Sunday, September 25, 2016

Thomas Cole, DM

Inspired by the If Romantic-Era Artists Ran D&D Campaigns post on the Against the Wicked City blog, here's one for Thomas Cole. An early 19th-century American landscape artist, most associated with the Hudson River School, Cole also painted European ruins (while traveling), historical & biblical scenes, allegories and fantastic landscapes.

As DM, Cole would start the first level PCs with a ruined tower over a seaside cliff, the former abode of a strange wizard...



Italian Seacoast with Ruined Tower


And then onto a sturdy keep on the border of the wild lands...





Then deep into a wilderness hexcrawl...





And into the dungeons beneath the ruins of a castle built by a mad demigod...




Ruins of Kenilworth Castle


In search of stolen artifacts hidden in a mountain with a white plume of smoke...



Mount Aetna


Against the giants...



Titan's Goblet


And finally on to the other planes of existence...



Youth

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5 comments:

  1. Chris HolmesSeptember 26, 2016 at 12:13 PM

    Nice adventure and beautiful paintings. It's gonna be hard to melt down that goblet into a bunch of easy to carry ingots.

    ReplyDelete
  2. DHBoggsOctober 13, 2016 at 6:05 AM

    Cool. Funnily enough, I once did some archaeological work at Cole's house (it is a museum now), exposing an old brick walkway.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Zenopus ArchivesAugust 25, 2017 at 10:04 AM

    See here for a scan of a TLG ad for Castle Zagyg that uses a Thomas Cole painting, Explusion. Moon and Firelight (1828).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Karel MachaNovember 3, 2017 at 9:54 PM

    Fun to read the Against the Wicked City post and yours! I (and several others in the comments there) were inspired to make our own Painter as DM posts.

    ReplyDelete