The Worst RPG Covers of All Time

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Wow, guess I'm totally alone in this, but I don't mind this cover at all.

It actually makes me want to crack open the book to figure out what its all about.
The main issue I see with it is that it blends too much. You can't make out the different people involved unless you really look. Even with that, I still have no idea how the guy with the shoulder cannon's anatomy works.
 
The main issue I see with it is that it blends too much. You can't make out the different people involved unless you really look. Even with that, I still have no idea how the guy with the shoulder cannon's anatomy works.

Well, I like art that gets me to look closer to see all of it. Blame it on a mispent youth raised on Sergio Argones and Where's Waldo.

Some of the questions raised by the picture intrigue me; like why is the one lady serenely "hugging" off the creature's arm?
Where is that hand coming from that's pinching the creature's nose?
What is the white girl doing laying her hand on the creature's teeth?
 
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Wow, guess I'm totally alone in this, but I don't mind this cover at all.

It actually makes me want to crack open the book to figure out what its all about.
I don't mind it either but I am confused by what's going on. The hand one person mentioned I previously interpreted as another creatures mouth biting but that looks wrong on further review.
 
The mystery hand is a 40k-style powerfist of the bazooka dude. He's pulling the thing's mouth open so he can fire down the gullet. The drow chick doesn't have enough leverage to be pushing the mouth open, so I'm guessing a psionic thing, mind-meld or something or perhaps she's the source of the blue lightning? The other chick with the bio-organic arm/suit is going to decapitate what's left.
 
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That gets my vote. Red X is so overdone and puerile.
I linked to the image on the Board Game Geek file for High Fantasy, but apparently that didn't work. Maybe I can save the image or something. I'd also put Wizard's Realm up, if I could find a good image. It's actually a really nice line drawing with very bad coloring but it deserves to be on this list as does Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming, though, I still have a copy of that so I'll have to scan it.
 
Honestly, I've always thought it was a pretty bold move. If the posing and photography had been a little better they might have pulled it off. There used to be a site that showed a diorama of German soldiers getting on the train that was so good that you couldn't tell it wasn't real until the pictures zoomed in really close. It's fun when people do something different.
 
Elephant in the room:

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So memorably shitty. I remember being confused looking at this as a kid, I liked Erol Otus and much of the interior art (especially by Trampier) but this looked like something drawn by a twisted child.

Oddly no one ever mentions the original cover for the 1e DMG which may even be worse. The City of Brass on the back has a primitivist charm but the front cover...

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Thank God for Trampier.

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Undeniably it was an ambitious failure. While I'm all for trying something new, after the very first photo was developed, someone should have realized how terribad it looked. Certainly it's now infamous as a hilarious chapter in our hobby looking back.
 
I don't have much in the way of visual taste, so I have trouble seeing just what's so horrible about most of these covers. But that might mean something damning about the ones I actually do cringe at. Like, if it's bad enough to register to even my notoriously dull sensitivities... :tongue:

He ended up going with a different cover, so I may be cheating, but this thing is so ugly it deserves to be remembered.

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Okay, that's... red. That's... really, really red.


... why? Why would anyone do such a thing? :shock:

which reminds me...

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Er, okay, aside from the... questionable choice of where to place the focus of the image... What the hell is up with her face?
 
What really grinds my gears about some of these covers is the putrid combination of UGLY + LAZY. Those are the worst.

Like those green-tinted barbie dolls. That actually gives me a headache. I despise those with every fibre of my being.

I have a love/hate feeling about Monte Cook games (Numenera, the Strange etc.,..). There are a few great artists in there, but so much of it is lazy poser art (some using recycled, free assets) or when the artist isn't even TRYING to make their images NOT look like obvious computer graphic renderings.

On that note, I'm starting to dislike a lot of digital painting. The best ones, in my opinion, are practically indistinguishable from actual paintings. There are little signs, though: objects in the background being way too sharp and crisp and bright, elements that are blatantly copied + pasted and/or flipped, awkward foreshortening on characters making it obvious that they just painted over a Poser render and didn't bother to consider the depth of field or whatever (example: hand outstretched toward the camera is super tiny when it should be a larger).

I also despise that tendency in the 90s to make swords and armour impossibly elaborate and convoluted to the point that I can't even picture them being real at all.

Sorry.

</end rant>
 
So memorably shitty. I remember being confused looking at this as a kid, I liked Erol Otus and much of the interior art (especially by Trampier) but this looked like something drawn by a twisted child.

The Monster Manual cover always made me think of Colorforms. There was a background, and some kid had come along and stuck all these monsters down on it.

I got my AD&D books at the worst possible time. It was when the change in covers was midway. I got the original Monster Manual and DMG, but I got the Easley cover on the Players Handbook. That's not meant as a knock on Easley. I really like his art. The Trampier cover just has more iconic weight. And the two original covers I got are the ones where the replacement was clearly better.
I don't have much in the way of visual taste, so I have trouble seeing just what's so horrible about most of these covers. But that might mean something damning about the ones I actually do cringe at. Like, if it's bad enough to register to even my notoriously dull sensitivities... :tongue:

I'd say that a lot the one in this thread, while not great, aren't really in the category of "worst RPG covers of all time". And some of them are just bad in the sense of being a poor match for the game.

On that note, I'm starting to dislike a lot of digital painting. The best ones, in my opinion, are practically indistinguishable from actual paintings. There are little signs, though: objects in the background being way too sharp and crisp and bright, elements that are blatantly copied + pasted and/or flipped, awkward foreshortening on characters making it obvious that they just painted over a Poser render and didn't bother to consider the depth of field or whatever (example: hand outstretched toward the camera is super tiny when it should be a larger).

Yes. A lot of digital painting bugs me, as I can always spot it. It can work fine on things going for a more comic feel or using it to color a drawn illustration, but I dislike it when people are trying to replicate oil or watercolors with it, as it is always obvious and falls short of the real thing. And, as Erol Otus has pointed out, there is no "original" that can be hung on the wall. It's just a file.

I dabble in art myself, so I completely understand why it is so popular. It's fast, which means it's cheap, and artists can make more money, and publishers can spend less. Having an Undo button is fantastic too. When I do digital painting, I am fearless. Still, I hate to see "real" artwork dwindling.

It's like the loss to movie SFX when CGI completely replaced practical effects whether CGI was better at that particular effect or not.

I also despise that tendency in the 90s to make swords and armour impossibly elaborate and convoluted to the point that I can't even picture them being real at all.

It depends on the game for me, but in general yeah, I agree.

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This would be bad enough for any game, but it's made worse by two things. Firstly, comparing it to earlier Paranoia art which was perfect. Secondly, it's utter lack of respect for canon. HORMONE SUPPRESSMENTS MOTHERFUCKERS.
Ah, but this is post-Crash. I remember my first thought on seeing this cover on the shelf was, "Looks like nobody is getting their hormone suppressants anymore."

Admittedly, I never bought this book. This was right around the time I stopped buy Paranoia books. I think the last two I bought were crossovers with Twilight:2000 and Cyberpunk 2013.

Wow, Until this moment, I had forgotten those happened.

Did they really happen?

I need to google...

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Yeah. I guess I didn't dream those.
 
I linked to the image on the Board Game Geek file for High Fantasy, but apparently that didn't work. Maybe I can save the image or something. I'd also put Wizard's Realm up, if I could find a good image. It's actually a really nice line drawing with very bad coloring but it deserves to be on this list as does Galloway's Fantasy Wargaming, though, I still have a copy of that so I'll have to scan it.
Yeah, I was being a smart-ass and giving you a hard time. I'd suggest saving a copy, tossing it up on a site like Imgur, and then doing a direct link to there.

I've not heard of any of these games and would like to see their awful covers.
 
The distinction was that the reviews on RPGNet were the forum: They were initially the only place with a discussion attached to it. One of the key early mistakes RPGNet made was de-centralizing the reviews: It started by eliminating the front page listing of all the weekly reviews, and then the forums murdered them as a focal point for discussion.

First thing I'd do if someone put me in charge of RPGNet would be to put the reviews front-and-center on the front page again, and then put the review discussion threads in the main forum.
There was a couple of years in the late '90s where I didn't have a computer at home. I'd go down to the library a couple of times a week for half hour Internet sessions. Checking out the reviews on rpg.net was always a priority during that time.

A while back, maybe five years ago, they added the reviews to the main forum page because they realized nobody ever sees their front page. They link right to the forum page.
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It was a good idea, but it was too little, too late. The "review culture" was already dead, and it hasn't really revived.
 
As I say, it's the cheap color process that ruined it. This one's better than the one I had but the line art is quite well done. It's a bit like Mr. Bean painting over Whistler's Mother.
 
Elephant in the room:

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I have to come to the defense of this cover. In 1979 if you told your dad to go to Waldon Books and get the new D&D monster manual this cover made his job super easy. It's covered in a crap load of monsters and has childlike drawings.
So assuming your goal is getting this book into the hot little hands of an eight year old then then this cover does that job like nobody's business!
 
I have to come to the defense of this cover. In 1979 if you told your dad to go to Waldon Books and get the new D&D monster manual this cover made his job super easy. It's covered in a crap load of monsters and has childlike drawings.
So assuming your goal is getting this book into the hot little hands of an eight year old then then this cover does that job like nobody's business!
I made the comparison to colorforms earlier, and I have to admit, it does have a childlike energy to it.
 
I have to come to the defense of this cover. In 1979 if you told your dad to go to Waldon Books and get the new D&D monster manual this cover made his job super easy. It's covered in a crap load of monsters and has childlike drawings.
So assuming your goal is getting this book into the hot little hands of an eight year old then then this cover does that job like nobody's business!
Until mom opens the book to "succubus".
 
Until mom opens the book to "succubus".
:smile: I was very lucky in that my folks were never uptight about sex and nudity. I mean, they didn't think I should be reading hardcore porn in grade school or anything, but they had no problem with the human form in artistic representations and such. They also didn't buy into the whole Satanic Panic thing either, though I can't say the same for some of my friends' folks ...
 
My mom got wind of it from Oprah. I told her it was no different than my life drawing class and a hell of a lot tamer than her playgirl she had hidden in her nightstand.

She never brought it up again....
 
My mom got wind of it from Oprah. I told her it was no different than my life drawing class and a hell of a lot tamer than her playgirl she had hidden in her nightstand.

She never brought it up again....

Oprah didn't Start until I was in high school. ImI pretty sure at that point my mom wanted nothing to do with my bedroom or anything in it. Don't ask, don't tell long before it was official US policy.
 
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I made the comparison to colorforms earlier, and I have to admit, it does have a childlike energy to it.
This reminds me of these weird diorama drawings I would make when I was a kid where it would just be this big crowded stick figure battle scene where there are all these mini-vignettes of stick-men killing stick-men. They were always shown from a side view with under- and above-ground regions. This looks like that.
Until mom opens the book to "succubus".
I recently found my old Monster Manual. In my youth, I had colored in a lot of the pictures. All the nipples were red. When I rediscovered this I was alone at the time, but I still managed to be embarrassed. And now I'm telling all of you.
 
This reminds me of these weird diorama drawings I would make when I was a kid where it would just be this big crowded stick figure battle scene where there are all these mini-vignettes of stick-men killing stick-men. They were always shown from a side view with under- and above-ground regions. This looks like that.

I recently found my old Monster Manual. In my youth, I had colored in a lot of the pictures. All the nipples were red. When I rediscovered this I was alone at the time, but I still managed to be embarrassed. And now I'm telling all of you.
Good thing I don't know your real name. Or the contact information of all of your closest friends and relatives ... ;)
 
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