RIP Jim Holloway

We lost Jim Holloway this week.

He was one of my favorite illustrators of gaming products. I could highlight so, so many, like his covers of Dragon Magazine and so many amusing fantasy illustrations.

But his work on Paranoia is just amazing.

First, the three nested covers:







It's a perfect summation of the surveillance state we all live in . . . I mean of Alpha Complex run by the Computer that the game takes place in! Trust Google the Computer! Facebook The Computer is your friend!

He also did this very, very accurate depiction of the game on the back cover of the player's book:



I just love how his pictures feel in media res - in the middle of the action, with something about to happen. The Paranoia ones especially feel like something face-palming or peek-through-your-fingers-bad is about to happen. You just want to look away from the poor Troubleshooter, but you can't.

I also just love how Science Ninja Team Gatchaman aka Battle of the Planets the security troops look.

Thanks for all of the art, Jim. I'm sorry I never got to say that to you in person.

David Trampier's birthday

Today would have been David Trampier's birthday.

Here is one of many images of his that I particularly like - the manticore and its treasure from the Monster & Treasure Assortment:



I've also added the Wormy Archive to my non-GURPS game resources list on the side of the blog, too.

Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser by Russ Nicholson

Russ Nicholson just did another image dump post on his blog. I like this one of the Grey Mouser (left, below Sheelba of the Eyeless Face) and Fafhrd (right, below Ningauble of the Seven Eyes):



Great stuff. And he's got a favorite from the Fiend Folio up there, too - one of the sources of inspiration for the bugbear in DFM1.

Myconid inspiration revealed

A4 In the Dungeons of the Slave Lords was one of my early module purchases, and I found the myconids really creepy and interesting.

This post over on Old School FRPG (on Tumbler) explains why - they're mushrooms from Fantasia* turned sinister, as imagined by Erol Otus:





A lot of D&D is just "cute thing, done creepy."

* which I'll admit I've never seen all of. Maybe only the dancing brooms part.

Tomb of Horrors, the pamphlet version

Over break, my players and I brought out our gaming loot from Christmas.

Among the loot was the boxed set of the D&D art book, as seen here on Amazon.com:



Included is a pamphlet of the tournament module version of S1 Tomb of Horrors.

Not only that, but as Paul discusses here, it was an adventure that helped bring about the Tomb of Horrors.

I'd really like a copy of that little pamphlet. Not enough to spend a lot of money on that art book. Don't get me wrong, the book is fascinating to look at. I just don't see me doing much with it, and if I really need to peruse a copy my group has several. I do really covet that early version of Tomb of Horrors and the Alan Lucien adventure which clearly helped inspire or inform it.

I'm just not sure it's worth $67 or so to get it.

Game day today!

It's finally game day again (and then not again for a few weeks - Easter, tickets to an event, family events for others, etc.)

I'll just give a little hint - one of these Jeff Dee illustrations from classic AD&D modules is related to today's delve. Heh, heh, heh.



But which one of these super-heroic scenes is it? Rufus and Burne of Hommlet? The giant monster* on the Isle of Dread? The manticore of White Plume Mountain? The drow vampire and his succubus lover of the Vault of the Drow?

You'll have to wait for the summary to find out.

* I did just watch Shin Gojira again last night, so maybe there is a connection?

More Jeff Dee artwork

Jeff Dee is doing another artwork Kickstarter, this time his interior work from A1 and A2.



I'm in.

My Jeff Dee Fiend Folio prints arrived

One is a Fiend Folio giant two-headed troll, the other is a stretch goal bonus.



Thanks for those Mr. Dee!

What Trampier Meant to Me

By now you've certainly heard of the untimely death of David A. Trampier, artist of such works as this one:



Back in the heyday of D&D and Dragon Magazine, he was a major artist for the game.

He was very influential on my young mind, and the things he drew inspired me in my gaming from then on.

Just for starters . . .

- Somewhere I have a handwritten set of stats for 1st edition GURPS for Barbadicus, Acchorath, and their double-bow toting buddy (whose name I forget). The PCs never ran into them, but I had them out there as bounty hunters.

- I'd turn to What's New? and Wormy! first when I got a new issue of Dragon. And the first thing I did when I bought the Dragon archive was to read the Wormy comics from start to eventual drift-off finish (since he'd fallen out with TSR and stop drawing the strip.)

- I even turned the cover image of the Player's Handbook into a set-piece encounter in my current Dungeon Fantasy game.

- And that Trampier picture of Emirikol the Chaotic burned into my head the moment I saw it.



All that art signed "Tramp" or "DAT" - it was all so cool and so evocative. The work of Trampier, Erol Otus, Jeff Dee, and David C. Sutherland loomed huge in my young mind.

I'm sorry the man passed at all, nevermind so young. I'd say he'd be missed, but I've been missing him since he stopped doing D&D art all those years ago. It's just a sad mark at the end of the long wait hoping he'd decide to start drawing again.

Goreyian Lovecraft

Thank to my friend and former paladin Tom for finding this:

What if Edward Gorey Illustrated Lovecraft?

The link is to a post on The Lovecraftian, a blog about H. P. Lovecraft over on Wordpress. The post selects the most Lovecraftian pictures by artist Don Kenn. His stuff really does look like Edward Gorey's, but with even more monstrous themes (if that's possible.

Pretty cool, and I fully intend to stat one or two of those guys now. Like maybe these . . .

My take on the B2/Jeff Dee illo Rorschach Test

Yesterday I posted a Jeff Dee illo Rorschach Test.

I received a lot of responses - probably more comments than any other post I've made has received so far. Pretty much everyone sees it as shaking down a thief who stole from the party.

I always saw this picture, poised right by the discussions of dividing up treasure and experience and whatnot, as two veteran adventurers shaking down a third "fellow" adventurer. Maybe as a pair of 2nd or 3rd level guys adding the loot the 1st level guy thought he'd earned. That other guy, the witness? He's suddenly realized he's next. There are two thieves in this one, and man, neither of them are the guy who is upside down.

Look at that guy with the rope. Does he look shocked, nay, horrified at the stuff the shaken down guy was hiding? Nope. He's got a grin a mile wide. That big guy shaking down the other delver? Does he look shocked? Nope, he's just concentrating on shaking the money down into one big pile so it doesn't roll off somewhere and need to be gathered up.

I figured, this illo was a picture of how one might divide up treasure. Hey, I was nine, and it's right there next to and under the text on Dividing Treasure and Computing Experience. To me, it seemed connected to the text as much as that illustration near Alignment in the Basic Set was connected to the text.

It was only years later I looked at it again with fresh eyes and thought, gee, maybe it's a thief being forced to cough up what he took unfairly. But that guy with the rope . . . he's got a nice sword and nice armor, and he seems a bit too happy with the whole thing. Maybe he's done this before - a serial join-and-extort adventurer. Best way to divide up loot is to divide it up as little as possible . . .

Anyway, that's my take on a classic picture.

B2/Jeff Dee illo Rorschach Test

Here is an old-school test for you, using a classic Jeff Dee picture "Shakedown" from B2 The Keep on the Borderlands.

What's happening in this picture?



I think your initial reaction to the picture, the one you had when you first saw it, can tell you a lot about your perception of old-school gaming. :)

I'll share my thoughts later, but first, what are yours?

Jeff Dee's Melnibonean Myths kickstarter

Jeff Dee has launched another Kickstarter project for his lost TSR artwork. This time, it's the big one:

Re-Creating my Melnibonean Art from Dieties & Demigods!

If you've never seen the original AD&D Dieties & Demigods, some of this artwork might be new to you. It's all really awesome. Jeff Dee did the entire chapter, with the one exception of Theleb K'Aarna, who got the Erol Otus "evil wizard with a horned helmet" treatment (which is equally great). Otherwise, it's all Jeff Dee - vulture lions, vampire trees, Elric and Moonglum, Donblas the Justice Maker (my personal favorite illustration), Arioch - the list is pretty extensive and the art is all uniformly evocative and excellent.

This is the one many of us have been waiting for, so jump in, even if only to see the video and check out the old vs. new artwork as it comes out.

Art for the Chronicles of Siala

I just stumbled on some really cool art.

The home page of the author of the Chronicles of Siala books (Shadow Prowler and Shadow Chaser and the not-yet-released Shadow Blizzard) has a great gallery of pictures. Many of them relate to the series, but others are just by the same artists, Oleg Yudin and Vladimir Bondar.

I'm much more wowed by the Oleg Yudin pics. The color pictures remind me of Larry Elmore, but a lot less posed and static feeling. The b&w pictures bring to mind Russ Nicholson, although I can't exactly tell you why.

There are lot more of these in the link above:

I discussed the awesome dungeon foreshadowed in this series of books a while back - Hrad Spein.

Shadow Harold is pretty cool looking, although I imagined his crossbow a lot smaller.