In putting together my first game(s), I've realized two things:

1) I have no artistic ability whatsoever.
2) My budget is slightly more than zero.

This got me thinking about where to put what little money I can budget for my game. My current idea is that all of it should go to the cover art. This means that I won't have any money for layout or interior art. I'll address the layout issue by keeping it very simple, which I tend to prefer anyway. But the lack of interior art worries me somewhat.

Personally, I couldn't care less if RPGs had art or not. Sometimes (if it really fits the game) it's nice, but solid text wouldn't bother me. Of course, I'm a word-oriented person, so I'm probably not the best meter to use.

So, first, does anyone have any firsthand experiences to share in this area (RPG with cover art, but no interior art)? Second, even if you don't have firsthand experience, does this idea sound like it would make a game less palatable to potential buyers?

Lxdr should speak up here. Fastlane has no interior art beyond the roulette layout needed for the game. It bothers me a little because there aren't any visual 'landmarks' in the book (I sometimes reference books that way, "oh, yeah that's on the page with the dragon swollowing the knight." But it isn't a major thing for me.

Also I believe Vincent's KPFS has no interior art either. That's more of a feel thing for the game (the typeface is like a manual typewriter.)

best

Trevis

In my opinion, you need to make a strong visual statement with your game. You don't need interior art to do this, but it can make it easier. I just don't buy games that fail to have some visual impact (unless I buy the book sight unseen because I am sure it has content I want).

Regarding Trevis's comment about visual landmarks: These really help me a lot, but, again, you can do them with text, if you have a visually distinctive title font or something.

I think art is particularly important for certain games or genres. For example, it can be very difficult to describe things in science fiction or fantasy settings without pictures to give players reference points. In modern settings or something similar to something else, I imagine you could do without it.

Art helps establish the tone of the game. For example, if you look at the old WFRP cover, it's a dirty, dank world, with people being brutally cut apart on the cover. The interior art continues to reinforce this dingy, dark world. Without that art, I'd probably have envisioned a clean D&D or Tolkien fantasy world (and thus would not have bought the thing in the first place). There are things that pictures just imply better than words can ever explain.

The last important thing is that art can give people something to immediately get excited about. Your cover art should accomplish much of that, but players often get jazzed about a game when they see a particular character or weapon or whatever. You can't put everything in the cover, so interior art can give people that many more places to emotionally latch onto the game.

Here's an idea, though... inspired by the ransom model, I was thinking about this the other day: publish a first edition or pre-release, or whatever you want to call it without any interior art. Then use a donation-driven ransom to pay for the rest of the artwork in a future edition. Clinton does something like this where he gives the text away for free, with the illustrated version at a cost. A ransom version jjust might work if people want it enough.

Andrew,

Unless you're saying that you have less than $100 for your art budget, I don't think you need to worry too much. Offer an artist $10 per interior piece, do one for each chapter heading. Offer $20-$30 for your cover. Take the rest of the money and buy lunch.

I sussed out some very good art for those prices.

How long is your game? How many sections? What's it about? What do you absolutely need art for? What about graphics and logos?

-L

abzu wrote: Unless you're saying that you have less than $100 for your art budget, I don't think you need to worry too much. Offer an artist $10 per interior piece, do one for each chapter heading. Offer $20-$30 for your cover. Take the rest of the money and buy lunch.

I sussed out some very good art for those prices.

Obviously he's connected...if you don't give him the art at the price he wants he sends some boyz with bats to negotiate further.

Seriously though, Ron has indicated that he typically will offer $100 to an artist to produce whatever amount of art the artist chooses for that price.

Hello,

Here are some useful older threads about this sort of thing:

Art necessity
Dying Earth and covers
The cost of art
Elements of a great cover
Art: does it matter? and Does art matter? (split)

A lot of these have embedded links to further discussions too.

Best,
Ron

Shreyas Sampat wrote: In my opinion, you need to make a strong visual statement with your game.

jdagna wrote: You can't put everything in the cover, so interior art can give people that many more places to emotionally latch onto the game.

Bob Goat wrote: Also a cover doesn't have to have art either.

Hiya,

Two interesting data points ...

1. The Whispering Vault has a brownish cover and a red circle/angular symbol. The book is a standard-sized with standard gloss, about (um) 144 to 160 pages, based on my memory, kind of skinny compared to a White Wolf sourcebook. The interior pages are white. Interior art, typeface, and layout was very good in my opinion.

It was absolute poison in the stores, in 1994.

2. The Burning Wheel has a brownish cover and a reddish cover, each with a circle/angular symbol. The books are digest-sized with a kind of textured, grainy feel, about 200 pp each (Luke? is that right? maybe a little less each?), making for a hefty-feeling but not fat-looking book. Interior pages are off-white, noticeably tan-ish. Interior typeface and layout are very good, with punk-ish "passion not gloss" art.

It does tremendously well in the stores (at the indie level, meaning steady low sales) and especially well in direct sales, 2003-2005. Speaking for myself, the BW books have a tangible satisfying feel when you pick them up, the sense that this is a grimoire which can be used.

Conclusion: no immediate correlate with any single feature. Do note the important difference between shipping off games to a distributor and then hoping they "take off" in the stores, and marketing them yourself with a direct eye on customer interaction and play-based sales/support.

Best,
Ron

Andrew Morris wrote:

Bob Goat wrote: Also a cover doesn't have to have art either.

That's true, but I recoil from the thought almost instinctively.

Yeah, Burning Wheel sold me on look alone. I knew absolutely nothing about the game, other than it was "fantasy." But when I saw it, I had to feel it. When I felt it, I had to pick it up. When I picked it up, I had to look through it. When I looked through it, I had to buy it. Just like that.

Honestly, when I think about the best-looking game book I've come across, I think BW. I bought it because of the texture and colors of the paper. That's not a good reason to buy an RPG, but it does show that visual (and tactile, in this case) impact is important.

I've never seen Whispering Vault in print, only online, so I can't compare the two in terms of tactile appeal. Did Whispering Vault do better in direct sales than it did in stores, or was that not an option?

Hiya,

Direct sales in the modern sense were not technologically available in 1994, nor culturally (in the so-called "industry") even imaginable. You begged a distributor to carry you; he bought enough copies probably to cover your costs (orders were a lot bigger then); you got in the stores ... then you waited. That was it. The store was the industry, and the distributor was its prophet.

To relate all this to the issue of interior art, though, consider these games:

InSpectres, for a great deal of its existence: logo on the front, no interior art.

Dogs in the Vineyard: picture on the front, no interior art.

Both of which play very fast and fun, easily demonstrated; both of which are supported very actively by enthusiastic players as well as the creators; both of which get major support at conventions through the same avenues. Neither of which need to be in stores in order to make the publisher lots of money.

The role of the cover in attracting distributors, which was a major major 1990s issue, may well be entirely obsolete at this point, from our perspective.

Best,
Ron

Ron Edwards wrote: The role of the cover in attracting distributors, which was a major major 1990s issue, may well be entirely obsolete at this point, from our perspective.

Andrew Morris wrote: Yeah, Burning Wheel sold me on look alone. I knew absolutely nothing about the game, other than it was "fantasy." But when I saw it, I had to feel it. When I felt it, I had to pick it up. When I picked it up, I had to look through it. When I looked through it, I had to buy it. Just like that.

When I was designing Neiyar, I had three main illustrators who got paid $50 each plus copies of the finished product. For additional incidental illustrations, I bought some pieces from artists at deviantart.com. And for filler art to break up text, I just used clip art. So in all I think I spend a little over $200 on art. Also, everyone got links posted on the website to their personal pages/contact e-mails, as well as that information made available in the back of the book. They were all very happy with that arrangement.

Just like in any field, there are a lot of struggling young talents looking to build a resume. Places like deviantart and others are a great way to both save yourself some money and give a young talent a chance to build their portfolio.

And there are other forms of payment that we, as indie presses, can offer. I've written two letters of reference for two of my illustrators expressing my satisfaction with their work and professionalism. They've both since told me that those letters have helped them get interviews (and one has two firm job offers and he doesn't know what to do with himself lol).

I think internal art is important, but not to the point of breaking the bank over it. In the end, the content of the book is what is going to make it successful, not just the pretty pictures. Sure, art might get someone to pick the book up off of the shelf, but it's the content that makes them buy it.

RPGNow has some packages of clip/filler art, Calvin(madelf) has packages of art available fairly reasonably.
Granted, you'll want to avoid pieces that are overused in these scenarios, but for one or two images to help spruce up the book, it could be worth the $10 for the image package.

Bob Goat wrote:

Highway fucking robbery Luke. Highway fucking robbery. How can you live with your self?

daMoose_Neo wrote: RPGNow has some packages of clip/filler art, Calvin(madelf) has packages of art available fairly reasonably.
Granted, you'll want to avoid pieces that are overused in these scenarios, but for one or two images to help spruce up the book, it could be worth the $10 for the image package.

As a small counter to the whole "no are isn't a big deal" vibe some people are putting out, consider the recent threads about Meatbot Massacre, where they got a spike in ransom revenue when they released examples of the art. And there ain't a lot of art in it -- it's only ten pages long, after all.

I think what it comes down to is that art, a priori, isn't important -- but look and feel is. Art can be part of that, or it can be conveyed entirely with layout and fonts, or some combination of all three.

There is a lot of high quality clip art out there. Depending on your game, you can also get a lot of milage out of stock photos.

There are a LOT of web sites with free art and free photos. I've collected a list of a lot of them in my del.icio.us:

http://del.icio.us/xiombarg/stock

Be sure to check out the links at the bottom, especially -- those are the first ones I found, and they're very good sites. I got pictures of all the NPCs in my Nobilis game by combing Stock.XCHNG...

With regards to physical copies, I believe that good interior art is crucial.
For the casual "flipper" in the store, internal art is both an expected feature of a "professional" publication and something that catches the attention immediately (increasing the chance that the flipper will hold it for more than 8 seconds). There are also more critical observers who can see the spirit of one’s system emulated in the art, and be attracted to the congruence of art and game description.
E.G., if heironymous were to release his Seven Leagues with the art on his .pdf, it would convey a strong message that corresponds with his system’s intention. Great Ork Gods is another example where the art tells you what kind of game you’re getting into. So, “generic” art is insufficient I think. I think if you just grab whatever art is cheap and fits in corners of your text (only roughly approximating your system's idea) that some will be dissuaded from your system. But, I pay heavy attention to art, and so maybe I’m speaking of the minority.

Balance is always crucial.
Many will never know it, but my card game Final Twilight uses a few (3 I believe) pieces of clip/stock art, and no one notices. My freebies on the site all consist of stock shots of cities. And I'm complimented on the artwork that adorns the cards regularly.
For my Imp Game, I'm doing something kind of similar. I'm doing some sketches, madelf is inking them, and those will be entirely unique to the game. Meanwhile, I've scratched up a couple of amusing but befitting pieces of clip art, madelf is working up some new pieces that will be available in one of his clip art collections, and its all coming together.

So, 100% clipart? Not the greatest of ideas. Meatbot I don't think could have been done the same w/ clip art, as an example. But, liberal use while making sure you have enough to capture the spirt and use the clip to support it? Can go a long way on a shorter budget.

Hi all. I just thought I'd chime in, because I just pitched a proposal to Andrew that he seemed to like. So, hopefully he'll get some art that fits the style of one of his games, and I'll have some fun doing it... gratis, of course.

Why gratis? It's simple. As everyone here has pointed out here numerous times, the market can't bear artists (or writers, for that matter) to be paid what they're worth. But regardless of the amount of money involved, money changes everything. In my experience, the amount of money involved in a commission is directly proportional to the chance that the person you're working for is going to be an a@@hole (no offense intended to anyone here, as I've never worked for any of you).

I look at it like this: When I donate my art to a project, I get a lot of creative control, I have very little pressure, and I get to work with nice people like Andrew. I also get to keep the pieces, which I know I'm going to like because I'm doing something I love. But any job I do for someone else also challenges me and stretches me conceptually to do some things I might not otherwise do. Also, Andrew gets some artwork he couldn't really afford, and hopefully he likes the look of his publication in the end. Everyone's happy... win/win.

And while I've done a lot of it in the past, now that I'm past 40 I have to say: Life is too short to waste it associating with a@@holes. I'd rather be happy with what I'm doing than be paid an itsy bitsy amount of money. I'm one of those people who has been cursed with the compulsion to make images. I draw every day of my life for free. The only way this job is different is that these images help someone out. I kinda like that. It's the same kind of thing The Forge has been doing for the indie RPG community for years.

BTW, Ron, I also like your "I give you $100; you give me something worth $100" practice. That's pretty close to barter, which is something I'd suggest to anyone interested in hiring someone for their skills. Let's say you're a writer. I can't think of ANYONE who doesn't need a writer's skills on a fairly regular basis. Need some artwork? Barter a resume and cover letter (for example)... or a fantastic written reference (as mentioned above). In fact, I prefer barter because it trades time for time and talent for talent. It's truly equitable. An artist is giving you so many hours of his/her life, and you give some of your life back.

One argument for interior art is the clearance shelf at your local game store. These are the games that failed to grab an audience. Once they drop to 50% the store owner is selling them at cost. Once they are below that they just want to get rid of the thing to make room for something people want.

These sad clearance casualties are not routinely badly made. Some are great - interior art, glossy color sometimes even hardback cover - but when you look at them you soon find yourself glancing away. Maybe it's the subject, maybe the lack of art, maybe the poor production qualities, or turgid writing, all that is important here is that the book fails to attract. As it says in the Quran "There are lessons in this for those who will see."

It is easy to say stores and distributors are irrelevant - that may be true - but the test in the market place of ideas is your games ability to secure player's time. If they don't give it - then what have you got? A pile of paper.

You don't need to be a great artist to create compelling layout. The use of lines, squares, shading, open spaces and text can do it without pictures. Clip art should not be overlooked. Dover Press has put out clip art books/CDs for years. Why not let the old dead white guys help you out. I'm certain they won't mind.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

The way I see it, if you're at a book store checking out games, art is the most critical factor. You're flipping through, trying to glean a sense of what the game's about without reading the novella of flavor text at the beginning. The art sets the tone of the setting that I don't really see layout and font doing. I'm sure there're exceptions, but I would be surprised to find them.

Gamers that shop online want art too, but they're probably more willing to look at the text. After all, most of the internet is text, so it's second nature to online gamers.

I personally feel that art—but not any art, only good art—is the most important part of the look of the game, which is probably common sense. I know that my game will have gobs and gobs of art, no matter if I have to take out loans to pay for it and make no money from it. I think it's essential for truly innovative and/or unique worlds, as pages of descriptions can only go so far to paint the picture without getting weighty.

I think it's essential for truly innovative and/or unique worlds, as pages of descriptions can only go so far to paint the picture without getting weighty.

K and Bob-

What do you think about something like Dogs in the Vineyard, then? It's selling well, and people are having lots of fun playing it. It has no interior art at all, except for the little tree end-of-chapter icons. The cover art is distinctive and memorable, though.

Also, I think a game like Universalis would be exactly as accessible without any illustration. This isn't a knock on the art, but Uni doesn't really need illustrations to help convey understanding, and it doesn't really have a specific "flavor" to convey, since you create that every time you sit down to play it.

With that said, Paul has shown me some sketches that really made me go, "wow, that's what I wasn't conveying with the text, the emotional impact." So, the game that I thought might be able to stand without interior art, actually will have art in the final analysis. I think it will work better that way, with the text saying, "this is how you play," and the art saying, "this is what it feels like."

So, my basic point here is that I think there are some games where the text can stand on its own without interior art (or even be improved by its removal). Also, telling which is which is probably difficult to impossible to accomplish beforehand.

killacozzy wrote: I personally feel that art—but not any art, only good art—is the most important part of the look of the game, which is probably common sense.

Andrew:
I actually just checked out DiTV's cover art at the site and agree that it is an awfully nice cover. I don't know anything else really about the game, so I can't really answer that part of your question.

As for Universalis (a game I particularly love), I've often wondered about what art would really do it justice. I like the piece that won the art contest at the Uni site, and I think it would make a good new cover if/when there is a new edition printed. Uni is a very strange case, in that it has a fanbase that seems to be coming primarily out of people with a background in rpgs, but has a lot of potential to appeal to people that don't have that background. Ithink the current artwork appeals/ is familiar to the first group. I'm not so sure about the appeal to the theoretical second group. I'm definitely not sure what sort of art would appeal to that hypothetical group, either.

I'll give a non-rpg example that I agree with. I recently read someone's ( I think Costickyan's) comments on the game Axis&Allies, comparing an earlier paper version to the more commonly available Milton Bradley "toy soldiers" version. His point was that while both games were essentially the same in terms of rules, the toy version just plain has a different sort of (and greater) appeal.

As for what games benefit, like I mentioned, Tekumel and Jorune both really benefit from the art. I would consider buying a product for either of these lines without game mechanics, but more art. The oWoD Vampire game and splats definitely benefitted freom the Tim Bradstreet art.

So, if I was to guess what games benefit from art most, I would say setting heavy ones. DiTV seems to be more situation heavy, and parallels real world settings closely, so maybe art isn't really that necessary. oWoD Vampire was set in "the real world" but the Bradstreet art really focussed on the goth-punk aspect, and tied in really well to the overall feel of the game. SoJ and T:EPT are setting heavy, and the art really lets you know that you are in some world other than a psuedo-european fantasy setting.

My thoughts anyway,
cheers,
Robert

If you are going to use art I've found pictures of people - and people in action - especially if you can see their eye (the gateway to the soul) are eye catching. Still lifes, and landscapes are much less compelling.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

Good point about setting, Bob. I'll have to think about that for a bit. I think there's an "and," "or," or "and/or" in there somewhere (as in, "heavy in setting and/or...") but I'm not sure what it is.

MatrixGamer wrote: If you are going to use art I've found pictures of people - and people in action - especially if you can see their eye (the gateway to the soul) are eye catching. Still lifes, and landscapes are much less compelling.

Andrew Morris wrote: What do you think about something like Dogs in the Vineyard, then? It's selling well, and people are having lots of fun playing it. It has no interior art at all, except for the little tree end-of-chapter icons. The cover art is distinctive and memorable, though.

Good point about setting, Bob. I'll have to think about that for a bit. I think there's an "and," "or," or "and/or" in there somewhere (as in, "heavy in setting and/or...") but I'm not sure what it is.

komradebob wrote: How much art do you think a game should have per page count?
In a standard size game book? In a digest size game book?