Old School Illustrations: In The Labyrinth

Here's the final set of illustrations from The Fantasy Trip core booklets.  These ones are from In The Labyrinth, the setting and game masters booklet.  Robert Phillips once again provides the illustrations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Old School Illustrations: Advanced Wizard

I recently posted several illustrations from Metagaming's Advanced Melee rulebook. 

There were two other main resource books for The Fantasy Trip game system: Advanced Wizard and In The Labyrinth.  Like the art in Advanced Melee, the Advanced Wizard illustrations were exclusively produced by Robert Phillips. 

Arguably, the illustrations found in Advanced Wizard were the weakest of the three resource books, thematically and otherwise, because there were no illustrations of Wizards (surprising, considering the title of the resource book), nothing connecting the subjects to any identifiable milieu, and a complete absence of hot fantasy chicks.  We are instead treated to battles with sabre-toothed tigers, does that make up for the lack of the former two?

Various humanoid antagonists make appearances in Advanced Wizard, beating their chests, reaching into crevices, and otherwise posing menacingly.

 

Many of the best main sourcebook TFT illustrations appeared in the gamemaster's resource, In The Labyrinth.  But it seems odd that for a gamebook, wholly devoted to the development of Wizards, there are no images of Wizards.  Instead we are provided with  illustrations better suited to Advanced Melee and In The Labyrinth, like Conan-esque characters battling Lizardmen and Archers facing off against Giant Lizards.

Robert Phillips' illustrations tend towards minimal environment connecting the subject of the piece to the scene.  Take for example the two illustrations below, one of an adventurer discovering an exit from the labyrinth, and another of a guard protecting the entrance to one.  There's nothing in the background to connect the adventurer or guard to anything more than a generic fantasy world.

And there's nothing in the text of Advanced Wizard to tie any of these illustrations to the purpose of the resource book.  Though the illustrations fit into the broader Fantasy Trip aesthetic, I have to wonder how the editor and publisher justified the inclusion of this particular artwork in this gamebook.

Old School Illustrations: Advanced Melee

The passing of David Trampier has me reminiscing about some of my favorite old school illustrators and games. 

Advanced Melee, the volume from which the above and following illustrations are ripped, was part of Metagaming's "THE FANTASY TRIP", a stripped down role-playing game.  The Fantasy Trip was one of our go-to games in the early 1980's, as it could be easily carried about and played during a lunch hour of after school. 

The Advanced Melee rulebook included only a handful of illustrations, all in black and white, drawn exclusively by Robert Phillips.  His Advanced Melee illustrations had a strong sword & sorcery flavour, in contrast to the later, second generation, colorized heroic fantasy artwork that would be introduced to role-playing games by such artists as Elmore, Parkinson, Easley and Caldwell.

The earlier RPG artists were perhaps not as technically proficient as the RPG artists that followed, but what they lacked in finesse they make up in raw motion and emotion.

Everything was less heroically styled in The Fantasy Trip artwork.  Take for example the above encounter between a warrior and a Dragon.  The Dragon looks to be an overgrown crocodile with wings.  Dragons have since morphed into creatures several stories high, and larger than jumbo jets.  But even at the scale used in the Fantasy Trip, the Dragon looks formidable, although more likely overthrown.

The humans were similarly scaled back, sporting plausible facsimiles of real-world armor and wielding sensibly-sized weapons.  Perhaps a typical gamer's power-fantasies were less urgent back in the day!