Café de Nuit

This is a thread that should be treated with respect, since authors do frequent these Boards, but basically this is a thread for the complaints people had about any aspect of the books or works that were produced under White Wolf and why.

I would like to point out at the quality of the books themselves, that is design, editing, covers and overall quality of the line, not the work of the writers.

Throughout the 3rd Ed RL, I missed great cover art work we had in 2nd Ed. Not that dull and boring black cover with a red cristal in the middle.

The editing of the books was poorly done in many cases (MotRD beeing the perfect example for this), which lowers the quality of the book and makes it, in my opinion, less atractive for buying it.

I think the interior design is also boring. The shades of gray used for this make the books not attractive to the eye, and not exciting at all, which contributes to making the books hard to read (I am not reffering to the work of the authors. Just compare a book with color pictures and in it and a book without. The colored one is more attractive to the eye and less boring).
In this topic I would like to add the lack of "own" work done by the designers, that used old 2nd. Ed templates for the interior design (mostly very poorly used) and not new interior design that would have contributed to the new edition. In my oppinion this shows that the designers/publishers didn't put a lot of work on the line as a whole.

I absolutely loved the interrior design. I think the stark black and white/greyscale gothic borders were cool and inspiring, and really set a great tone. Loved them.

The covers I agree were a little bland and stock standard. Maybe if tehre had been different covers I wouldn't have been mailed 5 seperate copies of GAZIII in my efforts to purchase GAZI off Amazon.com...

The other complaint I have is the editing - lots to be desired, and the creatures in the Denizens of Dread/Darkness were poorly crafted, at least rules-wise.

The actual writing I felt was quite strong. I remember feeling uncomfortable about some of the language choices for some of the domains...

Talon rocks.

Pozaz's earlier digital art I felt was lacking - looked unfinished, but the recent stuff has been excellent quality.

Don Fernando wrote:Throughout the 3rd Ed RL, I missed great cover art work we had in 2nd Ed. Not that dull and boring black cover with a red cristal in the middle.

I liked the variety of cover art from the 2E products, but there is something about having a more uniform cover that I found appealing with the 3E products. I liked the black covers with the various colored crystals/pictures in the center, but my opinion is that the cover doesn't matter so much as what is inside the book.

Don Fernando wrote:The editing of the books was poorly done in many cases (MotRD beeing the perfect example for this), which lowers the quality of the book and makes it, in my opinion, less atractive for buying it.

The overall editing would be my first and foremost criticism of the 3.0/3.5 products. Having done quite a bit of editing for the netbooks we host here at the Fraternity, I can certainly understand how difficult it can be to catch all the typographical errors, grammar mistakes, and rule misrepresentations. However, I had been rather disappointed to find as many misspelllings and technical errors scattered throughout the books.

It certainly did not prevent me from reading and/or using materials created by the writers, but I seriously thought twice about buying any new book that was released due to this lack of attention to detail.

I like the cover design.

I have a lot of books. It helps keep them all "ravenloft 3e".

I really liked this line. I got back into d&d b/c of Ravenloft 3e.

Now that I have practically all of them I'm a happy man.

Actually, my major complaint about the line under WW wasn't even under their control; it was a stipulation of WotC's: that they couldn't mention other settings by name when necessary....like that Hazlik was a Red Wizard of Thay or that Soth was from Krynn (or that they couldn't even call Soth by name).

My other problems mirror the others mentioned so far: lack of original cover art and poor editing.

Ah well. The Gazetteers kicked ass...too bad they couldn't finish them.

Bluebomber4evr wrote:Actually, my major complaint about the line under WW wasn't even under their control; it was a stipulation of WotC's: that they couldn't mention other settings by name when necessary....like that Hazlik was a Red Wizard of Thay or that Soth was from Krynn (or that they couldn't even call Soth by name).

Me too! Hopefully if we see Ravenloft again these problems would be solved.

My biggest problem with Arthaus was the lack of respect for what had gone before. The internal logic (I like that phrase) of the setting was ignored for the most part (especially CoD, HoL and the additions to the RLPHB).

It's all well and good trying to leave your mark on something, just watch you don't obliterate it in the process.

Bluebomber4evr wrote:Actually, my major complaint about the line under WW wasn't even under their control; it was a stipulation of WotC's: that they couldn't mention other settings by name when necessary....like that Hazlik was a Red Wizard of Thay or that Soth was from Krynn (or that they couldn't even call Soth by name).

My other problems mirror the others mentioned so far: lack of original cover art and poor editing.

Ah well. The Gazetteers kicked ass...too bad they couldn't finish them.

AFAIK, they could mention that Soth was from Krynn, but only found out after they'd created the Black Rose pseudonym.

Drinnik Shoehorn wrote:AFAIK, they could mention that Soth was from Krynn, but only found out after they'd created the Black Rose pseudonym.

Nope, coz they didn't have the rights to use the name "Kyrnn".

I guess I'm in the minority, but I *liked* the minimalist covers. They give the line a unified feel and actually stood out quite nicely at my FLGS.

Conversely, I remember covers from the modules ranging from not bad (Web of Illusion) to patched-together previous art (Neither Man Nor Beast) to just kind of crummy (Roots of Evil)...

I'm with Brandi and the rest, I like the 3rd Ed covers.

I think the deal with covers is that they all looked the same, at least from a distance. I personally think that to some degree, they affected Ravenloft's sales.

Why? Well, as much as the old saying goes - "Don't judge a book by its cover", people do. And when there's not much to see, there's little to reach out and grab future victims of the mists...

Minimalist may be well and good, but I don't think it serves to attract new players. It's not eye catching (consider the incredible art of 2nd edition adventures, etc). And dispite our love for the campaign, our devotion to it, and the hundreds of dollars we've spent on (might I say, considerably overpriced) 3rd edition Ravenloft products, apparently there has been a lack of enough fresh blood to feed the beast that is Ravenloft.

Ultramyth wrote:I think the deal with covers is that they all looked the same, at least from a distance. I personally think that to some degree, they affected Ravenloft's sales.

Why? Well, as much as the old saying goes - "Don't judge a book by its cover", people do. And when there's not much to see, there's little to reach out and grab future victims of the mists...

Minimalist may be well and good, but I don't think it serves to attract new players. It's not eye catching (consider the incredible art of 2nd edition adventures, etc). And dispite our love for the campaign, our devotion to it, and the hundreds of dollars we've spent on (might I say, considerably overpriced) 3rd edition Ravenloft products, apparently there has been a lack of enough fresh blood to feed the beast that is Ravenloft.

İ agree, marketing wise the covers where boring. Simply put that doesn't attract new players. The only ones that appreciate this are the old players, and only in limited quantities. We needed the same colorful covers to attract new players.
Pricewise, İ gues the books were very expensive.

Don Fernando wrote: Pricewise, İ gues the books were very expensive.

Damned straight. US$24.95 for 140 page softcover (plus ads) (Gaz III) is a rip off, even with the exceptional quality of the material.