Where do you like to see your art dollars in a ttrpg book?

MGibster said:

Art is one of those things I say I don't have a strong opinion on but if its bad I'm going to notice it. I suppose when it comes to art I want something nice on the cover and I want the illustrations inside the book tell me something about the world. What do people look like? What about the natural landscape and buildings? Monsters of course. And sometimes it's nice having an illustration that goes along with the text. Someone trying to pick a lock, fight a monster, cast a spell or whatever.

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Here's an image of a soldier charging with a bayonet in 4th edition Twilight 2000. This illustration can be found in the section of the rules on close combat and just look at that person. That is savage AF! I would not want this person charging me.

Edit: I won't lie. This picture is giving me serious Lt. Hooks of Police Academy vibes.

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Lt Hooks of Police Academy in the godamn Zombie Apocalypse!

Jd Smith1 said:

Art, other than maps, is completely unimportant to me. Maps should be of very high quality, because maps are a critical tool to the game.

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I forget this is a general thread, but I don't play anything other than 5E D&D right now so that's where my comments are directed at. I agree. Don't get me wrong well placed and well-done art absolutely has its place in game books. I just find the maps in the books are too small to be useful. Even if I had to buy a map pack along with a book, I'd be OK with that. The map pack for DotMM was pretty useless beside being laminated so you could use wet erase on them. Even if the images were made available for download with the purchase of the book that included a code would be OK too. I'm just not a fan of WotCs current format of mostly hardcover books.

In a general adventure module, I would rather see money spend on maps and then art. Pictures of NPCs can be useful to show players and if they are a class or race that needs a picture, even better. Best art is something the players will see, like in old modules where you have handouts showing puzzles and statues and such. As a DM, a picture of a building or landscape does not do much unless the players can benefit from it as well.

cavetroll said:

So if you have a budget for art and you want to split up between

• cover
• character classes
• character races
• monsters
• miscellaneous throughout the book
• etc

Of course the cover is the most important, but apart from that where would you put Color vs Black & White vs not necessary?

Does every class and every race need a color drawing? Can you get away with just black and white drawings for monsters?

How would you split it up?

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Good question, my last book, which is the second I did, acrobat said the size was 98% images, and that was at 250mb and 187 pages (I was able to get it down to 44mb). I spent $230 buying stock art, except I did a lot of stuff myself as well. I mean there are ~50 maps, many of resolution to be able to be enlarged to 300% and still be legible.
So I had to buy three of these images, so it cost me $27, I did the layout myself, and of course I had to buy that software (affinity suite), and that doesn't include paying myself. Comparing to another cover I paid for, that is $150, and the artist is not finished, I still owe them another $150, and that is for the first book (Andromeda Dragons is the second). I probably went overboard in some parts with art, though I had purchased it, and thus felt I ought to throw it in. So far I don't think it really has been important, even though I like it. It hasn't outsold the 1st book by any means, and while there are many factors, I think a lot of people buy some books just to look at the art or something, which is fine, though one should know their market, and who they are selling to, and what their audience expects. Not all are the same, as with mine, most are interested in the maps I believe.

I like the adventure scenes artwork over the heroic pose stuff. So, cover and chapter heads is fine. I will take all I can get tho.

For color I would say go with one of three options.

All color.

Color for big scene picture chapter changes, the rest black and white.

All black and white.

I think mixing and matching irregularly would be less aesthetically pleasing. Going with a consistent style choice would flow well but using the difference to functionally flag a chapter change is a decent use of different types of art.

There can be great black and white art.

Voadam said:

There can be great black and white art.

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Color always seems so obvious... but then I remember all the great B/X and 1e art in black and white.

This depends on the book in question. Assuming an all-in-one gamebook (player rules, GM rules, foes to fight) I want to see art that conveys anything from the setting that isn't already a basic trope of the genre your book is for. So for example if you're putting out a fantasy game and you add a race of squirrel-people and a race of rock people alongside the dwarves, elves, humans, etc. of standard fantasy games I want to see some kind of creator's conception of what I'm dealing with (I might change it for my own games, but I want to see the intent at least).

Monsters. eqipment, etc. are the same way - anything that is new or unique to your game I want to see a picture of it along with the text description. Bonus points if it's easy for me to show it to my players and say "this is what you see" for something new, but I at least need something to help me visualize the written description unless your written descriptions are far superior to the typical RPG book fair - a picture is worth a thousand words after all. If I can google it and find a picture of it I don't need it in the artwork necessarily (like I really don't need pictures of a glaive-guisarme or a morning star, but if you introduce a weapon called an Orcish Thark then I'd really like to see a picture of it in the book).

As for color vs. black and white - I just want consistency in the art. There's nothing wrong in my mind with an entire book done in black and white as long as the artwork has a consistent feel. And what I don't want to really see anymore is every page having a color background that makes the book slow to read on a PDF reader (and sometimes near unreadable in print).

Well, I'm a curious publisher, I suppose, in that I want as spectacular a cover design as possible, at the same time the interior art and maps must be top quality, yet I don't really have a budget to pay for that - so I do it myself. Now I'm a pro game cartographer, so best possible maps for my budget cannot be beaten, with my work. Non-map illustrations have been a struggle, but I am getting better at it. Since I'm developing for Starfinder products, aesthetically, I feel I can get away with using 3D art - something I'd probably avoid trying to publish a fantasy product. I'm not very good a character illustration, so I do that minimally, or when I can afford I commission an artist to do it. Below is some 3D ilustratons as cover design and some interior art for The Planet Builder supplement for Starfinder, rules to create scientifically viable star systems and their stat block for homebrew settings development.

Voadam said:

There can be great black and white art.

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Agreed. And b/w art can convey a feel and atmosphere that color can't. I'm a fan of good b/w art.

Disclaimer: I am an indie publisher, so I admit my biases.

Here is are my must haves:

• high quality color cover art. Luckily, there are a LOT of new folks in the past couple years that have great color cover art as stock art (Check out Dean Spender on DTRPG for example).
• every monster should have an illustration whenever possible. People want to see what a monster looks like, and can't always get that from a description.
• classes and races when possible

That's where you should place your focus. In addition to that, I suggest that other misc art fit with whatever it is you're talking about where you're place it. Combat chapter? Have a scene of fighting. Lineup and pose art only goes so far. Have art that depicts action, what's going on in the game, and spark the imagination.