Here we are at day four of the RPGaDAY 2024 challenge and our topic is “RPG with great art.” Being the father of an artist who is trying to break into the business, this is a big topic for me. Lately there has been a rash of AI renderings (I refuse to call them art) that has been used in RPG publications. Yes they are cheap, but the old saying is “You get what you pay for”. AI renderings look plastic and uninspiring. I remember when creating a character for Vintage Space in the last Character Creation Challenge and I noted how bad the AI renderings were. They didn’t have any uniformity and just seemed to be a random jumble of bad images that didn’t fit together.
So I’m going to talk about an RPG product that I purchased specifically for the art. It was the X-Treme Dungeon Master 2nd Edition that I picked up from Kickstarter and did a review when it arrived. The book was written by Tracy & Curtis Hickman, but the artist is Howard Tayler. I’ve talked about him before on my blog when he did some personalized art for me. Howard ran a webcomic called Schlock Mercenary and was able to keep it running for twenty years. As a loyal reader, I got use to his art style. The art he created for the XDM 2nd edition book had his style, but not once did I think “oh it’s Schlock Mercenary”. He was able to make it unique, make it his, but also make it new. There were a few color pieces on the cover and just inside the front cover, but the black and white art on the inside flowed along with the subject matter being discussed. There was also a little “flip book” art at the bottom of each page. I really liked the piece where the GM is using the “theater of the mind” to describe the scene. And since a picture is worth a thousand words, here are a few photos of the book that I took just for this blog post.
Additional things about the challenge. I’ve appreciated the feedback that readers have given me on my first couple of posts. I’ve had questions about comparing different Star Trek RPG systems. I’ve also enjoyed looking up #RPGaDAY2024 on BlueSky and finding a lot of other interesting gamers to follow. If you’ve followed me back, thank you.
Is there an RPG product that you thought had really good artwork in it? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.