Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron_Chef" data-source="post: 751683" data-attributes="member: 4530">I liked Arms & Armor and got good use out of it. My only complaints about it were the price and the horrible art, which almost made me not look closely enough at it to form an opinion about the content and whether or not to purchase it anyway. "Sinewy" and "silly" are the terms I was looking for, thanks!I too really like their OGC content and wish more publishers would follow suit. That's one area where nobody does it better than Jim, and you can't take that away from him! It also makes legal issues much easier to sort out, LOL. The revised $10 pdfs are a good idea (I love pdfs), though having read through both books before, I still wouldn't buy them as they just don't work for my campaign needs... and the art kills me. Moreso than Arms & Armor, where I can use my imagination to fudge item images to something cooler, it's much harder for me to do the same for people and critters. They must look cool in their listing or I'm not gonna use 'em in all likelihood, nor will I probably even read 'em in the first place.I think it's great that Jim is listening to his customers (and potential customers) by changing the artists and covers. That's the mark of someone who cares (as with the OGC issue he's way ahead of everybody else on). Guildcraft was so much nicer looking than Arms & Armor and the cover wasn't all cheesy like prior books with their Core rip-off design (not that Jim's the only one guilty of this practice, he's just one of many, and who can blame him---but others have done it much better).As to comparing his books with later releases, maybe it's not fair on my part (I'm no expert on release dates), but there's "first" and then there's "best". It's hard to be both, as whoever comes out after you has the ability to stack theirs up against yours before ever going to press, but it's not impossible. I probably won't be buying WoTC's Arms & Equipment Guide because I already have Jim's Arms & Armor which is incredibly comprehensive and full of neat stuff I haven't gotten to use yet. Plus, so many other books I own have various weapons, armor and equipment that I don't think I need WoTCs. I didn't buy Mongoose's Ultimate Equipment Guide for the same reason, though it looked good. I already gave Jim $25 for Arms & Armor a year or so ago (brilliant, him releasing that way ahead of the pack), so why spend $35 on Mongoose or however much WoTC's is now? That's an example of where "first" can be "best", though maybe not in the same way as I meant earlier in this paragraph, LOL. Bastion's books are more expensive and are in a much nicer deluxe format, but I question whether they really need to be when everybody else is offering similar content for much less or more content for the same price or a little more (and often in hardcover). That--and Todd Morasch's art--are my main complaints about Bastion's products (Jim's already taken care of the Morasch issue). Still, the format does easily distinguish their stuff from the sea of competition, so maybe Jim is right. After all, he's still publishing... and I'm (occasionally) still buying. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I hope it didn't sound like I was trying to tear into Jim or anything, because that wasn't my intent at all, though I worry that I might come off wrong over the internet. I think Jim's a good guy and an even better one for publishing books for my favorite game, LOL, we just seem to disagree on pricing and format, that's all. I'm glad he stopped by to make his case in such a civil, friendly manner, and that's one more reason to like him. He listens. Thanks, Jim!</blockquote>

Verification