clerics! Roll 1-5 on percentile if you want one suckers! nyah nyah nyah!"

Tone, reasoning and presentation.

My recommendation to use group character creation is sort of like recommending yoga: there's probably very little if any scientific proof that it's actually beneficial, but based on my players' and my experiences, it has been very, very useful.

This is how I did it recently:

Before planning a session zero, I told the players that we were using D&D and then asked them what they wanted to use as setting. They all wanted a quasi-historical world, not the bog-standard fantasy one.

So I told them that I was willing to run a few time periods and gave them a finite list. They voted on Ancient Greece.

At sesssion zero, with everyone at the table, I asked what sort of party they wanted. I stressed one thing only that was mandatory: they they all knew each other well and were willing to work together, even if they didn't like each other a lot. They chose to all be from the same village.

They were on-board with all being human, but that I'd be open to satyrs, centaurs and the like, by re-skinning existing races. They unanimously chose to be human.

I started with Attributes. I gave them the choice of any of the three options in the book (4d6 drop the lowest, pre-made spread or point buy), explaining the benefits and drawbacks of each (in my opinion, anyway). I was surprised how many chose rolling, even those who are usually vocally against that (once they saw how many of the others were doing it, they changed their minds).

Then I had them choose Backgrounds, and discuss their role in the village (and those of their families). We used some stuff from Beyond the Wall for this part, going around the table in a leisurely order.

Then they chose their classes. Some people were on the fence at first on which class to be, but once they saw what others picked, they were able to decide. That helped.

I mixed in a bit of world building into this as well. Things like what's around the village, what sorts of troubles that they'd had over the years. Since that part veers into Storygame territory, I'll skip that part because I know that sort of thing is  frowned upon in these parts.

Needless to say, I got an entire package of campaign hooks and developed the surrounding terrain and world in one 3-4 hour session (along with character creation).

It was quite awesome and so far it has been a great campaign.

Let the players play what they want; adapt the game to them, not the other way around. Otherwise, be upfront that you want a humanocentric game and no one plays a demihuman. The whole "only one of you can play a demihuman" thing is just asking for resentments.

Quote from: Omega;814502And make sure to present it to the players up front that this is based on the settings demographics youd like to work with. Rather than just because you want XYZ.

"There are no (or really few) clerics in this setting because the gods took them all away after a terrible event in the past. Roll 1-5 on percentile if want a chance to play one."

rather than

"There are no (or really few) clerics because you play too many clerics! Roll 1-5 on percentile if you want one suckers! nyah nyah nyah!"

Tone, reasoning and presentation.

Not to wholly undermine your point, as I do agree presentation of setting is critical, but you can also have other reasons for limitation. Campaign scope, personal or group challenge, and so on can be reasons, too.

For example, you may want to focus your campaign upon the stories of wizards and their acolytes inside a wizard school/keep. Basically Ars Magica domestic drama. Lingering barbarians and sailors start to raise questions beyond a quest or two.

Another, perhaps you are testing out a house-rule mechanic and you want to see it in play enough to get a sense of its power. Or everyone is curious to see the hijinks of a party of Wild Magic Sorcerers. Single Class Challenge!

There are reasons for many things. But it all keeps coming back to the same solution on how to present it. I don't think anything but the details has changed on our topic recommendations for that.

Quote from: Panjumanju;814376To clarify: I don't mind a game where everybody wants to be elves, or if everybody wants to be wizards; that's fine. "Only humans" isn't what I want at the table. What I want is a party that is well balanced for the setting. If we were adventuring in the Underdark it would be entirely appropriate for everyone to play drow, except for maybe one or two non-drow. We're adventuring in distinctly human lands, where everything else is exotic.

What I envision is something like the party that results from B/X character generation - humans of various backgrounds, their vocation giving them interest and meeting, and a few mysterious demi-humans coming along for their own, separate purposes.

Instead what I get is, as you put it: "another motley crew ambling through the backwaters and expecting egalitarian bliss". It seems to be that for 5e RAW there is no way around the party being constructed of all uncommon and strange combinations.

I don't think this is a clash of GM/Player expectations. We've talked about the setting and my expectations in great detail. Just, during character creation players make character choices as individuals, it does not matter if they rulebook says: "drow have almost no reason to leave the underdark" or "sorcerers are very rare", the player says: "Neat, I get to be rare!" and so does every other player, apparently.

This isn't something that can be dealt with by bans, because on a selective basis there's nothing wrong with a single drow or a single sorcerer. And I understand how random tables could upset some people. But so long as players are making individual character choices - and all races in 5e are getting 'equal billing' - the party is going to be a miss-matched mish-mash, entirely divorced from setting or context.

I'm just wondering what I can do to bring the party more in alignment with purpose.

//Panjumanju

Do you hand out a setting summary or just assume the "default" . A tight little setting inspires people to play characters in it and that automatically promotes the sort of PCs and games you want to run.
If you pitch a musketeer setting its going to be a very odd guy that asks to play an Orcish barbarian.

Quote from: Opaopajr;814531Not to wholly undermine your point, as I do agree presentation of setting is critical, but you can also have other reasons for limitation. Campaign scope, personal or group challenge, and so on can be reasons, too.

Very true. Wasnt the whole "No clerics" deal in the original Dragonlance campaign part of upping the challenge?

Group generation doesn't require tightly designed parties of complementary roles etc.

In my experience it's simply a high level 'ok, what kind of group is this? How do we know each other? Is a Paladin and Assassin really going to work together?'

Just basic stuff.

Because, frankly, the group is probably going to have to work this out at SOME point, and easier to do it when sheets haven't been written out.

I've seen more of that sort of "how did we get together?" and "I dont think an orc hating elf and a half-orc are exactly a good mix." more than the "one player tries to dominate the choices of the others." or worse, sorts.

Which is different, usually, from someone being the group leader. I get singled out for that often when I am the player.

Quote from: jibbajibba;814537Do you hand out a setting summary or just assume the "default" . A tight little setting inspires people to play characters in it and that automatically promotes the sort of PCs and games you want to run.

I do, I pitch it the week before character creation, then on the night of character creation pitch it again, and give everyone a one-page hand-out of the common, uncommon and rare races, classes and backgrounds. Please just played what interested them, which is fine, ultimately, but contrary to what I was after in the immediacy.

Quote from: Ravenswing;814482C'mon, man.  You've got several dozen posts' worth of suggestions.  Pick one.  Pick a couple.  Swear to heaven, you're starting to sound like someone who just devoutly wishes the whole problem would resolve to your liking, without anyone having to do or say anything.

Calm down, fellow, I'm just gathering information, here. There have been *more* than enough suggestions, but people adding things. Every time I've said 'thank you' it was because I'd expected that to be it.

//Panjumanju

Explain to the player that they are taking an uncommon or problematic race and that they are accepting ALL the possible hassles of that.

This was how our DM first explained it to Jannet and her first half-orc. She accepted that and had a blast with every misfortune that half-orc ran into.

Or her playing the halfling in our swamp campaign. Promptly eaten by a giant frog because she was the only small target. Roll new character Jan...

Or someone playing a drow. Constant disadvantage while in sunlight. Not a big deal if the campaign is mostly dungeon delves. But its going to be a hassle if the play is mostly wilderness travel and daytime encounters.

Its interesting, I set up the Albion campaign to be only-human as far as player characters were concerned (and really, all other intelligent races are basically hostile to humanity).  

Then I turned that around in my DCC campaign and made it that humans are quite rare in that setting, they're an endangered species.  There have been human PCs because there are certain areas of the (vast) game world where they still thrive (sort of, its pretty clear that even in the areas where there are still significant human populations things are not going well), but other races (including a wide variety of mutants) are much more common.

The current 5th Ed game I'm in started with "Humans only, no spellcasters except Druids"; the reason being, we're playing native peoples being invaded by Euro/American medieval forces.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;813948On a serious note, I prefer to play humans actually.  The variant racial bonus (get a free feat) pretty much makes humans my default PC unless there's something unusual that I want to try out (like my halfling battlemaster fighter)

Agreed. Humans are the Glorious PC Master Race of tabletop gaming. ...though I suppose that should be phrased as "the PC is the Glorious Human Master Race of electronic gaming," to reflect chronology.

Whatever. Point being, humans > ALL.

Re: the OP - I'm a big fan of group chargen for exactly this reason; it gets everyone on the same page and gives the DM a chance to oversee the whole thing, talking things out and nipping potential problems in the bud right from the start. If that isn't feasible for your group, you're just going to have to take control of your table and lay down the law as others have said (though perhaps be a tad more diplomatic about it than my phrasing might suggest).