Some people were going on about how awesome the french CoC hardback is. OK, let's talk production values in RPG products.

I think that a lot of older companies had great production values. I.C.E. had great production values when it was doing original setting spacemaster. The products were well written and edited, they were physically well made, the art was mostly B&W but well done and dedicated to the material and the overall quality was quite high.

Art: I prefer no art to bad art. I prefer good art to no art.

Cartography: I prefer cartography which is clean, utilitarian, and informative. If it's all fancy lookin', the extra dose of fancy should be adding to the utility or the information. (An easy way to do that is to offer the map at a resolution which allows it to be used as a battlemap or in a form which allows it to be used as a player handout.)

Good editing is at least five times more valuable than fancy layout graphics.

The couple of GDW products I own - the 1e Twilight:2000 set and...psh what was the other thing...can't recall atm...both have great production values.

FASA's stuff from the height of Battletech's greatness, before they purged the 20+ anime-sourced mecha and introduced the awful "Clans", that was all quality (now granted the post-Clan invasion products were all pretty well put together, what I saw of them).  But seriously, color plates, well laid out, clear, concise - sure there were a few weird things here and there but overall it was great stuff.

WHFRP 1e and 2e have/had amazing Production values.  Color art plates, well laid out, etc.

That's just a few I can think of.

it's funny, but it seems to me that the better the production values the more people become involved with every facet of the project.

I tend to be more interested in the singular vision of an individual or a very small group, and I'll gladly sacrifice production values to get that.

I take low production values and a singular, over-enthusiastic point of view to a project as a sort of tacit invitation to make it mine.
I enjoyed the early 90s with Crunchy Frog and Stellar and all those great outfits cranking out interesting, but low-production value material.

I love a slick, well-executed game as much as the next guy, but I prefer games that are interesting and playable and don't take themselves too seriously.

Personally, I don't care about the art - it's just all fluff anyway.

It's the rules that matter. Poorly written, or badly edited and the product is worthless.

A couple days ago I made what I thought was an innocuous claim: I'd rather have a product with awesome content and amateur production values over a product with amateur content and awesome production values.

Imagine my surprise when people wanted to argue about that.

Quote from: misterguignol;596584I'd rather have a product with awesome content and amateur production values over a product with amateur content and awesome production values.

I once said that I'd rather have one product like Lüdinn than ten more Ptolus bricks.

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;596590I once said that I'd rather have one product like Lüdinn than ten more Ptolus bricks.

See, Ludinn sounds awesome to me.

I totally want that.

Attractive books make it much easier to get people to read and/or become interested in a book.  However, keeping their interest requires a good set of clear rules.  So I see production values as very important to developing interest in a product . . . which is most critical if you are not a part of a long term network of dedicated RPGers.  If you move a lot (as I have, unfortunately), these things matter when trying to interest people in a system.

(1) I do not think production values and content are mutually exclusive.

(2) I do not value presentation above content. Crappy art and layout won't stop me from buying good product (I was a Palladium customer for years). I'll even admit upfront that an amateurish presentation can have a certain charm of its own. However, I have never, ever bought a book because it looked like crap. I did buy a book, more than once, because it was pretty, though; and I wasn't always disappointed by what I got.

(3) Every single one of ICvS' 5 top selling RPGs is an expensive, shiny big book. Now I have no idea how reliable that list is, but it's the only indicator we've got. And I also know that there are other factors at play, such as network externalities; correlation does not imply causation.

But if I was getting into the market for reals, you bet I'd be giving some serious thought to a big beautiful HC. Never underestimate the power of "shiny" over the geek psyche.

Ceterum censeo Vocatio Cthulhorum gallico esse translatus.

1. Content is what convinces me to buy your book. I don't really need any more RPGs, so it really needs to interest me.
2. If you've met condition #1, I'm willing to pay more for higher production values.
3. I put a soft cap on RPG purchases at $65.00 per book. If production values caused you to go over this, you've probably gone too far.

What is this thread about? It says it's about production values, but then just talks about the quality of art.

The quality of the art is A Production Value, but it's not the only one.

I'd expect the best production values available (cost effectively) to a publisher to be used, regardless of who they are. If you are proud of your product, you should present it with as much quality as you are able. Intentionally making things crappy is not something I find to be admirable. I don't think it's avant garde or post modern or whatever the current artsy phrase is for pretending pretentiousness is a virtue.

If care, professionalism, generous resources, and good taste are evident in the physical design and production of an RPG book, chances are those qualities will be evident in the game content. Not always. But it's likely.