What was so magical about 1E/OD&D art?

tx7321 said:
But, WOTC will still drop you guys just as fast...watch and see. :]
WoTC or rather HASBRO) will do whatever is necessary to keep them afloat as a company and to make them money. Shockingly that is what companies are set up to do. Its not some sort of evil conspiracy and to doom all of gamerland and to sugges totherwise is rather foolish. This was a lesson TSR somehow managed to fail to understand.
 

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tx7321 said:
Edited my original statement to say TSR. But, WOTC will still drop you guys just as fast...watch and see. :]

You've got that backwards.

I'm the one who's doing the dropping, if any such thing occurs. WotC can't drop me, it is I who control my gaming dollars. Sure they can produce something I don't want, but then I'll just drop them. No skin of my nose.

Take back the power, man! You shouldn't feel as if WotC is the dominant part of your relationship! It's not healthy, I say! :D

/M
 

RC said:
Actually, I don't have any problem with these characters at all (although Fran looks like she'd take some time getting dressed in the morning ).

Hehehe, one tidbit of interesting information: according to the game, her race is described as having naturally pointed, high-heeled, so high-heeled shoes are actually MORE comfy for them than our human clodhoppers. :)

Of course, FF12 is a fairly grounded game as far as final fantasies go....working with old kingdoms and Shakespearean themes. The characters reflect that.

thx surround sound said:
KM, thanks alot for burning out my retna with those images. YES I can easily see WOTC going in that feminized direction. You guys have to remember, WOTC is into this for the buck. They'll drop you 3Eers just as fast as TSR dropped us 1Eers when 2E came out. And the numbers of players won't matter, what their focusing on is the buyers who spend the most money. If there are 1 million active players, but only 10,000 buy 80% of whats released (you know the sort, they have a closet full of everything WOTC has ever printed....probably 5-10K worth) then guess what, your going to have to adapt to what those 10,000 addicts want; and if that means transgender flakes as heroes, so be it. If it happens, it'll be ironic.

You seem to completely ignore the fact that there's NOTHING WRONG with liking a character who is more svelte than beefcake. Heck, elves have looked half-androgynous since D&D began, and have been very popular, in part, because of that. People like sleek, silky, and smooth. This is why Legolas gets to surf on his sheild and Gimli gets dwarf-tossed. Legolas is sleek, silky, and smooth. And Gimli is loud, clumsy, and onery.

The Conan archetype is out the door, too. Rippling muscles and exposed man-chest have gone the way of Kevin Sorbo and the California Beach Meatheads. Their place is on the inside covers of harlequin romance, not really in the imaignations of the kids that WotC is trying to hook.

What's in the imagination of those kids? Legolas (sleek elf ninja). Harry Potter (awkward but powerful nerd-man-boy). Ash and Pikachu ("average high school kid on adventures" and his adorable pet). Ichigo from BLEACH (dresses in flowing black robes and wields a six-foot hunk of metal that represents his inner psyche...realistic? Piffle). Aragorn (scruffy rogue who fights with destiny and throws torches!). Frodo and Sam (plucky homosexual midgets on an impossible quest invovling a ring and some great evil). Aang from AVATAR (little bald kid who masters the elements and rides a flying bison through Vaguely Asian World). Naruto Uzumaki (lazy ninja student with determination instead of talent).

So what will the art of the future game look like? Take a bit of the old school, add a jolt of anime, probably kick around some asian symbology, put cute animals in various places...get a lot of black ink for the dark clouds and the brooding cliffs, and have fun impressionist-style.

I'm actually surprised so many people here even know about these old 70s and early 80s modules, never mind considering them to be thier all time favorite cover art (and you can't say its nostalgia when many of them weren't even alive when they were published).

Check out the average age here, sometime. ;) There's a lot of grognards who started, at their latest, back in 2e. Part of the reson is because this site came out of a site that posted updates when 3e was first coming out...there's not a whole lot of people here who have had exposure to ony 3e, or 3e first. Being alive when they're published doesn't matter...taking them off the family bookshelf when your older brother baught them with his part-time job money and marvelling at the fantastic creatures by the half-light of your bedroom lamp when you were supposed to be going to sleep is what matters. We don't really have people here that have had that experience with 3e art. Talk to some of these folks' kids in 10 years. ;) I'm *positive* people here had that experience with 1e or 2e art. And I think that's a LOT of what makes them so magical.

Armor spikes are nothing new, after all. I mean, check out that Otis pic...shoulder pads on the lady, *wings* on the helmet?! How impractical was THAT?! (what, did they make him go faster? :)) Why is he wearing a skirt? Wouldn't that leave his legs exposed? How is that flame attatched to that...is that a torch? Why is the water actually opaque green jell-o? And why is the dragon languidly raising his head? Wouldn't it make more sense for it just to dart out from underneath? Certainly that would make the stabbitty that Mr. Wingface is about to give a bit less likely...or were green jell-o dragons also tactically retarded in BD&D? :)

I mean, I'm usually very generous about art. I really don't mind the piece.

But given that, or this:
ffxii.jpg


or this:
GR_FFXII04--screenshot_large.jpg


or this:
101492.jpg


.....I'll go with the ones that don't have green jell-o water. :)
 



Jenson, agreed. Its all about the bottom line.
Magaan, power to the people! :D I can dig it. ;)
KM, perhaps some of todays guys are into transgender and gay midget halflings...but I doubt its many.
 
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J-Dawg said:
Freely admit that I haven't been reading your posts very closely. They're long and I have a short attention span. :D But I don't think the 3e message of the PCs as special snowflakes is very hard to mistake, while tx1234 is using completely different evidence to show that 1e art is for special snowflakes, who can't possibly have hinted to them that their characters are better than anyone else in the campaign setting.

Although perhaps I've been misinterpreting what "side" you're on in regards to art, I still think the irony of the mutually exclusive interpretations is kinda funny.


No worries. :D

I didn't say that all 3e art contains the message that the PCs are special snowflakes. So far as I know, this message is exclusive to the 3.0 PHB (admittedly, I didn't analyze the 3.5 PHB or PHB II). I said also that the 3.0 DMG art was the exact opposite: It implies that the PCs lives may well be nasty, brutish, and short. :] What I would prefer, is the combination of the two in both books, implying that the PCs will encounter adversity, but can win. :D

Maybe we're using the term "special snowflake" in mutually exclusive ways, though, because I don't see how someone who can't possibly be better than anyone else in the campaign setting would qualify.


RC
 


Hussar said:
:p Here now, no need for that. :p

BTW, I'd like more Pozas too.

RC: I can see what you're saying, but, honestly, I think you're reading far too much into things. It's a pretty big jump to go from "the art in the 3e PHB isn't very good" to "the art in the 3e PHB is an example of the publishers pushing player entitlement."

Here's one of my favourite Otis pieces:

DandDBasicSetBoxCover.jpg


But, look at that piece for a second. The chick is total beefcake, and the guy is just odd. Is he a midget? The perspective in this pic is WAY off.

Uh you trying to say a midget can't fight dragons or be a hero? :mad:
 

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