I like artwork in game books. This may be unsurprising as I am an artist, but still.

The function of art in a game book is to compliment and enhance the written material. Much like how some books are written by a number of writers yet are presented with one voice, the same approach should be taken by the art direction. When you have something like The Rigger’s Black Book (Shadowrun 1st or 2nd edition, FASA), where three or four different artists drew vehicle concepts in very divergent styles, the idea of what a car looked like in the game world was muddled. Does the motorcycle of 2050 look like a sleek, trim fully-enclosed TRON lightcycle or a bulky heavily-armored Judge Dredd LawMaster? Are cars totally streamlined teardrops from the World of Tomorrow or chunky Dark Knight Returns BatMobiles? Look at the vehicles of today–vehicles in the same class look remarkably similar. Heck, Toyota’s entire line of sedans from their economy to luxury vehicles look remarkably similar.

True about the Rigger Black Book and multiple artists working on the same project.

But I liked the gritty Shadowrun art and I think it would have been more difficult to envision the game setting without that.

The style of the artist who did the archetype color plates in SR2 was what I consider the iconic Shadowrun art style. Sure it’s cartoony and a little goofy. But that was the game for me, not completely serious in tone. If it had been a White Wolf product, all dark and pretentious, I wouldn’t have picked it up.

That said, nobody whould put color plates in a book unless the binding is woven and uses no glue or staples. They just fall apart too easily.

When I read the RBB I just figured these were different styles of manufacturer and that they were catering to a wider taste in car bodies. I envisioned that on the road of 2051 you’d see a huge 50s muscle car (the Highwayman) longside a sturdy but blocky Ford pickup, a tiny Korean zip-cycle, an Eastern Bloc cheap commuter, an Italian sports car with gull-wing doors, a German luxury car, and a sleek Japanese sedan.
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Sometimes art is complimentary, sometimes it detracts from the material. Good art interspersed artfully in the material is fine … bad art plastered all over the book sucks. If the book becomes an art medium with some written content like some of the WotC material … I just get annoyed. The content should be primarily (say +90%) the written word with no more than 10% artwork. Keeping the art more a stylistic thing, like pictures of fantastical landscapes, windy roads with medieval buildings along the road, stuff like that I love. Art in books depicting specific creatures/places/things that are featured in the book I’m not so happy with. It depends though … if it’s pretty overview compared to detailed and specific it’s okay. Harnmaster books as an example have interesting art but I don’t find it detracts from the book at all. It is certainly NOT the focus of the book though … written word content is probably 96%.