Here’s a great blog post on the early visual influences on DnD and other roleplaying games.
“That tradition was a subterranean one, largely outside the orbit of mainstream fantasy art. Psychedelic poster designers, Symbolist painters, and zinesters working on the margins of the counterculture all contributed, consciously or not, to the strange visual DNA of early roleplaying games. Before branding demanded consistency and legibility, Dungeons & Dragons was porous enough to absorb all of it.”
It makes wonder what’s on the fringes of modern visual culture. Snapchat filters? Adult Swim cartoons? Anthro furry art? AI slop? It’s hard for things to feel underground now, because as soon as you identify it you can get ten thousand other people who will latch onto your subreddit. Still, not everything has the same cachet.
“However, as D&D became a brand, this strangeness was steadily scrubbed away. Style guides were introduced. Idiosyncratic artists gave way to professionals. The game’s visuals became cleaner, more representational, more standardized. With that polish came a flattening of the imagination. D&D no longer looked like a vision; it looked like product.”
I’d argue DnD is still plenty flexible to accommodate weirdo visions. It’s no longer baked in, so you’d have to do more work on your own. As ever, that comes with pros and cons.
Anyway, check out the full article. It’s fun, and the author even hints that its influences made early DnD a vehicle for altered perception.
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