RPGaDAY: Day Four: RPG with great art

So, an RPG with great art? 

Art is very subjective, but the one that springs to mind is Dragonbane. I don't own the full game, but I did get the Quickstart a while ago.  

Lead artist Johan Egerkrans really captures the mood of a fantasy world, and I find his art evokes an air of mystery and menace. His style reminds me somewhat of Sidney Sime's illustrations of Lord Dunsany's writing, or (a favourite folkloric artist of mine), Brian Froud.

The game itself is a Swedish roleplaying game called Drakar och Demoner. I rather like the look of the rules, but it's probably not the sort of game that would be a hit in my current group (see yesterday's post about investment of time, money and effort).

When I look back at RPG artwork it's changed massively over the years. 

The earliest D&D pamphlets had line drawings done by the writers and their families, sometimes based on existing artwork which can readily be identified. 

Later RPG works used artists with a knowledge of the genre, but, partly due to the nature of the printed material, still tended towards line drawings.

These early illustrations, and artists such as Dave Sutherland, Erol Outs, Clive Caldwell and others immediately take me back to my youth. 

Much more of this and I'll be taking about THAC0 and level caps.

Modern RPGs tend towards a much more polished art style, and there are far more artists with gaming knowledge to do the work.  There are some very positive changes in the way many artists depict people; early RPG artwork can look quite offensive or exclusive to the modern eye, and I'm glad to see some moves to correct this.  I don't think were completely there yet though.

There have also been issues recently with the use of AI artwork, and I suspect this is something that will rumble on.

I'll finish with a personal, and perhaps controversial opinion, art in horror games, particularly Mythos style games. 

The horrors in such games are often described as 'indescribable', or 'that of which the merest glimpse would send a viewer mad'. Some games are better than others, hinting rather than showing, but if you show me a picture of a horror that should drive me mad and I remain sane, then you've failed, and cheapened the experience as well.

The best artwork in such games shows the results of such horrors (avoiding anything too graphic, of course). The look on an investigator's face as they witness something 'unspeakable' is far more effective than attempting to show the unspeakable thing.

The same applies to minis of such horrors. To my mind the early Call of Cthulhu sets did this best. Rather than minis or even fully drawn standees, they had a sheet of silhouettes. (Of course, Call of Cthulhu is a game that works perfectly well without minis or maps, and I much prefer it that way).

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