Spycraft cover art by Veronica V. Jones
Spycraft was a ground breaking modern spin on the, at the time, wondrous 3rd Edition Dungeons & Dragons RPG. The game was published by AEG and featured toolkits for generic espionage gaming as well as a spy-fi setting called Shadowforce Archer. While the game was pretty solid and still revered today, one of the most stunning aspects was the gaming books' cover art. The covers were created by Victoria V. Jones. She writes:
In 2001, Alderac Entertainment Group had a paranormal superspy game in development. They had a style in mind which would be black and white on black and would look gritty. The art director, Jim Pinto, sent out an email call for artists. I quickly put together a sample piece of what i had in mind and was happy to get the job.link
What followed was a surprising run. The two books I was initially contracted for turned into a run of 19 books as i did the covers for the entire first edition of the game, with additional books for licensed companies who wanted "the Spycraft look".
The following represent some of the best work I did for the line, including the licensed books. Enjoy!
Haha I like the "Mission: Highly Improbable" one! Witty.
ReplyDeleteIt's a pity that that was one of the very few books that was never released :(
DeleteMy favourite was the World Militaries one (8th one down) but I'm biased ;)
...And the Tomb Raider one. AEG had something against the UK, huh.
DeleteBoth were third-party projects unfortunately. Mission: Highly Improbable is the most famous Spycraft vapourware announced by its UK designers around the time the 1960s Decade Book was announced (as a sort of sister book) but their store became more successful (they run Fan Boy 3 in Manchester) and it kind of disappeared. The other was for Alex Flagg's titan campaign setting but the publishers of that disappeared when one oof the distribution companies collapsed.
ReplyDelete