Did I mention it’s dark? Yeah, a lot of David’s work is pretty dark, and it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (which is an oddly inappropriate expression to use when talking about monsters, zombies, and the like), but there’s a comic/pulp feel his work that I really like.

More than just the style, though, there’s a sense of anticipation in a lot of Hartman’s work that I think gamers will find inspiring. There’s almost always something just about to happen. It’s often something not very nice. But the people in these scenes aren’t passively awaiting their fate. As often as not, they’ve got a gun or a knife or an axe, and they’re poised to confront the awful thing that’s closing on them.

My favorites are:

• Revere – Paul Revere (one imagines) fighting off werewolves.
• Space Man – a classic sci-fi work with humans and hostile aliens (or, I don’t know, aliens and hostile humans)
• Sea Killer – Vikings having a rough day

David’s done quite a bit of commercial work for folks like Rob Zombie, MTV, and Warner Brothers. His work includes the Bruce Campbell movie, Bubba Ho-tep, several animated TV series, comic books, and even some work for game industry folks like Green Ronin Press. The biggest surprise to me though, after spending some time on his site, was learning that he directed “My Friends Tigger & Pooh”. I can only hope that the creatures from SideshowMonkey.com live far from The Hundred Acre Wood (or that Pooh is a lot more fierce than he lets on).

The fact that I stumbled upon David’s site only by accident, even though he’s obviously well-known in some circles, led me to point other gamers in his direction. I’ll go one better though–I got David’s permission to use some of his work as avatars for the EpicTable site. By the time you’ve read this, there will likely be a nice, shiny, new batch of avatars in the EpicTable forum, courtesy of David Hartman. So, if you don’t have an avatar of your own for the EpicTable forum yet, make your way over there and pick one out!

My Life with Master is, by all accounts, part of the story game canon. The premise is that the player characters are minions of an evil master. Quite unlike the typical, heroic characters of D&D or other RPGs, the minion player characters are deeply flawed. They struggle to find the courage and the will to resist the increasingly malicious commands of the Master. There’s no Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution here, folks. You’re working with the Fear and Reason of the environment, and your character’s Love, Weariness, and Self-Loathing. The characters strive to establish connections with the fearful townsfolk, thereby gaining enough love (basically, human connectedness) to finally turn against the evil Master.

“It didn’t matter that my character was not powerful in the traditional sense.”

Here’s an example of just how different My Life with Master can be. My character, Ilian, was a young man who had been beaten and kept locked in a small room for most of his life. His only companionship was that of a family of small birds, and his only joy, their songs and visits to his solitary window. Upon his parents’ death, Ilian was freed from the prison of his room, but found that he remained trapped within himself. Having almost never spoken with other people, Ilian’s speech was littered with irratic halts and starts. His mannerisms were birdlike–abrupt and nervous; his darting glances, half-fearful, half-furtive. The townsfolk shunned the odd young man, driving him into the clutches of the Master.

From a game mechanics perspective, Ilian was all but incapable or unwilling to defending himself physically. And his only special talent was his ability to imitate bird calls. Who needs a magic sword, when you’ve got all this going for you?

Now, I imagine that one can create more capable characters than Ilian. In a sense, I was trying to stay as far from D&D as I could, because this was a new experience for me. But here’s the thing: It didn’t matter to the game that my character was not powerful in the traditional sense. From a roleplaying perspective, and in the pursuit of making connections with the townsfolk, he was as playable as any of the other characters. That’s what’s so compelling about a game like My Life with Master. Playing a character like Ilian definitely changed the way I approached situations, but it didn’t make me less capable of dealing with them. The mechanics of the game not only support roleplaying, they demand roleplaying.

My Life with Master is a roleplaying game by Paul Czege. You can learn more at http://www.halfmeme.com/master.html. If you’re interested in playing My Life with Master (and you should be), you’re likely to find players and GMs at the Four Ugly Monsters forum or Pixels and Polyhedrons.

My plotting was thrown into high gear this weekend when I just stumbled upon the album, “Necronomicon”, from a band called Nox Arcana.

This album is the perfect complement to horror in the desert. It has lots of references to the Cthulhu Mythos, but it’s mostly instrumental, so it’ll work with lots of different settings. Several tracks have a distinct Eastern flair that works nicely if your next adventure involves deserts and mummies and other creepiness. Whether your game is fantasy or pulp horror or sci-fi, there’s always room for something ancient and sandy and horrifying. (Seems like there should be a joke there….) So pour yourself a cup of coffee, put on the headphones, and let Nox Arcana help you write the characters’ demise next heroic exploit.