WFRP1e  core:  p352-3 Artwork:  Flying ships.

What's up with that?

Did D&D steal the idea for their Princess Ark from the art in WFRP1?

jh

 I think it was just some random art they had lying around.

There's an article in White Dwarf 26 (Aug 1981) about space travel in AD&D which has similar flying ships.

Back in the day, TSR and Games Workshop worked pretty closely together, with GW being the European distributor of D&D.  They may have had some jointly owned art resources that floated around.

Callidon said:

No, it's as Monkeylite said above, it was random art they had lying around. One of GW's strengths was that it had a number of good artists on the staff who did all sorts of stuff, often for their own amusement, and it just got used in everything from adverts to articles to GW games.

One of the things that distinguished GW from most other games companies in the 80s was that its artists were original, quirky and distinctive, unlike TSR, for example, which seemed to rely on a pretty bland group of artists (cover artists excepted). Just compare the Fiend Folio with either of the two Monster Manuals for AD&D1.

Cheers

Sparrow

That artwork looks pretty distinctive though.  It reminds me of the Nurgle Plagueship art from Man O War.

It seems that the artwork oftentimes defines the genre.    Some of the pencil drawing crap that's also in the book is not withstanding though.

They were discussing this on StS regarding THIS ARTICLE. Comments by Graeme Davis are further down.  Summarized, the blog conjectures that any WFRP beyond it's complete inceptional, primevel egg is not WFRP and that WFRP is just Pellinore and TSRUK in disguise.  If it weren't for the first scenario (Bogenhafen), being supposedly written as 'Make a Cthulhu scenario for the WFRP world', it would have been overtaken by the creative (or he conjectures 'unoriginal') carry-overs from the defunct Pellinore setting from Imagine magazine, and closed-up TSR-UK.

Anyways, this topic isn' t necessarily about that, so much as the flying ships themselves.  The artwork there seems consistent with other artwork by whatever author that is.

jh

Emirikol said:

It's by John  Blanche. With some exceptions, WFRP1's art (in the core book) is by Tony Ackland and John Blanche. Most of Tony Ackland's work seems to be have been done specifically for the book, while Blanche's stuff seems to be stock art… hence flying ships.

Although the WFRP world is defined, for me, by John Blanche's Nuln on the cover The Enemy Within and Martin McKenna's art for Death on the Reik and Power behind the Throne, there's no doubt about it that the Warhammer artist was Tony Ackland as he provided the art for the original wargame and most of WFRP1. He may not be the most popular artist, but he was the dominant artist, at least initially

Oh, and flying ships in WFRP1 are almost certainly powered by mutiple bound Air Elementals. In WFRP2 and WFRP3, it's probably something to do with the blue wind of magic, Azyr. I would certainly have two or three such ships in the setting, although they are, of course, bowel-shudderingly unreliable.

Cheers

Sparrow

 Definitely one of those early WTF moments for me when I first got the v1 WFRP book.  I remember scouring that thing for "flying galleon" rules…not a hint, nor dwarf gyrocopters either .  That's when I realized that this game was going to not "boldly go where D&D had gone before…" or soon to go (i.e. Spelljammer).  Then of course the final Doomstones installment came out and low and behold…although that ship was a bit more "steamy…"

Just some eye candy I stumbled across scouring for this thread.  

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Interesting pic!

jh