First impressions – 2300AD – Tools for Frontier Living

[rust]

Well, yes, some of the art is quite terrible and should not be there.

However, I bought the book for what Colin wrote, not for the art,
and I have no problem whatsoever with the book's written content.
If I had not bought the book because of my extreme dislike of so-
me stuff which I would very much hesitate to call art I would not
be able to use Colin's overall excellent material for my settings.

In the end, I managed to survive dozens of fantasy roleplaying ga-
mes rulebooks and supplements despite their incredibly silly soft
pornographic covers, so the non-art in Tools for Frontier Living is
unlikely to have any serious long term consequences for my men-
tal health. I very much hope that Mongoose will spare me another
overdose of non-art in future books, but for now I am glad that I
bought the book and can use Colin's material.

 

[Lemnoc]

Well, yes, some of the art is quite terrible and should not be there.

However, I bought the book for what Colin wrote, not for the art,
and I have no problem whatsoever with the book's written content.
If I had not bought the book because of my extreme dislike of so-
me stuff which I would very much hesitate to call art I would not
be able to use Colin's overall excellent material for my settings.

In the end, I managed to survive dozens of fantasy roleplaying ga-
mes rulebooks and supplements despite their incredibly silly soft
pornographic covers, so the non-art in Tools for Frontier Living is
unlikely to have any serious long term consequences for my men-
tal health. I very much hope that Mongoose will spare me another
overdose of non-art in future books, but for now I am glad that I
bought the book and can use Colin's material.

+1

I think that RPGnet reviewer got a bit hung up on the tables thing, which is just a staple from the Old School where every list of suggested possibilities was paired with a dice number with no expectation that any GM would be so stupid or lazy as to just roll at random on it with out a vision or plan. No one is going to scratch-build a colony like that, and the dice option exists mostly to wing it in extremis. Seems a weird thing to get hung up on.

Also the reviewer seems to have snagged the errata version of the PDF (not a bad thing), as the original release definitely has a front and back cover.

 

[Colin]

"Design" vs. "Generation" is a fair point. It isn't a design system, its a colony generation system, based very heavily on the Mongoose Traveller character generation system. I thought it was a good paradigm for creating colonies, which are dynamic and change over time, like characters. I actually had a point-based "design" system, but I liked the feel of the generation system better, so I went with it.

 

[Lemnoc]

"Design" vs. "Generation" is a fair point. It isn't a design system, its a colony generation system, based very heavily on the Mongoose Traveller character generation system. I thought it was a good paradigm for creating colonies, which are dynamic and change over time, like characters. I actually had a point-based "design" system, but I liked the feel of the generation system better, so I went with it.

Well, again, this ain't GURPS; and if you're going to build to the Traveller standard you sort of have to build around the general klunkiness (some would say charm ) of that system. That means lots of tables that don't nest or interrelate to one another especially well, but—as you say—it feels like Traveller. Finagle help any player whose GM would substitute a dice roll for commonsense... "It says here this Earthlike colony has no atmosphere, and the dice never lie!" :lol:

IMO, someone who snootily rejects this sourcebook because of [some of] the art is missing out on a lot of great gizmos. As rust said, some of the art is unfortunate but doesn't diminish the text.

 

[Wil Mireu]

What I do think is a little disingenuous is to pick out the two worst pieces of art in the book and then suggest they are representative, without making any mention of, say, the maps in the colonies chapters, or the front cover. Or the other equipment chapters, for that matter, such as the weapons - they are not hyper-3D designs, but are perfectly competent.

And BTW, stretchy woman is not stretchy - we were trying to suggest DNA modifications as per the core rulebook.

First, I did mention the others and acknowledged that they were much better - see this post earlier in the thread: http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=762329#p762329 . Might help if you actually read the thread before accusing people of being disingenuous . Though is is interesting that you admit they're the two worst pieces of art in the book...

But still - nice try, but no. I mean, ffs, she's holding a crinkled plastic bag with a ring around it that's supposed to be a helmet? And her thighs are twice as wide as her head! It's a bloody doodle, is what it is. The proportions are wrong because the artist very clearly doesn't know how to draw people properly, not because they're deliberately drawing something mis-proportioned (as the midget in the michelin suit also demonstrates. Or are you going to claim that's a DNAM too?).

Frankly I'm insulted that you're even trying to defend it. Yes, it's not representative of the art in the whole book - and I never claimed that it was - but it's bad enough to be a serious distraction and a total waste of space. As for just showing the worst examples - the other artwork that this artist did in the Misc Equipment and Robots and Drones section is just as bad, it's just not as obviously bad as those two pieces. Again, the illustrations for the stuff there is nothing more than really crappy doodles with skewed perspective and half-assed shading. Why you didn't go for the clean line art that was in the vehicles/weapons section I just don't know.

And honestly, I don't blame the artist - you edited that book, you should have realised that their work was not good enough for publication so it's your responsibility. Frankly,I think you did realise that and just figured that nobody would care, or that you'd just ignore the inevitable complaints because "who cares, people are buying the book anyway", right? The alternative is that you're an incredibly poor judge of quality, which is just as bad. But either way you do need to accept responsibility for it, don't try to make excuses for it, and make sure that you never let this work of such low quality slip through again.

2300AD is a great game, and Colin is a great writer. This game deserves great artwork and illustrations too, not crappy doodles.

 

[mechascorpio]

What I find very strange is that this was brought up long ago when the PDF came out, and I didn't even realize it. Here's a thread from last December, five months before the printed version was released: 2300AD: Tools For Frontier Living. The Art.

What happened here ? Looks like someone left the placeholder artwork in ? I don't mean to be unkind to the 'artist' but... well, perhaps this aint your vocation after all ? I mean, these are just plain terrible. They actively detract from the product. The image of the woman on pg 84 is plain terrible. My daughter can - honestly - draw better than this. And she's 4.

I'd far rather not have artwork in at all than have artwork that is lacking. I'm willing to bet most consumers feel the same.

...this is pretty apalling, some of the worst i have seen in a professional publication and does Mongoose's image no good at all and ruins the book for me. Please redo these, if budgets are tight then crowd-source it. There are enough 2300ad fans out there with artistic talent to help out.

If they're not place holders, then i would put a stop on printing (if possible) and delay while you get new art done, because having no art would be better than 90% of whats in the equipment/guns section.

And it goes on and on. That was the immediate reaction when the PDF was released.

So you know what, Lemnoc? Don't give me this "snootily" cr*p. Mongoose was warned, the feedback was ignored. You say someone who finds this problematic "is missing out" on some great content. I say that Mongoose "is missing out" on X times $30 for every copy they don't sell because of it. And if you don't think it makes me wary about future publications, you would be mistaken.

I appreciate Matt/Mongoose saying that they "have taken your comments on board and are looking to review the way we approach this line", but I do feel that the larger part of the response sounds like "don't see the problem here".

This isn't nitpicky, senseless, "snooty" Mongoose/Matt/Mongoose Traveller bashing for the sake of it. I wrote the "Big Thumbs Up to Mongoose for Traveller" post a few months ago, and I meant it. But I'm not going to just blindly buy and accept whatever it is they put out, especially if quality isn't up to snuff. That goes for the text, the editing, the art, the binding, the distribution and so on. If the pages were falling out of the cover, no one would be saying, "So what? Stop being snooty! The content, man, THE CONTENT!!" It's a book. It all matters. No one is demanding an ENnie award winning publication everytime they go to press. But it is 2013 and I think we rightly expect something that exceeds the standards of 1983.

If we buy it no matter what, they don't get the message. If we don't say anything, they don't know that there is a message at all.

 

[Lemnoc]

So you know what, Lemnoc? Don't give me this "snootily" cr*p. Mongoose was warned, the feedback was ignored. You say someone who finds this problematic "is missing out" on some great content. I say that Mongoose "is missing out" on X times $30 for every copy they don't sell because of it. And if you don't think it makes me wary about future publications, you would be mistaken

If you will take a deep breath and try to calm yourself, you will note I was among those criticizing the artwork six months ago. With the same basic thought as yours, which is it gives a haphazard feel to the whole and likely harms sales. Perhaps my word choice was poor; I still feel there is more to appreciate in the book than despise. You are of course entitled to your own view.

 

[phavoc]

If you will take a deep breath and try to calm yourself, you will note I was among those criticizing the artwork six months ago. With the same basic thought as yours, which is it gives a haphazard feel to the whole and likely harms sales. Perhaps my word choice was poor; I still feel there is more to appreciate in the book than despise. You are of course entitled to your own view.

I don't have the book (haven't played 2300 since it's original release), but I understand the sentiment and I do appreciate both sides of the argument. But let me put this into context.

The previous Traveller version put forth by SJG, set the bar as far as production and content quality goes. While yes, most players do hunger for more information to flesh out the universe or to feed their games, it's unfortunate that we get taken advantage of by sub-par production quality. IF this had been an isolated incident involving a book, it's far easier to forgive.

But, that isn't the case. The production quality (content wise, I've never had a MGP book fall apart on me) appears to be totally random. You may get a high-quality product, you may get something mediocre, or you may get crap. That's the really bothersome aspect - you never really know. There have actually been a couple of Traveller supplements I've not purchased due to my low opinion of their quality. So it can, and to an unknown extent, does affect sales.

This is something I've personally harped on for a long time. It's annoying. I've also given kudo's for MGP's attempt at fixing past mistakes (remember High Guard with Mercenary pages in it)? It's been a common thread for a very long time. Apologies are made, and as far as I can tell they've tried to make amends. So kudo's to them for that.

Any business guy will tell you the brand does matter to your target audience. You will always have die-hards who will support it no matter what, but you can't normally depend upon those people for your business to thrive. So I think it's important that people DO speak up and list why they are disappointed with a product, and that they DO try to hold the business' feet to the fire to fix the problems. But more importantly, there's never a valid reason to let the same thing happen again and again. Defending them gets harder and harder to do with each repeat.

Unless people complain (and vote with their wallets sometimes too), its not likely fundamental issues like this will ever be addressed.

 

[mechascorpio]

If you will take a deep breath and try to calm yourself, you will note I was among those criticizing the artwork six months ago.

Breath taken, fair enough. I've seen so much "Anything Traveller is immune to criticism" and "Support the publisher at all costs!" lately that I misread your comments as falling into that. There often seems to be an acceptance of low expectations with many game titles and I think that's why we get books like this and T5 (which left me feeling totally burnt). Phavoc really nailed it above with reference to the SJG books. So many years later, I wonder why we have to accept falling backwards when there are books out there with the kind of presentation you see in something as extravagant as Eclipse Phase, or as simple as Diaspora. And I'm not even asking to make it as pretty as those. Just don't let it be as ugly as Gamescience's Space Patrol from 1977!

 

[Wil Mireu]

It's been a common thread for a very long time. Apologies are made, and as far as I can tell they've tried to make amends. So kudo's to them for that.

You'd think they would have learned not to make the mistakes in the first place by now. Or even back then, since Mongoose is hardly an inexperienced publishing company. But they keep coming up with new ways to screw up.

This really isn't rocket science.

 

[rust]

The production quality (content wise, I've never had a MGP book fall apart on me) appears to be totally random. You may get a high-quality product, you may get something mediocre, or you may get crap.

I think the reason that we have a debate about the appropriate reaction
to Tools for Frontier Living is that it consists of a somewhat strange com-
bination of a high-quality product (the written content) with crap (some
of the "art").

While I would not hesitate to warn people off those Mongoose Traveller
books I consider complete failures, like the original Vehicles books (whe-
re I find it highly questionable that the PDFs are still sold on DTRPG), I
admit that I am willing to swallow the toad of Tools for Frontier Living's
"art" in order to get the material the book contains.

However, and I hope that my posts are expressing this well enough, I am
in no way tempted to defend Mongoose's decision to include the "art".

 

[Colin]

I admit to some frustration here as the writer, cartographer, and, I guess, "line evangelist" (2300AD is, basically, me, with some much-appreciated assistance from luminaries such as Ian Stead and Gavin Dady, among others). The cover art is fantastic. I wish I had a poster of it, and indeed of all the 2300AD covers. Interior art is, ah... variable... is all I'm going to say. But art is important. It sets impressions of the quality of a line, and should be at least consistent.

I've bought books because of the quality of the art, only to find that the content was, ah, "poopy". No names shall be mentioned. That's why I do the maps myself, to make sure that they are correct, and why I keep working to improve the presentation of them. I want someone to open one of my books, and before they even read the content, which I hope will impress them, I want them to see a map (or a deckplan, or illustration) which will be evocative of the setting, and hopefully make them go "oohhh".

In the meantime, I do hope that people can get past some of the uh, "variable" pieces of art, and read the book. Of what I have written so far for 2300AD (or any other game), this book is what I am most proud of.