Clipart.
The standard of 'In-House' player handouts and play aids is fantastic these days. Looking around the games played at my local club the player handouts, character bios and background material being put out by more experianced GM's is fantastic. The PC (and I mean Personal Computer in the widest sense...Mac's included) allows those of us at home to produce material that looks 10 times better than the stuff we paid through the nose for a few years ago (and often still do!). Content is of course still pretty varied....but the LOOK of the home produced stuff is often better than that of all but the glossiest handout. (Chaosium's Sewn Beyond the Mountains of Maddness patches apart!)
So rather than scanning or downloading stuff from a multitude of sources (RuleBooks, Adventures, History Texts, Asterix Books, Elfwood etc) why not provide either on-line or as a CD a ClipArt Libary. Same proviso as all player handouts in that its reproduction is for personal use. Providing this sort of resource would allow the quality of HW games to soar. Personaly a big chunk of my Hard Drive Space (just under 2 Gig at last count) is images I use for various RPG handouts, or might do in the future, or just like the look of.
If there were a gallery of pics suitable for Player illustrations ( to that used in the recent Baldurs Gate pc game) I'm sure it would be popular. Once a sufficent amount was avaliable a art CD or handout pack could be marketed for those unable to go online for it. Maybe make it avaliable off password protected sites such as the GTA we've recently had a little security incident with. A lot of it could simply be reproduced from the published works...afterall anybody who buys the book can use it in their game with the aid of a scanner (or a good photocopier, a pair of scissors and tape) and a scanner costs less than a few rule books these days. What using the scanner does take however is time and effort. Something us 21st C types are willing to pay to avoid.
DomT
ps How about Gloranthan Desktop Themes anyone? DT
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