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Hi,
I've just bought Hobbit Tales hoping to use it in my TOR sessions, but I deeply regret it. I am not color blind, but I really can't distinguish the icons!
I can hardly distinguish the first one (role/travel icon) with the manual in front of me to compare colors but I really can't with the second one, 8 equally shaped boxes with some undistinguishable drawing inside and very similar colors/hues.

Is it just me or it's bad design?

Have taken out my copy and compared the Adventure cards with the back of the rule book.
I found that the five colours of the Journey Icons are pretty easily distinguished from each other: red, green, blue, orange and yellow.
However some of the eight different Effect Icons are quite similar - there are four shades of purple which could cause problems although the designs inside, whilst not completely clear, are enough for me to confirm which Icon is which.
Just my opinion...

I have only used my copy to play as a stand-alone game, not with my TOR sessions, although I have considered it.

bragma wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 20, 2017 10:00 pm

Hi,
I've just bought Hobbit Tales hoping to use it in my TOR sessions, but I deeply regret it. I am not color blind, but I really can't distinguish the icons!
I can hardly distinguish the first one (role/travel icon) with the manual in front of me to compare colors but I really can't with the second one, 8 equally shaped boxes with some undistinguishable drawing inside and very similar colors/hues.

Is it just me or it's bad design?

It is definitely bad design for people with colour blindness. We've learned a lot of lessons about colour blindness since it was made, and try to design with it in mind as far as we can.

Well done for finding a copy of Hobbit Tales. It's been out of print for some time. I know a bunch of people who will take it off your hands if it's a write-off. Probably myself included. It's hard to get, and my own copy is showing a lot of lovin' from use.

Similar to Winterwolf, with the Effect Icons in front of me from the rule book they look different enough when comparing the icon designs. When comparing only the cards it takes a little longer to make them out, especially with tires eyes!

I'm the other way round, I've used them in my TOR games but not stand alone yet. As soon as I saw these I thought that I can't wait to play this with my kids and they'll be a great way to get them into rpgs/Tolkien. I think my youngest was 1 at the time...

Jon Hodgson wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:31 am

It is definitely bad design for people with colour blindness. We've learned a lot of lessons about colour blindness since it was made, and try to design with it in mind as far as we can.

Great! I'm not colour blind, but I've noticed that some types of artificial light make more difficult to understand the color and the drawing is so small I can't distinguish them. I still appeciate the game, though.

Jon Hodgson wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:31 am

Well done for finding a copy of Hobbit Tales. It's been out of print for some time. I know a bunch of people who will take it off your hands if it's a write-off. Probably myself included. It's hard to get, and my own copy is showing a lot of lovin' from use.

Well, my copy is translated in italian so probably they'd just make a collection piece for you.

Now that I think about it, maybe they didn't do a good job in preserving original graphics during the translation. I'm not sure it's the case, but still a possibility.

In any case, I'm considering adding some hand drawn icons.

Ironbite wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 22, 2017 11:42 pm

As soon as I saw these I thought that I can't wait to play this with my kids and they'll be a great way to get them into rpgs/Tolkien. I think my youngest was 1 at the time...

Me too, still I have some years of waiting in front of me.

Jon Hodgson wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 21, 2017 11:31 am

Well done for finding a copy of Hobbit Tales. It's been out of print for some time. I know a bunch of people who will take it off your hands...

Looks across to his shelf with the spare mint copy...

Hmmm.