Quote from: Panjumanju;630314Seriously, your interest is hanging by such a thread as to be chopped by a single axe?

1) We already went over this a couple pages ago.

2) OK, I'll admit I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. Apparently I'm the only person to have ever done this on therpgsite. This one concept illustration in fact does not single-handedly eliminate my potential interest in 5E. But it's true that I don't like that illustration, and it's true that if it's representative of what the 5E art in general will look like that I probably won't be interested in the game (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that if the art is not to my tastes that the rest of the game won't be either). And it's also true that I'm probably not going to buy 5E anyway so it's less a case of the art turning me off than a case of it failing to turn me on - art that I don't like confirms my status quo intent to probably not buy the game, but art that I did like might have moved me more towards buying.

3) This seems like a very long and labored explanation to have had to give (especially to have had to give twice) for a one-line post made as a knee-jerk reaction upon seeing a piece of art I didn't like. But then I suppose laboring every point and beating dead-horses is pretty much a time-honored rpgsite tradition.

Oversize weapons are lame. Period.

Quote from: Planet Algol;630346Oversize weapons are lame. Period.

This is very true.  I blame Final Fantasy

Quote from: Planet Algol;630346Oversize weapons are lame. Period.

Thorette, our Fighting Woman Superhero, disagrees!

Quote from: Planet Algol;630346Oversize weapons are lame. Period.

Indeed.

Quote from: Benoist;630350Thorette, our Fighting Woman Superhero, disagrees!

Damn, now I have hammer envy, LOL!

You guys are suffering from Anti-Thorette Syndrome.

Quote from: T. Foster;630297Yep, when A/D&D was at its height of popularity (c. 1981-84) it was selling tons of copies to kids between about 9-14, but a big part of how it was able to do that was by appearing as if it was a game geared towards and intended for "adults" (or at least high school-college age). The notion that they were reading and playing something age-inappropriate both served as an ego-boost ("I'm only 11 but I play this 'adult' game") and also gave it a level of "forbidden fruit" coolness and cachet - especially when combined with the mass-media Satanism scare (that anyone who actually read or played the game knew was complete nonsense). For nerdy 'tween kids in the early 80s, playing D&D felt like a form of rebellion and an expression of individualism and non-conformity, even though the truth was that tons of kids that age were doing the same thing and the actual adult players were almost certainly the minority (which is to say there were probably about the same number of them there had been in the 70s).

It's ironic that TSR's attempts to blunt the BADD-type criticism (by removing demons and assassins and nipples in the art and such) and to more directly court the younger audience (through increasingly simplified and sanitized introductory products - black box, First Quest, etc.) managed to undermine and destroy what kids had found appealing about the game in the first place, and turned something that was really a hobby for nerdy kids but looked and felt vaguely dangerous and illicit and therefore cool into just a hobby for nerds, full-stop.

Yup, this explains why at the age of 11, Return of the Jedi made me cry... Compared to the previous movies, RotJ was geared more to kids... Kids younger than my 11 year old self... It was so blatant that I felt betrayed and I have hated Jedi for it since...

Quote from: Benoist;630350Thorette, our Fighting Woman Superhero, disagrees!

I love cosplay when its done right!









but when it isnt... *shudder*

Quote from: T. Foster;6303362) OK, I'll admit I was exaggerating for dramatic effect. Apparently I'm the only person to have ever done this on therpgsite. This one concept illustration in fact does not single-handedly eliminate my potential interest in 5E. But it's true that I don't like that illustration, and it's true that if it's representative of what the 5E art in general will look like that I probably won't be interested in the game (assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that if the art is not to my tastes that the rest of the game won't be either). And it's also true that I'm probably not going to buy 5E anyway so it's less a case of the art turning me off than a case of it failing to turn me on - art that I don't like confirms my status quo intent to probably not buy the game, but art that I did like might have moved me more towards buying.

Better know as the "confirmation bias".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

Confirmation bias (also called confirmatory bias or myside bias) is a tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they gather or remember information selectively, or when they interpret it in a biased way. The effect is stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs.

Quote from: Planet Algol;630329One of my reactions to the art was "Oh wow.... realistic, tasteful swords YES! But those axes, oh my...."

The way weapons and armor are drawn in FRPGs has almost always been retarded, with the exceptions of Angus McBride's work on MERPG



and the art of Jim Holloway and Roger Raupp in Dragon Magazine and a few old TSR modules.

Quote from: T. Foster;629785Art in published rpg products is extremely important to me, probably the most important thing, because it's the one thing I can't do on my own. The art helps me envision what the game looks and feels like, and helps me convey that to the players (including potential players). Anybody I'm likely to play with doesn't really care about rules (and I'll probably house-rule and modify them anyway) so they don't matter as much as establishing a feel and tone, being able to show a few pieces of art and say "this is what this game is about." So if I don't like the art in a game, or don't find it inspiring, I'm extremely unlikely to buy that game.

What a dull mind you must have. Amazing isn't it, how many gamers over the last 40 years have been able to imagine for themselves what people, places and things in their game worlds look like without taking their cues from "official" artwork.

Quote from: Imp;630311Well a particularly cunning way to handle the art would be to have the Basic set illustrated mostly in the more cartoony Pixar-ish style and then have the Standard and Advanced versions feature progressively more quote unquote adult style artwork, but they'd have to have the strength of will to ignore forum dipshits whining about how the pictures they like aren't "core" or whatever.

My sentiments exactly.

Quote from: Haffrung;630272Why wouldn't you want to appeal to today's equivalent of your 13-year-old self?  

D&D was a mainstream game for about 9 months in 1983. It's naive to think 5E will be a game that grandparents buy at Target for their 10-year-old kids. If it's a game that high-school and college age kids play, the 10 and 12 year olds will follow. That's exactly how it worked in the 70s and 80s. D&D became enormously popular before it started catering to 10-year-olds. Heck, the blue-box Holmes set that introduced me to the game said Adult Fantasy Roleplay right on the box. That only made us want to play it more. And frankly, the kind of parents who worry a lot about what kind of pictures their 10-year-old looks at won't be onboard with D&D in any manifestation.

Nah....
See I don't think that is true at all.

First off Pixar/Dreamworks cartoons appeal to a massive audience. The Incredibles, Kung Fu Panda, Shrek, Puss in Boots etc have established that genre as cool Kung Fun Panda is cool, Shrek is cool. On the D&D Next art as you see from the artwork of the gnoll and the barbarians it's not all cute little Hobbitess. It just has that clean line and crisp esthetic that we have come to associate with the modern animated movie.

Then the idea that a parent that cares about what images their kid looks at will by definiton be anti D&D is frankly bizzare and I am only think comes from the American need to devide everything in to Liberal vs Conversative. I don't think my 8 year old daughter should be looking at Boris style erotic Fantasy Art or reading my RanXerox graphic novels or reading Mark Millar's Wolverine run. In fact recently I forbade her from going to see the Hobbit as I deemed it too violent. However, I have been playing 'D&D' with her since she was 5 and from the get go she was incredible violent. However there is a huge difference between the violence she watches on Tom and Jerry or Kung Fu Panda and the violence in the LotR or Hobbit movies.

Yes the artwork in the original D&D was mostly awful. Sutherland could not draw and that is clear from most of his work. However, it was another time D&D grew from small hobby press stuff, and the amature artwork was part of that DIY vibe that the early hobby had.

By the time you get to the early 80s things have moved on but D&D art was still trying to scrape by on goodwill. I mean Mondrons.... really. The fans of the genre were now used to Frazetta, Boris, etc Certainly kids like me that read comics and bought books found it hard to understand how say 2000AD could put out a comic each week with solid art by Bolland, Wilson, Davis, etc and this hugely sucessful game we loved couldn't get cover art as good as a cheap paperback or internal art that was comic book standard. 2e had to step up but maybe in doing so it lost its own unique look and became too "generic fanatasy".

Art direction changes over time. I think D&D needs a strong look you need to see an image and it to kind of click as a D&D image. Wizards have been really good at doing this with Magic. Each Magic cycle has its own look and feel. They put a lot of care onto the concept art, so that the architecture, clothing, people, monsters of a certain world have a specific feel and they are absolutely great at it. They need to take that esthetic approach into D&D. I think this 'pixar D&D ' manages it.

Again to those that haven't been paying attention to Magic artwork recently check out the Innistaad Block. Just really solid evocative artwork with no Giant swords or chain mail Bikinis

Quote from: Sacrosanct;628781That's one of the things that baffles me about the vitriol.  People who want a more complex game are getting it.  It's not like having a Basic version means that they're getting shafted.  It just means the core skeleton of the game isn't complex.  Some of the vitriolic reactions against the idea of a basic core game makes no sense at all.  It really is cutting off your nose just to spite your face.

But... but... but...  who's going to gatekeep and make sure it's only the right kind of person playing?  

Quote from: jibbajibba;630396Art direction changes over time.

This.

There's no going home again. Industry artists are either not painting full oils for RPG art the way they used to, or they've become too expensive - with a few exceptions. More importantly - art design goes in movements, and if this art looks too Pixar it's only because that's the art movement in which we're seated. Artists fully capable of doing old-school-style-oils are doing what they consider 'new and exciting' instead.

There's a whole culture within artists (especially industry artists) that we're forgetting here. Young artists would rather do their work wholly or partly on the computer, and this is what results.

//Panjumanju

Quote from: jibbajibba;630396Again to those that haven't been paying attention to Magic artwork recently check out the Innistaad Block. Just really solid evocative artwork with no Giant swords or chain mail Bikinis

I hadn't seen this Innistrad, though now that I check they have been out for a little while.  i don't follow Magic at all, though.  Character-like cards from Innistrad for those that are interested.