This cover was painted by Sean Bodley for our open-source solarpunk tabletop game. The goal is to try and create something that isn’t just representative of a specific narrow version of solarpunk, but can act as a starting point for writers and game masters to create stories that fit their tastes. We want this to be to solarpunk what D&D is to fantasy: whatever you want to make of it.
The default setting is a high-density, high tech, urban, version of solarpunk with a mix of hard science, optimism, radical politics, and an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach to world building.
If you want to know more, check out our new website, http://fullyautomatedrpg.com, and if you’ve got more questions head over to our Lemmy community: https://slrpnk.net/c/fullyautomatedrpg !
We’re in beta, and running games on Discord, so if you want to actually plan, follow the link on the website.
You can find more of Sean’s work at http://seanbodley.com and https://patreon.com/seanbodley .
Cool art style! Reminds me of 90s CGI in a really good way. The nostalgic return to an optimistic time for me, when people seemed to really believe in environmental change, fits the concept well I think.
Yeah, I get it.
When we started brain-storming ideas for the cover, Sean and I agreed that we both loved the feeling of retro tabletop RPG covers. If you look at old editions of games like Shadowrun, you’d often have these images that tried to pack in a bunch of characters demonstrating how many different ways you could play while trying to establish the breadth and tone of the setting as much as possible. Sean took that idea and really ran with it, and I think the results look awesome do a great job capturing that sense of bombast and potential that we want to communicate.
I always like seeing houses built on bridges. Probably partly because of the cyberpunk Bridge trilogy but also the many historical versions there’s just something cool about it. In solarpunk I think it’s a neat way to show car spaces being reclaimed by people, and to add a touch of fantasy. I suppose with the loading being different, it’d have to be modified to support the small houses long-term, but given how far in the future the setting is, that seems quite possible.
I also like the various lanes for travel, including the much-narrowed motorized vehicle track, delineated by plants.
I think Sean has a great artistic vision in that regard. I shared the manual and the setting, and told him what kind of themes I wanted to communicate, and he really found a way to put it into an image. I would encourage everyone to check out his art, it’s really diverse and really cool.
Is it a road game?
I’m not entirely sure what you mean by road game, so I’m guessing that means it isn’t.
What’s a road game? Is that category of tabletop RPG?
A road leading to a metropolis is like 80% of this image. And quite a road, you could fit many cars there, it’s the main character of the img. And quite the metropolis. I do like that people overtook it but still I just get the message thar is leading me to this big urban place.
The default campaigns are set in Los Angeles
