<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Murph:
Agree here. Also make the covers mirror that of the original LBB/The Traveller Book. Minimalist, it makes a statement all its own.
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I can't agree more. One of the most annoying things (for me) about MegaTraveller when it came out was the fact that the rule books had pictures on them. That was something other RPGs did, not Traveller.
One of the things Gurps Traveller did right was stick with a black cover with red and white text on it. The minimalist covers are perfect for the kind of RPG that Traveller is. It's very "blankness" evokes something that's hard to explain. Once you've put a picture on the cover, you've shaped the look of the setting in the players minds. That's easy for fantasy (a longswords and chainmail don't change much...), but for SF it can be confining, IMHO.
That having been said, there is excellent artwork out there. Although I gather he doesn't do non-Pagan Publishing artwork anymore, Blair Renolds is the all time master of Traveller art IMHO. The shot of the banking air/raft approaching a city in _Flaming Eye_ defines the air/raft for me.
He's closely followed by William H. Keith, David Dietrick (how do you spell his name, anyway?), Mike Vilardi, Brian Gibson, Jesse DeGraff, Tom Peters (and a few others whose names are escaping me).