How gonzo and weird do you like your fantasy settings to be?

I like weirdness as long as it makes sense internally. Give me guns, give me benevolent feathered snake-gods, give me magic-powered dune buggies and legendary heroes who have sex with the moon and beget lunar bastards.

Exactly this

One of my favourite resources is Goblin Punch on blogspot.

The one that stuck with me was the False Hydra, a monster that you can't notice while it's singing. It's basically an immobile blob with a prehensile neck. The point is to have the players fight a monster their characters can't interact with, and coming up with schemes to detect the hydra by 'accident' or through a couple degrees of separation. The setting and the resources are very OSR designed and pretty rules light.

That said, I enjoy reading Lamentations of the Flame Princess modules so y'all will probably just discount my opinion.

All the weird.
ALL OF IT.
It's fantasy, homie.

Bonuspoints if I can get some weird-and-goofy-as-balls elements that seem totally realistic and believable in the setting. Terry Pratchet-style.

Yeah, that's less gonzo and more just silly.

How is "gonzo" defined in this context?

That being said, I consider the trick to making weird shit believable in your setting, is by laying out a baseline of what is 'accepted and normal' in the setting.
For example: it's a general rule that all barbarians walk around in total cheesecake gear, with leather and chains, and go around invading temples, looting shit and saving girls. That's just how it is. It's dumb, but if your entire setting obeys by these rules, then it's not weird at all. If a PC starts mentioning historical correct barbarians, all NPC's will look at them weirdly.
And after laying out this baseline, introducing a wannabe barbarian with an extra bit of weird, like him being really scrawny, or actually being gay, is easier to believe and actually interesting.

If your historical barbarians are significantly different from shirtless fantasy barbarians then you are referencing the wrong parts of history

Am I? Didn't the word 'barbarian' mean all non-Greek societies? What kind of barbarians should I be referencing?
Because I thought pic related was pretty historically inaccurate, but I'm no history mayor.

The only inaccurate part is he should be wearing more color, bronze age was wild in every aspect

A nice sweet spot between mild and spicy.

Weirdness of content and aesthetic isn't enough, if you REALLY want it to feel weird you need to tamper with other things. The character formula, plot elements, the chronology, the vocabulary, the plot complexity, the pacing, and so on. Wacky magic stuff won't make a setting feel as weird as fucking with the narrative itself and making something that doesn't abide by the formulae we are used to.

If you still follow tropes and whatnot, it won't truly feel weird even if the surface and aesthetic are weird.

Each region should have something familiar and something strange. The planes are home to NOTmongols and tribes of giants. The mountains have back woods tribesman and hawkmen who shepherd crows and cowbirds for food. Etc.

Theater of the mind relies on common ground, so making things too strange means that no two players will have identical impressions of any given situation.

Ah, good to know.
The difference I was trying to make, is that historic barbarians were obviously still realistic humans. While Pratchet's barbarians who "kill the priest, loot the treasure, get the girl" are caricatures. Caricatures that actually are a part of the setting, and presented as believable.

>no spears
INTO THE TRASH IT GOES!

I was wondering how to add fully functional guns into a fantasy setting without resorting to steampunk or ruining the asthetic beyond the minimum.

I mean full blown miniguns and shotguns and stuff in fantasy world. Cool furnace guns with chimneys as well as magitech guns could just be the tip of the iceburg. Bullets made into little wooden painted elf cases? How should this work exactly?

First Id have to ask "why". What does having all those things achieve, and who would bother going to war in any mundane way with fucking miniguns around?

>barbarians who "kill the priest, loot the treasure, get the girl" are caricatures.
That's literally what the Invasion of the Sea Peoples was. They ended seven empires over fifty years.
Granted there's some nuance in that they may or may not have been an oppressed underclass that rose up against their chariot riding overlords, but no one knows for sure.

For you.

I like to keep things grounded so the fantastical elements stay special

If your general tech level wouldn't allow for such guns, you have to resort to some form of creative bullshittery. Perhaps they're relics from a lost forerunner civilization, or gifts from a god who used to rule a much more technically advanced world?

What this guy said. The more miniguns, assault rifles and frag grenades you have, the fewer people are going to go into battle with swords and bows. At some point, playing a swordfighter dude is going to become completely invalidated, and then you might as well set your game in modern times.

Alright you knowledgeable scholar, barbarians are a bad example then.

Weird yes, gonzo no.

How gonzo is "Medieval kamen riders fighting giant fantasy monsters in order to pull floating islands in space together, assembling a patchwork planet"?

I like my settings gonzo enough that things like this aren't out of place, and I can apply meme-based creatures with relative impunity. Yes, I know it's cringe, and yes, I don't care.

You can't. The aesthetic is rooted in practicality which would fade away if you introduced elements that invalidate the practicality. On the bright side, you're far from alone in this. In fact, it would be more realistic to have a medieval aesthetic with modern firearms than it would be to have a medieval aesthetic in most medieval fantasies. The average magic system is far more potent than modern weaponry and would have prevented the development of things like castles and plate armor which are useless against it. It would be more believable for knights to have AR-15s than have wizards fighting them.

This but without the guns.

Goblin Punch is amazing. That and False Machine are my fave D&D blogs.

I don't mind gonzo settings at all. I wouldn't mind being a cowboy monster hunter wielding a giant chainsword hunting dragons across a tropical island chain.

>magitech
I hate this so bad. It's either guns with glowy parts or magic with gun parts. There's literally no good magitech unless you're in it for the aesthetic - which I hate.

I find that magitech is best when it's centered around the idea of powering things. Like, you could have motorized vehicles because engi-wizards would pour magical energy into some form of batteries to make them go vroom, but guns might still be based on mundane tech because the magic fuel energy doesn't explode in the way gunpowder does.

or just go full FF6 and fire magic lasers out of magic powered mechs

Naw, man, magitech does more than guns, ya just gotta be creative with the concept, and work with the rules of how magic functions within your setting. If magic is real within a setting, then sciences can be formed around it, and technologies based on those sciences can be engineered. Magitech is only bad if used as an excuse for something, like guns in wizard fights as you suggest. If it's been developed with the setting in mind, it'll work.
Spelljammer and Eberron are examples of this in DnD, for starters.

I'm a bit picky. I believe there's a place for gonzo and wacky and a different place for "realism" (with different places for shades of gray inbetween), just not in the same place. I really don't like kitchen sink settings, which is why I like how Dungeons and Dragons uses separate settings (Greyhawk, Planescape, Spelljammer, Dark Sun, etc.) with varying degrees of fantasy and themes. Kitchen sink settings like Golarion stretch my suspension of disbelief too much.

Who get's to decide what is weird? Personally I think walking around indoors in your home with shoes on is weird, but I know some americans who insist that its normal...

The more bizarre the better.

If you've got gun-slinging knights, you might as well go all out and have motorcycle knights.

Don't use gunpowder. Guns fire spells instead of bullets.

Or, do what I do, duns don't use gunpowder, they're more like ray weapons. They require a refined crystalline battery to function, one that recharges by pulling power from the aether.

But, more powerful shards are incredibly hard to create, so most of these weapons aren't lethal.

Most of the weapons take two or three hits to stun and can't really do more than that.

It brings balance to firearms, still allows them to be lethal if you've got the coin to afford it but still makes them somewhat dangerous to go up against.

This is my jam.

I'll add ridiculously extravagant clothes, clockpunk and social upheaval.

Very gonzo, but focused by certain themes and concepts, otherwise you get a bland kitchen sink sort of setting.

This but in fantasy space.

Malifaux.
I fucking love the Old West kind of vibe it has.

That's pretty fucking gonzo but holy shit that sounds rad.

Honestly, I've been dialing back my tastes lately. I figure when it comes to fantasy, less is more.

Same happened to me a few years ago. Liked my high fantasy full of magitech and loads of races and all sorts of dumb bullshit but then I found that I way prefered more grounded stuff.

Occasionally I get the urge for some high fantasy though, so there's one setting I work on from time to time which is a kind of outlet for more standard fantasy ideas - multiple races, active gods, etc.

Why does he have all those bolts and no crossbow...

He puts the ends in his mouth then spits them at people really really hard.

I think it would be an interesting addition, and make combat more interesting then 'hit guy with sword'. Fighters would be the best with guns and could probably pair them with melee weapons, rogues could mix high flying mobility options and gunplay, and wizards could naturally mix spells and guns together. It could be like System Shock or Bioshock in a way, combining spells with weapons.

The weapons don't necessarily have to be overpowered nor do they have to necessarily be any kind of technology issue either. There's no reason you can't have a medieval fantasy setting with really advanced guns, but the guns don't have to necessarily be really steampunky or magical to work either.

Have the guns be painted a bit, maybe use weird looking cartridges and painted wood for their parts, but function the same. The bullets that are fired out ping like fireworks, scattering off an Orc's shield.

The issue isn't with cosmetics, it's capability, right?

Guns in a fantasy setting kind of mess with the sword & sorcery dynamic. Why fight with a sword when you can shoot? Why cast a fireball if you can just shoot?

The guns need to have limitations that don't ruin a melee fighters usefulness.

Weird, but not gonzo. You got to have internal consistency.

Man, the Sea Peoples were awesome.

>Guns take forever to reload, making them essentially encounter powers for fighters. They are also rather inaccurate compared to bows or swords, so it's likely that you will end up wasting that one shot.
>That said, they are cheap-ish and there is no reason not to tuck a pair into your belt while swashing buckles.

You could always just not have that problem? Edgar Rice Burroughs didn't have that problem in the Barsoom series. They had rifles with radium shot, but melee combat was still favoured.

Age of Sail and Swashbuckling stories had firearms but are more well known for sword fights. Hell, The Three Musketeers are better known for their swords than their muskets. despite the name.

You are a beautiful man user

Also, fantasy people survive ridiculous amount of shit already, so why not bullets?
If sword and shield soldiers can survive in a world with all kind or mages, arcane archers, monstrous creatures, constructs and whatever, why would guns be the dealbreaker?

If I had my way gonzo as fuck
My own fantasy setting would basically be Wierdworld, Gemworld, Skartaris, and The Savage Lands shoved in a blender with a little bit of Eternia and D&D thrown in for good measure

Those are arrows. He is wearing a bow on his back, string removed and wrapped in cloth to keep it springy and dry.

I'd kill that so hard it'll have to stop existing in five realities at once.

Man, thats got to be a chill way to travel, but that front footman really needs a shield. No reason for him not to have one.

Thanks! It has indeed been gonzo, but fun. Party is all gestalted with the Henshin Hero from, what else, Gonzo 2. Attributes adapted for the Rider side to work on the same stats as their other class. For that other side of each we've got a Dynamancer, Vigilante, Paladin, Thread Maiden and Unchained Monk.

Holy shit user.
Once it reaches the conclusion I'd like a story time.

>Gonzo 2
Please tell me you have a DL link to this

Will try to remember

/pfg/ has it in the Trove, link in the OP. Little Red Goblin Games, grab the first Gonzo too while you're in there.

>How gonzo and weird do you like your fantasy settings to be?
Pic related is the theme of the current setting.
Apocalyptic threats, mystical creatures and all kinds of other shit that just jumps right out of the window because why the fuck not.
As long as it's consistent with the rules established previously I say go for it.

Although I do tend to allow Eldritch things to break the rules of the game because it's the very nature of Eldritch thing to do so.

Depends, although I generally don't go too overboard. I suppose I would describe my two styles as
A. Fantasy races are fairly common and tend to have their own kingdoms and intermix to some extent. Pretty generic really except I tend to make most races competent and powerful instead of living in mountains and trees. Elves have magnificent cities filled with libraries and colleges, dwarves live in heavily fortified cities and castles and tend to be trade oriented, etc.

B. Low fantasy elves and stuff exist but they are extremely mysterious and more along the lines of the elves of traditional folklore. I forbid most non-human races although I tend to allow Half humans (treat it as distant ancestry so a half elf might have had an elf great great great grandmother), humans (duh), and tieflings. I styled it quite a bit off of the Golden Age of Berserk in that it is grim, there is a lot of warfare, and there are tons of giant guys in giant armour carrying giant weapons with fancy nicknames and titles. Players remain low level and magic is extremely rare with only a couple encountered NPCs using magic all of whom were extremely high level and outcasts.

So, Exalted.

I would love Exalted if it wasn't for the system

Underrated.

Most I can tolorwte is early fire arms, or wow, WoW is the highest fantasy I can go, any more then that Ugh can't stand it.

very conventional

pleb

I like high tech and mysticism all rolled into a nice big ball. I want swords and machine guns carried on the same person and they go to fight monsters.

I want cities to range from ultra modern glass cities to rustic villages with the few flashes of modern tech clashing with simple wooden houses.

I want knightly orders and tacticool operator mercenaries competing for contracts and fighting each other. I want Emperors and presidents and holy figures as leaders.

I want strange supernatural creatures that act as you would expect as well as interacting with technology. I want the ghost from the Ring to be something people have to be careful of. Demons who email you to try and get you to sell your soul and people falling over noses and eyes bleeding after seeing a holy spirit appear on their device.

I want mages who have implants that make their magic better. I want fighters who run the gambit from barely human tanks to grizzaled veterans.

Gentlemen, I love sci-fantasy settings.

This is all great shit
Except the pic
Destiny was terrible

The medium matters not. What unites the likes of yourself and I is the same appreciation for the sci-fantasy concepts where dragons and computers can exist in the same setting.

only a little
just a smidge

really I'm quite conservative when it comes to things

I really wanna run an Asura's Wrath inspired game now.

What about a different kind of magictech, of using magic bullets, but no glowing bits. Basically symbol magic, to put on the back of a bullet casing. Hammer hits the symbol, magic collides, boom, bullet flies. Magitech by way of physics, rather than handwavy bs. Then just scale it up, so that you can have a blunderbuss. But I wouldn't go further, to keep the aesthetic alive. Miniguns require too much ancillary stuff, if you can build a minigun with magic physics gunpowder, you can build it with actual gunpowder

> The end of the last campaign consisted of a crewed golem punching a dracolich to death.
> There are guns, and they have cartridges for ammunition, but because most monsters and armies have resistance to fear, firearms developed very differently.
> Technology is kept tightly controlled, since the last time it got out of hand a bunch of Egyptian dwarves drilled a hole into the Abyss
> In fact, most dwarven problems are caused by and solved by giant drills and alcohol.
> The Templars throw grenades filled with Greek fire at their enemies. If they really don't like you, they throw vials of their Prophet's lymph fluid at you. Don't let the Prophet's lymph fluid touch you.
> The most egalitarian faction is the Arisen, who are undead that look like if HR Giger worked in costume design at the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. The Arisen promise that they don't care what god you worship or what color your skin is, so long as they get your skeleton when you die. They also might knit your flesh into a giant corpse dog, but is that so large a price to pay to live tax-free?
> The catfolk were given a frozen island the size of Greenland to practice pyrotechnics away from everyone else. The frozen island is now airborne and floating over the Western realms, sending off blazes of fireworks whenever they perfect a new artillery design.
> Orcs and goblinoids are the most feared soldiers in the world, because they can digest cellulose.
> The Hordes of Chaos are less like an army of darkness and more like the world's biggest rolling party.

Really, the only thing I draw a line at is centaurs and centaur-like creatures.

True
I grew up on stuff like He-man and Thundarr and a bunch of Thor and New Gods comics so I like to include a lot of that sort of flavor in my games whenever I can. Science and Sorcery and Superpowers all existing side by side within the Heroic population.

Hail brother. It is all shades of the same awesome and what would the awesome be without the wide range of aesthetics to go with it?

My centaurs are goat-dwarf Bedouins that live in the hills that come down to the cities to trade/ rape and pillage.
>inb4 goat fucker arabic jokes
That's the joke/ I think it is actually kinda neat

Also I fucking love everything about all of what you posted. I would honestly take your campaign notes, and likely steal them mostly wholesale right now.

To the max.

All races live in general harmony and trade between all cities is generally keeping the world from stabbing each other.

That and also there's a gigantic demon portal where a military group has to prevent from destroying the rest of the world.

In other words, all my players hated it, because the orc butcher couldn't be smite evil'd.

I like a wide variety of settings, some grounded, some weird. My tastes aren't binary.

Anyone here remember gigerverse?

yep
neat idea, but the setting really didn't seem like something I'd enjoy playing I must admit

RIFTS with all the sourcebooks and maybe even some of the other settings tagged on.

>> The catfolk were given a frozen island the size of Greenland to practice pyrotechnics away from everyone else. The frozen island is now airborne and floating over the Western realms, sending off blazes of fireworks whenever they perfect a new artillery design.

Huh, that's... really close to how catfolk developed in my setting.

Are you my doppelganger, user?

So murderhobos in a comfy setting and not bothering to go to the one mutderhobo location.

So many people have it right. So many others trying to kill the fantastic in fantasy...

B-b-but muh realism.

How do I determine its level?