"Mood" graphics in 6th edition: Too much of a good thing?
I've gradually been getting to browse the copy of Call of Cthulhu 6th edition I got before Christmas. I've enjoyed reading (and helping my kids stat up characters). But I find the book's layout awfully busy and distracting. Maybe I've been "spoiled" by the minimal art in other publishers' game books. Pictures, line art, silhouettes, alternating panels of black-on-white text and white-on-black text, alternating fonts, watermarked backgrounds, interspersed with full-page drawings and paintings ... it's as if the art department failed its SAN roll. Perhaps that's the effect Chaosium wanted to achieve. But sometimes less is more. To me, the Big Gold Book struck the right balance between illustrations and text and is much easier to read.
What do y'all think?