Arcana Unearthed: Pro's and Con's

[Desdichado]

Well, I just tried to say I was disappointed in the book (thus stating my own opinion and not decrying something as "bad"). However, the idea that I shouldn't expect color art and high-quality interior graphics and layout because it's expensive is a little strange to me. Why shouldn't I? Is Malhavoc/Sword and Sworcery not trying to be competitive in an RPG market where companies do produce high quality interiors that I'm not disappointed in? I think it's absolutely justifiable to raise the bar in expectations when the bar in quality has been raised by other companies. Look, it's not even the color issue; plenty of companies produce great works with black and white interiors. AU fails to satisfy my tastes when it comes to the visual style. I think that I'm entitled to my opinion (or did something change?) and many other people here complaining about the book are entitled to theirs too.

Should we not express disappointment? "Oh, you don't like the book because your expectations were wrong" may be a true statement, but heaven forbid anyone expect high quality stuff out of a guy that's proven to be one of the best game designers of recent times.

No, feel free to make such complaints. Also feel free to have pointed out to you that you apparently have no understanding of the industry. Look around! Who's got color books besides Wizards of the Coast?

 

[Desdichado]

I've seen other boards where people ragged on AU for putting 'furries' into the game (which they aren't, any more than gnolls are furries). However, I was surprised that so many people in this thread were proud to be 'furry bashers' (as one put it).

Why this hostility towards that particular fandom? To be quite frank, it's just another branch of the SF/fantasy fandom family tree, and no worse than any others.

If it's because of some rabid/unstable fans... I point you back to the D&D fandom.

If it's because some fans aren't too pleasant to be around (physically or emotionally)... I point you back to the D&D fandom.

If it's because of the porn and some fans' sexual fetishes... again, I point you back to the D&D fandom.

If it's just furry creatures in general... well, why?

I'm not trying to derail the topic or start a flamefest. I'm just saying: Pot - Kettle - Black.

D&D fetishes?!? Anyway, someone's gotta be the lowest man on the totem pole, right?

 

[Desdichado]

Re: have no expectations

It's a proven fact that when people have large expectations of a product, most of the time that product fails to meet those expectations

While that's likely true, I'd like to see where this proof is.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

Re: Re: have no expectations

While that's likely true, I'd like to see where this proof is.

I can't offer definitive proof, but think about every book, movie, etc that has been highly anticipated by a large segment of the population. Seems like most of them fail a lot of people. For every "Spiderman" there's the Star Wars prequels, the "Matrix Reloaded", and a dozen other movies that are highly anticipated and then are judged more on their failure to live up to anticipation than on their actual merit (or lack thereof).

 

[Darrin Drader]

First of all, forgive me for my attempt to hijack this thread and plug my own material. It does have a purpose.

The furry debate is an interesting one, and one that hits close to home for me. As you may or may not know, Oathbound, a campaign world I've done a bit of design work for, has plenty of furries. As a fantasy fan, I've never been overly interested in furries myself. When I was invited to work on Oathbound before it was released and before anyone had any idea what it would be about, I was initially disappointed at all of the animal based races. At the time I wasn't really looking at it as a paycheck, but as a potential opportunity, and not one that I needed to follow.

I ultimately decided to go forward with the work I was commissioned because it was an interesting stretch for me. When designing sharacters based on new races, I'm always asking myself how the mentality of the creature deviates from the standard human and how is the creature perceived by society. After doing this for a while, I found it to be quite a lot of fun. We're all familliar with the half orc and the elf, and the dwarven point of view. How about that of an intelligent tiger with wings? Or what about an upright walking sentient version of a house cat? How much more interesting would it be to actually play that creature? And what about their natural attacks and other racial abilities. Sometimes they can run faster, fly, hover, breath under water, and do other things that humans normally wouldn't be able to do without the aid of magic.

So tying this back to the Diamond Throne, yeah, Monte put furries into the world. More to the point, very few of his races are just humans that happen to be a little shorter or a little thinner. Good for him! In fact, at some point I actually want to get into a DT game just to see how that gameplay is different than standard D&D. Diamond Throne is a setting that interests me and after reading AU, I would like to explore it some more to see what it offers. Judging by Monte's past work, I'm sure there will be plot aplenty, so we'll see what's in store.

 

[RodneyThompson]

Who's got color books besides Wizards of the Coast?

Green Ronin and AEG come to mind.

I'll be bowing out of this discussion. If I can't be a part of this without someone telling me I have no understanding of the industry, I don't want to keep it up. Sorry if my dislike of the book offended someone, I just have a different taste in visual styles I guess.

 

[Darrin Drader]

Green Ronin and AEG come to mind.

Green Ronin only does color with M&M. I don't know how this line has the volume of sales necessary to continue printing in color, but I'm happy for their success- it is noteworthy. AEG only prints color on their licensed material, such as Farscape, and that is because licenses often stipulate that they must be in color, and they also have a built-in fan base that is larger than the most successful stand-alone games, hence the higher sales necessary to support the expense of color. Spycraft doesn't really count as color because its only 3 color - black, white, and silver. The Everquest RPG has a huge built in audience. Slain is a licensed world as is Judge Dredd and Bablylon 5. That pretty much covers all the non-WotC full color books in the D20 market.

Most of the time, a company that publishes in color breaks even or loses money on the product. Not only do you have to pay the expense of getting the color onto the page, but you also have to pay the artists to produce high quality color paintings. This is much more expensive than paying for black and white art. Most books only have the budget for one such piece - the one on that ends up on the cover. Even so, we know that AU had several color pieces commissioned, some of which were featured on the actual cover while others appear in the PDFs Monte has available for download. Anyway, I'm fairly certain that neither White Wolf nor SSS are interested in putting forth the effort to bring a book like this to light and then losing money on it.

 

[Desdichado]

Green Ronin and AEG come to mind.

I'll be bowing out of this discussion. If I can't be a part of this without someone telling me I have no understanding of the industry, I don't want to keep it up. Sorry if my dislike of the book offended someone, I just have a different taste in visual styles I guess.

What makes you think anyone's offended by your taste? But I still maintain that you don't have an understanding of the industry if you expect to see color pages frequently. Besides WotC I can count on my fingers the colored RPG products I'm aware of. The Rokugan campaign setting, yes (although no other AEG book that I've seen, and I've looked at a lot.) Mutants & Masterminds yes (again, though, no other Green Ronin, and they have a lot too.) And if you want to be picky, you missed a few; the EverQuest books are also in color. But again, nothing else by SSS is.

Color is clearly a very rare commodity in RPG books. If you expect that, then I'd say you have a poor understanding of the RPG industry. You're free to expect it all you want, of course, and be disappointed when you don't get it. But you'll be disappointed a lot, and as I said, you'll probably have it pointed out to you (as has been done many times in this thread by various people besides just myself) that that simply doesn't happen in this industry.

 

[Morgenstern]

What Moridin? You aren't getting a laugh out of a statement like "nobody but WotC produces color books"? All I see in it is a person who doesn't look at enough books by companies other than WotC to be telling me about "the industry" as a whole .

To be fair, is it common? No. Is it somehow imposible for any one but WotC? Obviously not. Is it expensive? Hell yes. Does it contribute to my desire to purchase a product? Yes. Corallary: does its absence reduce my desire to purchase a book? Yes, slightly. Particularly in hardback books which are kicking off a product line. I certainly don't expect color art in softcovers.

Let me weigh in on AU for just a moment, as I've only looked through the book, not bought one. The presence or absence of color art didn't really make an impression on me. Layout is much more important to me, because I see game text in simple form all the time- I write it, and I edit about half a dozen other authors' work in that format. Plain text is nice for editing, but it's boring as heck to look at. Having a book prinited in that format (or double columns and not much else) does not detract from the quality of the text, but IT DOES detract from the value of the product -to me-. A book is significantly more than one guy puting his thoughts on paper. It is the summation of several different talents including editing, art, and layout. And the layout guy did not strike me as putting in as much effort as some of the rest of the team. Is this enough to damn a book all by itself IMO? No, but it is a vote against purchase of any book if I'm on the fence.

Overall I expect I'll pick it up at some point, because I'm a very system oriented guy, and because having followed the design diaries, I saw a lot of evidence that Mr. Cooke's design theory is similar to mine, and I want to see what he's done with it in a fantasy-but-not-D&D context. I don't expect I'll run DT, but I don't runned canned campaigns period so no real negative observation there. I'm looking for a toolbox with some ideas in it, and AU looks promising. The racial levels aren't a new idea, but I'm hoping to get some that are well implemented, if only as a suggestion for how I can do them myself for my own campaigns in the future. The three version spell system also sounds interesting to my cold little mechanics driven heart .

Anyone but me think the Loresong faen are modeled after the gelflings in The Dark Crystal ?

 

[Desdichado]

To be nitpicky, I never said nobody but WotC uses color, I said "Who else besides WotC uses color?" The answer speaks for itself. I even added an example or to to his reply to that post, but that doesn't negate my point in the least.

If you expect color in an RPG publication, you're expecting the anonaly; the outlier, to be true. I don't know how well y'all are familiar with statistics, but hopefully you know not to hold out outliers as expected results.