Environmental Art

I had not thought about this until recently, but you really don't see a lot of environmental art in RPG materials.You see a lot of character art, definitely. You see a lot of specialized object art of things like lockpicks and grappling hooks, swords and axes, coins, etc. But you don't get many environments. Forgotten Realms is my favorite campaign setting of all time, despite all it's flaws. Yet, I would have no idea what the spine of the world looked like unless I played Icewind Dale on my computer.

This may sound like an unimportant detail, but lets think about it further. I have read a lot of people attribute the success of the Lord of the Rings (book) to it's incredible descriptions. A lot of the text is descriptive and has little to do with the story itself, but it draws a powerful fantastical landscape in your mind. Who hasn't wanted to move to New Zealand after watching the Lord of the Rings movies? Environments may seem tangential to "the game" but they may very well be essential to the experience.

Due to my unique position as a free game designer, I can use non-commercial creative commons art and photography for no cost, only an attribution. Furthermore, I have been able to secure far far more art than most commercial projects of the same size. Cascade Failure has nearly 1 piece of art per page, Synapse is in the 1-2 page range, and my other books are close behind. I have gotten a lot of praise for my art direction on these projects, nearly every person who has sent me comments leads off their discussion with a note about art. Perhaps it isn't just the volume of art, but also the kind of art.

I have a lot of character art, but in general that kind of art is harder for me to acquire than landscapes. So I put a lot of environmental pieces in my work. Castles on mountainsides, people looking out over endless fields, a lone farmstead on a hilltop. These kind of images draw out the imagination in a way that character art has a hard time doing. You may look at a character and think "that is a cool person" but you look at a landscape and think "I want to be there". Like a first-person shooter video game, the player often spends more time thinking about the world around them than how they look within that world. Perhaps art of the WORLD is more important than art of the PEOPLE in that world.

I don't know how definitive I can be on this theory of art direction, but in the past 24 hours I have secured access to a lot of environmental art for Devil's Fork. So I will be able to really paint a picture of what this place looks like for you. I am anxious to see how people feel that it differs from what they are used to.

It was hard to choose just a single piece for this post, but here is a piece to tempt you. In the book, it will have a filter on it that makes it look more like a painting, but this is the raw photography. Click for full view, it is an amazing piece. Enjoy!