When reading a new role-playing game, art is often what makes the first impression. Before a reader can even begin to learn the rules or world of a game, they are going to be looking at the art to help them get a sense of what that game is all about.
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There are plenty of amazing games with little to no art, whether as a stylistic choice or a result of budgetary limitations, but it's hard to deny the extra flair added by a game with truly incredible art. Some TTRPGs showcase the best of the best when it comes to independently designed art direction.
10 Iron Edda Accelerated Has A Unique Take On Norse Mythology
What could possibly make Norse-inspired fantasy action even cooler? Giant bone mechs made from the skeletons of long-dead giants is the answer Tracy Barnett gives in Iron Edda Accelerated built on the Fate system. Such a specific premise needs some really stellar art to go along with it, and Matt Morrow, Lance MacCarty, and Theo Evans rise to the occasion. The artwork in Iron Edda Accelerated is dark and moody, with many scenes lit by firelight or deep in an alpine wood. For anyone looking for more, a new installment in the Iron Edda series is in the works after its successful 2021 Kickstarter campaign.
9 Damn The Man, Save The Music Has A Distinctive 90's Flair
Written by Hannah Shaffer and Evan Rowland, Damn the Man, Save the Music is about a small group of punks working to save their local independent record store from succumbing to "the Man." DtMStM leans heavily into a 90's aesthetic in both art and layout, with lots of bright colors, boxy shapes, and sketchy-looking fonts straight off a Dixie cup.
The cover and interior art really help set the tone and setting, with tons of fashion references and evocative scenes. Damn the Man, Save the Music was illustrated by Rowland, and the two designers worked together on the layout.
8 Hack The Planet Has A Specific Cyberpunk Vibe
Hack the Planet is not Fraser Simons' first foray into cyberpunk RPGs, but this game differs from his other game, The Veil, in some key stylistic ways. In Hack the Planet, the characters live in a city, Shelter 1, built to protect people against ever-worsening natural disasters, or Acts of God, caused by climate change. The artwork by Fabio Comin helps drive home this setting, with all his character illustrations feeling cosmopolitan and utilitarian. The very clothes they wear are indicative of how hostile the world has become in the face of increased industrialization.
7 Thousand Year Old Vampire Looks Like A Real Antique
Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings has the player taking on the role of an immortal vampire as they live on through the ages, gaining and losing memories with the passage of time. TYOV itself can act as the player's journal, as it contains space to write down the answers to various prompts. Thousand Year Old Vampire is filled with collage-style artwork from throughout history, sourced from a number of libraries and archives. Combined with a marbled paper cover designed to look like an antique folio.
6 Troika! Is Weird And Wonderful
The artwork in Troika! by the Melsonion Arts Council is trippy, unsettling, and somehow impossibly compelling. The science-fantasy game has a quirky sense of humor and strong aesthetic identity, both of which are wrapped up nicely in the artwork.
Strange heroes wander through roughly-sketched environments where the angles don't quite seem to add up, hauling in their packs all manner of unidentifiable objects. Jeremy Duncan, Dirk Detweiler Leichty, Sam Mameli, and Andrew Walter all contributed to the many illustrations throughout the book.
5 Lancer Has Giant Robots In Spades
Anyone looking for a host of great drawings of huge robots needs to look no further than Lancer by Massif Press. Contained within its nearly three hundred pages are dozens of illustrations of spacefarers, weird landscapes, and so many mechs. Every stock mech option has a full-page illustration to get the inspiration going. There are too many artists featured in Lancer to list, but a free version of the game can be found on Massif Press's store page with a complete list of all contributors.
4 Orbital Blues Brings The Retro Style
After a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign in the spring of 2021, Orbital Blues by SoulMuppet Publishing is finally seeing the light of day. This sad space-western game is all about vibes, and the art by Josh Clark and layout by Lone Archivist help convey its retrofuturistic setting really well.
Orbital Blues is chock full of chunky spaceships, in-universe advertisements for technology straight out of the 70s, and more than a few cool space-ponchos. If the table of contents styled to look like a classic diner menu doesn't grab readers right away, it's hard to imagine what would.
3 We Sail Beyond Is The Latest In A Line Of Greats
Almost everything published by SealedLibrary has a distinctive multicolored look, and We Sail Beyond is certainly no exception. Digital artist Saga Mackenzie uses a cyan, magenta, and yellow color scheme seen in other SealedLibrary games combined with images of bizarre sea creatures and hand-drawn maps to give this hex-crawl generation tool a look that makes it really jump off the page.
The layout by MA Guax is the icing on the cake, bringing the whole thing together into a product that is as fun to read as it is to play.
2 I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic Is Simple And Elegant
Bearing one of the best names in all of RPGs, I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic by Caro Asercion is filled with surreal images blending the natural and the artificial to make for a landscape of dreamlike beauty. The images are sourced from a zine by illustrator Shannon Kao called You Can't Get There From Here, which is full of similar artwork. Kao's website is home to more illustrations in this style, as well as a handful of comics.
1 Dialect Is As Beautiful As It Is Somber
The artwork in Dialect by Jill de Haan and Erica Williams incorporates imagery from nature as well as books and letters for a final result that is hauntingly beautiful, understatedly simple, and a joy to look at. de Haan incorporates text into leaves and flowers in a really beautiful way, underscoring the themes of language and communication in the game's mechanics. There is one image early in the book of a deer wading through a pond – its antlers draped in runes and the surface of the water dotted with lily pads and open books – that is truly otherworldly.
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