Just read the Op not the whole thread:
To me, it depends on the book. Generic books (rule books, etc) with colorful art on the pages and amongst the text is fine. Hopefully its awesome but even if its not, I'm fine with it.
Art depecting something to be used ingame (such as in the equipment section or magical item section) needs to be /good/ art thats /accurate/ about what it is portraying though.
Bestiaries need to be A++++ artists who can read what they are given about a monster and write something accordingly. They need to ahve at least enough grasp of the game system to have some clue about what they are doing.
Seeing some of the art they tack on to bestiaries and the sheer inaccuracies just makes me die a little inside.
(this was especially true back for WotC- some of the darksun stuff could have been drawn better by a blind 3rd grader- regardless of accuracy the "artist" was just bad) but inaccurate stuff slips through Paizo's bestaries quite abit too.
I understand an artist may not be a gamer or care about it but dang- seeing a strong powerful creature depicted as some hunched over shriveled up crone just grates.
-S
Note to monster artists: if your skills are insufficient to the task of making a critter look cool, simply adding spikes to it does NOT make up for the lack.
With Paizo being the king of RPG's at the moment they have the budget to put out quality artwork. Smaller companies like Palladiumbooks have great games, but their artwork is in black and white and are from freelancers but that doesn't stop me from buying their products. With a giant like Paizo, of course we are going to get quality artwork because they have the budget money to provide us with quality. The more money a company gets, the better quality of their products and Paizo is doing great at the moment.
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I really liked the ability to change between map types (geographic, political, etc). I just realized, almost every RPG map I've seen has been geographic (with an emphasis on terrain), with other types overlaid as an afterthought.You've got to remember, though, that up through the last couple centuries, most of the earth didn't belong to a political unit; there was just terrain, and maybe a tribe or two, whose territory might fluctuate on a weekly basis. Western Europe was the exception rather than the rule. It's only very recently that we divided up every square inch of land into political units.
No disagreement here. But given the history of the hobby, it is surprising. Sometimes you just want to know whose lands your traipsing through.
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Note to monster artists: if your skills are insufficient to the task of making a critter look cool, simply adding spikes to it does NOT make up for the lack.
Ditto for huge muscles or glowing red eyes.
Photo-referencing Beau Bridges is just plain awesome, though.
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...Darksun, Ravenloft and Planescape are three example of settings that got into their own because of their artistic direction. I know art (in which I included layout, fonts and editing) does a lot for me, especially initially.
'findel
Yeah, I was a fan of several campaign settings (Darksun, Ravenloft, Planescape, Spelljammer, & Eberron) where I first got interested in the setting due to their unique art styles.
I got into the RPG scene during the days of 3.5, so I've always been used to books with a solid percentage of pictures in them. With that bit of background out of the way, my view on art is a bit complicated, because it depends on what sort of book it is included in. I will say right off the bat that the art can color the perception of the viewer, especially if the art is supposed to depict an example of a listed object/entity. Then again, taken with a grain of salt and plenty of imagination, there's no reason why anyone "has" to imagine their character to look just like one in the book, or to have a weapon just like the one in the equipment illustrations. Lets face it, most people that claim to have little imagination simply are not using it, but I digress, let's take a more in depth look at types of books.
Rulebooks and supplements: While not every page needs to have art on it, it is important. Take Pathfinder's Advanced Player's Guide, for example. Throughout the book, there are illustrations of various forms of player content in action. While one could indeed just read the content and get an idea of what it does, and indeed imagine it, the art acts like an advertisement of the ability. Long before you even read the entry, your eyes have bugged out as you gaze in wonder at what you see, sparking your imagination, and soon you're searching the page for the content depicted. Now, imagine you didn't have that illustration, and you were skimming through the book looking for content. Maybe you would have found that content, maybe not, depending on how eye-catching the name is or how much of a rules-reader you are. (Turns out, not everyone reads through the books thoroughly.)
Bestiaries and Monster Manuals, on the other had, both need and suffer from illustrations. Compare, let's say, the image used in Monster Manual 1 of the mimic with its counterpart in Bestiary 1. By comparison, the Bestiary art is much more dynamic and interesting, isn't it? A good illustration can go a long way towards selling a monster for use by a GM in an encounter, or by a player summoning said monster, in some cases. Meanwhile, a "good enough" illustration can make a monster seem boring, usable as filler, but little else. Bestiary art should inspire scenarios. By the same logic, bestiary art can also sometimes lock you into the idea of what a monster looks like, or what a monster "is". Which is why unique art in adventure paths and scenarios is so useful, not only representing the variety a single monster can exhibit, but also inspiring beyond that.
I was just playing the Europa Universalis III demo, and something just clicked. I really liked the ability to change between map types (geographic, political, etc). I just realized, almost every RPG map I've seen has been geographic (with an emphasis on terrain), with other types overlaid as an afterthought.How cool would it be to have an area map with translucent overlays allowing you to add or change layers?
You can do that digitally with Campaign Cartographer 3, for the record. You actually have both "sheets" and "layers" -- the sheets are the overlays, the layers are the broader categories which organize the data in different ways (so the mountain layer might contain both the mountain symbols and the mountain terrain drawing underneath the symbols, but the symbols and the terrain drawing are in turn on separate sheets). By hiding or showing various layers or sheets, you can have entirely different versions of the same map--and you can save views. I'm working on that with a current map I have of my homebrew world---one view shows geographic terrain, the other is a political map where the borders are much more transparent.
You can also link maps in CC3, so you can open the overland map, click on the city which takes you to the city map, then click on a building which takes you to the map of that building. Course, you have to build all those maps first, so it takes time, but it's a neat feature.
Just as a note.