#6 Interview with Hodag RPG
I was fortunate enough to talk to a great illustrator, we talked about how he got into the hobby and how he became a game illustrator.
Hodag RPG writes and illustrates games. He always describes his style as "Y2k meets B/X". You can follow his work on twitter and his itch page.
Mario | La esquina del rol: Hodag, welcome to La esquina del rol! I am so happy to chat with you. I have been a follower of you for a few years now, and I really love your art and your own style!
I would like to start this interview by asking you (for those who live under a rock and don't know you), Who is Hodag RPG and what do you do in relation to the TTRPG scene?
Hodag RPG: Hi, Mario! It's a great honor to be interviewed by you. Thank you!
I'm Hodag, I am an OSR/NSR illustrator originally from the Great State of Wisconsin! Born about an hour outside of Lake Geneva, The birthplace of Dungeons and Dragons itself!
I've been really fortunate to work on many awesome games and collaborate with so many awesome people.
Mario: Wow, I didn't expect you to live so close to Lake Geneva, hahaha! that's so rad!
Hodag, I'd like to know how you got into tabletop roleplaying, was it as a player/GM or... later as an ilustrator?
Hodag RPG: Haha, yeah! I was born in the Racine/Kenosha area south of Milwaukee. I claim Sheboygan as home, as that was the place I had my first ever solid friend group who happened to be my first ever DnD group!
I was invited by my first ever DM to join the group at an overnight fundraiser in Fountain Park, called Shanty Town my Freshman year of High School (9th Grade). It was a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser sponsored by a local church, but we used it as an excuse to play DnD all night in a cardboard castle we made with Duct Tape and old refrigerator boxes! It was 2nd edition, just stiff my friends cobbled together via disparate books, written down from old Baldurs Gate games and lots of "Rulings" on the fly.
One game and I was HOOKED! The next week I took my paycheck from bagging groceries to by the 3e Player's Handbook and the rest is history! This October will be my 24th anniversary of Roleplaying!
Mario: Wow! 24 years! That's quite a long time. I think it's great that you remember it so well and how meaningful it was to you.
I wonder at what point you decided to take the plunge and start writing things and illustrating tabletop role-playing games.
And... maybe another question I'd like to ask you is how did you get from there to where you are today?
Hodag RPG: Great Questions! Well, I'm a lifelong artist, starting with an I'll fated attempt by my Paternal Grandmother to draw Batman for me (the first thing I ever drew was out of frustration, as she didn't draw his ears long enough, to my liking). I took matters into my own hands, Haha.
Most of my childhood was spent drawing my favorite DC Superheroes and Star Wars fan art, and as a teen I decided I wanted to Draw Comics. I tried at that from my early teens until my early thirties, when a conversation with a comics professional hero of mine relayed a story to me that made me realize I didn't want to draw Comics, I was an artist who liked to draw Superheroes.
I stopped pursuing Sequential Art and Started gearing up to do my other favorite subject: Sci Fi and Fantasy RPG illustrations. I learned a lot trying to break into comics, and the speed necessary to draw comics actually helped my prolific output. I was actually planning on debuting my art and looking for gigs at GARYCON in early 2020... which was canceled one month before the whole world shut down due to the pandemic.
But, with the online boom during Quarantine, I was actually able to meet and work with people across the world just starting out! Lemonade from lemons and all.
Writing is always secondary, to me. I'm not very good at it, but my games do have an "auteur" quality to them, they say!
Mario: In an interview I was talking to Johan Nohr, he told me that since he was very young his illustrations have always been as we all know them, of course they have been perfected over time and experience, but in essence he has always illustrated in this very particular way. He had been doing it since he played role-playing games with his friends when he was a teenager.
In your case, how did you find that particular style that characterizes you? At what point did you say this is my style? And who do you consider your biggest influences?
Hodag RPG: I always describe my style "Y2k meets B/X"... definitely old school in form and function, but with a flair of that 3rd Edition "Dungeonpunk" style, and heavy undertones of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings when it comes to fantasy, which is now and has always been my preference. I love all the old DnD art from Bell to Brom, and especially Titans like Trampier, Otus, Dee, Elmore and Jenell Jaquays, may she rest in peace.
My ALL TIME favorite DnD Artist is Justine Mara Andersen, who I have adored ever since I bought the 3e Herobuilder's guide. Her very clean, very evocative and highly emotive illustration style captured my imagination early in my interest in the hobby, and I've been lucky enough to make her acquaintance and express that love for what how she illustrates.
I always hear that I have expressive characters, and people like that I give my characters alot of personality and context clues via wardrobe, posture, facial expressions, etc...I thry to make each Character or Setting unique!
I didn't really develop into a "serious" illustrator with a style or set of styles until about 2018/2019.
Mario: Nice! I love how do you describe your style!!!
Well, something we explore in these interviews is the creative processes that our interviewees follow. So, how do you approach your creative process when doing what you do?
Hodag RPG: This is going to sound a little like I'm bragging, but I promise you I'm not: I don't really have a process.
I might have to consult specifications or prompts, but usually I just start drawing and it's almost like I turn my brain off and it just pours out of the pen itself. Can't explain it. Unhelpful, but true haha.
Mario: hahaha that's fine, no problem. Actually, just because there is no process, doesn't mean there isn't one. In itself, not having one is having one.
It happened to me, when I wrote an adventure for the core book of the Spanish Edition of Primal Quest, that I realised in writing I simply don't have a real process. I just had the ideas in my head and started writing. But, this doesn't happen to me in other things I do.
I've seen that on your Itch page you have some adventures, games and other game supplements of yours. Although you've told me you don't really like writing, but I think it's interesting to see how flexible your creativity is in another task.
Is it the same with writing or do you have a process when you write?
Hodag RPG: I feel like writing is hard, but my friend Alan Bahr (namedrop) gave me some good advice when I was stuck on BEYOND! THE HYPERTRENCH!..."Just keep writing". Great advice honestly. I just keep going through and then doubling back to edit and fix errors, scrap ideas, and rewrite. I guess everyone does that tho? Maybe.
I like to "make" more than I like to "write", but the writing is part of the "making" I guess. I have a lot of fun making, but I'm a big headache for the editors, haha.
Mario: So when it comes to writing you are like me hahaha I understand you perfectly, I am very unstructured when it comes to thinking creatively and sometimes I just get carried away. The more I think about something, the less I advance in its development. I like to do. Part of starting these interviews has been knowing how others do it and it is interesting to find people who do things like you.
Let's move on to another topic, I would like to know why you have decided to become known as Hodag? Can you tell us the story behind them? (of course, if there is one).
Hodag RPG: In 2002, as a sophomore, I met a kid in my second ever DnD group after moving to the Fox Valley Area in Wisconsin. We got along okay but weren't friends, just kind of like, acquaintances. I moved away and came back after I graduated at a different place, but he was still finishing up his senior year and he was good friends now with another one of my good friends I had made up there. We got reintroduced and from 2005 to 2013 we were best friends. We used to make all of kinds of comics and games, watch movies and hang out constantly. In a lot of ways, we were polar opposites... he joined the military and fought overseas, I was an anti-war peacenik. He was guarded, I was open. He believed that the only way to become better was to "hack away at the unessential", my philosophy was always keep expanding upwards and outwards.
We really had a yin/yang thing going on, we just flowed together. There was just such a strong friendship that from the day we became friends to his last day on earth, we were just completely in sync. When he was overseas, and I don't know why, we started calling each other Ursa Minor and Ursa Major-Little Bear and Big Bear. He wanted an older brother his entire life, and I was blessed to be that person in his life.
After he returned home from the War, he spent some time at a Veterans Hospital in Milwaukee. We talked alot and we created THE HEROIC ORIGINAL DICE ADVENTURE GAME in a weekend in October of 2013. In December of that year, he unfortunately lost his battle with depression, and now belongs to the night sky.
When I decidedly to become a fantasy illustrator, I wanted to honor his memory so I became Hodag in honor of our last project, to keep his memory alive. The HEROIC ORIGINAL DICE ADVENTURE GAME can be found on my itch page, Hodagrpg.itch.io, which includes all of our original text plus stuff collated from notes and plans and almost entirely art I did for it in 2013 if you want to see my earliest attempts at old school art.
For publication. I miss him every day, I will always carry him with me. He was a brilliant creative mind lost too soon, and I can't even imagine what we'd have been able to create together if he was still alive.
Mario: That is a really great story. And that your alias was inspired by the name of the last project you did with your friend, it really seems like a great way to honour his memory. You left me speechless, honestly. It's a great way to honour someone's memory.
Well, let's move on. We all change over time, and what we do changes as well. Looking back your art from this moment, what are your three favourite illustrations, and why are they?
Hodag RPG: I like this piece called (1) "Struggle" a lot. I was practicing some old timey techniques and it's got this awesome warrior woman going toe to toe with like a kind of Orc guy.
I also love (2) "Spike Pit' from You Meet In A Tavern/You Die In A Dungeon, where an unlucky Dwarf is falling into Spikes.
There is of course, also (3) "Wilderness Classes" which was a Sorceror, Ranger, Barbarian and Druid that I did just for fun a few years ago
Mario: I like your choices, although I personally like your pieces that are science fiction. hahaha! I find them very interesting!
Well, we are currently facing situations that are generating tension in the community. All social networks are being used to train AI. Before, social media was a means to promote the work of illustrators like you, but now the rules have changed for the worse. What do you think the future holds for your colleagues and what can we do to continue using social media as a meeting point?
Hodag RPG: My honest reaction is that we SHOULDN'T have to worry about it. My only hope lies in that AI now seems to be eating itself, becoming an abstraction of an abstraction.
I would like to send a message to all artists fighting the good fight that we can and will win. The one thing they never counted on was people being able to tell what was made with a soul behind it and what wasn't.
It's illegal, it's theft even if in the public domain. If a person can be attributed, it should be attributed to them.
Mario: I agree with you, I think it is important to regulate in this sense and that no one is affected. I have many illustrator friends whom I appreciate, and they have my full support as a collective.
Changing the subject a bit, I would like to know what you are working on now. Both in terms of the projects you've been collaborating on and what you're working on as your own.
Hodag RPG: Wow! Yeah, I'm doing loads of work right now. I don't know what's all been announced yet but I can point out stuff like Deadbeats, Footfall, Wheels of the Wasteland, BX Bestiary Vol.2, No Nazis in Valhalla, Death Game, Campfire Scouts, Nuked!: Adventures, Smacked Down: Book of 1000 Holds and Advanced Fantasy Dungeons if you're looking for stuff I've done the last two or three months.
As for my own projects, alot of them on on the backburner now, but I've got a secret Superhero game in the works that leans heavily into the Superhero Films from the Aughts and A New Edition if BENEATH! THE DUNGEONFLOOR! called Dungeonfloor Accelerated funding in late Autumn, and a setting adventure in Candle 4 based in my campaign notes for "The Wheel Cities", which will be compatible with most OSR games.
Mario: So rad! There are a lot of very interesting projects you are involved in. But, Hodag, how can our readers contact you for commissions or to follow your work?
Hodag RPG: I'm reachable online almost everywhere as HodagRPG! Also, feel free to contact me at hypertrench(a)gmail.com!
And he is Hodag RPG. See you next time!
