D&D: Five Genres To Mash Up With Your Fantasy
Is vanilla D&D a little too vanilla? Spice things up with a little genre mashup. Make your fantasy into something more.
Look, I know what it sounds like when you say “make your fantasy something more” but that’s literally what we’re doing. It’s not my fault that words have meaning. And it’s a tried and true methd for making your D&D games a little more funky.
When “standard fantasy” – in this case D&D with no extra work put into it – gets a little boring, it’s easy to spice it up by adding in a genre mixer. That’s what WotC does; designers throughout the history of D&D have done it. Mix horror and fantasy for a bit of Ravenloft. Post-apocalyptic and fantasy blended together lead to Dark Sun. The list goes on.
You don’t even have to mash up genres to make a whole campaign setting. It can even be fun for just an adventure or two while you get over your D&D blahs. Here are some genres to try mixing in!
Western
Western is a fantastic mixer for many an RPG. This is because the genre is very arch – and it’s one that lends itself to the typical “adventurer” paradigm. You can draw on a variety of genre elements here, from character archetypes like “solitary drifter” or “dopey sheriff” or “merciless gunslinger” to aesthetic choices like ponchos and spurred boots and swinging doors.
Play with genre situations like “showdowns in the street” or “frontier being fenced in” to give your fantasy adventures a little of that Western twang without having to actually try and do an actual twang.
Spy Thriller
Foggy meetups in dark alleys. Clandestine operations. Secret plans encoded in arcane crystals that can only be decoded with the right kind of device. There are many ways to pull in theh allmarks of a good spy thriller into D&D.
After all, some of that is already waiting in D&D; Harper agents clashing with the Zhentarim to thwart each other’s schemes. Gnomes in Zilargo ensuring that another Day of Mourning never happens. There are plenty of story archetypes and action scenes that slot right into a game of D&D. A party of adventurers is basically like a group of James Bonds. Or Austin Powers, depending on your party.
Historical Epic
If you want to add the kind of “intrigue” into your game that most people think of – scheming courtiers and duplicitous masters of coin plotting to overthrow/subjugate/or go to war with whoever else, then you probably want to draw on the genre elements of a historical epic. These are larger than life stories that often show the effects of a large event full of rich characters.
If you’ve ever seen one of Shakespeare’s history plays – the Henries or Richards, for instance, you know these don’t have to be historically accurate. They just have to feel like things are happening. Battles and speeches and banquets all end up here.
The same holds for stories like the Romance of the Three Kingdoms or the Iliad/Odyssey. Even if they’re mythic, they feel weighty and impactful.
Stoner Comedy
Your party was already basically headed there, anyway. Why not lean into the more chaotic behaviors of certain player types and serve up some stoner humor. After all, we’ve all had those moments where someone in the party – usually the bard – turns to someone and asks “do you spice?“
Genre elements that can play well in a D&D game include: the quest for something insignificant but meaningful (like sliders or an epic party), enemies who turn into friends when they get high enough, mistaken identity hijinks, repeating the phrase “littering and…” over and over again, and being extremely intoxicated while also having to try and stop a villain.
Pirates
This is basically D&D but on a boat. There’s so much to play with here. Rival pirate captains. Swashbuckling duels amidships. This is probably the easiest genre to drop into your D&D game, but for a good reason. It’s a genre that invites adventure in much the same way.
Fun elements can include racing for a treasure, being stranded at sea in a mystic calm, swallowed by a sea monster, betrayal, double betrayal, and a whole lot of grog.
What genres do you like to remix with your adventures?
