Sunday 2 October 2016

If Romantic-era artists ran D&D campaigns 2: Back by popular demand!


you asked for it and now it is happening and you have no-one to blame but yourselves

Benjamin West (1738-1820): Started as a wargamer; wrote his own mass battle system and uses it whenever he gets the chance. His system broke down spectacularly when he tried to use it to model 'Everyone vs. the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and also a lion' at the end of a long-running campaign.

Image result for the battle of la hogue benjamin west


John Flaxman (1755-1826): Has a long-running Mazes and Minotaurs campaign, all about the exploits of a bunch of heroic warriors who go around battling monsters in Mythic Greece. Doesn't understand why so many of his friends, including Blake and Fuseli, insist on  making their games so weird and creepy all the time.

Image result for john flaxman mythology

Image result for john flaxman odyssey

Image result for john flaxman odyssey

Joseph Gandy (1771-1843): His love of dungeons grew so great that he ended up running games in which the dungeons functioned as the setting, the antagonist, and the treasure, all at the same time. His players swiftly learned that, when all treasure hauls came in the form of thousand-pound lumps of statuary, teams of hirelings are not optional.

Image result for joseph gandy jupiter

Image result for joseph gandy soames

Image result for joseph gandy museum

JMW Turner (1775-1851): A devotee of ultralight abstract minimalism, determined to boil the game down to its purest essence. Has pruned OD&D down to two pages and is always looking for opportunities for further cutting. Smiles enigmatically when people point out that, under his rules, there's no difference between a monster and a natural hazard like a wave or a storm.


Image result for jmw turner hero and leander


Image result for jmw turner heidelberg


Image result for jmw turner ulysses deriding polyphemus
Can you spot the cyclops?
Eugène Delacroix (1798-1863): At his best when running bloody, grubby campaigns about low-lives and violence. Runs Al Qadim whenever anyone will let him, but tends to get a bit carried away with his breathless descriptions of naked harem girls.

Image result for Eugène Delacroix paintings

Image result for Eugène Delacroix brigand

Image result for the death of sardanapalus

Samuel Palmer (1805-1881): Began as one of William Blake's players, but started his own group after the disintegration of Blake's long-running 'Jerusalem' campaign. (The revelation that the PCs were Jerusalem all along didn't go down very well.) Loves fairytale adventures. A big fan of Beyond the Wall. Has never run a single scenario set during daylight hours.


Image result for samuel palmer the lonely tower

Image result for samuel palmer

Image result for samuel palmer

(See also: Jacques Callot at Honor and Intrigue, and Thomas Cole at Zenopus Archives. Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery!)

5 comments:

  1. I...really badly want to read Turner's ruleset.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like this style of writing. It reminds me of John Clarke's novel "The Tournament," where he writes about the accomplishments of famous people from the 20th century as though they were tennis players in the middle of a match.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think I am either Flaxman or Delacroix.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I did a few for the Symbolists/Decadents: http://bearded-devil.com/?p=1599

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nice! The random encounter tables are a nice touch...

      Delete