D&D General How Weird Do You Like Your D&D

[Scribe]

It also has religious vampire conquistadors

The art around them in particular, is quite fantastic.

 

[Scribe]

I think the problem with this is that D&D has become so famliar that it doesn't seem weird any more.

If this isnt weird... (note, I love this as Spelljammer is meant to lean into the weird!)

 

[Lanefan]

As OP, I can say with confidence I meant weird. You can have fantastical without weirdness. For example, The Wheel of Time.

I dunno - Wheel of Time gets pretty weird in some parts...

 

[bloodtide]

I'm an 11 on Weirdness, and a lot of other things.

Of course, just being an old school DM allready makes my game quite "weird" to nearly all modern, and much younger gamers. Then throw in killer DM, randomess and I make the game for the players, not characters. So the weird fact is already quite high.

Though it does seem like most games by others are not too weird in comparison.

I make my game a bit more "historically accurate" for the time era, and not the generic modern view that is typical used for most games. This alone is too "weird" of a lot of gamers. Of course a lot of this is also that a lot of gamers are set in the American view.

Mundane things, but even more magic things are made quite bland by the rules, even more so the D&D rules mechanics. The character shoots and arrow or creates a blast of fire or a ray the polymorphs, is just a dull mechanical action. The fire shoots out for ten feet and does 1d6 fire damage.

A LOT of players find things not mentioned in the rulebooks "too weird". A large tree in the forest casts no shadow, and climbing up the tree triggers it's portal to the Shadow Plane. Players have been confused for hours with the "tree climbing portal" that makes no sense to them.

Its all weird.....

 

[Fifinjir]

I seem to be more of a fan of weird things treated mundanely than most. A mimic house that all the villagers avoid is one thing, a mimic house that the villagers have entered a symbiotic relationship with is some real “we’re not in Kansas anymore” stuff.

 

[S'mon]

Occasional weirdness in a mostly non-weird setting.

 

[King Babar]

Fairly grounded with strong moments of weirdness. Although what is an isn't weird can be a matter of perspective.

I have been tempted to go full weird fantasy at times, with a setting/campaign mashing up Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, Ultraviolet Grasslands, and the Graham and Roy run of Prophet.

 

[grimslade]

Most of my campaigns have an element of weirdness to them, even Greyhawk. Spelljammer lends itself to cranking up the weirdness to 11. Dark Sun is a different kind of weird from regular fantasy settings. Eberron is pretty weird too.
Weird is kind of hard to quantify though. You can have farm realm/ abyssal incursion horror weird. Feywild/Sidhe shenanigans weird. Or the unsettling strangeness weird of Innsmouth/Watership Down/AI generated art. Gonzo weird is the easiest to overdo and the line between just right and overdone is invisible and constantly moving. When it is just right it is EPIC, but it can quickly devolve into Monty Python quotes and Warner Brothers cartoon antics.
The best weird is offset by the normal, banal, world. Weird is spice, not the main ingredient.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I like my setting weird as most generic fantasy has been done and has bored me.

I do not get why people are contrasting weird with grounded, mundane and grounded are not the same, related sure but not the same.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Mimics are a prime example. And yet we can see them all over the place, even outside of D&D. D&D's weird tropes have propagated out into the world. And that just makes it easier to forget that there's so much high weirdness in D&D by default.

I think the problem with this is that D&D has become so famliar that it doesn't seem weird any more.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Mimics are a prime example. And yet we can see them all over the place, even outside of D&D. D&D's weird tropes have propagated out into the world. And that just makes it easier to forget that there's so much high weirdness in D&D by default.

You know, mimics are an interesting case.

The pop culture mimic is a monster that looks like a treasure chest, perfectly evolved to menace adventurers with its weird tongue and trying to swallow people whoopen 'the chest'.

Buuut, have you really read the mimic? It's a big, predator mollusk with a pseudopod (that's not a tongue!?) that's sticky so as to trap prey that can look like anything and it just happens to always become a big, piratey chest. It's actually less weird than we're all thinking when we look at the mimic... and that's what makes it even more weird in context.

 

[grimslade]

Mimics, lurkers, trappers, and cloakers (oh my!) are just the tip of the weird in the D&D baseline. The room is going to kill you from all angles and the lone humanoid in the room is a doppelganger who will replace one of your hirelings once rescued. Don't look too hard at magic items like the Apparatus of Kwalish, cloak of the bat, Onyx fly, or Cloak Cape of the Mountebank.
Edit: I has a dumb Cape not Cloak

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Over the decades, D&D has evolved entire ecologies for all sorts of fantastical creatures. Is deeply charming and weird and a big part of what makes the game great.

You know, mimics are an interesting case.

The pop culture mimic is a monster that looks like a treasure chest, perfectly evolved to menace adventurers with its weird tongue and trying to swallow people whoopen 'the chest'.

Buuut, have you really read the mimic? It's a big, predator mollusk with a pseudopod (that's not a tongue!?) that's sticky so as to trap prey that can look like anything and it just happens to always become a big, piratey chest. It's actually less weird than we're all thinking when we look at the mimic... and that's what makes it even more weird in context.

 

[James Gasik]

Mimics, lurkers, trappers, and cloakers (oh my!) are just the tip of the weird in the D&D baseline. The room is going to kill you from all angles and the lone humanoid in the room is a doppelganger who will replace one of your hirelings once rescued. Don't look too hard at magic items like the Apparatus of Kwalish, cloak of the bat, Onyx fly, or Cloak Cape of the Mountebank.
Edit: I has a dumb Cape not Cloak

Just the tip of the iceberg!

 

[OB1]

I'd say I like a base weirdness of 6-7, with spikes up to 10. If you just go 10 all the time there's nothing to compare it against

 

[Vaalingrade]

Speaking of things that are a lot different between the pop culture version vs the actual game text, I think a lot of people don't realize that's a real dead rabbit the WiSC killed to lure something bigger.

 

[grimslade]

Speaking of things that are a lot different between the pop culture version vs the actual game text, I think a lot of people don't realize that's a real dead rabbit the WiSC killed to lure something bigger.

Well, the WiSC is not a savage. You need something to be an appetizer before the main dish. Prior to this, the WiSC used the salad course to attract the rabbit. Economy of motion.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Are we talking weird to us or weird to our characters???

 

[Hussar]

Loves me the weird. My current adventure has an incursion of the Feywild that has destroyed a town, turning most of the population into vegepygmies.

I once ran The Tarrasque Task of Moreen Trask where the party has to kill the Tarasque from the inside.

I'd say I'm pretty high on the weird scale.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Loves me the weird. My current adventure has an incursion of the Feywild that has destroyed a town, turning most of the population into vegepygmies.

Awesome. That's an amazing idea for an adventure.