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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkWhite" data-source="post: 1868309" data-attributes="member: 9027">Constructive FeedbackHi Bastion and board members,I've been following the replies and counter replies with interest, and have strong opinions of my own, which I hope will be taken as constructive feedback.I have purchased most of Bastion Press' softcovers.  Arms and Armour was awesome first time around, and I can't wait until the 3.5 hardcover hits my local store in Melbourne, Australia.  I have also bought the Oathbound hardcover, and one other Oathbound supplement.  Following are my impressions:Much has been said about art vs content.  From Bastion's replies on this issue, I think they vastly underestimate the effect that good artwork has in supporting a product.  If you're reading about a new creature or race, you REALLY need a good image to accompany it, because it conjures the imagination in ways that text description alone cannot.  It also helps to set the scene, mood, tone of the product/campaign world, without having to read large amounts of text first.First impressions are very important with limited time flying through a bookstore once a week on my way home from work, and good artwork and layout helps to convey what I might expect from a product.  For this reason, online reviews are also very important to me, where I can read them at my leisure at home or during lunchbreak.If there's one thing I have learned from brief teaching/instruction, its that different people absorb and relate to information in different ways.  Some people are "visual" people and learn best by reading; others are "audio" people and learn best by hearing, while others learn by "doing".  The best way to get your message across to a wider audience is to try to engage them by a wide range of methods.  Talk them through your presentation, have overhead-transparency slides and handouts, and use audience participation or get them to do practical tutorials.In the case of a printed product, of course you're restricted to what you can display on the printed page.  But to draw customers in and keep them engaged, you'll need to use a combination of engaging text description, as well as imagination provoking images.  Many people will skim through a product, stop at a race or prestige class because it's picture strikes their interest, before reading the accompanying text to see what their character might gain from it.It was mentioned that D&D products of the 80s were sold by the quality of their content, and visuals weren't a requirement to selling a product.  While this may have been true then, this isn't the situation today.  Times have changed, customers expect much more from their product than they did a decade or two ago.  While some companies emulate the nostalgic 1st Edition look and feel as a marketing technique, I don't believe that is what Oathbound is aiming for, it won't sell more Oathbound product, and neither should it be used as an excuse to dismiss artwork over content.I hope my criticism isn't viewed as being too harsh.  To be fair, the art in the Oathbound hardcover did contain some really excellent art among some otherwise rather ordinary ones.  It has been stated that Bastian Press' art has undergone some change in recent products, I'll need to take a second look.However, Art isn't the ONLY consideration when buying a product.  I have other comments I'd like to post about Oathbound content, but as I've exhausted my lunchbreak, they'll have to wait for next time.  Cheers   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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