Dungeon Fantasy party compositions

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

Looking at discussions on different forums, it seems to me that freak show effect is fair common among players. Perhaps it is today most common style of fantasy roleplaying.

It really seems that contemporary players are ineluctabily attracted by the most special kind of creature they can play.

It's the Reece's Peanut Butter Cup effect.

Each of the templates offers something interesting. It might be interesting to roleplay, or a combat/other ability advantage. And a player might say "Gee, I want my guy to be good at combat; well, a Knight is good at that, but if I also take the Dwarf template/lens, I can fight really well in the caverns where I know we'll be fighting."

Or the penchant for elves and magical stuff to go together.

I think the "freak show" aspect of it is just "interesting combination of highlights to play." The fact that Staver's character is an Infernal demony-looking thing rarely has come up to our detriment in play. My Warrior Saint has a thing for Undead because it's a God thing, and demons tend to upset the wheels of fate when they act out. But as long as they don't, he's OK with it. So the oddity of THREE characters with strong ties to the divine hanging out with a part-demon? Mainly he's a great archer and more than makes up for any issues with the not-quite-prehensile tail, combined with how hard it is to find boots that fit him.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Incidentally, in my experience if you allow players options other than "Human, elf, dwarf, halfling" and "Fighter, wizard, thief, cleric" (expressed however is appropriate for your game system) you WILL end up with gnome barbarians wielding garottes, half-celestial assasins, and minotaur sorcerers. The "freak show" aspect seems to be a major attraction for my group. They like doing something unusual for the entertainment value.

Hey, I didn't say I objected to the freak show, especially for a one-shot. ;)

[Aneirin]

Freak shows are awesome. I have heard other peple discuss it and would like to play in a group of creatures, fed up of being on the kicking end and trying to ascend from dungeon mook to adventurers!

My fantasy party would have a slime, a regular zombie (not lich or vampire or ghoul or anything fancy), an umber hulk, a gaunt (baby beholder type thing) and probably some others.

Though balancing those together would be difficult...

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

It's the Reece's Peanut Butter Cup effect.

Each of the templates offers something interesting. It might be interesting to roleplay, or a combat/other ability advantage. And a player might say "Gee, I want my guy to be good at combat; well, a Knight is good at that, but if I also take the Dwarf template/lens, I can fight really well in the caverns where I know we'll be fighting."

Or the penchant for elves and magical stuff to go together.

I think the "freak show" aspect of it is just "interesting combination of highlights to play." The fact that Staver's character is an Infernal demony-looking thing rarely has come up to our detriment in play. My Warrior Saint has a thing for Undead because it's a God thing, and demons tend to upset the wheels of fate when they act out. But as long as they don't, he's OK with it. So the oddity of THREE characters with strong ties to the divine hanging out with a part-demon? Mainly he's a great archer and more than makes up for any issues with the not-quite-prehensile tail, combined with how hard it is to find boots that fit him.

My campaign is fantasy, but not DF. We don't use templates and lenses, for example, nor spell system (we use powers for magic). I tell my players that GURPS allows to play any idea character they can think, and the only limit is the setting. In a harsh realistic world, their character are true heroes of 200 points.
So, a new player was wondering of what kind of character he would play:

I: you could be a sellsword. a veteran that fought every battle, under every banner, but not a common one: your sellsword is one of best combatant of his time!
Player: interesting. What else?
I: 200 points allow you to create a famous surgeon and physician! You are plenty of points for other stuff, too: perhaps you have a strong charisma, are a great singer, and knows fighting skill, too.
Player: mmmmhhh...
I: or a rich merchant. You've traveled all the continent, and beyond its border, too...
Player: I don't know. Have you further ideas?
I: a juggler midget? One with extraordinary skill in any form of circus stuff, and thieving skill perfectioned over the years... Or a bard from the northern islands, with angel voice and knowledge of herbal secrets... Or a relentless hunter... or a gladiator... a barbarian warrior from the north of continent... an old mariner, a jack of all trades that has seen every port around the sea, fast with words and knives... Did I already tell a surgeon? And what of an old one-eyed assassin with a secret? Perhaps he's a werewolf?
Player (his eyes enlights): a werewolf?
I: yes, there are werewolves. They are rare, but they exist. More common on the other side of the sea, yet. Here where you are, there are old patrician families involved with necromancy from centuries... Some of them have necromantic blood in their veins that makes them similar to vampires or undead...
Player: AN HALF VAMPIRE? OH YES, THIS IS THE MAN!

[Aneirin]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

My campaign is fantasy, but not DF. We don't use templates and lenses, for example, nor spell system (we use powers for magic). I tell my players that GURPS allows to play any idea character they can think, and the only limit is the setting. In a harsh realistic world, their character are true heroes of 200 points.
So, a new player was wondering of what kind of character he would play:

I: you could be a sellsword. a veteran that fought every battle, under every banner, but not a common one: your sellsword is one of best combatant of his time!
Player: interesting. What else?
I: 200 points allow you to create a famous surgeon and physician! You are plenty of points for other stuff, too: perhaps you have a strong charisma, are a great singer, and knows fighting skill, too.
Player: mmmmhhh...
I: or a rich merchant. You've traveled all the continent, and beyond its border, too...
Player: I don't know. Have you further ideas?
I: a juggler midget? One with extraordinary skill in any form of circus stuff, and thieving skill perfectioned over the years... Or a bard from the northern islands, with angel voice and knowledge of herbal secrets... Or a relentless hunter... or a gladiator... a barbarian warrior from the north of continent... an old mariner, a jack of all trades that has seen every port around the sea, fast with words and knives... Did I already tell a surgeon? And what of an old one-eyed assassin with a secret? Perhaps he's a werewolf?
Player (his eyes enlights): a werewolf?
I: yes, there are werewolves. They are rare, but they exist. More common on the other side of the sea, yet. Here where you are, there are old patrician families involved with necromancy from centuries... Some of them have necromantic blood in their veins that makes them similar to vampires or undead...
Player: AN HALF VAMPIRE? OH YES, THIS IS THE MAN!

I am sorry..but I would have stopped you at juggler midget! (maybe if you got to get to werewolf/vampire he would have been a vampire werewolf juggling midget)

The one DF game I have been involved with was a very conventional party. The standard five or six race choices and the standard roles. And part of me rejoiced that they were so well-rounded and would make a good team, and it wasn't full of anime-rejects - and another part of me wondered why the folks I play with have to be so methodical about the mechanics that they were worried about ensuring that every skill that's listed as potentially relevant to the DF genre was covered.

I agree that there are some folks who, through no fault of their own, will always come up with a character that - were they to show up in a story - would be called a Mary Sue. It's definitely a weakness of my own that I have to struggle to appreciate those characters as much as I do a more conventional one.

Maybe it's time to start playing human-only games for me...

[simply Nathan]

Running only out of Basic when 4e was fairly new, this was our party combination:

My character. A blue-haired human mage/knight. I failed on both accounts; I didn't know the trick for making super awesome mages back then and wound up with both gimped magic and gimped combat skills, but I was our only spellcaster and wound up being pretty useful. I would have played a half-elf if they existed in that GM's setting, a full elf if it wasn't such a huge chunk of starting points (70%!), or a dwarf if they weren't magic-resistant. There were no other races, or I'd have played something actually weird.

A female dwarf thief. The GM gave her throwing axe what was essentially the Dwarven modifier at no extra cost. Restricted diet: Mushrooms. She didn't have a beard, but to this GM that's normal.

A male dwarf knight, self proclaimed "dwarf-troll" due to his regenerative ability. Brother of the thief, armed with a halberd, and had Restricted Diet: Fresh Meat.

A human martial artist and self-proclaimed ninja, with IQ 8 and Musical Instrument(Guitar)-6 as a background skill from such. Insisted on buying both Weapon Master(ninja weapons) and Trained by a Master, putting decent points into Throwing Art. When he got into an arena fight, he decided for whatever reason to try punching the fully-armored warrior instead of running around throwing rocks at him. Same name as his player.

[b-dog]

I like to have the party be humans because DF is about exploring strange and unusual dungeons and it sort of loses this feel if people play gargoyles, coleopterans and so on because often the party becomes stranger than the dungeon they are supposed to explore. I also like to use real world religions and cultures because they give a grounding that is believable to contrast with the weirdness of the dungeon. All of the races like elves, dwarves, gnomes and so on are fairies and not suitable races for PCs. I am thinking of allowing PCs with fairies blood however. So a person could play a PC with elf blood and the PC would be graceful and adept at magic but in other ways would live like a mortal human. A person with dwarf blood would be short and stocky and a good with an axe or mace but they would be mortal as well.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Fez

I agree that there are some folks who, through no fault of their own, will always come up with a character that - were they to show up in a story - would be called a Mary Sue. It's definitely a weakness of my own that I have to struggle to appreciate those characters as much as I do a more conventional one.

I'm not sure it's about being a "Mary Sue" per ce, so much as wanting to be just kind of unique and special. There's a huge difference because of the different contexts between a piece of fiction, and an RPG.

In a piece of fiction, the work is aimed at people other than the author. Mary Sues are a problem character because they're tailored to the authors interests, and become so specifically the author's personal fantasy that everyone else can see what's going on and it becomes funny/annoying/ludicrous.

Power or idealism fantasy protagonists are a perfectly valid protagonist character in fiction - but you have to realize that the smaller the target audience you tailor them for, the smaller the target audience that is going to enjoy that protagonist. The ultimate in small target audience is an audience of one (the writer) which is why Mary Sues just don't work.

RPGs are different.

RPG characters have an audience of about 4-7 people, and only ONE of those people is going to see that character as the protagonist of the story - the others just need to see them as a (potentially very) colourful character.

So the line between "eccentric character" and Mary Sue is drawn very differently in an RPG context. The other players and the GM don't need to sympathize with your PC or think the idea of a kobold bard is the greatest thing since dual-wielding magic-zapping scimitars. They just need to think the idea is interesting or entertaining enough as a "secondary" character to the protagonist (if another player) or just interesting or entertaining (if we're talking about the GM).

Some groups find the wisecracking kobold bard, gloomy infernal scout, dynamic dwarven swashbuckler, and sublte-quick-to-anger minotaur sorcerer an entertaining party of characters with lots of potential for roleplay.
Some groups find them a ludicrous combination.

As in all things RPG, your audience is the people at the table, and you should arrange things to suit them, not some hypothetical "Everyone".

[Aneirin]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I'm not sure it's about being a "Mary Sue" per ce, so much as wanting to be just kind of unique and special. There's a huge difference because of the different contexts between a piece of fiction, and an RPG.

In a piece of fiction, the work is aimed at people other than the author. Mary Sues are a problem character because they're tailored to the authors interests, and become so specifically the author's personal fantasy that everyone else can see what's going on and it becomes funny/annoying/ludicrous.

Power or idealism fantasy protagonists are a perfectly valid protagonist character in fiction - but you have to realize that the smaller the target audience you tailor them for, the smaller the target audience that is going to enjoy that protagonist. The ultimate in small target audience is an audience of one (the writer) which is why Mary Sues just don't work.

RPGs are different.

RPG characters have an audience of about 4-7 people, and only ONE of those people is going to see that character as the protagonist of the story - the others just need to see them as a (potentially very) colourful character.

So the line between "eccentric character" and Mary Sue is drawn very differently in an RPG context. The other players and the GM don't need to sympathize with your PC or think the idea of a kobold bard is the greatest thing since dual-wielding magic-zapping scimitars. They just need to think the idea is interesting or entertaining enough as a "secondary" character to the protagonist (if another player) or just interesting or entertaining (if we're talking about the GM).

Some groups find the wisecracking kobold bard, gloomy infernal scout, dynamic dwarven swashbuckler, and sublte-quick-to-anger minotaur sorcerer an entertaining party of characters with lots of potential for roleplay.
Some groups find them a ludicrous combination.

As in all things RPG, your audience is the people at the table, and you should arrange things to suit them, not some hypothetical "Everyone".

I have never heard the difference between Mary Sue in literature and Mary Sue in rpg's explained so eloquently! Thanks for that, I will be nicking that.

I mean there is a line I suppose, but I imagine that lies with the player and how he plays it. You could have two people playing the exact same character, a half fey catboy with a demon dad who was raised in Japan with a katana forged from the blood of his dead mother...and the lad catboy was raped when he was younger (actually...that would be damn near impossible to play as anything likeable without it falling into parody...but I suppose it is possible)

I have lost my point now...damn it.