How much art?

[BiggusGeekus]

How much artwork is required for an RPG? I realize this is a very vague and open-ended question. But is there a rule of thumb?

[Misguided]

Originally posted by BiggusGeekus
How much artwork is required for an RPG? I realize this is a very vague and open-ended question. But is there a rule of thumb?

I think there's a huge difference between "required" and "suggested". I don't think there's an absolute requirement for art at all. This depends greatly on what you are talking about though. If you are talking pdf, art can be a bad thing for the ink it takes up. If you are talking about a game at your FLGS, most people aren't going to buy something without art in it. Personally I love art, and am of the more the merrier variety.

[Jack]

Way back in the day, a colleague and I figured out that about an illustration or some visual representation every 3 pages or so was good. Larger pieces and attractive borders can reduce this number. Now since then I've seen a lot of book that have pieces every 5 pages or so, but these usually have the aforementioned borders, icons, etc....

But I'm not a layout expert, I'm a writer. This is mostly just observation.

[Patrick Chipman]

The typical rule for layout is this: if the art breaks up a large amount of "grey space" (text blocks), breaks up or fills a lot of white space, or makes the page look better, use it. You can also use it to make sure your chapters end on an odd page boundary, so that you have room for facing page chapter art.

Don't, however, use art to "vary" the layout's basic structure (continuity is prized; note The Last Exodus to see the problems in this), to sever columns of text completely, to create weird wrapping effects, or to unbalance the page. Art is also ineffective as a layout tool if you restrict it to the sidebar columns and facing pages only (Vampire: The Masquerade 2 was a particularly good example of this).

I used to have a great spiral-bound book that went into serious technical detail about layout theory and how to build good looking pages, but I can't for the life of me remember its name.

[James Wallis]

It's completely up to you. For Warhammer FRP, we typically have a text:art page ratio of 5:1 or 6:1 (six pages of text per full page of illustration, although that full page can be split into two half-pages, four quarter-pages, etc.) For Nobilis, we've gone 9.5:1.

I'd say it's better to have a little good art than a lot of mediocre or sucky art, but that may just be me.

[Misguided]

From everything I had heard about Nobilis I thought the ratio would be smaller. Knowing you guys, though, the art will be very good. Ratio for Children of the Sun is going to be less than 4:1, but it may not seem that way since we are using all full-page art and there will be 2 16 page color signatures.

[Jim Butler]

The old TSR standard was 10% art and 5% maps, though the number of maps we included varied widely. I always thought that 20% art and maps as necessary was the way to go, but for budgeting purposes it's easier to pick a set number.

In my opinion, artwork makes products more rich and vital, illustrating points that the author was making in the written text. There is such a thing as too much artwork, but that's not generally an issue with RPG products.

[Flower of December]

For God's sake, please don't do what I did for my Diver Down game. Text should not be in color and it should not be printed on top of photographs. Pull quotes are also not a good thing. I took such a bath on that one.

[BiggusGeekus]

Thanks for the advice, folks. I'm going to aim for a modified version of Butler's school of thought with 15/5 being my art/map ratios. Hopefully, I'll have the finances to pull it off!

Marigold Mao,

What's so bad about pull quotes? I've seen lots of books use them.

[Misguided]

BG,

look to your own game books. Pick books you like and ones you don't and look for patterns. There are some books out there that don't have much art, but make great use of what they have and use other tricks to occupy the eye. I loved how Alternity did this, but they're approach wasn't exactly low budget.