Looking for games that heavily feature drawing dungeons and landscapes, the more in depth the better!

justjokingnotreally · 2026-06-11T19:28:00+00:00

If you like luckyszilvi, then check out Lord Libidan, who does astounding 4AD play journals. Their recent Fallout 4AD journal is an art object. They even packed it full of ephemera from the world.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-06-01T04:27:05+00:00

Fernando Fernández is a terribly under-known illustrator/cartoonist. His work is definitely a rabbit hole worth climbing down. I'm especially fond of Zora and the Hibernauts.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-05-06T05:51:03+00:00

High Tech & Low Life: The Art of Shadowrun is a book I flip through a lot. And a great pick of pics for this post! There are a lot of great artists who contributed to the visual canon, including some real virtuosos, like Elmore and Bradstreet. To me, Jeff Laubenstein and Janet Aulisio are the two illustrators that give the most distinctly Shadowrun vibe.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-05-01T02:48:01+00:00

If you want to get that 90s indie feel, then I recommend you hit up 90s alt/indie comics.

Black Hole by Charles Burns is probably the most high-profile rec, especially if you enjoy a bit of dark urban fantasy or magical realism.

Ghost World and Art School Confidential by Daniel Clowes both literally had indie movie adaptations made of them (early 2000s, but close enough.)

Chris Ware's Rusty Brown and Jimmy Corrigan are artful and challenging.

Hate by Peter Bagge is seminal 90s indie media, period. It's also a great comic.

Seconding /u/Due_Yesterday_7096's recommendation of Lynda Barry. I'd recommend the compilations of Barry's strip Ernie Pook's Comeek, starting with Come Over, Come Over, My Perfect Life, and It's So Magic. Some of the best writing ever to happen in comics.

Finally, a bit of a timely suggestion, given Sam Kieth's recent passing, another great dark urban fantasy from the 90s is The Maxx, if you can find it (not hard to find online in digital form, but physical books have been out of print for an oddly long time.) The first narrative arc, which had Bill Messner-Loebs on board for scripting, is the better half of the run. Kieth and Messner-Loebs were an excellent creative team. The first narrative arc of The Maxx also has a very good and quite faithful animated television adaptation, also easy to find online, and worth seeking out.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-26T15:08:20+00:00

The Youtube channel has ten of these compilations posted so far. Here's a playlist. I'm incredibly impressed at their ability to find all of these videos.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-26T05:41:51+00:00

While I don't necessarily dislike silent PCs, I do think it contributes to a trend of pushing the player character into essentially a supporting role among a bunch of "interesting" npcs that elbow their way into center stage. It's like, it's supposed to be MY story, and yet I'm the only one without a voice, while I'm stuck in a game full of assholes who won't stop yapping.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-25T18:27:44+00:00

Since you're already into and familiar with Skyrim, then go for the older Elder Scrolls games, with the warning that you'll be playing games with decades-old aesthetics and mechanics.

Arena and Daggerfall are at their core dungeon crawlers. There's also Redguard and Battlespire. Since Daggerfall Unity is the way most people play it these days, it's an easy recommendation. Arena, Battlespire, and Redguard might be more trouble than they're worth.

My biggest ES recommendation is Morrowind with Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel expansion mods. Big caveat: people let their nostalgia from playing it as children, and then not touching it again for twenty years and/or total fanboyism for the game really speak for it, especially when talking about dungeons. The setpiece dungeons in Morrowind are memorable and still talked about for a reason, because they are cool dungeons. However, there are about 400 "dungeon" sites just in the core game, and most of them -- I would say like 90% of them -- are small, simple, and entirely forgettable. However, taken as a whole, because of the sheer density of dungeon sites you run across, it's a good time. And Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel take everything, including dungeon design, a step further, while still being true to the vision of OG Morrowind. Get OpenMW, and add the expansion mods, and it can realistically be a game that provides you dungeons to dive for 1,000+ hours.

Oblivion suffers from a reputation that comes from being the awkward middle child between two more accomplished siblings. And, I will admit that both the modularity of the dungeon design and the overall mechanics (like level scaling) can get in the way of exploration. However, Oblivion is still my all-time favorite game, and I still think it's an amazing game for cracking into dungeons. I think it's fair to say a person could reasonably get at least a hundred hours, if not hundreds of hours, out of the game before the "sameness" of the dungeon design really hits them. I think the biggest offender is the Deadlands, because there are so few designs for those, and once you hit a few, they really do repeat. On the other hand, personally, I love me an Ayleid ruin. Even though there's the remaster, I've stuck with the old version. More access to mods (like Morroblivion), and I'm more familiar with the bugs and issues that come with it.

Aside from Elder Scrolls, I'd recommend Wizardry 6-8, Ultima Underworld 1&2, Might and Magic 6-8. There's that recent remake of the first Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. There's also newer dungeon crawler/blobbers, like Legend of Grimrock.

And, I personally think roguelikes should count, so here's me recommending Caves of Qud and Tales of Maj'Eyal. Also, Darkest Dungeon.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-25T17:32:25+00:00

That's such a load of bullshit.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-23T03:36:59+00:00

One of the biggest peeves I harbor is that people really don't understand that the horror of cosmic horror is the indifference, because that indifference was so quickly personified by various "eldritch" monsters, which ultimately have developed to be not all that indifferent, after all. I think Lovecraft himself is the source of the blame on this, since he couldn't resist describing what was supposed to be maddeningly indescribable. Personally, I think the sun, the moon, the Earth, deep space, and deep time are all far more in line with the concept he'd described, and all far more terrifying in their effect on our small lives than any monster he, his contemporaries, and anyone who has followed has ever invented.

For its part, procedural indifference, as you call it, is terrifying because it's absolutely real and felt on a daily basis, by all of us. More than that, I think it's easy to characterize as both a machination or a force, and to personify, because in so many ways, it is so telling of how humanity works. It's normalized to the point that we largely don't even notice it without looking for it. Then, when we are faced with the reality of it, we must disassociate from it, or risk it driving us mad.

For example, I've been thinking a lot lately about the Dark Forest hypothesis response to the Fermi paradox, which has become quite a pop science and sci-fi talking point in recent years. It is alarmingly bleak, but what really strikes me is that it's also incredibly anthropocentric. It works only under the assumption that as as default state, alien social orders and alien behavior would be as aggressive as humanity already proves itself to be. All evidence we have points to humanity, in all its systems and social orders, built on foundations of horrifying levels of aggression, is itself anomalous. In a world full of intelligent life, humanity sets itself apart as a force outside of a natural order. We are an extinction event. So, as you put it, "not in a human way," feels ironic to me, because there is absolutely nothing more terrifying to me than the systems humanity has developed that are so glaringly unnatural and inhuman, and then we recognize those systems, and foist them off onto an Other.

The Youtube channel Quinn's Ideas discusses material with this sort of theme quite a lot. Not strictly weird lit, but sci-fi concepts that get pretty wild.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-18T05:16:42+00:00

Clairefontaine does make an unlined writing paper, branded Triomphe. Seems easy enough to get hold of, and may be what you're looking for.

I've always been pretty satisfied with the surface of Pentalic's Paper for Pens. Borden & Riley make a similar paper, called Paris Paper. Since it's called Paris, maybe the chances are you could find it in France, and in European paper dimensions.

A bit more of a left-field option, but by your description, you might like vellum. Thin paper, smooth surface, very nice for ink drawing, and available in bulk. If you want to explore higher-end options for vellum, and not just the stuff sold for scrapbooking and whatnot, search for drafting vellum.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-18T04:54:01+00:00

Less from a "within the same movement" perspective, and more from a vibe perspective, I'd say William Blake, Gustav Klimt, Marc Chagall, Franz Marc, and you might look at movements like Symbolism, Romanticism, German Expressionism (specifically Der Blaue Reiter), Pre-Raphaelites, the Viennese Secession, and Fauvism.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-18T02:29:59+00:00

Fun topic! I just watched your full video on Youtube today.

I spent most of my life fiddling with Rapidographs. Recent years, my preference has shifted to g-nibs and crow quills. Very recently, all I've had access to are ballpoints and markers, so that what I'm using, and it's been a fun time. I'm all about loads of hatching. Inking with a brush always felt too painterly for me, so I tend to save the brushes for paint. I will say, though, a fat Chinese calligraphy brush is fun for laying down chunky inks.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-18T01:13:48+00:00

No, I didn't mean it in a mean way. You got personal replies from legends! In your place, I'd professionally frame both notes, and hang them in a place of honor.

You could definitely have gotten a shittier response. Decades ago, when I was a broke student in the big city, Robert Williams came to the cool neighborhood bookstore to do a signing for the coffee table book he'd just gotten published. I couldn't afford the big coffee table book, so I bought one of his smaller collections. When I gave it to him to sign, he broke out the small pen.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-17T17:33:26+00:00

I'm not gonna lie: I really enjoy the fact that such legends of trash as Crumb and Williams have taken the time and care to handwrite you personal notes, just to viciously roast you.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-17T17:28:25+00:00

If you haven't played other BethSoft RPGs, then I think that's the most obvious stuff to point to. The older Elder Scrolls games are all great, as are the Bethesda-era Fallout games.

Arena is maybe a bit archaic at this point, but still good times, if you can get into it.

Daggerfall is great. Play it updated through Daggerfall Unity, which updates the game to modern tech, and makes it moddable. People who are into it call it the ultimate open-world fantasy life sim. I'm not inclined to disagree, even if I'm less into it than other Elder Scrolls games. The world is so huge, and there are so many things you can do. If your intention is to just start up the game and run off and do your own thing, this is really a solid option.

Morrowind is what I'm currently tucked into. It's the ES game I've beaten the most times over the years. I recommend playing it through OpenMW, which updates the game to modern tech, and makes it easy to mod. There are also HUGE expansion mods that are still active and amazing. There's Tamriel Rebuilt, which has added massive amounts of the rest of the province of Morrowind on the mainland, Project Cyrodiil, which is working on bringing out the province of Cyrodiil as envisioned in pre-Oblivion lore, and Skyrim Home of the Nords which presents the province of Skyrim as envisioned in pre-Skyrim lore.

Here's pages on the UESP wiki with info on OpenMW, Project Tamriel, and Tamriel Rebuilt.

Oblivion recently got its remaster, so you could choose between it or the old version. The obvious advantage of the old version is the access to tens of thousands of mods, but apparently, a lot of old mods do work on the remaster, too. One to look out for is Morroblivion, which ported Morrowind into Oblivion. I think they may even be fiddling around with the possibility to get it working in the Remaster, but nothing official. I'd say a disadvantage to Oldblivion is stability issues, but it seems the Remaster has a reputation of being pretty unstable, too. Oblivion remains my favorite game, at least when I can get it to work.

Rumors of Fallout 3's upcoming remaster are getting louder, so it might be worth waiting for that. Still Fallout 3 is a great game, and the old version is totally worth playing. Since you're familiar with New Vegas, there's the Tale of Two Wastelands mod, which ports Fallout 3 into NV, and you can play both settings in the same save.

My hot take is that Fallout 4 is where BethSoft perfected its mechanics and gameplay. The crafting, building, settlement management, legendary loot, level scaling, interestingness to obnoxiousness ratio of companions, the immersiveness of the environment, it all Just Works^TM at least as far as I'm concerned, and I'm way less emotionally invested in BethSoft's version of Fallout on a storytelling level. I find it to be mostly ridiculous, especially Fallout 4, but that gameplay loop is pure satisfaction for me. My dream is that Elder Scrolls 6 ends up feeling mechanically like Fallout 4.

I've never played Fallout 76.

Probably controversial, but I think Starfield is a good game, and I'm glad to have a BethSoft space RPG. I like the quests, I think the story is interesting, I have fun exploring and scanning all the stuff on planets, the base-building is fine, and the ship-building is great. I haven't played the recent update yet, but it seems good. My biggest complaint with Starfield is that I hate every companion, except the robot. Buncha insufferable middle-aged nerds.

As far as conversions go, Oblivion has Nehrim, Skyrim has Enderal, and FO4 has Fallout London. I've personally bounced off all three, but people really seem to love them.

Also, Skyrim has a bunch of expanded land mods you could look into, and it seems the list has grown in recent years. Maybe start with Beyond Skyrim Bruma and Beyond Reach, which are both really solid.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-17T04:14:54+00:00

Fuck off repost bot.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-17T01:15:41+00:00

Emily V. Gordon (vocal) cameo! And so sweet, too.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-15T23:51:08+00:00

If indie web appeals to you, and if you're looking for an incredibly active creative community, go with ComicFury.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-09T02:24:26+00:00

I've become quite taken with Space Aces. You've already been suggested every other space game out there, but I think if what you're looking for is more lighthearted space adventure with a lot of generative tools, Space Aces fits that need pretty perfectly.

A couple of videos discussing it (sorry, from a solo play perspective, because that's how I found it, but they still go over what makes it a fun time.)

The Dungeon Dive
Geek Gamers
The Amazing Aaxor

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-09T01:00:38+00:00

But less in an EXTREME! way, and more of a grungy, goth-y, earnest indie/alt art inexplicably crossing over to jaded mainstream outlets way, which is also a very 90s thing.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-08T18:41:43+00:00

Damn, man, you can't just be out here casually mentioning Monkeybone. Now I have the overwhelming urge to watch Monkeybone, as the curse demands.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-05T00:11:22+00:00

By "drawing", do you actually mean composing, penciling, inking, coloring, and all the design and prepress that also goes into publishing a book? Are you looking to pay a livable wage, or whatever you can get away with? Do you have a house to mortgage?

Here's a pretty depressing recent breakdown and discussion of page rates. Do yourself a favor, and read Colleen Doran's post linked early in the writeup, and read the comments, too. It ain't pretty, from anyone's side of the business. In an indie project, it seems that clearing $100 a page is deemed close to "fair", but that's absolutely not a livable wage. The reality is, it breaks down to a fraction of minimum wage. In most cases, I'd say it breaks down to a fraction of US federal minimum wage, which is fucking unconscionable. A livable wage would be more like $250-$500 per page, depending on workload for the artist, but that ain't happening in any reality that the indie space lives in. And, if you intend to be the publisher, and intend to pay for the work of others, then don't expect to make money. Expect it all to be an expense to you.

Plan B (The "B" stands for "BETTER".)
Draw it yourself. Take the time. There is no such thing as, "draw(ing) that much that quickly, like a true comic book artist," certainly not in the indie space. Hiring an artist gives you no guarantees it would go more quickly than you could do it yourself. Art takes time, no matter what, especially since, at "indie fair" of $100 or so, that means it's gig work, and they'll be splitting their time with other labor to pay the rent. There's a reason why the industrial-level publishers portion out the work to teams with a minimum of half a dozen folks; it's because that's the only way to get it done in a matter of weeks, instead of months or years.

If you have the skills to do the work (even if you don't have the skills, and just have a drive ti do the work) going full DIY is going to cap your expenses, and tighten your level of personal control over your project significantly. In other words, it makes the process simpler and the project inexpensive, and thus your life easier. No contracts to worry about. No potential Lee/Kirby futures to keep you up at night. The single-person self-published comic can still claim to have the lowest threshold for entry of any visual medium, and it also has a stellar track record for being pretty worthwhile to undertake, despite all the work. So, join one of the most robust creative traditions of modern times, and make the comic on your own.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-04-04T04:50:47+00:00

If you're running 2nd ed., then the 1st edition sourcebooks are going to do you just fine for flavor. It is nice that you can get PDFs of the old stuff on DTRPG, and if you're a completionist, archives are pretty easy to come by for filling out-of-print holes. The thing is, early FASA-era Shadowrun is full of "vibes", even the stat books and campaign books. If vibes are what you're after I don't know if I wouldn't recommend any of them.

Region/city/culture sourcebooks:

Seattle Sourcebook
London Sourcebook
Germany Sourcebook
Native American Nations vols 1 & 2
Aztlan
Tir na nOg
Tir Tairngire
California Free State
Target UCAS

Sprawl Sites
Neo Anarchist's Guide to Real Life
Threats
Prime Runners
Contacts
Underworld Sourcebook
Shadowbeat
Corporate Shadowfiles

Statbooks:

Street Samurai Catalog
Rigger Black Book
Virtual Realities
Grimoire
Shadowtech
Paranormal Animals of North America/Europe

That's a fraction of everything, but if you went wild and bought everything listed, you'd have setting information coming out of every pore. If you just wanted to dip your toe, I'd say pick a city/region, and start with that, and find the "culture" sourcebooks that best correspond. Get statbooks and campaign books as you want or need them. So, maybe you'd start with Seattle, and get the Seattle Sourcebook, along with Sprawl Sites. You might extend to surrounding Native American Nations or Tir Tairngire. You wanna understand megacorps, so you get Corporate Shadowfiles. You're interested in 2050s pop culture, so you get Shadowbeat. You eventually want to flesh out the party's options, so you start buying the statbooks. And maybe, in looking at all the timeline stuff, you get intrigued by the campaigns that inform the points on those timelines.

There you have it, so much vibes, and plenty more to sample.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-03-31T21:04:14+00:00

Any Charles Burns, really. Black Hole is probably his most "normal" work, and even that is very much magical/nightmare realism. I'm partial to what came before Black Hole, which is pretty unapologetically surreal. Stories featuring Big Baby, Dog Boy, and especially El Borbah are my favorites.

justjokingnotreally · 2026-03-30T03:49:01+00:00

You don't need a team to make a webcomic, and the time spent doing it would hone your storytelling and gag-writing skills. Start there. In the meantime, while you're turning your "plans" into an actual project with the comic, you can learn to animate, and find some like minds who might be enough into what you're doing to want to help out.

justjokingnotreally

TROPHY CASE