There is a substantial hurdle to pass when it comes to taking your normal fantasy adventure and doing something with it that will leave the players completely out of their element.  Today’s post is about the process of creating weirdness to be remembered.

The high-level idea is to take an ordinary story element and then just change everything that you would normally expect of it.  That element becomes a seed that grows into a full-scale anomaly, used to complement an appropriate atmosphere and tone.  Some of the inspiration for this process can be had from classic science fiction and fantasy productions like The Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Amazing Stories, Weird Tales, etc.  All of these shows had a similar formula where in each episode there was a science-fiction/fantasy theme, omniscient narration, and various twists where introduced along the way.  And they all frequently played around with interesting and uncommon perspectives on subjects like time travel, mass hysteria, social commentary, nuclear disaster, and conspiracy theories.  These are all things that can be done with a D&D campaign, and in my opinion, aren’t being done enough today.  One just needs to choose an approach and paint a compelling vision.

Each of these various productions had their own way of presenting their stories in an entertaining and engaging manner.  The Twilight Zone premise revolved around a main allegory or fairy tale that reflected the moral or philosophical dilemmas that the characters’ faced.  The Outer Limits was more focused on action and suspense based on the conflict between the human spirit and grim forces which could be either internal or external.  Both approaches are very effective, but you definitely need to focus on a single approach in order to get a consistent vibe.

In a D&D adventure that focuses on “weird fantasy”, it is sometimes useful to create a MacGuffin or Big Dumb Object for the players to focus on while everything comes unraveled around them.  It keeps them on their toes, because they’re not really sure how to even get back to solid footing.  In the television and film industry, a MacGuffin is a supposedly important item that actually has very little significance to the fundamental plot which makes a great distraction but still drives the story along.  Similarly, a “Big Dumb Object” (BDO) is any unexplainable object, of unknown origin and immense power, in an adventure which creates a disturbing sense of wonder by its very existence.  It should have properties that are wholly unexplainable and undeniable, leaving the characters very uncertain of how to deal with it.  The players are now out of their element, because their normally understood game world has this X factor which is somehow affecting the plot but just knowing about the X factor doesn’t necessarily mean they understand it.

Another inspiration for the process is the whole industry of weird fiction.  There is a growing genre in fiction referred to as the bizarro world.  While the style that bizarro represents isn’t anything new, it is becoming more common to today’s popular television and movies.  So why not bring it into your favorite mainstream hobby game?  Certainly you don’t have to turn every other D&D adventure into a gruesome horror story, far from it.  Bizarro fiction is more about exploring weirdness as an artform, which leads to very surprising places.  Which is one of our objectives.  And this brings us back to crafting the playable anomaly where the bizarro element permits adventure where anything goes and nothing is predictable.  Beautiful!

The end result can bring new joy to groups that want to experience something that is considered truly fantastic even in a world where fantastic is the norm.  It just has to be odd enough to really become memorable.  For example, suppose  the characters are traveling to a neighboring region on a diplomatic mission.  Two days into the trip, they stop in a town for rest and supplies.  The town seems normal enough, but that changes as soon as the characters encounter locals gathering at an auction where the hot items are actually loved ones who happen to be mindless flesh-eating undead.  Yikes.  After several questions are asked, it is apparent that there are several large families here that are doing this and sometimes even trading amongst themselves.  What are the players supposed to make of this?  No one else in town seems to think it’s a problem and they will violently defend their way of life against any outsiders trying to interfere.  This is just the kind of scenario that the characters could remember for some time.  ”Remember that nutty town with that traded zombies like beaver pelts? Just weird!”

So, go forth and mess with their heads.  Come back frequently and we’ll keep feeding you the bits to make it happen!

For the DM

So your group has an established campaign setting and you want to introduce some new protowarped elements from Murkengard.  Well, first you must set the stage.  As a GM, you have a lot of control over the flow of events and information within your game world.  You should take advantage of this in every possible way.  If you intend to throw a serious twist into an ongoing campaign, you should leak a few hints and provide some foreshadowing to set the mood.  This way, when things get really weird, the players will not be completely lost and confused as to why it’s all happening, they can tie it back to something else which happened previously.

Having a weird, but seemingly innocuous, event in the background will leave the players with questions later, but will provide an immediate answer or clue to the origin of the current situation and let them focus on dealing with the situation instead of just scratching their heads.  Often, movies or television shows which intend to go into a “unbelievable” realm, will first present something else that is somewhat odd but easily dismissed.  In a sci-fi movie, if the writers are going to have undead come back to life and attack the townspeople,  they first establish that a satellite with previously unseen forms of radiation has crashed into Earth after visiting Venus.  That’s odd, but could be forgotten by the majority of everyone within a few days if nothing comes of it, as everyday life always competes for their attention.

Here are some ideas for setting the stage, though these only scratch the surface.

1. Strange weather.  Purple lightning anyone?
2. Astronomical oddity.  The clouds went behind the moon?
3. Earthquake.  Nine tremors exactly nine minutes apart?
4. Missing inventor/alchemist.  She was working on lava hat?
5. Stolen artifact.  It was supposed to keep time stable?
6. Mass suicide.  They killed themselves by eating cotton?
7. Local water or food.  The water briefly tasted like pine sap?
8. Lights circling the city at night.  A pattern?  What do you mean?
9. Unexplained abductions.  What kind of experiments?
10. Malfunctioning elements.  For a day, nothing would burn?

This can all be a lot of fun for the DM by taking the gloves off and granting more creative freedom, but the players may be wary of getting involved in such unnatural endeavors, instead opting to chase down gnolls or dragons.

For the players

One way to get players excited about a playable anomaly is to give their characters something cool that’s related.  Let’s say you are going to run an adventure that features zombies with super speed.  And the zombies are making a real nuisance out of how quickly they zip around the battlefield, tearing chunks out of the heroes.  They aren’t just charging in and chomping away, they are making flyby attacks with their claws and teeth.  Your average party may or may not have the necessary tools to handle these guys effectively, but what if the fighter had telekinesis?  He could mentally grab a zombie and hoist him in the air.  If the zombie can’t touch the ground, it can’t go anywhere.  Or maybe he waits until a zombie darts after a friend and erects a telekinetic forcefield directly in the zombie’s path, causing the zombie to run into a solid wall at full speed.  Ouch.

Sound like fun?  Sure!  But something to consider before granting the players these abilities is that you may not want to deal with how these new abilities could unbalance the game long-term.  We propose that these protowarped abilities only be made available until the conclusion of the adventure, and the players should be encouraged to enjoy and abuse them while they last.  There are plenty of ways to explain how the characters gain and lose such abilities, or you may not want to explain anything.  Sometimes the unexplained is part of the fun.

Here’s an example of a protowarped ability for player characters.  Enjoy!

Last week we talked about how a well-established campaign world can be spiced up with weird events, creatures, and powers – all under the umbrella of the “playable anomaly”.

The foundation for our playable anomalies will be another world, we’ll call it Murkengard, that is absolutely overflowing with dark oddities.  In the distant past, this otherwise normal fantasy world was viciously struck by a celestial object which changed it all.  Such a devastating event really should have obliterated all forms of life, but for Murkengard it only served to warp everything, not destroy it.  The reality in which this world exists has become unstable and it finds itself spilling over into other realities, other game worlds, such as the one you may already be enjoying.  This premise gives us a palette from which we can paint the adventuring canvas with the most bizarre and unpredictable vistas that our imagination will allow, and all without leaving the comfort of your favorite campaign setting.

On Murkengard, humans are not the most common or dominant species.  In fact, it would be hard to identify any one creature as having that distinction. Oh, there may be a period occasionally when one species becomes more powerful than others, but that rarely lasts long because things change too frequently.  Wars happen, allegiances change, things develop new abilities or the environment rewrites the rules for everyone.  Many of the changes felt by the denizens are largely in response to the environment.  Long ago, when Aod’s Eye descended and smote the world, so much debris was flung into the sky that it has blotted out the sun and stars ever since, irradiating everything.  Significant portions of animal and plant life died, but the rest adapted.  No one really knows for sure if any of it is true because there is no proof of the supposed sun or stars.  There is only perpetual darkness and affliction.

We’ll be revealing more and more of this setting through playable anomalies (adventures) that range in size from single encounters to full story-rich escapades that can span a character level.  In the near future, we will release our first full adventure and meanwhile preview it’s content here on the blog and in the newsletter.  If you have any feedback as we go along, please feel free to speak up as it can only serve to improve the final product.

The next blog will propose how to set the stage in your game, introducing these new warped elements.  We’ll also consider how players can prepare and what they can expect.  If you’re a player, you’ll be interested to know that your character may get just as warped as the rest of the story.  Imagine a fighter that suddenly has the ability to use telekinesis or pyrokinesis, without using feat slots, without multiclassing, without sacrificing existing powers.  Or imagine a wizard that just gained the ability to increase his density whenever he likes, wading into a host of monsters and taking almost no damage and becomes a terrifying immovable, indestructible turret of arcane death.  It would certainly be anomalous, which is why it’s fun.

In regards to fantasy roleplay games, there are a wide variety of settings out there for players and DMs to use for their adventures and campaigns. Usually, a group of players will choose one particular setting that they enjoy and stick with it. This works well because, over time, the players become familiar with the geography, the bestiary, the economies, and power centers. This allows for a very immersive experience as everyone has the same detailed world to roleplay within and are able to make setting-specific references that other characters can build upon. This benefit can also be a drawback, in that the players become very reliant on their preconceived understandings of the world and how it works in order to make decisions or judge a situation.

What better fun is there, than to turn everything upside down occasionally? What if there was a setting where even the natives didn’t know what to expect from day to day? This is the kind of setting that I want to make available to all roleplayers out there. But I don’t want to ask anyone to abandon their established campaign worlds. Many DMs run campaigns in homebrew worlds that they are attached to and they aren’t inclined to just blindly transition to something completely different. That’s all fine, because I want to publish a new setting in a unique way that allows gamers to adopt unpredictable oddities and yet keep playing in the same game world they’re used to.

This brings me to the concept of playable anomalies. In our world, we have many mysterious places and occurrences that can inspire us. Sometimes it’s a Twilight Zone or Outer Limits scenario, or sometimes the Bermuda Triangle phenomenon, or even Area 51. These anomalies are just peculiar turns of events that no one can completely explain or comprehend, but they are fun to hear about or experience. Through this blog, our newsletter and forthcoming adventures, we will be delivering these anomalies for inclusion in your favorite gaming world.

Playable anomalies happen, so have fun with them.

A Taste

There is a strange world that exists in a remote place, between the planes. Long ago, it may have been much like any other world. But something horrible happened that changed everything, twisting life, death, and reality alike. Any now, in many other worlds, odd things are also happening. Unexplained phenomena are occurring, previously unseen creatures are materializing and very occasionally an otherworldly super being makes itself known.

In your town, where things have been going along as usual, you have now overheard two conversations of how a baker’s dog had to be killed because it began to electrocute things uncontrollably. Small bolts of lightning were said to leap from the dog and strike nearby objects and people. The baker is almost unrecognizable, as most of his body is covered with blackened burns and he drifts in and out of consciousness, babbling about leeches. He keeps saying that his dog didn’t get away and sometimes he starts flailing wildly like something is flying about his head. What’s going on? Did this dog really almost kill his owner with lightning? What do leeches have to do with anything? Does this have anything to do with the electrical storm a few nights ago? Something doesn’t seem right here…