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Since I need a distraction I’m going to talk a little about the late Russ Nicholson. I didn’t know him though he sounds like a great guy, but I DID know his art. At the time TSR was showing me stuff by their greats, and this was often color and fairly clean.
The book was full of lackluster monsters… who were shown dark, grimy, dangerous. Even the PCs looked grim in a way TSR’s art didn’t. It just was really something; thanks, wherever you are now.
The Fighting Fantasy books suggested, and if I’d then had access to White Dwarf it would have been clear, how Fiend Folio really blew me away. FF books were great so the pictures stood out less; by comparison Fiend Folio was ENTIRELY about those pictures. Without those illustrations the Dark Creepers, Grell, Crypt Thing and others would have been as memorable as the Gorbel, Jermelaine, or Gorilla Bear.