D&D General Weird: Do you introduce weird elements in your campaigns?

[ccs]

Oh yes.
It's not a constant barrage of weird, but it could crop up at any point.
For ex; in the previous campaign (well I guess it be the campaign before the previous one at this point) I dropped a WWI British MKIV tank into the game. Literally.
A portal in the sky opened. Something came streaking out of it & hit the ground with an almighty boom several hours up the coast from where the party was.
They went to investigate.
They found a ginormous crater. When they got near enough a possessed tank (complete with model) came lurching out & attacked them....
It was an interesting encounter - and had absolutely nothing to do with the adventure they were on.

I've transported the party to Whoville to help thwart the Grinch. (And described them & everything as classic animation)

I've run a session where the players had to play as their assorted animal companions/familiars/mounts.
And no, the pcs were not mind swapped into them or such. The animals really got played for a session.
Very funny watching the one powergamer try & play his characters ordinary dumb horse.
This session also set in stone that YES, there really IS a "language of animals" in my games. That they DO talk & think.

 

[Composer99]

You mean weird like magic spells, short bearded miners who ecvavate giant underground halls, tree dwelling paragons with pointy ears and gargantuan firebreathing flying lizards?

No, weird like the particularities of weird as a subgrenre of speculative/fantasy, as well as bizarre genre-swapping.

 

[Reynard]

Always. My favorite recent example is when the PCs running through Avernus ended up caught in the crossfire in a fight between a bunch of demons and a squad of Doom Troopers in power armor and wielding beam rifles and chain swords.

 

[darjr]

As often as I can

 

[overgeeked]

A long time ago D&D add weird elements inserted into modules. Some modules were completely weird as with S3 Expedition to Barrier Peak in which the PC stumble onto an alien space ship. Some people refer to this as the Gonzo style. Cross genre inserts and adventures seems to have faded away from D&D. Do you introduce weird or gonzo elements in your campaigns?

Yes. I absolutely love this type of game. It helps break up the monotony of the game so often falling into faux medieval tropes.

 

[J-H]

Yes. In Castle Dracula (castlevania) there is a locked iron door in the treasury. The door is warded against acid, and there's a dusty cabinet outside containing a Rod of Telekinesis and a few flasks of Alchemist's Fire. Inside the room is a force-field box with a latched lid. Inside the box is a pretty big and hungry Shoggoth.
All the tools are there to contain it...

In my current campaign, a high-level hexcrawl, there is a

Spoiler

crashed Illithid flying saucer in the mountains. Several illithid are in cryo-tubes inside, and there's a big hole in the side as well as the bodies of several warforged who attacked it and caused the crash. The spacecraft they rode to get inside is lodged in the cargo bay. It's just an engine strapped to an open framework, because if you don't need to breathe, you don't need an enclosed spaceship for a short boarding action. There are a couple of high-end magic items inside.
A couple of hexes away is a Githyanki party searching for the spaceship, and near them is a party of Githzerai trying to track down the Githyanki, who are wanted as war criminals.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I love putting in weird elements and using the ones that already exist. I started in 3.5 where there were tons of templated creatures like ooze bears and acidborn sharks (plus this was around the time when "stupid" D&D monster lists were a thing online), so weird creatures were just viewed as part of D&D (looking at Planescape and Spelljammer material in particular further cemented that idea in my mind).

In my current campaign, the party is currently in a large vault within the Underdark of the Feywild with a blue, hazy "sky" broken up in places by giant stalactites piercing through. Magical plants are plentiful, many of them awakened. The party has met a talking fish that travels in a tiny, living pond elemental. They've dodged a stampede of giant fire beetles being driven by a cyclops riding a triceratops. They saved a satyr from webbirds who had laid eggs in the creatures wounds. They met a hag who rides a gazer she can magically change to beholder size to ride around.

I'm planning a segment in the next session where hidden meenlocks cause the PCs to hallucinate while invisible, evil sprites whisper threats. Oh, also the hag has enslaved a treant infected by parasitic fungi that threatens to kill the trees in the vault without her magical aid to curtail the spread, despite her also having a wood golem made from pieces of the treant's saplings called Stumpstack.

 

[Yora]

For something to be weird, it has to break out of the players' expectations and defy categorization in the system they are familiar with. This is something that D&D out of the box is particularly poorly suited for, as it's brand identity, especially since the start of 3rd edition, is all about familiar categories. Alignment as it has become established certainly didn't help, but having creature types and fully detailed rules for the creation of magical objects went a lot further than this. Monster Manuals are of course cool, but they entrench the shared definition of how things really are and how they are supposed to be. It's serving the brand very well, but is unsuited to produce weird adventures and campaigns.

To get weird, you have to ditch the formalized rules for monsters, spells, and magic items. Weirdness is created by facing the players with things that defy the rules as they understand it.
When you go through Lovecraft's Yog-Sothery stories, one thing that may not jump out immediately but is very consistent and deliberate, is that he never used any monsters twice. There is one Cthulhu story. One Deep Ones story. One Mi-Go story. Once the audience know what they are, they are no longer useful to create a weird mystery.

 

[Magister Ludorum]

The first published adventure I ever ran was Temple of the Frog from the original Blackmoor supplement. What some consider weird D&D is just D&D to me.

My kids* just finished playing through Temple of the Frog in a Blackmoor homage setting AND Expedition to the Barrier Peaks in an expanded Freeport/Isle of Dread setting in a homebrew world of my own creation. Two settings, two different groups, same world.

*It's weird to me to keep calling them kids, since they're 21, 21 and 18.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

By the way, I really want to encourage people interested in embracing D&D's weirder side to check out the 4E Underdark book, which features a wildly different take on the setting that is essentially a transitive a plane. It's also rules light and easily adaptable outside of 4E. I'd go so far as to say that Underdark is probably the best setting book to come out of 4E and goes a long way to flesh-out a unique, alternative take on the Underdark, essentially describing it as a place ruled by a stalking god of torture and influenced in certain regions by the intruding influence of other planes.

Examples of locations from the 4E Underdark book:

• Anathema - Long ago, this metropolis was known as Erenira, the first and greatest of the drow cities in the Underdark. However, some slight against the Crawling King prompted the god to personally appear and wreak havoc in the city, driving the drow out from their ruined home. In their place came yuan-ti followers of the god known as the Midnight Serpent. Though the yuan-ti worship their own god, they also operate multiple torture dens dedicated to the Crawling King to ensure that they don't eventually suffer the same fate as the drow. Thirteen yuan-ti anathema dwell throughout the city, though only one reigns supreme.
• Glimmer - Located in the depths of the Underdark of the Shadowfell, this is the hidden home of a race of Vecna worshipers known as the incunabula. Each incunabulum is supernaturally bonded from birth with a piece of the swaddling clothes of a stillborn child of Nerull, giving them powers related to necromancy and extracting secrets from their targets' minds and souls. No piece of knowledge is too mundane or trivial, and all the lore collected by the incunabula is stored and catalogued by the Lady of Secrets within a grand library of scrolls called the Hollowing. It is believed that by hoarding and analyzing such a vast amount of seemingly unrelated information that a grand, cosmic plan will reveal itself.
• Inbharann - Located in the Underdark of the Feywild, Inbharann is the wealthiest of the fomorian kingdoms thanks to its river of cool, liquid gold. The ruler of this kingdom has been prophesied to die by fire within the next 18 months. The children of the king have begun a war against one another to gain status and allies, as it is the tradition of the kingdom for the greatest of the ruler's children to become the successor (complicating matters is that accomplished fomorian heroes and leaders are sometimes adopted into the royal family, creating more contenders for the throne). Deceased rulers of Inbharann watch over the kingdom, in a manner of speaking, as upon death a ruler's evil eye is plucked and supernaturally enlarged to be inset into the face of a watch towers. These towers are dotted throughout the kingdom, the gazing evil eyes searching for intruders to inflict their curse upon.
• The King's Highway - An interplanar tunnel that connects the Underdark of the Material Plane, Feywild, and Shadowfell. It was created long ago during a prolonged fit of madness in the god known as the Crawling King, who futilely attempted to escape imprisonment in the Underdark by breaking through the walls of the planes. Unlike most of the Underdark, where living rock can rapidly reshape the environment, the King's Highway is stable and unchanging, with any attempt to create barriers within it cursed to fail. Though this makes it ideal for travel, it also makes it a place where opposing creatures often encounter each other and engage in battle.
• Ladoga - A small, isolated dwarven mining community. Despite amassing a large amount of gold from the mines the Ladogans are mistrustful of outsiders, preventing the gold from being used in trade. In truth, the gold of Ladoga is cursed and comes from the Nine Hells, the product of an Infernal pact made by the prospector who founded Ladoga and a devil. The advisor to the current chief of Ladoga is a devil in disguise who plans to trick adventurers into carrying the cursed, greed-inspiring gold to the surface world.
• Maelbrathyr - An ancient tiefling city that was pulled underground long ago by the Crawling King. An adventuring party made-up of nobles known as the Pride of Maelbrathyr attempted to steal one of the god's slaves, the Ruby Wizard, away from one of his underground torture dens. In retaliation, Crawling King interrupted the celebration held in honor of the return of the Pride of Maelbrathyr and the Ruby WIzard by dragging the entire city down into the Underdark. Though most of the population died in the calamity, the Ruby Wizard himself was captured and taken back into captivity while the heroes of the Pride of Maelbrathyr were cursed with ageless, mutated bodies wracked with constant pain. The Pride of Maelbrathyr are now enemies who each control a section of the ruined city while trying to make certain that they are not assassinated, as the Crawling King promised that death would only bring greater torments within his Soul Abbatoir in the Underdark of the Shadowfell. Despite this grim environment, Maelbrathyr plays host to an event called the Bleak Carnival that draws visitors from throughout the surrounding caverns. The city even has its own unique thieves guild.
• The Spire Sea - An underground sea where stalactites and stalagmites penetrate the water's surface. One such spire hosts the stronghold of Gar Morra, where dwarves and duergar who practice a heretical version of Moradin's faith have lived for generations following a war against the aboleths. At the center of Gar Morra is the prison of a powerful devil, reverence for whom the accursed residents have incorporated into their heresy. The dwarves and duergar live in the higher reaches of Gar Morra, having long ceded the levels closer to the water to kuo-toa and other remaining servants of the aboleths. The Spire Sea is also the waters that the ghost ship fleet of the Clan Lost sails, having long ago perished in the war against the aboleths but unable to pass on. They rise from the waters to attack non-dwarves, such as the rakshasa-led gang of drow, grimlock, ogre, and oni pirates known as the Spire Spiders.
• Xarcorr - A bizarre vault where rock behaves like water, even generating a kind of stone fog at times. Locales include the tumultuous sea of Rock's Roil and its Stone Gyre, the mutant-infested Dripping Jungle, the Toothy Plains of colossal, moving crystals, the levitating latticework of slime called the Warp Web, where aboleths draw upon the Far Realm's essence to perform experiments on natural life forms. The supposed capital city of the aboleths, Zahulaxon, can also be visited, but is in truth an illusion created to hide the true nature of the aboleths' civilization from their enemies.

EDIT: I nearly failed to mention that a later 4E Dragon Magazine article introduced the concept of an intelligent fungal entity called the Carrion King (that may or may not be related to Psilofyr) that permeates the Underdark of the Feywild. This entity can create multiple myconid-like aspects of itself, but in doing so these aspects are almost-entirely separated from their source and can become very unique, in some cases warring against one another. It is primarily concerned with the wellbeing of the myconid race as a whole (meaning that it does not value individual myconid lives, but the perpetuation and growth of the species in aggregate). The Carrion King can also attempt to create an impermanent body to talk to creatures whenever or wherever it wants in the Underdark of the Feywild, but as its thoughts and memories are dispersed throughout the plane's entire Underdark it can be difficult to understand the entity's mouthpiece.