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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1090464" data-attributes="member: 10201">I looked at the D&D core books [3E or 3.5E--not enough changes to matter] and must say i'm terribly unimpressed by the mediocre production choices.1. Cover art is uninspired, and fails to excite any emotion except "what were they thinking? Why would i want to pick up this pretentious-looking thing that doesn't even have any indication of what's inside? The lame 3D effect totally falls flat, and looks like plastic, not metal!"2. Interior art is all this bizarre "dungeonpunk" style, that you can never tell which part is style and which part is representation; the monster illos are particularly bad--several of them don't match the descriptions, and most of them are so heavily stylized that, combined with the very abbreviated descriptions, i don't know what the creature actually looks like.3. Layout is poor.  No shading for tables--instead, these obnoxious visible baselines that fade in and out, and don't provide much visual tracking for the eye.  What's worse, they continue the lines into the regular body text, really mucking up the letter-forms and obscuring word breaks, which makes the whole thing hard to read.  And tables aren't set off with boxes, or anything else. The organization is attrocious!  And all the color, especially the very busy images on chapter-opening pages, really detracts from the readability.  Not to mention the obnoxiously-close wraps on images.  And what's with that annoying border?  If this were just another low-rent pdf, i wouldn't complain, but this is a $30 hardcover from a major RPG publisher.  I expect them to hire an awesome layout team!4. D&D's ideas for the world are hackneyed and cliche.  Elves who love nature and are good with bows and swords? Taciturn dwarves who hoard gold and gems and love to fight goblins? Hobbits--er, excuse me, "halflings" who are friendly, homey little people who are extraordinarily lucky and good with thrown weapons? Hardly original.  In fact, i absolutely HATEd practically every idea they had for the setting.  Really amateur stuff anyone could have dreamt up after watching a bit of LotR or reading just about any crappy fantasy novel. Really, really bad, as in "the only reason it would ever see the light of day is because of D&D's name recognition" bad.  This has nothing to do with the design teams' ability as game rules designers, but reflects on their ability (or, rather, lack thereof) to creat a FRESH and EXCITING setting.I know I haven't bought a single product from WotC in large part as a result of my disappointment with the core rules.  The books are simply too poorly-layed-out and illustrated to make for a good read, and horribly organized so it makes a lousy quick reference tool.  It elicits frustration just from flipping through it; it is a painfully boring book to try and sit down and read......OK, now, just to be clear, i didn't do the above just to mock you.  Rather, i wanted to make a point: every one of those criticisms i just made above is my sincere opinion of D&D3E.  I didn't have to embellish one bit to "match" your criticisms of AU.  Moreover, i left out the tons of criticisms i have of the rules themselves (roughly, a matching criticism for every one of your "pros" about AU).  Is AU the 2nd Coming?  Heck no!  But most of the stuff you critiqued is pretty subjective.  IMHO, it's miles ahead of D&D3[.5]E, or any other D20 fantasy game i've seen.  In fact, my only criticisms of AU are in areas where it *didn't* deviate from D&D.  IYourHO, it's inferior.  That's ok.  But i think it telling that all the elements that are vaguely objective (i.e., the rules content, and its workability/balance) you praise AU, and only in the more-subjective elements (mostly layout) do you find it poor.  The only real "rules" criticism you have is of the races--and even that is a matter of taste.  I, for one, am sick and tired of the hackneyed elves and dwarves of D&D.  At the very least, they could've rounded-out the trope, and included orcs, trolls, and goblins among the PC races.  I've saved for last the one criticism that i don't agree with, but that is specific to AU:I am *so* glad that AU included that material, and is thus a stand-alone game book.  One of the things that has kept my from buying any D20 games prior to AU is the need for a D&D3E PH to actually play them.  The degree, of course, varies from game to game.  But, not only do i not own any D&D3E books, and have no intention of buying them, i dislike it on principle.  Yes, i know that the D20STL basically requires it, but i consider that an excuse, not a reason.  Game companies managed to sell quality games without a D20 logo before 2000--they still can today.  I'm fully aware that i can fill in the blanks with the D20SRD, but (1) it's a bit of a pain, and (2) i don't want to, on principle.  Also, in the specific case of AU, a lot of the "duplicated" material *is* altered.  Things like feats being slightly different.  And a combat-rules chapter that is organized sensibly.As to rebutting your specific criticisms of AU:1. i love the cover of AU.  I think it's cool looking, and would make me pick the book up if i didn't already know what it was.  And i particularly like the mixture of matte and glossy--i'm a big texture person.2. I dodn't really have any objections to the interior art.  Some of it is awesome; some of it is mediocre.  I don't recall anything pissing me off the way the art in the D&D3E MM did.  And i *much* prefer the realistic style used in AU to the "dungeonpunk" bondage-fetish look of D&D3E.3. I found the layout of AU, for the most part, easy on teh eyes, and pleasant to read.  I would have picked slightly tighter leading, but that's about it.  And a line every 3rd row is more than sufficient for reading tables--nothing is more than one row away from a visual guideline, which is plenty sufficient.  I always find the every-other-row-shaded technique busy, and excessive.4. beast-men, faeries, giants?  Sure, they're cliche--but i wouldn't go so far as to say hackneyed.  First, he gave them some twists from the basic tropes.  Second, they're certainly no moreso than the races in D&D.  And it's nice to have something that's both different from core D&D, and still roughly archetypal.  Just as elves and dwarves are fairly archetypal, and can be slotted into many fantasy settings, so too are lion-men, faeries, and giants.  If he'd gone much further afield, we'd end up with something that could only be a basis for The Diamond Throne, or fairly similar settings.  As is, it's just as "universal" as D&D3E, in terms of using for homebrew settings.</blockquote>

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