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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 months

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A year in illustration, 2023 edition (part one)

(This is part one; part two is here.)

I am objectively very bad at visual art. I am bad at vision, period – I'm astigmatic, shortsighted, color blind, and often miss visual details others see. I can't even draw a stick-figure. To top things off, I have cataracts in both eyes and my book publishing/touring schedule is so intense that I keep having to reschedule the surgeries. But despite my vast visual deficits, I thoroughly enjoy making collages for this blog.

For many years now – decades – I've been illustrating my blog posts by mixing public domain and Creative Commons art with work that I can make a good fair use case for. As bad as art as I may be, all this practice has paid off. Call it unseemly, but I think I'm turning out some terrific illustrations – not all the time, but often enough.

Last year, I rounded up my best art of the year:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/25/a-year-in-illustration/

And I liked reflecting on the year's art so much, I decided I'd do it again. Be sure to scroll to the bottom for some downloadables – freely usable images that I painstakingly cut up with the lasso tool in The Gimp.

The original AD&D hardcover cover art is seared into my psyche. For several years, there were few images I looked at so closely as these. When Hasbro pulled some world-beatingly sleazy stuff with the Open Gaming License, I knew just how to mod Dave Trampier's 'Eve Of Moloch' from the cover of the Players' Handbook. Thankfully, bigger nerds than me have identified all the fonts in the image, making the remix a doddle.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/12/beg-forgiveness-ask-permission/#whats-a-copyright-exception

Even though I don't keep logs or collect any analytics, I can say with confidence that "Tiktok's Enshittification" was the most popular thing I published on Pluralistic this year. I mixed some public domain Brother's Grimm art, mixed with a classic caricature of Boss Tweed, and some very cheesy royalty-free/open access influencer graphics. One gingerbread cottage social media trap, coming up:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

To illustrate the idea of overcoming walking-the-plank fear (as a metaphor for writing when it feels like you suck) I mixed public domain stock of a plank, a high building and legs, along with a procedurally generated Matrix "code waterfall" and a vertiginous spiral ganked from a Heinz Bunse photo of a German office lobby.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/22/walking-the-plank/

Finding a tasteful way to illustrate a story about Johnson & Johnson losing a court case after it spent a generation tricking women into dusting their vulvas with asbestos-tainted talcum was a challenge. The tulip (featured in many public domain images) was a natural starting point. I mixed it with Jesse Wagstaff's image of a Burning Man dust-storm and Mike Mozart's shelf-shot of a J&J talcum bottle.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/01/j-and-j-jk/#risible-gambit

"Google's Chatbot Panic" is about Google's long history of being stampeded into doing stupid things because its competitors are doing them. Once it was Yahoo, now it's Bing. Tenniel's Tweedle Dee and Dum were a good starting point. I mixed in one of several Humpty Dumpty editorial cartoon images from 19th century political coverage that I painstakingly cut out with the lasso tool on a long plane-ride. This is one of my favorite Humpties, I just love the little 19th C businessmen trying to keep him from falling! I finished it off with HAL 9000's glowing red eye, my standard 'this is about AI' image, which I got from Cryteria's CC-licensed SVG.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/02/16/tweedledumber/#easily-spooked

Though I started writing about Luddites in my January, 2022 Locus column, 2023 was the Year of the Luddite, thanks to Brian Merchant's outstanding Blood In the Machine:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/26/enochs-hammer/#thats-fronkonsteen

When it came time to illustrate "Gig Work Is the Opposite of Steampunk," I found a public domain weaver's loft, and put one of Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes in the window. Magpie Killjoy's Steampunk Magazine poster, 'Love the Machine, Hate the Factory,' completed the look.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/12/gig-work-is-the-opposite-of-steampunk/

For the "small, non-profit school" that got used as an excuse to bail out Silicon Valley Bank, I brought back Humpty Dumpty, mixing him with a Hogwartsian castle, a brick wall texture, and an ornate, gilded frame. I love how this one came out. This Humpty was made for the SVB bailout.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/23/small-nonprofit-school/#north-country-school

The RESTRICT Act would have federally banned Tiktok – a proposal that was both technically unworkable and unconstitutional. I found an early 20th century editorial cartoon depicting Uncle Sam behind a fortress wall that was keeping a downtrodden refugee family out of America. I got rid of most of the family, giving the dad a Tiktok logo head, and I put Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes over each cannonmouth. Three Boss Tweed moneybag-head caricatures, adorned with Big Tech logos, rounded it out.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/30/tik-tok-tow/#good-politics-for-electoral-victories

When Flickr took decisive action to purge the copyleft trolls who'd been abusing its platform, I knew I wanted to illustrate this with Lucifer being cast out of heaven, and the very best one of those comes from John Milton, who is conveniently well in the public domain. The Flickr logo suggested a bicolored streaming-light-of-heaven motif that just made it.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/01/pixsynnussija/#pilkunnussija

Old mainframe ads are a great source of stock for a "Computer Says No" image. And Congress being a public building, there are lots of federal (and hence public domain) images of its facade.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/04/cbo-says-no/#wealth-tax

When I wrote about the Clarence Thomas/Harlan Crow bribery scandal, it was easy to find Mr. Kjetil Ree's great image of the Supreme Court building. Thomas being a federal judge, it was easy to find a government photo of his head, but it's impossible to find an image of him in robes at a decent resolution. Luckily, there are tons of other federal judges who've been photographed in their robes! Boss Tweed with the dollar-sign head was a great stand-in for Harlan Crow (no one knows what he looks like anyway). Gilding Thomas's robes was a simple matter of superimposing a gold texture and twiddling with the layers.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/06/clarence-thomas/#harlan-crow

"Gig apps trap reverse centaurs in wage-stealing Skinner boxes" is one of my best titles. This is the post where I introduce the idea of "twiddling" as part of the theory of enshittification, and explain how it relates to "reverse centaurs" – people who assist machines, rather than the other way around. Finding a CC licensed modular synth was much harder than I thought, but I found Stephen Drake's image and stitched it into a mandala. Cutting out the horse's head for the reverse centaur was a lot of work (manes are a huuuuge pain in the ass), but I love how his head sits on the public domain high-viz-wearing warehouse worker's body I cut up (thanks, OSHA!). Seeing as this is an horrors-of-automation story, Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes make an appearance.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/12/algorithmic-wage-discrimination/#fishers-of-men

Rockefeller's greatest contribution to our culture was inspiring many excellent unflattering caricatures. The IWW's many-fists-turning-into-one-fist image made it easy to have the collective might of workers toppling the original robber-baron.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

I link to this post explaining how to make good Mastodon threads at least once a week, so it's a good thing the graphic turned out so well. Close-cropping the threads from a public domain yarn tangle worked out great. Eugen Rochko's Mastodon logo was and is the only Affero-licensed image ever to appear on Pluralistic.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/16/how-to-make-the-least-worst-mastodon-threads/

I spent hours on the sofa one night painstakingly cutting up and reassembling the cover art from a science fiction pulp. I have a folder full of color-corrected, high-rez scans from an 18th century anatomy textbook, and the cross-section head-and-brain is the best of the lot.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/04/analytical-democratic-theory/#epistocratic-delusions

Those old French anatomical drawings are an endless source of delight to me. Take one cross-sectioned noggin, mix in an old PC mainboard, and a vector art illo of a virtuous cycle with some of Cryteria's HAL9000 eyes and you've got a great illustration of Google's brain-worms.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/14/googles-ai-hype-circle/

Ireland's privacy regulator is but a plaything in Big Tech's hand, but it's goddamned hard to find an open-access Garda car. I manually dressed some public domain car art in Garda livery, painstakingly tracing it over the panels. The (public domain) baby's knit cap really hides the seams from replacing the baby's head with HAL9000's eye.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

Naked-guy-in-a-barrel bankruptcy images feel like something you can find in an old Collier's or Punch, but I came up snake-eyes and ended up frankensteining a naked body into a barrel for the George Washington crest on the Washington State flag. It came out well, but harvesting the body parts from old muscle-beach photos left George with some really big guns. I tried five different pairs of suspenders here before just drawing in black polyhedrons with little grey dots for rivets.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/03/when-the-tide-goes-out/#passive-income

Illustrating Amazon's dominance over the EU coulda been easy – just stick Amazon 'A's in place of the yellow stars that form a ring on the EU flag. So I decided to riff on Plutarch's Alexander, out of lands to conquer. Rama's statue legs were nice and high-rez. I had my choice of public domain ruin images, though it was harder thank expected to find a good Amazon box as a plinth for those broken-off legs.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/14/flywheel-shyster-and-flywheel/#unfulfilled-by-amazon

God help me, I could not stop playing with this image of a demon-haunted IoT car. All those reflections! The knife sticking out of the steering wheel, the multiple Munsch 'Scream'ers, etc etc. The more I patchked with it, the better it got, though. This one's a banger.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

To depict a "data-driven dictatorship," I ganked elements of heavily beribboned Russian military dress uniforms, replacing the head with HAL9000's eye. I turned the foreground into the crowds from the Nuremberg rallies and filled the sky with Matrix code waterfall.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/26/dictators-dilemma/#garbage-in-garbage-out-garbage-back-in

The best thing about analogizing DRM to demonic possession is the wealth of medieval artwork to choose from . This one comes from the 11th century 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros.' I mixed in the shiny red Tesla (working those reflections!), and a Tesla charger to make my point.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

Yet more dividends from those old French anatomical plates: a flayed skull, a detached jaw, a quack electronic gadget, a Wachowski code waterfall and some HAL 9000 eyes and you've got a truly unsettling image of machine-compelled speech.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/02/self-incrimination/#wei-bai-bai

I had no idea this would work out so well, but daaaamn, crossfading between a Wachowski code waterfall and a motherboard behind a roiling thundercloud is dank af.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/03/there-is-no-cloud/#only-other-peoples-computers

Of all the turkeys-voting-for-Christmas self-owns conservative culture warriors fall for, few can rival the "banning junk fees is woke" hustle. Slap a US-flag Punisher logo on and old-time card imprinter, add a GOP logo to a red credit-card blank, and then throw in a rustic barn countertop and you've got a junk-fee extracter fit for the Cracker Barrel.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

Putting the Verizon logo on the Hinderberg was an obvious gambit (even if I did have to mess with the flames a lot), but the cutout of Paul Marcarelli as the 'can you hear me now?' guy, desaturated and contrast-matched, made it sing.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/10/smartest-guys-in-the-room/#can-you-hear-me-now

Note to self: Tux the Penguin is really easy to source in free/open formats! He looks great with HAL9000 eyes.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/18/openwashing/#you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think-it-means-what-you-think-it-means

Rockwell's self-portrait image is a classic; that made it a natural for a HAL9000-style remix about AI art. I put a bunch of time into chopping and remixing Rockwell's signature to give it that AI look, and added as many fingers as would fit on each hand.

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/20/everything-made-by-an-ai-is-in-the-public-domain/

(Images: Heinz Bunse, West Midlands Police, Christopher Sessums, CC BY-SA 2.0; Mike Mozart, Jesse Wagstaff, Stephen Drake, Steve Jurvetson, syvwlch, Doc Searls, https://www.flickr.com/photos/mosaic36/14231376315, Chatham House, CC BY 2.0; Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; Mr. Kjetil Ree, Trevor Parscal, Rama, “Soldiers of Russia” Cultural Center, Russian Airborne Troops Press Service, CC BY-SA 3.0; Raimond Spekking, CC BY 4.0; Drahtlos, CC BY-SA 4.0; Eugen Rochko, Affero; modified)

#pluralistic #illustration #collage #fair use #creative commons #stock art #blogging #art #practice makes perfect

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chronotsr · 3 days

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No. 3 - G3, Hall of the Fire Giant King (July 1978)

Author(s): Gary Gygax Artist(s): Erol Otus, Dave C. Sutherland III (cover), David A. Trampier Level range: Average of 9, preferably 5+ players Theme: Standard Swords and Sorcery Major re-releases: G1-3 Against the Giants, GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders, Against the Giants: The Liberation of Geoff, Dungeon #200, Tales from the Yawning Portal

So that was a little disappointing. But maybe it just middles in the middle? C'mon Gary, let's see that special skill I've heard so much about.

G3 begins how G2 ended: teleporting conveniently on the outskirts of the fortress in such a way as to skip a trek without surprising the players. Meh. Our big bad this time is King Snurre -- I haven't mentioned the Chieftains yet because they're all just midbosses compared to the this guy. And, he's kind of famous isn't he?

For a guy who is functionally a one-off NPC that the party presumably kills, he ends up in a lot of paintings. Not that I'm complaining, that 4e art is amazing. In fact, broadly, 4e's art is a little underrated, it benefits from being less restrained than 5e. I don't think that's a knock on 5e's artists, more like…the art direction seems to be intentionally tamer. Anyway, thank you 4e art, I never realized there was a dog in the background of the 5e PHB until now. Neat.

Yada yada yada the setup is exactly the same as before, but now it's got ~mordor vibes~. As far as changes change, these fire giants (even the children) expressly do not do morale checks because apparently Snurre is such a motherfucker. Scary!

Anyway, we're already in the room-by-room, so let's begin the juicy part:

There's a scooby doo trap with a tapestry in the doorway having holes for eyes so a giant guard can alert the entire building if the players don't catch it. That's evil! But not unfair, which is a good balance. Naturally, there is a ballista tripwire on revisit that does some nasty damage, so this hallway is just The Troll Zone

Snurre has two pet hellhounds leashed to his throne, but also he's wearing a white dragonskin as a cloak at all times, which overcomes his natural aversion to cold with MAGIC. What an asshole! Also, as you look at that picture from the 5e cover, there's a bevy of (unimportant) changes from the original, like Snurre is no longer in his signature pitch-black platemail, but I think special mention should go to the fact that in the original he has literally 60k worth of precious stones on his person and scattered throughout the architecture of the throne room. This room should be GLEAMING.

A Gygaxism: Queen Frupy is a 'haradin', which roughly means 'scold', which. Ok. So, so much attention is given to how uggo she is (to Gary). Actually, I think the description of her armor is kinda cool, she wears black dragonskin, studded with iron (so by Runescape logic I guess she's good with a bow?). Reaper Minis did a character that sort-of resembles the description, but their Vanja has a spear where Frupy uses a scepter:

You can actually negotiate with her, the implication of the text is that she's unreasonable but…just ignore that. Lol.

She also has a magic mirror (implied to be a furniture mirror, not a hand mirror) that reveals invisible creatures in the reflection, which is kind of awesome. Good way to catch assassins! Somehow the drow are using a gifted necklace to spy on them, but I feel like the mirror probably should've revealed in some way (maybe the mirror was also a drow gift?) She's more astute than she lets on, because she has a huge stash of mind control crap in her dresser drawers for emergencies.

????????????????????????????

Keeping with the "giant leader's treasure sucks" tradition, Snurre's treasure is genuinely crazy. It occupies a FULL PAGE, and each INDIVIDUAL TRUNK has a listing and an explicit mention of the traps. Traps range from a standard scything trap to secret snakes to the treasure being invisible to contact poison. How the hell does Snurre use this room? You're telling me he never fucked up remembering which of the 13 chests were trapped in which way? Oh, also, they're pick-proof, because fuck you thief. Naturally, the loot itself is also a fucking trap, because while there is some truly amazing stuff in there (20 randomized magic items, a decent amount of valuables, a +3 ring of protection, and a ring of 3 wishes), there is also lots of troll items (statues with a stacking curse of -1 to all tests, ring of contrariness, ring of delusion). On the whole, a big fuck you to the party. Oh, and while the locks are unpickable, you can shoot them off with magic missile, which is…why?

Snurre's dwarf-slave-advisor is bizarrely well equipped and loyal, and given the opportunity to escape he will…backstab the party. As much as people complain about how early DND has too many save or die traps, I genuinely think the regularity with which rescued npcs betray the party is a waaaaaay dumber and more ridiculous trend. I simply cannot fathom why someone as smart as Obmi would choose to keep being a slave to Snurre when adventurers showed up with the ability to free him. Honestly? Take his big lie and make it true. The lie makes sense because it makes more sense than the canon character.

The scroll that finally tips at the motivation of the giants is, no kidding, scroll #68 of almost 450 paper items, none of which are mentioned. The weird need for a number baffles me.

The kitchen is doing some lateral thinking and using one of the gas vents as a gas stove, which is hilarious.

Oh, we're only now to level 2?

All of the former kings are entombed in a Giant Tomb, which, that is entirely too cool of a visual for them to have not included a visual. In a fucking grave mistake, this room is cut from the 4e remake, so there is no incredible art of it. There is no justice.

If you somehow didn't kill the hill giant chieftain AND you didn't get him in G2, he's here in G3. And he brought the pet bears!

Gary, you're such an asshole. No one would ever think to throw their cool mace into the lava pit mid combat. This is just trolling.

🤷 Guess I'll die

"The were-rats, if losing, will turn into rats and flee down the drain" That is, actually an incredible escape plan, except that we have pre-established that this Hall is founded upon LAVA AND COOKING-HOT GAS.

Fuck the party I guess

You often hear people who got into ADND in the late 1e/2e era talk about how people speculated that Hommlet must lead to Temple of Elemental Evil because of hints about the Elemental Eye and, honestly it just kind of feels like Gary defaults to the Eye. It has come up in every scenario he has written so far (which admittedly is 2 so far), but with the power of Knowing What Comes Next I can assure you that this is going to keep happening. Anyway, there is a temple to the Eye here, complete with human sacrifice, and the allusion to tentacles eating people is already starting to signpost what we now know is true: It's Tharizdun. The Eye is Tharizdun. It always comes back to Cthulhus!

A lot of early players clearly enjoyed Poking Random Shit because if you decide to touch the Elemental Eye's altar and also play every musical instrument in the room, you get to make every person in the room roll on this table, AND also execute whichever player is nearest to the altar (no save). But, hey, you will suddenly get whatever you want most on the altar. If you are somehow dumb enough to do it again, there's a 1 in 12 chance you get a +1 in all stats, a 2 in 12 chance of something extremely bad happening, and a 9 in 12 chance nothing happens.

Would genuinely like to know how many GMs bothered following this instruction. It does teleport you towards the final encounter, so that's something.

An entire page is dedicated to disarming the tentacle wall magic trap, which to be honest looks like it'd repel a significant percentage of players because you either need an evil cleric or some good magic to dispel the wall, and the wall punishes the shit out of you for trying to disarm it. To be a mild devil's advocate, the tentacle wall IS super suspiciously placed (the shape of the room implies it's going somewhere), so at least it's not also super esoteric. If you DO bypass it, you are now the proud winner of the "discover the drow" award! Woah, elves but they're ontologically evil??????????????????????????????????? Truly novel! Eclavdra, head of the drow here, hangs out doing nothing in particular, and you may unceremoniously execute her if you want to bring her storyline to an unceremonious end.

The frost giants are here from last module, if they survived. They really want you to kill these kings!

No really why did they used to draw trolls like that

This adventure just won't end. There's a surprising amount to say about this module given that it's only 22 pages of monster murder and motherfucker traps. Anyway, welcome to level 3!

There are fake dragons here to troll you into getting excited for loot

The fire giants also have a panic room? Every giant has a panic room. Why are panic rooms so normal in the G series?

A SECOND fake dragon that is actually a gorgon, which is almost funny

Finally, a REAL red dragon, which is frankly cruelty to fool me three times

After many, many drow are fought, you eventually run into a magic-fighter drow noble who has a wand of "viscid globs", which despite the suggestive name, is actually a superglue gun? You can literally rip yourself apart trying to separate yourself from a glued object. It's a really, really bizarre item. And it has a LOT of charges -- 79.

Mercifully, finally, something that could be potentially interesting: Eclavdra's rival is hanging out in the basement and can be sweetalked into helping the party screw over Eclavdra, which. FINALLY. However, if you displease her, it's demon time.

For reasons I cannot fathom, there are mind flayers here observing the drow, and the drow are not super bothered by that.

And that's basically it! at the very end they find a tube with a map and a wish leading to the D series, and a quick explainer on the then-new Drow. Well, not that quick, it's a page and a half, but the conceptualization of the drow is basically unchanged between then and now. Evil elves, forced underground, adapted to living there, dark skin, magic spidersilk clothes and adamantine weapons, sunlight sensitivity, drow spell list.

On the whole, G3 is, an adventure. While yes the Drow twist is kind of neat (but not special, since Drow are functionally Melniboneans and Elric was already decades old at this point), mostly this module lacks the fun of G1 and substitutes lots of murder traps for any genuine creativity with the scenario. On the whole, I consider it…crowd pleasingly boring? Your treasure goblins will love it for how much nice stuff they can find, if they survive.

We will end today with the back cover, which features some hippogriff mounts. People just don't give parties flying mounts anymore, it's honestly strange the tradition died. See you in the D series later. And if you're waiting for more obscure modules…I can only promise one in 1978.

#1e #chronotsr #dnd #dungeons and dragons #tsr #ttrpg #adnd

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