News — Todd Lockwood

ART OF THE EARLY 40's; WELL THE DRAGON MAGAZINE EARLY 40's AT LEAST!

Bill Willingham Dragon Magazine Erol Otus Jack Crane Jeff Dee Jim Holloway Jim Roslof Todd Lockwood TSR

ART OF THE EARLY 40's; WELL THE DRAGON MAGAZINE EARLY 40's AT LEAST!

So yesterday I was reminded by artist Brian 'Glad' Thomas the Jim Holloway's first Dragon Magazine cover was actually #41.  This prompted me to take a look at that issue, and as I did, I noted just how many classic artists had b/w (and even color) pieces I'd never really known about before in there.  An hour, and five issues, later, I'd filled a nice little file with some really outstanding images that I thought I'd share with you all today, so I hope you enjoy! Good old Jack Crane had more than I realized in these issues, and I...

Read more →


Tome and Blood, a perfect piece of artistic gaming history

D&D 3.0 Todd Lockwood Wayne Reynolds Wizards of the Coast

I freely admit I was a huge fan of D&D 3E when it came out. I was there the first day it launched, leaving Circuit City on my lunch break to go to the mall in this little half-hidden comic shop to buy the Players Handbook. It had a couple of sample monsters in the back and I remember being completely confused by all the changes. Still, as I started playing, the system made sense, and the more I played the more I enjoyed. This joy was extended when I discovered WotC would be releasing character class Guide Books. Today,...

Read more →


The 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, certainly nothing forgettable about it!

D&D 3.0 Forgotten Realms Todd Lockwood Wizards of the Coast

Hey all, I just want to say again that over on Black Gate.com my ‘Top 10 RPG Artists’ article is in a knife fight death duel like Steven Segal versus Tommy Lee Jones in Under Siege with another article, so if you haven’t checked it out please help me out and do so here.Otherwise, I wanted to take a look at one of my all-time favorite gaming supplements, the 3E Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting because my friend Sean K. Reynolds announced yesterday he was leaving Paizo for my home state of Indiana and thus I dedicate the review to him.Released...

Read more →


The First Divergence: D&D 3.0

D&D 3.0 Todd Lockwood TSR Wizards of the Coast

Now certainly RPG art had been changing and metamorphosising since its inception, first from the likes Dee, Willingham, Otus, Roslof and other local talent in Wisconsin, then to the hiring of oil painters into the 1980s ‘pit’ with Easley, Elmore, Caldwell, and Parkinson, and finally to the addition of outside the box talents such as Baxa, Brom, and freelancers such as DiTerlizzi, but it wasn’t until the advent of the WotC D&D 3.0 that a full scale change began to take place market wide. Although D&D 3.0 might not be WoW for the tabletop, as it existed four years prior...

Read more →


Alternity: Player’s Handbook... why wasn't this Star Frontier 3rd Edition?

Alternity R.K. Post Todd Lockwood TSR

I really have no idea what the business concept behind TSR’s late-run science fiction RPG, Alternity, was.  Perhaps they’d long ago abandoned or lost the rights to Star Frontiers, but it seems incredibly odd not to do a revamp of that universe since it already had a strong fanbase and solid universe. Whatever the case, Alternity was created in 1998 and failed almost as quickly as TSR’s bottom line before being salvaged from the scrap heap by Wizards of the Coast.  Although the staff at TSR survived [roughly], Alternity did not, and the game has become more of an oddity...

Read more →