Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Giant Mushrooms and Otherworldliness

I need some help.

Throughout D&D modules we see depictions of giant mushrooms.

One of the earliest modules, B1 In Search of the Unknown, depicts them on both the monochrome and colour module covers.

Does anyone know where this signifier of otherworldliness came from? I'm guessing fantasy fiction. Does anyone have any specific thoughts?

9 comments:

  1. The Trippy Psychedelia of the 70s.

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  2. I'd vote for Alice too. Here's the famous drawing:

    http://aliceproject7.files.wordpress.com/2009/11/448px-alice_05a-1116x1492.jpg

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  3. It goes back to the old world. Fairy rings were made of mushrooms, in the traditional lore. Also, trippy psychedelic mushrooms, were known to man, way earlier than the 1970's.:)

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  4. Where do the mushrooms come from? The same place the theramin music does. ;)

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  5. Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth featured a subterranean forest of giant fungi.

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  6. Damn - I've got a dissertation-sized post on this very topic that's been awaiting completion and posting for almost two months; you trumped me with a four-paragraph one! :P

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  7. Chris - I'd love to read it!!!

    Please let me know when you post so I don't miss it!

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