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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Coreyartus" data-source="post: 1053455" data-attributes="member: 5399">1.  Products with one artist are stylistically stronger, IMO, than multiple artists.  There is more of a unity to the product.  Imagine having a comicbook illustrated by many different artists page to page.  Continuity issues abound, and the product starts to be about the artwork rather than the subject matter.2.  If indeed this is going to be about culture, removing the color aspect from artwork would be detrimental to the product, so some version needs to have color in some respect.  Color cannot be underestimated as a tool to express subliminal character, mood, and focus.  While some of this can be achieved in B&W to a lesser degree, part of the emphasis of this book is on culture which is inherently artistic and expressive.3 & 4.  Full-page illustrations are never a waste of space, but their subject matter can't be superfluous.  If the illustration is merely decorative, then why bother?  The illustration has to demonstrate something, clarify something, explain something...  When it comes to cultural expression, not having illustrations is like reading a paragraph of text about a piece of artwork.  Pointless.  For example, comparing stylistic expression between German, English, and French is a lot easier when one can visually demonstrate the differences in architecture, clothing, furniture, weapons, and art.  Without a visual guide, discussion of cultural expression is kinda worthless.  I have noticed, as a general trend, a dirth of cultural expression in RPG products as a whole.  Many of the products on the market contain a lot of historical, geographical, and political detail, but don't discuss what the cultural expression of these societies would be like.  For example, Tolkein took huge strides (some would say excessive) to create a world where the impact of myth, language, and cultural style was a part of the conflict between his fantasy forces.  The recent movies gave a face to those cultures, and suddenly they were intrigueing in new ways.  The clothing, the armor, the architecture, the music...  There's something missing when all you can do is summarize things from a historical/geopolitical stance.   We can talk about wars and politics and borders in a historical context (and many RPG products do this) but often we never see expressions of the different types of societies except in full-figure/comparison-contrast racial line-up illustrations.  There's so much more to a culture than the difference between what one fantasy country of humans looks like next to another.  In our own world, much of the conflict in the medieval world was a result of cultural strife which led to political problems (i.e. The Crusades).  And we never see culture clash that comes from two different societies' influence upon each other, and the new directions they take because of the new ideas introduced.  Western Europe was never the same after the Crusades.  England was never the same after the Romans.  Africa was never the same after the British.  I hope your product deals with some of these topics.  Your previous product was intelligent and very useful.  If your new product can shed light on how cultural expression impacts medieval life, and how to distill generating tools from that discussion into creating well-rounded RPG settings, then you'll have another award winner on your hands.Just my two cents!Coreyartus</blockquote>

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