Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

Chris, I hope you don't think I started this thread to knock SJG or the quality of the books. It was more at how struck I was by the vastly different opinions between FLGS guy ("GURPS needs to focus more on artwork and presentation to be more eye-catching.") and old-school GURPS/3E fans ("I hate that they went to hardcover and color because I feel like I'm paying for it. Give me text I can read and a decent layout and nothing more, please.")

When I told him of the reaction (I'm tempted to say "backlash") that ensued when fans found out GURPS was going to hardbound, color, 240-page books, he (FLGS guy) was absolutely floored.

So, I didn't really want this to be a "What's wrong with SJG that their artwork sucks?" thread... more of a, "Do you guys think this is right? Do you think that presentation matters as much as content?"

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

Game of Thrones was but one example of many, and one that he could put in my hand. He specifically said that the d20 books that sold well were far more visually appealing. And from the comments that his customers had made, many of them (Game of Thrones fans or not) were undecided about whether to pick up the book until they held it in their hands and looked at it, and that made the difference.

I know I've done the same thing. I heard a good buzz about Nobilis, but it was only one game of many that sounded interesting. It wasn't until I was in my FLGS and saw it on the shelf that it grabbed my eyes and pulled them towards it. Flipping through it, I couldn't help but thinking, "Wow, even if this game sucks, it'd sure be pretty to have lying around...." That night, I consciously grepped the net for as much solid information as I could get about the game -- I got mixed reviews, but overall it seemed not to suck, so I bought it, simple as that.

Now, don't get me wrong -- Nobilis is an absolutely brilliant game. I hate over-hyped terms like "revolutionary", but it's appropriate here. Still, I would never have been so interested in the game (interested enough to sit down and spend my night making sure it was worth checking out) if the core book hadn't looked as damn pretty as it did.

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

One thing to keep in mind is that, when we first started working on the page design for Fourth Edition, the example of the horrible backgrounds from some of the new D&D books was firmly in our mind. We decided to forgo backgrounds entirely rather than try to come up with something that wouldn't make the text difficult to read for at least some people.

There were a couple of major reasons for switching to three columns. One is that it's an immediate visual cue that something is a Fourth Edition book rather than an earlier one.

(And here I'll note that Phil and I set up a couple of experiments YEARS ahead of Fourth Edition's release. Alpha Centauri was a prototype 4/e book long before anyone but Phil was even thinking about the 4/e graphic design, and All-Star Jam was a refinement of those ideas based on the things we learned from AC. Jam also let us test our new text font* to see if it would be obtrusive, obstreperous, or otherwise objectionable. Passed with flying colors -- well, grayscale.)

Another is that it gives the production staff a lot more flexibility in layout. Boxed text, quotes, art, and other graphic elements can be two or three columns wide (very rarely, one), which allows for a bit more variety on the page at a cost of not much more effort.

* Modified New Aster, if you're curious. The old books used plain old Times, which is a solid workhorse but which caused problems on occasion ... there are a LOT of versions of Times out there, and sometimes opening a file created with one version of Times on a computer that had another version of Times would result in the layout equivalent of a technicolor yawn. New Aster is significantly less common, which makes it less likely that font problems will arise down the road. Plus, IMO, it's visually just a bit more interesting than Times, but not in a way that jumps up and down waving road flares while you're trying to read. (I especially like the italic version, compared with italic Times.) And New Aster came in a wide variety of weights, so it's useful in a variety of situations.

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

Don't worry, I didn't take it that way at all. Just trying to give you an idea of where we're coming from when we look at the books ourselves.

And to prosper and grow, we need to please both sets of customers. A bit tricky, to say the least, but that's what makes the job fun. :)

best wishes,

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

Ah.. let them fend for themselves! Just give me what I want :\

Heh. I'll buy one of each... kind of a shill that way :)

When do I get paid?

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

This is a very good point. As long time players we're mostly interested in the material, but making the books more attractive isn't going to lose us as customers, and is much more likely to attract new customers.

We all repeat the cliche "Don't judge a book by its cover."; however, the reason it's a cliche is because it's something we all do.

Before buying any book we look at it, pick it up, look at the back blurb.
If the art is crap we might just put it back before reading the blurb, if the art is good we might buy it just because we were attracted to it.
Then we read the blurb in the back, if its good we'll buy the book, if it's bad, we either put it down, or maybe flip through the front comments, or check out the prologue or first chapter to see if its interesting, and if something catches our eye we buy it, otherwise it goes back on the shelf.

I like GURPS, and despite my complaints about some of the bad pieces in the books, for the most part outside of the amateurish looking unfinished Poser bits, the art is adequate and there's even an occasional nice piece.

However, adequate doesn't really attract people, it doesn't make them go "ooh shiny, must purchase", or "wow, this is cool".

I'll buy the books for the written content, because I'm an established customer. I'd hazard that most other established customers also buy the books despite the bad Poser stuff because of the written content as well.

On the other hand, to get new customers, GURPS needs to be more attractive. I'm not saying it's an ugly dog, you don't need to wrap it in a paper bag, but it's also not good-looking enough to flaunt.


I've also mentioned in the past that I believe new GM's screens for different settings with good art would be worth pushing. (Luther's right, the current GM's Screen is the one published product which is a dog, visually.)

Qoltar has a good point too, GURPS Lites on better paper, maybe with some art or even softcovers, possibly even expanded out to twice the size with additional material for different settings and/or additional game aides like the GURPS cards, depending on the price I'd probably buy half a dozen and hand over one to each of my players.

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

I am a person who always does lots of research on a given game system or sourcebook before deciding whether or not to purchase it. I'll read multiple online reviews of the product, ask around about it at RPG.net, join any dedicated forums and/or chat rooms (anyone who remembers my entrance to this forum will know that I did not own Basic Set for weeks after joining), et cetera. At no point does the appearance of the book or its artwork affect my decisionmaking process, although sloppy layouts annoy me and bad editing will turn me off in an instant.

However, I also find myself drawn to flashy or pretty books when I am in the FLGS. I won't buy them based on their eye-candy factor -- I've been through one too many beautiful, worthless d20 books to fall for that again -- but they sure are appealing. I was sorely tempted to buy Engel just the other day, until I read the horror-story reviews and also discovered that it was OGL (I've sworn d20 off indefinitely).

Still, cuteness does equal sales these days in many cases. It's unfortunate.

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

IMO what's important is that the presentation be distinctive. Show that GURPS is different from the competition. Make it stand out from the clutter on the display shelves. How do you do that? I dunno, I'm not a graphic designer.

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

Actually, I'm in favour of the art and layout. Well okay, there's some pieces in Magic that are horrible, sure, fine. But the thing is, realistic looking people with realistic looking gear. Very limited amounts of bondage gear.

Yup, I like the look just fine. ;)

Re: GURPS/4E... could be more attractive?
 

Yes, I believe he's right. This is especially true of the cover art. I remember seeing the first edition of Shadowrun from across the room. The striking Larry Elmore cover art really grabbed me. I went across the room and picked the book up. I was impressed more by the look of the book and the cool concepts than the game design. I only played Shadowrun (SR) a couple of times but I bought several SR books and converted them to GURPS to play. But I probably never would have given SR a look if it hadn't been for the covers.

Of course, the only reason I ever gave GURPS a try was due to Steve Jackson since I'd played the In the Labyrinth line from when Steve was designing games for Metagaming.

The art work for 4e, isn't bad, but it really isn't really doing a good job of competing with a lot of stuff out there. The old CP 2020 books had much better artwork. I remember one of my players picking up one of my Cyberpunk books (might have been the original boxed set that had Friday Night Fire Fight) and saying "nice art ... this looks cool, why don't we play this". Since I pretty much standardized on GMing using GURPS rules, it had to wait until I could do some conversions into GURPS.

I think improved art work, especially for covers would help direct sales at retail quite a bit. I've never seen a GURPS cover as striking as the old GURPS Fantasy one (1st edition demon cover by Denis Loubet). That picture was so cool it was reused multiple times including Space Gamer (which I think was its first appearance) and later for one of the Ultima computer games.

I just bought GURPS Dragons and the art is nice - stylized with an attitude. The layout is really nice. I like it much better than the GURPS Basic books. The two columns are much nicer to read and the boxes and they way the art work is presented are very nice. Personally, I would have liked to have had a couple of different artists doing the dragons, but the Alex Fernandez illustrations are definitely better than a lot of the older GURPS books. The style is vaguely reminiscent of "SMIF", but bolder and more well -- artistic.

If they do a GURPS Beastiary I hope they get Heather Burton and Shae Ryan to illustrate most of the creatures. I especially want Burton to do the griffins.