Dawn of the Orcs Development Log 2 – From A Game to a Book

18 Feb, 2025

In Development Log 1: The Recap I explained how I came up with the rules for the game Dawn of the Orcs. In this blog entry I’ll get into how I made the book. The typical disclaimer: this was my first experience doing a project like this. This is not an expert’s guide. This is an apprentice’s journal.

Dawn is designed to be a focused experience that guides the players through the story step by step; it also has a short word count. This meant that I wasn’t too worried about space or ease of reference, but I cared about ambiance and aesthetics. It seemed like a rational choice to make Dawn the type of heavily-designed book that also serves as an art object. Not every RPG needs to look like this – I’m a fan of a more “textbook” or “user’s manual” look for universal systems – but it was the right choice for Dawn. I also wanted Dawn to be affordable, to be printed on uncoated paper, and I wanted to be done with it before the end of the year. That meant black and white art, which would keep the cost down, take less time to draw, and has long been known to look good on uncoated paper (although with modern printing techniques, I understand color art will do fine on uncoated too).

I was used to commissioning cover art from earlier, simpler works, so I started with that – which might have been a little out of order. I looked through RPGs on Itch.io until I found covers that called to me, then looked up the artists and went through their portfolios. Eventually I narrowed it down to three who I wanted to work with, and sent them all emails asking for their rates. One never got back to me, one got back to me several months later, and one, Simone Tametta, replied right away. Simone, also known as Old Raging Barbarian, is a well-known figure in RPG art, especially the OSR, where he’s done a lot of black-and-white dark fantasy art. I was a little surprised to see his rates were around the same as most other artists; it was an easy choice to go with him. I sent him three cover ideas, he told me which one he thought would look best, we went back and forth a little on the details, and in very little time I had the amazing cover that’s on the front of the book today.

I broke the black and white rule by asking for the pair of red eyes, inspired by Simone’s painting “Spectral Knight of the Gold Moon” and my own personal love of “red eyes opening in the darkness” imagery. These two small dots of red ink mean that I pay the full rate for a color cover with every printing of Dawn, maybe the most artistically indulgent choice of my career. I thought it was worth it then, and I still think it’s worth it now.

In retrospect, I probably should have started working with a visual designer before commissioning a cover. I got lucky and it all worked out in the end, but I’ll do it the right way around if I ever do this again.

Visual design, art, and layout are all different skills, and all important to creating a book that looks good.¹ Unfortunately, I don’t have any of those skills. Fortunately, I knew someone who had all three.

I met Plasmophage a couple years ago through a game jam, and we’d worked together on a couple one-page games. I knew I liked her style and we could work together. She had solid layout experience and was looking to build a larger art portfolio. I also knew I was going to need someone with an eye for visual design through the rest of the game’s lifecycle: designing the book, designing the Kickstarter page, designing the page and thumbnail if I took Dawn to a webstore like Itch.io or DTRPG (which I ended up doing), and making revisions to the book. I sent Plasmophage my first written draft of the rules, and offered her a permanent cut of the profits and her name on the book. I’m very glad I made that offer. Not only did Plasmophage do an outstanding job with the art and layout, but the process of visual design for a book like Dawn turned out to be so collaborative that I have a hard time imagining how it could go smoothly as commissioned work instead of with a team member.

While I’m useless with a stylus, I did some art direction. Dawn has two different themes to balance: the occult, arcane, intellectual world of the wizards and mad scientists who make the Orcs, and the brutal, gritty world of the war that they fight, both wrapped in the stylized feel of an ancient origin myth. I made the setting intentionally vague for players to fill in, so the Lannians and Styrovites could look like anything, as could the Sages – and coming up with unique-looking Orcs is kind of the whole point. This isn’t easy to depict!

For inspiration, I gathered a lot of black and white dark fantasy images that channeled both vibes, including some work by Feral Indie Studio, a lot of 1990s-era Warhammer Fantasy art, and choice picks from the Meanwhile Back in the Dungeon art blog. Some medieval alchemy texts helped inspire the layout for the Warps. I asked Plasmophage to make sure the Orcs look different in every image, and to include plenty of figures who features are masked, helmeted, or otherwise obscured. It’s a look that gives players more room to imagine their own creations, plays to both the themes of occult mystery and militant dehumanization, and most importantly, that I think is cool.

Armed with my best attempts at art direction, Plasmophage drew up a layout for the book, handling esoteric subjects like bleed, font selection, and the rest - her name is on the front because, at the end of the day, the book people buy is as much her creation as it is mine. She put together a draft layout, with spaces marked out where the art would go. She picked which pieces of art she wanted to draw herself, marking out others for an additional artist. I’d originally written Dawn with the chapter and lists format it still has today, but not knowing how much space I’d have on each page, I’d made every line on each list as long as I felt like. That wasn’t going to work in a final product - each chapter of Dawn needed to fit on exactly two pages to avoid spoilers, and lines had to be at least close to each other in length to have some appearance of order. Making chapters more uniform in length would also give the book a more professional look. Plasmophage’s first draft of the layout showed how much space I had for words on each page. Then we went back together line-by-line, and I rewrote each one to add or remove words as needed so the lines would fit the layout. It’s a fiddly process, but personally, I find that having to rewrite to constraints almost always improves the quality of my writing, as it forces me to choose words carefully and focus on the most important parts of each passage.

For the additional art, I posted in the Discord for a local artist’s meetup. Kira Ghost was interested in the work, and it turned out I’d played RPGs with her a few times before through a mutual friend; that made it convenient to collaborate with her. Plasmophage and I looked through her portfolio to make sure she’d be a good fit. I gave Kira the same art direction I’d given Plasmophage, and Plasmophage provided Kira with .PSD files for each page her art would go on, the space for the artwork marked out clearly.

Kira and Plasmophage finished their artwork more or less around the same time. I knew what was coming because I’d seen sketches and provided feedback throughout, but I’m still floored with the quality of both their artwork. It’s evocative, intricate, and everything I asked for, simultaneously evoking the magical and the tactical, the fantastical and the historical.

Plasmophage converted everything into PDF files, and I did a small test print through Mixam. The copies came out looking great, and like that, Dawn of the Orcs was a book as well as a game. It was time for marketing and production – but that’s a story for another time.