How Weird Should D&D Be?

[Viking Bastard]

I like it weird. And another shout out to Planescape from me.

 

[MoxieFu]

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."

-Hunter S. Thompson

 

[Aramax]

Just say no to sci fi-keep them out of my core rule books(low tech guns would be ok)

 

[Mattachine]

D&D has had the weird elements from the start, and I hope it stays that way. Some settings have less, but the core has always been kinda off.

Fritz Leiber's Lahnkmar stories were as big an inspiration to D&D as Tolkien (maybe even moreso), and they are pretty weird. Even Conan stories involved Lovecraftian horrors at times.

 

[rogueattorney]

Even Conan stories involved Lovecraftian horrors at times.

The "elephant" in Tower of the Elephant was pretty clearly a space alien.

All of authors who were the main influences on D&D other than Tolkien - Burroughs, Lovecraft, Howard, Vance, Leiber, Anderson, DeCamp & Pratt, Moorcock, and Zelazny - pretty freely mixed genres in their writing.

Actually, that's somewhat anachronistic on my part, as the genres of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror as they are understood now didn't yet exist for all of those authors except maybe Moorcock and Zelazny. Moorcock, for one, wrote fairly extensively on what exactly one should even call the types of stories he and others were writing.