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I don’t get it, I really don’t… Somewhere along the way RPG artist Wayne Reynolds became the whipping boy for everything that ever went wrong with RPG artwork, and frankly that is completely unfair and moronic.No matter the forum, any mention of Wayne Reynolds will inevitably bring up phrases like ‘Wayne Reynolds caused the failure of D&D’ or ‘I loathe Wayne Reynolds’ or ‘Wayne Reynolds makes me sick’, or my personal favorite ‘Wayne Reynolds is an absolute disgrace!’. I posted an article this week concerning the art for the D&D 3.0 Players Handbook, in which Wayne doesn’t even appear, and...

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...

Why do I love artist Janet Aulisio? There are really too many reasons to count, but it is safe to say her artwork has been a driving inspiration for me since I first saw it in 1990. Now granted, Janet’s work in the genre of fantasy and science fiction goes back well before that to novels and work on periodicals like Asimov’s, but to me it was her work on Shadowrun that captured my heart. Having had the opportunity to work with Janet over the years has always been a blessing, and she’s never disappointed in the way she takes...

In the transition between 1996 & 1997 Alderac Entertainment Group decided to invest in creating the Legend of the Five Rings RPG. The 1995 split with company founder Jolly Blackburn over the direction the company was headed, namely the CCG market, created an opportunity to expand that was not in Blackburn’s original designs. From the CCG of Legends of the Five Rings the RPG was also born and I say the world of role-playing is much better for it.Written by John Wick who I believe is the absolute best game designer of the past two decades [and yes this includes...

Today Art of the Genre is going to take a look at Paizo’s Pathfinder NPC Codex. However, before I begin I’d like to put this book into context.I few years back my oldest friends and I decided to go back and play a bit of AD&D 1E since we’d spent a decade playing 3rd Edition and its heir apparent Pathfinder. Now, that isn’t to say we no longer enjoyed Pathfinder, but it just felt like nostalgic variety was in order so we split our time between the two.I well remember sitting down to our first adventure and rediscovering what an...