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)