James' RPG Art is a way to prep a scene instantly -RPG Artist Spotlight

[@DaveThaumavore]

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[@carltonbauheimer]

This turned out to be a LOT more interesting than i thought it would

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@carltonbauheimer good to hear!

[@tabletop.will.phillips]

I've become enamored with this approach and use it for my in-person games (I tend to avoid VTTs): art cards for each "zone" within a larger scene allow for players to visualize the location and give just smidge of tactical positioning to think about. With the proliferation of easily available art out there, I think James is taking an interesting approach to focus on VTTs with the animated flourishes.

[@opscontaylor8195]

Alchemy is about the only VTT I actually understand the interfaces for, which is hilarious because I work in IT and Roll20 seems purpose built to confuse everyone.

[@007nikster2]

For a couple years now, I have been in search of a program that is like a D&D battle map maker (Dungeondraft, Campaign Cartographer, etc.) but makes scenes like this instead. You can drag, drop, and paint using premade assets, textures, and tools to quickly make scenes like this but it doesn't really exist. The closest I've seen so far has been the "Vistas" feature in the newly announced Ember Virtual Tabletop Roleplaying Game. Unfortunately it's only for that specific game and environment.

[@timothyyoung2962]

This is how I approach running many of my RPGs. I almost always illustrate the main characters of a plot (my own artwork), and I will occasionally do the same with a scene. Especially if the shear magnitude is best visualized as well as described... like the immensity of a mega block in a cyberpunk game or a gothic structure in a dark fantasy setting. I use maps to show basic position in relation to everything else, but no grids. I stay pretty loose in combat, a habit I have kept with me from running lots of CoC games in the past.

[@kimmoffat6429]

Been running games like this for years and its my favourite way. Especially when paired with MS style maps

[@ScyThe16SketZz]

Do you know more creators of animated images for scene? Especially for modern/ sci fi rpgs?

[@pickpocketpressrpgvideos6655]

I love the first person picture/scene approach. That's how I ran my last cyberpunk adventure - just showed pics of the club interior, street stalls, etc to the players and if a fight broke out they just described roughly where they were. Very minimal prep, easy to find an image on the interwebz. These looping illustrations however are gorgeous.

[@Pandariots]

These look amazing. I'm mostly a gridder but I can absolutely see a use for a ton of these.

[@juauke]

This is a so great way to run games! Love TotM but this might help me reduce prep a lot for my games!

[@EruditeDM]

I’m beginning to use more images to set a scene, too. I use images of npc’s and load them on another screen, hide the with fog of war, then reveal each when appropriate. I draw and upload my own simple maps. 👍🏼

[@samchafin4623]

Those are pretty! I love using scenes/anchor images. I'm not a great artist, but I'm confident enough that I will totally make a crude drawing at the table of places, things, PCs and NPCs. The players seem to get a kick out of it, too.

[@twistedturns65]

Alchemy RPG and this style of running the game is becoming my favorite way to run games.

[@ejsmith7626]

Epic its like the visual equivalent of background music

[@kalleendo7577]

Awesome!

[@G-Funk42]

I took the scene image approach to a couple of Savage Worlds campaigns that I ran on Roll20 back in 2020. My players seemed to prefer that to the gridded map approach, which was great because it involved a lot less prep, and a lot less troubleshooting in the middle of a Roll20 game. I'm glad to see that method of running a game on a VTT is catching on.

[@DaveThaumavore]

@@G-Funk42 nothing worse than troubleshooting a VTT in the middle of a game. Ugh.

[@megasquidd]

Dave, do you know if you get the access to the Ravenloft collection if you are a member or do you have to still purchase it for $50. I don't mind paying for things, but don't want to double pay. Thanks for letting me know.

[@thehubbleton]

I love how there's so much hate for AI-assisted art and yet the question is so often "Is this AI art?". I posit that if you don't know, it doesn't matter.