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Message: <blockquote data-quote="polyhedral man" data-source="post: 7850716" data-attributes="member: 6901380">Jonathan is one of my favourite designers out there. I don't need to list his credits but some of the highlights for me were his work in Ars Magica, Everway (can we get an article on Everway please!) ,13th Age. The list goes on and on. I'm very appreciative of his influence on this industry.In this instance i have to disagree with him on a couple of points though.2nd ed was my first edition, and in terms of the art it's still my favourite. It's not just nostalgia (although i'm sure that plays a part). It's the variety. So many different art styles, so many different fantastic situations depicted, that inspired me so much.  They spurred you on to make D&D your own, to make it match your vision. I must admit that i found the art direction of 3rd ed. alienating. It had something anachronistic (almost futuristic) about it that put me off completely. And there was no escaping it. Everything was illustrated that way. So many straps! So as a Dm i would need to fight against it, since it didn't match my vision for the game - i didn't run it in the end. (One notable exception was Lockwood's depiction of dragons in 3rd ed which was incredible). I remember other people that i talked to at the time, long time 2nd ed players and DMs, felt the same way.This made me appreciate how much of an influence the art direction exerts in me in the choice of running a game.I will only look into the mechanics and the story if the art gets the ok (very personal thing, i'm well aware). At least 3rd ed made me conscious of that fact. (It's a very personal thing but this is why i discarded 3rd,4th and Pathfinder. And why i bought into 5th ed (mostly ok), 13th age, Trudvang Chronicles, Forbidden Lands and Symbaroum).With regards to the reference to earth history and mythology, again that was a feature for me. My group was isolated, so we never felt kinship to D&D tropes like oriental style monks in medieval towns or half orcs in taverns. And the more the source material used those as its core assumptions the less useful it was to us.Having said all that, i will be forever grateful to 3rd ed for doing away with THAC0 <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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