I love art, but I also recognize most core and splat books are just compendia of new rules. That said, great art that evokes a point of view, mood, or suggestions of the rather difficult to fathom, really help. Art can be useful setting off points for me to describe locales or attitudes.

Now, I need a new set of RPG rules like I need a venereal disease (omg, such retro vocab, totes adorbs). So, as practical as it may be to print (or .pdf) a new system or splat sans art, without that evocative image hook I'd rather just pick up an old TSR, WW, or Dragon magazine product. Probably cheaper, probably better art quality on average, and easily better production and style diversity. It's like why I enjoy the cover art on my music albums or books -- evoking a sense of place and wonder is quickly done in image.

If you're new to the market and you want to even bother, bring me something evocative and new either in your cover pitch or your product imagery. I buy games for their settings, not their rules. I type out "cheat sheet" player references, or make my own GM Screens, and so I rarely want to bring your book as a reference to the table, too. But beautiful art that inspires... that's a joy and a treasure for the ages.

Art sets a tone for a setting for me.  So I consider it very important.  But it has to be good, or it'll turn me off the book.

Let me qualify that a little better:  For me good art is composition, perspective and if I like the style of it presented.  It doesn't have to be realistic but it needs to 'flow', so no using cartoon art overlayed a photo of a castle or a car park or something, that will turn me off.

And like everyone else says, this is subjective and personal.

Quote from: Ravenswing;866490You know, this is an interesting notion I wish I'd thought of in other art-in-RPGs arguments I've been in.  The rebuttal to all the people screeching how evocative art is and how they somehow need it to play a game based almost entirely around the spoken word is this: how often has the art in a RPG book been bad?

There's a few that I might cast as "bad," on a several levels, be it technical, jarring style to setting, failure in mood, contrasting expectations, etc., but the big thing for me aesthetically is how it sets up expectations. Like, I could really care less about most comic book hero art, and most anime art. Most of it does little for me nowadays (there was a time when at least the anime look was novel, but alas no more). So when I see anime-esque art, I prefer to look for the spoof angle before I really dig much deeper (unless it is one of the few animes I still have love for).

But more importantly, taking the comic book hero art style as an example, it broadcasts an aesthetic in looks that speaks about aesthetic and genre conventions that I have no interest in. I don't want to play Supers games; I don't like them, I don't 'get' them, the best I could care about is maybe street level gumshoe. That art very much advertises to me "BAD! STAY AWAY!" because I already have certain preferences when I go to market.

Now, and at this point it feels like gratuitous beating of D&D 4e, the art posing of that edition line was very Supers-esque. At its start it felt like a poor fit with what I wanted to play. Needless to say Pathfinder wasn't much better, just cluttered with more shit atop each character like a Katamari Damacy ball, as Wayne Reynold's aesthetic was ubiquitous. In the end upon reflection I sort of wished I did judge both books by their covers because it really did feel like a Supers aesthetic leaked into both spheres.

So not exactly "bad art," but "warning art."

Quote from: Omega;866577Not really. There are games with some surprisingly good poser art in them.

They are unfortunately so rare as to be nigh mythical.

Perhaps it is due to my background in art, but I can TELL if someone just used Poser models and painted or drew over them. There's a certain "look" to them that I can identify a mile away (the faces, the way the arms are positioned and the foreshortening/perspective (or lack thereof because the artist didn't tweak the camera settings). This screams "LAZY" to me and I loathe it very much.

In my opinion, Poser should only be ever used as reference if you need a super specific pose that you can't find from an image search or catalogue. To each their own, of course.

Quote from: Omega;866577Not really. There are games with some surprisingly good poser art in them.

They are unfortunately so rare as to be nigh mythical.

I suppose I have lower standards as far as Poser art goes. I do like the medium.  I'd say majority of Poser illustrations in rpgs falls into the lazy category but there's some, good ones (in the sense I liked them, individual mileage will vary). One thing that seems to hold true is that Poser pictures don't play well with other mediums so mix and matching with more conventional art can be jarring.

Quote from: Necrozius;866625Perhaps it is due to my background in art, but I can TELL if someone just used Poser models and painted or drew over them.

I thought this was about poser (i.e. poseur) art. I didn't know that Poser art was a thing.

It's not awful, but it does feel a bit lifeless or sterile.

Though I could probably use this one for CoC.

Palladium Fantasy 2nd Edition is my gold standard for how a book should handle art and formatting.

1) Evocative Cover
2) Sparse but very high quality B/W illustrations
3) Formatting is easy on the eyes with enough white space

I actually like quality b/w illustrations in my RPG books. But I am a very visual guy, it helps me absorb ideas I can later recite from memory for improvisation.

Quote from: Simlasa;866547I was looking at my (recently rediscovered) copy of Melee over the weekend and was kind of surprised at how good the art still looks to me after all this time... though the cover image is kind of iffy (I've got the one with the  floppy-dick gargoyle.
I'm pretty sure those illustrations helped boost our enthusiasm for the game.
GURPS on the other hand, had such lackluster (though not technically bad) art through most of books I own, that I suspect it served to water down my expectations a bit... despite liking the rules quite a bit.

I'm thinking my preferences run to having a variety of artists illustrate rather than having the whole look of a game defined by one person's work that might hit or miss with me... and silly as it sounds I think it frees up my imagination a bit if there's a wider menu of visual interpretations.

Yeah, I have the "dead gargoyle" Melee, and I didn't even see the floppy-dick gargoyle till years later. Melee being the first game in the series, I might not have found the RPG that got me hooked (and that I'm essentially still playing with GURPS + house rules), so I suppose cover art can be very important in that sense. Game cover art has definitely got me interested or not interested in many games.

So perhaps it is important to get cover art (at least) that's not only well-done, but also somehow relates to what you think is compelling about your game, and represents it well and doesn't sell something it's not (because I also know some games I resent or avoid because the cover art is compelling but the game isn't like the art's suggestion, for me, at all).

I agree with you Simlassa too about imagination - my imagination will be used during the game, and has a lot of advantages over art, and if there's one artist doing the same style throughout a book, that's a fairly strong suggestion to that style of visualization. Variety can help invite broader imagination by the players, I think.

It's a factor in my decision but not a decisive one.  I will be more likely to buy a game with evocative art that I like and less likely to buy one with amateurish looking art.  It not the only thing I look at but I do look at it.

I personally have no problem enjoying a book with almost no art in it that's well-written (Hulks & Horrors, for instance).  But Dark Albion has certainly proven to me that in general, among gamers, having great art/production makes a huge difference in terms of the popularity of a game.

well for me it play little part in what i will buy with the exception that i will pay more for good art good being a subjective term

Quote from: artikid;866513Absolutely! Bad/Good art is very subjective.

yep yep yep for example i love the pencil sketch art Kōsuke Fujishima dos from time to time for stuff heres a good example if you want a look
http://static.zerochan.net/Sakura.Wars.Illustrations.The.Origin.%2B.Tribute.full.258028.jpg
yet a friend of mine ribs me regularly for liking them  

Quote from: Skarg;866533It's largely irrelevant to the game content, but if it's really off-putting, then it's off-putting and a shame marring a good set of rules, even if irrelevant. I'd rather it weren't there. Rules without art are ok for me, and better than problematic art.

My bar is fairly low, and crosses into "bad" territory when it contradicts my imagination of a game I'd want to play.  Or if the aesthetic bugs me (e.g. The Palladium Role-Playing Game core book had a lot of portraits that put me off somehow - dragons with human-like muscles, off proportions, and lots of faces that creeped me out and made me slightly nauseous somehow - I did not want to imagine myself if a world of creatures that looked like those). Or if the art is weirdly off in how it draws stuff - either too cartoony without being cartoons, or bad perspective or body proportions (http://i48.tinypic.com/t6cv0x.jpg), or characters doing things in ways that look really dumb or wrong, or that illustrate misconceptions as if they're cool, or something.

I strongly dislike this, for example:


And I rather like art that contributes and appeals to me, by being well-done, attractive, interesting/intruguing, somewhat realistic, and evoking something that sparks my imagination, and seems/feels/looks appropriate to the genre in a way I might want to play it, and that helps me get or get into the setting. The Fantasy Trip tended to do a good job of this in some of its art, without being too fancy, just well-done, for example:

please correct me if im wrong but isnt that top picture from shadow run ?

Quote from: artikid;866541Except for the Irrelevant category (of course ;P) all of these could be appropriate according to the subject matter.
I may well expect a RPG about punk fanzines to have art that is utterly lacking proficiency for example...
Or a game about Boris Vallejo-style barbarians to have cheese cake art.

yah and cheese cake is not necessarily a bad thing

Quote from: Necrozius;866625Perhaps it is due to my background in art, but I can TELL if someone just used Poser models and painted or drew over them. There's a certain "look" to them that I can identify a mile away (the faces, the way the arms are positioned and the foreshortening/perspective (or lack thereof because the artist didn't tweak the camera settings). This screams "LAZY" to me and I loathe it very much.

In my opinion, Poser should only be ever used as reference if you need a super specific pose that you can't find from an image search or catalogue. To each their own, of course.

Same here. I can tell sometimes when Poser has been used and sometimes even the model types they used. The arm and body thing is another tell-tale.

Apparently some or all of the art in Dead of Winter uses poser as a base. Im a little dubious of that though.

Quote from: Nerzenjäger;866648Palladium Fantasy 2nd Edition is my gold standard for how a book should handle art and formatting.

1) Evocative Cover
2) Sparse but very high quality B/W illustrations
3) Formatting is easy on the eyes with enough white space

I actually like quality b/w illustrations in my RPG books. But I am a very visual guy, it helps me absorb ideas I can later recite from memory for improvisation.

Palladium art period. Overall their art and composition has been great. They tend to have a semi-uniform look throughout a book and the art nearly allways IS what is being described and gets across at a glance what the thing is.

And the art isnt over-used. Though they do like their little retread fillers. But mostly just as section breaks so that is ok really.

Quote from: Omega;867851Apparently some or all of the art in Dead of Winter uses poser as a base. Im a little dubious of that though.

I generally hate Poser art too... if that stuff started with Poser the artist has done a good job of covering his tracks, I like the feel of it... at least in regards to what I perceive that game to be about, a kind of soap opera horror.

Quote from: Simlasa;867871I generally hate Poser art too... if that stuff started with Poser the artist has done a good job of covering his tracks, I like the feel of it... at least in regards to what I perceive that game to be about, a kind of soap opera horror.

Co-op Board game from Plaid Hat. Survivours in a snow shrouded town dealing with not only some sort of zombie problem outside. But internal strife from within as well. Hidden agendas and possible power plays.

Oh, and theres a stunt dog that you can equip with a 44 magnum. That he then uses. And you can exile Felicia Day and one of the game designers to the cold harsh wilderness.