The original artwork for the logo to Shadowrun 1e and 2e is for sale. As of this writing, Noble Knight Games, the online and brick and mortar store that’s the Mile High Comics of tabletop gaming, has this unique piece of RPG history. In terms of beloved RPGs, Shadowrun is part of a select list alongside Dungeons & Dragons, Call of Cthulhu, Pathfinder, Cyberpunk, Traveller, Vampire: The Masquerade, Rifts, and a handful of other long lived games. These are RPGs that have been around for decades, have large active and lapsed fanbases, and have shined both inside and outside tabletop community. Owning a piece of consequential artwork from any of these brands offers a unique opportunity that has lasting value as these intellectual properties (IPs) are not going away. Purchasing the original logo for Shadowrun is owning a marquee piece of the past, and may be an ideal investment for the right type of art collector.
SHADOWRUN
As discussed in Shannon Appelcline’s Designers & Dragons: The 80s, Shadowrun is a seminal work that has stood the test of time from 1989 to this day. The property, currently owned by The Topps Company, Inc., combines cyberpunk with fantasy giving you hacking, magic, and fighting the corps as well as fighting dragons. The games’ conception by Jordan Weisman, L. Ross Babcock III, Dave Wylie, Bob Charrette, and Sam Lewis started at FASA, but publication history branched out from there. Moving from FASA to WizKids then Fantasy Productions before moving to Topps and Catalyst Game Labs, the publishing imprint for InMediaRes Productions, with the digital rights through Microsoft. Shadowrun has benefited some of the top gaming publishers in the Western world, each finding a loyal fanbase interested in more content about the world of elven hackers and cyborg orks. As of this writing, Shadowrun is on its sixth core edition plus the Anarchy version. If you’re a fan of Shadowrun, Bundle of Holding is offering the PDFs of many of the original books via their SHADOWRUN 1E-2E MEGA. This offer runs through December 21, 2022 and gives fans a lot of early content, the same era was the logo NKGs has for sale.
Beyond a tabletop RPG, Shadowrun has migrated to video games (eight times as of this article), toys (which I covered here), collectible card games, board games, and pushing towards 100 novels. The game spawned a large number of items and a good sized following as displayed by Catalyst Games Labs’ booth at Gen Con.
WHAT OWNING THE ARTWORK PROVIDES
I’ve written about purchasing original artwork before and this logo falls into that category. When it comes to RPG artwork, certain covers and logos are key pieces that collectors will seek out. This Shadowrun logo was used for the first and second editions of the game and the “S” utilized in this logo continues to be a part of Shadowrun’s trade dress.
The original logo artwork is just that, the singular piece of art. The buyer gets the art, a nice frame, and a placard denoting the artists and this piece’s pedigree. This purchase does not include the ownership of the rights to the Shadowrun brand, trademark, or IP. To be clear, the buyer is purchasing the artwork only.
WHY YOU’D WANT TO INVEST $35,000?
The price for this piece is high, no two ways about it. You could buy a fair car for that amount. Many people in America live on less than that amount of money in a year. That amount of cheddar is a lot to put into a single anything, let alone a picture. At that price point it’s not for everyone, but for the right collector, it could be a cornerstone image for their portfolio. The reasons you might invest in it are simple: It’s a one-of-a-kind piece of art, and whenever they make a AAA video game or tentpole movie, this singular piece of memorabilia is likely to climb in price. Original comic artwork has seen steep increases over the last several decades. Important pieces of RPG artwork are unlikely to reach those heights, but the covers to Dungeons & Dragons books or Tim Bradstreet’s Vampire: The Masquerade covers are likely to gain in value in the coming decades. This prolifically used logo may stand beside those.
NOBLE KNIGHT GAMES’ PITCH
Noble Knight Games is a massive web and physical store specializing in secondary market tabletop roleplaying games as well as new content. While they’ve been in the news recently as their employees unionize, they have always been an important retailer for tabletop gaming, offering hard to procure pieces of tabletop.
Here’s the full pitch from NKG’s page. To be clear, NKG has had this item up for a while. The pitch mentions 5th edition Shadowrun, while the game is on 6th edition. Clearly, the $35k price point is waiting for the appropriate fan. But, when that fan is identified, this piece will find its place on the wall behind the GM’s chair.
High Tech… Low Life…
Or perhaps not?
Maybe one lucky runner managed to avoid all the classic pitfalls: no death by corporate assassins, no untimely end after hacking the wrong data, and definitely no deals with dragons. Maybe, somewhere out there there’s just one soul who made it well enough to settle down and spend all of that glorious, hard-earned loot. Such a person would need just the right thing to represent their success, one perfect symbol to show the world their devotion.
And, here it is, the single greatest prize that any runner could possibly claim.
Yes, this is your chance to buy a legendary artifact, the original Shadowrun Logo artwork acquired by Noble Knight Games directly from former FASA art director, Dana Knutson. This is an opportunity that comes not once in a lifetime, but once, period.
From its very inception, this piece was destined for greatness. It was a group effort between three FASA artists, each a legend in their own right. The design was originally created by Jeff Laubenstein, a prolific illustrator for both Shadowrun and Battletech whose influence you can see throughout the illustrations of both games. The type was chosen at the discretion of Jim Nelson, an artist whose body of work from his years at FASA, Wizards of the Coast, and beyond is far too large to detail here. The final painting of the piece was at the hand of Dana Knutson, renowned for his work on all of FASA’s lines including many of the iconic mechs and symbols of Battletech and countless illustrations for other Shadowrun products.
Measuring 39” x 28” in its frame, this piece would be a striking display, even if not for its history, and that history only ups the ante. Included with the piece is a custom plaque with the artists names and a brief description to give your display a true gallery feel.
At the very dawn of the game, in 1989, this emblem was the face of Shadowrun; the stylized “S” introduced in this piece has persisted all the way into today with the game’s 5th edition. This is no mere drawing, it is a touchstone back to a time when the dark, fast, brutal world of Shadowrun was just beginning and the possibilities that lay ahead were infinite.
And if you play your cards right, it can be yours.
[UPDATE 2023-01-03] At the Shadowrunners’ Union Facebook group, original logo artist Jeff Laubenstein commented about some memories and tidbits about the logo and other original pieces of Shadowrun’s artwork.
Egg Embry participates in the OneBookShelf Affiliate Program, Noble Knight Games’ Affiliate Program, and is an Amazon Associate. These programs provide advertising fees by linking to DriveThruRPG, Noble Knight Games, and Amazon.
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