There is a school of thought that “vanilla” old school monsters, villains, pseudo-European medieval settings, are not interesting and should be set aside for something more creative. What is meant by “creative” is often an aesthetic that is absurd, unusual, and experimental.

Uniqueness of this sort can be engaging but often disorienting. As a player, I find it difficult to make choices when everything is strange. I feel confused and uncertain. When the whole scenario is weird, strange, or avant garde, the feeling of cause and effect breaks down. One choice is as good as another.

That may be what the designer or game master is going for. That’s fine if you like that sort of thing but it’s not something I want very often.

I prefer when the weird has some contrast with a baseline of normal and familiar. When something weird happens, it is really weird and can be treated with caution. The contrast is clear and meaningful.

Many of my adventure locations and non-player characters fit within the normal genre expectations of sword-and-sorcery fantasy but are different in ways that don’t rely on a psychedelic aesthetic. I prefer to make the mysteries in my campaigns something players will be able to make sense of as they encounter clues and unravel what is going on.

Lazy ways of making the familiar different

A common recommendation is to give a monster a different look but using the same stat block. The monster gets a cosmetic change that has players guessing about its strengths and weaknesses but it’s the same as a goblin or orc in combat mechanics.

This is useful for certain applications. I don’t like the associations that come with the orc. Creating a new humanoid monster with the same stats provides the same low powered, minion type, humanoid monster that serves the same function but avoids the baggage players have about orcs.

Another low effort way to make the familiar different is to give a common monster a different power or ability. This is fine to create variations of existing monsters but it gets tedious if it used too often.

These skeletons explode when you turn them. These skeletons are covered in an adhesive that sticks to anything that touches them. These other skeletons regenerate unless you destroy them with fire. They all look the same or have some slightly different appearance that players can learn about to puzzle out how fight them in future encounters.

I like this method when the monster tied to a particular location or source. In the adventure Night of the Walking Wet from Jennell Jaquays Dungeoneer zine, the zombies are not normal zombies. They have a different look and some different abilities that make them unique. They are tied to that location and the monster that is the big problem at the center of the adventure. Once that monster is destroyed, the slimy zombies are gone.

Higher effort and more surprising ways to confound expectations

I like to use familiar elements of the game but alter the usual context. I have found some of my most effective uses of this method start off with something that is completely cliché on the surface and has a twist that fits within the rules and assumptions of the game.

I used these next two techniques for most of the the major NPCs in Hogwater.

Messed up magic

I look through the magic items and pick one that I find interesting. Once I’ve selected the item, I start imagining as many ways as possible that an asshole NPC could abuse that item’s powers. Once I have a good list of ideas, I create an NPC and decide how they are exploiting the power of the item. I’ll build the adventure around that.

This is also useful method for spells. A first level magic user with charm, or sleep could be a nasty problem in a village of normal peasants who can’t resist.

I have gotten a lot of good NPCs and adventures out of magic items that can be used by any character class. I put them into the hands of normal people who aren’t adventurers. Examples of magic items that have all kinds of interesting implications are Chime of Opening, Deck of Many Things, Medallion of ESP, Efreet Bottle, or Decanter of Endless Water.

The banal and the brutal

If I want something to be disturbing, I’ll pick a common fantasy cliché and give it some ugly backstory.

The friendly inn keeper reminiscent of Butterbur at the Inn of the Prancing Pony? A charming psychopath who drugs people traveling alone. You just had elf stew for dinner.

I like to give an NPC a cursed magic item that makes them behave in a anti-social way. The players kill the NPC and take the magic item only to find out the guy might not have been so bad if he didn’t have this cursed object. Sentient swords that can overwhelm their wielder are an example of this technique.

Reversing assumptions

Players who have been gaming for a long time have all kinds of assumptions.

One of my favorite ways to mess with metagaming players who think they have it all figured out is to create a situation that has some nasty surprise that fits both the context of the setting and the game’s rules.

I flip the assumption in a way that make sense. This takes some effort. We don’t often think very hard about what is obvious. We just assume it is always so and don’t make an effort to consider it could be different.

I like to flip things that are “safe” or “good” and make them “dangerous” or “evil”.

I’ll create a non-player character who is a good guy but have the rumors and gossip about him say he’s a bad guy.

The rumors are not wrong but lack context. Players can learn what’s going on if they do a little more digging. If they accept whatever the local turnip farmer has to say about the situation, the party might make an enemy of someone who could have been their ally.

In Lord of the Rings, Butterbur tells the hobbits that Strider is one of them rangers who go about in the wild. Dangerous folk. If the hobbits listen to Butterbur and go on without Strider’s aid; the Nine would have caught up with them and LotR would have been a tragic and short novella.

Unusual and unexpected combinations

Sometime I create interesting situations by combining things that aren’t usually found together. That can be a monster or NPC in a strange place.

Here are examples of strange combos I’ve had in my games.

• A 20th level wizard posing as a healer and herbalist in a peasant village.
• An order of paladins that had become unfashionable. All the members were elderly.
• A group of monsters working together that wouldn’t normally cooperate but were charmed by a wizard for his own ends.

The familiar can be creative

A game master can be creative with weirdness. You can create completely new monsters, magic items, and adventure situations.

Another way to be creative is to take the things we already have and use them in ways that subvert expectations while fitting within the constraints of the game rules and the typical fantasy setting. There are many unexplored avenues.

It requires some time and effort but you can create something different while feeling familiar.