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Rodger B. MacGowan Has Passed Away at Age 77

1 year ago 68

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by W. Eric Martin

Artist/designer Rodger B. MacGowan passed away on February 22, 2025, and if you have been a gamer for any amount of time over the past fifty years, you have likely seen his work.

MacGowan founded RBM Design Studio in 1973, founded Fire & Movement magazine in 1976 — winning the Charles S. Roberts award for "Best Professional Wargaming Magazine" annually from 1978-1981 — co-founded GMT Games in 1990, and founded C3i magazine in 1992, winning the CSR award again in 2008, 2012, 2019, 2020, and 2021.

MacGowan has art credits for almost six hundred titles in the BGG database, with his most visible work possibly being the cover of Twilight Struggle. That game's co-designer Jason Matthews wrote the following in tribute of MacGowan:

Rodger WAS wargame art for many of us. His classic covers at Avalon Hill, then GMT (and a lot of other publishers of course) are etched into my mind's eye whenever I think about this hobby. My personal favorite is the Squad Leader module Crescendo of Doom. It made me want to play Squad Leader so much when I was a kid. That is what great graphic design does for games — it elevates them to something you just feel compelled to engage with.

Most notably in my own experience, Rodger designed the cover of Twilight Struggle. Rodger had a very distinctive style. I think most of us could pick out a MacGowan cover at a glance. So when I first saw the proof of the Twilight Struggle cover I was like, wait what?

Then he and I had a conversation about it. For Twilight Struggle, he'd drawn on his early work in Los Angeles as graphic artist at an advertising agency. He used to do science fiction magazine covers there for a client in the 1970s. And when he said that, his now iconic work on Twilight Struggle totally clicked, and I understood precisely what he was getting at.

From then on, I loved the cover of Twilight Struggle. He did something very important for the game. He let GMT's core audience know that whatever was in the box was going to be a little bit different than other wargames or even other CDGs. That helped set the tone. And then when Twilight Struggle took off, the gaming world loved the cover as much as I did. I've seen it on birthday cakes, cookies, T-shirts, Christmas stockings and on and on.

Joachim Boaz of Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations has posted a tribute to MacGowan's science fiction art from early in his career, and BGG users have posted their own tributes in this thread, often including their favorite example of his work.

If you want to do something further, you might consider contributing to this GoFundMe campaign, which was set up by Steven MacGowan following the destruction of the MacGowan home and art studio in the Palisades fire that took place in Los Angeles in early 2025.