Visual Milieu 2: Bill Willingham

Despite being a key member of TSR's 2ND-Wave (1977-82) art team, Bill Willingham is probably best known as a comics creator. His writing and/or art has appeared in any number of titles since the early 1980s, including Green Lantern, Batman & the Outsiders, Elementals, Coventry, and Fables. His success in comics comes with no little irony given that critics of his Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) visuals often argue that their "cartoony" character is ill suited to "serious" fantasy gaming.

Be that as it may, D&D's sensibilities were undoubtedly influenced by the comic books of the 1960s and 1970s [1] -- which, along with cheap paperback books, were the pulp literature of the day. And Willingham is no different than a host of other '70s pop artists -- John Byrne, Jeff Dee, Keith Giffen, and Barry Windsor-Smith, among others -- who understood that cartooning (as opposed to illustration) could engage consumers, especially pre-teens and teens, as effectively as any then-current style.

Willingham's TSR efforts were slick, inviting, and dynamic precisely because they tapped into the ethos of the era's comic books. His work may lack the visceral weirdness of Erol Otus's renderings or the high-fantasy realism of later (post-1982) D&D imagery, but there's no disputing that Willingham helped define the game as a pop-cultural artifact, fully in tune with artistic trends of the day.

Note

[1] In a recent interview, Timothy Kask reiterated the oft-noted fact that Marvel Comics' Doctor Strange led to the psionics system presented in Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry. The general impact of comic books, including Marvel's Conan the Barbarian, on the game's early development has routinely been noted by both observers and participants, including Robert Kuntz.

Links of Interest

• "Bill Willingham" (Tome of Treasures)

• "Bill Willingham" (WordPress)

• "Bill Willingham and the Iconography of D&D" (Corky.net)

• "Bill Willingham Interview" (The Comics Journal)

GenCon 2013: Moldvay's The Lost City

The 2013 Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) Open Championship at GenCon (Aug 15-18) will feature a 4TH-Edition homage to adventure module B4: The Lost City by Tom Moldvay:

[. . .] A challenge for experienced players, this adventure features five 7th-level pre-generated characters. The city of Cynidicea was once the capital of a rich and fertile kingdom. It fell into chaos and ruin when its people turned to the worship of a terrible monster called Zargon. Now, hundreds of years after the fall of Cynidicea, the cult of Zargon has returned, more dangerous than ever. The only way to stop them is at the source: Zargon must be destroyed.

This year's Championship is inspired by the classic B4: The Lost City by Tom Moldvay. This event consists of an open entry round, with top-scoring tables participating in a final round on Sunday. The format and scoring have returned to a more free-form play style, so come try your hand at a return to the classic style of the D&D Championship.

B/X D&D Florilegium

This slim red volume emerged before us as a brilliant piece of game design that not only changed our world with it's own bright light, but looking from the vantage of 1981, I can see that this game changed THE world. This world of dark dungeons and savage encounters slowly crept out into ours, from hobby shops to basements, to computer labs and movie screens. And we're all better off for having adventured in it, even if the game isn't played quite the same anymore. (Luke Crane, creator, Burning Wheel RPG – Jun 2012)

• • •

Basic D&D, the version released in 1981 and assembled by Tom Moldvay, is a big inspiration [for D&D Next]. It’s a complete game in 64 pages and covers the essence of D&D in a compact package. (Mike Mearls, Sr. Manager, D&D R&D – May 2012)

• • •

The second edition [of Basic D&D] [. . .] is the best possible introduction to the D&D game. [. . .]

I think the new Basic Set rules are an improvement over the first edition. Not a big quantum jump ahead, but better in a number of minor ways. I’m proud of the original Basic Set, and I like to think I did a good job of describing a great invention, the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS game, so that everyone could enjoy it. The nicest compliment I ever got for it was from a game-store manager who said, “That’s made a lot of people happy.” May the new edition do the same. (Dr. J. Eric Holmes, editor, Basic D&D 1e – Aug 1981)

Site Update 1

A serious family illness is likely to sidetrack my posting plans over the next couple-three weeks. Things should eventually settle down, but I'm not yet sure how long it will be before I can return to my "normal" frequency. In the interim, I include below a list of the posts I'm planning to make as I have the time and energy to do so.

• D&D: 1977-82
• D&D: 1982-83
• Laying the Foundations: Errata
• Laying the Foundations: Pulp Fantasy
• Visual Milieu 2: Bill Willingham
• Visual Milieu: Diesel (David LaForce)
• Visual Milieu: Jeff Dee

Visual Milieu 1: Erol Otus

Roleplaying games come alive, both in the imagination and at the table, through a mixture of visual, verbal, and mathematical elements. Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) was, from the very beginning, at least partly defined by its distinctive pop-art visuals. Indeed, a case can be made that the game's art appealed as much (or more) to new players as its premises or mechanics ever did -- fantasy worlds are rendered most real, after all, by the imagery they entail, whether painted by words or by brushes.

By 1976-77 D&D's visual style had evolved, with an eclectic look akin to the book covers, record jackets, and alternative comix of the time replacing the fan art seen in the original 1974 booklets. Erol Otus was one of a handful of artists who came to embody TSR's 2ND-Wave (1977-82) artistic sensibility. Nearly every fan of Moldvay-Cook-Marsh D&D knows, for example, that it's Otus's paintings that grace the box (and rulebook) covers for the Basic and Expert (B/X) sets -- the power of his storytelling calls to viewers as palpably as the contents, leaving little doubt about the appeal of B/X D&D's pulp-fantasy milieu.

Otus's images most often depict, or at least imply, ongoing narratives of one sort or another, while his visceral pop style combines elements elsewhere seen in 1930s pulp illustrations, 1970s sf-fantasy paperbacks, and early Iron Maiden album covers. Most of his efforts were for 1e Advanced D&D products, but the power of his B/X visuals indelibly marked those rules' incipient diegesis -- the implied world in which game events are said to unfold -- and added a countercultural edge that the later work of Larry Elmore, Jeff Easley, and Clyde Caldwell (among others) never contemplates.

Links of Interest

• "Art Evolution Special: Erol Otus" (BlackGate.com)

• "Erol Otus" (Tome of Treasures)

• The Erol Otus Shrine (Tumblr)

• "An Interview with Fantasy Artist Erol Otus" (Tor.com)

Laying the Foundations, Pt. 3

Whether it's Nike's swoosh logo or McDonald's golden arches, Apple's iPhone or Heinz ketchup, corporate and product brands capture the attention of (and in/directly engage) nearly everyone on a daily basis. Modern branding was born in the mid- to late 19c, maturing in parallel with a middle class all too eager to spend its leisure time and money, but it's the nearly seventy years since 1945 that chart our current relationship with companies via brand recognition, brand identification, brand loyalty, etc. Indeed, the proliferation of technical terms for how we interact with brands is itself a sign of their intimate role in our contemporary lives.

As I noted in a recent post, TSR Hobbies, Inc., first began to exhibit its own brand self-awareness during the period from mid-1975 to mid-1977 -- moving to a slicker trade dress for its products, launching a hobby-wide magazine (The Dragon), adopting a pictocentric logo (the D&D lizard man). The culmination of that process, however, would be nearly a decade in coming, and perhaps inevitably, it was a process that would both reflect and reconfigure the company's identity and implied values as well as re/define its employees, customers, and critics. So many changes had occurred by the end of 1985, in fact, that TSR constituted an entirely different brand.

Because B/X D&D was on the market during the years just prior to those changes' culmination, it's worth keeping their trajectory in mind. Not every individual development did or could impact the Basic D&D line, but each and every one of them reflects the TSR brand's destination, one that was fast approaching even as the 1981 rules continued to sit on store shelves.

• Adventure modules went through two redesigns between 1978 and 1983, eventually settling on a more modern logo and cover presentation. The innards were likewise adapted to a more rigid "customer-friendly" template -- heavy reliance on boxed text (to be read aloud by the DM) is perhaps the most widely recognized of those interior changes.

• In mid-1983 BD&D underwent a mass-market retooling under the auspices of Frank Mentzer, accompanied by Larry Elmore artwork. BECMI became the "gold standard" for the non-Advanced D&D line, and while many of its rules were either identical to or only slightly modified from the 1981 edition, its sensibility is much more mainstream and consumer (i.e. pre-teen and teen) friendly.

• AD&D's hardcover rulebooks were likewise updated, beginning with 1983's Monster Manual II. All previous releases, with the exception of Fiend Folio, were reprinted to match. (Deities & Demigods was renamed Legends & Lore to forestall criticism from conservative critics, clergy, and parents.) The orange spines and sleeker artwork of Jeff Easley remain visual hallmarks of those versions, at least for my generation.

• TSR had always published games other than D&D, but a cadre of RPGs occupied the company's shelves by 1985. Gangbusters 1e (1982), Star Frontiers 1e (1982), and Gamma World 2e (1983) joined Top Secret 2e (1980), Boot Hill 2e (1979), AD&D, and BECMI. Not to mention the licensed properties that routinely made their way into TSR's catalog -- Marvel Comics' superheroes (1984), Conan (1984) and (later, in 1986) Red Sonja, Indiana Jones (1984), and Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar (1985) all put in appearances.

• The much-loved Dungeons & Dragons Saturday-morning cartoon ran for three seasons between 1983 and 1985, capitalizing on the game's growing popularity and vaulting it into the mainstream in a way no other RPG property has ever managed. And whether due to Gen-X nostalgia or their quality of production (or both), they remain highly popular, easily besting D&D's more recent adventures in live-action Hollywood.

D&D: 1976-77

This post is the second in a series of chronological reviews illustrating my "wave and transition" approach to Dungeons & Dragon's development. I would again emphasize that these posts are cursory at best; additional details will be presented as I begin focused analyses of individual creators, products, etc. in the months to come.

Pt. 1 - D&D: 1970-76

Transitional Period B (1976-77)

The first production-level hints of D&D's growing market and marketing success appear in late 1975. Chainmail 3e gains a slick silver cover. The original D&D (OD&D) boxed set gains new cover art and goes all white. Timothy Kask becomes TSR's first outside editorial hire, taking over, among a slew of other duties, as editor of Strategic Review with issue 5 (Dec 1975). But by 1976-77 the company's growth and branding changes are impossible to ignore.

On the creative side, Dave Arneson, Mike Carr, [1] and David Sutherland are brought into the official TSR stable during the spring of 1976 -- though Arneson, continually more frustrated, is already gone by the end of that year. James Ward solidifies his position within the company, coauthoring Supplement IV: Gods, Demi-gods & Heroes (Jul 1976) with Robert Kuntz and designing Metamorphosis Alpha (late 1976). [2] Tom Wham joins the crew as a staff artist and board-game designer in May 1977.

By mid-1976, Kask has overseen the transition of house-organ Strategic Review from newsletter to magazine before further transforming it into a bonafide gaming publication (The Dragon) with outside content. [3] Articles in both reveal a continuing emphasis on retrofitting and otherwise tinkering with the 1974 OD&D rules.

Generic materials like hex sheets and polyhedral dice had been early additions to the TSR catalog, but its first branded D&D accessories are released in 1977 in the form of Character Record Sheets and Dungeon Geomorphs, Set 1 -- the latter is an idea teased as early as Strategic Review #5 (Dec 1975, p. 7). If nothing else, those products suggest that TSR sees play aids as a supplemental revenue stream, with game content (especially adventure and setting details) being something customers could and would create for themselves.

OD&D's final two supplements as well as its miniatures rules have slick two-tone or color covers -- in contrast to Greyhawk and Blackmoor's rough tan card stock.

And the cardstock gaming booklets of 1974-76 soon become the monochrome and color rulebooks of 1976-77.

The company's stylized GK (Gygax-Kaye) monogram is replaced by a D&D-style lizard man in Sep 1975. [4] Thus, even the smallest details make it clear that TSR sees itself as an increasingly important player in the gaming market, one whose brand is as important as its content.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .

Notes

[1] Carr's popular Fight in the Skies (AKA Dawn Patrol) was acquired from Guidon Games, with the fifth edition appearing under TSR's imprint in 1975. Carr would go on, among other things, to author the first Basic D&D adventure module B1: In Search of the Unknown (Nov 1978), which was eventually bundled with J. Eric Holmes' D&D rules revision (Jul 1977) in later printings of the "Basic Set" box.

[2] Gary Gygax and Brian Blume's Warriors of Mars predates Metamorphosis Alpha by two-plus years, but given the former's emphasis on miniatures, most commentators consider the latter the first true science-fiction roleplaying game.

[3] Strategic Review had a seven-issue run between Spr 1975 and Apr 1976, the last three issues being clear (i.e. magazine-format) precursors to The Dragon, the first issue of which is cover dated Jun 1976.

[4]  The lizard-man logo was itself replaced in late 1978 by a wand-wielding wizard. "Wizard" was the title for an 11th-level OD&D Magic-User and, later, incorporated into TSR's catchphrase "The Game Wizards."