Smuggled photos

[DandD]

Never heard of Traveller, and never played it. And by your description, I wouldn't give it one second more. Guess that explains it all. If I want to have text only, I read novels. And even they do have some art here and there sometimes, to spice it up.
Just because people back then had to fight dinosaurs, mammuts, and couldn't afford art at all in their books, doesn't mean that the newer generation has to endure that hardship either.

 

[cdrcjsn]

I like the Psionic soulknife...er soulspear?

 

[Doc_Klueless]

Never heard of Traveller, and never played it. And by your description, I wouldn't give it one second more. Guess that explains it all. If I want to have text only, I read novels. And even they do have some art here and there sometimes, to spice it up.
Just because people back then had to fight dinosaurs, mammuts, and couldn't afford art at all in their books, doesn't mean that the newer generation has to endure that hardship either.

The beauty of Traveller back then was that it fit into 3 little black "books" which were actually more like pamphlets. The fit easily into any bag and were very light. However, they were very deep in content. It was fun to play. That it lacked illustrations didn't even dawn on me until much later, after I had been playing it a while. Then, the spaceships in my head looked so much cooler than what they had pictured. (especially the Safari Ship which was essentially a donut that had a docking ring in the center.)

That said, I really like the direction that 4e is going in, but I have a lot of disposable income. The amount of white space doesn't bother me.

 

[Quantarum]

OTOH, one of the most successful games ever, Traveller, had *no* *art* in its first edition. Not one single picture. The very absence of art was inspiring; it gave you a perfect blank slate on which you could draw anything you could imagine.

I did play Traveler, I thought it was horribly spartan not only art wise but also in the way they glossed over little things like the fact that sentient aliens existed in the game. If the descriptions of the game universe had been more colorful and in depth I'd agree with you. It was the best sci-fi RPG for a long time and I liked how they referred to every dice roll as a 'throw'. (I recall a game called Universe by SPI that made Traveler look like the Guggenheim by comparison.)

-Q.

 

[Knight Otu]

Well, of those three pictures, two are chapter openers, and one is the end of a subchapter, beginning of another. There are worse places to put whitespace, and from what I recall, the PHB spreads from XP that weren't chapter openers weren't that filled with whitespace. Perhaps we should dig them out for reference...

Edit - Tiefling pages
Armor and Shields pages
Wizard spell pages

Assuming cuts as seen in the photos above, there still seems to be more whitespace than I recalled, and it might be more than in a 3.X rulebook, but I'm not fully certain.

 

[FATDRAGONGAMES]

I love it - I think the art and layout are gorgeous.

 

[Geez3r]

I'll preface this by saying that I've been a fan of 4e practically since it was announced.

I really like the layout of the new books. To me, the books, the PHB especially, should essentially be the quickest way to say "Here, have fun." You should be able to quickly thumb through the PHB, find a few things that look fun and interesting, throw together a character in like 2 hours tops (going from when you first crack open the PHB to when you walk through the tavern door) and then just start having fun.

Now, don't get me wrong, I really like 3.5, but you simply could no do that. Learning the system took a considerable investment of time, especially if you were a spell caster. In 4e you can transcribe an entire power verbatim from the PHB and take up only 1 side of an index card, there is a very short list of spells you can do that with in 3.5 AND every single power in the game follows the same straight forward design.

The mechanics should be delivered in the quickest and cleanest way possible. Both mechanics and fluff need to be streamlined IMO. The quick 1 or 2 line phrase at the heading of a power is just right; it gives a soul to the numbers below without drawing your attention away from them. You don't need a page long description to say what a fighter is at this point, a single paragraph would do just nicely. Don't like what you've read? Then go to the next class my friend, it will have it's name and most the vital information displayed prominently next to a full color illustration of that archetype on a page all to itself.

Because everything advances at the static 1/2 level, most of the tables from the 3.5 PHB just go poof, and you can convey the classes' progression in a few simple bullet points. The whole point of having mechanics in a game like D&D is to ensure that everything runs smoothly, and everyone can have fun. I think that 4e has done this better than any edition so far, and because I have always liked D&D, I will like 4e even more.

That's just my opinion.

 

[Nytmare]

Possibly. But I really see very little difference in general art direction between 3e and 4e, except for, as others have noted, page-eating white space, presumably on the belief the next generation of gamers is scared of words. (This was also done with the 1e-?2e shift, and was MAJOR turn off. The information density of the 3e books was an irresistable lure when they first came out, compared to the horrid bland emptiness of 2e. But I digress.)

It might also be that document design has evolved over the last 20-some odd years.

I was surprised by the layout of the new books too, but not because (and forgive me for paraphrasing) "new gamers are stupid", but because I was expecting poorly laid out, information-overloaded pages where empty space was seen as something blasphemous that needed to be filled with whatever was on the next page.

 

[dblade]

The new layouts look awesome.

And very user-friendly.

I'm quite happy with the art direction of 4E.

 

[Dragonblade]

You can never have too much white space, it's visually calming and allows your mind to take things in easier without it feeling 'overloaded'. Looks like it's all written concisely and to me the layout looks like it'll help take in the rules that much quicker.

In the 3E books I end up scanning over a page, jumping from one part to another, maybe I'm just weird, but they felt a bit too 'busy' for me, these look just perfect.

Yes. A little bit of white space is a good thing. The 3e books were awful. They felt crammed and cluttered and those horrible notebook style lines on every page drove me nuts. I also hated the faux tome covers.

The art and white space in the 4e books is a godsend. Thank you, WotC! Whoever designed the look of your books deserves to be praised.