Posted on 06/15/2005 1:08:24 PM PDT by Borges
David Sutherland, an artist whose work appeared in various Dungeons and Dragons rule books, has died. He was 56 years old.
Sutherland passed away at his home in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., on June 6 from chronic liver failure.
Although he remained faceless to Dungeons and Dragons players, a generation of gamers grew up with Sutherland's otherworldly images in the 1970s and '80s.
Perhaps his best-known illustration is the one that appeared on the cover of the first Dungeons and Dragons set.
A simple composition, it shows a wand-waving magic user and a knight, his longbow drawn, squaring off against a dragon who sits – à la Smaug from The Hobbit – atop a vast pile of gold coins and jewels.
Sutherland's clean, expressive artwork helped players picture their own imaginary "campaigns," as the ongoing games of Dungeons and Dragons were called.
Working at the company Tactical Studies Rules under the game's co-inventor, Gary Gygax, Sutherland was part of a team of illustrators that produced pictures of battles and monsters.
His fellow artists included Erol Otis, Darlene Pekul, David Trampier and others.
Sutherland's work also appeared on the cover of the Dungeon Masters Guide, the book used by the referee who would oversee each gaming session.
He also did the cover for the Monster Manual, the compendium of foes that players fought for treasure.
A Minneapolis native, Sutherland trained as a commercial artist before going to Vietnam to serve as a military policeman. After his return, he launched a career as a fantasy artist while working odd jobs.
Sutherland's cover art for the 'Dungeon's Masters Guide.' Eventually, a university professor involved in developing Dungeons and Dragons put him in touch with TSR, the Wisconsin firm that emerged as the dominant publisher of role-playing games.
Sutherland also served as TSR's artistic director, but preferred working on his own art.
Sutherland's career stalled after Wizards of the Coast, another gaming concern, bought TSR in the late 1990s and did not rehire him. He recently divorced, and was reportedly still upset at the dissolution of his marriage when he died.
An auction of Sutherland memorabilia was held last year, raising $22,000 US that was used to set up a trust fund for his two daughters. He is also survived by his mother, a sister and a brother.
Following a visitation, Sutherland will receive a military burial on June 22 at Fort Snelling National Cemetery in Minneapolis.
I never heard anything about D&D except from very obscure groups. The rumors were that the D&D fans were trying to drum up controversy.
OOOOOOOKay there Fonzie. Ease back on the goofballs and the fun-burgers.
He must have rolled a low die.
Is this the same guy that shows up on Reno 9-1-1?
Two of the three 'long-term' (that is to say, more than a month or two) girlfriends I had in high school I met through the high school's D&D club.
My husband used to be into these sort of fantasy games. He and a couple of nerd friends went to a convention a few years back to play in a tournament. He came home about two hours after he left. I asked him if he had fun, and he said, very sulkily, no. Why not? "Because I got beat. By a girl. A 10 year old girl." He hasn't played since then, but I still get a good laugh out of it.
Dude, I need my Bag of Holding back. I'm moving out of my mother's basement next weekend and it would make things a lot easier on me-- since I don't have any friends to help me move.
There was a true story along those lines. It was either the D&D or the LSD, the media conluded it was the D&D.
p.s. Reno 911 has a great bit with patton oswald playing D&D.
I believe it was...kind of silly of them.
I've got a neighbor lady bitching at my kids because we play D&D. She has no clue except that someone said that someone said that they heard that someone on the radio said that D&D is occult.
There's not much strategy involved in classic D&D. It's mostly all about the outcome of the die rolls.
Dude didn't make his Saving Throw against alcohol poisoning.
Maybe we could find the 18th-Level Cleric that cast the resurrection spell on Senator Frank Lautencadaver to bring this artist back.
We've all outgrown D&D though -- there are scarier monsters roaming the US Senate than in the D&D Monster Guide.
I was always more partial to Portable Holes.
You can't get beat in D&D, its not about winning, its about the experience. Thats why the girls were into it I think. Its like a shared story. It could turn into a bit of a soap opera.
The people (all boys) I couldn't stand were the competitive characters. They had a mechanistic view of the thing.
My 9 year-old son pwns me in Call of Duty. I can't do anything against him. And I normally do well against adults.
>> Growing up, the kids who played role-playing games in my high school were split evenly between guy and chicks. Go figure. <<
Aaahhh, female Geeks. There's nothing like making an inadverdant Stargate or Tolkein reference, observing a flint of recognition in a girl's eyes, and realizing: Even though this woman is absolutely gorgeous, she so used to be a geek!
Once we got a littler older, we started playing mire adult games like Vampire, which attracted a LOT of girls. Many of them were crazy Goth girls, but they can be a lot of fun.
Google "James Dallas Egbert III"
Nah, its really about the world-creation. Properly speaking (at least in my style of DM'ing) the players shouldn't even see the die rolls, and if the die rolls "wrong" then the DM can declare things to be as they should be.
Undergrad wasn't so bad given what you'd expect from a university but the law school is completely nuts. Just took a class on biomedical issues that kept devolving into a rant on America's moral obligation to get with the universal health care program already.
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