Defenders of the Realm preview pics

Comic Sans goes with the Cheesy Shittacular art I suppose.

In 1984, I thought Larry Elmore was tha shiznit. In 2010? Not so much.

I hope this is a good game. It certainly has a good pedigree. But what the fuck were they thinking? These are the kind of production values I'd be embarrassed to bring to the table.

Stephen Avery wrote:

I think you guys are really going to like this game. Its med-light wieght and has that "I'm going to go forth and kick a lot of ass" feel. The crux of the game is that there are more things happening than you can take care of and so you have to choose which things are the most threatening.
Steve"DefendersFan"Avery

How's the game length? Med-light weight = Runebound complexity or Taliman complexity?

Runebound though the turns are faster.

Steve"Tank top wearing Barbarian"Avery

Space Ghost wrote:

Of all the things that could bother me about a game, I don't think the font is in the top 100.

Well font or artwork choice aren't going to keep me from buying this game if it's fun, either.

If typeface doesn't matter then neither does art.

Art doesn't matter, or at least, isn't that important.

I'd rather play an ugly good game than a gorgeous shitty game any day of the week, and no amount of visual polish will make a lousy game fun to play. On the other hand, I have never in my life played a game that I thought I would have enjoyed if only the fonts hadn't been stock, or the art less silly.

Would I prefer good graphic design? Sure, but if I ever find myself pissing and moaning about something as trivial as the font for the designer credit, I'll know I've been spoiled rotten.

Prissy esthete nerds complaining about the font on one of the cards and pooh-poohing the art style as being oh so 1980's... You guys are worse than BGG on some days. :oP

Based on the description of the game, the art style works for me... it looks similar to Return of the Heroes and conveys the fantasy theme well enough. I'm not sure what other kind of style would be better for the type of thing it's supposed to depict. And complaining about Comic Sans?? Yikes. I didn't even notice that because I was only concerned about what it said on the card... ya know, the game part of it. It's clean and readable and for all we know something akin to Comic Sans was all the rage back in the bygone fantasy realm age.

I think the problem with y'all is that you're projecting something onto this that doesn't necessarily matter in the context of its intent. There was a painting my wife saw on Craigslist recently that she really liked, and she thought it was by some relatively famous painter, but when she contacted the person it turned out to be by someone else entirely that she'd never heard of. She didn't care, though... she thought the painting was beautiful and she still wanted it. On the other hand, an art esthete might look and think that it's a beautiful painting and that it must be a great example of (famous artist)'s work, but when they found out that it wasn't by that artist, they wouldn't want it anymore, because it really must be terrible. It's still a beautiful painting, regardless of who did it or what era of work it hearkens back to, and you can still enjoy it for its intended purpose. In this case, the intended purpose is to play the game, and you guys are projecting something negative onto the whole experience of the game based on some art style that hearkens all the way back to the 80's? If it fits the style of the game, so be it. I don't care who designed it or what era it looks like. And what's wrong with something "retro", anyway, if it fits the theme?

I am willing to defend Comics Sans MS. Admittedly, I am a comic book fan, so I have been looking at this kind of lettering for decades. No, it isn't the most attractive font, but it is much more legible than most of the alternatives. White Wolf fans know what I'm talking about, because White Wolf has experimented with all kinds of highly illegible fonts in their rpg supplements over the years, and even in my game that they published. If you're not going to use a legible font, you might as well not use words at all.

I'm just saying if people can complain about art they can complain about type. Type is an easier fix though, it really would have taken them two seconds to pick another font.

I read comics too, Shellhead, but none of them use Comic Sans.

metalface13 wrote:

I read comics too, Shellhead, but none of them use Comic Sans.

In the old days, comics were lettered by hand, and Comics Sans is a tribute to the style of the typical hand-lettered comic book.

Shellhead wrote:

metalface13 wrote:

I read comics too, Shellhead, but none of them use Comic Sans.

In the old days, comics were lettered by hand, and Comics Sans is a tribute to the style of the typical hand-lettered comic book.

Yes, I know that, but it still looks like crap.

I can't tell the difference between a good and bad font. When I first got my mitts on a PC i was forever typing in comic sans.