RPG Books with the Best Art

[Autumnal]

The Symbaroum line has some amazing work.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Heh, the old First Edition book falls just a tad outside the “released within the last few years” parameters …

Oops. forgot that part when I was making my post.

Fine then, I love the art in the just released GEAS

 

[Jahydin]

Shadowdark for me!

Runner up would be Lancer though!

 

[Jahydin]

The Dark Souls book for 5E had some great art if you like darker imagery, to the point that it felt more like a coffee table book.

I might have to take a look...

 

[Older Beholder]

I might have to take a look...

Lots of full page art, unfortunately the rules felt a bit rushed so I can’t recommend it.
Worth a flick through if you see it in store, though.

 

[mcobden]

Mouseguard! I dont even play, I just like to flip through it. Even the border designs are great.

 

[Anon Adderlan]

If I had to pick it'd be Household and Wildsea.

 

[Gnostic Goblin]

Art is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I love early rpg pen&ink art. It has the feel it is made by normal people who are good at art, not by professional artists. Hiring artists is expensive. Putting creativity in to the hobby to make it better was from the outset an essential part of the hobby. Somehow that has been lost when the industry made everything glossy, when digital art replaced hand-craft with a bland wallpaper of really amazing images which seem invisible, possibly because I have seen so much of it before and am over-saturated with it. The OSR movement discusses 'doing it the old way' without often coming at it from the art angle and how art represents that original rawness verses the modern gloss.

I love the illustrations in WoD, especially Werewolf: the Apocalypse and Vampire: the Masquerade. Again, black and white line art, pen and ink. It has texture. There are several really good artists there. It is Tim Bradstreet whose name I remember the most, the work he did for those books, before he too one the way of glossy colourful digital blandness.

You can see from my profile pic how much an influence these specific things have been on my own art. That picture is an example from the series of an rpg product which I have in the pipeline. Having said that about glossy blandness from digital art, I confess I too use digital art apps rather more than I would like too, and hand-drawn pen&ink less than I should. I work with charcoal also. I'll keep ya'll updated about my goth rpg product as it develops.

 

[GM Lent]

Astonishing Sorcerers and Swordsmen of Hyperboria.

 

[Marc Radle]

Art is subjective. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
I love early rpg pen&ink art. It has the feel it is made by normal people who are good at art, not by professional artists. Hiring artists is expensive. Putting creativity in to the hobby to make it better was from the outset an essential part of the hobby. Somehow that has been lost when the industry …

Yep, I mentioned that art is subjective in my original post

This was a lot more editorializing than I was hoping for, and not really the place to promote your own work, but thanks for your thoughts all the same!