Artsy GMs

[Agent Oracle]

Lucky. The artist GM I had was.. how to say this... a fangirl of Yaoi? Every one of her NPC's was an ultra-bishonen. Oh, and she was a writer, so there was a metaplot we couldn't stop. She also got her "balance" ideas from the old world of darkness... our patron was an immortal sorceress. Our archenemy was her identical twin sister.

Half the time, by my guess, We were running missions for the evil one.

Of course, neither detected as good or evil, so they were probably just chaotic and lawful... if they weren't just both true neutral.

Every NPC was more interesting than the player characters. Our paladin's cohort was a 12-year-old elf boy... (Elves age differently in my world!) oh, and every race was different (To fit my world)

 

[Jack Morgan]

My best friend and i both draw, he's professionally good, whereas I am merely adeqaute. I do all the GMing, and lately he has been on me about the lack of art in the game- it's just that he's so much better I feel foolish putting any of my stuff in front of him, because he can do it twice as good in a quarter of the time.

grrrr.

 

[Gremory]

...our patron was an immortal sorceress. Our archenemy was her identical twin sister.

Half the time, by my guess, We were running missions for the evil one.

Of course, neither detected as good or evil, so they were probably just chaotic and lawful... if they weren't just both true neutral.

That part actually sounds incredibly cool.

 

[Mitchbones]

Lucky. The artist GM I had was.. how to say this... a fangirl of Yaoi? Every one of her NPC's was an ultra-bishonen. Oh, and she was a writer, so there was a metaplot we couldn't stop. She also got her "balance" ideas from the old world of darkness... our patron was an immortal sorceress. Our archenemy was her identical twin sister.

Half the time, by my guess, We were running missions for the evil one.

Of course, neither detected as good or evil, so they were probably just chaotic and lawful... if they weren't just both true neutral.

Every NPC was more interesting than the player characters. Our paladin's cohort was a 12-year-old elf boy... (Elves age differently in my world!) oh, and every race was different (To fit my world)

This story makes baby jesus cry :'(

I am thinking about letting one of my players who loves to draw, draw up some sketches for me and get a little exp orsomething as a reward.

 

[Agent Oracle]

That part actually sounds incredibly cool.

No, no it wasn't. It was aggravating because we KNEW that they were identical, and one was "evil" and one was "good", and there was no way to tell them apart... because they both acted exactly the same way and had exactly the same freaking characteristics, they weren't even left / right handed, so we wound up robbing three of the four major world religions (oh, she made up her own religions too.)

This story makes baby jesus cry :'(

Thank you for understanding. She was a great player, and a good friend, but dear god if that campaign didn't burn my butt in retrospect.

 

[Hussar]

For my online games, I'm guilty of robbing the Internet for images to use in my games.

In my Shelzar game, I did try to keep with a theme for art and clothing. I dunno how close I was, but I did make the attempt. For example, the clothing was all "Arabic" styles, but, probably from all sorts of time periods. It was close enough for us, but, to anyone with any background knowledge in the cultures, it was probably very wrong.

Although, I did learn that Taureg peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa were amazingly cool for mining ideas from. A very large portion of my images came from there. OTOH, the map of Shelzar was a modified 15th century map of Constantinople, and the buildings were anything and everything so long as it had turrets and onions on top.

 

[Nyaricus]

I actually have been an artist for many years, and draw out maps and small scees for my players; usually I get a couple positive comments about how cool the visual aid is

I also try to get pictures from all over the net to give my campaigns a "look". I love art, and I think fantasy is half about the cool visuals, so it's onlt natural for me to do this. Mostly, though, it's for more important NPCs, but "grunts" sometimes get a pic or two. I don't deluge the game in pics though, so players might only see a couple to a few every session.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

As an artist and a living history enthusiast, it always bugs me to see campaign worlds with no unified theme insofar as what people wear in the illustrations. Eberron is the biggest culprit of this; in one picture, you have a guy dressed as a medieval crusader, while in another picture, you have someone in a Victorian frock coat. Sometimes they're in the same picture. It's extremely jarring.

Ditto. I guess it's a historian thing, since that is what leaves me 'blah' when it comes to Eberron. I really like a lot of the ideas taken seperately, but the ideas don't seem to fit together for me.

 

[Aeric]

Ditto. I guess it's a historian thing, since that is what leaves me 'blah' when it comes to Eberron. I really like a lot of the ideas taken seperately, but the ideas don't seem to fit together for me.

The Five Nations book gives general descriptions of the various nations' clothing style, but for the most part it is really generic, and the artwork doesn't support the text descriptions. Sometimes I wonder if they even have an art editor working on these books.

 

[shilsen]

As an artist and a living history enthusiast, it always bugs me to see campaign worlds with no unified theme insofar as what people wear in the illustrations.

I'm with you on the unified theme.

Eberron is the biggest culprit of this; in one picture, you have a guy dressed as a medieval crusader, while in another picture, you have someone in a Victorian frock coat. Sometimes they're in the same picture. It's extremely jarring.

It's not at all a problem for me, because I don't expect clothing styles in a fantasy campaign setting to develop in the order they did in our history. In a world where neither the medieval period nor the Victorian period as we know them ever existed, it's quite reasonable that clothing styles reminiscent of each developed and are in existence at the same time. At least to me.