I sincerely welcome an alternative to DTRPG, Amazon and LULU that caters to small publishers and creators.

Amazon is litterally the devil

DTRPG is a hassle

Itch does not offer POD

Searching or setting up stuff on LULU is a chore.

Rpg-trader sells digital stuff and POD.

So far printing happens via LULU but rpg-trader has its own interface, so set-up is fast while printing quality and shipment costs remain accessible to people outside the US or UK.

BTW there is an import function for itch and dtrpg shops.

I've already set-up my shop and plan to get my 550+items inventory in.

So far I've uploaded a dozen digital titles and a couple print titles (a Troika! adventure and a CY_BORG supplement that includes an adventure).

I wish rpg-trader all the best, we need it

See you there!

https://rpg-trader.com/creator/976/artikid

Although my first D&D character ever was a Cleric (a class I ended not liking that much), elfs are where I'm at.

When I first put my eyes on Vault of the drows and the Fiend Folio I was mind blown.

I know, I know, you are thinking of that guy with two scimitars and a panther. Of Unearthed Arcana munchkinism and all that.

Believe it or not I played an exiled drow warrior roaming the Realms some 3 years before Bob Salvatore published his first D&D novel.

(But: I was not a goodie two-shoes like DDU, we played Rolemaster and I didn't have all those magical powers and magic items, I was a warrior and my weapon of choice was the two-handed sword)

So I can't help it, there is something about the idea of subterranean elven villas surrounded by spider-filled forests of bioluminescent fungi that thrills me.

So it should come as no surprise that this month's art is all about Drows.

It should come as no surprise that this one was inspired by Erol Otus

This month's second piece has a slightly different, and maybe surprising, inspiration.

If I didn't mention the fact that EO and DAT (with Russ Nicholson) are my favorite D&D artists now you know.

Last but not least we have Drow male warriors

This is my own thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if some AD&D 2e thing, like Menzoberranzan maybe?, subconsciously played a part.

As usual you can get all this on drivethrurpg at

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/5943/Artikid-Arts

As usual each piece is sold in a four piece bundle of line-art, shaded, grayscale and full-color pngs at 300 dpi.

Oh, and if you are curious: my favorite OSR artist? Without a doubt Peter “The King” Mullen.

Take care and see you next month.

L

This month I’m going to give you more proof of the permanent brain damage rpgs have left me with.

For my Patreon campaign (https://www.patreon.com/c/artikid) I’ve created two art pieces: the first is a bunch of goblinoids whose descriptions have been taken straight out of the Monster Manual.

The second is player character ancestries, inspired by a famous piece in the Player’s Handbook (I added a couple of missing characters)

You can find these and more illustrations on dtrpg at my shop:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/5943/artikid-arts

Take care and see you next month

Luigi

One of the reasons I didn’t catch up on blogging is that I’m bad, horribly bad, at communicating. Writing more than drivel requires herculean efforts on my part, not surprising that I chose graphic arts over the written word, then.

And that’s why I forgot to update all of you on a couple of art releases.

But I’m making amends by showing you the ALL NEW art for this month!

Inspirations for this month are the wonderful Troika! by Melsonian Arts Council, jrpgs (I never, ever played one in my life, but my eldest is an avid Zelda player), and Dune.

As usual you can get my art at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/5943/artikid-arts or subscribe to my Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/artikid

Take care

Luigi

This month I reached 54th level and all I got was a sprained ankle, the world stinks I tell you.

But you are not here to listen to my complaints, are you? You are here for the art.

I’ve been negligent of my substack lately, so I’m making up now:

I also forgot to show off the starships for February, here is a “Byzantian Lictor” (my take on an un-Romulan ship)

and a Q’linq’on Raptor (you are smart enough to guess what this is a take on)

You can get all this and more on my dtrpg shop at https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/5943/Artikid-Arts or better yet you can shower me with money on Patreon www.patreon.com/artikid

If you like what you see please tell others about my work, if you don’t like what you see I’ll be as much as grateful if you kept it to yourself ;P

“What’s up next?” You might be asking yourself, as much as I like character art and starships, I’ll be probably doing a some scenes in the near future. Not sure about the subject yet, if you have ideas throw them at me in the comments.

Have a great Spring and see you in the coming months!
Luigi

While not much of a Trekkie (I own no uniforms and I can’t speak Klingon) my love for the franchise goes back to TOS when it first appeared in Italy in the late 70s.

Why do something ST-inspired, why now?

Well I’m currently doing a binge rewatch of my favorite Star Trek (for the curious: DS9, and Bashir and Sisko are my favorite characters, but I actually like them all) and I plan to rewatch TNG and Voyager too.

It’s quite possible, also, I did too much fantasy in the past and I’m just badly in need of a palate cleanser.

So much so that at least for the next month I’ll be indulging myself some more.

Through the 80s and 90s I played my share of wargames and boardgames: Avalon Hill stuff like Dune, Kingmaker or Samurai, some SPI games, GDW stuff like Air Superiority, lots of Battletech, and obviously Star Fleet Battles (I loved quick battles using the pseudo-fighter class of ships, I usually played Hydran).

So for my February release on Patreon I’ll be doing something different, I’ll try to draw some star-ships.

See you next month!

Luigi

That's not a word you expect to be tossed around for Christmas, is it?

But I couldn"t help it.

Last month (or was it two months ago?) one of the images I released was a skeletal apparition.

In the comments on Facebook Phil Reed liked the image and prompted me to do more skellies.

I found the suggestion compelling and it also brought a realization: I had to do a Totentanz.

I think I first saw a Totentanz in real life on a holiday when I was 10 or 9, a Fresco in the german-speaking corner of Northern Italy.

While I find german a baffling language (despite studying it as a kid and my swiss-german grandmother) you can't deny some words couldn't exist in any other language.

I wouldn't be surprised if it somehow explained the fascination I have for Warhammer's Old World or Mörk Börg although my games are often bery far from Grimdark fantasy.

I even named “Totentanz” a street gang in my cyberpunk games.

Well, enough about me and my little obsessions.

You can get my Totentanz on Drivethru at:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/publisher/5943/artikid-arts

Or you can subscribe to my Patreon (https://patreon.com/artikid) to keep seeing art lik this

Happy holidays, have a fantastic new year

Luigi

So just before the month ends here is my newsletter about art and ttrpgs.

I published new stuff on my DTRPG shop that you can see here:

As usual you can get my art from dtrpg or subscribe to my Patreon.

As for the tabletop gaming news… I haven’t played in a while but there is some OSR gaming ahead of me, next week I should play in an OD&D game run by online friend Riccardo.

In the meantime I managed snatching up a cheap copy of Blades in the dark so to get my rpg diet more varied (I already own and have played Agon second edition by John Harper). I also set my hands on Duel for Middle Earth, the 1-on-1 boardgame.

That’s all for now, see you next month

Luigi

As usual you can get it on Drivethru

Should you want to regularly throw money at me (promise I won’t get offended!) you can come and subscribe my campaign on Patreon

That’s all for the moment

Luigi Out

So much more than other Old School artists, through all these years, Russ Nicholson's art has stuck with me, it definitely struck a chord (though it doesn't show in my style).

So when I have no idea of what should I draw, I often go back to Russ.

This month I'll do 4 characters/monsters: an Apparition, a Gibberling (a favorite of my brother that used to throw parties of 200 Gibberlings at high level characters), a Mezzodaemon (final pose may vary, I'd like something more threatening than what I came up with sketching) and a Grell.

Lowest Tier supporters (only 3$ per month) will get the line art for the Grell this time.

If you like what you see here, please consider checking out my DTRPG store as Artikid Arts or subscribe to my Patreon

See you next time

L

As a matter of fact I'm not WoD's biggest fan although I often find some the ideas amusing (I'm somewhat cold towards Vampire, which I played exactly once, but I really love the themes behind Wraith and Mage).

However, one of my oldest gaming buddies, Vincenzo (yeah, Luigi and Vincenzo can you get more stereotypically italian than that?😜 ) has always been a big fan.

So much so that he also Larped a lot with the Italian Camarilla and had long running campaogns in the 90s.

A few years ago he wrote an extensive sourcebook, actually two extensive sourcebooks, about our hometown: Rome.

Rome by Night Liber I - Damnati super Damnatos (a who is who of the Camarilla, Sabbat and other supernatural beings of Rome covering some 80 NPCs) has been recently updated, and I was in charge of layout (yes I do layout work too, and yes, you can hire me)

For the time being the sourcebooks are only in italian and an english version has been in translation purgatory for a while.

With the revised edition seeing light (Liber II is next) there is a chance that an english version will actually be published.

You can get the pdf here:

https://site.storytellersvault.com/m/product/541610

See you next time with some more talk about the November releases from my Patreon campaign!

Cheers

L

#ttrpg #gdr #Vampirethemasquerade #vtm #v20 #vampiri #vampire #wod #mondoditenebra

In the end I managed to get my stuff published on DTRPG.

If you don't want to give money to Amazon, you can now get POD versions of both my coloring books Chromatic Bestiary Volumes 1 and 2 and the Cy_Borg supplement 2Xth Century Cybernetic Cargo Cult in POD at Artikid Arts ( https://legacy.drivethrurpg.com/browse/pub/5943 ).

I haven't been idle on other fronts either!

This month I released some middle-east themed fantasy art from my Patreon that you can preview here:

You can buy these (at 300 dpi) and more on my Dtrpg store.

On a personal note, I'm happy to share with you that I'm now a certified Taichi chuan instructor and I finally started to studying chinese for real.

Keep safe

L

An idol of Great Cthulhu, a ghoul, a shantak and most notably Nyarlathotep as the Black Pharaoh (Nyarlathotep, along with Celephais and Polaris is one of my favorite short stories as you can imagine)

I’ve had another change of plans for my Patreon: Curious Passerbys will now receive one piece of line art of my choice each month, so if you want to support me for just 3$ you get a bw illustration for that each month

Starting next month I’ll also open up Commissions on Patreon.

There will be new tiers and you will be able to have color art be made to order. At the moment I plan to limit this to just three persons, bringing the illustrations released each month to seven.

More on that next time

Cheers,

Luigi

A few months ago I wrote and published a Troika! adventure: The Gardens of Ravandos Xarr.

I initially decided to make it available via Amazon.

Putting stuff up on KDP is a lot less of a hassle than DTRPG, and shipping is rather inexpensive all over the world because of printing being handled locally.

On the other hand I’m one of those that feel that Amazon “is the devil”, or at least one of the many “devils” of the modern world that beset us.

I clearly needed an alternative for this and other projects, especially for people who’d like to give me money (hint-hint) without further enriching the already hyper-rich Mr. Bezos.

So, clearly in the name of redistributive justice and without a whiff of self-interest, I finally published a POD version on DrivethruRPG too.

You can get it here:

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/514510/the-gardens-of-ravandos-xarr

At the center of Troika, near the palace of the Phoenix Throne, there are large, indeed immense, public gardens built by the first Chiliarch and later expanded by his heirs.

The gardens of Ravandos Xarr, also known as Forgetfulness Park, are therefore only a part, and perhaps not even the weirdest, of what is an immense botanical
garden populated by plants and animals from every corner of the universe, and from various parallel universes.

The Park of Forgetfulness is certainly its gloomiest part, however, and is known to attract - due to some peculiarities - the desperate and the morbid (intent on forgetting themselves or an annoying emotion, a painful memory) and the cultivators and traders of dreams.

Somehow the PCs are indebted to, or hired by, Ortumba the Herald, a wizard of moderate fame, their task is to find Norimance the Epopt who has lost himself in Forgetfulness Park.

On the other hand…

I really, really hate how DTRPG handles printing.

Proofs for the Bestiary and for 2xth Century Cybernetic Cargo Cult have come back an utter mess and I’m back to work on those.

So I expect at least another month of updates and back and forth before I can get those in print on DTRPG.

I really, really wish POD - and other kinds of - services didn’t make it so easy for Amazon.

In case we were not introduced before, my name is Luigi and I’m a freelance artist form Italy working -mostly- in the OSR-sphere.

I recently published via Amazon my first two coloring books full of monsters,heroes, wizards, aliens and weird places!

You can get Volume 1 here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FGNZRYLX

You can get Volume 2 here https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FKRX7NBN

If digital is more of your thing, you can get the Chromatic Bestiaries in pdf via my pages on itch.io, patreon and drivethrurpg (in case you are not a fan of Amazon, POD versions will be available here too as soon as I get print proofs).

As you might expect, I’m not just an artist but a gamer too, and I occasionally write stuff for games I run.

I’m currently waiting for print proofs on 2Xth Century Cybernetic Cargo Cult (my supplement for Stockholm Kartell’s Cy_Borg) and The Gardens of Ravandoss Xarr, an adventure for Troika!

This August will also see the return of color art to my Patreon campaign, but more on that later…

Till next time!

Luigi

Generous passerby

You can now show your support to me and my art in exchange for a peak at my workflow and process and occasional present.

Full-color supporter

…or you can become a full-color supporter for the full-color art I'll be delivering in the next months!

Come say hi at https://www.patreon.com/artikid

As a small thank you to the few stallwarts that have kept with me in the ups-and-downs of my Patreon I released my take on the Dreamlands Mount Ngranek.

From August onwards I'll be offering a subscription tier for color art, starting from September, maybe October, I'll be once more taking submissions as well.

In the meantime you can get my stock art on drivethrurpg.

Take care

Luigi