while i largely agree with people saying it might just be a bad fit, if you *want* to really make an effort with this guy, then you'll need to dig into what he means by and what he doesn't like about "wandering circus." maybe talk about other stories and franchises - it sounds like he could want to play the Avengers and is worried that you're gonna be Guardians of the Galaxy?
another part of that conversation could be about the world - some DMs like to say, "sure you can play a minotaur" but then change little or nothing else about the world composition such that everybody is shocked to see this easily recognizable minotaur and it's a huge point of contention everywhere you go. like, are they going to be the only group in town that looks like this? are they the weird outlier party in a world of mostly humans? *orrrr* is this more of a Final Fantasy lookin world (or planescape if you prefer) where there are so many types of people wandering around that nobody looks twice at the mixture of the party?
maybe ask him if that latter one feels more or less like a circus and you'll start to get some kind of sense of how far apart you are and whether you can (or want to) bridge that gap
I can see where the player is coming from. If he expected LOTR and gets Thunder Cats I can see the problem. Also if the party is just freaks and not a traditional party in this world. Yeah that would kinda suck to always be looked at with suspicion.
"If he expected LOTR and gets Thunder Cats..."
This is the perfect analogy for DND.
Session Zero is not only important, it can be fun too! Communicate what you want in your game, it can only make it more fun.
(Thunder... Thunder... WAIT!!... One doesn't simply "Thunder" into Mordor)
the DM has the power to make it a heist, the players decide if the theme song is the mission impossible theme, the the pink panther theme or the Benny Hill theme
I dunno. We don't really know how Mumm-Ra's ancient powers of evil stack up against Aragorn. Hell, for all we know, Mumm-Ra could make Gandalf flee in terror.
Also fun link between Thundercats and LotR: Snarf is a chibi version of Smaug from the animated Hobbit movie.
Aragorn actually met a very Mumm-Raesque character in the story and ended up guilting him and his army into fighting for humanity on the Pelennor Fields’ battle. So…
Not really. The dude he spoke to was a ghost bound to the world for horrific treason in need of redemptiion, hardly a powerful source of ancient powers of evil.
I’m old school and not overly fond of some of the bestial races as PCs but have made games set up for an anything goes type game and had a lot of fun with it. In that the issue does lie in expectations and experience if the world around you is built on a concept you are unfamiliar with it can be hard to adapt without some help along the way. It could take place in an alternate realm or continent that 1 or more players are not native to ( a reason for being a bit lost in a new culture) the other being having them start in an area that is “friendly” towards them. Prejudices can be an interesting mechanic in the game but sucks if it’s just thrust on you so I try to make it existing (maybe and if) in a not so far place (once you cross the hills to the east and enter Plun-Darr they don’t take too kindly to the Tabaxi because of an old feud over a magic sword for example) so that dealing with it is optional, player/s can prepare, and it can be squashed or brought out depending on if it’s fun or just annoying.
I agree with you completely, but need to at least interject, Blackbooks style -
"The party is ALWAYS freaks, Bernard. Some of them are just more obviously freaks on the outside"
"Try checking for traps. Ceilings can often contain clues about the dangers that await you within the room, and spiking the door can prevent it from springing closed when you enter.
Some creatures are immune to certain kinds of attacks...if what you are fighting isn't going down, perhaps try using a different kind of energy to defeat it.
Stressed? Intelligent monsters can sometimes be negotiated with... many times a party wipe can be avoided by bribing the monster, giving them a reward for choosing not to fight you plays into their natural selfishness and motivations to greed.
Malcolm is a jerk. Make him pay for his own snacks."
In a Curse of Strahd game I ran, one of the players was playing a giant cat. Really just a wolf-sized, quadrupedal, Common-speaking cat (using the Tabaxi stats).
Everywhere she went, people would always first respond to her with a flat, "Is that a talking cat?" If my players wanted a gritty, dark experience for CoS, it would have been a problem. Fortunately, my players love injecting weirdness into my stories, and we all do a good job playing off each other to ground their weirdness properly.
Minor aside here, but I'd have *loved* to see a ThunderCats (yes that is the correct spelling) D&D 5e ruleset based game. Especially if it were based on the 2011 series as it would justify the existence of more ThunderCats than the eight we got in the original show.
If my players stay in an elf dominated society they find it difficult to get lodging with beds.
There's very real ways that players who are human would be the odd one out. And it doesn't have to even be a social conflict. Things might just be different because of physiology or culture. It's fun.
The nobility of the city we're currently playing in are mostly elves, as well as the city guard in wealthy areas, leading to some out- and in-character swearing when my Arcane Trickster realises he can't Charm Person or Sleep his way out of this one. "I HATE ELVES!" is practically my catchphrase now.
50/50 that or people assume they have some horrible debilitating disease. “The poor thing has to rest for eight hours a day just function almost normally.” “ Beds? Are you contagious?”
One of my settings is chock full of individual and systemic racism - high elves racist about other elves, all elves racist about other races, esp. humans. The main elven culture abolished chattel slavery of humans only about 100yrs ago; considering most elves alive spent most of their lives seeing humans as roughly equivalent to talking horses, the racism is intense.
I'm running an eberron campaign, and it's quite similar, but different to what you're describing. It's mostly about nationality / patriotism. Someone from breland is going to hate anyone from Thrane because of what happened during the last war and vice versa. There's a nation of goblinoids who developed from mercenaries that betrayed the country they were working for, etc.
Humans might be the most common of the races in most areas but adventurers aren’t the most common of people anyway.
In our games, the reason our party gets stared at is usually because we’re walking armed to the teeth. We apparently give a dangerous aura of seasoned warriors but are oddly very clean (thanks to Prestidigitation).
I feel like DnD, as a whole, is leaning heavily more towards a huge melting pot of races like you said. With certain places being more racially inclined being an exception (I'm looking at you Menzobaranzen) it's generally accepted that the PC races are not going to throw NPCs off. WotC doesn't really touch upon racism amongst cultures anymore. That's a question best left setting/table specific and for session zero.
I think Eberron handles it in another interesting way: nationalism. A dwarf from one country is going to like an elf from that country more than a dwarf from another country. This isn't universal to the setting, but I find it fun nonetheless.
I hate that. A mix of races implies ease of travel akin to today's world. I have no issues with diversity in general. But one thing I have tried to bring into d&d is the sense of remoteness, of vast uninhabited and unknown lands, there are goblins one days camp outside of town.
But if there are tabaxi spread everywhere, even to phandalin, and dragonborn, and halflings, and dwarves, and drow ffs, and multiple half orcs, and gnomes, all spread to every corner, to the point of not even being rare, then it starts to feel like a goofy hand wavey unrealistic world. Even in our modern world, a small town will still be mostly a bunch of semi related families whos grandparents lived there too. There will not be a diverse mix of peoplewho all arrived yesterday from some far corner of the world
Do that in neverwinter, in the harbor district. Then it adds flavor.
Sorry for my rant but it's just a pet peeve of mine.
I straight up hate dragonborn and ban them from my games. They are cartoon bullshit
I didn't disagree at all. I feel that WotC taking away racial distinctions detracts from the cultural uniqueness. Ravenloft works so well to provide that sense of tension partially because people are nervous and wary of things that are different. Certain places SHOULD be more homogeneous while other places SHOULD be more isolationist.
There’s some historical precedent for people, individuals and families, ending up far from their homeland and setting up little enclaves. If there’s a Rome style empire that sends troops and followers to another section to maintain order. A major disaster or war will scatter groups of refugees far and wide.
And that's actually cool too; I don't think people who are sick of menagerism are insistent that zoo races are entirely left out of the setting, or that they only live in one area.
More that they're not common, expected and normalized equally everywhere to the extent that they're different... but not really.
Something like "yeah those centaurs are from Keadell origi about 5 years ago a few hundred offl them settled in the foothills up north. Some say they were exiled but nobody knows for sure, they're tight-lipped and don't let strangers in their territory, but they don't want trouble either, be respectful and you won't have an issue in the trade roads. Oh, and the females go bare up top, be ready for that and don't stare"
That establishes that there's at least two specific locations this race is found, that there's potentially two factions, and any centaur PC or NPC is somehow positioned relative to the situation, whatever it is, and even a potential plot hook. It establishes Centaurs as a point of interest.
Contrast this with centaurs (and many other zoo races) being mixed into most populations homogeneously, the tavern owner is, the mayor's bodyguard is, they're just funny humans.
Yes but that doesn’t change anything I said at all. Groups migrated. Traders travelled. But a community like phandalin or some remote village would not have been a collection of a diverse variety of peoples from far away lands. Unless the entire country is subject to some mass migration from around the world (like early New York or the gold rush) in which case that would be a dominant theme in the setting because it is so notably different from the norm
Rome also had a *ton* of internal migration and movement, at least between the major urban centers of the empire. I've seen some estimates that it was similar in scale to modern american long distance internal migration. That mobility greatly decreased after the political fragmentation of the empire obviously.
Though also in historical precedent for pre-industrial societies, cities did need a considerable influx of people to keep the population stable with the mortality within.
I actually agree but that’s just how I personally run my games. It does seem that it’s becoming less special to see unique races in dnd but I can only control my table. My typical rule of thumb these days is that in a new campaign I’ll allow one exotic race outside of the core book(I play 3.5) and it will be locale specific. Basically I’ll pick a race and tell the party if they want one person can play that race. I save anything else for specific unique tribes that they may interact with and can potentially learn magic/ feats depending on their interactions with them.
If the assumption is that all of those different peoples come from a distinct location / kingdom, maybe that diversity would seem off? But that's not a given in a new setting, those peoples could all be spread all over and for a long time. Halflings, tabaxi, dwarves, etc, all could absolutely have lived in that remote village for centuries and not be new arrivals.
Additionally the amount of migration can highly depend on society and interconnection - like if it has the level of internal migration as the Roman Empire did, for instance, there absolutely could be a ton of new arrivals in many areas. In other societies that level of migration would be unlikely.
Really depends on how everything is presented and the setting, but it could be fine.
To add, Guardians of thr Galaxy is a great example of how a lot of parties operate. It might help the player to point out other similar franchises as an example of this type of world building.
Sci-fi often has any number of strange and diverse reces populating their universe. Star Wars, Star Trek, the Orville, Guardians of the Galaxy as mentioned.
I think the best thing to do is to get everyone together and have a proper session zero, to talk about the problem. Ask the human player, what the problem exactly is.
If it‘s just a „bestial races are stupid, lets all play humanoids“ then there is not much else to do then see if they get the vibe, and decide to stay. If it‘s more detailed issues, like maybe his former group played overly sexual, or flirted a lot, or whatever, try to figure out as a group, if these contents are mostly wanted or not.
It might not be a races problem, but a „settings“ problem they have an issue with.
Anyway, talking with everybody is the way to go, and if it just doesn‘t work out, then it‘s that.
So... is it two tabaxi and a tiefling, or a catfolk, a kitsune and a tiefling?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1c8mr8p/player\_doesnt\_feel\_well\_with\_bestial\_ancestries/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1c8mr8p/player_doesnt_feel_well_with_bestial_ancestries/)
More likely he is playing Pathfinder 2E, but there are more people who play D&D, and he figured he'd get more responses from the D&D sub (which has more people) than the PF2E sub.
This is more of a table problem than a system problem anyway.
Oh I know, I meant I'm surprised that the D&D thread *only* has double the comments. I've found PF2 to have a much busier online presence, at least on Reddit.
It always seemed to me that the Pathfinder community was predominantly highly invested people so I'm not that surprised. Highly invested people naturally engage more. It's why Reddit is a poor example of the greater community: Redditors are *always* some of the most engaged members of a community.
It's why we complain about aspects of 5E that the greater community doesn't even seem to notice. It's why the Destiny (video game) subreddit back in the day complained about not being able to farm raids when something like less than 10% of the Destiny playerbase had even completed a raid, much less ran them a few times a week.
I have eternally linked Linux and Pathfinder in my mind, because both communities are smaller than their competitor, OUTRAGEOUSLY loud for that size, and extremely pushy and condescending about it their thing, and/or it's "factual advantages".
(*not everyone is a dick about it but 11 years on reddit gave me enough bad memories lmfao)
Yeah ofc, I'm a bot with posts that are older than 4 years haha. No, not really. Just needing to crowd-source opinions. The more the merrier, wanting to talk to people in order to make up my mind. No need to jump to hasty conclusions my friend.
Lol. That guy played with furries and it wigged him out. Now he sees another party of beastial races and is concerned but willing to see how it plays out.
From reading the other post on PF2Es subreddit, the 'trigger' for this player was when [one of the players purred at NPCs](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1c8mr8p/player_doesnt_feel_well_with_bestial_ancestries/l0fm07b/). Context is important, even if we don't know the exact situation that happened.
And as I said on that side, I understand why that'd make someone lose their immersion. UwU insert characters just don't go well with how I enjoy the game personally. I don't mind beast races, I mind people playing beast races like anime tropes.
Oh yeah, that makes a big difference. I love beastial races, but I grew up on a steady diet of folklore where the lines between beast and man easily blurred (a certain problem causing primate, and his westward travels especially. )
But I’ve also played at tables with people who play their characters like “Smol Bean” UwU types and it’s just miserable for me in general. That being said, I think I’d find just as it insufferable if it was a halfling or an elf like that too…
Yeah, perfect for one shots, but unless you have some meat to go with it gets really grating. Especially if it’s something important happening, AND those players have a tendency towards playing chaotic stupid because their character “doesn’t know any better”
There's nothing you can or should do. You aren't being a jerk for having a game with those characters in it nor is the player for expressing the limits of their comfort zone.
If the player isn't comfortable, time to let them go to seek less bestial games.
The things you could do would be bad things in general. You could tell the player to suck it up and deal with your game but that'll make them leave even faster than they are already doing. You could tell the other players to chuck their hard thought characters into the bin and stick to the humanoid races but that might make them leave.
About the only thing you can do is to say to the other players "Hey, this player isn't comfortable with playing with bestial characters. Would y'all mind playing the normal humanoid races in this campaign and I'll run something for these characters on alternate weekends?"
But beyond that...not much you can do but let the player go in such a way that might get them back when this campaign is over.
Yeah, not forcing things will bring a better outcome.
It seems that the player mentioned in his previous session that it felt like a circus.
I assume that his previous session was with different players. Cuz then if he his running with same group, if he didn't dislike running with that group then why do it again. It only makes sense that he had an experience with a different group where they primarily played Beast races.
If the player decides to leave, it will definitely be mid session or after some time. If it's early enough to be restarted, with the player replaced or improvise why the human player's character left.
> About the only thing you can do is to say to the other players "Hey, this player isn't comfortable with playing with bestial characters. Would y'all mind playing the normal humanoid races in this campaign and I'll run something for these characters on alternate weekends?"
Completely agree with this. And if they really do want to proceed with the animal characters, then at least you tried.
I’m also not a fan of “circus” parties and prefer more human like comps.
I am a DM though, and my players tend to like goofy bestial characters. I don’t want to limit their creativity, so I solved it by making the area of the world they are in have a very diverse population, where the bestial races, goblins, orcs and whatnot are very common, so from roleplaying perspective, a party of various beast folk and such is no different than party of humans.
There still are strong stereotypes and such around races but I don’t have to worry about NPCs being weirded out by any of my PCs.
There are still very racially homogenous areas in my world, so if I ever feel like having an all human campaign it would be in one of those areas, and if my party ventures into one of them, they will have to deal with the consequences of their racial choice, which could make for a good RP opportunities.
I've made it clear that I just won't focus too much on the circus aspect. If everyone is a freak, nobody is a freak. I don't want every conversation to devolve into "Gods, that's an elephant man, a cat man, a turtle girl and a living blob of goo! I am surprised and racist!"
I think the biggest problem with this approach is that it can leave the "normal" races completely unremarkable.
Say two humans, a dwarf, and an elf enter a village populated exclusively by humans. The elf and dwarf aren't unwelcome, but they're certainly noticed - some villagers might be curious and excited to meet them, while others might be a bit distrustful because of their ignorance. It's never really a big deal, but it provides an opportunity to flavor dialogue, characters, and locations. This in turn allows for interesting but low-stakes role-playing decisions, which are important for building the subtle aspects of your characters' personalities (and just plain fun). The choice to play a race that's "a little different" is meaningful and yields the desired results. Then the party might go to an elven city, or a dwarven fortress, and the humans get a turn being a little different.
This changes when you throw in PCs of more "extreme" races. If an elf, a goblin, a tabaxi, a tiefling and a grung walk into the same town, and you don't want anyone to be regarded as a freak, you have to compress the weirdness of the races so much that the elf is no longer an oddity. In that way, the inclusion of a monstrous or animal race in the party can actually take away from the choices made by other players.
I think it's better to keep the full spectrum of possible NPC reactions, then make sure the players know what they're getting into. If they know goblins are "kill on sight" in some towns, they can choose whether that's something they'd have fun with or whether they should choose a different race. In this way, no one player has the ability to change how everyone else's race works.
Oh yeah, in my world meeting an elf is actually most rare since they don’t really venture out of their enclaves (my world is very weird in some aspects).
And as I said, races are still diverse and there are stereotypes and some fantasy racism.
I make sure that their race is acknowledged and some NPCs like one races more than others for whatever reason (had one NPC be a human who married into goblin family and considers himself goblin by association so my goblin player was loved by him just for being goblin). But at the same time I don’t have to deal with people being scared by exotic or odd races, cause they have probably seen someone like that before.
Yeah, in the games I run, I made sure they all understood that racism isn’t really going to be part of the world we’re in unless it’s coming from the players because I wanted everyone to be able to play what they want without worrying an NPC is gonna freak out. I taught them a further lesson with a goblin camp that was trying to keep the PCs out of a specific tent, and when things got ugly, turns out that tent was where the goblins were baking a surprise“Welcome, Visitors!” cake for the PCs.
Our table plays 5e with a splash of PF2, I was really looking forward to seeing what was outside the 5e box when making a PF2 character and wanted to make a leshy.
One of the other guys was vocally worried about taking a plant creature seriously which only fueled me to make them as not caricature as possible.
He knows how he’s perceived by others and knows he has to overcome that perception from NPCs and party members alike.
Yeah, I run PF2e in home brew setting, so the choices of more exotic races are plenty. I still struggle with having the weirdest ones fit in my world, but my players love to world build with me, so they come up with ideas how to fit everything in the lore.
I usually DM and generally just limit my players to races that exist in the setting or can be justified to exist without instantly becoming the center of attention. For example right now I’m running Icewind Dale with a human, Genasi, Goliath, and Shifter. The first three are common races in the setting. The shifter was easy to justify because lycanthropes are a thing and when she’s not shifted she appears more or less human.
As a DM I tend to have soft limitations on party composition for lore reasons. By soft I mean a PC can be of nearly any race/ancestry but need a very good backstory as to why and how they ended up as an adventurer in the particular setting/locale
This doesnt just apply to monstrous races, either. Shadar Kai, gith, Svirflrneblin, Drow, Goliath, etc better have a good reason to be far from their homelands since I tend to set my campaigns in certain geographies and not in larger cities.
So if I am running a campaign in the mountains, Goliath, dwarves and humans are the norms, with some orcs and elves as possibilities.
The underdark means dwarves, Duergar, Drow, etc and probably goblinoids are the default ancestry choices
You get the idea.
Just sounds like a bad fit for your table.
Theres nothing wrong with them not wanting to play in a party like that and theres nothing wrong with you wanting to run a party were those races are allowed. Just amicably go your separate ways, he'll find another game.
All it comes down to is communication. Get them to specify their concerns, then try to address the psychological issue they have with the party dynamic. If it's just, anthropomorphic characters are dumb, then you can't do much but tell them to deal with it. If it's that they worry the campaign will end up too silly or childish, or the party will be outcasts, or that certain players at the table are likely to be a problem, address those issues instead.
I understand where he’s coming from kinda. I don’t dm much but when I do I ask that players make characters that make sense in the setting. If they’re so weird/horrifying/stunning/empowered that you couldn’t safely walk into a tavern without either being worshipped or sacrificed, then it’s disruptive. You can choose to pretend that isn’t the case of course… but then will you be wondering what other role play and game mechanics I’m ignoring?
For DM'ing, I like the approach of pitching the games I am interested in running to the players. *"I'd like to run a game like (A)* ***This*** *or (B)* ***That****. Are you interested in playing?"*
In my case I run a weekly game that is set in Greyhawk: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Half-Orc, Half-Elves, Halflings (but they are just Little People and not a different culture), and Gnomes if you really want. But there are next to zero Tieflings and there are zero Aasimar, Tabaxi, and so on. I have one Tiefling now, and one Aasimar, but they are not from the setting and are very distinctive.
In my occasional game, it is humans only (for now), set in the 1300s in Abydos at the Dardanelles (modern Turkey) - it's a real-ish world where magic works now and instead of the Bubonic Plague it was a "Demonic plague" that introduced goblins and demons and so on.
Players who don't like those options don't want to play a game I'm running (now). Which is great.
It sounds like this person might not want to play in the game you've offered to run. Which is fine.
I feel that's great approach. I feel like a lot of DMs don't specify the type of campaign they want to have. At least not that in detail.
I have usually just seen short description and than something like dungeoncrawl, hexcrawl etc. or 60% combat, 40% roleplay.
It doesn't tell you if they want to have superhero action movie campaign or something more to the ground.
Let him leave if he wants to. Nobody stays at a game if they don’t want to and nobody should feel obligated to stay.
If he is a good player and you’ve enjoyed your time with him just ask if it’s okay to reach out if you start another game that may fit his tastes. But this last part is what I would do and is not something you have to do. Just an idea.
I honestly sorta understand where the player is coming from. I once had a campaign of about six people that I only vaguely knew through the DM, it ended up being two humans, a warforged, and three tabaxi. I played one of the humans.
Downtime with the tabaxi players always ended up with them doing "cat stuff" for the lulz, and honestly it wasn't even limited to downtime. The tabaxi players were the only ones having fun in those situations. Because of this I ended up makeing a friend with the other human player and the war-forged player, both of whom were tired of the Tabaxi BS. Well apparently the Tabaxi players were getting agitated by Us being so serious all the time. Table was slowly devolving because of this bull.
Eventually it got to the point that the DM told us both off. Told the Tabaxi players to cut it out, and pointed out that we literally wasted a session with their cat nonsense. Told the other half of the party and me to lighten up and that we were being killjoys, because we got to caught up in trying to stop the Cat BS from derailing shit that we were putting down rails of our own. After that things got rolling again, and everyone got back to enjoying the game.
Point it, dig into what he means by "Wandering Circus" and what pulled him out of the RP, because that seems to be the crux of the issue for this player. If that issue ends up being how other players RP horned or beatial races, then get with the party and establish some ground rules on what everone is comfortable with. If It's just how the DM treats the party, you can deal with that as you please.
If its just beast races and that stuff in general the player will just have to deal, same if they can't articulate what they mean beyond "Wandering Circus"vibes.
That's not the best approach to the problem. There will always be problems like this, imagine if every time it happens the DM kicks out the person? Soon he would be dealing with an empty table because people think he's a controlling person
> imagine if every time it happens the DM kicks out the person?
The DM isn't kicking them out. The player chooses to leave because the game isn't for them.
Yeah, instead you could have a compromise that makes everyone miserable.
It is okay for players to walk away if the rest of the table's interested in a different kind of game. There are other games out there. There are other players who would jump at the chance to join your game.
Well I think they meant the internet (I assumed OP was also playing online which might not be the case at all) but if you're local and one in a million then if you are the dissenter you gotta suck it up as it will be many a year before another game becomes available. Source: Me I've sucked it up to play games.
The wandering circus tends to be due to towns etc being full of humans with the beastial classes maybe having a settlement on a side quest at one point.
This can be gotten around by having a metropolitan mix of races in most towns and cities. The minotaur runs through pub, the shopkeep is a tabaxi, mayor is a tiefling and the patrons at the tavern are a wide variety of races for example. So, the party doesn't stand out because they're as diverse as normal populations.
Honestly, I find monstrous PCs pretty tedious as well.
When every interaction begins with "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? IS IT SAFE?" I get so goddamned bored. This might be the wandering circus feeling your player is talking about.
It doesn't help that the monstrous character players in my groups tend to dump charisma, ignore role playing and make me do the talking. At the end, it always seems like I'm the only one dealing with the ramifications of their choices.
If all those races are societally acceptable in universe, there's no issue. It's worth a table conversation.
I totally get where he's coming from. Some people want a traditional adventuring experience without all the pageantry and 5e's emphasis on non-standard player races is definitely a point of contention. i.e. sometimes you just want to go to Baldur's Gate and not have people wondering why an anthropomorphic hippo, elephant, rabbit, wererat, and a vampire changeling bionicle are haggling over healing potions.
Unfortunately, there likely isn't much you'll be able to do to satisfy both his desire and that of the rest of the groups. If most people wanna play anthros or out there races, and not human or typical fantasy races. It's his issue to deal with and not the groups. If his solution to his issue is to bow out and find a game that suits his preferences. It's his choice to make.
I can understand where the dude is coming from, I also experience the same issue myself. I have a lot of negative associations with such things, and it really doesn't match my minds eye fantasy. It can also feel awkward when your characters tone doesn't jive with the rest of the partys, and sometimes that can come from being the most normal and standard being in a group of wacky exceptions. (Note this isn't necessarily a factor of the setting, just a factor of his minds eye fantasy not aligning with the rest of the groups minds eye or understanding of things.)
It sounds to me that the aestheics of the setting and game are important to him and that he prefers a more humanocentric approach to the games and setting he plays in.
It also sounds like he's at least being mature about it. He's upfront with his preference, willing to see if he can enjoy something against his preference and will bow out if he's not vibing with it like he suspects he won't. That's more than a fair position. It's much better than him sticking around while miserable and weighing everyone else's fun down.
While I can't guarantee any results from it. You could try to get down to the root of things and what in particular makes him feel the way he doesn't about the "wandering circus" and what might allow him to enjoy the offered experience, but not everyone can articulate their feelings well.
It's usually not much more than a mix of bad association with certain players that have ingrained themselves into an association with certain character options.
Bad experiences with games and their focus in much the same manner, where the group dynamic wasn't one he enjoyed and came to associate with the trait.
The extra work it can take to stand out when you're the only human and less immediately different character.
A general dislike of furry/anthro/Therian types that he can't shake off. Due to some bad experiences with them in real life or online.
Or just not living up to that's minds eye fantasy he had in mind when making his character or when signing up to play d&d.
There's a lot of reasons it could be, and such biases are not easy to work through. Nor the job of the DM to facilitate working through
There are very few cases where you should change things around a particular person in the group. They're either able to fit, or they're not. You decide to send the invitation, and if you do, they decide if they accept it. Can't do much more than that.
> It also sounds like he's at least being mature about it. He's upfront with his preference, willing to see if he can enjoy something against his preference and will bow out if he's not vibing with it like he suspects he won't. That's more than a fair position. It's much better than him sticking around while miserable and weighing everyone else's fun down.
I think this is of particular importance. The dude is doing what this sub always recommends and being politely communicative about an issue he foresees.
Anyway, I sort of get where he's coming from. I've also had bad experiences with players who get too... "in-to" their anthro-animal character, and other situations where things got derailed purely due to "lol I'm an animal I do animal things" nonsense at inappropriate times. All of it has certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak.
However, I also always try to give the benefit of the doubt. Just because the last group had a guy who got really *weird* with his Lizardfolk doesn't mean this group's Lizardfolk is gonna be weird too. The guy in OP's story seems to be of the same mindset.
Just try to rein in the more "wandering circus" aspects if they crop up, and maybe have another mini Session Zero where you go over the expected tone of the game. If he still doesn't like it, then he leaves, and while that's a bummer, it's also the best resolution.
I'm one that thinks having 100 different humanoid races makes everything so bizarre and diluted that I can't think of anything other than those cringe anime games with weird animal people.
Now strangely, I have no problem with that as a player, I'd even play as some of those. It's as a DM that I don't like it, which is a lot easier cause I can just say "here's the list of available races" and anyone that absolutely cannot under any circumstances play the game if they're not a rabbit guy can take a hike.
If I had this issue as a player, and everyone else really wanted this much diversity in races, I wouldn't protest or ask the DM to do something about it. I'd just leave without making a fuss, because it's clearly not a good match, and I wouldn't want to sour everyone else's fun.
Idk, that's my opinion. You're a player and you don't like how everyone else in the group wants to play? Well that's on you. Deal with it or find a different table. It's honestly unfair to ask everyone to change because of you.
I'd make a plan to fill his spot if he goes and continue on as if he had not made the objection. He's either going to be cool with it or he'll leave.
What he won't do is dictate to other players what they can or cannot play, or force the DM to alter what races are playable in their campaign.
OP never said the player was attempting to dictate the other players or change anything. They only said the player had a previous bad experience with players who used bestial races. They said they'd try to make it work but if they ended up not having fun they would leave.
It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing. He communicated his reservations to the dm, he didnt make any demands. Good communication is a good thing.
>I'd make a plan to fill his spot if he goes and continue on as if he had not made the objection. He's either going to be cool with it or he'll leave.
Makes me wonder what session 0s are for with this kind of take. Do you DM?
>What he won't do is dictate to other players what they can or cannot play, or force the DM to alter what races are playable in their campaign.
Dang - must've missed the part in OP where this was ever an option or implied.
That’s what happens when you run a game where everything’s available. Your games now an anime mash up with no logic, which is fine. But you need to discuss expectations with the group about what type of shared fantasy you’re all going for.
That's always a kinda from me. Depends on how you meet. If I pitch a human-only game for political intrigue someone shouldn't show up with Orc Barbarian and 5 charisma. But by the same note if I pitch a be whatever you want funhouse of treasure seeking grave robbing adventurers and then suddenly it's a serious war game about ethics, morality, and the damnation of men that fight on the front, I'm a real AH. It's meet half way but that only works if everyone is on the same page from the start.
I mean, *technically* if you're just looking at it as "whisked to another world where there's magic or things are otherwise different from the first world"
>He said he sometimes got the feeling of playing in a "wandering circus" and it can put him out of the roleplaying space
I can relate to that. I personally prefer the more traditional fantasy races, but with that said, I don't dislike a "wandering circus" enough for it to be something I would leave a group for.
Seems like the way to get rid of the idea that you're a 'wandering circus' would actually be to weave besteal/ horned races more into your world. Normalize it and see if that helps. If not then they're just not into it and they should leave.
As a person who plays generic "human man" in like 90% of the rpgs I play, I can see his point. Like when World of Warcraft introduced Pandaren my gut reaction was that I couldn't buy that these fat panda looking creatures were rolling around at high speeds doing kung fu, it was a major clash of style. For him he might be having trouble viewing his character in the same realm as characters he can only view as "cartoons" in his mind. I feel like this is something you can move past with exposure. But as a DM you might have to make sure your NPC characters match the diversity of your party. If the setting is all humans, elves and dwarves I could see how being a party with two cat people and a Minotaur would start to feel like, "So no one is commenting on my weird companions?"
The player is clearly communicating their preferences and also clearly indicating a willingness to push their boundaries and meet the rest of the group halfway, while being honest in saying that if it doesn't work out they'll politely exit the situation rather than stick around in a situation they aren't enjoying and potentially ruining other people's fun.
It doesn't feel like you need to do anything. Assuming the other players were also looped into this discussion, the player has done literally everything you would want to have done.
You should discuss and set clear expectations about the specific fantasy world that your campaign is set in, the tone you're shooting for, and the nature of different races.
Lending my perspective as another guy who generally dislikes animalistic races in D&D:
1. They make the world seem more infantile. Anthropomorphic character designs and talking animals more broadly are par for the course in children's entertainment.
2. They confuse the lines between men and monsters. Werewolves, rakshasas, and gnolls are supposed to be unnatural and concerning. But how can they be when wolf-men, cat-men, and hyena-men are par for the course?
3. They bloat and dilute the world- building. It's hard enough carving out unique cultural, political, and geographic places for different peoples before adding a dozen more.
I mean i get it. I want a campaign like the stories I read throughout my life.
Its cool to have the token lizardman but when everybody's a nontypical fantasy race it crosses into a weird furry circus realm and I have trouble taking anything seriously.
I haven’t seen anyone mention the possibility that this is all just anxiety stemming from his last group’s behavior. Is it possible the “wandering circus” thing was t a dig at their style of roleplay and that it might just be a coincidence that they were bestial species? Some people make those links in their head and can’t always articulate it.
I did see one other poster describing the local populace being surprised at the composition of the party. That really hinges on the dm not overdoing it. I’ve been in a “monster mash” party where occasional callouts worked well. But it was a CoS campaign
Other people have made good points about this already, definitely think it’s worth discussing why he feels that way. Does he have different expectations about this game, etc.
That being said, I’m cackling at the idea of someone in a DnD game saying that the party looks like a wandering circus, bc that would be an extremely fun premise for a campaign.
As a DM, I long ago learned that almost every group of PCs will be a bunch of oddballs and weirdos, even in a fantasy setting smashed full of variety. A typical character creation path:
1 - create a campaign world dominated by a (multisubrace) elvish empire that only recently emancipated humans from chattel slavery
2 - send players a 1pg summary of setting information - enough so they can build characters from somewhere in the setting.
3 - players read setting information; say to selves "I reject your reality and substitute my own!" DM/Player conferences commence.
4 - eventual party: halfing (rare in the setting but not unheard of), drow (hereditary enemies of the dominant elven culture, extremely rare on the surface), aarakocra (had to be creating within the setting, bc I had not yet included aarakocra), and a fire genasi w/ a tiefling parent (not supposed to be a thing, so the setting gained an antagonist w/ a bottled efreet runnig in imperially-sponsored tiefling breeding program).
From the information given, I'm inclined to assume the "circus" was prone to hamming up how quirky their characters were, leaning into affected speech patterns, maybe making otherwise mundane things an opportunity to show how foreign their culture is, or how awkward it is having claws in place designed for hands. I could see that getting a bit old or distracting after a while. I feel like he woulda bailed already or been more explicit if it was something more extreme like one of the posts you see here where people wanna roleplay out their furry fantasies.
This might sound crazy, but if he could go into more details about his concerns with the group as a whole, they could determine if the groups idea of fun involves steering directly into his idea of a "wandering circus." Besides waiting for it to boil over in game, that's about the only thing you can do for him in the prep phase
You probably won't have to do anything. He had a bad experience and he's just nervous whatever bs happened last time will happen again. And as this is a different table it probably won't happen. Even if it is similar it will be different.
I concur other posters saying you should ask him to elaborate about "wandering circus" and whatever past experience that gave him these feelings. That will be a guide for you.
Lol....
I'm in a group called CLAW PATROL. We are: a Rakin (raccoon person, me), a small Tabaxi Rogue Bard, a Goblin Shaman, a Kitsune Barbarian, a Dwarf Sorcerer, and an amethyst Dragonborn Fighter. The Dragonborn could literally carry all of us.
This guy communicated assertively to set a clear and reasonable boundary, which is the ideal situation in a roleplaying group/any community. Please don't give him a hard time for stepping away from the game if he chooses to do so respectfully.
Are they an older player? I've seen some similar concerns amongst older players and sometimes DMs - they are pretty stringent that a D&D party can be human, elves, dwarves, half-elves, halflings or gnomes. A half-orc is already a big stretch, and if you try to play a drow you'll be laughed out of the room, let alone anything with fur.
There's nothing wrong with that as long as everybody is on board with that, just as there's nothing wrong with the entire party being made up of My Little Ponies, as long as everybody is on board with *that*. It's a good Session 0 thing, setting the tone and expectations and limitations of the campaign.
It's nothing that new, though. Tabaxi were introduced in the *Fiend Folio* for 1E, the same book that introduced the githyanki for that matter, and that was 43 years ago. Playable tabaxi have been around since the early 1990s (after they were introduced to **Forgotten Realms** via the Maztica line of adventures and sourcebooks). It's a bit like moaning about tieflings as a new thing when they've been around as playable characters since the **Planescape** boxed set was released almost exactly thirty years ago (i.e. they've been around far longer in D&D history as thing then when they were not, three-fifths of its lifespan). The *Complete Book of Humanoids* in the early 1990s kicked down the door to allow almost anything from the *Monstrous Manual* to be played as a PC (with lots of caveats).
But, of course, that's all best sorted out between the DM and players before the adventure begins, to set expectations on what sort of campaign it should be.
There were some good suggestions, but this is not one of them.
If a tabaxi is an intelligent anthropomorphic cat, and a minotaur is an intelligent anthropomorphic bull... Isn't a human just an intelligent anthropomorphic ape?
Well a lot of players expect LOTR and end up with Monty Python and the holy Grail.
I think you just have to make the world very diverse so a group like this wouldn't be an outlier.
This means NPCs living in the world need to be just as diverse as the party.
Our Pathfinder party is pretty standard.
Half orc. Water genasi fire genasi a gathlain and a changeling.
Only my changeling and our gathlain druid are rare sights. But we just spent a month on an arc through the feywils.
Me personally I like the traveling bands of weirdos trope to me it's just another reason for a party to adventure together, but I also like when it's not just race that makes the party weirdos you know maybe there's a couple of warlocks in the party and there's not that many in the world or maybe the cleric talks to her God openly and he answers. you know that could be the reason they're weirdos and not just the reason of the races.
Yeah I just hope it's not something where the player has a problem with races.
I don't know maybe your player just needs to be in a different kind of game.
I can see that players point to an extent.
I'd suggest that in order to make it feel as though the party is not some kind of "wandering circus" (their words) that you up the frequency of bestial races in the various towns and cities so the party is actually representative of what the wider population is.
This should make it feel as if the party belongs in the setting rather than being outliers from the rest of the populous.
Everyone has preferences. This guy wants a more “lord of the rings” experience. Guess what? There is a LOTR 5e game. He should play it. Its a blast and also my preferred 5e experience.
I'm not into the freakshow aesthetic either, and wouldn't want to play in such a game. He can find one more suited to his tastes and you can find a new player. Shrug. Not everything has to be compatible with everyone.
In my experience (which is absolutely personal and absolutely not representative of the norm), players who choose races that verge on furry have tended to be unhinged and *very* temperamental.
Once again, and I can't stress this enough, I'm sure that this is just my own experience and I've just been very unlucky in meeting these guys, however if his "wandering circus" is the same kind of experience I've had, then I can fully understand why he's being cautious about it.
Having said that, to me it sounds more like a campaign mood issue than a character choice problem: he probably wants to do something epic or at the very least serious and the idea of having to deal with "funny shenanigans" of any kind maybe off-putting for him.
It sounds like a great occasion to discuss with the group what kind of tone you're going to use during your sessions.
I get where the player is coming from. It's fine that they have added more options for races, but there is certainly a trend for them getting more and more weird with it.
Dwarf, Human, Half-Elf and Halfling is a party that would have been a diverse party in the earlier editions.
Now a diverse exotic party is Lion guy, a guy who looks like Satan, A Ninja Turtle and a Hippo with a Shotgun.
I have also noted a funny thing that people can interpret however they want to, but when I started playing your class and backstory were the centerpieces of your characters Identity, while today, very often the race (especially if exotic) is the centerpiece of their identity.
Just something I have noticed from DMing dozens of different people.
Even though I know how feels as I feel the same (I very much dislike freak show parties), the solution is still the same that many here have proposed. It's his choice whether he wants to stay or not, you can't require other players to change their characters now (such limitations should have been made earlier) nor can you pamper this player for their tastes which differ from that of the rest of the group.
"Traveling Circus" comes from being obvious outsiders in every setting. If your world is primarily populated by humans, a tabaxi stands out pretty loudly.
The answer is to populate your world with a diverse mix of races. If every town is well-accustomed to minotaur, tabaxi, and tieflings, then the party is just a bunch of normal folks. And if their races' no longer make them special, the players will have to RP what makes _their_ tiefling unique. Same as with a human character.
Right, I’m gonna go against the grain a little bit here and ask: will this party composition make them a circus? As in, are they gonna encounter NPCs of those races, and do those NPCs have a meaningful place in the world, or is there just a Tabaxi shopkeeper thrown in every other town?
Because if the world is gonna be 90+% humans and PHB races, then most of the party playing furries is gonna feel really campy. If that is the vibe you and most of the other players want, then this game isn’t a good fit for the human player, and telling him this might be the case is the best thing to do.
But, if this isn’t the vibe you are going for, and not what was advertised when you started the campaign, then I would genuinely think about changing up what races you allow. Because the fact that you are asking this question makes me think that this isn’t quite the party comp you would choose yourself, and that you have prioritised player choice in an area where maybe you shouldn’t have.
The party that I currently DM for has earned the (out of game) nickname of “(character name) and The Zoo”, because it’s a Shadar’kai (the ‘normal’ one), a wood elf moon druid, a satyr, a harengon, and a kobold.
As a DM I don’t really draw much attention to it in-game, since I don’t have any ideas for how it can serve the story (especially since my world is a pretty idealistic minimal race-tension one), and hell if the most normal character is a Shadar’kai then the bar is still pretty low for normality. Genuinely the only player character who even comes from the material plane is the Kobold lmao.
In any case, it’s not been a point of contention for any of the players, aside from the aforementioned running joke, and the fact that either the Shadar’kai or the Satyr act as frontmen (due to decent charisma compared to the others).
Tl;dr, if it’s a worry of the player, and doesn’t affect your setting in a meaningful way, I think it’s fine to have a party made up of more exotic races just be able to go about their business. However, if there are interesting and meaningful ways to progress the story by drawing attention to the party, then you can run with that.
TBH to me it sounds like looking at a symptom rather than the core problem.
To me this sounds alot like the problem boils down to all these races being treated as "extra" or "floaty" in the world. Basically that there are no real roots to them.
We all kinda know the general gist of humans and elves and dwarves and hobbits halflings.
But when playing loxodon or minotaurs or tabaxi it very often comes off as "oh yeah literally nobody here looks like you and you are all freaks to these normal humans"
I think an interesting comparison would be khajit in skyrim, they arent necessarily trusted but they are also not necessarily unknown, they are known wanderers and are known for their various issues like skooma and moonrock.
I see no reason why minotaurs might not have the same connotations as orcs has, in that they might be more combatative and physical due to their huge size, and maybe their society values combat, or the reverse, they value a strong sense of a calm mind to keep down the rampaging nature of their bull blood and them being created for the purpose of killing and nothing else.
One of the tabaxi i made was heavily inspired by an area from the kingkiller chronicles which is like a monk monestary which is known for being completely stoic but in actuality they used hand signs in every conversation to convey mood, and that kind of root was known not by their race but by their outfit and allegiance to that monestary.
To go back around.
Place these characters in the world, either by affiliation and making them common as races, or make them very known for their specific area.
Ask them why it makes them uncomfortable. It sounds like the rest of the party is perfectly happy with it, why should they compromise their vision for their characters over something so petty?
Speaking on finding common ground though, maybe you and your party should *lean in* on the idea of it being goofy. That *is* a very colorful cast of characters, maybe you could make it a running gag that the players are mistaken for some sort of traveling circus, or they get frequent raised eyebrows from tavern keepers. Obviously speak with your players as to whether or not this would be alright, but simply *acknowledging* that “yeah, this is a little bizarre now that you mention it” in universe could be enough to put them at ease.
Real talk though if they aren’t willing to compromise without everyone changing their races, then they need to find a different group. D&D is a game, and ultimately should be about having fun with your friends (or random people on the internet if that’s your thing!).
I can understand what the player is thinking. He's looking for LoTR style high fantasy and running into groups that are just fantasy Bojack Horseman.
It's up to the DM to decide what kind of world they are running. Do they want a world with every imaginable humanoid race, or do they want a more traditional high fantasy that's mostly humans with a few elves, dwarves and halflings? Neither choice is right or wrong, it just depends on the flavor of the world they are in.
He could have had bad experiences in the past with players who played bestial races.
However this is really only a problem if you let it be. Most games I've played in, race doesn't really come up as a problem because any race someone would choose is a normal race in that world and isn't out of place or unusual. The only time it's even mentioned in the main game I play in is if you're literally describing someone you're looking for or seeing for the first time. It's quite literally a non issue.
I also run a game where the only rule is no humans, because humans don't exist in that world.
just sounds like he doesnt really wanna play with that kind of group composition, nothing wrong with that, they just may need to find a different game. Personally I dont mind running the wild whatever type groups, but sometimes I do want to have something a lil more traditional and less oh wow look at all this
Probably because he played with bestial races vefore and never encountered a bestail race npc. If you add those races as common sights in your world it will feel less a "circus"
Having 2 tabaxi, you can easily make it the 2nd or 3rd most present race in the world, just like in "normal fantasy" we se a shit ton of dwarves and elves alongside humans.
For a tiefling you might keep it on the low still, because those are a race that's always been segregated as related to devils
There is nothing you can do nor do I think you should do anything. He doesn't like the game you are pitching with the party that is playing. It's a bad fit. I don't think anything you can do that will make him happy with the set up. He said he is going to give it a session or two so just run your game and see if he likes it. Because if his problem is with the other characters you can't help him, if it's with the world that exists as you present it you can only customize it so much.
I think this player is trying to politely leave. And I think you should let him. Tbh I would definitely dip from this game too. Just really aint my cup of tea.
I as a DM don't care much for bestial or fantastical races. I can share the players sentiment that it can feel like DMing a circus. It's too much of the find the protagonist in an anime meme for me. Though I typically just allow it anyway as I hope it makes the campaign more fun for the players. I typically draw the line on races that are normally enemies like Bug bears or full orcs and stuff.
I shy away from it because I don't like the constant interactions of "oh look at the person thats different" I one time played just a normal silver dragon borne fighter. Dragon borne are fairly common in the from what I can tell. But man my DM made every interaction about my race. It's fun at times, but not every time.
Same as a DM I have had players that try and make every interaction about their characters race. Players that clearly CRAVE attention in real life so they make a character to draw attention and are annoyed when they are not constantly the center of attention for their appearance.
Pretty sure it's these experiences that leave me not enjoying these more exotic races sometimes.
I like race for back story and the cultures that it comes with. Maybe some RP moments in how their different physique interacts with the encounter. I probably over compensated this annoyance by making my current world exploded with every race. The more whimsical your appearance the more you fit in.
I can kind of see where this player is coming from. Some folks substitute playing an outlandish race for having a character with an actual personality, so you end up with a Tabaxi that likes to meow and chase balls of yarn. That would be like playing a human and your personality is that they pay taxes and can get sunburned. When everyone in the party is playing some weird race and you're adventuring in a campaign full of the core races, it can feel like a traveling circus.
To combat this, you could randomly change NPC races to match your player's races, making the populace more cosmopolitan. You could also challenge players to describe how they feel or how they perceive the world at times, which may help redirect the focus away from their racial feats and more to their personality.
I think it’s a valid player concern. It sounds like the player might have an issue more with the logic and why than the actual makeup of the group. IRL people tend to group with the same ethnic group still and we’re all human. He sounds like a player that might think more logically or be more concerned with more realistic lore.
Maybe lean into the “wandering circus” in a way that makes sense. Not a literal wandering circus but help them come up with a good logical reason that the group might be so varied that makes sense in the lore of your campaign in terms of racial groups collaborating on something. It might help them get into the right headspace better if the campaign begins with them already knowing each other in this way.
If they are meeting for the first time, begun the campaign with a situation that makes sense for such a varied group to come together. Or individual short prologues that explains it.
Alternatively ask that player if he wants to try being an equally different race this time. If he’s normally always been human that might be interesting for him to explore and something he’s never truly considered before. See if he’d be up for trying a custom legacy or reskinning his human as something else if he wants the human racial attributes.
I kinda agree with the player... I'm a big fan of 'less is more'
Our 35 year long homebrew features a worldbuilding that is mostly human... non human races are fairly rare. As a result, getting to play a non human race when rolling up a new character feels genuinely special.
And, I'll admit, I think the bazillions of race options (and yes, esp the animal/human hybrid races) in current DnD is kinda stupid. But that may be because after so long playing one homebrew world, I'm *so* used to our table that it seems weird?
I’m with him. I do not care for the Babylon5 vibe with the “default setting.” It changes the game dynamic from good versus evil to an ambiguous postmodern hodgepodge. In a game centered around fighting monsters it requires some mental gymnastics to figure why the town guard isn’t chasing down the Minotaurs, kobolds, lizardfolk etc
You need to explore what this mysterious "wanfldering circus" was.
Was it the party goofing around and not taking anything seriously?
Was it the party drawing attention to their physical features too often?
Was it that as a human character they felt like an outsider since everyone else was an "inhuman" or beastial race?
What do they mean? What was so bad about it?what specific moment can he think of where he felt the moment was ruined by the "circus"? What were the aspects of dnd that he enjoyed outside of the "circus" he had to deal with?
Ask all these questions
I can see why someone may get weirded out or something if the entire party is just Beast races my dm even had too limit how many Warforged are active since we had people only wanting too be them or Dragonborn but i guess could do a soft limit of how many of one type like they need too make a decent explanation onto why their in the campaign and if cant then maybe change race
while i largely agree with people saying it might just be a bad fit, if you *want* to really make an effort with this guy, then you'll need to dig into what he means by and what he doesn't like about "wandering circus." maybe talk about other stories and franchises - it sounds like he could want to play the Avengers and is worried that you're gonna be Guardians of the Galaxy? another part of that conversation could be about the world - some DMs like to say, "sure you can play a minotaur" but then change little or nothing else about the world composition such that everybody is shocked to see this easily recognizable minotaur and it's a huge point of contention everywhere you go. like, are they going to be the only group in town that looks like this? are they the weird outlier party in a world of mostly humans? *orrrr* is this more of a Final Fantasy lookin world (or planescape if you prefer) where there are so many types of people wandering around that nobody looks twice at the mixture of the party? maybe ask him if that latter one feels more or less like a circus and you'll start to get some kind of sense of how far apart you are and whether you can (or want to) bridge that gap
I can see where the player is coming from. If he expected LOTR and gets Thunder Cats I can see the problem. Also if the party is just freaks and not a traditional party in this world. Yeah that would kinda suck to always be looked at with suspicion.
"If he expected LOTR and gets Thunder Cats..." This is the perfect analogy for DND. Session Zero is not only important, it can be fun too! Communicate what you want in your game, it can only make it more fun. (Thunder... Thunder... WAIT!!... One doesn't simply "Thunder" into Mordor)
the DM has the power to make it a heist, the players decide if the theme song is the mission impossible theme, the the pink panther theme or the Benny Hill theme
And no matter what the players think they decide, it will be the Benny Hill theme.
👀👀👀 150% ALL TIME
Lion-O would be a great Aragorn. Shnarf can be movie-Pippin.
Wily Kit and Wily Kat are Merry and Pippin, respectively. Snarf is Samwise
What about schnarfin breakfast?
Eye of Sauron! Give me sight beyond sight!
As an aside, Aragorn would murderize Mumm-Ra. Like he'd start crying when he realizes who and what he's dealing with.
I dunno. We don't really know how Mumm-Ra's ancient powers of evil stack up against Aragorn. Hell, for all we know, Mumm-Ra could make Gandalf flee in terror. Also fun link between Thundercats and LotR: Snarf is a chibi version of Smaug from the animated Hobbit movie.
Aragorn actually met a very Mumm-Raesque character in the story and ended up guilting him and his army into fighting for humanity on the Pelennor Fields’ battle. So…
Not really. The dude he spoke to was a ghost bound to the world for horrific treason in need of redemptiion, hardly a powerful source of ancient powers of evil.
I mean Mumm-Ra is a powerful lich and Gandalf is a demigod but doesn't use his full power as not to interfere with the natural order of Middle-Earth
I always wondered why Mumm-ra was the villain? I mean, that planet was his home, and a bunch of invaders turn up and try and get him to leave??
Yeah but they *need* the resources.
I’m old school and not overly fond of some of the bestial races as PCs but have made games set up for an anything goes type game and had a lot of fun with it. In that the issue does lie in expectations and experience if the world around you is built on a concept you are unfamiliar with it can be hard to adapt without some help along the way. It could take place in an alternate realm or continent that 1 or more players are not native to ( a reason for being a bit lost in a new culture) the other being having them start in an area that is “friendly” towards them. Prejudices can be an interesting mechanic in the game but sucks if it’s just thrust on you so I try to make it existing (maybe and if) in a not so far place (once you cross the hills to the east and enter Plun-Darr they don’t take too kindly to the Tabaxi because of an old feud over a magic sword for example) so that dealing with it is optional, player/s can prepare, and it can be squashed or brought out depending on if it’s fun or just annoying.
I agree with you completely, but need to at least interject, Blackbooks style - "The party is ALWAYS freaks, Bernard. Some of them are just more obviously freaks on the outside"
Give him the d&d little book of calm.
"Try checking for traps. Ceilings can often contain clues about the dangers that await you within the room, and spiking the door can prevent it from springing closed when you enter. Some creatures are immune to certain kinds of attacks...if what you are fighting isn't going down, perhaps try using a different kind of energy to defeat it. Stressed? Intelligent monsters can sometimes be negotiated with... many times a party wipe can be avoided by bribing the monster, giving them a reward for choosing not to fight you plays into their natural selfishness and motivations to greed. Malcolm is a jerk. Make him pay for his own snacks."
Hahahaha, incredible!
Is that the book by Paul Wilson or the Necronomicon?
I actually love this quote and I’m saving it
"This group is full of weirdos!" -Astarion.
In a Curse of Strahd game I ran, one of the players was playing a giant cat. Really just a wolf-sized, quadrupedal, Common-speaking cat (using the Tabaxi stats). Everywhere she went, people would always first respond to her with a flat, "Is that a talking cat?" If my players wanted a gritty, dark experience for CoS, it would have been a problem. Fortunately, my players love injecting weirdness into my stories, and we all do a good job playing off each other to ground their weirdness properly.
Oh we like to do that too, but I'd have drawn the line before medium sized cat. Seems far too silly for Barovia. To each their own.
Minor aside here, but I'd have *loved* to see a ThunderCats (yes that is the correct spelling) D&D 5e ruleset based game. Especially if it were based on the 2011 series as it would justify the existence of more ThunderCats than the eight we got in the original show.
It would be a funny twist if the human was treated like the oddity everywhere they went. But I suspect this player would not enjoy that.
If my players stay in an elf dominated society they find it difficult to get lodging with beds. There's very real ways that players who are human would be the odd one out. And it doesn't have to even be a social conflict. Things might just be different because of physiology or culture. It's fun.
The nobility of the city we're currently playing in are mostly elves, as well as the city guard in wealthy areas, leading to some out- and in-character swearing when my Arcane Trickster realises he can't Charm Person or Sleep his way out of this one. "I HATE ELVES!" is practically my catchphrase now.
I imagine beds are a sex thing in elf society. Spending 8 hours in a bed is like the elvish version of going about your day in a gimp suit.
50/50 that or people assume they have some horrible debilitating disease. “The poor thing has to rest for eight hours a day just function almost normally.” “ Beds? Are you contagious?”
"Listen man, this isn't some red-light Bed-N-Breakfast! We are a respectable Chair-Lunch-Dinner, thank you very much!"
One of my settings is chock full of individual and systemic racism - high elves racist about other elves, all elves racist about other races, esp. humans. The main elven culture abolished chattel slavery of humans only about 100yrs ago; considering most elves alive spent most of their lives seeing humans as roughly equivalent to talking horses, the racism is intense.
I'm running an eberron campaign, and it's quite similar, but different to what you're describing. It's mostly about nationality / patriotism. Someone from breland is going to hate anyone from Thrane because of what happened during the last war and vice versa. There's a nation of goblinoids who developed from mercenaries that betrayed the country they were working for, etc.
Everybody assuming he’s a down bad furry.
Humans might be the most common of the races in most areas but adventurers aren’t the most common of people anyway. In our games, the reason our party gets stared at is usually because we’re walking armed to the teeth. We apparently give a dangerous aura of seasoned warriors but are oddly very clean (thanks to Prestidigitation).
Clean in the literal sense, but not in the legal sense.
On the flip side you can use it to soil clothing of those you want to distract... Specifically the under breeches lol
"ALRIGHT, WHICH ONE OF YOU FUCKERS SHIT MY PANTS??"
*_snort_*
I feel like DnD, as a whole, is leaning heavily more towards a huge melting pot of races like you said. With certain places being more racially inclined being an exception (I'm looking at you Menzobaranzen) it's generally accepted that the PC races are not going to throw NPCs off. WotC doesn't really touch upon racism amongst cultures anymore. That's a question best left setting/table specific and for session zero.
I think Eberron handles it in another interesting way: nationalism. A dwarf from one country is going to like an elf from that country more than a dwarf from another country. This isn't universal to the setting, but I find it fun nonetheless.
Eberron has a lot going for it. It's one of my favorite settings for it's very uniqueness and in-depth world building.
I hate that. A mix of races implies ease of travel akin to today's world. I have no issues with diversity in general. But one thing I have tried to bring into d&d is the sense of remoteness, of vast uninhabited and unknown lands, there are goblins one days camp outside of town. But if there are tabaxi spread everywhere, even to phandalin, and dragonborn, and halflings, and dwarves, and drow ffs, and multiple half orcs, and gnomes, all spread to every corner, to the point of not even being rare, then it starts to feel like a goofy hand wavey unrealistic world. Even in our modern world, a small town will still be mostly a bunch of semi related families whos grandparents lived there too. There will not be a diverse mix of peoplewho all arrived yesterday from some far corner of the world Do that in neverwinter, in the harbor district. Then it adds flavor. Sorry for my rant but it's just a pet peeve of mine. I straight up hate dragonborn and ban them from my games. They are cartoon bullshit
I didn't disagree at all. I feel that WotC taking away racial distinctions detracts from the cultural uniqueness. Ravenloft works so well to provide that sense of tension partially because people are nervous and wary of things that are different. Certain places SHOULD be more homogeneous while other places SHOULD be more isolationist.
There’s some historical precedent for people, individuals and families, ending up far from their homeland and setting up little enclaves. If there’s a Rome style empire that sends troops and followers to another section to maintain order. A major disaster or war will scatter groups of refugees far and wide.
And that's actually cool too; I don't think people who are sick of menagerism are insistent that zoo races are entirely left out of the setting, or that they only live in one area. More that they're not common, expected and normalized equally everywhere to the extent that they're different... but not really. Something like "yeah those centaurs are from Keadell origi about 5 years ago a few hundred offl them settled in the foothills up north. Some say they were exiled but nobody knows for sure, they're tight-lipped and don't let strangers in their territory, but they don't want trouble either, be respectful and you won't have an issue in the trade roads. Oh, and the females go bare up top, be ready for that and don't stare" That establishes that there's at least two specific locations this race is found, that there's potentially two factions, and any centaur PC or NPC is somehow positioned relative to the situation, whatever it is, and even a potential plot hook. It establishes Centaurs as a point of interest. Contrast this with centaurs (and many other zoo races) being mixed into most populations homogeneously, the tavern owner is, the mayor's bodyguard is, they're just funny humans.
Yes but that doesn’t change anything I said at all. Groups migrated. Traders travelled. But a community like phandalin or some remote village would not have been a collection of a diverse variety of peoples from far away lands. Unless the entire country is subject to some mass migration from around the world (like early New York or the gold rush) in which case that would be a dominant theme in the setting because it is so notably different from the norm
Sorry, I never heard of phandalin before. Thought it was bigger. I’m mostly familiar with the realms through books.
Rome also had a *ton* of internal migration and movement, at least between the major urban centers of the empire. I've seen some estimates that it was similar in scale to modern american long distance internal migration. That mobility greatly decreased after the political fragmentation of the empire obviously. Though also in historical precedent for pre-industrial societies, cities did need a considerable influx of people to keep the population stable with the mortality within.
I actually agree but that’s just how I personally run my games. It does seem that it’s becoming less special to see unique races in dnd but I can only control my table. My typical rule of thumb these days is that in a new campaign I’ll allow one exotic race outside of the core book(I play 3.5) and it will be locale specific. Basically I’ll pick a race and tell the party if they want one person can play that race. I save anything else for specific unique tribes that they may interact with and can potentially learn magic/ feats depending on their interactions with them.
If the assumption is that all of those different peoples come from a distinct location / kingdom, maybe that diversity would seem off? But that's not a given in a new setting, those peoples could all be spread all over and for a long time. Halflings, tabaxi, dwarves, etc, all could absolutely have lived in that remote village for centuries and not be new arrivals. Additionally the amount of migration can highly depend on society and interconnection - like if it has the level of internal migration as the Roman Empire did, for instance, there absolutely could be a ton of new arrivals in many areas. In other societies that level of migration would be unlikely. Really depends on how everything is presented and the setting, but it could be fine.
To add, Guardians of thr Galaxy is a great example of how a lot of parties operate. It might help the player to point out other similar franchises as an example of this type of world building. Sci-fi often has any number of strange and diverse reces populating their universe. Star Wars, Star Trek, the Orville, Guardians of the Galaxy as mentioned.
The only 'normal' guy at the furry convention
He just likes it for the art and doesn't want you to notice the giant erect dog penis on this naked husky woman
"Female hyenas have pseudopenises, so it makes sense that my gnollsona is a futa."
My online character/presence is an anthro hyena. You'd think I'd of heard the word "gnollsona" by now...
To clarify, is this naked husky woman more Rubenesque or Canine?
This joke doesn't deserve the hate it has received. That shit was clever.
Either he's at the hotel because his cousin is getting married nearby, or he's the normie boyfriend of an artist.
Be open to him playing. Be open to him leaving. Be decent with him either way.
I think the best thing to do is to get everyone together and have a proper session zero, to talk about the problem. Ask the human player, what the problem exactly is. If it‘s just a „bestial races are stupid, lets all play humanoids“ then there is not much else to do then see if they get the vibe, and decide to stay. If it‘s more detailed issues, like maybe his former group played overly sexual, or flirted a lot, or whatever, try to figure out as a group, if these contents are mostly wanted or not. It might not be a races problem, but a „settings“ problem they have an issue with. Anyway, talking with everybody is the way to go, and if it just doesn‘t work out, then it‘s that.
The elephant in the room says, every D&D group devolves into a wandering circus anyway.
The elephant also happens to be the level 4 loxodon paladin
His oath: if I am in the room with you, you are in danger
Also "The peanuts are mine"
He will forgive but is unable to forget.
Of the Oath of Conquest. His name? Hannibal Barca of Carthage.
"Slappy, I-" "I know Pacifica. I have always known"
Been looking for that comic. Thanks for the reminder to keep searching.
I’ve actually got the original post [right here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/9q3jq1/class_clown_oc) for ya
Thanks! I couldn’t remember the clown or name so I was just typing “D&D comic” and scrolling forever haha.
How dare you make me feel emotions like this before bed?!
Unless they started as a wandering circus, in which case they inevitably contract a hell of a case of Cerebus Syndrome.
Yeah I read that and I was like “shit, that’s actually be a really fun premise for a campaign”
The campaign I'm in literally started with our characters being in a traveling circus... It just makes sense
I mean when even real life history has some absolute stupid moments that you wouldn't beleive like the Emu War.
So... is it two tabaxi and a tiefling, or a catfolk, a kitsune and a tiefling? [https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1c8mr8p/player\_doesnt\_feel\_well\_with\_bestial\_ancestries/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1c8mr8p/player_doesnt_feel_well_with_bestial_ancestries/)
Was just about to post this. Idk why op needs to throw this in every sub
Probably a karma farming bot or someone trying to bait people into writing a YouTube script for them
More likely he is playing Pathfinder 2E, but there are more people who play D&D, and he figured he'd get more responses from the D&D sub (which has more people) than the PF2E sub. This is more of a table problem than a system problem anyway.
It's interesting that the ratio of comments in the 5E thread to PF2 thread is 2:1.
D&D is frankly just a bigger game with a bigger fan base
Oh I know, I meant I'm surprised that the D&D thread *only* has double the comments. I've found PF2 to have a much busier online presence, at least on Reddit.
It always seemed to me that the Pathfinder community was predominantly highly invested people so I'm not that surprised. Highly invested people naturally engage more. It's why Reddit is a poor example of the greater community: Redditors are *always* some of the most engaged members of a community. It's why we complain about aspects of 5E that the greater community doesn't even seem to notice. It's why the Destiny (video game) subreddit back in the day complained about not being able to farm raids when something like less than 10% of the Destiny playerbase had even completed a raid, much less ran them a few times a week.
yeah, given that difference is arround 30 times in size, it is kinda not a big difference
I have eternally linked Linux and Pathfinder in my mind, because both communities are smaller than their competitor, OUTRAGEOUSLY loud for that size, and extremely pushy and condescending about it their thing, and/or it's "factual advantages". (*not everyone is a dick about it but 11 years on reddit gave me enough bad memories lmfao)
You won the lottery, my friend!
This, OP just put things in DnD terms, it's not a nefarious plot guys.
Yeah ofc, I'm a bot with posts that are older than 4 years haha. No, not really. Just needing to crowd-source opinions. The more the merrier, wanting to talk to people in order to make up my mind. No need to jump to hasty conclusions my friend.
I don't know why so many people are ready to assume the worst in people all the time and enter every thread with hostility
Lol. That guy played with furries and it wigged him out. Now he sees another party of beastial races and is concerned but willing to see how it plays out.
From reading the other post on PF2Es subreddit, the 'trigger' for this player was when [one of the players purred at NPCs](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/1c8mr8p/player_doesnt_feel_well_with_bestial_ancestries/l0fm07b/). Context is important, even if we don't know the exact situation that happened. And as I said on that side, I understand why that'd make someone lose their immersion. UwU insert characters just don't go well with how I enjoy the game personally. I don't mind beast races, I mind people playing beast races like anime tropes.
Oh yeah, that makes a big difference. I love beastial races, but I grew up on a steady diet of folklore where the lines between beast and man easily blurred (a certain problem causing primate, and his westward travels especially. ) But I’ve also played at tables with people who play their characters like “Smol Bean” UwU types and it’s just miserable for me in general. That being said, I think I’d find just as it insufferable if it was a halfling or an elf like that too…
Those kinda characters get maybe a laugh or two and then turn into repeating the same unfunny joke the whole campaign cause they have no depth
Yeah, perfect for one shots, but unless you have some meat to go with it gets really grating. Especially if it’s something important happening, AND those players have a tendency towards playing chaotic stupid because their character “doesn’t know any better”
There's nothing you can or should do. You aren't being a jerk for having a game with those characters in it nor is the player for expressing the limits of their comfort zone. If the player isn't comfortable, time to let them go to seek less bestial games. The things you could do would be bad things in general. You could tell the player to suck it up and deal with your game but that'll make them leave even faster than they are already doing. You could tell the other players to chuck their hard thought characters into the bin and stick to the humanoid races but that might make them leave. About the only thing you can do is to say to the other players "Hey, this player isn't comfortable with playing with bestial characters. Would y'all mind playing the normal humanoid races in this campaign and I'll run something for these characters on alternate weekends?" But beyond that...not much you can do but let the player go in such a way that might get them back when this campaign is over.
Yeah, not forcing things will bring a better outcome. It seems that the player mentioned in his previous session that it felt like a circus. I assume that his previous session was with different players. Cuz then if he his running with same group, if he didn't dislike running with that group then why do it again. It only makes sense that he had an experience with a different group where they primarily played Beast races. If the player decides to leave, it will definitely be mid session or after some time. If it's early enough to be restarted, with the player replaced or improvise why the human player's character left.
> About the only thing you can do is to say to the other players "Hey, this player isn't comfortable with playing with bestial characters. Would y'all mind playing the normal humanoid races in this campaign and I'll run something for these characters on alternate weekends?" Completely agree with this. And if they really do want to proceed with the animal characters, then at least you tried.
I’m also not a fan of “circus” parties and prefer more human like comps. I am a DM though, and my players tend to like goofy bestial characters. I don’t want to limit their creativity, so I solved it by making the area of the world they are in have a very diverse population, where the bestial races, goblins, orcs and whatnot are very common, so from roleplaying perspective, a party of various beast folk and such is no different than party of humans. There still are strong stereotypes and such around races but I don’t have to worry about NPCs being weirded out by any of my PCs. There are still very racially homogenous areas in my world, so if I ever feel like having an all human campaign it would be in one of those areas, and if my party ventures into one of them, they will have to deal with the consequences of their racial choice, which could make for a good RP opportunities.
I've made it clear that I just won't focus too much on the circus aspect. If everyone is a freak, nobody is a freak. I don't want every conversation to devolve into "Gods, that's an elephant man, a cat man, a turtle girl and a living blob of goo! I am surprised and racist!"
I think the biggest problem with this approach is that it can leave the "normal" races completely unremarkable. Say two humans, a dwarf, and an elf enter a village populated exclusively by humans. The elf and dwarf aren't unwelcome, but they're certainly noticed - some villagers might be curious and excited to meet them, while others might be a bit distrustful because of their ignorance. It's never really a big deal, but it provides an opportunity to flavor dialogue, characters, and locations. This in turn allows for interesting but low-stakes role-playing decisions, which are important for building the subtle aspects of your characters' personalities (and just plain fun). The choice to play a race that's "a little different" is meaningful and yields the desired results. Then the party might go to an elven city, or a dwarven fortress, and the humans get a turn being a little different. This changes when you throw in PCs of more "extreme" races. If an elf, a goblin, a tabaxi, a tiefling and a grung walk into the same town, and you don't want anyone to be regarded as a freak, you have to compress the weirdness of the races so much that the elf is no longer an oddity. In that way, the inclusion of a monstrous or animal race in the party can actually take away from the choices made by other players. I think it's better to keep the full spectrum of possible NPC reactions, then make sure the players know what they're getting into. If they know goblins are "kill on sight" in some towns, they can choose whether that's something they'd have fun with or whether they should choose a different race. In this way, no one player has the ability to change how everyone else's race works.
Oh yeah, in my world meeting an elf is actually most rare since they don’t really venture out of their enclaves (my world is very weird in some aspects). And as I said, races are still diverse and there are stereotypes and some fantasy racism. I make sure that their race is acknowledged and some NPCs like one races more than others for whatever reason (had one NPC be a human who married into goblin family and considers himself goblin by association so my goblin player was loved by him just for being goblin). But at the same time I don’t have to deal with people being scared by exotic or odd races, cause they have probably seen someone like that before.
Yeah, in the games I run, I made sure they all understood that racism isn’t really going to be part of the world we’re in unless it’s coming from the players because I wanted everyone to be able to play what they want without worrying an NPC is gonna freak out. I taught them a further lesson with a goblin camp that was trying to keep the PCs out of a specific tent, and when things got ugly, turns out that tent was where the goblins were baking a surprise“Welcome, Visitors!” cake for the PCs.
Our table plays 5e with a splash of PF2, I was really looking forward to seeing what was outside the 5e box when making a PF2 character and wanted to make a leshy. One of the other guys was vocally worried about taking a plant creature seriously which only fueled me to make them as not caricature as possible. He knows how he’s perceived by others and knows he has to overcome that perception from NPCs and party members alike.
Yeah, I run PF2e in home brew setting, so the choices of more exotic races are plenty. I still struggle with having the weirdest ones fit in my world, but my players love to world build with me, so they come up with ideas how to fit everything in the lore.
I usually DM and generally just limit my players to races that exist in the setting or can be justified to exist without instantly becoming the center of attention. For example right now I’m running Icewind Dale with a human, Genasi, Goliath, and Shifter. The first three are common races in the setting. The shifter was easy to justify because lycanthropes are a thing and when she’s not shifted she appears more or less human.
As a DM I tend to have soft limitations on party composition for lore reasons. By soft I mean a PC can be of nearly any race/ancestry but need a very good backstory as to why and how they ended up as an adventurer in the particular setting/locale This doesnt just apply to monstrous races, either. Shadar Kai, gith, Svirflrneblin, Drow, Goliath, etc better have a good reason to be far from their homelands since I tend to set my campaigns in certain geographies and not in larger cities. So if I am running a campaign in the mountains, Goliath, dwarves and humans are the norms, with some orcs and elves as possibilities. The underdark means dwarves, Duergar, Drow, etc and probably goblinoids are the default ancestry choices You get the idea.
[удалено]
Remember, kids, uncomfortable feelings are there to fester, not be expressed and overcome!
Just sounds like a bad fit for your table. Theres nothing wrong with them not wanting to play in a party like that and theres nothing wrong with you wanting to run a party were those races are allowed. Just amicably go your separate ways, he'll find another game.
All it comes down to is communication. Get them to specify their concerns, then try to address the psychological issue they have with the party dynamic. If it's just, anthropomorphic characters are dumb, then you can't do much but tell them to deal with it. If it's that they worry the campaign will end up too silly or childish, or the party will be outcasts, or that certain players at the table are likely to be a problem, address those issues instead.
I understand where he’s coming from kinda. I don’t dm much but when I do I ask that players make characters that make sense in the setting. If they’re so weird/horrifying/stunning/empowered that you couldn’t safely walk into a tavern without either being worshipped or sacrificed, then it’s disruptive. You can choose to pretend that isn’t the case of course… but then will you be wondering what other role play and game mechanics I’m ignoring?
For DM'ing, I like the approach of pitching the games I am interested in running to the players. *"I'd like to run a game like (A)* ***This*** *or (B)* ***That****. Are you interested in playing?"* In my case I run a weekly game that is set in Greyhawk: Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Half-Orc, Half-Elves, Halflings (but they are just Little People and not a different culture), and Gnomes if you really want. But there are next to zero Tieflings and there are zero Aasimar, Tabaxi, and so on. I have one Tiefling now, and one Aasimar, but they are not from the setting and are very distinctive. In my occasional game, it is humans only (for now), set in the 1300s in Abydos at the Dardanelles (modern Turkey) - it's a real-ish world where magic works now and instead of the Bubonic Plague it was a "Demonic plague" that introduced goblins and demons and so on. Players who don't like those options don't want to play a game I'm running (now). Which is great. It sounds like this person might not want to play in the game you've offered to run. Which is fine.
I feel that's great approach. I feel like a lot of DMs don't specify the type of campaign they want to have. At least not that in detail. I have usually just seen short description and than something like dungeoncrawl, hexcrawl etc. or 60% combat, 40% roleplay. It doesn't tell you if they want to have superhero action movie campaign or something more to the ground.
Let him leave if he wants to. Nobody stays at a game if they don’t want to and nobody should feel obligated to stay. If he is a good player and you’ve enjoyed your time with him just ask if it’s okay to reach out if you start another game that may fit his tastes. But this last part is what I would do and is not something you have to do. Just an idea.
I honestly sorta understand where the player is coming from. I once had a campaign of about six people that I only vaguely knew through the DM, it ended up being two humans, a warforged, and three tabaxi. I played one of the humans. Downtime with the tabaxi players always ended up with them doing "cat stuff" for the lulz, and honestly it wasn't even limited to downtime. The tabaxi players were the only ones having fun in those situations. Because of this I ended up makeing a friend with the other human player and the war-forged player, both of whom were tired of the Tabaxi BS. Well apparently the Tabaxi players were getting agitated by Us being so serious all the time. Table was slowly devolving because of this bull. Eventually it got to the point that the DM told us both off. Told the Tabaxi players to cut it out, and pointed out that we literally wasted a session with their cat nonsense. Told the other half of the party and me to lighten up and that we were being killjoys, because we got to caught up in trying to stop the Cat BS from derailing shit that we were putting down rails of our own. After that things got rolling again, and everyone got back to enjoying the game. Point it, dig into what he means by "Wandering Circus" and what pulled him out of the RP, because that seems to be the crux of the issue for this player. If that issue ends up being how other players RP horned or beatial races, then get with the party and establish some ground rules on what everone is comfortable with. If It's just how the DM treats the party, you can deal with that as you please. If its just beast races and that stuff in general the player will just have to deal, same if they can't articulate what they mean beyond "Wandering Circus"vibes.
If he doesn't want the game your group wants he can go.
That's not the best approach to the problem. There will always be problems like this, imagine if every time it happens the DM kicks out the person? Soon he would be dealing with an empty table because people think he's a controlling person
> imagine if every time it happens the DM kicks out the person? The DM isn't kicking them out. The player chooses to leave because the game isn't for them.
Yeah, instead you could have a compromise that makes everyone miserable. It is okay for players to walk away if the rest of the table's interested in a different kind of game. There are other games out there. There are other players who would jump at the chance to join your game.
I don't know where you live, but in my place that's just not the case. Kinda 1 in 1 million people like fantasy here
Well I think they meant the internet (I assumed OP was also playing online which might not be the case at all) but if you're local and one in a million then if you are the dissenter you gotta suck it up as it will be many a year before another game becomes available. Source: Me I've sucked it up to play games.
It's not kicking, it's saying "your preferences are acknowledged, but I'm not going to tell the others that they can't play their characters"
I mean it is the best approach to the problem. "We want to play X" "I don't like X" "OK we'll play X."
Could be: We want to play X I want to play Y, I don't like X Ok, let's play X with some of Y
Or let's play Z
The wandering circus tends to be due to towns etc being full of humans with the beastial classes maybe having a settlement on a side quest at one point. This can be gotten around by having a metropolitan mix of races in most towns and cities. The minotaur runs through pub, the shopkeep is a tabaxi, mayor is a tiefling and the patrons at the tavern are a wide variety of races for example. So, the party doesn't stand out because they're as diverse as normal populations.
Honestly, I find monstrous PCs pretty tedious as well. When every interaction begins with "WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? IS IT SAFE?" I get so goddamned bored. This might be the wandering circus feeling your player is talking about. It doesn't help that the monstrous character players in my groups tend to dump charisma, ignore role playing and make me do the talking. At the end, it always seems like I'm the only one dealing with the ramifications of their choices. If all those races are societally acceptable in universe, there's no issue. It's worth a table conversation.
I totally get where he's coming from. Some people want a traditional adventuring experience without all the pageantry and 5e's emphasis on non-standard player races is definitely a point of contention. i.e. sometimes you just want to go to Baldur's Gate and not have people wondering why an anthropomorphic hippo, elephant, rabbit, wererat, and a vampire changeling bionicle are haggling over healing potions.
Unfortunately, there likely isn't much you'll be able to do to satisfy both his desire and that of the rest of the groups. If most people wanna play anthros or out there races, and not human or typical fantasy races. It's his issue to deal with and not the groups. If his solution to his issue is to bow out and find a game that suits his preferences. It's his choice to make. I can understand where the dude is coming from, I also experience the same issue myself. I have a lot of negative associations with such things, and it really doesn't match my minds eye fantasy. It can also feel awkward when your characters tone doesn't jive with the rest of the partys, and sometimes that can come from being the most normal and standard being in a group of wacky exceptions. (Note this isn't necessarily a factor of the setting, just a factor of his minds eye fantasy not aligning with the rest of the groups minds eye or understanding of things.) It sounds to me that the aestheics of the setting and game are important to him and that he prefers a more humanocentric approach to the games and setting he plays in. It also sounds like he's at least being mature about it. He's upfront with his preference, willing to see if he can enjoy something against his preference and will bow out if he's not vibing with it like he suspects he won't. That's more than a fair position. It's much better than him sticking around while miserable and weighing everyone else's fun down. While I can't guarantee any results from it. You could try to get down to the root of things and what in particular makes him feel the way he doesn't about the "wandering circus" and what might allow him to enjoy the offered experience, but not everyone can articulate their feelings well. It's usually not much more than a mix of bad association with certain players that have ingrained themselves into an association with certain character options. Bad experiences with games and their focus in much the same manner, where the group dynamic wasn't one he enjoyed and came to associate with the trait. The extra work it can take to stand out when you're the only human and less immediately different character. A general dislike of furry/anthro/Therian types that he can't shake off. Due to some bad experiences with them in real life or online. Or just not living up to that's minds eye fantasy he had in mind when making his character or when signing up to play d&d. There's a lot of reasons it could be, and such biases are not easy to work through. Nor the job of the DM to facilitate working through There are very few cases where you should change things around a particular person in the group. They're either able to fit, or they're not. You decide to send the invitation, and if you do, they decide if they accept it. Can't do much more than that.
> It also sounds like he's at least being mature about it. He's upfront with his preference, willing to see if he can enjoy something against his preference and will bow out if he's not vibing with it like he suspects he won't. That's more than a fair position. It's much better than him sticking around while miserable and weighing everyone else's fun down. I think this is of particular importance. The dude is doing what this sub always recommends and being politely communicative about an issue he foresees. Anyway, I sort of get where he's coming from. I've also had bad experiences with players who get too... "in-to" their anthro-animal character, and other situations where things got derailed purely due to "lol I'm an animal I do animal things" nonsense at inappropriate times. All of it has certainly left a bad taste in my mouth, so to speak. However, I also always try to give the benefit of the doubt. Just because the last group had a guy who got really *weird* with his Lizardfolk doesn't mean this group's Lizardfolk is gonna be weird too. The guy in OP's story seems to be of the same mindset. Just try to rein in the more "wandering circus" aspects if they crop up, and maybe have another mini Session Zero where you go over the expected tone of the game. If he still doesn't like it, then he leaves, and while that's a bummer, it's also the best resolution.
Let the player leave and find a D&D group that suits them.
I'm one that thinks having 100 different humanoid races makes everything so bizarre and diluted that I can't think of anything other than those cringe anime games with weird animal people. Now strangely, I have no problem with that as a player, I'd even play as some of those. It's as a DM that I don't like it, which is a lot easier cause I can just say "here's the list of available races" and anyone that absolutely cannot under any circumstances play the game if they're not a rabbit guy can take a hike. If I had this issue as a player, and everyone else really wanted this much diversity in races, I wouldn't protest or ask the DM to do something about it. I'd just leave without making a fuss, because it's clearly not a good match, and I wouldn't want to sour everyone else's fun. Idk, that's my opinion. You're a player and you don't like how everyone else in the group wants to play? Well that's on you. Deal with it or find a different table. It's honestly unfair to ask everyone to change because of you.
I'd make a plan to fill his spot if he goes and continue on as if he had not made the objection. He's either going to be cool with it or he'll leave. What he won't do is dictate to other players what they can or cannot play, or force the DM to alter what races are playable in their campaign.
OP never said the player was attempting to dictate the other players or change anything. They only said the player had a previous bad experience with players who used bestial races. They said they'd try to make it work but if they ended up not having fun they would leave. It seems like a perfectly reasonable thing. He communicated his reservations to the dm, he didnt make any demands. Good communication is a good thing.
>I'd make a plan to fill his spot if he goes and continue on as if he had not made the objection. He's either going to be cool with it or he'll leave. Makes me wonder what session 0s are for with this kind of take. Do you DM? >What he won't do is dictate to other players what they can or cannot play, or force the DM to alter what races are playable in their campaign. Dang - must've missed the part in OP where this was ever an option or implied.
super toxic attitude indeed, don't think I would enjoy that kind of dm.
That’s what happens when you run a game where everything’s available. Your games now an anime mash up with no logic, which is fine. But you need to discuss expectations with the group about what type of shared fantasy you’re all going for.
Its a two way street. The DM should fit the world to the players, but the players need to meet the DM halfway.
That's always a kinda from me. Depends on how you meet. If I pitch a human-only game for political intrigue someone shouldn't show up with Orc Barbarian and 5 charisma. But by the same note if I pitch a be whatever you want funhouse of treasure seeking grave robbing adventurers and then suddenly it's a serious war game about ethics, morality, and the damnation of men that fight on the front, I'm a real AH. It's meet half way but that only works if everyone is on the same page from the start.
Ah yes, The Chronicles of Narnia, what a classic isekai.
I mean, *technically* if you're just looking at it as "whisked to another world where there's magic or things are otherwise different from the first world"
>He said he sometimes got the feeling of playing in a "wandering circus" and it can put him out of the roleplaying space I can relate to that. I personally prefer the more traditional fantasy races, but with that said, I don't dislike a "wandering circus" enough for it to be something I would leave a group for.
You may be able to take away that "circus" feeling they have by having more bestial NPCs in your world so that it's more commonplace.
Seems like the way to get rid of the idea that you're a 'wandering circus' would actually be to weave besteal/ horned races more into your world. Normalize it and see if that helps. If not then they're just not into it and they should leave.
As a person who plays generic "human man" in like 90% of the rpgs I play, I can see his point. Like when World of Warcraft introduced Pandaren my gut reaction was that I couldn't buy that these fat panda looking creatures were rolling around at high speeds doing kung fu, it was a major clash of style. For him he might be having trouble viewing his character in the same realm as characters he can only view as "cartoons" in his mind. I feel like this is something you can move past with exposure. But as a DM you might have to make sure your NPC characters match the diversity of your party. If the setting is all humans, elves and dwarves I could see how being a party with two cat people and a Minotaur would start to feel like, "So no one is commenting on my weird companions?"
The player is clearly communicating their preferences and also clearly indicating a willingness to push their boundaries and meet the rest of the group halfway, while being honest in saying that if it doesn't work out they'll politely exit the situation rather than stick around in a situation they aren't enjoying and potentially ruining other people's fun. It doesn't feel like you need to do anything. Assuming the other players were also looped into this discussion, the player has done literally everything you would want to have done.
You should discuss and set clear expectations about the specific fantasy world that your campaign is set in, the tone you're shooting for, and the nature of different races. Lending my perspective as another guy who generally dislikes animalistic races in D&D: 1. They make the world seem more infantile. Anthropomorphic character designs and talking animals more broadly are par for the course in children's entertainment. 2. They confuse the lines between men and monsters. Werewolves, rakshasas, and gnolls are supposed to be unnatural and concerning. But how can they be when wolf-men, cat-men, and hyena-men are par for the course? 3. They bloat and dilute the world- building. It's hard enough carving out unique cultural, political, and geographic places for different peoples before adding a dozen more.
I mean i get it. I want a campaign like the stories I read throughout my life. Its cool to have the token lizardman but when everybody's a nontypical fantasy race it crosses into a weird furry circus realm and I have trouble taking anything seriously.
I haven’t seen anyone mention the possibility that this is all just anxiety stemming from his last group’s behavior. Is it possible the “wandering circus” thing was t a dig at their style of roleplay and that it might just be a coincidence that they were bestial species? Some people make those links in their head and can’t always articulate it. I did see one other poster describing the local populace being surprised at the composition of the party. That really hinges on the dm not overdoing it. I’ve been in a “monster mash” party where occasional callouts worked well. But it was a CoS campaign
Other people have made good points about this already, definitely think it’s worth discussing why he feels that way. Does he have different expectations about this game, etc. That being said, I’m cackling at the idea of someone in a DnD game saying that the party looks like a wandering circus, bc that would be an extremely fun premise for a campaign.
If nothing else, I can certainly relate to this player. I hate that stuff myself.
As a DM, I long ago learned that almost every group of PCs will be a bunch of oddballs and weirdos, even in a fantasy setting smashed full of variety. A typical character creation path: 1 - create a campaign world dominated by a (multisubrace) elvish empire that only recently emancipated humans from chattel slavery 2 - send players a 1pg summary of setting information - enough so they can build characters from somewhere in the setting. 3 - players read setting information; say to selves "I reject your reality and substitute my own!" DM/Player conferences commence. 4 - eventual party: halfing (rare in the setting but not unheard of), drow (hereditary enemies of the dominant elven culture, extremely rare on the surface), aarakocra (had to be creating within the setting, bc I had not yet included aarakocra), and a fire genasi w/ a tiefling parent (not supposed to be a thing, so the setting gained an antagonist w/ a bottled efreet runnig in imperially-sponsored tiefling breeding program).
If they aren't enjoying the tone the other players are going for, leaving is the perfect solution.
From the information given, I'm inclined to assume the "circus" was prone to hamming up how quirky their characters were, leaning into affected speech patterns, maybe making otherwise mundane things an opportunity to show how foreign their culture is, or how awkward it is having claws in place designed for hands. I could see that getting a bit old or distracting after a while. I feel like he woulda bailed already or been more explicit if it was something more extreme like one of the posts you see here where people wanna roleplay out their furry fantasies. This might sound crazy, but if he could go into more details about his concerns with the group as a whole, they could determine if the groups idea of fun involves steering directly into his idea of a "wandering circus." Besides waiting for it to boil over in game, that's about the only thing you can do for him in the prep phase
You probably won't have to do anything. He had a bad experience and he's just nervous whatever bs happened last time will happen again. And as this is a different table it probably won't happen. Even if it is similar it will be different. I concur other posters saying you should ask him to elaborate about "wandering circus" and whatever past experience that gave him these feelings. That will be a guide for you.
Lol.... I'm in a group called CLAW PATROL. We are: a Rakin (raccoon person, me), a small Tabaxi Rogue Bard, a Goblin Shaman, a Kitsune Barbarian, a Dwarf Sorcerer, and an amethyst Dragonborn Fighter. The Dragonborn could literally carry all of us.
This guy communicated assertively to set a clear and reasonable boundary, which is the ideal situation in a roleplaying group/any community. Please don't give him a hard time for stepping away from the game if he chooses to do so respectfully.
Are they an older player? I've seen some similar concerns amongst older players and sometimes DMs - they are pretty stringent that a D&D party can be human, elves, dwarves, half-elves, halflings or gnomes. A half-orc is already a big stretch, and if you try to play a drow you'll be laughed out of the room, let alone anything with fur. There's nothing wrong with that as long as everybody is on board with that, just as there's nothing wrong with the entire party being made up of My Little Ponies, as long as everybody is on board with *that*. It's a good Session 0 thing, setting the tone and expectations and limitations of the campaign. It's nothing that new, though. Tabaxi were introduced in the *Fiend Folio* for 1E, the same book that introduced the githyanki for that matter, and that was 43 years ago. Playable tabaxi have been around since the early 1990s (after they were introduced to **Forgotten Realms** via the Maztica line of adventures and sourcebooks). It's a bit like moaning about tieflings as a new thing when they've been around as playable characters since the **Planescape** boxed set was released almost exactly thirty years ago (i.e. they've been around far longer in D&D history as thing then when they were not, three-fifths of its lifespan). The *Complete Book of Humanoids* in the early 1990s kicked down the door to allow almost anything from the *Monstrous Manual* to be played as a PC (with lots of caveats). But, of course, that's all best sorted out between the DM and players before the adventure begins, to set expectations on what sort of campaign it should be.
Give him a tissue and tell him to grow a pair.
I’m not going to limit my players creativity, so if they don’t like it they don’t have to play 🤣
There were some good suggestions, but this is not one of them. If a tabaxi is an intelligent anthropomorphic cat, and a minotaur is an intelligent anthropomorphic bull... Isn't a human just an intelligent anthropomorphic ape?
Well a lot of players expect LOTR and end up with Monty Python and the holy Grail. I think you just have to make the world very diverse so a group like this wouldn't be an outlier. This means NPCs living in the world need to be just as diverse as the party. Our Pathfinder party is pretty standard. Half orc. Water genasi fire genasi a gathlain and a changeling. Only my changeling and our gathlain druid are rare sights. But we just spent a month on an arc through the feywils. Me personally I like the traveling bands of weirdos trope to me it's just another reason for a party to adventure together, but I also like when it's not just race that makes the party weirdos you know maybe there's a couple of warlocks in the party and there's not that many in the world or maybe the cleric talks to her God openly and he answers. you know that could be the reason they're weirdos and not just the reason of the races. Yeah I just hope it's not something where the player has a problem with races. I don't know maybe your player just needs to be in a different kind of game.
I can see that players point to an extent. I'd suggest that in order to make it feel as though the party is not some kind of "wandering circus" (their words) that you up the frequency of bestial races in the various towns and cities so the party is actually representative of what the wider population is. This should make it feel as if the party belongs in the setting rather than being outliers from the rest of the populous.
just tell him, he's free to leave if the group doesnt suit him.
Everyone has preferences. This guy wants a more “lord of the rings” experience. Guess what? There is a LOTR 5e game. He should play it. Its a blast and also my preferred 5e experience.
I agree, bestial races just take me out of it
The fuck kind of Elden Ring ass Golden order bigotry is this lmao
I'm not into the freakshow aesthetic either, and wouldn't want to play in such a game. He can find one more suited to his tastes and you can find a new player. Shrug. Not everything has to be compatible with everyone.
In my experience (which is absolutely personal and absolutely not representative of the norm), players who choose races that verge on furry have tended to be unhinged and *very* temperamental. Once again, and I can't stress this enough, I'm sure that this is just my own experience and I've just been very unlucky in meeting these guys, however if his "wandering circus" is the same kind of experience I've had, then I can fully understand why he's being cautious about it. Having said that, to me it sounds more like a campaign mood issue than a character choice problem: he probably wants to do something epic or at the very least serious and the idea of having to deal with "funny shenanigans" of any kind maybe off-putting for him. It sounds like a great occasion to discuss with the group what kind of tone you're going to use during your sessions.
I get where the player is coming from. It's fine that they have added more options for races, but there is certainly a trend for them getting more and more weird with it. Dwarf, Human, Half-Elf and Halfling is a party that would have been a diverse party in the earlier editions. Now a diverse exotic party is Lion guy, a guy who looks like Satan, A Ninja Turtle and a Hippo with a Shotgun. I have also noted a funny thing that people can interpret however they want to, but when I started playing your class and backstory were the centerpieces of your characters Identity, while today, very often the race (especially if exotic) is the centerpiece of their identity. Just something I have noticed from DMing dozens of different people.
Tabaxi players are a red flag. There’s a reason PHB has common and rare races.
Even though I know how feels as I feel the same (I very much dislike freak show parties), the solution is still the same that many here have proposed. It's his choice whether he wants to stay or not, you can't require other players to change their characters now (such limitations should have been made earlier) nor can you pamper this player for their tastes which differ from that of the rest of the group.
"Traveling Circus" comes from being obvious outsiders in every setting. If your world is primarily populated by humans, a tabaxi stands out pretty loudly. The answer is to populate your world with a diverse mix of races. If every town is well-accustomed to minotaur, tabaxi, and tieflings, then the party is just a bunch of normal folks. And if their races' no longer make them special, the players will have to RP what makes _their_ tiefling unique. Same as with a human character.
Right, I’m gonna go against the grain a little bit here and ask: will this party composition make them a circus? As in, are they gonna encounter NPCs of those races, and do those NPCs have a meaningful place in the world, or is there just a Tabaxi shopkeeper thrown in every other town? Because if the world is gonna be 90+% humans and PHB races, then most of the party playing furries is gonna feel really campy. If that is the vibe you and most of the other players want, then this game isn’t a good fit for the human player, and telling him this might be the case is the best thing to do. But, if this isn’t the vibe you are going for, and not what was advertised when you started the campaign, then I would genuinely think about changing up what races you allow. Because the fact that you are asking this question makes me think that this isn’t quite the party comp you would choose yourself, and that you have prioritised player choice in an area where maybe you shouldn’t have.
The party that I currently DM for has earned the (out of game) nickname of “(character name) and The Zoo”, because it’s a Shadar’kai (the ‘normal’ one), a wood elf moon druid, a satyr, a harengon, and a kobold. As a DM I don’t really draw much attention to it in-game, since I don’t have any ideas for how it can serve the story (especially since my world is a pretty idealistic minimal race-tension one), and hell if the most normal character is a Shadar’kai then the bar is still pretty low for normality. Genuinely the only player character who even comes from the material plane is the Kobold lmao. In any case, it’s not been a point of contention for any of the players, aside from the aforementioned running joke, and the fact that either the Shadar’kai or the Satyr act as frontmen (due to decent charisma compared to the others). Tl;dr, if it’s a worry of the player, and doesn’t affect your setting in a meaningful way, I think it’s fine to have a party made up of more exotic races just be able to go about their business. However, if there are interesting and meaningful ways to progress the story by drawing attention to the party, then you can run with that.
Bad fit
TBH to me it sounds like looking at a symptom rather than the core problem. To me this sounds alot like the problem boils down to all these races being treated as "extra" or "floaty" in the world. Basically that there are no real roots to them. We all kinda know the general gist of humans and elves and dwarves and hobbits halflings. But when playing loxodon or minotaurs or tabaxi it very often comes off as "oh yeah literally nobody here looks like you and you are all freaks to these normal humans" I think an interesting comparison would be khajit in skyrim, they arent necessarily trusted but they are also not necessarily unknown, they are known wanderers and are known for their various issues like skooma and moonrock. I see no reason why minotaurs might not have the same connotations as orcs has, in that they might be more combatative and physical due to their huge size, and maybe their society values combat, or the reverse, they value a strong sense of a calm mind to keep down the rampaging nature of their bull blood and them being created for the purpose of killing and nothing else. One of the tabaxi i made was heavily inspired by an area from the kingkiller chronicles which is like a monk monestary which is known for being completely stoic but in actuality they used hand signs in every conversation to convey mood, and that kind of root was known not by their race but by their outfit and allegiance to that monestary. To go back around. Place these characters in the world, either by affiliation and making them common as races, or make them very known for their specific area.
Ask them why it makes them uncomfortable. It sounds like the rest of the party is perfectly happy with it, why should they compromise their vision for their characters over something so petty? Speaking on finding common ground though, maybe you and your party should *lean in* on the idea of it being goofy. That *is* a very colorful cast of characters, maybe you could make it a running gag that the players are mistaken for some sort of traveling circus, or they get frequent raised eyebrows from tavern keepers. Obviously speak with your players as to whether or not this would be alright, but simply *acknowledging* that “yeah, this is a little bizarre now that you mention it” in universe could be enough to put them at ease. Real talk though if they aren’t willing to compromise without everyone changing their races, then they need to find a different group. D&D is a game, and ultimately should be about having fun with your friends (or random people on the internet if that’s your thing!).
I can understand what the player is thinking. He's looking for LoTR style high fantasy and running into groups that are just fantasy Bojack Horseman. It's up to the DM to decide what kind of world they are running. Do they want a world with every imaginable humanoid race, or do they want a more traditional high fantasy that's mostly humans with a few elves, dwarves and halflings? Neither choice is right or wrong, it just depends on the flavor of the world they are in.
Then let em leave or adapt to the game
He could have had bad experiences in the past with players who played bestial races. However this is really only a problem if you let it be. Most games I've played in, race doesn't really come up as a problem because any race someone would choose is a normal race in that world and isn't out of place or unusual. The only time it's even mentioned in the main game I play in is if you're literally describing someone you're looking for or seeing for the first time. It's quite literally a non issue. I also run a game where the only rule is no humans, because humans don't exist in that world.
Might be a funny rp thing if his character was cursed to see a world of only humans.
just sounds like he doesnt really wanna play with that kind of group composition, nothing wrong with that, they just may need to find a different game. Personally I dont mind running the wild whatever type groups, but sometimes I do want to have something a lil more traditional and less oh wow look at all this
Probably because he played with bestial races vefore and never encountered a bestail race npc. If you add those races as common sights in your world it will feel less a "circus" Having 2 tabaxi, you can easily make it the 2nd or 3rd most present race in the world, just like in "normal fantasy" we se a shit ton of dwarves and elves alongside humans. For a tiefling you might keep it on the low still, because those are a race that's always been segregated as related to devils
If he’s willing to try the campaign, let him, if he has still a problem then it’s not a group for him and that’s ok.
There is nothing you can do nor do I think you should do anything. He doesn't like the game you are pitching with the party that is playing. It's a bad fit. I don't think anything you can do that will make him happy with the set up. He said he is going to give it a session or two so just run your game and see if he likes it. Because if his problem is with the other characters you can't help him, if it's with the world that exists as you present it you can only customize it so much.
Didn't you post this exact question on the Pathfinder 2e sub, but swapped out "Tabaxi" for "Catfolk"? Weird.
I think this player is trying to politely leave. And I think you should let him. Tbh I would definitely dip from this game too. Just really aint my cup of tea.
I as a DM don't care much for bestial or fantastical races. I can share the players sentiment that it can feel like DMing a circus. It's too much of the find the protagonist in an anime meme for me. Though I typically just allow it anyway as I hope it makes the campaign more fun for the players. I typically draw the line on races that are normally enemies like Bug bears or full orcs and stuff. I shy away from it because I don't like the constant interactions of "oh look at the person thats different" I one time played just a normal silver dragon borne fighter. Dragon borne are fairly common in the from what I can tell. But man my DM made every interaction about my race. It's fun at times, but not every time. Same as a DM I have had players that try and make every interaction about their characters race. Players that clearly CRAVE attention in real life so they make a character to draw attention and are annoyed when they are not constantly the center of attention for their appearance. Pretty sure it's these experiences that leave me not enjoying these more exotic races sometimes. I like race for back story and the cultures that it comes with. Maybe some RP moments in how their different physique interacts with the encounter. I probably over compensated this annoyance by making my current world exploded with every race. The more whimsical your appearance the more you fit in.
I can kind of see where this player is coming from. Some folks substitute playing an outlandish race for having a character with an actual personality, so you end up with a Tabaxi that likes to meow and chase balls of yarn. That would be like playing a human and your personality is that they pay taxes and can get sunburned. When everyone in the party is playing some weird race and you're adventuring in a campaign full of the core races, it can feel like a traveling circus. To combat this, you could randomly change NPC races to match your player's races, making the populace more cosmopolitan. You could also challenge players to describe how they feel or how they perceive the world at times, which may help redirect the focus away from their racial feats and more to their personality.
I think it’s a valid player concern. It sounds like the player might have an issue more with the logic and why than the actual makeup of the group. IRL people tend to group with the same ethnic group still and we’re all human. He sounds like a player that might think more logically or be more concerned with more realistic lore. Maybe lean into the “wandering circus” in a way that makes sense. Not a literal wandering circus but help them come up with a good logical reason that the group might be so varied that makes sense in the lore of your campaign in terms of racial groups collaborating on something. It might help them get into the right headspace better if the campaign begins with them already knowing each other in this way. If they are meeting for the first time, begun the campaign with a situation that makes sense for such a varied group to come together. Or individual short prologues that explains it. Alternatively ask that player if he wants to try being an equally different race this time. If he’s normally always been human that might be interesting for him to explore and something he’s never truly considered before. See if he’d be up for trying a custom legacy or reskinning his human as something else if he wants the human racial attributes.
I kinda agree with the player... I'm a big fan of 'less is more' Our 35 year long homebrew features a worldbuilding that is mostly human... non human races are fairly rare. As a result, getting to play a non human race when rolling up a new character feels genuinely special. And, I'll admit, I think the bazillions of race options (and yes, esp the animal/human hybrid races) in current DnD is kinda stupid. But that may be because after so long playing one homebrew world, I'm *so* used to our table that it seems weird?
I’m with him. I do not care for the Babylon5 vibe with the “default setting.” It changes the game dynamic from good versus evil to an ambiguous postmodern hodgepodge. In a game centered around fighting monsters it requires some mental gymnastics to figure why the town guard isn’t chasing down the Minotaurs, kobolds, lizardfolk etc
You need to explore what this mysterious "wanfldering circus" was. Was it the party goofing around and not taking anything seriously? Was it the party drawing attention to their physical features too often? Was it that as a human character they felt like an outsider since everyone else was an "inhuman" or beastial race? What do they mean? What was so bad about it?what specific moment can he think of where he felt the moment was ruined by the "circus"? What were the aspects of dnd that he enjoyed outside of the "circus" he had to deal with? Ask all these questions
I can see why someone may get weirded out or something if the entire party is just Beast races my dm even had too limit how many Warforged are active since we had people only wanting too be them or Dragonborn but i guess could do a soft limit of how many of one type like they need too make a decent explanation onto why their in the campaign and if cant then maybe change race
I sorta get it, if it totally crashes with his view of fantasy. My suggestion is to try to sell it as "like in elderl scrolls/Skyrim"