News — Jim Holloway

The first thing that strikes me about Dragon #67 is the cover, which is a bit of a divergence from the standard stuff people were growing used to from Dragon.  Instead of the basic adventure fantasy and S&S images, we are greeted with a fantasy dinner party complete with sword-wielding Viking slicing a turkey down the center.   What exactly does this mean?  I guess you’d have to ask the artist, Jack Crane, or perhaps the Kim Mohan who was the Editor-in-Chief.  Whatever the case, I’ll accept it for face value, a bit of old school tongue-in-cheek humor for the...

Now, I think each of you know that Dragon Magazine had certain ‘ages’, meaning that there are plateaus of greatness involved in the magazine.  First and foremost, you had the inception issues, the first two dozen that helped define a budding RPG industry, and afterward, from issue 25-100, you had what could arguably be considered the Golden Age of Dragon, where the magazine was nearing the pinnacle of everything it could be and TSR ruled over the RPG universe. Today’s issue hits within the wheelhouse of the Golden Age, as Dragon #89 is an absolute masterwork.  I mean, if you...

Today I’m taking a bit of a divergence from my standard RPG art reviews because I wanted to talk a bit about building an RPG.  Recently, I had the possibility of a RPG project fall to me here at Art of the Genre and I have to say I’m struggling with it.  Not, per se, the creation of the system itself, but instead what I want from a game I’d take the time to build.  Back in 1985 I built my first RPG, a post-apocalyptic shout out to Mad Max called ‘Future Warrior’.  It had roughly a hybrid D&D base...

Someone back in 1982, my assumption being Jim Roslof, thought it would be a good idea to let a single artist handle all the art responsibilities for a single AD&D adventure module.  What came next was an inspirational series that helped define Jim Holloway’s career at TSR, either for better or for worse. To me, the creation of I3: Pharaoh, written by Tracy and Laura Hickman, is genre defining adventure that is the first step in distancing TSR from the 1970s module prototype, which I have to say is no easy task.  I3 has more polish, more maps, and yes,...

I feel like, as I do a Dragon Magazine review each week, I’m getting too late in the magazine’s run for the bulk of my readers to remember them, as though, sometime around 1990, everyone stopped reading Dragon.  In truth, that is probably very true, but nonetheless, I’ll keep reviewing whatever random issue I pull out of my collection each week. This week brings Dragon #173 from September 1991.  It is a Dark Sun dedicated issue and therefore is chocked full of both Brom and Tom Baxa artwork.  Edited by Roger E. Moore, the top articles in this particular volume...