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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rodrigo Istalindir" data-source="post: 5625624" data-attributes="member: 2810">When evaluating Aid or Accessory products, I would tend to towards things that have a tangible, specific purpose and benefit to preparing or running a game.  Stuff that you look and and immediately say "Wow, I could really use this."   Innovation is important: if it's something that any one of a number of products out there already do, it needs to add something unique to make it stand out.  And as with every category, execution is paramount.  A 100% certified organic, free-trade, glow-in-the-dark battlemat might be really cool, but if the lines aren't straight, it's not really much of a battlemat.That said, 'Aid or Accessory' is a very, very broad category.  A really good book on how to GM a certain kind of game, for example, might very well be worthy of nomination despite it being a little more general purpose, or not having that immediate 'wow' factor.As far as art, I'm not an artist by training or education.  I fall squarely in the "I know what I like" category.  But I look for three things:  consistency, inspiration, and execution.  Execution is obvious; I may have an untrained eye, but talent and skill are  discernible to anyone with a degree of objectivity.  The struggle is in putting away any stylistic prejudices and look at it with an unjaundiced eye.  I think not being an artist, and in general preferring a fairly wide variety of games in different genres, let's me avoid that pitfall.Consistency of vision is very important.  Pick a style and stick with it.  The art needs to reinforce the fluff and flavor of a book on a visceral level.  If the art doesn't match the tone, or if the style changes from page to page, you're not drawing the reader into your story.Inspiration is easy to define but very subjective.  A picture that sparks a cool adventure idea, or that in classic '1000 words' fashion brings a setting to life, differentiates the competent from the classic.</blockquote>

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