Looking for cool ideas of surreal imagery

[S@tanicoaldo]

So my group is back in town and we will be playing three different games, one simple d20 all magic users group, one star wars game and they asked for one far out, weird surreal and psychedelic game.

So I would like to ask you guys for tips, ideas and inpirations for the game.

So far this is what I was able to come up:

-The characters are normal people that are running away for some reason and end up at the place.

-I still don’t have an idea for the name for the place, I was thinking about twilight zone but that’s too on the nose.

-This place is located between dream and reality, mind and matter, logic doesn’t work there and everything is very symbolic.

-The place looks like a vast desert but no one is sure how they got there in the first place they just showed up when they were running away, they don't know where they are, why they are there or how to get out.

-There are going to be some places such as a hotel where the rooms consist of large elevators with furniture.

-A prison where the cells are fancy rooms.

-Dark woods with a lot of mist and heavy traffic.

Any other ideas for weird, surreal and neat places or events?

Spoiler: Inspirations

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[Cespenar]

Those descriptions sound very much in the spirit of some classic surrealist paintings. Maybe go through the list of works of Dali or Magritte and see if anything gives you any muse? Wikipedia must have those lists on hand.

[TeChameleon]

Just about anything painted by Salvador Dali or the Dadaists would likely provide some visual inspiration. Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass might be good to take a look at as well.

As far as a place name goes, perhaps just call it 'Outside'. Outside the bounds of logic, where Outsiders come from, outside the universe... stuff like that.

Places?

- Somewhere where everyone walks on their hands, manipulating doorknobs and such with their bare toes, but no-one ever comments on this, not even to acknowledge that the PCs are doing something different.

- A large department store where all the customers are mannequins (if wanting to go creepy, they only move when the PCs aren't looking), and the store dummies are clearly living, breathing humans who refuse to move or speak, in fact violently resisting any attempts to force them to move, even though they're visibly suffering from being locked in the same position for long periods of time.

- Maybe in the 'main' desert, the PCs can quite literally watch a giant, disembodied hand paint the sunset/clouds/etc. onto the sky with an enormous paintbrush.

[Epimethee]

You could also play with distance and dimensions. Small and far away may be hard to distinguish.

I like Böcklin very much but it is more a symbolist than a surrealist. Still worth looking at.
The more you look at his landscapes the stranger and deeper they grow on you.

And of course there is Bosch. Old but unsurpassed.

Some classics like the lovecraftian Dream country, the places of the Sandman , the comic by Gaiman, or Promethea by Moore and Williams III may be great, depending of your expectations.

I also love Les Cités Obscures, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Cités_obscures
It’s a strange blend of architectural madness, retrofuturism, poetical musing and graphic experimentation. The surrealsism is quieter, it grow gradually. Small details show the total outerness of the place, like a colored picture in a black and white comic.

You have a lot of options, depending of your framing. You can also change the rules on a regular basis. I mean how the setting react phisically, how you describe the place, how the NPC react. You can start for example in a very normal place with a twist. As soon as the players discover the twist the setting change for something completely different, as if the players were in a different picture.

So You should be able to give them the taste of strangeness, to put them in a changing and surprising world. Of course, around the main plot, some rules should be consistent.

[Jay R]

Go through the works of M.C. Escher.

Spoiler: Base the world here.

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Spoiler: Have a melee here.

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And for more ideas, watch the Dr. Strange movie.

[Arbane]

Check out the art of Alex Andreyev. I find a lot of his work both awesome and unsettling.

Spoiler: like this one

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[Andor13]

If you have a copy of Mysterium then that is a gold mine of surreal and evocative imagery intended to convey messages, but poorly and obscurely.

The key to such a thing as a game is that it's a story puzzle, but you don't see the story directly. So I'd say write the tale they have to unravel, but then go back and pull out at least two levels of abstraction (so the little boy in blue may be represented by an idealistic paladin at one level and as a fish at another.) Then you can figure out how to retell the story at each level. Then scramble it when presenting it to the players.

Oh, of for a couple of "What you see is not what you get" in recent movies, I recommend "The life of Pi" and "Sucker Punch".

[Bohandas]

Escher's Print Gallery

Spoiler

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http://im-possible.info/english/arti...ery/index.html

[Jay R]

And here's the battle map.

Spoiler

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[If you actually run an encounter on this, the whole game will have been worth it.]

[Bohandas]

In addition to Escher there's also Oskar Reutersvard

Spoiler

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factory reduces emmissions by 25% by employing a poiuyt


http://im-possible.info/english/art/...ard/reut1.html

[Perch]

Old movies are a great source:

Spoiler

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[Bohandas]

So my group is back in town and we will be playing three different games, one simple d20 all magic users group, one star wars game and they asked for one far out, weird surreal and psychedelic game.

So I would like to ask you guys for tips, ideas and inpirations for the game.

So far this is what I was able to come up:

-The characters are normal people that are running away for some reason and end up at the place.

-I still don’t have an idea for the name for the place, I was thinking about twilight zone but that’s too on the nose.

-This place is located between dream and reality, mind and matter, logic doesn’t work there and everything is very symbolic.

-The place looks like a vast desert but no one is sure how they got there in the first place they just showed up when they were running away, they don't know where they are, why they are there or how to get out.

-There are going to be some places such as a hotel where the rooms consist of large elevators with furniture.

-A prison where the cells are fancy rooms.

-Dark woods with a lot of mist and heavy traffic.

Any other ideas for weird, surreal and neat places or events?

*An area with conical angle deficit. Basically cut a quadrant out of the map and treat the esposed edges as if they were joined

*Vagaries of scale. The wild untamed areas between cities are the size of a modestly sized courtyard, and conversely the rooms in some buildings may take days to cross.

*The moon is in front of the mountains and tall buildings, not behind them

Also, check out these threads:

Weird Forest Encounters
Weird Races and Strange Places
Ideas for a Non-Euclidean Dungeon
Non-Euclidean Maps
Making A Scenario Dreamlike
Modern Ravenloft rainstormig
1001 Strange Plot Hooks
Surreal Worlds

[Khloros]

A huge gigantic battleship with a normal regular sized ship as a lifeboat.

[kraftcheese]

Considering it's based on Dante Alighieri's book of the same name it's scary and horrifying as well as weird, but Wayne Barlowe's "Inferno" has some great melty landscapes and dreamlike stuff.

Barlowe's "Expedition" has some great, alien landscapes too.

I'm on mobile and I can't remember how to properly link pictures; there's some good stuff on Google!

[Bohandas]

*An area with conical angle deficit. Basically cut a quadrant out of the map and treat the exposed edges as if they were joined

See the diagram on page 3 of this pdf:

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/tong/talks/cstring.pdf

[dspeyer]

If you really want to mess with your players, make the fourth wall selectively porous. Let analogies from out-of-game conversation show up in-game. Or a creature be adjacent to whomever asks a question about it.

[Knaight]

Randy Scott Slavin's Alternate Perspective galleries could also work here. Here are some highlights:

[Bohandas]

-I still don’t have an idea for the name for the place, I was thinking about twilight zone but that’s too on the nose.

going along those lines how about "the outer limits"

[Segev]

Looking up from the sandy desert at the sky above, periodically they see green clouds, perfectly still, high above. If they manage a closer examination, they can realize that they're the tops of trees, poking down out of a crystal-blue ocean of water that is the blue sky above.

[Bohandas]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P06z_ZymfXY

Along the shore the cloud waves break,
The twin suns sink behind the lake,
The shadows lengthen
In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,
And strange moons circle through the skies
But stranger still is
Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,
Where flap the tatters of the King,
Must die unheard in
Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;
Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed
Shall dry and die in
Lost Carcosa.

-Robert Chambers, Cassilda's Song