D&D 5E Don't make the game too weird

[bloodtide]

So with the talk about Spelljammer coming soon has gotten many gamers excited. In my little corner an ad was posted at the library for a 5E Spelljammer DM. I know the players, but they are not my kind of gamers. I'm Old School Hard Fun Unfair Unbalanced and they are something else. Still, after two weeks the game still had no DM. None of the younger DMs felt they knew enough about Spelljammer to run a game.

So as a Spelljammer fan, I offered to run the game. And they agreed......they even agreed to my Old School Hard Fun Unfair Unbalanced game style. the only big request was that I not make the game "too weird".

So, I'm a "weird" gamer too....I love strange and weird and crazy things in a game. But what is too much? I ask myself what would be too weird for me, and I find myself having trouble getting an answer. My only vague answer is when the GM gets so weird that we are not playing D&D, things like the space trolls are "immune to attacks" or they have a 33% chance to hit a PC and ignore all D&D rules.

The players are all younger then me, so there is a huge culture gap with our ages.
I tried to ask what was "too weird", but just go a bunch of confusing non answers. I did e-mail everyone to get what they thought was too weird....no answers yet.

So.......what do you think is "too weird"?

 

[J.Quondam]

Strange conundrum. To me, the whole point of Spelljammer is to be "too weird"!

 

[bedir than]

So.......what do you think is "too weird"?

Plasmoids

 

[BookTenTiger]

You run a game in which the characters are playing D&D, and the DM in their game is running a game in which the characters are playing as the original players.

 

[Guest 7034872]

Okay, so they definitely won't want one of those psychedelic acid trip adventures the other thread discussed. Too bad--those are awesome adventures.

From what you wrote I suspect they just want you to stick to the sorts of story arcs and NPC personalities they're familiar with. They don't want a Spelljammer adventure that requires them to study all the 2e books they've never read just in order to figure what's going on and what they should do. But you know--this is from me reading between the lines without even having finished my coffee yet, so I'm just guessing here.

 

[Cordwainer Fish]

When the game gets weird, the weird turn pro.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

It is modular. The players are who choose the tone of the game. Spelljammer was created to be the "sandbox" where you could add elements from your favorite sci-fi franchises. If you want, your Spelljammer can be Aliens vs Predator, Doom Slayer, Dead Space, Warhammer 40.000, the Thing, Event Horizon, Pitch Black, Disney's Black Hole, Virus, Screamers, System Shock, Body Snatchers, They Live, Saturn 3, Outland (space thriller with Sean Connery).

WotC is only selling the pieces, but you are who choose the figure to be created.

 

[DeviousQuail]

There are few things that are too weird in and of themselves. Stacking a bunch of those things together is probably where you'd run into issues. Just go the route of most sci-fi TV shows and make each place they visit familiar but with one or two weird things going on. And when they move on you can reset to a different familiar setting with a new weird thing.

 

[DND_Reborn]

Frankly, anything with Spelljammer is "too weird" for me... but that is why it never appealed to me, personally.

Otherwise, I would just start throwing weird at them and see when they balk.

 

[John R Davis]

I'm intend to be running it to younglings and they are fairly stoked for it