>From: Clark Peterson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>You wrote: > >"The SRD is missing all the very valuable artwork and >most of the background of the MM. Try to imagine >playing D&D with the SRD, having never seen an >illustration of any of the creatures." > >Is that a joke? You thinkwe cant play D&D without >descriptions and pictures? You have to be kidding. > >I can do that easily. Its called Original D&D. There >were no illusrtations for most monsters. > Yes, in the early days there were very few pictures. The genre now has many more illustrations, players, and is a much bigger, more professional market than it was back in those days. I know that many still fondly remember those early days (not that they typically get out the old books and play them), but I think for different reasons other than the lack of pictures. I think that very few people would deny that what we have since then is called *progress*. Regardless of the right or wrong, there are now market *expectations* of artwork. You might not like the way certain things have progressed, but I don't think that one of your protests would be to blot out the pictures in your MM. In fact, I think that if you did, you'd find that you were very unhappy with the result (lets pretend you never saw similar pictures in the 2nd ed MM). I think you can be fairly certain that WotC added significantly to their costs for MM production (artist's fees, publishing etc) by deciding to incorporate the artwork. To me (and I'm sure, many others), it's not just about marketing sizzle. Minor point: You cited old examples that really left a lot to the imagination of the DM, when describing said creatures to the party. One of the problems is with DM rotation. It's pretty difficult when different DMs in the group have to build on the descriptions of previous DMs to maintain a consistent world view. In many cases (when DMed properly), players wouldn't even necessarily know what the race was of a creature encountered in a previous DM's session, so the next DM wouldn't even necessarily know that they were conflicting with the group "mind view" of what the background and visuals are - specific to a particular monster race. Of course, there could always be issues with this problem, but a bit of background, and a picture, goes a *long* way to helping the situation. _________________________________________________________________ MSN Photos is the easiest way to share and print your photos: http://photos.msn.com/support/worldwide.aspx _______________________________________________ Ogf-l mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.opengamingfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/ogf-l
