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Today’s #RPGaDay2015 topic is Favorite RPG Illustration. There are so many I could choose from that I’ve loved: The covers of STAR FRONTIERS and JUSTICE INCORPORATED (a cover I loved so much, in fact, that I licensed the artwork so that I could re-use it for Adamant’s THRILLING TALES Savage Worlds book, and also offer it as as a poster), interior illustrations such as Tim Bradstreet’s work on the first edition rulebook for VAMPIRE: THE MASQUERADE, or Jim Holloway’s work on the first edition of CHILL, or even re-used artwork from non-RPG sources, such as the color plate inserts from the Games Workshop hardcover edition of CALL OF CTHULHU, which used a bunch of horror art, including The Croglin Vampire by Les Edwards. I could go on and on.

Despite all these fantastic choices, though, I’m going to pick something which isn’t particularly flashy or dynamic — a simple pen-and-ink illustration of two characters. This was the interior title page illustration from the very first RPG I ever owned or played, TSR’s first edition of TOP SECRET. The illustration is by Jeff Dee:

That’s it. With that one picture, with the flared pants and the turtleneck, with the pistols and the expressions on the characters’ faces, Jeff Dee managed to distill turn-of-the-80s Spy Cool. I knew that within those pages, I could create a spy to put James Bond to shame. I know it looks really goofy now, but that illustration grabbed me and didn’t let go — and that’s what an RPG illustration SHOULD do.

Here’s Dave Chapman, who talks about his choice (which is another of my favorites), with special guest Jon Hodgson from Cubicle 7 who talks about several of his:

Welcome to Day 11 of #RPGaDay2015, and today’s topic is another tough one: Favorite RPG Writer. Now, after yesterday’s pains to avoid setting one group of friends above any others, you’d think that I’ve have similar difficulty with this topic — and even more so, since it requires that I name ONE person. Well, funny enough, that’s not actually true. I thought it would be the case, but when I thought about my answer, I realized that none of the other game writers that I know would feel slighted or give me any push-back on this choice at all. I’m pretty sure that upon hearing my choice, almost everyone working in the business would nod their heads and say “yeah, fair enough.”

My favorite RPG writer is Ken Hite. I’ve known Ken for about 20 years or so, first through his work with Steve Jackson Games on various GURPS titles and his absolutely brilliant SUPPRESSED TRANSMISSIONS online column and collected editions. From then, up until recently, with his work for Pelgrane Press (notably TRAIL OF CTHULHU, and supplements like SHADOWS OVER FILMLAND and BOOKHOUNDS OF LONDON, to his spies-vs-vampires game NIGHT’S BLACK AGENTS), Ken has never failed to impress the hell out of me with his sharp mind, inventive concepts and erudite prose. The stuff that he casually tosses out as mere conversation, never to revisit, is the kind of stuff that most writers would kill to have come up with. I am reminded of something that Robert Rodriguez once said about Quentin Tarantino, which I feel definitely applies here: Being friends with him is like being friends with Clark Kent… He’s just like any one of your other friends… and then you see something he’s created and get reminded: Oh yeah, he’s also Superman.

So that’s my answer. Let’s check in with Dave Chapman to see his…

Today’s topic for #RPGaDay2015 is a difficult one: Favorite RPG Publisher. This is difficult for a couple of reasons: One, there are a metric ass-ton of games publshers out there, and quite a lot of them are truly excellent, which would make narrowing the choice down to a single publisher much more effort than I’m willing to expend for a brief blog post. Two, I work in the industry, and most of the publishers out there are either owned by my friends, or have friends of mine working for them in some way. This, as you might imagine, makes the choice difficult because I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by saying that Friend Company A is my favorite, while Friends B through ZZZ are not. There are precious few rewards to working in this business, and I don’t want to add to anyone’s burdens by saying “sorry, pal, but I like this other guy’s stuff better than yours.”

It seems that Dave Chapman has given me a good way out of this though, in his video entry:

Dave, smartly, chooses a publisher from the past. So, I’ll go with that… sort of.

For me, my Favorite RPG Publisher is, hands-down, Chaosium of the 1980s. I’d probably extend that into the early 90s, but for me, the heyday was the 80s. Not only the seminal CALL OF CTHULHU (obviously), but other games that I devoured at the time: SUPERWORLD. THIEVES’ WORLD, STORMBRINGER (whose cover I chose to illustrate this entry, rather than going for the obvious Cthulhu boxed set), HAWKMOON, RUNEQUEST, RINGWORLD, DIFFERENT WORLDS magazine. My fudging of the timeline to allow for the early 90s is entirely due to the launching of the Chaosium fiction line in 1993, whose collections of Mythos stories still grace my shelves, 20+ years later.

So why do I say “sort of?” Well, because the news broke, right around GenCon, that Greg Stafford, founder of Chaosium, and Sandy Petersen, designer of CALL OF CTHULHU, have taken back control of the company, and are looking to bring it back to prominence, aided by an ownership group which includes the fine folks from Moon Publications, the most recent publishers of Stafford’s Glorantha setting. So, yes — My favorite publisher is Chaosium of the 80s/early 90s… but I’m holding out hope that the NEW/old Chaosium will return to that glory.