How important are and RPG's aesthetics to you?

[Wofano Wotanto]

Wow. Quite a callback there. I have that book somewhere around here.

I happened to read one of the earlier books in the Daedalus series the salaman was pulled from last month, and had been thinking about tracking down the rest so Barlowe's art book was bubbling around in the upper layer of my brain stew. Always kind of wondered why it was wearing a leaf for a hat in the illustration, didn't you?

On topic, there's something to be said for having a consistent, unified style for an entire product range of products, at least if that style is appealing. I would probably have bought much less Planescape stuff back in the day if it weren't for DiTerlizzi's art defining the line so heavily, for ex.

 

[GrimCo]

For me personally, artwork IS the reason i buy physical rpg books. If i like art, i'll buy the product just for the art. For actual play, i'm good with no art, no flavour text, plain text PDF file since it will probably be read on e ink b&w tablet. Tbh i prefer it that way. Or good SRD.

I bought 2ed ad&d Dark Sun just because i like Brom. Never actually ran even one session of 2ed ad&d.

Last thing i bought was Brancalonia by Acheron games. Probably won't run it any time soon. But artwork reminds me of Andre Juillard's work in "7 lives of Hawk" ( excellent comic).

If anyone knows TRPG with art style similar to Enki Bilal's, i'm all ears.

 

[Voadam]

Decently important.

Erol Otus and Jeff Dee and others really set the tone in Moldvay Basic and I find them evocative to this day.

The art is very important for me when thinking of Warhammer or Rifts or TMNT.

I really love the art in 1e Deities and Demigods but a lot of the art in the 3e version really turned me off and it is one of the few RPG books I returned although that also had to do with the retrogression of lore information from the 2e god book standards.

That said, I also played 3e, 3.5, and Pathfinder with just the no art srds for years.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Erol Otus and Jeff Dee and others really set the tone in Moldvay Basic and I find them evocative to this day.

Jeff Dee is a big chunk of why I'm so still nostalgic about Villains & Vigilantes, with Bill Willingham as another major factor.

 

[Tonguez]

Very important, I like to visualize the style and feel of creatures, buildings and and scenes in the world - they can be done through a quick vignette or more effectively in an evocative image. That said my aesthetic tastes are wide and eclectic soap long as it's not necessarily gory or edgelord I enjoy all kinds of depictions

 

[Umbran]

Granted, but the joke would still work better if it was easier to read it.

Unless, of course, part of the joke is about games that are hard to read, in which case the point is hard to make otherwise.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. It is pretty common for me to find the description of a game intriguing but then to be turned off by its aesthetics, whether that is the over-the-top grimpunk of Mork Borg, or the cutesy cartoon art of like 50% of 5E Kickstarters these days. Andof course aesthetic that I like will get me to look at stuff I might have otherwise skipped: Shadowdark's old-school reminiscent art, or the beautiful and unique style of Dragonbane (even if there are anthro races).

How important are a game's aesthetics to you? Not so much quality of art -- although that might be a factor -- but more style, theme and mood of the art? Have you ever been completely turned off by a game's art style even though it was otherwise something you might like? Or the opposite: has a game's art style so intrigued you that you gave a game a chance even though the actual system or play loop of theme of the game is something you would not have liked?

It is incredibly important to me. And it’s out of proportion and perhaps a bit absurd.

I would rather line art or minimal art in lieu of the cute art I keep seeing where people smile broadly with toes pointed inward…often wearing glasses?

It sets a tone for me that I cannot put aside. I would rather minimal or line art than art that conveys incongruent flavor.

Pathfinder art is a turn off but it is not incongruent per se. But the new cutesy anime adjacent stuff does not do it for me…

 

[Umbran]

I have played entire campaigns in which I have never actually looked in a rulebook. I have run campaigns where my players haven't - not that they aren't allowed to, but I lay out the rules and they don't have the need.

And, in play, I try to minimize the amount of time I spend looking things up. So, in the day-to-day of play, perhaps the esthetics aren't particularly important to me, given that I'm usually trying to minimize my exposure to them.

 

[Theory of Games]

I don't want fancy art I want great rules. There's a sickening amount of naughty word rpgs out there with great art but the rules are nauseating trash. The D&D RC doesn't have a lot of art and the art isn't that amazing but what IS great is the ruleset which allows a group to do anything within the fantasy genre. Some think Degenesis: Rebirth is the greatest collection of art ever presented in an rpg BUT it's over 700 pages (proving it lacked professional editing) AND those Shadowrun-esque dice pools everyone loves, right?

I finally watched "Tenet" yesterday and after I couldn't help but think Nolan was covering up a so-so plot with a great soundtrack and good cinematography. This is what a lot of rpgs are: great art covering up a naughty word ruleset.

 

[Reynard]

The D&D RC doesn't have a lot of art and the art isn't that amazing but what IS great is the ruleset which allows a group to do anything within the fantasy genre.

I love the RC but let's not look at it with too rose colored glasses. It let's you do the D&D fantasy genre well. Like all TSR editions, you can also bolt on other systems pretty easily, but the RC is a D&D toolkit, not a "anything fantasy" toolkit.