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

[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.