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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Foundry of Decay" data-source="post: 4752931" data-attributes="member: 846">I have to agree with the OP on several points.  Though admittedly they aren't all easy points to 'fix'.On the case of actual layout, fonts, and theme of various books, I think that, indeed, 4e has become a little too sterile.  In second edition, you could tell you were reading a Ravenloft supplement even if just by the fonts and layout used.  The art of Ravenloft varied greatly from book to book, some of it being right bloody awful in a lot of cases, but you were still left with a feeling of 'This is Ravenloft.  This is cool!'.The same could be said for other realms books.  You could tell a Forgotten Realms product from a Greyhawk product due to fonts, layout and even page themes.  In 3e its even easy to tell the 3e FR books apart from the general Greyhawk setting books (Though the FR art, almost on a whole, was absolutely horrendous from a technical point of view).Part of the problem might be that there's a select group of artists doing pretty much everything.  Eva Widerman (sp?) is an incredibly good artist, the free range artwork I've seen from her is very skilled.  However you can tell that she has to operate within a certain 'visual theme' in the new edition.  The same goes for William o'Connor.  His work is very highly skilled and high quality, but he has to operate within an almost 'corporate view' that didn't exist with earlier editions.It wouldn't be easy to fix the latter 'problem' because you'd have to go back to a more freeform, loose style.  First Edition artwork was, on the whole, obviously done by people the creators knew.  2nd edition was spastic.  You had artists like Kieth Parkinson and Larry Elmore who were technically brilliant artists and brought a theme and feel to what they worked on (Dragonlance) but then you had the generally lower grade artwork from the monster manuals, because artists would be suddenly divided up by 'realm' instead of being a part of the whole.Planescape had the most distinct look of all.  Brooding, dark, yet still with an air of impish personality that a lot of people loved.  It made the realm.  However I'd deeply loathe having to wade through the 'eccentric' art of that nature in each and every book. So the developers would almost have to go back to assigning 'realm' artists to get back the thematic feel for each new world books that were put out to market every year.  Considering it's only once a year now, and for only a couple books, it wouldn't really work I don't think.And I have to admit, I do wish there was a mix of life-scenes (Adventurers around a fire telling stories, or at an inn, or making some dark deal in an alley) amidst all of the leaping and exploding and fighting and spellcasting.  I love action!  However too much of it can become overwhelming or at least desensitize people to its cool-factor.Er, this is going on too rambly and long.  In short, I love the 4e artwork from a technical standpoint.  I love the books for being easy to read.  However I do indeed miss the binding themes that each realm used to have.</blockquote>

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