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It’s only a slight exaggeration to say that artist David A. Trampier made the underground phenomenon of Dungeons & Dragons viable in the mainstream. In its original form, D&D was a game outlined in some very underwhelming booklets — fine for the hobbyist market that embraced the game but lacking in style. When TSR decided to go next-level with D&D, beginning in 1977, the company released a series of hardcover books. Among these was the Player’s Handbook, which featured a cover painting of a statue of a fat horned deity holding a bowl of fire. A party of human adventurers in the foreground have just killed some lizard men, while a couple humans can be seen on top of the statue trying to pry one of its diamond eyes loose with a crowbar. This cover painting by Dave Trampier is arguably the most iconic image from early D&D (technically the “advanced” version of the game, or AD&D).
For sustained effort, Trampier’s part in the Monster Manual (another of the first AD&D books) is perhaps more impressive. Trampier didn’t paint the cover of this one, but his black-and-white illustrations appear throughout. These strange and fearsome creatures, depicted in a variety of styles, are unforgettable — any player or former player who opened the first edition Monster Manual will recall Trampier’s contributions, always tagged with his initials “DAT”: Gorgon, Harpy, Basilisk, Displacer Beast, Rakshasa, Pit Fiend, Lich, Intellect Devourer, Lemures, Banshee and many others. Trampier wasn’t the only illustrator TSR used for the Monster Manual, but he was without a doubt the best. The Player’s Handbook and Monster Manual (along with a third book, the Dungeon Master’s Guide) helped solidify D&D — taking a game that was fairly abstract and putting it on store shelves as an attractive must-buy product.
Trampier’s art became further identified with Dungeons & Dragons thanks to his illustrations for The Village of Hommlet, one of the early campaigns TSR published, and even moreso via his “Wormy” comic strip that ran in Dragon magazine for years. (There’s a “Wormy” archive here.)
Trampier also co-created a tabletop game called Titan, which was first published by Gorgonstar and then licensed to Avalon Hill.
Trampier disappeared quite suddenly in the late ’80s — his Dragon strip “Wormy” simply stopped mid-story, and the checks sent him by TSR (payments for “Wormy” and other royalties) were returned unopened. Was he dead? That’s usually the case when someone fails to cash checks. Tom Wham, a fellow TSR artist and Trampier’s brother in law, maintained that Tramp was still alive — but admitted he didn’t know where he was.
Trampier’s status remained thus — disappeared, possibly dead — until 2002. Then the student newspaper of Southern Illinois University published a story that profiled a cab driver who identified himself as David Trampier. The author of the story did not know his subject as an artist — just a cabbie.
But the picture in the newspaper confirmed it: Dave Trampier, the Dave Trampier, was alive. Driving a cab in Carbondale, Illinois. Uninterested in fantasy art or gaming.
Fans and publishers tried to get Trampier to re-engage in some way, but he refused. He turned down invitations to appear at conventions and he wasn’t interested in having his Monster Manual drawings or “Wormy” strips collected in a book. He just kept driving his cab.
In 2013, Trampier lost his job when the cab company went out of business, he suffered a mild stroke, and he was diagnosed with cancer. It was at this point, and under dire circumstances, that he finally considered returning to gaming and fantasy art after 25 years away. He sold a few paintings (including the original Dungeon Master’s Screen from 1979) and made plans to appear at a convention in April 2014. But he never made it to the show — Trampier died on March 24, 2014.
Who knows what we might have seen out of Dave Trampier had he not retired 25 years early? He seemed to harbor some serious ill will toward TSR, though as with many parts of his story, the specifics are unknown.
Here are some scans of his Monster Manual art as it appeared in situ:
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