Wahoo vs. Traditional

[Lord Mhoram]

I much prefer the over the top Wahoo approach.

When I was designing my Fantasy Hero world, I told my players "Expect the taverns and inns in major metropolitan centers to look like the cantina from Star Wars.

 

[NMcCoy]

For me, D&D is about killing things and taking their stuff, outsmarting devious dungeon designs, and having a blast with my friends. If we can weave it into a compelling narrative, so much the better, but it's not necessary.

I've played a blink dog character. In 4e. I believe this would put me soundly in the "wahoo" camp.

 

[TwinBahamut]

During my formative years, I immersed myself in stories about boots that could travel seven leagues in one step, a talking fish that could grant wishes, a doctor who could talk to animals, a shepherd boy who could kill a giant with a sling stone, a Gaulish warrior who grew strong enough to defeat entire armies by drinking a magic potion, a swordsman so skilled that he could decapitate an entire room full of enemies by just throwing his scimitar (and have it return to him, too), a warrior that was invulnerable to injury (except for a single weak spot), an immortal stone monkey who battled demons and protected a travelling monk, and a god of thunder (yes, several of these stories had the gods as protagonists).

For me, wahoo is traditional.

I think I am in a similar boat.

Honestly, I think phrasing all of this as "traditional" vs. "wahoo" is really flawed, since it really is more of a matter of there being various different traditions that people pull ideas from. Many things may seem like "wahoo" from the perspective of the "Tolkien Tradition", but are extremely commonplace and normal within a different tradition. Dragonborn a great example of such a thing, I think. People with dragon heads may be "monsters" within the classic Tolkien-esque fantasy tradition rooted in Norse myth, but they are nonetheless very common in various other kinds of fantasy works, and are perfectly normal within the "talking/humanoid animals" tradition that dates back to prehistoric times in various cultures.

 

[Lanefan]

As a DM, I prefer the run campaigns where the Weird collides with the Mundane. I tend to start things off looking fairly ordinary and historically based, and gradually reveal the utter strangeness lurking under the surface. In my opinion, the Weird (or Wahoo) quickly becomes ordinary and just as boring as the mundane, unless it used sparingly and in contrast to the ordinary order of things.

Bravo! Couldn't have put it better.

On the surface, things are relatively mundane.

Under the surface? Don't ask. Just, don't ask.

That said, no dragonborn or tieflings for me, thanks; and no warforged either. I likes my Hobbits and Elves...

Lan-"still putting up with Gnomes after all these years"-efan

 

[alleynbard]

During my formative years, I immersed myself in stories about boots that could travel seven leagues in one step, a talking fish that could grant wishes, a doctor who could talk to animals, a shepherd boy who could kill a giant with a sling stone, a Gaulish warrior who grew strong enough to defeat entire armies by drinking a magic potion, a swordsman so skilled that he could decapitate an entire room full of enemies by just throwing his scimitar (and have it return to him, too), a warrior that was invulnerable to injury (except for a single weak spot), an immortal stone monkey who battled demons and protected a travelling monk, and a god of thunder (yes, several of these stories had the gods as protagonists).

For me, wahoo is traditional.

Very good point. I feel very much the same way. Not only did I grow up on those kinds of stories, but I also grew up on Star Wars. So "wahoo" would be traditional for me as well.

Part of my earliest exposure with D&D came from the D&D cartoon. Talk about "wahoo".

 

[alleynbard]

I think I am in a similar boat.

Honestly, I think phrasing all of this as "traditional" vs. "wahoo" is really flawed, since it really is more of a matter of there being various different traditions that people pull ideas from. Many things may seem like "wahoo" from the perspective of the "Tolkien Tradition", but are extremely commonplace and normal within a different tradition. Dragonborn a great example of such a thing, I think. People with dragon heads may be "monsters" within the classic Tolkien-esque fantasy tradition rooted in Norse myth, but they are nonetheless very common in various other kinds of fantasy works, and are perfectly normal within the "talking/humanoid animals" tradition that dates back to prehistoric times in various cultures.

Even the Norse myths that Tolkien took inspiration from were rather crazy. But I agree, the Tolkien tradition derived from his inspiration in the Edda is rather tame compared to what we are talking about here.

Talking heads in wells at the foot of the World Tree. Ships made from the fingernails of the dead. Dwarves and elves that make their D&D equivalents look quite tame. The World Serpent, giants, and the wolf Fenrir who will devour Odin at the end of time. In fact, Ragnorak is some rather crazy stuff. Heck, the Norse cosmology can be rather easily overlaid upon the World Axis of 4e with a few adjustments.

Based on the psuedo-definition we have been using, Norse myth definitely is "wahoo".

But then, I guess that begs the question, if these things are "wahoo", what isn't?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Tolkien preferred Norse mythology to Celtic because he thought the latter was "too wahoo". I believe those were his exact words.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Or there's this, from the Tolkien entry at Wikipedia:

'I do know Celtic things (many in their original languages Irish and Welsh), and feel for them a certain distaste: largely for their fundamental unreason. They have bright colour, but are like a broken stained glass window reassembled without design. They are in fact 'mad' as your reader says—but I don't believe I am.'​

 

[Mallus]

I'll take Greyhawk over Forgotten Realms any day, let alone Eberron.

Heh... it was 1e Greyhawk that convinced me that D&D was --and ever should be-- wahoo fantasy.

Things like the demigods (who were former PC's) that carried six-shooters and conjured magical fire extinguishers. And the two ancient empires that magically nuked one another. And the hundreds of sentient races. And the magic jello monsters. And the puns ("I get it, the floaty eyeball monster is called a Beholder!").

Also, stuff from the modules like the crashed spaceship.

edit: I just realized I didn't answer the original question. I like my D&D to be wahoo fantasy. I think wahoo works best as the default assumption. Trying to run a more realistic, or even realistically mythic version of medieval Europe, or something a Tolkien knock-off using D&D is tough. It seems like you're fighting the rules at every turn.

 

[Clavis]

My personal conception of Traditional Fantasy was formed by mythology, folktales, legends, and history. That's what I read as a child, but almost no mainstream Fantasy fiction. I tried to get through Tolkien a few times, and found him very boring. A could sit and read a treatise on the development of armor in the West, but somehow Tolkien made my eyes glaze over. I didn't start reading fantastic literature until my teens, and then it was authors like Lovecraft that caught my attention. Now I'm influenced by HPL, Clark Ashton Smith, Howard, Tanith Lee, Vance, and the movies of Terry Gillliam. One of my favorite books is Jan Potocki's "Manuscript Found in Saragossa". When I want handle the truly Weird in my campaigns, I'm influenced by William S. Burroughs, Robert Anton Wilson, and the films of David Lynch and David Cronenberg.

The only real influence of Tolkien on my campaigns is through the conventions of D&D itself. My Elves, however, are not the neutered proper Victorian gentlemen of Tolkien, but the actual fierce, lustful, amoral race of medieval legend. My Dwarves are unlikable greedy bigots, based on Alberich from Wagner's Ring cycle.

My problem with Tolkien is perhaps exemplified his the anti-Celtic quote posted above. Tolkien took medieval legends, filled with strange, savage and morally questionable incidents, and tamed them. He made fairy folk, who in medieval stories are interested in humans as illicit lovers (not for lawful matrimony), and as a source of babies to steal, and made them boring and safe.