How Weird Should D&D Be?

[Oni]

How weird should the default presentation of D&D be? Should it entice players to traditional fantasy or beyond it? It seems like something the game originally embraced at its inception with OD&D's robots, Temple of the Frog, and the suggestion that players could play pretty much anything. However over time it shucked a lot of this, by the time you get to the 2e core a lot of the weirdness had been expunged, we didn't even have monks anymore. The new editions seem keen on adding some of the stranger things back in, but very recalcitrant about anything overtly science fiction.

What say you all?

[edit: I was going to add a poll, but was evidently too slow. 1 to 5. 1 being practically historical. 5 being robots on dragons, lightsabre wielding Jedi liches, and Illithids with sixshooters. Just to kind of give a range to things.]

 

[Lanefan]

It should start with and stay close to traditional fantasy - to begin with. Sci-fi and other non-traditional elements can be introduced later - 1e did this via some adventure modules - and be left up to each DM whether to run 'em or not.

It should get back to 1e's sense of whimsy and ability to laugh at itself, though. 2e killed this and it has yet to be resurrected.

Lan-"Flumphs for the win"-efan

 

[FireLance]

Short answer: as weird as you can imagine.

Long answer: about this weird.

 

[Sunseeker]

There are plenty of great sci-fi RPGs out there. There are plenty of great sci-fantasy games out there. D&D I feel should remain focused on the purely fantasy segment of the hobby.

 

[DogBackward]

Personally, I like the current drift toward "Make a baseline, then allow people to add what they want." The baseline for D&D is classic, romanticized medieval times, and the basic game should reflect that. Low-magic, low-power, and consisting of a mostly "normal" world. Then, let the modularity of the system take over. If you want high-magic and super-weird fantasy, add those bits from the relevant books.I do, however, think that the "standard" mid-high fantasy D&D should be able to be replicated with the core books only. The baseline should assume low-magic and low-power, but the same books should include the options to fancy it up.

So, as an example, the baseline of D&D should resemble the world of A Song of Ice and Fire: there's fantasy elements, but they're not running rampant all over the place. Mostly, you have strong men with sharp blades and clever tongues.

With a minimum of effort, you can then bump things up to Lord of the Rings levels of fantasy, and then up the next step to high-fantasy worlds like Shannara or the world of the Eragon books. The sorts of places where magic is everywhere and you're not like to turn a corner without running up against something odd or magic-steeped.

Keep in mind, this isn't about a preference of playstyle. I like high-magic just as much as I like low-magic most of the time (depending on how well it's done). However, I fully support the concept of starting with a bare-bones system, and then providing DM's and players with the tools to easily sculpt the game to fit what they want to play. The easiest way to do that is to start with as little as possible, then allow the users to add from there. And you can't really deny that low-magic and low-power is the simpler starting point.

 

[Oni]

Just for the record I like some weird. My next campaign will likely have guns, robots, and goblins descended from crash-landed little green men, and I'm sure assorted other weirdness.

 

[GM Dave]

DnD has it's own brand of weird that it has created over the years.

Classic monsters like the Beholder and Mind Flayer are DnD's weird. You won't find others like it in other games (and Hasbro intends to keep it that way).

DnD loss much of its weird when it had to bend to 'Satan Worship' fears. 2e had a great purge of things like Assassin in the Player's Handbook, renaming of Devils and Demons, to avoid misguided 'perceptions' (DnD was not alone in this and Warhammer had a large change of their model lines).

There was also not the strict line of Fantasy as Tolkein like that currently people 'classify' as Fantasy. It is actually, a common part of writer threads in fantasy, whether guns and ray guns belong (there are whole sections of fantasy with such items from turn of the century pulp like Warlords of Mars).

DnD has been marketed towards the more Tolkein style of fantasy enjoying people but it has maintained several campaign worlds that are different in style (Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun) and high adventure (Ebberon).

Weird to me is more the creepy crawly stuff like Cthuhlu material that now appears in the Pathfinder bestiaries. It is the aberrants that are conjured or take over.

I'm fine with Sorcery and Six Guns (a GM topic from the old days). Pathfinder has recently started into this idea with their Clockwork monsters, Gunslinger class, and Ultimate Combat/Magic class options that give alternate ways to cast spells using 'bombs' or 'firearms'.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

...goblins descended from crash-landed little green men

Heh!

I had "elves" who were crash landed Greys- their tech allowed them to alter their appearance to being more human-like, and their "stasis fields" that made interstellar travel practical also accounted for their long lives and the time distortion effects of being overnight in "Underhill".

 

[Incenjucar]

I'm hoping that future creative innovations are largely contemporary in feel. There are sooo many great ideas in the creative space these days, it would be sad to be stuck trying to reinvent the owlbear when we could be creating Adamantine Hydras or something.

 

[trancejeremy]

There was also a Lovecraftian horror element that was sort of removed (except the Mind Flayers). It wasn't huge in the rulebooks, but you saw it in some of EGG's modules - Shrine of the Ku-Tuo, the Tharizidun one.

And he added Derro to the game, which were from science fiction.