#RPGCovers Week Eleven Lemuria Space Station (2023) Scragend
It’s a simple but effective look– reminiscent of Soviet era posters maybe, or a retrofuturist look in general. Either way it was striking enough, browsing through DTRPG to make me stop, take a closer look, and then pick it up.
There’s a lot of great small details that go together to create the effect. First there’s the cross-section of the station itself, with strange tubes running throughout, creating a texture of blocks. That has several labels which invite you to wonder (a mycology section? what is The Divide?)
The dotted line circles focus attention on the center, where the color changes, making the red of the whole cover seem like an overlay. Or is it that the centerpoint represents a target location. The orbital circles have shapes. Are those ships? If so, what are the larger three star shapes?
The stars are like paint splatters against the red, but they’re echoed by the dotted fade out on the cross-section of the section itself, a continued visual motif. It wasn’t until my second or third look that I noticed the water stain running along the right-hand side, like a manual someone had spilled coffee on and then wiped clean.
I dig the title font as well– looking slightly official and severe until you notice the serif elements on the Es and Ts. Finally there’s the band just above the lower quarter– looking like a warning strip and also reinforcing the color choices. Those colors continue on the inside– with some absolutely amazing art, page design, and layout.
