How important is color?

[Trickstergod]

Good artwork takes precedence first of all. Perhaps that goes without saying, but, there you have that.

I'm stingy, too; if I an save a few bucks by not having to pay for color, I will. This isn't always true, but for the most part, if I were to be presented with a slightly more expensive color version of a book, and a less expensive black and white one, I would go for the black and white one. Usually, anyway. Less to do with a preference for one over the other, just the aforementioned stinginess.

Though, as a semi-counterpoint, I'd be willing to pay a bit extra for a book with black and white artwork over one with none at all. All text can become a bit monotonous.

 

[Dimwhit]

I don't mind b/w, especially if the printing of the book is still high quality. The Kalamar books are a good example.

 

[Agback]

Artwork's main focus should be to set the mood

That's an important role, no doubt. But I prefer art to illustrate things that are hard to describe: to show what things are supposed to look like, how they are supposed to be put together, how they are supposed to work. I guess you could say that I prefer illustration to decoration, or that I think illustration is important and decoration at best pleasant.

Considering the OP, then, I like colour illustrations to show me what colour things are: uniforms, costume, flags, shield designs, for instance; and black & white line for most diagrams (though colour-coded diagrams have their place).

I'm buying RPG books because of the text, not because of the illustrations.

I buy them for the game content, which includes illustrations but excludes decorations.

YMMV. YDWYDWP.

Regards,


Agback

 

[KB9JMQ]

When all is equal I would rather haver color.
But I would rather have no art then bad art.

 

[ConnorSB]

For PDFs, its much easier to print them if they are black and white (Mmm.... laser printer of doom). Plus, i generally like black and white. Bad art is real obvious when its in B&W, not so much when its in color. Therefore B&W generally has higher quality art, which is good.

 

[trancejeremy]

Jim Butler has mentioned that their switch from color to B&W doesn't seem to have affected sales any. And they've saved money.

 

[dream66_]

I would say that to me color or B&W doesn't matter too much, except in one circumstance.

Headers and borders and page backgrounds and things like that look absolutly horrible in B&W in my opinion. Things like Creature Collection 2 would have looked much better with white pages than to try to put that horrible B&W reptile scale on the sides.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Artwork's main focus should be to set the mood - IMHO B&W does this better than color most of the time, but there are exceptions - Superhero books for instance...

I was going to say exactly this. I think Color work is perfect for Superhero products, but anything else I tend to prefer B&W (3rd Edition Ars Magica, White Wolf products etc.) I think that for a long time, 2E D&D was coasting on the popularity of Larry Elmore's color work, and I didn;t much care for it.