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Wow, that's a real breakdown in the group.

Probably best to get out of that. DM is sounding really petty with that Discord. It's not the players fault that he's completely crushed their desire to carry on.

That leads me to a question, How do you guys go about forming and finding new groups.

I have run into this problem for the following reasons:

1, I prefer F2F PNP TT experience
2. Rural area without FLGS action
3. Local players I have run across leave me cold (Probably because I am an elitist)
4. Mostly encounter newbies with a casual interest to try

How do you go about forming or reforming a strong, solid group?

I play with friends. Friends who want to try that i dm for or friends who want to dm that let me play.

1) dont be an elitist. Its a toxic way to be.

2) new people are great. And new people with even slight encouragment become solid reliable players.

I'll echo that, if you can pull in friends (or even co-workers of friends-of-friends) then that's the way to go. The more familiarity the better, as you want to be playing with people around whom you're comfortable to both make a complete fool of yourself and be openly emotional. It also helps with tailoring the experience, if you're playing with people you know at least moderately well you can make sure their interests feed into the game (so you're not running a campaign that's more Game of Thrones for a group that would rather play something closer to The Princess Bride, for example).

I find newbies are honestly the best people to run for, it's a joy introducing new folks to the game as they have no preconceptions or hangups carried over from other DMs or gaming groups (I've had way more trouble with people who have come from another group and not gelled with our style of play than I have with people new to the hobby altogether) and often, you get feats of imagination from a first-timer that a long-term veteran RPGer would never go for because their more detailed knowledge of the rules tells them it's not the ideal or practical solution to a problem.

And it's just great to take something you enjoy and share that with more people, then watch them share it in turn; the 'extended family' of my gaming group started with me as a DM and 3 players, now across a few different campaigns we have 7 players, 5 of whom DM on the regular less than a year after starting. Of course, not every group is going to grow like that and not everyone is going to take to it that well, but opening yourself up to that happening can lead to great things.

It's all in the pitch, I think. I genuinely believe that just about anyone can have fun with tabletop roleplaying, the trick is pitching it in such a way that it appeals to the person you're trying to recruit. Do what you can to cut through the stereotypes and myths around the hobby, and if you can convince someone to try one session then make that session a good one, tailored to their interest, that's often enough. If they're big into a certain franchise, that can be a good gateway, but more generally than that, ask what they want and build the game around that. If they say they want drama and intrigue, don't run a dungeon crawl. If they say they want hack and slash, don't plan an hour-long debate with a politician.

But whatever you do, lead with the experience, not the rules. Telling someone how they can slay dragons or fight gods or rule kingdoms is inherently more appealing than giving them a 300 page hardback as homework. For that first session, try and take as much of the complexity away as you can; have pre-generated characters ready to hand out, and dice on hand for everyone organised by type (to us, telling a d10 from a d12 at a glance is easy, but for the newcomer, it won't necessarily be). Print out spells or feats on cards rather than passing round the rulebooks, and be prepared to handwave any discrepancies or issues that you might ponder longer in a more developed game. Try and avoid saying 'no' as much as possible, let people try all sorts of stuff even if it's futile as that's the best way to help them understand exactly what the TTRPG experience is.

And if at the end of that they've had fun, boom, you got yourself a campaign!

 A Town Called Malus wrote:
Wow, that's a real breakdown in rhe group.

Probably best to get out of that. DM is sounding really petty with that Discord. It's not the players fault that he's completely crushed their desire to carry on.

And the Cleric just backed out, though he doesn't seem salty like I am.

So yeah... Maybe just go do something myself is sounding a lot more appealing.

 Easy E wrote:
That leads me to a question, How do you guys go about forming and finding new groups.

I have run into this problem for the following reasons:

1, I prefer F2F PNP TT experience
2. Rural area without FLGS action
3. Local players I have run across leave me cold (Probably because I am an elitist)
4. Mostly encounter newbies with a casual interest to try

How do you go about forming or reforming a strong, solid group?

Most of my groups have been a result of happy accidents. After I moved to Atlanta I posted on an Atlanta subreddit looking for people and got a response from 1 guy. As he and I started hashing out thoughts on a small campaign with him, me, and my wife; his wife found an FLGS and ran into another couple looking for a group. So suddenly we had five people and the game proceded from there. The new people from the FLGS slowly introduced us to more people both from the store and other online LFG sources until eventually Me and my wife were actually playing in a couple different games (and none of them with each other lol). Once I got to Dayton I discovered a Board Games Bar and they held a DnD Mixer for people looking for groups. I ended up meeting a dude that had just recruited a bunch of people online through a discord for a ravnica dnd game and he invited me and my wife along. That group now meets in person every week rather than discord because we all were local.

I have yet to actually play an online only game despite almost all my groups discovering people online.

 Easy E wrote:
That leads me to a question, How do you guys go about forming and finding new groups.

I have run into this problem for the following reasons:

1, I prefer F2F PNP TT experience
2. Rural area without FLGS action
3. Local players I have run across leave me cold (Probably because I am an elitist)
4. Mostly encounter newbies with a casual interest to try

How do you go about forming or reforming a strong, solid group?

What does elitist even mean? Competition in games is normal, but D&D is the one game I've never encountered that in before.

When i have seen elitist used for things like this and board games it tends to mean no patience for people not on your level. Noobs beware. Build your characters correctly and tactically handle your conflicts regardless of "what your character would do". Different play styles or motivations for being at the table are not welcome.

Maybe he means something else?

 Lance845 wrote:
When i have seen elitist used for things like this and board games it tends to mean no patience for people not on your level. Noobs beware. Build your characters correctly and tactically handle your conflicts regardless of "what your character would do". Different play styles or motivations for being at the table are not welcome.

Maybe he means something else?

Nah, I love Noobs. They are still open to the magic of it all and not dug deep into min-maxxing and optimization yet. I love different styles of play than mine!

When I say Elitist, I mean I don't tolerate the socially awkward very well. When I go to recruit, I have certain standards. Things like:

1. Don't openly eyeball my wife or female friends
2. Don't be greasy and smelly
3. Be able to string two or more words together in a sentence
4. Be a mature, semi-well adjusted person
5. Don't be a dickish A-hole

Like I said before, sometimes the hardest thing about being a nerd is dealing with other nerds. I know as a Nerd I should be accepting of all and accept differences and not judge and all that.... but I can't always be a charitable and saintly person. I judge and I judge my fellow nerds harshest. It is a weakness of mine. :(

Ah. I would not call that elitist. Thats just stock standard social expectations. I support you having those expectations.

When I think of elitist, I think of snobby veterans who not only play the game better, but rub it in your face at every opportunity and mock you for looking at the game in anyway different from how they look at it.

I thankfully have yet to encounter this in D&D but I'm sure I will eventually.

 LordofHats wrote:
When I think of elitist, I think of snobby veterans who not only play the game better, but rub it in your face at every opportunity and mock you for looking at the game in anyway different from how they look at it.

I thankfully have yet to encounter this in D&D but I'm sure I will eventually.

They were fairly common online once upon a time, especially various Character Optimization boards.

In person, there tend to be tales of them out in the the wild places, but they've largely been driven out of their habitats by the great herds of CCG players that don't care about their old stories.
Mostly they have their established groups or they don't actually play anymore. Just complain in some of the less pleasant places of the internet.

My RL groups fell apart as people moved away for various reasons and became online only groups. I really, really wanted that same face to face gaming, since even knowing the people involved for decades I find online gaming just not as satisfying (generally speaking).

I've found a couple pretty solid groups through Meetup. They can be hit or miss, because I also found a group that sat in complete silence for about 10-15 minutes before I started introducing myself (I was not the host, who apparently also sat in silence).

One the DM just stopped showing up. They log into discord all the time, so we know they're not dead, they just don't answer any messages or say anything. The rest of us are still gaming together, and they're a truly wonderful group of people. My second group was an AL group that lost our play spot, which sucks, but such is life.

One group I'm loving is an online group I met through a coworker.

So... try Meetup maybe? I met a bunch of people through it and so far only a small few have been the "no showering, socially awkward, no decency types".

As I probe around more, I am amazed at the number of people interested in trying an RPG of some type.

Da Boss wrote:My biggest issue with Dungeons and Dragons is the use of the word "Race" rather than "Species" but that is mostly the legacy of the fantasy literature the game is inspired by. I just would rather it was not used since race is just a social construct invented by racists to justify discrimination. I see Pathfinder is moving to "Ancestry" which is a bit better I suppose. But the concept of "evil races" is pretty dodgey no matter how you slice it.

No word of a lie here. I've been worldbuilding my own D&D setting, working out how everything fits together in my personal world, and as soon as I reach Drow, I was like "oh no, I don't like the implications of this at all". Completely rewrite them in my universe to be more akin to Elder Scrolls Dunmer (aka, the first elves who would become Drow committed a horrible act of betrayal against their fellow Elves, got cursed by the gods, and all those descended from them bear the mark - many Drow see this as a mark of shame and seek to live lives of compassion and servitude to atone for their forbear's sins, and many do not), at least allowing for genuinely Good Drow to be more accessible.

The idea of a playable race that can only be "evil" just throws me all the wrong ways.

This is honestly why I find Drow really boring. Taking them as written a) comes with the aforementioned problems (from a worldbuilding perspective as much as a sociological one), and b) cliche as hell and not in a good way. 'Elves But Spikey And Evil' is, aside from being problematic, also dull as dirt.

On the other hand, it's also something you often have to work so hard to subvert that it becomes it's own cliche or just equally boring. I do enjoy subverting the classic stereotype of wise, benevolent if aloof (aka Tolkieny) High/Wood Elves by making them more neutral, violent and arrogant in their wisdom, but I find Drow hard to fit into that.

I tend to have something of a scale that goes Eladrin at the top as almost primal forces of nature, totally removed from the concerns of the mortal world, High and Wood Elves, in the middle with the former being more arrogant and vain and the latter being more violent and insular, and then Half-Elves as the most 'mortal' variety. Throughout that, there's the duality that Elves tend to be peerless at what they do due to their lifespans, so one that turns to heroism will do great things, but one that falls to darkness will be truly monstrous indeed.

I struggle to find a place for Drow in there because it's literally baked into their conceptual DNA that they are the opposite of whatever the traditionally 'good' Elves are, and pitching those High/Wood Elf cultures as very ambiguous and neutral means there isn't really an opposite. Duergar I can work with as the dark mirror of Dwarves, Kobolds as the same for Dragonborn, but the mirror of Elves the way I usually portray them is... basically how they already are, as I cast them with a particular duality already.

I actually tend to leave Drow out of my world lore for just that reason. You can play them in my game, sure, but they're about the only race I don't have a developed or thematically consistent culture, background or history thought out for (I have more Triton lore than Drow lore! ) I ought to do something about that, but I'm just completely stuck for interesting ideas, and no one is playing one so they might as well not exist for the time being.

In my world the elves have their origins in the Fey wild thousand upon thousands of years ago. There was an invasion from the feywild when it was more closely linked to the material plain.

The elves that would become the Drow did a major act of betrayal against the other elves and Fey that resulted in the shunting off and sealing away of the Fey Wild from the material plain and made crossing between them significantly more difficult saving the Material plain and stranding a bunch of elves here (resulting in the race/s as we have them today). The drow were cursed and exiled and are treated as evil and now it's been so long that nobody has any recollection or records of what the betrayal was.

Poor Drow, they saved the world and paid for it with their current state. Being hunted and hated by the elves who eventually found acceptance but where the mortal enemies of all the world.

 Paradigm wrote:
This is honestly why I find Drow really boring. Taking them as written a) comes with the aforementioned problems (from a worldbuilding perspective as much as a sociological one), and b) cliche as hell and not in a good way. 'Elves But Spikey And Evil' is, aside from being problematic, also dull as dirt.

On the other hand, it's also something you often have to work so hard to subvert that it becomes it's own cliche or just equally boring. I do enjoy subverting the classic stereotype of wise, benevolent if aloof (aka Tolkieny) High/Wood Elves by making them more neutral, violent and arrogant in their wisdom, but I find Drow hard to fit into that.

I tend to have something of a scale that goes Eladrin at the top as almost primal forces of nature, totally removed from the concerns of the mortal world, High and Wood Elves, in the middle with the former being more arrogant and vain and the latter being more violent and insular, and then Half-Elves as the most 'mortal' variety. Throughout that, there's the duality that Elves tend to be peerless at what they do due to their lifespans, so one that turns to heroism will do great things, but one that falls to darkness will be truly monstrous indeed.

I struggle to find a place for Drow in there because it's literally baked into their conceptual DNA that they are the opposite of whatever the traditionally 'good' Elves are, and pitching those High/Wood Elf cultures as very ambiguous and neutral means there isn't really an opposite. Duergar I can work with as the dark mirror of Dwarves, Kobolds as the same for Dragonborn, but the mirror of Elves the way I usually portray them is... basically how they already are, as I cast them with a particular duality already.

I actually tend to leave Drow out of my world lore for just that reason. You can play them in my game, sure, but they're about the only race I don't have a developed or thematically consistent culture, background or history thought out for (I have more Triton lore than Drow lore! ) I ought to do something about that, but I'm just completely stuck for interesting ideas, and no one is playing one so they might as well not exist for the time being.

You could always pull from the old Nordic lore abit where the primary distinction between light-elves and dark-elves is where they lived. Light-elves lived in Alfheim in the heavens while dark-elves lived underground. It makes the distinctions mostly ethnic, and leaves room still for wood-elves as a third distinct ethnic group.

There's also the Moriquendi from The Silmarillion, who were a group of elves who didn't want to leave for Valinor and desired to stay in Middle-Earth. The term was a sort of backhanded insult as the implication was that these elves were okay with what Melkor was doing in Middle Earth at the time of this debate, which they obviously weren't, but you could easily work that into the origins of a elven schism. One group wanted to just up and leave somewhere to avoid some problem, and another group chose to stay and both sides accuse the other of various evils without really understanding each other's reasonings.

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

Da Boss wrote:My biggest issue with Dungeons and Dragons is the use of the word "Race" rather than "Species" but that is mostly the legacy of the fantasy literature the game is inspired by. I just would rather it was not used since race is just a social construct invented by racists to justify discrimination. I see Pathfinder is moving to "Ancestry" which is a bit better I suppose. But the concept of "evil races" is pretty dodgey no matter how you slice it.

No word of a lie here. I've been worldbuilding my own D&D setting, working out how everything fits together in my personal world, and as soon as I reach Drow, I was like "oh no, I don't like the implications of this at all". Completely rewrite them in my universe to be more akin to Elder Scrolls Dunmer (aka, the first elves who would become Drow committed a horrible act of betrayal against their fellow Elves, got cursed by the gods, and all those descended from them bear the mark - many Drow see this as a mark of shame and seek to live lives of compassion and servitude to atone for their forbear's sins, and many do not), at least allowing for genuinely Good Drow to be more accessible.

The idea of a playable race that can only be "evil" just throws me all the wrong ways.

Who says they can only be evil? This is an RPG, you can literally play or do anything you want...

I'm currently playing a Drow Rouge that is Chaotic Good, it's been a blast of a campaign so far too. No problems...

 LordofHats wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
This is honestly why I find Drow really boring. Taking them as written a) comes with the aforementioned problems (from a worldbuilding perspective as much as a sociological one), and b) cliche as hell and not in a good way. 'Elves But Spikey And Evil' is, aside from being problematic, also dull as dirt.

On the other hand, it's also something you often have to work so hard to subvert that it becomes it's own cliche or just equally boring. I do enjoy subverting the classic stereotype of wise, benevolent if aloof (aka Tolkieny) High/Wood Elves by making them more neutral, violent and arrogant in their wisdom, but I find Drow hard to fit into that.

I tend to have something of a scale that goes Eladrin at the top as almost primal forces of nature, totally removed from the concerns of the mortal world, High and Wood Elves, in the middle with the former being more arrogant and vain and the latter being more violent and insular, and then Half-Elves as the most 'mortal' variety. Throughout that, there's the duality that Elves tend to be peerless at what they do due to their lifespans, so one that turns to heroism will do great things, but one that falls to darkness will be truly monstrous indeed.

I struggle to find a place for Drow in there because it's literally baked into their conceptual DNA that they are the opposite of whatever the traditionally 'good' Elves are, and pitching those High/Wood Elf cultures as very ambiguous and neutral means there isn't really an opposite. Duergar I can work with as the dark mirror of Dwarves, Kobolds as the same for Dragonborn, but the mirror of Elves the way I usually portray them is... basically how they already are, as I cast them with a particular duality already.

I actually tend to leave Drow out of my world lore for just that reason. You can play them in my game, sure, but they're about the only race I don't have a developed or thematically consistent culture, background or history thought out for (I have more Triton lore than Drow lore! ) I ought to do something about that, but I'm just completely stuck for interesting ideas, and no one is playing one so they might as well not exist for the time being.

You could always pull from the old Nordic lore abit where the primary distinction between light-elves and dark-elves is where they lived. Light-elves lived in Alfheim in the heavens while dark-elves lived underground. It makes the distinctions mostly ethnic, and leaves room still for wood-elves as a third distinct ethnic group.

There's also the Moriquendi from The Silmarillion, who were a group of elves who didn't want to leave for Valinor and desired to stay in Middle-Earth. The term was a sort of backhanded insult as the implication was that these elves were okay with what Melkor was doing in Middle Earth at the time of this debate, which they obviously weren't, but you could easily work that into the origins of a elven schism. One group wanted to just up and leave somewhere to avoid some problem, and another group chose to stay and both sides accuse the other of various evils without really understanding each other's reasonings.

True, there are certainly approaches I could take working from scratch and binning everything about their existing 'canon' lore and nature, it's just not something I have room for in my current setting and alongside the structure for elves that I've already established. As I say, my hangup is that there has to be a reason they're so different from High/Wood/Fey elves as a culture, and 'cos they're evil' is such a naff one; that's an effect rather than a cause. The ancient betrayal angle works in theory, though I've already done that with both Dragonborn/Kobolds and Dwarves/Duergar in my current world, so it'd be a stretch to throw the Drow in with a similar origin (especially as Elves did not exist when that betrayal went down so it would have to be multiple civilisations suffering the same fate millennia apart).

One angle I might play with in a future setting is making the schism recent rather than ancient history. Have them as a portion of Elven society that is cast out, 'disfigured' in Elven eyes by the changes in their appearance as a deliberate punishment or censure by the High or Fey Elves, and left to form their own very young society. Plays into my love of High Elves as the most potentially dickish race going, makes the Drow interesting via them being very sympathetic, and keeping those events inside a generation (albeit an elven one, so a century or three ) makes those themes very fresh and able to inform a whole raft of cultures and societies across the setting.

How do other nations or civilisations deal with the fact there are now a whole other society of Elves to deal with, do they risk jeopardising alliances with the High Elves by sheltering the Drow, do they fear the influence of a brand new civilisation, how do the original Elves spin the schism to not appear outright evil?

Dragonborn were my big rework with my current setting, I did throw out pretty much all the standard lore for them (including things like their lifespan, why would things descended directly from dragons not live centuries like their ancestors?), so maybe Drow are my next big rework... I've been meaning to start on a new campaign setting soon, this could work nicely as the central tension for it. I tend to reserve major changes for only one race in my games so that if you don't like my out-there ideas, you do have everything else to choose from, so I think Drow might be the next to get that treatment.

Personally I am not a big fan of the Dragonborn as a race. There are already SO many kinds of dragons and so many variations of things with dragon heritage including people with draconic bloodlines (sorcerers) why does this entire race need to exist beyond the 13 yr old power fantasy of "I want to play a dragon!"

The "slave race" of dragon kin from dragon lance already existed and were basically man sized kobolds with wings. Going the extra mile to make full on dragon people is just silly imo.

The original write-up for dragonborn was a little more interesting than the current one. Instead of a dragon race of humanoids that acts like other humanoids and randomly has breasts, the dragonborn are individuals of other races that have undergone a ritual rebirth into a new form.

Unfortunately, they were specifically servants of Bahamut, the LG god of good dragons, and specifically devoted to him, so that severely limited the stories you could tell, but it was an interesting reason for yet another kitchen sink fantasy race to exist. Easily fixed by letting other dragon gods (or arcane magic) do the same thing, however. This version was in 3e's Races of the Dragon and I believe one or two other books. This version got wiped by 4e.

An (unsurprisingly) similar concept popped up in Monte Cook's Arcana Unearth/Evolved The mojh (which seem randomly named) But they individually transformed themselves into draconic entities for longer life and magical power. Can't breed, have no 'society' as such, but I'm a sucker for transhuman characters that actually seek out that kind of thing.

Bah! Every schoolboy knows that dragons will have sex with anything -- except maybe dwarves and orcs. Dragonborn are the spawn of polymorphed dragons and humans, possibly elves.

Anyone have $300.00 USD burning a hole in their wallet? WotC is offering these Sapphire DIce

 Red Harvest wrote:
Bah! Every schoolboy knows that dragons will have sex with anything -- except maybe dwarves and orcs. Dragonborn are the spawn of polymorphed dragons and humans, possibly elves.

Anyone have $300.00 USD burning a hole in their wallet? WotC is offering these Sapphire DIce

Hold up while I phone my dad...

 Togusa wrote:
Who says they can only be evil? This is an RPG, you can literally play or do anything you want...

I'm currently playing a Drow Rouge that is Chaotic Good, it's been a blast of a campaign so far too. No problems...

This is true, but literally on the PHB entry for Drow, it makes it quite clear that the vast majority of Drow are "evil", which is a connotation I really don't appreciate. It doesn't claim they can "only be evil", but very much implies they sway a certain way, and just the implication of "most of this race are 'evil'" just feels uncomfortable.

However, in all fairness, that's also a side effect of the alignment system saying that something is "good" and something is "evil".

 Sgt_Smudge wrote:

 Togusa wrote:
Who says they can only be evil? This is an RPG, you can literally play or do anything you want...

I'm currently playing a Drow Rouge that is Chaotic Good, it's been a blast of a campaign so far too. No problems...

This is true, but literally on the PHB entry for Drow, it makes it quite clear that the vast majority of Drow are "evil", which is a connotation I really don't appreciate. It doesn't claim they can "only be evil", but very much implies they sway a certain way, and just the implication of "most of this race are 'evil'" just feels uncomfortable.

However, in all fairness, that's also a side effect of the alignment system saying that something is "good" and something is "evil".

One thing I like about the background for 5e is that for "usually evil" races, it's often because they have a god actively interfering in their affairs and keeping them on a narrow cultural path.

Its a product of their society.

If we were playing a game that took place during the height of the roman empire the "race" "romans" would almost always be lawful. It doesnt mean that there are not romans who are othérwise.

Then consider that drow society is centered around the worship of a spider goddess who encourages slavery, murder, betrayal, and all kinds of other nasty gak.

If you want drow to be evil less often lolth needs to be less prominant a figure in their societal structure. Its not the drows nature that makes them evil. Its their nurture.

I agree that good and evil can be terms that are a little too strong, and it's something that's bothered me about the alignment system in D&D, but I also think it's a good idea to have just renamed more accurately. I don't remember where I read it recently and I haven't been able to find it again but it was a summarized version of more indepth alignment descriptions from somewhere else. It boiled down to:
lawful: value the laws of society and promote them over the needs of the individual
chaotic: value individuals over society at large
good: place value and safety of others above yourself
evil: self centered and self interested, placing your needs and wants above others

The term "evil" feels like all evil races and characters are psychopaths and sadists. I like the above summery for that reason. Anyone know the source? Thanks

Originally it was just Law, Neutrality and Chaos, which worked just fine.

I guarantee y'all that Lawful and Good as imagined by Gygax are not at all what y'all think they are. He was very much thinking about things in a medieval mindset.

Anyway, I started a short campaign for my group. They are getting to play some Holme's Blue Book D&D. So far, so good. Three elves out of 8 PCs in the party.

Artificer is being added to the list of classes for 5e.

I never really liked the class, though if playing in the Eberron campaign setting it makes more sense to be there. The ones I have played with though were not in Eberron.