In May, Geek Native’s Patreons voted to put publisher and illustrator Dario Corallo in the spotlight.
A poll like this happens every month and is designed to help promote smaller companies or creators who might not get media attention as easily as the more prominent publishers.
I’ve been chatting to Dario, having tracked the Palermo-based illustrator down. He was kind enough to agree to a Q&A. The fact that Dario offered to do this comes as no surprise. Everyone I talked to for the Spotlight was full of praise. Here’s what Rick Meints, the President of Chaosium told me;
He is a very generous and creative individual. I have always enjoyed working with him.
Sadly, though, we’ve rolled into a new month, and the Q&A isn’t ready. Dario’s too humble!
As time progresses, the Spotlight is due to shine somewhere else. So, we’re going to do two things; make some tweaks to the RPG Spotlight and highlight Dario without the Q&A.
We might start at where Chaosium and Corallo intersect! If you pick an edition of the Gloranthan Classics then you’ll almost certainly encounter his art. This Italian illustrator has been with RuneQuest for years.
Zenith Counters
As it happens, I suspect it was Dario’s more recent work that won him first place in the May vote in the RPG Publisher Spotlight. It was the Zenith Counters.
Dario’s art can bring your virtual tabletops to life with isometric monsters, animals and crawling horrors.
- Antelope Lancers
- Trolls & Trollkins #1
- Chaos #1
- Chaos #2
- Giant Baboons (And the Lost Temple of Simian God)
- The Flying Trollkin
- Tusk Riders
- Zorak Zoran Trolls #2
These counters are published as part of the Jonstown Compendium. That’s Chaosium’s community content program, similar to how WotC has the DMs Guild.
7 out of those 8 counter collections have 5/5 perfect review stars at DriveThruRPG. The 8th hasn’t yet been reviewed.
Alephtar Games
Google hard enough, and you’ll find a legacy of how and where Dario has helped shape the RPG community.
For example, here are Cardboard Warriors a community who like their paper figures, highlighting Dario’s art and his involvement of the founding of Alephtar Games.
The Wolfriders, even more tokens – well, you’ll recognise the style! – are still available on DriveThruRPG.
RPG Publisher Spotlight
Usually, at this point in the RPG Publisher Spotlight, we’d have a collection of summary links pointing you to where you can find the publisher’s website or social media. That’s not appropriate here.
Instead, let’s talk about the changes to the program. Geek Native has created a permanent hall of records for the spotlight. If you want to see who’s won the Spotlight poll in previous months, you can find out here.
The current winner gets the prime position at the top of the page. At the time of posting, that’s Dario.
This page is linked to by the Quick Links sidebar on the blog. It’s a prominent page. The hope is that the Spotlight will shine even more brightly for winners like Dario.
I’ll update this write-up if and when we get the Q&A to a satisfactory place. In the meantime, check out Dario’s tabletop counters and level up your monstrous encounters.
