Quote from: Géza Echs;637161Hmm. Dreampark, maybe? Or... Crap. What's the name of that older game set in a Callahan's-style outer space bar?

Tales From the Floating Vagabond

Quote from: CRKrueger;637185Tales From the Floating Vagabond

Thank you. I left those books up north when I moved, and it was driving me crazy which one I was thinking of.

Quote from: Géza Echs;637114Precisely, yes.

Rock and roll.

Quote from: jibbajibba on March 03, 2013, 05:46:00 AM
depends on context. 

One of my problems with old TSR modules was that there was no internal consistency, if each giant can eat a cow a day and there are 200 giants where are all the cows. Why is there a magic statue that answers riddles ?
So if I wanted something so disconnected I just used the random dungeon generator in the DMG.

If you present yourself as a logical world then I need internal consistency. If you present yourself as a post apocalyptic fantasy world where the Old Ones have triggered the apocalypse to reclaim earth then gnomes on Kangaroos chucking grenades at shoggoths is practically a trope.

Switch Earth with some alien planet similar to Tatooine meets Dune, and you'll get Cha'alt!

Quote from: jeff37923 on March 13, 2013, 11:25:22 AM
I've got all four seasons of Samurai Jack on DVD ...

Don't miss Season 5! It's different, but at least as awesome.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan on March 03, 2013, 07:19:15 AM

Quote from: CRKrueger;633548For example, Heavy Metal as a D&D adventure would be pretty gonzo, but at the same time, it's not slapstick gonzo.

Funny you mention that, because I've found simply adding more METAL will counter the silly in Gonzo.

Quote from: Silverlion;633602Gonzo for me is good.
Silly for me is bad.

This. And it largely depends on how well you can maintain mood and tone.

Like a hand in glove... my monthly YouTube show with Aaron the Pedantic, Gonzo Up Your Ass!  Gonzo and metal tastes the best, diluting the worst out of both.

I love gonzo but am bad at it.

A long time ago in 3rd edition I had some PCs discover, in the back of a wizard's abandoned lab, three huge dust and cobweb covered taxidermies of monstrous three eyed tentacled amphibian like creatures standing upright in an unnatural pose with huge musical instruments and strange very ornamented wide brimmed hats. They had to look these things over in torchlight and found out that the musical instruments were non functional replicas resembling some sort of short bass horn with valves and switched built into it, a large unusually configured two hand string instrument related to a lute, and some kind of device with two boxes which were held in each tentacle and linked by something like a collapsible air bellows apparatus which perhaps were squeezed to make a sound as the air was pushed over reeds...

They asked some questions, determined that nothing was valuable or about to explode or spring into unlife and nothing was hiding in the taxidermy so they cast a couple of detect spells on it, got nothing, and just moved on. They kind of took it in stride as a weird thing but didn't see anything to recognize or comment on. Just "he collected some creatures and dressed them up a little? Could be some kind of religious thing?"

After the session one guy comes back to me and says "was that a Tijuana Froghemoth Band?" and I said " YES! Nobody seemed to get it. I'm not sure if they've never seen a Tijuana frog band at a souvenir shop on a road trip or if I didn't describe the froghemoth right or the instruments? Maybe they don't know a brass and string an accordion conjunto type setup? I thought it would get a big laugh or at least some smirks at realizing it's a D&D version of a tacky tchotchke and maybe some groans or head shaking but...nothing. It might as well have been a tapestry with something odd but nonmemorable on it for all the impact it had." 

He said "well when it popped into my head what it probably was I thought I had better come and ask you because when we moved on without saying anything you looked so sad."

Quote from: PatW on March 14, 2013, 11:32:30 AM
Remember, D&D is incredibly gonzo right out of the box - we're all just used to it.  You've got pun monsters like sea lions, you've got man-eating furniture, you've got half-owl half-bears, you've got giant flying eyeballs with smaller eyeballs that shoot deathrays, you've got robot lobsters that you can drive around.  This is the default D&D universe.  It's completely ridiculous.

So much this.

"D&D fantasy" is inherently Gonzo.

Yet I always get a lot of pushback when I point this out to people on other forums.

And one of the first things they cite in D&D's defense usually is:

Quote from: Daddy Warpig on March 14, 2013, 11:32:30 AM
...
We're on the same page here, as well. "Gonzo" worldbuilding relies heavily on the Rule of Cool: if it's awesome, it's in. (See China Miéville's Perdido Street Station universe.)
...

Daddy Warpig got it in one... "The Rule of Cool".

And also: "Why would anyone expect verisimilitude in a fantasy setting?"

Yet somehow D&D is not gonzo...

IMHO - Probably because I'm largely interacting with people to whom J.K. Rowling is their Tolkien, and they think Computer rpg games are great examples of 'storytelling'.

Just look at this snippet of a review of the 5e setting book: Mythic Odysseys of Theros

https://www.dicebreaker.com/games/mythic-odysseys-of-theros/feature/dnd-mythic-odysseys-of-theros-preview
"Despite how inescapable the pantheon may seem in Theros, it is easily one of the most complex and entertaining sets of deities that Dungeons & Dragons has ever seen. This is part due to the influences that Wyatt, Schneider and the rest of the Mythic Odysseys team drew upon. Rather than using the traditional Western European-style religions as a basis for inspiration, Mythic Odysseys' pantheon was concocted using the gods of Greek myth. "

I find this to be a typical example of what we are dealing with...

More often than not when I point out how baseline D&D is inherently Gonzo, I soon find out they have no idea what I am even talking about because to them: "D&D Fantasy" = "Vanilla" Fantasy.

I'd think running ASE with Gamma World or Mutant Future would be a lot less jarring than AD&D 2e.