Gaming Clutter

I did a lot of gaming art in the early days of role-playing games, where the sourcebooks were simple black and white magazines and the equipment was dice, paper, and pencils. Not like the technocratic games of today where you need to invest hundreds of dollars on computer gear to play. I got commissions to illustrate entire games, like this one. It was called THE EVIL RUINS and took place in a haunted ruined castle. The writers crammed their game progress with all sorts of objects and environments which you would encounter and figure out how to treat them. "You enter a very dusty room with a mounted set of armor on a pedestal...the shield from the monument has the arms of the old dead King...the dwarf in your party hears something in the corridor.....etc." The characters were selected from the usual array of Tolkien races. Here is one of the most cluttered environments from the game.

Black ink on illustration board, 11" x 7", fall 1983. Click on the picture for a larger view.