To me, it's emblematic of GW's shift from the quirky, individual, and interesting to the dull, impersonal, and monolithic. I think this comes across in every aspect of the company's output. The artwork becomes more consistent and technically refined, but loses the odd, personal, sometimes wildly divergent work of artists like John Blanche, Ian Miller, John Sibbick (remember the punked-out dwarf hacking through the goblin on the over of WFRP 1st ed?), and Martin McKenna, who did the group portrait above and whose pencil work can be found throughout a lot of early WFRP stuff (he did all the interior illos for The Enemy Within: Death on the Reik, for instance) , resulting in a comparatively stagnant, predictable, uniform aesthetic that has more to do with maintaining "brand identity" than anything else. White Dwarf's past awesomeness and sad metamorphosis into little more than a glossy advertising brochure is already well documented here and elsewhere.
I was going to go off on an extended diatribe on the loss of the individual voice/personal aesthetics/creative risk-taking in gaming products and publications, conformity and corporate culture, and a little pom-pom twirling on how, with the OSR and the the indie gaming scene, we're seeing a resurgence in the sort of distinctive personal blah blah blah.... but if you're reading this, you've probably already read several of those, with better writing, stronger arguments, and more exhaustive detail, so for now, I'm just going to say OH MY GOD LOOK AT THAT PICTURE OF MUTANT SPACE PUNK GAME DESIGNERS WITH RAYGUNS AND CHAINSAWS.
Good times, good times. I remember reading through these books when they first came out. They were as awesome then as you might imagine they were. They helped shape a whole mentality about creative grottiness.
ReplyDelete"I was going to go off on an extended diatribe on the loss of the individual voice/personal aesthetics/creative risk-taking in gaming products and publications, conformity and corporate culture, and a little pom-pom twirling on how, with the OSR and the the indie gaming scene, we're seeing a resurgence in the sort of distinctive personal"
ReplyDeleteI am a little concerned--not outright worried yet, there is a ways to go--about the creeping commercialization of the OSR as it picks up visibility. Does commodity capitalism doom us to repeat this whole cycle ad nauseum? Hope not.
I hope not too Chris. Unless, of course, there is $$ in it for me.
ReplyDeleteNot only GW suffered from this "loss of sytle and voice". I find it running rampant from AD&D Second Edition onwards, through D&D3.x, 4e, and expecially Pathfinder. A sanitzed, uniform look and feel that is extremely colourful but makes the eyes glaze over the pages because it's all samey-same.
ReplyDeleteOne can argue that this trend started as soon as Mentzer D&D, with clean Elmore and Easley replacing the weirdness of Otus et al.
I am torn over this. Thing is: if I really like the style I have nothing against a uniform look. An RPG line illustrated by Gary Chalk in his wonderful Talisman/Lone Wolf style? An RPG line illustrated by Carl Crichlow in his post-WD Thrud the Barbarian style?
Where can I subscribe?
See, I think even 2nd ed. D&D has some pretty distinctive stuff, and I can't think of Planescape or Dark Sun without thinking of Tony diTerlizzi and Brom. Hell, I even think Easley produced more interesting work than a lot of the 3rd and 4th ed. guys. I think the problem comes in when you establish a house style that all your illustrators more or less have to adhere to.
DeleteThis isn't helped when you're thinking of rpg characters in terms of products and branding. I think of the 3rd ed. "signature characters" as an example of this -- they got names and (I believe) back stories, and in essence, you have WotC telling its audience "rather than give you a multiplicity of images to get you thinking and project your imagination onto, we'll be doing the imagining for you. Same thing with the visual design of 4th ed. All dwarfs have a unified, art-deco aesthetic because they kind of did in Peter Jackson's LotR movies. All tieflings look the same, whereas in Planescape, they'd vary considerably -- you'd roll on some charts to generate your character's unique appearance and some minor powers. It's not for nothing that they're owned by a toy company -- this is the way you go about marketing toys, cartoons, and merchandising tie-ins. Too many conflicting visions, and you've compromised brand identity.
You name two examples of why I'm torn about this. DiTerlizzi's Planescape is a unified design that I like.
DeleteRedgar & Co of 3e I absolutely despised! And I also dislike their Pathfinder counterparts.