OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies

The above piece was created by Pete Mullen for the Chaotic Henchmen Productions module The Fane of Poisoned Prophecies, authored in 2009 by Guy Fullerton.

This blog post is about the work of Pete Mullen.

There are many talented artists associated with the current OSR movement. But Mullen is at the head of the pack. If anyone deserves the title of The OSR artist, he does.

Part of this is due to the variety and diversity of products he has done illustrations for. A partial list would include Lamentations of the Flame Princess, Swords & Wizardry (he provided the cover illustrations for both the WhiteBox and Core editions) and Dungeon Crawl Classics as well as various smaller games and companies such as Ruins & Ronin and of course Chaotic Henchmen.

But more importantly the tone and quality of his work practically screams OD&D*. Many of his illustrations center around an adventuring party doing what adventuring parties do--fighting of course, as in the above—but just as interestingly and evocatively, exploring, pausing, thinking (which way to go now?), plundering (after a battle) and so on. The text below will be interspersed with a few other works out of a great many that I could just as easily have featured tonight. My only bias in choosing them is that I tried to pick pieces that were perhaps not quite as well-known as his more famous covers.

  
A few years ago Mullen gave an interview to Stuart Robertson on his blog Strange Magic. I want to excerpt one of his answers here:

I think there are several key differences between these two generations of fantasy art (Old School versus standard contemporary]. In terms of subject matter, the fantasy art in the seventies and eighties had their fair share of super heroes and strange monsters but their work encouraged the viewer to use their imagination and ask the question of "What the heck is going on here?" To me, the fantasy art in this day's market has more of an instant gratification element to it. When I look at it, I say, "Cool!" But then I'm left with, "Now what?" I find that I don't pursue the, "What the heck is going on here?" questions beyond that initial "Cool!" When producing my art work, I try to get the viewer to ask the "What the heck is going on here?" questions.

The piece I featured above would seem to almost buck this. We know what's going on, don't we? The party is fighting a group of Giant Scorpions. Three party members are engaged in melee while the fourth—pretty clearly the Magic-User—is casting some sort of probably offensive spell. But even here in this more 'obvious' scene, the viewer finds himself asking questions which serve to more thoroughly engage him in the painting: What is the spell? It appears to involve some sort of bright globe. Is it a Light spell? Why would the Magic-User want to cast that? And the way those columns are spaced and drawn is sort of...stressful. Are there other Scorpions about to scuttle around from behind? Did the party attack them in their lair or are they being set upon by surprise? The piece is exciting not because everyone is flying through the air like Chinese martial-artists (as in a typical 4e illustration) but because we really don't know what's going to happen next.

And I think the center of it is the Magic-User's raised arms. I chose this illustration partly because out of all the Old School or OSR works that I have seen (a lot) this is the most evocative rendering of a spell cast in melee that I have ever come across.

Here is another non-combat painting titled The Dungeoneers (I don't know which product, if any, it is attached to):

Now, in previous posts I have disparaged the 'cartoony' aspect of contemporary 'New School' art. But it's clear that Mullen's work is cartoony in its way. We know that people or dungeon adventurers don't actually look like this. The representations are abstract or exaggerated in a certain sense. So what gives? I'm not an experienced or schooled art critic (obviously) so call me out if I make some howlers here. But to me the difference is that, say, 4e art looks video-gamey because it's almost saying, this is what your fantasy world looks like. Since (by assumption) you think video games are cool, we're going along with that by portraying your fantasy world as a video game. Isn't that cool? Or, see, we're cool too, or whatever. But Mullen is not treating us like we are babies or passive consumers. The shoulders on his Magic-Users are not pointy or angular because we think that's how they actually are, but to stress the point that they're thoughtful, logical Magic-Users. That's what grown-up art—art made for grown ups—does (or at least often does).

Great stuff.

Mullen has sometimes been portrayed as a sort of Erol Otus wannabe. This is a slur. Not because there's anything wrong with Otis. He's also brilliant, of course. But I think Mullen is up to something a bit different...and unique.

I don't know what he is doing now. I assume he is still available to provide illustrations for OSR games and modules. I certainly hope he is. His site—containing the above and many other neat illustrations—is here.

At the risk of sounding too much the OSR artist groupie (though I am one)...

Thank you.

* I owe the precisely appropriate 'screams' designation to a Google+ comment by Theodore Kabisios, referring to last Friday's OSR Art offering.

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Those of you that who haven't voted on the Zylarthen name shortening thing (wait, I just prejudiced the vote there) have until 11:37 PM Pacific Standard time to get your vote in on the comments section of this post. Again, you might win hardcopies of Seven Voyages of Zylarthen, Swords & Wizardry WhiteBox, Stonehell Dungeon or Anomalous Subsurface Enviroment—all pinnacles of OSR genius and creativity (well, three out of four them, at least).

By the way, there's a rumor going around (started by my own ambiguous wording more than anything else) that I want to rename my game. But it's only a question of finding an appropriate shortening of it. You guys know that right?

Seven Voyages of Zylarthen will always be Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. Unless you first pry it from my dead mailed fist...

Lamentations of the Flame Princess: Does Tone Matter?

Author's Note: The following grew out of a pending review I was writing. But I thought it deserved it's own space. It may sound critical of the primary game discussed in the post--Lamentations of the Flame Princess--but that was not its purpose. With the caveats expressed below, I think the game is excellent--the most perfect example of a completely realized OSR game product that I own. Indeed, I spent more money on the thing--31 Euros or whatever (which is $519,000 or thereabouts in U.S. currency)--than I have on any other contemporary game or accessory.

And I like the painting.

Perhaps the defining element of Lamentations of the Flame Princess is its tone, which we might variously describe as dark, macabre or expressive of what author James Raggi calls 'The Weird'. We might contrast the tone with the rules and setting of the game. The rules are  Classic 'B/X' D&D with some new twists, extrapolations and additions. The setting--perhaps early Baroque if anything--is actually surprisingly thinner than many games, owing to the fact that LOTFP does not include its own catalog of monsters or magic items.

So I think the tone is the thing, partly set by Raggi's sharp and evocative prose as well as the often graphically violent illustrations. We are introduced to it quite forcefully in the descriptions of the character classes in the Grindhouse edition. Let's skip the Thief and look at the three original human classes in the order first presented in OD&D. First the Fighter (to save space multiple paragraphs are concatenated):

Slaughter defines man’s history. Every new era is defined by the cruelty man inflicts upon man...In battle, there is no law. Man maims man. Horribly wounded men scream for mercy as their life’s blood pours out from cruelly hacked wounds. Their cries are ignored and their lives extinguished by those too cruel or frightened to listen...in battle there is no justice...To be willing to slaughter at another’s command in the name of peace and nobility, to be hardened to the deaths of loved companions, to be immersed in this worthlessness of life, that is the life of a soldier. Fighters are these soldiers that have seen the cruelty of battle, have committed atrocities that in any just universe will damn them to Hell, and have survived.

Some have called the tone of LOTFP cynical or nihilistic. But given the above, one could also brand it almost Nietzschean. Note that I'm not saying that Raggi himself is a Nietzschean or even that he is cynical or nihilistic in real life. I would strongly bet that he's not. But I think the author believes that infusing the text with that sort of tone helps to create the Weird effect he's going for. It makes it cool in the way that, say, certain kinds of dark horror films are cool or a Lovecraft story is cool. 

Now one reaction to the description above is to embrace it. Indeed, embracing it might almost be the expected reaction of a normal human being that has had nothing but a steady diet of the pap that passes for prose in the current and recent editions of the world's most popular fantasy role-playing game.*

Another reaction is to be put off by it. Wait, I don't want to play that guy.

Let's follow along with that reaction as we look at the other two classes. Here's the Magic-User:

Magic-Users choose a different path. Instead of cowering away from the darkness, they revel in it. They see the forces of magic as a new frontier to explore, a new tool for the attainment of power and knowledge. If it blackens the soul to equal that of any devil, it is but a small price to pay.

But what if I don't want to have my soul, you know, blackened?

Well, hope still lies with the Cleric. Here's the text:

Some religions teach the people how to receive the grace of their loving deity. Some religions teach the people how to survive the wrath of a cruel and vicious deity. Some religions simply strive to teach the truth about creation. All religions serving true powers have one thing in common: orders of those selected few who are not mere priests, but spiritual warriors endowed by their deity with mystic powers. These few are known as Clerics.

Okay, finally at least a neutral description. I'll be one of those guys, please!

Not so fast. On the opposite page of this text is an illustration of a Cleric, or rather two Clerics. The one has just lynched the other and is admiring his work as the victim's eyes bulge out. Behind is a burning church with bodies strewn about. Why did the one do such a horrible thing to the other and his parishioners? After all, they seem to be wearing similar hats, similar robes and have similar pendants. But look closely. What's that? There is a difference with the pendants. Or rather a slight difference. The star on one of them has five points. The other star has seven. It's sort of a very adult version of the Sneetches.

Now, I'm a Catholic, so by definition I don't think religion or at least all religion must be like this. Nevertheless, I think the illustration is very clever and even I suppose quite funny in a very dark way. In addition it probably expresses a cynical truth about human beings (and even religions) at their worst.

But it doesn't make me want to play that Cleric.

Is that reasonable?

Here are four possible ways to look at it:

1. You like the tone. That is, you like it for purposes of the game, not that you necessarily agree with the morality or metaphysics of it in real life.** That attitude presents no problem of course.
2. You like the tone or at least appreciate its point of view or effectiveness as art or literature. But you don't want to play in a campaign defined or infused by that tone.
3. You hate the tone and therefore don't want to play in such a world or have anything more to do with the game. You're sorry you spent those Euros. You could have instead purchased a croissant and two espressos at a cafe on your next trip to Paris.
4. You hate the tone but like the rest of the game. Therefore you play the game--with its rules and setting--and ignore the tone completely. Why should it matter? Rule Zero, after all.

I subscribe to 2. I think tone does matter. If it didn't matter, why put it in? In the case of LOTFP it elevates the game (in a good way) over much of the competition. But at the same time it colors the game in a way that if the tone doesn't agree with you, it might interfere with your enjoyment of actually using it for a campaign.

Think of this hypothetical: Suppose Lamentations were rewritten by, say, a Fundamentalist Protestant. After each important bit of text there's a corresponding bible passage that supports it. Instead of Clerics lynching each other, you have pictures of Aslan and sandaled biblical heroes. If you didn't like that tone, would you play the game? Why not just ignore that stuff? Rule Zero.

I think that would be a stretch. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Or rather, you can but only if you like it.

Ideally, a successful OSR game is not just a sum of mechanics and lists. It should be evaluated as an aesthetic whole. The original 1974 version of Dungeons & Dragons was such a game, as is the contemporary Lamentations of the Flame Princess. And of course there are many other examples. Every successful game is such an example. This may seem like an obvious or even trivial point, but I think it is often a bit lost amidst discussions of house-ruling this or hacking that (not that there's anything wrong with it).

You should aspire to rise above the bland. But you should understand that some people may then have a problem. Tone matters. If they're fair people, they'll still appreciate your effort (even if they don't use it for their next fourteen year campaign). If they're not fair people, then who cares?



*A human in clanging plate armor holds her shield before her as she runs toward the massed goblins. An elf behind her, clad in studded leather armor, peppers the goblins with arrows loosed from his exquisite bow. The half-orc nearby shouts orders, helping the two combatants coordinate their assault to the best advantage.

**That last sentence was a later insertion motivated by a comment made by Stefan Poag in the Google+ OSR Community discussion on this topic.  

Girl With Sword Revisited: Wednesday Evening Comments on an OSR Art Friday Post

Last week's Girl With Sword was one of this blog's most well-read posts. No wonder. It's a great painting.

I wanted to make two more comments. Or, rather, one correction and one comment:

1. The girl is the Flame Princess. Apparently, in a post or interview somewhere or another, James Raggi confirmed this. But all you have to do is look at her hair, which is clearly Flame Princess orange-red, in contrast of course with everyone else's 'normal' hair.  This obvious fact eluded me, at least initially. Three things are implied:

a) Spalding can be an idiot (well, that's not really news, but still).
b) She survived.
c) Presumably this is the beginning of the story as to how the Flame Princess became the Flame Princess.

2. Some have said that the painting puts the viewer in the position of being the attacker or attackers. I understand this point of view, and in saying what I'm about to say, I don't mean to personally criticize those who hold it.  But I don't buy it. If I did buy it, I would of course hate the piece. For the record, before I originally posted, I asked a number of my friends and co-workers whether they felt the painting put them in that position. And no one said that it did. That isn't by itself completely determinative of course, but it does mean something. I believe the painting is set up as it is because the artist believed it to be about the girl, not the bandits or monster, or even about the girl plus the bandits or monster. And the only way to do that was to frame it from that particular angle. As I see it, the girl (and the woman with the baby) isn't looking at me, but someone or something slightly over my shoulder. Okay, so Raggi may revel (!) in showing a sexy Medusa doing what sexy Medusas probably do (if you really stop to think about it) or graphically portraying an adventurer being horribly slimed to death. Or whatever. But I don't think he wants us to look at things from the perspective of a child murderer.

OSR Art Friday: Girl With Sword

Among the best fantasy art of contemporary 'Old School' games is that commissioned for James Raggi's Lamentations of the Flame Princess (LOTFP) products line. The above piece graces the cover of the Rules and Magic booklet for the 'Grindhouse' edition of the LOTFP roleplaying game. It is by Jason Rainville and I assume was created sometime in 2010 or 2011. More of Rainville's work can be found at deviantArt.

Raggi's game and related supplements are almost defined by the art they contain.  They are generally not for children. The illustrations are often graphically violent and/or sexual, sometimes macabre and often cynical or at least, well, arch. Some would say it's nihilistic, though I don't think that gets it quite right.

I like it.

The best pieces almost always tell a story. Scratch that. The best pieces almost always tell an interesting story that makes you think. Indeed, the attraction of many of them is that it isn't completely clear what the story is. That is they are subject to multiple interpretations, and part of the fun is puzzling out which one works best.

Contrast the above scene of implicit combat with, say a typical 3e, 4e or 5e illustration. Most of those are also of combat scenes. And almost always they catch the figures in mid-jump or mid-charge or mid-something or other that is supposedly incredibly exciting. But in fact they are dramatically static, equivalent to (as has been pointed out before) an almost arbitrary screenshot from a video game.

What is going on above? The first interpretation for many is that it's a girl suddenly finding herself in the position of defending her family against some unseen attacker, perhaps someone or something supernaturally horrific. Her father is almost certainly dead-killed first (though how did the girl get between him and the attacker?). Her mother stares at the unseen (by us) attacker in fear, instinctively protecting her baby. The girl grips the adult sword steadily but awkwardly. It's obviously too heavy. How did she get it? Are the tears due to to simple terror at what now confronts her, or the realization that she herself is already 'tainted' by perhaps wounding or killing one of the attackers? Logically there is no hope. But somehow one thinks that this girl may have a chance, surprising all of us-even and especially the enemy who thought it would be easy.

An alternative view is that the bleeding man was himself one of the enemy (would her father have been sleeping in his breastplate?) that unfortunately (for him), took no account of the young girl. Who would have?

She's not a victim. She's a heroine. That's why we like this piece.

She might die. They all might die. Bad things happen-even to innocent girls. That's not cynical. Just, well, accurate. But you can go down fighting...

The Towering Castle Beneath the Stormy Night Sky

Pop quiz: match these opening lines to the above games--the new "5e" D&D Basic (2014), Lamentations of the Flame Princess (2012), Swords & Wizardry Complete (2010) and Dungeons & Dragons (1974):

TREASURE and glittering gems; dark places beneath the earth where monsters dwell; magic circles, pentagrams and pentacles; runes of evil import, and iron-banded doors of mouldering oak; wizards of vast power, living in their isolated towers above black seaside cliffs; great-horned demons in their bloody lairs; massive stone idols with jeweled eyes and hieroglyphic pedestals, carved in the distant eons before the young civilizations of humankind; strange and glowing orbs, floating in the air above rusted metal grates leading to deeper levels of the underground passageways…

It is about flying carpets and cursed blades, about hooded priests gathered for unspeakable rites in their forgotten temples; it is about adventure and about perilous undertakings, forcing back the evil creatures of Chaos from the borderlands of embattled civilization; it is about battle-scarred warriors and deadly sorcerers…

Being a Referee is like being an artist, a manager, an accountant, and that crazy old guy that lives in the park that everyone avoids because he’s always talking to himself, all in one. Although hopefully you won’t be talking to yourself. At least not while anyone is listening.

ONCE UPON A TIME, long, long ago there was a little group known as the Castle and Crusade Society. Their fantasy rules were published, and to this writer's knowledge, brought about much of the current interest in fantasy wargaming. For a time the group grew and prospered, and Dave Arneson decided to begin a medieval fantasy campaign game for his active Twin Cities club. From the map of the "land" of the "Great Kingdom" and environs — the territory of the C & C Society — Dave located a nice bog wherein to nest the weird enclave of "Blackmoor", a spot between the "Great Kingdom" and the fearsome "Egg of Coot". From the CHAINMAIL fantasy rules he drew ideas for a far more complex and exciting game, and thus began a campaign which still thrives as of this writing! In due course the news reached my ears, and the result is what you have in your hands at this moment. While the C & C Society is no longer, its spirit lives on, and we believe that all wargamers who are interested in the medieval period, not just fantasy buffs, will enjoy playing DUNGEONS and DRAGONS. Its possibilities go far beyond any previous offerings anywhere!

The DUNGEONS & DRAGONS ROLEPLAYING GAME IS ABOUT storytelling in worlds of swords and sorcery. It shares elements with childhood games of make-believe. Like those games, D&D is driven by imagination. It’s about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents.

It's a pretty easy quiz, obviously, for people who have read or played these games or who know a bit about the authors or the historical context. And for anyone paying attention, the point of the exercise should be immediately clear. Only one excerpt uses the term "imagination" (and if you count the variant, "imagine", it mentions it twice) yet the prose in that piece is without doubt the least imaginative (and the dullest and most boring) of the four.

The precise character of the selections differ somewhat of course. One is an attempt to get you excited about the game in question by immediately transporting you into a fantastic world. Another is a sort of self-deprecating and funny introduction to how to "run" a game. The third is an all-over-the-place and quirky piece focusing partly on the historical circumstances of how the game in question came to be created. And the fourth is of course a straight introduction. Are the first three authors Nobel-Prize winning stylists? I don't know. Perhaps not. Who is? But they--Matt Finch and James Raggi--are (or in the case of the late Gary Gygax, were) damn good "amateur" writers who felt it important to start the text of their rules right off with strong, interesting adult prose--even though they knew that children were a big part of their audience (okay, maybe Raggi doesn't write for children, but still). I don't know who the author of the D&D Basic excerpt is. And even if I did spend a few seconds to investigate, I imagine that the opening text to one of the flagship games of a major game company is somewhat of a joint effort. The point is not to criticize or blame any particular person. The author (whether or not the text was modified or overseen by others) is undoubtedly a talented game designer and probably a pretty good writer. (He has a good paying job doing this and I don't. And there is probably a reason for that.) But that doesn't absolve the text.

It's terrible. Boring. Clipped. Unimaginative. It reads like one of those excruciatingly awful high-school history textbooks that have had all the color leeched out to avoid offending anyone and to make it understandable to readers in the lowest tenth percentile, or perhaps a book report written by an intelligent 7th grader who has mastered the rules of grammar, but has no particular desire to make her writing particularly interesting or exciting (it's only a book report).

Well, after all (so the counter-argument goes) it's a mass-market product. There are certain things they have to do and that are expected given the economics and their market niche and the corporate culture that they are a part of, etc., etc., etc. You're naive if you think otherwise. Well, putting aside one obvious retort to that--must all prose intended for the "mass-market" be insipid?--even if that were an explanation or a justification for why it happened, that doesn't change the fact. If you thought my prose was insipid, and I told you that the reason for that was because I was promised a million dollars if I would make it insipid, that wouldn't change anything for you. That wouldn't or shouldn't make you any more likely to buy or even pay attention to my product.

Does it matter? After all, it's only a game.

Yes. It does. 5e D&D Basic asserts that it is at the pinnacle of role-playing games. It builds (so it claims) on the experience gained in the design, writing and play of the previous four editions and three generations, forty years and literally millions of players. Thousands of hours and probably hundreds of thousands of dollars have gone into its development, and the best they can come up with is:

[Dungeons & Dragons] is about picturing the towering castle beneath the stormy night sky and imagining how a fantasy adventurer might react to the challenges that scene presents.

The dull, completely unimaginative prose is one way that contemporary "D&D" smothers the imagination of its players. There are other ways that it does this, of course. But this as good an example as any.