D&D General Surrealism in D&D

[Richards]

Agreed - interesting. I hadn't heard either of your alternate answers, but they're equally fitting. The version I heard was told to me by my grown son.

Johnathan

 

[Lanefan]

Surrealism works if one has the party in an Alice-In-Wonderland type of setting or adventure (I tried this once for a gonzo one-off and it worked well enough), and-or if a party somehow finds its way to the Plane of Chaos, at which point anything goes.

But long-term? Hard to sustain, if only because one either a) runs out of cool new ideas or b) succumbs to the how-do-I-top-that problem and takes it completely off the rails.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I always wanted to base a campaign world around surrealist landscapes, but I haven't found very many pictures to use that didn't include blatant references to technology, so I haven't gone further with the idea.

 

[Lanefan]

I always wanted to base a campaign world around surrealist landscapes, but I haven't found very many pictures to use that didn't include blatant references to technology, so I haven't gone further with the idea.

One source might be, of all places, Magic cards. There were a few series - Zendikar might have been one - that had a lot of surrealist landscapes in their art - chunks of land floating in the air, that sort of thing.

Of course, if all you have is the cards the art is kinda small, but it's something.

 

[J.Quondam]

Surrealism works if one has the party in an Alice-In-Wonderland type of setting or adventure (I tried this once for a gonzo one-off and it worked well enough), and-or if a party somehow finds its way to the Plane of Chaos, at which point anything goes.

Dreamlands-type locales are fitting, too, i think.

 

[J.Quondam]

I always wanted to base a campaign world around surrealist landscapes, but I haven't found very many pictures to use that didn't include blatant references to technology, so I haven't gone further with the idea.

You might try one of those recent txt2img generators, using the keyword "surrealism" in the prompt.

Spoiler: random weird pics

The "AI" does the acid so you don't have to.
.

 

[pointofyou]

Surrealism can work well but it is also easy to overdo it. I've had some success with some places and some scenarios being particularly weird. I think trying to make the entire setting be surreal would be difficult and probably too much.