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Category: Art of the Genre

Art of the Genre: The real ‘L’ word

Art of the Genre: The real ‘L’ word

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chainmail_3rd_editionI’m an old TSR module fan, and as such I’ve always been intrigued by how the concept of such media came into existence. For the most part they fall in series, kind of like writers follow Tolkien with the concept of connected books and characters in a trilogy. It makes perfect sense, especially if you’re trying to create an extended campaign with a gaming group that meets on a regular basis. Series modules facilitate that, and recently I had the opportunity to chat with one of the original designers of a TSR foundation adventure path, the L Series ‘Lendore Isles.’

The author, Lenard ‘Len’ Lakofka is probably so ‘old school’ he’s beyond the term. His inclusion into the realm of RPGs predates the genre entirely, as he was a member of the International Federation of Wargaming. This institution came about in the sixties before the creation of Gygax’s Chainmail and was the original organizer of the first Lake Geneva Convention, i.e. GenCon in 1968.

At that first convention, people were playing Avalon Hill board games and Diplomacy during the Saturday only gathering, but that first year a chosen few were invited by Gygax to try Chainmail on the following Sunday after the convention was over. Lakofka was one of these founding fathers of the game.

From those humble beginnings, Chainmail would evolve into Dungeons & Dragons and Lakofka would continue to play the game with verve for the next forty years.

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Art Evolution 3: Jeff Dee

Art Evolution 3: Jeff Dee

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t1-254

In the first installment of this series, I explained my plan to collect ten of the greatest fantasy role-playing artists for a shared project to illustrate a single character in their best known style. For that one I chose Earthdawn and Shadowrun artist Jeff Laubenstein.

And now the Art Evolution blog series continues into Week 3, after last week’s contribution from Exalted artist Eric Vedder.

OK, so two down and I had an ‘Exalted Lyssa‘. As pleasing as that was, I still needed more ammunition before I started blind solicitations.

In another stroke of ‘luck’ I was already a horrible failure as a writer. As such, I’d spent time marketing a wretched book I’d written in 2006 that I’d worked with Jeff Dee on some illustrations for.

To me, Dee was a must for the article, all of his work at TSR a kind of Holy Grail of RP art.

My imagination still wonders if the zombie on the cover of T1: The Village of Hommlet has grappled or bit the unfortunate warrior pictured there.

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Art Evolution 2: Eric Vedder

Art Evolution 2: Eric Vedder

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exalted

Last week I kicked off the Art Evolution blog series, explaining my plan to collect ten of the greatest fantasy role-playing artists for a shared project to illustrate a single character in their best known style. For my first installment I chose Earthdawn and Shadowrun artist Jeff Laubenstein.

With Jeff Laubenstein and a ‘Shadowrun Lyssa‘ in the fold, I took stock of my list and imagined how I would gain other universally recognizable names. I determined that each name carried a ‘weight’, a kind of industry standard validity recognizable to other artists.

Remember, I was working this alone, without a single writing credit to my name, so I had to find legitimacy where I could. Understanding that, and without a previously established friendship with the lion’s share of these artists, I needed a greater combined ‘weight’ of already contracted artists to approach the next heavier weighted contributor on my list.

At this point I only had a single artist signed so I went back into the few art connections I’d made during my time trying to market my other writings. Like most struggling writers in their publishing infancy, I believed there might be a shortcut or magic bullet to getting published. J.K. Rowling couldn’t buy bread before Harry Potter, but she went out and purchased a lovely red transparent folder to place her Potter manuscript in before she sent it to a perspective publisher.

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Art Evolution 1: Jeff Laubenstein

Art Evolution 1: Jeff Laubenstein

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a2-slavers2I’m a gamer, a lifer, someone who at the age of thirty-nine doesn’t get to roll dice like it did at nineteen, but I still take a week’s vacation every year to hang out with High School friends and revisit campaigns where characters have been on paper long enough to legally drink in the U.S.

My love for fantasy role-playing goes back to middle school. There, I was introduced to Dungeon’s & Dragons, but it wasn’t just the concept that inspired my love affair, it was the art. The first piece of fantasy role-playing art I ever saw was the module A2: Secrets of the Slavers Stockade.

I stared at it for a full hour in History class; flipped through the pages trying to figure out why the cover wasn’t stapled on, and went home convinced this was something I had to get involved in.

Enter the Sears Christmas catalogue and TSR’s D&D Basic Edition red boxed set. Once I saw Larry Elmore’s red dragon and seemingly endless treasure trove, I convinced my mother to order it and began a journey lasting nearly thirty years.

I still buy gaming supplements for art alone, collecting entire genres and systems knowing full well I will never have the time to play them. If you put a great cover on it there’s a good chance I’ll buy, and I devour new talent almost as fast as I’ll snap up a collector’s piece from the seventies or eighties on eBay.

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Art of the Genre: Boot Hill‘s Ballots & Bullets: The 80’s Magic of TSR

Art of the Genre: Boot Hill‘s Ballots & Bullets: The 80’s Magic of TSR

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bullets-and-ballots1As I was walking the hallowed halls of the Indianapolis Convention Center during this year’s GenCon, I managed to uncover a handful of truly wonderful relics. Perhaps the greatest of these [although I contend that L3 Deep Dwarven Delve by Len Lakofka with Wayne Reynolds art in 1st Edition format is still in the running] was this masterpiece from TSR’s defunct Wild West game Boot Hill.

Now you may be asking “Boot Hill, really?”, and indeed I would be saying the same thing — if I hadn’t made it a personal quest to uncover many secrets about early TSR artists and their antics in the legendary ‘pit.’ So we have BH3 Ballots & Bullets by David James Ritchie, which by no means defines the game or genre, and yet played out in the cover is a true stroke of genius. Here, in muted color, we are once again reminded as fans of the fantastic comedy of artist Jim Holloway.

The four men featured here are all that truly matters about BH3, as right to left we are shown TSR Art Director (and cover artist for such classics as B2 Keep on the Borderlands and D1-2 Descent into the Depths of the Earth) Jim Roslof, a very Jimmy Stewart looking Jeff Easley; the gambler himself, Jim Holloway, and all the way to the left on horseback, the crazy old coot Larry Elmore (click on the image at left for a larger version).

Yes, that’s them, the entire TSR ‘pit’ crew circa 1981. Looking at this cover it seemed as though I had a snapshot of that time period, but this was even better. Having these artists, all in their youth, portrayed by the hand of one of their own made this purchase perhaps the greatest in my collection.

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