Fat And Manky Orcus - Redux

Six years ago, I posted an image of a fat and manky Orcus illustrated by Todd Lockwood, of Dungeons and Dragons 3.0 fame.  The image above was taken from Dragon Magazine Issue 42, October 1980.  This may be old news to many, but I recently stumbled across an image of the original Todd Lockwood illustration on Flickr.  Someone was displaying original fantasy art at a gallery and the original Todd Lockwood illustration was part of the displayed collection.

The owner of the original print appears to be someone by the name of Jimmy Simpson David "Diesel LaForce.  Does anyone know him?  He looks to be a fantasy art collector.  He also had a copy of the original Greyhawk cover "illustrated" by Greg Bell.

I'm asking about the owner of the Todd Lockwood illustration, because years ago, Lockwood and I exchanged emails about this particular Orcus illustration.  At the time, Lockwood had lost track of the Orcus art and was wondering if I knew where it had ended up.  He asked that I send him a high res scan of the Dragon Magazine version.

Perhaps someone knows a guy who knows a guy who can identify the owner of the original artwork, and put Jimmy Simpson and Todd Lockwood in touch with each other?  Alternatively, someone could use their google-fu to track Jimmy Simpson down and let him know about Todd Lockwood's search.

I've since been in contact with Todd Lockwood, and he confirms that David "Diesel" LaForce, an illustrator and cartographer for TSR, has the original Orcus illustration.  He gave LaForce the illustration in 1997 when they were cleaning out the archives at TSR, during its sale to Wizards of the Coast.

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: 1st Session

I will be running the inaugural session of the St. Albert Mission Pathfinder Adventure Card Game ("PACG") Organized Play program on Sunday, October 19, 2014, at Mission Fun And Games in St. Albert, Alberta.

Participants will partake in the introductory session of Skull And Shackles PACG Season 0, as their characters cooperate to jointly face the villains and monsters of the Pathfinder universe's pirate-infested seas.  And after all, who doesn't like battling were-sharks while brandishing cutlasses and pistols?

Game sessions are no more than 2 hours long.

A demo game for first-time PACG players will be run from Noon to 1:00 pm on Sunday, October 19, 2014.

The first adventure, "On The Horizon", will commence thereafter at 1:00 pm and will end no later than 3:00 pm.

Participants will benefit from reading both the Skull And Shackles Adventure Card Game rules and the Organized Play rules (both available as free downloads from the Paizo website).

A Pathfinder ACG Class Deck (a $20-$25 investment), colored card sleeves, and matching colored polyhedral dice are necessary for participation, all of which are available at Mission Fun And Games.

Anyone interested in participating can leave a comment here, or can register their interest with Mission Fun And Games.

Thanks!

Event #	51256
When	Sun, Oct 19, 2014 afternoon (Noon - 3 pm)
Where	Mission: Fun And Games 560 St. Albert Trail St. Albert, AB T8N 6A7 Canada

Skeleton King: Magic Realm Ruins Expansion

The Skeleton King and retinue are not as dangerous as some of the other opponents in the Magic Realm.  However the Skeleton King casts curses on his opponents, and two of the skeletons still have relatively sharp weapons.  The fastest characters, with move times of 2, can run from these opponents, but until the attackless speed 3 skeleton changes tactics, he prevents any characters with a move time of 3 or greater from fleeing.

Bears In the Woods: Magic Realm Forest Expansion

Best be careful, young adventur'r!  Thar's bears in them thar woods!

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!

Petty Gods Resource Book

How I'd love to see Petty Gods selling on the shelves of my friendly local gaming store.

DnD Spells: Massmorph

Messenger To Macbeth

As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I look'd toward Birnam, and anon, methought,
The wood began to move.

MACBETH

Liar and slave!

Messenger

Let me endure your wrath, if't be not so:
Within this three mile may you see it coming;
I say, a moving grove.

MACBETH

If thou speak'st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee: if thy speech be sooth,
I care not if thou dost for me as much.
I pull in resolution, and begin
To doubt the equivocation of the fiend
That lies like truth: 'Fear not, till Birnam wood
Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane. Arm, arm, and out!
If this which he avouches does appear,
There is nor flying hence nor tarrying here.
I gin to be aweary of the sun,
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone.
Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back.

While Shakespeare's march of Birnam Wood was an effective, if mundane, ruse, Gygax and Company give us the magical alternative:  Massmorph. 

This is yet another of the many utlility and miscellaneous spells that provide early versions of Dungeons and Dragons with their richness and depth. 

While my preference leans towards the player-created or organically-introduced spells, the existence of Massmorph and other non-combat spells within the DnD lexicon is welcomed. 

And it doesn't hurt that the apparent inspiration for this spell is found within the works of one of the greatest playwrights of western civilization.

DnD Spells: Shape Change

Shape Change is a ninth level Magic-User spell that evokes remembrances of that wonderful wizard's duel in the Disney film, The Sword In The Stone. 

Like the Magic-User spell, Gate, it's a shame this spell is reserved for high-level Magic-Users, as it would be fun to play out a wizard duel at low to mid-levels.

David Trampier's Gamma World Cover

Sure, I like the Erol Otus Gamma World art well enough, but I still prefer the David Trampier Gamma World Cover.

Second Generation DnD Illustrators

I consider Parkinson, Elmore and Caldwell to be premiere members of the second generation of DnD illustrators.  Technically proficient, that group of artists raised the bar when it came to the quality of art appearing in Dungeons and Dragons publications.

But while they brought a more professional look to DnD game materials, their skill came at too high a price.  Dungeons and Dragons art became increasingly disconnected from the game itself.

Fewer and fewer covers and interior illustrations reflected what Dungeons and Dragons was all about. 

Instead, we had posing and posturing of highly fantasized personalities. 

Here are three illustrations, by Parkinson, Elmore and Caldwell, gracing the covers of Dragon Magazines, that are representative of the second generation of Dungeons and Dragons art.

Yes, these are excellent examples of fantasy art, but none provide any insight into, or reflect the major themes of, Dungeons and Dragons.

DnD Spells: Gate

"Jagreen Lern has succeeded in making a sizable breach in the Law-constructed barrier which has hitherto kept the creatures of Chaos from wholly ruling our planet.  He is forever widening this breach as his power increases.  This explains how he could summon such a mighty assembly of Hell's nobility where, in the past, it was hard to bring even one of the Dukes of Hell to our plane."

-- Michael Moorcock, "Stormbringer"

Few of the DnD campaigns that I participated in ever reached the player character levels necessary to access ninth level magic-user spells.  One of those spells, Gate, permits the magic-user to open a gate to another plane and entreat a powerful entity to come to the caster's aid.

I've always wanted to include scrolls with spells like this, as treasure.  To have a powerful one-shot item that the players could use, in this case, to gate in a powerful entity, would be handy for those occasions where the party is overmatched and otherwise needs some deus-ex-machina intervention by the DM to survive.

The problem is that a lower-level magic user are more apt to write the spell into their spell-book (for use when they reach the necessary level) as keep the scroll as a one-use item, thus defeating the point of scrolls as one-shot magic items.

Dragon Magazine Collection: June 2012

Still busy filling holes in my Dragon Magazine collection. I came across another six missing Dragon Magazines, and also decided I might as well expand my collection past issue 145.

I've been looking for Dragon Magazine issue 140 for a while now.  It features one of the few Larry Elmore illustrations that I consider to be Dungeons and Dragons art.  In this case, a female cleric healing a stricken warrior.  It's an imperfect illustration, from an old-school perspective, since the depicted scene is almost entirely devoid of menace.  The female cleric seems unconcerned by the proximity of the giant, and the giant's glance towards the cleric seems half-hearted.

You can't help but be impressed, though, with Elmore's skill and attention to detail.  Consider the treatment given to helmets, weapons, chainmail and how the snow interfaces with the two human subjects.