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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 9357098" data-attributes="member: 6779310">I've never really found artwork essential; at least not in the current methods.Traveller's The Traveller Book is just about perfect in terms of art as inspiration; I'd have liked more color, but at least some is red and black ink rather than just black inkFor me, unless it's  tied to what's in the text, it shouldn't be included. And art on a given page should be relevant to that page. And be distinct enough to use as a finding aid.This is setting dependent. I've seen cases of excellent maps being totally inappropriate to the adventure they were in. Not often in WotC nor FFG materials, Heavily so in Mongoose Traveller 1st Ed; particularly bad in the ships books. Beautiful maps of capital ships... but in 150dpi raster format in the PDF, and at 10 squares to the inch, most of the symbols are little red, black, or grey blurs.  The "if it has a ship, it has to have the deckplans for that ship" was a LOT of wasted space on illegible on the dead treee, and unzoomable on the PDF so it's equally unzoomable... The Mongoose 2e 3/4 views are pretty, and occasionally nice to have for relating multi-deck designs... but are useless on the tabletop; so useless that by fan demand, 2.0 wound up with a free download of standard top down orthoganal grid mapping.Those are good unless the designer of a given adventure tries to check them all off at once.For me, the components would be worded differently... For playable modules<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Linked situations design mode</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Evocative situations<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Locations</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Characters <ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">NPCs</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">suitable PCs in case of needing an instant run. ¹</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">environmental conditions</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Suitable challenges for the stated range of character experience</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">only the maps needed for play<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">in a table-usable format, either with just a photocopy or print-from-PDF.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">without excess "illumination" - at least on the GM map.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If including an illuminated map, make it the player handout one and include a functional GM map, too!!!</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">all maps-included products in PDF should include printer friendly versions.²</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Only the text needed for a relatively low-investment GM to understand the situations.</li> </ul>It's also worth noting: The situation to situation mode of design doesn't prevent railroad, but does often reduce the need to have specific outcomes in any given situation most of the time.For setting books, as opposed to modules...<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A suitable map<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">More maps if needed  — location details, key building plans.⁴</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">GM Maps have coordinates.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Map qualities as for adventures</li> </ul></li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">If it's named on the map, it has at least a paragraph describing it. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">A quick index by map locations</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">an index by names giving both page of description and map grids</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">any needed rules changes/expansions in a single chunk of the book</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Adventure seeds for each major area.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Evocative art tied to the cultures and places. ³</li> </ul>Footnotes:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Classic Traveller had, thanks to a short format, suitable PCs for the adventure in the intro for almost all of the 14 Adventure _, and the 7 Double Adventure _ books. DGP did likewise for their Traveller and MegaTraveller adventures. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Yes, this is a subtle plea to Modiphius in re Federation-Klingon War... and the quadrant books. The maps are really nice, but I still prefer colored text on white for maps, especially with PDF, as I often use my eInk reader, and white or non-black color on black field renders VERY poorly on it. And I can't afford color eInk yet. </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">I'm 'minded of Cubicle 7's rulebooks for The One Ring. The art is relevant to what's there. Classic Traveller only gets it right half the time, IMO.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Again, C7 did this great with TOR 1e. Each of the major locations' key buildings had a floorplan. The Homely House, Bjorn's Hall, etc.</li> </ol></blockquote>

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