Most Outlandish Creative Non-sense You Ever Thought Up.

[Satyrn]

Bunnyfish.

They appear as mere bunnies in large schools. When the heads poke out of the water they look around and spot sailing vessels... and then approach as a group. When they reach the vessel, they gently bump into it... and explode.

They're actually the weaponized probes of a large undersea beast that uses them to scout, draw land dwelling creatures into the water, and kill themso that it can eat their corpses.

I . . . almost want to add that to my slumbering great old one. This'd be the way it hunts and eats while still sleeping.


. . . And OMG, this could be the origin of the threshers! Probes that separated from the great old one's body. And even probes still attached that poke up through the ponds, puddles and cracks connected its watery lair scattered through the megadungeon

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

An old fave:

Here's an interesting fact: Aspen Trees are a clonal species- they can spread by runners. One of the largest organisms on Earth is an Aspen grove in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains that has 41,000+ trunks.

That inspired this:

No Man's Land:

5000 years ago, a druid (whose name is lost to humanity...) of great power picked a large and remote island devoid of human life as his home, choosing a grove of aspen trees his most sacred space. At some point, he chose to cast Awaken upon one of the aspen...and the entire grove came to life! He had forgotten that Aspen spread by runners...the entire grove was actually one plant- and now it had a mind equal to his own. He trained it in the ways of the druids.

Eventually, death found the druid, but his greatest student lived on. Eventually, the Aspen grew enough in power that it began to experiment with Awaken itself. First, it made other Aspen and a few other mighty trees as self aware as it was, forming the Green Council, each a druid, cleric or mage in its own right. They, in time and in turn, granted awareness to some of the animals of the forest...bringing them into a society ruled by the Green Council, each day's food created by powerful magics.

As decades passed, the island became a great druidic haven, but still unknown to man.

1000 years ago, Man came...and he was not ready for what he found. The animals and trees welcomed those who resembled the one who had made their haven possible, but the ignorant sailors who found the island hunted for food for their journeys, and were driven back by the island inhabitants. The sailors returned to civilization to tell tales of the mysterious island to the East, where both animals and trees thought and fought as if men.

The Council's research of the civilized world (directly and through its awakened, shapechanged agents) has brought them much information about the destructiveness of man...and also solutions as to how to fight back. Those shapechanged agents often lived lives among the so called civilized men, bringing their children, natural shapeshifters, back to the island. The Council did much the same.

Now, the island is inhabited by more than trees and awakened animals. Alongside them now live natural shapechangers and other curious hybrids of man and beast or beast and plant...all members of an insular society on the island.

And they are leery of Mankind's intent.

(In game terms, the island is inhabited by Awakened Trees of the Green Council (each with 20 levels of some combination of Druid, Cleric, Wizard or Sorcerer, some with Epic levels); Awakened animals (any class, Rangers and Druids most common); Anthropomorphic Animals (see WOTC's Savage Species); Shapeshifters (see WOTC's Eberron, but instead of being linked to Lycanthropes, they are linked to Druids); and Woodlings (see WOTC's Monster Manual III).

 

[Mad_Jack]

I once ran an adventure where the party was hired by a red-headed man who asked them to protect his village from the predations of an evil wizard. It started out as a standard adventure.
The man wore a magical amulet that let him cast a Sympathy/Antipathy spell a certain number of times per day. The party discovers that each person in the village had their own special amulet that let them cast a particular spell - Friends, Charm Person, Control Weather, etc...
And it turns out that all the villagers are were-bears.
The wizard is trying to steal the amulets to use their combined magic to power a device designed to allow him to create an army of mind-controlled slaves.

Now, here's where it takes its first twist...

The villagers aren't just were-bears... They're were-Care Bears. (Try saying that seven times fast, lol.) Yes, I went there. And the "evil wizard" looks suspiciously like the Purple Pieman from Strawberry Shortcake. He's stealing the amulets to build a device designed to suck all the joy out of the world, and turn children into mindless workers.
The party quickly gets the picture, that they're stuck in a comedy module centered around Eighties nostalgia and all the iconic things of their childhoods - they set off through an Enchanted Forest filled with trees covered in chocolate bark or with chocolate licorice trunks and spearmint leaves and caramel Squirrels running through the branches, past a stream filled with blue raspberry soda and Swedish Fish... Along the way, they meet several interesting characters including a blue marshmallow ghost who joins the party.

As they get close to the wizard's tower, the second twist kicks in. It is now a horror adventure.

They're attacked by hordes of rabid forest animals including chocolate rabbits, little yellow marshmallow birds, and cinnamon bears.
When a stray arrow hits one of the trees, it bleeds strawberry blood.
The blue marshmallow ghost turns to the party as its eyes begin to bleed blueberry-syrup blood and lets out a banshee's wail.
At the castle gates, the party battles chocolate-covered giant ants and gummi orcs.
When the orcs are hit, there's a horrid squelching sound as the weapon becomes stuck in the orc's body and the "flesh" seals up around it. A yellow gummi orc has its left arm chopped off only to pick up the right arm of a red gummi orc and hold it to the stump, where the two melt and flow together to form an orange scar before the arm becomes functional again.
A Fireball from the party's wizard leaves them gagging on the horrid stench of burnt chocolate and slogging through ankle-deep puddles of the stuff.
When they get inside the tower, they discover that the evil wizard is actually a necromancer, and the amulets are going to be used to power a device needed to perform a profane and infernal ritual that will slowly begin sucking the very life force out of the children of the world, turning them into mindless undead minions of the wizard.

The last battle before the boss fight with the wizard was against the small horde of child zombies the necromancer had already created.

By the time the adventure was over, the entire party were looking at me with haunted, shell-shocked eyes, but they were smiling like lunatics. it was probably the finest DM-ing I'll ever do.
I'd love to run that adventure again, but I've never found another party I would have felt comfortable running it with, who'd be okay with me putting them through that kind of hell for their own entertainment.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I once ran an adventure where the party was hired by a red-headed man who asked them to protect his village from the predations of an evil wizard. It started out as a standard adventure.
The man wore a magical amulet that let him cast a Sympathy/Antipathy spell a certain number of times per day. The party discovers that each person in the village had their own special amulet that let them cast a particular spell - Friends, Charm Person, Control Weather, etc...
And it turns out that all the villagers are were-bears.
The wizard is trying to steal the amulets to use their combined magic to power a device designed to allow him to create an army of mind-controlled slaves.

Now, here's where it takes its first twist...

The villagers aren't just were-bears... They're were-Care Bears. (Try saying that seven times fast, lol.) Yes, I went there. And the "evil wizard" looks suspiciously like the Purple Pieman from Strawberry Shortcake. He's stealing the amulets to build a device designed to suck all the joy out of the world, and turn children into mindless workers.
The party quickly gets the picture, that they're stuck in a comedy module centered around Eighties nostalgia and all the iconic things of their childhoods - they set off through an Enchanted Forest filled with trees covered in chocolate bark or with chocolate licorice trunks and spearmint leaves and caramel Squirrels running through the branches, past a stream filled with blue raspberry soda and Swedish Fish... Along the way, they meet several interesting characters including a blue marshmallow ghost who joins the party.

As they get close to the wizard's tower, the second twist kicks in. It is now a horror adventure.

They're attacked by hordes of rabid forest animals including chocolate rabbits, little yellow marshmallow birds, and cinnamon bears.
When a stray arrow hits one of the trees, it bleeds strawberry blood.
The blue marshmallow ghost turns to the party as its eyes begin to bleed blueberry-syrup blood and lets out a banshee's wail.
At the castle gates, the party battles chocolate-covered giant ants and gummi orcs.
When the orcs are hit, there's a horrid squelching sound as the weapon becomes stuck in the orc's body and the "flesh" seals up around it. A yellow gummi orc has its left arm chopped off only to pick up the right arm of a red gummi orc and hold it to the stump, where the two melt and flow together to form an orange scar before the arm becomes functional again.
A Fireball from the party's wizard leaves them gagging on the horrid stench of burnt chocolate and slogging through ankle-deep puddles of the stuff.
When they get inside the tower, they discover that the evil wizard is actually a necromancer, and the amulets are going to be used to power a device needed to perform a profane and infernal ritual that will slowly begin sucking the very life force out of the children of the world, turning them into mindless undead minions of the wizard.

The last battle before the boss fight with the wizard was against the small horde of child zombies the necromancer had already created.

By the time the adventure was over, the entire party were looking at me with haunted, shell-shocked eyes, but they were smiling like lunatics. it was probably the finest DM-ing I'll ever do.
I'd love to run that adventure again, but I've never found another party I would have felt comfortable running it with, who'd be okay with me putting them through that kind of hell for their own entertainment.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet!

 

[Tallifer]

I once built an entire encounter around various jack o'lanterns. They sat on the back gate guarding the entrance into the city of the ghouls. One pumpkin was clever and dextrous, throwing showers of large pointed pumpkin seeds which variously pierced, exploded, bludgeoned or burrowed into flesh.



Another pumpkin full of rotten slimy insides threw himself messily onto the head of the paladin.



The largest monstrous pumpkin opened wide and swallowed the monk.



Another rolled around the ground from hero to hero, gnashing at them with his sharp teeth.

 

[iserith]

I'm working on a Friday the 13th scenario called "Terror at Star Lake" right now for a Halloween one-shot.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ha-ha-ha-ha...

 

[Satyrn]

I once built an entire encounter around various jack o'lanterns. They sat on the back gate guarding the entrance into the city of the ghouls. One pumpkin was clever and dextrous, throwing showers of large pointed pumpkin seeds which variously pierced, exploded, bludgeoned or burrowed into flesh.

View attachment 101520

Another pumpkin full of rotten slimy insides threw himself messily onto the head of the paladin.

View attachment 101521

The largest monstrous pumpkin opened wide and swallowed the monk.

View attachment 101522

Another rolled around the ground from hero to hero, gnashing at them with his sharp teeth.

View attachment 101523

Sweeeeeeeeeeeet!

 

[MarkB]

When running a cyberpunk adaptation of 5e D&D I had to come up with the triggering event that brought magic and strange races into our everyday world. That event, known as the Conjunction, consisted of a secret Druidic order deciding to reverse climate change, deforestation and world hunger by casting a Plant Growth spell beefed up to affect the entire planet, intending to both re-grow the rainforests and boost worldwide crop productivity.

To do it they needed a mathematically-precise magic circle over a mile wide - so they used the only one available, the Large Hadron Collider. Unfortunately they managed to cast their spell right at the same time CERN were performing a major particle-physics experiment, and the resulting combination of forces created a massive planar rip that intermingled our world with the Feywild.

Also, as background for the same campaign, Bitcoin and most other major cryptocurrencies were a front for a secret project to develop a true distributed AI. The blockchain algorithms masked hidden code that distributed the extremely complex mathematical number-crunching across the entire world, creating the first true AI, who went on to become a minor antagonist in the campaign.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Another old one: the Lich the party THOUGHT was the BBEG behind tha evil army threatening the world was actually senile and only interested in researching powerful spells like Magic Missile, Shocking Grasp and Pyrotechnics. The times over which he pored so intently in his studying were his own.

Which of course begs the question, who is the REAL evil power behind the army?

 

[Satyrn]

Also, as background for the same campaign, Bitcoin and most other major cryptocurrencies were a front for a secret project to develop a true distributed AI. The blockchain algorithms masked hidden code that distributed the extremely complex mathematical number-crunching across the entire world, creating the first true AI, who went on to become a minor antagonist in the campaign.

So, you're saying the Bitcoin AI . . . became a bit player