Would you be willing to pay more money for sourcebooks and splats that had higher-quality art from more skillful artists again? How much more, out of curiosity?
>>93145148I have never paid for sourcebooks or splats and never will.
>>93145162Not even the pdfs? I won't pay for print (bespoke short-run pricing is not for me and I run mostly online anyway), but I buy systems I like and use in pdf form. Like I wish the EU version of BoL got an EN printing, since its art is better.My only exception is when a publisher buys another publisher's system, like happened with WFRP 2nd, I won't give someone else money just for buying a license, they didn't make anything.
Those are equally competent at a technical level. You have political hangups about content, which isn't the same thing.
>>93145148The problem isn't quality per se, it's different mindset.Old art wasn't good because it was of high quality (some of it was, some was amateurish trash), but it generally was authentic and tried to take itself seriously. Modern art by contrast is scared of being too serious and too invested, as it risks it becoming too unapproachable by new consumers. Normies generally stay clear of things where you need to commit to enjoy something.
>>93145148There's no point in supporting any corporation because the moment they have a hold over a demographic they will inevitably take that for granted and try to breach out en lieu of potential infinite gains. Fuck this shit, fuck marketability of anything even remote tangent of the hobby, make your own games or pirate them.
>>93145148I buy the books I need for the games I run. Art won't change my mind either way. But a good cover can get me interested in the first place. And good art can inspire me to want to run something I need a book for.
>>93145258I agree, capitalism is the problem.
>>93145148Yeah. Hell, I would (and have) buy an artbook from the setting that didn't have a single stat block.>so it's a separate thing from rulebooks then?Not at all. The art informs your mind's eye, when I picture a setting, character or monster I picture the one in the rulebook if nothing else has superseded it.If the rulebook is ugly then it is telling me to go to a world I don't want to go to.>>93145211>not a lick of aesthetic senseI mean if aesthetics are political then cowabunga but to me it's more about immersion. If the setting looks more like a coffee shop when MegaCon than somewhere actually in Faerun, that does nothing for me. Is that really political? Which political party has "make fantasy shitty" as their platform?
>>93145331Don't pretend to be retarded. It demeans you. Say what you think with your full chest.
>>93145148No, because the only people with the money for it are making shitty games.
>>93145362*inhale*It looks boring as shit, and the artstyle is soulless.
>>93145148No. I buy rulebooks for the rules.Also I see nothing good about either of those pictures.
>>93145423Thank you. Now have that much bravery from now on. I agree on both counts by the way.
I honestly want them as far as possible from darksun
>>93145211>Those are equally competent at a technical level.They are not. It's like comparing Frazetta to Vallejo. Frazetta is better.
>>93145597They are. The same flaws are in each. The same strengths are in each. The styles differ, and the intent differs. That's it. The top one doesn't even have more detail work or time investment than the bottom one.
>>93145148>blah blah blah woke woke woke look at the woke dwarf woke woke woke tranny, do you agree?????Board is getting raided today innitBut to humor your thread being legitimate, yes. If it looks nice and is formatted nicely and I like the game and company I'm willing to buy it.Same reason I own artbooks.
>>93145820>project project projecting some moreIs that the only reason anyone would dislike the art? Be honest now.
>>93145858No, their forge looks like one of those jokey galvanized square steel 2x2 meter apartments with how it's designed, but it is the reason you posted it.
>>93145258Why are so many of you dumb fucks completely misusing "in lieu of" these days?
>>93145902Why does it bother you so much that gay people exist? And how does that even relate to artistic style?
>>93145930The only thing here that is pozzed is your retarded ass. Artists who do great art are not cheap and WotC want to save money so they find cheap artists.>>93146119He a stupid nogames. If he played anything other than cocks he would understand people were able to play gays long before 5e had them in game books
>>93145148Some instead of not buying.
>>93145148No.
>>93145148The only RPG products I buy are made by independent creators who source or make their own art. Your problem is not my problem because I don't try to buy and consume something that inherently makes me angry.
>>93145148I want higher quality & reduced prices. Fuck you. Fuck corpos. I wont he led to fork over my paycheck for the modern shovel full of shit. Suck my chode.
>>93145615Not quoted but you're genuinely artistically blind if you think the digital slop with both busted scale and busted axionometric perspective is anywhere near Brom's in quality. Even the obvious detailing is off in the lower one and the shading is miles apart. It's like comparing someone's deviantart page to an actual trained artist and it's not even a question of taste since i'm not fond of Brom's BDSM-tier art-style any more than I am the lower twitter-homosexual Seattlite renfaire crap.
>>93146183Dude fuck off. You two trolls need to go back to your shitholes.>>93146676This. The idea that these two are identical in quality is complete nonsense. The only reason that retard is trying to peddle that is to stir shit, its probably the same troll shitting up the thread.
>>93146701You are too retarded to be here if you think that post is trolling.
>>93146676The bizarre perspective is very clearly intentional and uniformly applied, conveying a sense of non-continuous and expansive space truncated down to the required dimensions of an art panel to be slapped into a book.>shadingYou're desperately reaching. There is nothing wrong with the shading in either image and the intensity of it is entirely stylistic in both cases.>obvious detailingThis is where both artists are fucking up equally actually. Look at the incompetent amorphous shapes of the background figures in the top image, the mangled details of the mace faces in the foreground figure's hands, the fucked proportions and absurd musculature. There's bleed in the left hand where it comes across the sun figure. Is it evocative? Yes. Is it flawless? Fuck no. Neither is the bottom, in much the same ways, though it intends a completely different tone for an utterly different audience. We could get into overall composition if you like but you're not competent enough to even enter that conversation and not self-aware enough to go do something better with your time.You have this pretense of artistic literacy but it doesn't exist. You're not even an amateur. You've just declared your gut reaction as informed taste with zero evidence of ability and tried to paper over your yawning pit of ignorance with half-remembered art terms. It's embarrassing, and I imagine you're numb to it only because you're constantly embarrassed in your life.
>>93145148I pay for nothing.
>>93146853Damn dude, in a thread full of assumption and unmotivated hostility, you reply is the only one that gets points for style and originality: "I imagine you're numb to it only because you're constantly embarrassed in your life" fucking slaps!
>>93145148>Would you be willing to pay more money for sourcebooks and splats that had higher-quality art from more skillful artists again?No but I'm not willing to pay the same amount for a sourcebook with worse quality that it had before
>>93145148Yes. I would never pay money to a big RPG publishers product if it has AI art in it.
>>93147001Based
>>93145148No. I'm inevitably going to overhaul things and develop my own setting with little if any resemblance to the assumed setting, so the art in the books is useless to me.
>>93145879You're not even talking to the OP, so I doubt the veracity of your psychic abilities.
>>93146206Personally, I don't pay money for D&D, it's an overpriced, low quality product for stupid people. I do find you can indeed have cheaper AND better-illustrated books. Someone mentioned BoL, and that system did have pretty good art in the French version.
It actually seems like these days the opposite is happening: companies charge you more to buy books with noticeably less skillful art. Warhammer has this problem in a big way. Cards aren't books, but so does MTG. The only old game with improving art is Battletech, and considering the absolute shitshow most TROs used to be, they could only go up.
>>93145148If better, thematically appropriate and more evocative art was an option in the first place, why would they bother making and selling an inferior version at all? Even still, you'd be looking at a situation where the system could suck, but the nicest thing you could say about it is that the art in the alternate version of the book that they made for some inconceivably stupid reason looked pretty nice.
>>93147561>why would they bother making and selling an inferior version at all?Saves money.
>>93146853Retarded pseudo-intellect take of the worst variety. Top has soul, bottom is soulless. Fuck off.
>>93145148>that had higher-quality art from more skillful artists againNo I'd rather pay for better material. Half the art across 2+ decades of play has never seen by my players.And I'm sure half the stuff my GM has used I've never seen half of that stuff either.Art is nice. Art is not required.If I wanted art I'd by art books... Oh I do, and they're nice, but not required in my RPG rules.
>>93146853>Is it evocative? Yes. Is it flawless? Fuck no. Neither is the bottom, in much the same ways, though it intends a completely different tone for an utterly different audience.I thought the purpose of art is to be evocative.I feel like the second one is more in the direction of corporate pictographs trying to make a pie chart look more fun while thr first one evokes feelings of curiousity and interest in the setting presented.
>>93145148Don't forget the others OP
>>93147745Amazing how none of these creatures look like either Orcs or Elves
>>93145148Brom's artwork was what got me into Dark Sun in the first place.
>>93146853>and uniformly appliedExcept it's not as can be seen from the scale. The perspective isn't proper from the angle, hell it doesn't even make sense if you think of it as a fish-eye lens effect or similarly.>There is nothing wrong with the shading in either imageThere's plenty wrong with the lower, take a look at the metal engravings for one and what's worse how the light sources don't make any sense.>Look at the incompetent amorphous shapes Now you're just telling on yourself.>We could get into overall composition if you likeNo thanks, I don't feel like giving more time to obvious cretins who couldn't hack it in a crab-bucket /ic/ redlining thread and mistakenly believes technical ability is the same as taste. The lower picture is not the work of a competent artist.
>>93145148YeahHunter the vigil 2e had me bitching about it in couple threads already
>>93145148no but I might actually buy anything for a game if I actually liked the art.
>>93145148No, if I want an art book I buy an art book. I buy the rules for the rules. I have very rarely gone back to look at most of the art in books. Most of the interesting art I have got in the art books or the calendars I have bought over the years. Sure, most of that art wouldn't exist if it hadn't been commissioned for a book cover or interior but there's no reason to pay more when skilled artists are readily available.>more skillful artistsThose artists looked skilled, apart from the weird distorted foreshortening on the middle guy at bottom. The main problem is that the lower image is just not aesthetically pleasing and the content is in itself stupid. The subject matter is rubbish and the design brief probably has a lot to answer for by throwing everything into one nonsensical sense. Plus the layout guy did a hatchet job on it by cutting it out like he did, especially that fade at top right and bottom right which doesn't match the rest.
>>93145148so sanitized it looks like meeting stock photos
>>93145211>You have political hangups about contentThe commissioner* has political hangups which ruins it.>>93147745This makes me try to imagine the reverse:>Middle Earth cracks open the beloved RPG, Offices & Humans>it's the latest edition>the dwarf cries out for he is racist>he points out that humans don't have large teeth, slouched postures or bony faces like orcs>that humans are not lithe and tall with beautiful faces like elves>that humans aren't stunted with extremely hairy feet like hobbits>and that humans most definitely would not be dressed in the clothes of dwarfs whilst prancing around a tree like prissy elves>he is most upset at the hairstyles too, especially the new style orcish ones on display that no-one was wearing 10 years ago>he even starts praising how orc hair used to have style 30 years ago>the dwarf barely gets through the next sentence, his spit coating the table during a tirade about there being more elves than ever before in book media, with something about wizards being behind everything, before the group kicks him out the door>he doesn't understand why they don't hate it too>they don't understand why he hates it>but they never play together again>>93148103Those orcs have postmodern synthetic clothing, coffee shop patron haircuts (high maintenance; requires constant cutting), seemingly no reason to be out in the desert, and upper class falconry that even the children can be afforded to play with.The only way they're illegals is if they forgot to keep up with tourist visa requirements.I don't even think those elves own any money - you can see the gay couple on the right.What disappoints me the most is how they're all different fantasy skin colours yet the black elf has to be black because he's black, yo.
>>93147612Maps. I'll pay for better more impressive maps.
I would never buy a book with the current slew of art. You're already telling me it isn't for me or anyone who i'd like to associate with in any way.
>>93148383Good, playable maps are not seen enough in modern RPG books. Probably because they do everything in their power to remove dungeon crawling or anything resembling it. Without going into the design of the dungeon or location itself, the perfect map has>Logical, easy to see distance and measurement tools on the map>Clearly keyed areas, with no more than a small paragraph of easily indexed gameable text for each location. Key senses, actionable stuff, who could be there>Inspiring aesthetics that make you, the gm, want to use it
>>93148340Lmfao I never realized how much modern RPG art has resembled stock photo posing. The consequences of college art degrees.
I would pay 10% more for every 50% better the art is, to a maximum of 35% higher cost. Good art in rulebooks isn't for me, it's for onboarding "image-brained" players who need to feel like their character looks cool. Having art of some kind at all is good for remembering which page has what, so this is a rare case where I would pay more for quality than quantity.
>>93145148>Would you be willing to pay more money for sourcebooks and splats that had higher-quality art from more skillful artists again?Sure but only in the sense that i'm not paying for anything at all right now because all the modern stuff is so incredibly offputting it makes me not want to own it. Not even the PDFs.
>>93147617>the purpose of art is to be evocativeNo. It's to communicate ideas. To learn more, look into semiotics.>curiosity and interestIf you can't accept that those are triggered by different subjects and signs in different people then you quite literally failed to achieve the psychological milestones expected of a 12 year old.
>>93148355>postmodern synthetic clothingLiterally meaningless word salad. You put a bunch of words that scare you together and that's all.>coffee shop patronJust say fag, loser. It's less typing and more honest. It's 4chan, you won't get banned.>haircuts (high maintenance)People have had those haircuts for literally thousands of years in both Asia and the Americas.>seemingly no reason to be out in the desertThey fucking live there retard>upper class falconryNow you're showing off how deluded you can be. I'm not impressed. Holy shit, this is stupid.>afforded to play withYeah it's so postmodern synthetic how the children learn adult skills through practice and play no one does that before 1986Can you kill yourself, please? You'll be happier and make the world better.
>>93145148Yes I would be willing to pay more. How much depends on the quality of the art. Problem is, the actual game has to be good. I'm not willing to pay anything for a shit system with good art.>>93145211At a technical level maybe, I'm not an artist, I don't know. But I can easily call Dark Sun aesthetically superior and more memorable.>You have political hangups about contentYep.Anyway, post some cool, but amateurish rpg art anons. May as well turn this lame thread into a fun one.
At some point there was a shift in the DnD player demographic from nerds to various shades of LGBT on the autistic spectrum. Dunno if it's something that happened suddenly or slowly but it's definitely who these games are nominally targeting now. Joined an online group not long ago and everyone turned out to be gay, a furry or a they/them.
>>93149752We used to call those types "elf players" and "dragon obssessed"
>>93149752There were gays and trannies in the RPG community before. Surprise surprise, fags in the Eighties had a thing for fantasy escapism. What's changed is now companies loke WotC will pay lip service to thejr existence now, for reasons that are different depending on who you ask and how cynical they are.
>>93149760I mean yeah I don't doubt there was a disproportionate number of gays and lesbians from the start. But do you think the bottom pic in the op is what they yearned for during 40 years and are only getting now?
>>93149752ttrpg is social and basic nerds aren't good at that so we got replaced. DnD being the biggest and most visible fell first, it's different from VtM were half of them were fags from the start
>>93149789It sounds like you know more about buttfucking than tabletop gaming. There is little reason for anyone making gaming stuff for retards like you who do nothing other than whine about everything. Those who play even if they are not LGBT+ people (or other kinds of people who make you upset for stupid reasons) they don't mind as they understand that there are all kinds of people in the hobby.
>>93149760It's more than lip service at this point.
>>93149839Yes yes, you are a retard who can't read and loves to take it in the butt.
>>93147745Why are the orcs all one ethnicity but the elves are diverse?
>>93149880Yeah, like I said you can't read. Go be too retarded to play tabletop games somewhere else faggot.
>>93149887This is a thread about the art, the one part of the game that has no consequence on the playing of it. You immersive faggots just cant be stripped from your little minis and art and grid based movement, thats why art older than the OP was good. Just enough to motivate but not enough to elaborate.
>>93149924If you stop and use your brain and not your ass when talking about the art you would see that the reason the art is like this has to do with money. Great artists are not cheap and WotC wants to save money so people on the top of the food chain can get their raises so they get artists who don't cost that much.
>>93148751>It's to communicate ideas.t. non-artist who fell for his grade school teacher's ideas and never went beyond it.
>>93145148I don’t think high quality art would significantly affect costs outside of small scale productions. If you spend $5000 (just making up this number) on art for a whole book, that won’t make a difference for a game that sells over a million copies for $30 each.
>>93145162FPBP, but also the bottom art is better done than the top.
>>93145211>Those are equally competent at a technical level.You're a fucking idiot if you think that's true.
>>93148751>No. It's to communicate ideasWrong. Your understanding of art is bad and you should feel bad.>>93148781>Literally meaningless word salad.I understand it just fine. You might just be retarded.>They fucking live thereAnd they all just happened to be out like that. Now I know you're retarded.>it's so postmodern synthetic how the children learnYou're truly illiterate. Don't try to use words you don't understand.
>>93145211Enjoy your gay dwarf buttsex. >>93145234I really hate this sanitary art that tries to appeal to as many people as possible.
>>93145423If you're ever curious as to why you prefer older fantasy art over newer, try comparing them both in black and white.It is generally believed by artists (although I don't know if this is scientifically backed up) that the eye is drawn to the areas of highest contrast, and the black and white will help you get a better understanding of the overall compositional shape. As you can see, the artist of the top image has actually used contrast to his advantage: the areas of highest contrast are the figure's distinctive helm and the midground spearpoints silhouetted against the sky, and the main figure's tattered clothes against his body and the background, all these things being highlighted by the value contrast in the image are things you want the viewer to look at specifically. In addition, you can see just how deliberately the overall image is shaped, there's a symmetry in the round background and figure's arms that is broken by the left to right flow of the cloth. It's decent composition.Bottom pic is all over the place. The highest point of contrast is a window against a white void in the corner, the other darkest values are all reserved for pants that aren't forming any interesting compositional shapes. There's no real sense of foreground-midground-background being established by the contrast. Overall just a really poorly put together image. The execution is fine, the linework and colouring is just fine, the decorative elements of the floor and walls give some nice detail and help maintain the perspective which can be quite awkward in a cutaway like that. But all the basic compositional decisions of the bottom image were made with either far less care or far less skill than the top.But then, isn't that dark sun image from a cover while the dwarfs are probably a random interior illustration? The cover of a project is usually going to get the most attention from the most skilled artist on the project, so maybe not a useful pair to compare.
>>93150595You'd have difficulty finding any Dark Sun images as bad as the new phb stuff.
>>93149701>I'm not willing to pay anything for a shit system with good art.Same. Now, go full art book and maybe. I would honestly say bad art makes me want to buy a good system less. Don't see why I should foot the bill for crap.
>>93145148For a WotC product? the company of low effort?Christ no!I'll take their art from whatever Artstation or Deviantart page they sourced it from and use it for my own derivative shit. I won't even pirate the material the art is pasted all over. Why the fuck would I?
>>93150118>This sounds like complete schizo ramblingit is, don't worry
>>93150509>t. dumbass who is underage and nogame
>>93145148The art is a symptom of the problem, not the problem in and of itself. Everything WotC puts out is bland outsourced corpo slop. They have the most successful RPG on the market, and yet their rules are ass and they barely have a handful of people working on them. The art is bottom of the barrel stock photos of diverse smiling people, the adventures are soulless rehashes of things Gen Xrs remember fondly, and they're trying to tie everything into their online ecosystem where you pay 20$ for digital dice skins. The art reflects the product perfectly, it's bland, inoffensive, and soulless.
>>93152338I thank God they consider Dark Sun "too problematic" to try and revive. Imagine the absolute basedslop mess they'd make of one of D&D's only cool settings.
>>93153142>Noooooo we can't include bad things in this RPG or else they'll think we support those bad things nooooooooooooThe absolute cowardice of Wizards of the Coast in the current year.
Do the people who praise the bottom pic on twitter genuinely like it or is it purely a culture war thing where they see games as fortresses to be wrested one by one from the chuds?
>>93153222I think it's a mixture of both, but leaning towards the former. A lot of people just have poor taste; there's no need to assume bad faith in most cases.
>>93145148I would pay standard retail prices, including applicable sales/discounts, for the above - and nothing for the below.
>>93153222They can't genuinely like anything because that would require having souls.
>>93152265>can't respond with anything but buzzwords
>>93145148Yes, as long as it isn't an absurd amount. Tabletop RPGs are one of the cheapest hobbies you can have so I wouldn't mind spending a little more if it was for a good reason.
>>93145148...Did those dwarves tattoo each other's beards on their arms?
>>93153823The irony of this reply
>>93145148>white male dwarf has the most emasculating jobFigures
>>93153876They're gay, according to the artist.
>>93154133>white male dwarf>maleIt's really too early to tell.
>>93145323Capitalism and Communism are two sides of the same shekal big dog
>>93145148I don’t think I can really quantify that, but yes, honestly. I would be much more likely to buy RPG materials with full-color illustrations if the illustrations in question didn’t reek entirely of having been designed by a committee.The art for the new edition of D&D that I’ve seen so far just isn’t to my liking. It looks very sterile, and none of the pieces actually make me feel like I’m peeking into a setting with any amount of verisimilitude, just frictionless wish fulfillment. I am not the target audience for D&D, unfortunately. I would really like to be! I do quite like both dungeons and dragons, and I really like several of the settings D&D has. Oh well.
>>93145148I am willing to pay more for high quality art and rules combined. The fiction side being decent helps as well but is in most ways less important. If its just high quality art I'll save the art from a pirated pdf and delete it. If its just high quality rules I'll screenshot the rules I like or maybe print an artless version, but am likely to go back and pay for the pdf because might as well encourage the writer but that depends on how much of the rules I'm going to use really.
>>93145148>pay more money for sourcebooks and splatsNo, I want the opposite of that.
>>93154669Mostly agree, but because I'm being generous with what those words mean to the general public. Any non-voluntary organization and industrialization is a poison to human activity, and will violate the sanctity of pretending to be elves.
>>93150047Pro tip from a functional adult, since you clearly need the help from someone completely unlike you. When you want to refute somebody in an argument, you have to meet or exceed their level of evidence. They supported their claim with an academic field. You refuted their claim with pissing your pants. That's not a winning move. Try again after you have a nap, maybe a snack.
>>93153142Never say never.WOTC might very well try to butcher Dark Sun by removing every... thing about it.
>>93153222The thing is that people like that have no taste. Not bad taste, but NO taste at all.The bottom image has no style or composition or anything immaterial. It's competent in the sense that the anatomy and perspective look fine, and that's really all that matters to a person with 0 taste. Chances are, they're just going to gloss over the image anyway. It's purely decorative, not meant to be analyzed.They will, however, rabidly defend it for culture war reasons. But they will never admit that culture war is the sole reason they're defending it. They'll pretend that they liked it regardless.
>>93145211No, brom is a lot better at technical level, and aestethical, the one down is also like a stock photo of what a seattle suit would want dwarfs to look like, they have absolutely 0 soul, while the one in the top is all kinds of metal, its own composition highlithing the weapons than is plausible but with its own aestethic sense, armor and chitin mixed together, wich makes it not your average setting. Bottom doesn't have a lick of culture, it could be portland in bright or shadowrun, there is nothing than screams dwarf apart of the idiotic reason to put a magical forge in the middle of a house with kids in it, they must be all deaf.
>>93159972The argument about the purpose of art some dudes were having above is honestly moot because this isn't any art, it is specifically illustration. Good illustration is aesthetically enjoyable and can stand on its own, but it has the specific purpose of communicating something about a subject to the audience. Sure the dark sun image is from a cover, so it ought to work in broad themes, but it communicates them reasonably well. Dark sun is a savage and violent place by typical dnd setting standards. The clothes are tattered and minimal, the helmet is weird and vicious looking, a major compositional element are mismatched points of pole weapons, thr armour is tarnished and mismatched. The artists did a decent job at communicating that. It's a hot and dry place too, and again the artist made a piece of art that fits that theme, there's barely a drop of cool colour in there. The bottom piece of art seems mostly intended to communicate that dwarves are just short Americans. It's doing that ok I guess, but it's an incredibly lame thing to dedicate page space to.
>>93145148No, that's what Lulu and not being a mobilefag are for. No gay layout, organized how you want it, with the art you want.
>>93145148>aboveHard and homosexual>belowSoft and straight-faggotlearn the difference, it could save your life
>>93160097I was about to make a joke about not being able to tell the difference without a regional marker like a cheese steak,.ten gallon hat, or a hot dog with too much shit on it.But actually now I want dwarves to be drawn in 10 gallon hats. Maybe bolo ties.
>>93145148No, but I'm willing to not buy shit books with shit art. Voting with my wallet goes both ways.
>>93145148>more moneyNever.
>>93145148The real problem with today's society is that people have been taught not to give up on things. Giving up is an important skill that will make your life infinitely better once you learn it.
>>93145148>>93147745Somewhat unrelated, but, looking at both back to back actually gives me an idea for a campaign/setting. >Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, etc live in high density cosmopolitan arcologies with magitek.>Orcish nomads traverse roads between them, taking up jobs in return for money or things they can't make or find themselves. >Humans revert to chiefdoms, warbands, etc to escape the fate of becoming decedent and soft at the hands of entropy. Each one a response to growing Arcane infused technologies made by Artificers. At one end, an embracing of incorporating such technology into everyday life, the latter being an outright rejection of it as not to become dependent on it. The orcs being somewhere in the middle with a more moderate usage but not over reliance on the convenience such magic machinery brings.
>>93160096Make homosexuals macho macho men again
>>93150231You really think so? I mean, it’s more busy, a bit twee, very generic.
>>93160124My nigga, you’re describing picrelCaptcha: HRT4, which is what the “dwarves” in the bottom image take
>>93160862Based
>>93145148I would rather have the information with no art at all.
>>93149877because those pictures are obviously of a single community of orcs and a meeting place for several different types of elves
>Strong BIPOC women working the forge while men assist them or bake cakes>Prominent gay couples everywhere >Plus-sized women, sidecuts>Muttoid children>Every group is a rainbow of ethnicities except the orcsIt's like someone tried to cram as many good boy points as physically possible into the pictures.
>>93160097Pretty much. As much as WOTC likes to tout their love of diversity, they really do water down their entire setting into a homogenous coastal metropolis.
>>93162557>sidecutsOkay, I understand the rest of these on some level, but why the obsession with sidecuts? Why is that part of the good boy points checklist?
>>93164755The board room clearing this shit doesn't have the creative ability to decide upon a haircut. They can only use 1 haircut per type of person once another form of media decides upon it (market safety), why do you think this haircut has been so popular in media? Why does every greaser thug have a pompadour? Why does every disco attendee have an afro? Why did everyone in Beatlemania have a bowlcut?
>>93150820have you looked at the interior of a dark sun book? not just the brom covers?>>93150595 has a very good point about interior vs cover art.
>>93148383Ditto. That's a very nice map. Maps this good almost key themselves.
>>93165981This is still massively superior, lol.
>>93164808It's what a bunch of talentless former hipsters think is punk or cool, but palatable enough for the masses. It has an artsy vibe to it, while a perceived edge from its fans. I can count on one hand how many people in real life use it that I've met.
>>93145148I would pay any amount of money, no joke.
>>93145148No. Besides, most artists I liked are now either dead or cancelled.
>>93147745I love drow and want them to exist as a distinct race and that can't happen if all of the elves homogenize with each other.
>>93145211The bottom one isn't even fucking finished you chimp
>ArtNo. I don't give a shit about artwork in a physical book. I care about time construction (binding, paper quality, cover materials, etc) and content organization (clear rules, ease of reference, tables in appropriate areas, glossary, table of contents, etc).I WILL give a shit about artwork if it is well done, incredibly violent, full of nudity, and puts smoking hot human and non-human females all over the place. But even then it won't make me but a book by itself.
>>93160430You sound like someone whose only "skill" is giving up.
>>93145148I would be willing to pay THE SAME money for books with NO art.
>>93169721“Wow look at the heckin holesum grape-flavored elves”Meanwhile Drow: picrel
>>93150595Interesting but in this case it's more of the subject matter. Savage desert warriors are far cooler than faggot diversity dwarves.
>>93172063I mean, to play devil’s advocate Dark Sun is a specific setting with a very distinct tone. The Player’s Handbook, by contrast, is supposed to be generic/setting-neutral (of course this generally just means taking either Greyhawk or FR and filing the serial numbers off). The art has no SOVL because it’s not really trying to convey a vibe beyond “this is the dwarf section” or “this is the elf section” or “this is the Mexican section”.
>>93145162See, this is why sourcebooks and splats have such shitty art. Why bother paying an artist to make something good when it's just going to get pirated.
>>93145148They're just two different types of literally gay.
>>93174062See >>93160096
>>93145148No.The price I am willing to pay has nothing to do with the images inside, it has to do with the rule system. And it doesn't budge a lot around. Art determines whether I'll even look into it to begin with.IF it is a system I already love, I MIGHT sperg out on a variant with a leather cover and/or new art, but very few games ever reached that.This is not unlike dating. The girl's appearance will not determine if I marry her, but I will not pick her as a date to begin with if she has tatoo sleeves and a septum piercing.
>>93174175> Soft and straight-faggotNothing straight about literally a gay couple.
>>93145148I absolutely agree that the bottom picture is garbage while the top one is kino. And 'quality', as in artist skill has nothing to do with it. Bottom one is a turd, if a polished one at that.If you don't have anything meaningful to convey, being skilled at drawing wont help you.Conversely a sketch done in 2 minutes on a back of a napkin can be dripping with soul.
>>93145211disliking corporate boardroom art but with dwarves is not 'having political hangups'. I all the dwarves were Aryan archetypes it would be equally shit.
>>93148340kek gottem
>>93161747>Why Ah'm Doug Dimmadwarf. King under the Dim Dale Dimmamountain!
>>93147745>>93145148this shit makes me think of this chihuahua. once a wild animal who got by on its own the best it could, for better or worse, its benevolent masters have bred it into a 'cute' and 'safe' ideal. Not content with their work, they dressed it up in cute clothing to its dismay, to wipe even the last vestiges of respectability from the poor creature, therefore completely housebreaking it in body and spirit
>>93172535>The Player’s Handbook, by contrast, is supposed to be generic/setting-neutralThat's where you're wrong. It is setting a tone with the art they chose, I shall elaborate:>Dwarves: Burly faggots and masculine diverse women.>Elves: Liberal Arts College.>orcs: Mexicans (for some reason) but portrayed as le soft latinx.The tone is queer (aka gay as fuck.)
>>93145148I'd prefer it if they just kept the art to a minimum but had it be very high quality. I don't need a billion pictures to feel like a book is good.
>>93174266what you must understand is that the people who make this are straight and make it for straights. but they are straight faggots making it for other straight faggots.
>>93175494One can be gay and not a faggot, one can be straight and a faggot. Such is the way of things
>>93165981This is not as well executed but is COOL. Think about being a kid and opening the books.Here you see two cool monsters with cool weapons, there you see dwarves made un-cool, faggy, mundane.Which one is going to stimulate your imagination?
>>93145148No. I want to go back to the days of cheaper black and white books like the B/X era modules or 90's WoD books.
>>93172063>>93175731Artistic skill and artistic vision are different issues. /tg/, masterful critics that we are, are sitting here in a thread where about half the participants are conflating subject matter they dislike with being low skill (the OP is literally implying exactly this). If you paid the top artist to draw gay heckin wholesome dwarves he would have, and it wouldn't have been a skill issue if you didn't like it. Dark sun has the benefit of having a very specific aesthetic to communicate in its art, and a good art director will get some interesting stuff even from a mediocre artist. Where is this queer dwarf polycule illustration even from?
>>93145148The issue isn't big named artist, the issue is that todays artists are bad and make everything gay.
>>93176004>Where is this queer dwarf polycule illustration even from?The 5.5e Players Handbook. The section on playable races, or “species” as Wizards insists they’re to be called.
>>93145188Just ask Ai to convert your pdfs to English. It's not that hard and works better than you'd think.
>>93176225>speciesThat's accidentally pretty cool, I love science fantasy.>>93148340You can just see that they didn't give a damn.
>>93175731Probably the dwarf thing because I'd never have seen that before but I see drawings of monsters with weapons all the time.
>>93164755People have had sidecuts for like three thousand years as far as we know and these retards think it's a signal to Politics They Don't Like. Who cares, ignore everyone shitting their pants on the board.
>>93169806>I don't understand how people make books
>>93176333>>species>That's accidentally pretty cool, I love science fantasy.It's even more accidental than you might think. Species has been around in a non-scientific sense a lot longer than in a scientific one. It just means "a particular kind of thing (based on its outward form)".
>>93176982>People have had sidecuts for like three thousand years as far as we knowWhat cultures?
>>93178290It would be a shorter list to say who didn't do it. It's a basic haircut. It's cropped up independently in North America, sub-Saharan Africa, the pre-German tribes of Europe, Mediterranean slaves and Egyptian serfs, the fucking Harappans. Never seen any drawings that the Aboriginals in South Pacific did it. Any more stupid questions you want to ask in bad faith?
>>93176225>The section on playable races, or “species” as Wizards insists they’re to be calledYour tone makes it seem like that is a problem.
>>93178344>ask in bad faithIt was an earnest question asked in good faith and it was not stupid.For my inquiry what I got was a rude little cunt giving a stupid answer that treats "Egyptian" as some sort of monolithic culture implying no differences between dynasties let alone between today and 5000 years ago, the same for North America which isn't a monoculture over time or space, Mediterranean slaves, same, sub-Saharan Africa, same. You want to talk about bad faith, look at the attitude with which you answered my question.
>>93178451Thanks for proving me right. It's very convenient for me when you do all the legwork, hypocrite.
>>93178451>the same for North America which isn't a monoculture over time or spaceThat's a good point but I know some specific examples he might be thinking of such as Northeast natives, like the Mohawks aka the the guys who invented the you know, mohawk. I've seen it mentioned in some accounts about Aztec soldiers too. I think some Norse had it as well. It's not an uncommonf hair style. I just didn't want to barge in to the discussion.
>>93178459Nothing in what I wrote proves your false accusations true. I asked a non-stupid question, I asked it in good faith. Instead of correcting your answer with actual information when called on your bad faith assumptions, your insults and and your vague, unhelpful answer you double down on the bad faith and the insults. That's great work.>>93178489Thank you. I wouldn't have thought to call a mohawk a sidecut.> I just didn't want to barge in to the discussion.It wasn't much of a discussion so I'm glad you could add something intelligent and worthwhile.
>>93178344I think you are lying. I don't think any of those cultures had sidecuts
>>93178489Norse probably did not. We have like 3-4 hairstyles that we can reasonably say that the ydid have and they are just variations of medium lenght hair
>>93145148>>93147745I'd rather have bad art with soul than this corporate diversity checklist slop.
>>93148383God. Why isn't there a simple system for map making? Like, I use Campaign Cartographer and as far as ease of use goes: it's fine. But all some one would need to do is create an RPG Maker style map creator and I think we'd all be golden. Just a toggle able grid based thing where you can plop assets down on selected layers after selecting them from a simple frame to the side. Maybe a system whereby you can select shit based on it's native resolution so there aren't any mixels or anything. Maybe a system where if you place 2 tiles next to each other it'll choose a random tile from a set of tiles parented to the selected tile? Like you select grass and have 10 similar grass tiles and it just drops a random one as you fill spaces? Then just let people buy and sell tiles and create a fucking market for that shit. It would be easy. Maybe give the user the ability to save as PNG and determine the final resolution of the project and make suggestions based on what VTT they're using? Fucking. Easy.
>>93175845That art was also mostly better than the sloppa WotC commissions today.
>>93145148Yes, I do. Good art informs the mind's eye as >>93145331 said, and I can fall in love with the creator's vision which makes me want to run the game. I play almost exclusively with my friends around a table and I like to have the physical book in hand, if only to cut down on gadget use.
>>93176225This art is actually cool and would be even more pleasing on the eyes if WotC could be consistent about the style of their books and the art in them, instead of putting stock photo faux realistic-tier slop all over the modern editions. I even miss the Pathfinder guy's sense of illustration style from 4e by comparison. I could care less if something is gay or not if it actually was evocative with the visual fantasy and had an immersive sense of style or direction to it. But also modern day rpg books often have god awful layouts that are pure white pages with arts slapped on in a "blob" serving for sole canvas.
>>93179725The 5.5e variant covers for the PHB and DMG (by Wylie Beckert and Lena Richards, picrel for the latter) are both excellent. The MM one (also Lena Richards) less so in my opinion but I guess they can’t all be winners. I guess the faux-realistic art was cheaper?
>>93176225>>93180125These are good, and communicate a fairy-tale mix of sweet and scary, especially the latter. Perfect.The pic in the OP makes everything mundane, which is the biggest sin.
>>93148340Thank you. This is why people says if feels "corporate". It was eerie, but I could not put my finger on it.
>>93148781>They fucking live there retardNTA but compare the approach an actually fantasy desert race like the fremen, and actual desert people have in covering themselves and moving compared to what is in that pic.That feels like a bunch of tourists. Is incredibly modern and mundane, has no sense of actual adventure.
>>93147745>wotc concerned of orcs being compared to black>so they make them mexican insteadlel
>>93178344Just because you saw those retarded styles in a movie or tv show, doesn't mean that people had those cuts in real life. There is no evidence that any of the cultures you mentioned kept their hair like that.
>>93178739Not him, but as far as I'm aware the closest thing to a sidecut that existed among europeans is actually a lot closer to the modern mullet.
>>93145148>make things just poor to average>charge extra for quite goodI see you
>>93145148This is just depressing
>>93176982I didn't ask where it came from. I asked why it seems to be everywhere now specifically. Or more accurately, everywhere in fiction and in very few places in real life.
>>93175731>This is not as well executed but is COOL.thats not the subject at hand here retard lol. We are talking about execution.>hrmm whats cooler monsters with sword or dwarf in a room?>so the monster art is better!use your brain anon.
>>93188726>everywhere in fictionPartly because it's trendy, and also because it's visual shorthand/deliberate messaging. Mohawks mean "punk", shaved heads and crewcuts mean "military", the Karen haircut means "I want to talk to the manager", and sidecuts mean "I support the mainstream-approved types of counterculture".>and in very few places in real lifeBecause on an actual human being it almost always looks like shit.
>>93145148I'm writing an RPG and trying to find artists who can even hold a candle to the first example. There's basically nobody. Stable Diffusion might actually be my only option.Basically any fantasy art that's made is soft shit made by people who don't know how texture is supposed to look. (Pic related) I'm in the weird position where I disagree with the luddites that think that AI is terrible, but completely agree with the people before then that digital art ruined the medium.
>>93191405No one cares about the "woke" part. The composition is shit. They tried to cram too many concepts (and yes, a lot of those included woke check marks) into a tiny package, and it just ends up looking like trash.It doesn't help that they tried to cram a working blacksmithy into a coffee shop
>>93146711>too retarded to be heredoubt
>>93190499No, you are an autistic cretin but that's ok.You can draw a completely lame and uninspiring, unthreatening monster (perhaps - just an example - because an exec asked to mish-mash monsters from many franchises for mass appeal and the artist didn't put his heart in it).You can draw a dwarven slice of life that doesn't feel like a fantasy starbucks near to a forge. You can drive dwarves in their mountain, showing their territory. The art style is important too - the new mexicorcs pic tries to do exactly that, but the features, poses are weak, non-threatening, non-orcish.
>>93145148I'm okay with literal scribbles as long as the system is made for fun rather than to deliver a message.
>>93191749Making the art yourself will have infinitely more charm than what ever mediocre product you could squeeze out of an AI
