We at LPJ Design were having a discussion and we wanted to get the Pathfinder fan bases feeling on this. Simply put: How important is it that there is artwork for a monster when facing/in combat with it. The monster maybe something that you OR may not be familiar with. Please discuss.
I don't need artwork for "human" but I think it's critical for unfamiliar monsters. I'm perfectly happy with black & white pencil drawings, however.
I dunno about "critical" but anything which helps visualize the situation increases immersion and makes the game more fun.
I know that having a miniature for every monster is something that my players really get enjoyment out of.
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I like showing my players pictures of the monsters when they're funky and hard to describe/terrifying. I'm not very good at descriptive imagery off the top of my head, so saying "You see a scary creature and he looks something like THIS! AAAAAH!" is very nice.
But that's mostly for something that looks weird.
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It's a visual world and I'm not sure I can fully describe a non-iconic monster without art. Even if I tell my players what a "peluda" looks like with spikes akimbo and later ask them to draw it, I'm going to get 4 drastically different views. I also prefer artwork on NPCs to make the characters breathe, and selfishly so I don't have to flip through 20 pages of notes to recall whether Baron Drelev has brown wavey hair or blonde or a scar on his cheek. When possible, I show artwork to the party (while trying to cleverly cover up stats), and it's always been 4 heads swiveling to see what they're dealing with.
The quality of art has some impact. It's hard to immerse in a medieval fantasy setting if the monsters and NPCs all appear to be anime. Color is merely a bonus. Well-done black and white was the Bestiary standard for years in AD&D.
I've not been at a gaming table without someone online for several years now. I think you need some kind of visual reference point for monsters, but you probably don't need it to be in the actual book as long as it's available digitally.
I would rather just show a picture showing what they see than explain it.
For my part I will say very important. Case in point there are rarely any monsters in the pathfinder published material that dont have an associated image.
I find artwork very useful. I use paper minis for the AP I'm running, and will do so for the next one simply because I don't have to say "This large plastic unicorn is actually an ettercap, and that medium soldier is a skeleton, and the halfling mage mini there is a goblin."
I like to print and use the artwork for the BBEG's, too, to put a face to the name.
Since I never haul my Bestiaries to games I print off only the monsters I need for an adventure from d20pfsrd.com, I rely on my descriptive abilities to bring the monster to life for the players. And I'm pretty good at it, if I may so myself.
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Honestly, what keeps us from getting a Kaidan Bestiary out is the money to pay for art, which is my round-about way of saying we won't create a bestiary without art. Art for monsters is that important.
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Unless the monster looks just like something else (e.g. the giant and miniature animals in 1E AD&D) a picture is very important. Worth 10,000 words as the old saying has it.
I agree that art for monsters is highly important. As someone who publishes monster books, and would be quite happy if it weren't, ala the Kaidan example above. Art not only helps to create a mental image for players and GMs alike when a monster is in play, it makes the GM much more likely to be intrigued by a monster in the first place. I know that some of the artless OGL monster books (like the Monster Geographica series), didn't catch much of my attention, despite me having access to many of those self-same monsters in other, be-arted, projects (and I helped edit the damn things!).
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The role-model monster book layout, in my opinion, was the Monsternomicon by Privateer Press. The book was entirely black & white, which keeps cost down, and had nicely drawn art for each monster. The thing that made it special was the extra information given with each monster: in-character description, GM information, and a list of lore DCs with what information each DC gives about that monster.
Contributor; Developer, Super Genius Games
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We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it. Since Jacob Blackmon was present, he sketched the thing from the description between rounds one and two (yes, he is that fast). It was a huge help.
It also looked slightly different than "classic" snallygasters, which was fine, but also speaks to the point. I find at least sketch illos of monsters with uncommon appearances very useful. I don't have an issue with "a red unicorn, with a curved, saw-toothed horn," but for more exotic things a picture is very worthwhile.
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I think the necessity of an illustration depends on where it appears. If it's in an adventure and isn't a rare monster or terribly unique, that's fine. There are likely other sources for an illustration. In a perfect world, everyone could have illustrations for everything encountered.
But, for a new monster or a bestiary, lacking an illustration is a one way ticket to never-being-used-land... and no good monster deserves that.
Paizo has proved that even though you might be familiar with a typical monster like a goblin, that it might actual look that monster might be quite different then what people traditionally think of.
Malleus Monstrorum (Thanks for the suggestion Kthulhu!) doesn't have illustrations for most of it's monsters, and manages to work. It does however have images of news clippings, creepy artifacts, etc relating to the monster, so what it lacks in visualization it makes up for with atmosphere.
But yeah, otherwise it's usually the illustrations of a monster that make me excited. Only then do I read the fluff/statblocks. And a really goofy/bad image is going to make me less likely to use a monster as well.
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Once upon a time I had all of the Monster Geographica books. Excellant compilations of OGL monsters arranged by terrain and CR. If I knew the terrain and CR of my encounter (and when did I not?) then these were my goto books for something different encounters.
And I never, not once, used a monster from them.
The reason is the lack of pictures. The books were made without illustrations to cut costs. At first I thought this was great-I like cheap books. But the illustration is what firsts catches my eye. Without it I just flipped the pages.
So, as a GM, illustrations of some sort are an absolute requirement.
TL;DR
An absolute requirement.
We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it.
As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?
Personally, I prefer names like Mind Flayer - easy to translate to the iconic "Gedankenschinder" - since we're playing in German, I've had multiple instances where names that sound cool in English just sound ridiculous in German. There is a race that translated to "doggy", wrong usages of German "Märchen der Daemonwulf" and the like. What I'm trying to say is: If you make up names, make them up so they don't translate to something dumb-sounding in at least some of the more common languages like Spanish etc.
@LPJ: Last week I finally got to introduce the Chanting Queen's victims and her storyline. GLORIOUS!
Regarding artworks: They are VERY important - I rather have no artworks than lame ones. In the end, though, it depends on creature and intent. In the German CoC monster book, for example, there are no regular artworks and instead authentic (or photoshoped) b/w-photographies in the style of the 20s that feature eerie phenomena related to the mythos - and it works splendidly!
No artwork has ever made me use or not use a critter whose mechanics were broken or bland, though. In 3.X there were a lot of them around.
Priority 1: Rules, signature abilities, writing
Priority 2: Artworks/Presentation
Both are NOT optional and required for a good monster book.
Just my 2 cents!
An adventure I was running recently used bunyips. I had no clue what they looked like, as I had never heard of them. After combat, I just showed my players the google images results, and told them to imagine an amalgamation of the results. But during combat, I couldn't really describe what was going on as well as I had wanted to due to not knowing what the enemy looked like.
Art's useful!
We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it.As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?
Depends on how you are presenting the creature. While Illithids may think of themselves as "Illithids" everyone else calls them Mind Flayers. Ditto with Paizo's Fetchling vs. Kayal. I would go with whatever is most evocative sounding (ie "yuan-ti" rather than "snakemen" & "bullette" rather than "land shark") in the actual entry.
-TimD
We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it.As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?
Depends on the name chosen. I have the creepy bestiary from Alluria Publishing, and while some of the art is pretty good, and some of the stats are good, the names of some critters make me cringe. The Frogodile looks bad ass, but the name just makes me shake my head. But I have also seen completely made up names do the same thing, either because no one can pronounce it right, the word too easily sounds like something embarassing, or it just doesn't stick in the memory.
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Art is required unless it is very easy to describe. With experienced players, what is easy to describe changes.
Examples:
1. Stegosaurus skeleton with dark energy surrounding it.
2. Giant green grey frog.
3. Many black tentacles with pincers and suction tubes explode from water. Something resembling your mother-in-law rises from the depths.
As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?
I like it when there are both types of names, what they're commonly called (Mind Flayer) and what they call themselves (Illithid).
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We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it.As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?
I kind of like how TSR did it with the mind flayer... It has the common name "mind flayer, but it also has the more technical term "illithid".
We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it.As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?
I think monsters should be called what people call them. So if they are native to the area then the locals will have a real name for them like "cow".
If it is some sort of abberation that no one has ever seen then it will get a more descriptive name like "moo-moo" or 'udder beast' or 'horse-minotaur'.
On a slight tanget, because of this I believe catfolk to have been created by wizards or druids fairly recently.
Have you every seen a monster who didn't live up to the picture or vice versa?
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Personally, I prefer names like Mind Flayer - easy to translate to the iconic "Gedankenschinder" - since we're playing in German, I've had multiple instances where names that sound cool in English just sound ridiculous in German. There is a race that translated to "doggy", wrong usages of German "Märchen der Daemonwulf" and the like.
Then again you have descriptive names that translated to 'Riesenvettern' or 'Watschelnder Komposthaufen'...
To the OP:
I prefer to have illustrations of monsters, even if they are 'low budget'. While I don't often show those illustrations to players during play, they help invoking the image of the monster in my mind, thus making it easier to describe the encounter to the players.
If I get descriptive names for animal-intelligence level monsters, I am fine with that. Descripive names for intelligent, non-unique monsters are best accompanied by a name these creatures use to describe themselfs.
We just had this come up recently in a playtest game. we were attacked by a snallygaster, and had no art for it.As a side conversation: what do people feeling about naming of monsters, should it be a completely new name like the "Urathai" or a descriptive name like "Mind Flayer" or "umber hulk"?I think monsters should be called what people call them. So if they are native to the area then the locals will have a real name for them like "cow".
If it is some sort of abberation that no one has ever seen then it will get a more descriptive name like "moo-moo" or 'udder beast' or 'horse-minotaur'.
On a slight tanget, because of this I believe catfolk to have been created by wizards or druids fairly recently.
Well you can bet that any monsters borrowed from Japanese folklore and inserted into the Rite Publishing Kaidan setting of Japanese horror will retain it's original Japanese name, with a parenthetic notation on it's English translation. Such as Rokuro-kubi (neck stretching woman). Part of the goal of Kaidan is to teach westerners about Japanese culture and folklore, so retaining accuracy means using the terms the Japanese used.
As an aside, with the mentioning of Rokuro-kubi, which exists in the Bestiary 3 as undead. In Japan, Rokuro-kubi was not undead, in fact, it's not even a monster per se, rather in Kaidan, this is a template. Nobody is born a rokuro-kubi, as it is an acquired curse that anybody could gain.
