CONAN: Shadizar map debacle?

[Turjan]

Actually canals are more common in ancient dessert cities, they doubled as aqueducts. Persia, Egypt, and Syria were famous for them.

That's okay, but in this case nothing in the verbal description of the city gives the slightest hint on the existence of canals. And if you look at the map, this would be a feature that's so prominent nobody would be able to neglect it.

Interesting typo, btw .

 

[Emirikol]

I hope we do find out. I don't consider it internal because of the market.

If there are 'credits' there is someone there who is supposed to do their job and when someone buys a product and doesn't get what they paid for, maybe someone should be held to answer for it. It applies to Dan Rather at CBS just as much as here

I'm excited for the CONAN stuff (except that they didn't do d20), so I hope they get enough crap to not let things like this happen a 3rd time.

Anybody know who was credited?

jh

 

[Turjan]

If there are 'credits' there is someone there who is supposed to do their job and when someone buys a product and doesn't get what they paid for, maybe someone should be held to answer for it.

Well, the artist will be held responsible at court and he will never ever get any job in the RPG industry anymore. Does this fulfill your criteria?

 

[Emirikol]

For gossip's sake, I'll have to go look in the box and list it unless someone beats me to it.

jh

 

[pogre]

The whole thing is a shame because the cartographer in question had a very fine track record in the industry and just had too much on his plate - He made a huge mistake and he is going to pay for it, but I wish him well.

BTW - I think it is very unrealistic to expect a line editor to be familiar with maps outside the company. Why should they have any idea at all what WOTC's free maps look like?

It absolutely should be handled within the confines of Mongoose and Mongoose Matt has made promises to do so. I rarely would defend Mongoose, but really I don't think they are to blame here.

 

[Emirikol]

Didn't the editor have to OK the maps before they went out [to the printers] though?

jh

 

[Rasyr]

As much fun as it might be, you cannot really blame Mongoose for the map issue. There is no real way that an editor could search the web to see if an illustration is original or not. And apparently, that is what that artist was counting on.

Same thing actually happened to WotC for Unearthed Arcana, though on a much smaller scale (i.e. the image was not integral to the product - it was a filler piece). On page 43 of UA there is a picture of a map/scroll. The map depicted is the western half of the continent of Emer from ICE's Shadow World setting, turned sideways and photoshpped a little bit (some of the markings on the image are from the original b&w map it was taken from).

As you can see, this sort of thing can happen to even the largest of companies...

 

[Turjan]

Didn't the editor have to OK the maps before they went out [to the printers] though?

Yes, and what do you think he should have said?

 

[GentleGiant]

Let's just say that there's probably a reason why my bookmark for http://www.morningstarillustration.com/ doesn't work anymore...
Which, as several people have mentioned, is a shame, since he did produce some outstanding maps.

 

[Emirikol]

Well, for starters, canals are not appropriate to Howards work on the subject (or any other pastiche, comic, or fanboy version ever put out about Shadizar). That would have been a dead give away and maybe a big "No, this doesn't work for us..try another approach." [I'm not trying to argue too much, but I DO think that the Editor has a responsibility to look at this stuff before it goes out.]

jh