OSR Art Friday: The Lace & Steel Illustrations of Donna Barr

From the original box cover

I bought the first edition of Lace & Steel--the game of faux-17th century swashbuckling and fancy court balls--in 1989, after seeing it on the shelf and flipping though it for thirty seconds. I never played it, but it has always enchanted me. Recently I realized that one of the reasons for that was its art. Unusual for its type, all of the illustrations are by one artist, Donna Barr. In addition, and also, somewhat unusually for the category, the pages are drenched in illustrations of all kinds. There are approximately 200 pages, distributed over four booklets. There are many full-page and even two-page drawings but also a huge number of smaller ones averaging out to at least three a page. Large-scale battles, duels, ladies and gentlemen at leisure or at fancy balls, monsters--warnets (intelligent giant hornets), pixies, harpies and "half-horses" (centaurs), to name a few--landscapes and maps, individual weapons, armor pieces or clothing, as well as musketeers with hangovers making faces into mirrors in the morning, are all covered.

In a roundabout way, Lace & Steel was one of the inspirations for Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. I wanted to make a 17th century "Lace & Steel" version of OD&D. That became a 16th century pseudo-Catholic version, which finally became a more conventional swords & sorcery-fairy tale version. But a few things from Lace & Steel survived almost intact--for example, the idea of using physical tokens to represent money in the game:

The author has found that a new dimension is added to game play when a player character’s funds are simulated by solid objects. One or two cent pieces can simulate copper groats, and heavy washers make good silver and gold pieces. Washers or disks can be had from any hardware store. Go for big washers (20 to 25mm is good) with small central holes, such as muffler washers. Brass washers are used for gold marks, and steel washers for silver schillings. 

“Real” money is excellent fun to use, and players soon develop odd habits such as fondling their money or stacking it into neat little piles. Parting with money can be a traumatic experience for miserly players, since they are handing over a physical object rather than just crossing a number off a piece of paper. Players will also tend to keep a less ready tag on their wealth, which adds a bit of spice to play.

A man bathing in coins

But to get back to the art. Is it OSR? Well, the game itself--authored by the still active Paul Kidd--certainly features some supposed new school elements, such as skills. But it is twenty-five years old, released at a time when 1e AD&D was still (barely) the standard. And to me, the evocative line-drawings of Donna Barr are the polar-opposites of the video-gamish color splatterings of most contemporary RPG art. But in any case, OSR Art Friday was never intended to be ideologically rigid (whatever that might mean in this context). And part of the fun is to choose a diverse variety of examples. Donna Barr's drawings are cool. They work. In the end, that's what matters.

Who is Donna Barr? One way to get to know her is to read her long-running and frequently updated blog. As many of you know, she's an incredibly prolific and still very active writer and illustrator, known primarily for comic books or "graphic novels" (though, she prefers the label "drawn-fiction"). Her output is distinctive. Her major works or series are The Desert Peach--about Erwin Rommel's fictional brother Pfirsich, an exuberantly homosexual Nazi general who leads a North African unit of homosexuals and assorted misfits--Stinz--about centaurs or "half-horses" interacting with normal men in a stylized German valley setting--and Bosom Enemies about two normal men who find themselves enslaved and transformed into half-horses. Obviously there's a sexual subtext to much of her material (also involving animals or, rather people that are half-animals), but without (on the main) being graphic or pornographic. Let us say, she at least occupies a niche. (Occupies? Scratch that. She dominates it and then uses it as a bridgehead.)

Musketeer with hangover making faces into his mirror in the morning

Wait, Nazis? Flamboyant, leather-clad, homosexual Nazis (that are to some extent made fun of, albeit affectionately), sexual themes involving animals or people half-way transformed into animals and then quasi-sexually dominated by other people?

BAN IT! BAN IT! BAN IT! BAN IT!

(Oh, sorry. I was temporarily seized by the spirit of the age.)

Emphasizing the sexual part doesn't do the whole justice. Her series are witty and funny and at times moving and, yes, profound. See for yourself if you can.

In the late 1980's she also did some drawings for Traveller and GURPS. But her work for Lace & Steel was her most thorough RPG effort. That the game is now long out of print does not diminish its value or influence. For example, I would be surprised if James Raggi did not riff off of it for Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Used copies of the first edition are now hard to find and expensive. A second edition came out in 1998 but featured an inferior cover and a somewhat different one-volume layout. Inexplicably it discarded many of the best and largest drawings.

Donna Barr is a great asset to the wider hobby. OSR Art Friday is proud to feature her.

OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Dragon #67

This festive scene is from one of six covers that Jack Crane drew for Dragon Magazine. He also did some interior art for the magazine and wrote a short story, "The Legacy of Hortus", which appeared in Issue # 87.

Scott Taylor of Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature, recently did an illuminating interview with the artist here, from which we took most of the information below. Among other things, Crane stated:

I’ve always been a bit of a non-conformist, as is probably the case with most artists and creative types. And I’ve always rejected the “norm”, meaningless rules, and established styles for almost everything. My style of drawing is … my style of drawing … as is the case with most artists. And when I first started working for Dragon I was unambiguous about insisting that I never create art depicting one human being inflicting death or injury upon another human being … or any other sentient beings. This seems to be a predictable response to having spent four years in the military with one of those years in a war zone. Kim (Mohan) was perfectly comfortable with those parameters.

Fair enough. His pieces stand out from other fantasy offerings of the day partly for their whimsical humor and Art Nouveau-style use of shading and colors. Add another important mark to Old School art: it was diverse.

Luckily, he didn't apply his otherwise laudable philosophy to holiday turkeys.

The other covers, including the iconic Tree-Men in the Dismal Swamp (# 54) and the unforgettable Andragon (# 96) can be seen in the same Black Gate post, among other places.

Since the 1980's he has had a great diversity of non-fantasy art commissions including newspapers, trade, hobby and craft publications as well as three-dimensional legal displays for law firms. Recently he publicly returned to fantasy art, doing some work for Gygax Magazine. Great stuff.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

OSR Art Friday: World of Adventure Movie

World of Adventure, created by Riley Swift in 2006, is our first video entry in the OSR Art Friday series. Swift, who was already known in gaming circles for his set of Dungeon Majesty actual play videos, put this together for a fan movie contest. It won of course.

It's a perfect homage to early 80's D&D (has anyone created a more perfect one?), using seemingly found and modified TSR art as well as "original" pieces such as the big-hair nymphs or sexy shamans or whatever they are exactly, beckoning to the viewer in the opening seconds. There are dungeon corridors, more dungeon corridors, slithering things, skeletons and skulls and more skeletons and skulls including a giant skull with flashing jewel eyes. There are references to Spelljammer as well as tavern scenes and floofy wilderness settings with bards and maidens. My three-old son was looking at the video very intently and seriously, but then burst into a spontaneous and joyous laugh when the talking tree appeared.

Scott Martin of the metal/punk bands 400 Blows, Crom (the American one) and Big Business created the original heavy metalish soundtrack. Speaking of which, the whole video is sort of a shorter and more fun version of the 1981 film Heavy Metal. Again, remember, World of Adventure was made in 2006.

Swift would later be hired by HASBRO to use pieces of the movie to create thirty second television ads for the "Red Box" version of D&D 4e. Many Old Schoolers predictably sniffed at this as an attempt to portray a bad game in nostalgic terms it hadn't earned. They were right of course, but the ads are still fun. 

Dungeon Majesty (whose 2004 trailer is here) features Swift and four ladies sitting around a small table playing D&D 3.5 in a relatively demure if nerdy manner. However, the greenshot background shows the ladies dressed as their characters in cheesy but cool early 80's style costumes, sneaking through corridors and swinging their weapons. I'm not sure how many episodes there are but they seem to all be available from multiple sites. You either like this sort of thing or you don't. I like this sort of thing.

Swift is a graphic artist and video maker who directed and wrote the Multinauts, with a similar 70's/80's low-budget ambience. His website also features a diverse set of commissioned works ranging from the Intro to the Sophie Grace and Rosie Show, a toddler's website, rock and roll tee-shirts and a Disney Cars video featuring, of all things, the great Stooges song Search and Destroy.

Cool stuff all around. We wish him well.

But most of all, thanks for World of Adventure.

OSR Art Friday: Editing Batten (a long post with too many pictures at the end)

This post will be annoying to some of you in that you were probably expecting a pretty color picture. Instead you will be getting many black and white pictures.

And the featured artist of the day is not some 1970's luminary but well, me. Or rather, the featured artist is the brilliant John Dickson Batten, but the post is about what I did to him.

And if that doesn't irritate you enough, be warned, I will be doing some bragging (explained below).

The post is about how I edited the illustrations of Batten to better suit their inclusion in my four booklet game, Seven Voyages of Zylarthen. The bragging is not how about how great I am compared to you. I am not great compared to you. I expect that most of you reading this post are more experienced/adept/talented at editing illustrations than I am, and that many of you are familiar with illustrations programs that I haven't even heard of. No. I'm bragging because I did it. I did it. Knowing nothing about editing or graphic design, and being generally uncoordinated and not artistic, I nevertheless figured out (temporarily) how to (arguably) do a passable job at it. That's an accomplishment I want to brag about.

A few months ago I said this about Batten:

Finally, in regards to setting, I should mention the artwork of Zylarthen. There are close to a hundred pieces, all by the same artist--the turn of the century illustrator John Dickson Batten. I said elsewhere that once I had chosen the works of Batten, the art actually began to inform the setting and even the writing. Batten's works appeared in children's fairy-tale books. But appropriately enough they were also from a diversity of sources--English, Celtic, general European, Middle-Eastern and Indian. In my humble view, the art was not merely the best art I could find for free, but was in fact precisely right for what I was trying to do. I couldn't have paid for anything better. To the extent that Zylarthen as a visual or physical product succeeds it does so due to Batten. But equally importantly, to the extent the setting and tone are interesting or attractive is also I think due to Batten. Indeed, he deserves an entire post, and will get one soon.

In the review of Zylarthen on the Save or Die! podcast. DM Liz paid the product one of its finest compliments do date (I think). To paraphrase, despite the fact that the art was public domain from approximately a hundred years ago, each piece still seemed appropriate to the subject or the page. It enhanced the work rather than looking just tacked on to fill up space. (Then her husband emphasized the point by making a joke: "hey what's that 57' Chevy doing there?")

I think it worked for three reasons:

1. The art itself. Now, Batten didn't draw illustrations for dungeon expeditions, obviously. But the exotic, fairytale vibe was exactly right for what I was trying to do.
2. Having drawn hundreds of illustrations for nine books, there were enough of them so that I could make informed choices as to appropriate pieces to use.
3. I edited most of the illustrations. Obviously many of them worked on their own without any (or hardly any) touch ups. But I think if I hadn't edited the rest, they would have looked forced or slightly inappropriate. The editing was a crucial part of the process.

And some of the editing was for tone. Many of Batten's fairytale drawings were comical. I didn't want a severe tone, but I didn't wan't it silly either.

So part of this is bragging (see above). Again, not I'm so great, but, rather I did it. Most of it was just whiting stuff out, which is easy and actually almost cathartic.

I used the free program Gimp. I only learned 5% of it, but it was all I needed.

In a handful of cases I actually pasted a few images. In two instances, I actually drew small bits of my own. Once I actually sketched a foot.

But the main message is, it wasn't hard. If I could do it, you can. I suspect many of you could almost do it with your eyes closed.

So enough of these boring words. The rest of the post will feature a long line of actual examples. I think this sort of thing is interesting, but you are pardoned if you think it goes on for too long.

Before precedes After:

To me, the odd hand angle was reminiscent of the Judges Guild "Flying Turkey".

The Ducks were silly.

The original was too busy.

This was one of the only cases where I pasted something in (I duplicated the dagger). I don't know. I thought a second dagger might be more effective in combat than a mask.

Better just a corpse than a corpse with a silly man standing over him.

I love this monster. I think it's a Solian.

This was ironic in that I took a fantastical drawing and made it more mundane. The Boar went from two heads to one.

From silly to (hopefully) sinister.

The original was too well-known to leave as is.

Pure greed.

Dungeons don't have beds. Okay, maybe they don't have curtains either, but still...

The original was fine but the bird didn't fit.

This was my second choice for the magic cover. The first was a great drawing, but it just didn't seem to work on its own. I think this one works. I liked the contrast in that it was the only cover not featuring a person.

Away with that little man!

I'm not sure this totally works but people seem to like it.

These bottles were lifted from various places.

Okay, I'm proud of these drums (look on the top). Also, note that I removed the lute from the otherwise identical picture on the back cover of Volume 4 (see the blog heading picture). It just seemed too much. But that's probably just me.

I'm sort of proud of this. I edited out the arm and of course re-angled it. But the design in the center is obviously kind of screwed-up, especially if you look at it closely. I banked on readers not looking at it closely, mentally processing it as "oh, a rug", and then quickly moving on.  

Too many angels, or bird women or whatever.

I like this sullen creature.

Again, the original was too busy...

So there it is. Part of the method to my madness. Perhaps exposing the method was too much--oh dear, the magic is gone! But I figure we're all adults here and are enough interested in the craft of game design such that the above might be entertaining and useful.

It's not perfect. I know that. But we tried. This is part of how we tried...

OSR Art Friday: Cover of City State of the Invincible Overlord

Yes, I think this is art.

The OSR and the Old School products that it draws from is as much about aesthetics as anything else. And in turn, aesthetics is as much about the overall presentation as it is about, say, any particular illustration. Finally, fun cover hype (when it is justified) is part of the overall presentation.

Here it is for $9.00 (or $22.20, adjusting for inflation). Why should you buy it? Here are a few reasons:

1. It's a fascinating Swords & Sorcery World!
2. There's a Huge 34" x 44" Judge's Map of the City State!
3. Also, there's a 17" x 22" Player's Map!
4. With a Forty Page Guide!
5. it's a Huge Referee's Guide for Fantasy Games!
6. And it also includes Thunderhold, a 11" x 17" Castle of the Dwarven King!
7. There are Two Booklets of Rules, Rumors and Renegades!
8. And Ten Dungeon Levels!
9. It's endorsed by Dave Arneson, Famous Fantasy Game Author!
10. And The Entire Playing Aid Includes Seven Mapsheets & Eighty Pages...

It's like an ad from your one of your childhood comic books: 500 plastic soldiers AND 15 pieces of artillery AND 500 enemy soldiers AND three individually molded, authentically designed jeeps, for only $2.99 plus shipping! (please allow 7-12 weeks for delivery, no C.O.D.s).

I also love those circles--each filled with such promise--that show you what's being so enthusiastically described.

The cover hype of City State was justified. This is not the first edition, but it's substantially similar. Apparently when it first came out it blew everyone away. It blew me away when I first saw it.

An entire city?!! And Ten Dungeon Levels?!! And Thunderhold (just in case)?!!

Okay, so in small print we read: "Fantasy Game System Not Included". Presumably you have one of those if you've managed to get this far. Also, the "Recommended Age" is "15 and up". That just makes it all the richer if you're younger.

Speaking of fifteen-year olds, that warrior on the flying horse was drawn by someone who was still two years away from that. I'm going to quote a full passage on this from Fight On! #3:

The Origin of the "Flying Turkey" by Bob Bledsaw II: I was a lad of thirteen when the first boxes of printed Judges Guild product got stacked in my bedroom. I had aspirations of being an artist, with some talent in cartoon-ing. My father came to me and said that he needed a logo for the company, perhaps a man riding a dragon instead of a horse, “waving a cutlass like one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Roughriders.” A dragon felt a bit too TSR-ish, so I offered a Pegasus, as it was horse-like enough, and he agreed. I drew the “flying turkey” in 30 minutes, and off he went to have it printed. It was in pencil with intricate shading and detail, but the printer informed him that it would work better in multipurpose application if it was inked. Dad took out an engineering .00 pen from his pocket (a leftover from his work at General Electric) and inked it quickly on the counter while the printer looked on. Because of his rush, he failed to ink the fingers of the raised right hand and accidentally faced it back. That is why the ‘flying turkey’, as he called it, has, if you look closely, a left hand on his right arm.

Well, those days are gone, obviously, with all of their associated stories. And I can only feel a bit melancholy when I read about them.

OSR Art Friday: Cover of The Dragon #37

The piece is by Darlene Pekul and appeared in the May 1980 issue.

I am fond of it partly because it graced the cover of one of the first issues of The Dragon that I purchased, and thus it helped to define the look of the game for me. Its pastel colors and serenity provided a neat contrast with the usual fare.

Oddly, I never noticed the skulls until now.

Pekul (who legally changed her name to the one-word and capitalized 'DARLENE' in 1984) was one of the most prolific of the early TSR artists. Indeed, that same issue of The Dragon seemed to feature her work on almost every page, from city and wilderness illustrations—'From the City of Brass to Dead Orc Pass'—to calligraphy and background design—Out on a Limb, Leomund's Tiny Hut—to the comic strip, Jasmine, which would run for twelve issues.

She also was responsible for the 'fat unicorn' on the title page of the Dungeon Master's Guide, the cover and interior art for a number of TSR adventure modules and perhaps most famously, the full-color map of the Flanaess for the 1980 World of Greyhawk release.

The neat illustration below (also in the DMG), probably contributed to good old-fashioned mutual suspicion among players as much as any other single thing:

Curiously, Image Googling 'Darlene Pekul' or even 'Darlene Pekul The Dragon' or 'Darlene Pekul Dragon Magazine' does not yield this OSR Art Friday's featured piece. Doing a reverse search seems to imply that it has rarely, if ever, been previously discussed or featured. I hope this post, in its small way, helps to redress that.