What art inspires your game?

RPGaDAY is all about being positive, but it’s also about being honest & exposing ourselves a little bit. ~ So, I can honestly say “it depends”, and sometimes “it doesn’t”.

But let me explain….

I’m interpreting this question to mean “art” in the visual sense. Cool pictures, paintings, illustrations, etc. Stuff you would find in RPGs and other places like book covers or that great source of truth & beauty ~ the internet.

I like art, I really do. Quite a bit actually. Some pictures are quite evocative of a mood or a setting. Very often they fire the imagination. I tend to find those not actually connected to any game or other media to be the most inspiring, as I can make up what they are about. This can come from anywhere, but I suppose the common denominator is the ability to determine for myself what it is. My imagination isn’t constrained by what it’s supposed to represent or what it’s connected to.

The actual art in RPGs is hit or miss for me. Some of the art from my youth is so iconic that it never fails to make me smile. There are games that have art that matches up so perfectly with the images that I get in my head that it inspires me to want to play the game. Masks has art that just jives with how the game makes me feel when I read it. ~ Vigilante City by Eric Bloat is another one that has art that just lines up perfectly with the images that I get in my head. The fact that when you look at the art in those games it might not match the images in your head is kind of irrelevant. Art is funny like that, and so are human imaginations.

There are plenty of other RPG books where the art ranges from annoying to distracting. Very often this is nothing more than a conflict between how I imagine the scenarios & characters that the game describes & how the artist conceives of them.

When it comes right down to it, art is a crap shoot for me. Sometimes it is extremely evocative & inspirational, & other times it conflicts so strongly with my own imagination that it gets in the way & I have to do my best to ignore it.

If a picture is worth a thousand words then sometimes the guy with the mic has your undivided attention, & other times you just wish that he would stop talking.