What is too silly for D&D?

[an_idol_mind]

Forked from: Do you like modrons?

And to those who bring up gelatinous cubes and destrachans and owlbears and the like... I think those are stupid too. What's your point?

Quite often, people point out certain monsters in D&D and say they're too silly/stupid for their games. One man's meat is another man's poison, as many others argue that the silly monsters are awesome.

What do you consider too silly for D&D? Owlbears? Green slimes? Dinosaurs running around in a medieval era? The old school pig-headed orcs? Trappers and lurkers above?

Specifically, why do you see those things as silly? In a game where iconic creatures include beholders, blink dogs, and gelatinous cubes, what makes those iconic creatures so different from the stuff that is regarded as silly, such as modrons or flumphs?

 

[Shroomy]

Personally, I don't think that anything is too silly for D&D, because IMO, everything has a potential use; I wish that more adventures would inject some levity or comedy into them (I think that the last adventure that I read that made me laugh out loud was "The Devil Box" by Rich Pett). Now, that said, even if something is silly, I would hope that it would be well designed so its actually useful.

 

[Nightchilde-2]

Giant space hamsters.

Pistol-toting hippopotamus people.

Yak-men.

 

[Mallus]

What is too silly for D&D? Virtually nothing (as long as it's done creatively/well)

The 3.5e campaign I run features an NPC named Glutinous Maximus, a gelatinous cube monk --well, he's really a magical hybrid of a gelatinous cube and a partially-digested human monk-- and former pit-fighter turned political candidate, whose eventual fate was to be killed by the party, resurrected by chaos magic in the Land of the Dead, and then imprisoned --much to his delight-- in the court of a demon lord, where he was made to pioneer new forms of pornography with the help of the demon's 994 succubi daughters.

And then there's our new 4e campaign, where I play a jolly Dragonborn paladin (and slam-poet) who marks his foes with his own semi-divine semen.

 

[Greg K]

For my own campaigns
- blink dogs
- displacer beasts
- flumphs
- modrons
- most monsters from the original Fiend Folio (especially, the "pillsbury dough boy")
- most monsters created by WOTC specifically for 3e

I am sure there are more 1e and 2e monsters, but I can't think of them off hand.

edit: and Boo, the giant space hamster.

 

[Mallus]

edit: and Boo, the giant space hamster.

I hope he goes for your eyes.

 

[Greg K]

I hope he goes for your eyes.

As long as it is not any lower anatomical parts of the body

 

[Silvercat Moonpaw]

Absolutely nothing. D&D needs to lighten up and let loose.

 

[avin]

- Evil races (or good races)
- Clichés...

 

[the Jester]

Only that old awful module Castle Greyhawk, and even it has a lot of stuff that can be used. Hell, I ran part of one adventure from it in my regular campaign back in the 2e days! Mithril breadknife, here we come!

In my style of gaming, there's plenty of room for levity and humor. I made a 3e template for oozes called the "edible jelly" template, for Christ's sake!