pure visuals

[Mike Holmes]

Until we can solve either the 'adding compelling visuals to MUDDs and MUSHs' problem or expand on the nascent 'gamemaster toolkit' aspect of those rare 'role-playing games on the internet' (especially when it comes to 'talking for the non-player characters' when the gamemaster is doing something else), I can't see computer role-playing games even coming close to whats possible with their 'print' relatives.

That's what I'm talking about. I think this is much less far off than you imagine. Conservatively, we'll see it before the end of the decade, and, perhaps much sooner. Talking on the Internet will be handled by actually talking for the characters. Which can be done with current technology. In fact all the technology exists to do this functionally, it just has yet to be assembled properly.

Anyhow, it can't hurt to start down what I see as an inevitable road.

Mike

[Le Joueur]

For my part, I see a big need for art in a product.  Not just for the usual 'place keeper' ("Where is that chart?" - "By the nude elf.") or as space-filler/padding (if I ever see another 1" drawing of a pile of dice...), I see the art as one of the primary ways to communicate 'the look' of the game to the customer.  As much as I don't play White Wolf's products, I have always appreciated how well the art in Vampire: the Masquerade really carries the visual 'feel' of the game.

I'm of a mixed opinion.  I think that the trend of "game book as art" of which WW is a big factor in have an enormous place in the RPG world.  VtA was the phenomenon it was in no small part to the mood, tone, and visual effects of the corebook.  

However, beautiful stunning game books don't make the actual play of the game better, and in a way serve to disempower the GM and players by drawing all the focus onto the product, not what you can do with the product.  This isn't to say I don't dig a gorgeous book- I can't wait to see Godlike now that I've heard about the artwork because I'm working on a similar idea (artistically speaking, not game concept or premise) for a different project... and I have heard that the art does exactly that: conveys the premise of the game to the customer better than filler art ever would.  

I just think there's such a thing as too much focus on art and style for a game book.

Hey, anything can be overdone.  What I am saying is that I believe art is needed.  The 'thousand words' or two goes a long way towards carrying the visual 'feel' of a game especially when it has to do with worlds unfamiliar to the reader.  I am mostly reacting to the common response on the Forge over in Publishing where someone says, "don't worry about art, you don't really need it."  I'm an amateur graphic designer and illustrator, and pure text really doesn't carry much weight when it comes to visualizing a game.

So I guess I see things opposite of "too much focus on art and style" around here.  You'll have to put me down as wanting enough of everything.

Fang Langford

[Ron Edwards]

Hey Fang,

To my knowledge, only one person on the Forge has made any comment like the one you describe. It was Jared and he was suggesting providing two products, one with and one without art, buyer's choice, as PDFs. I think it's a little off the beam to suggest that text-without-art is a "common" response at this site, i.e., made by a lot of its members. In fact, if you look at production and design threads about book-publishing, you see that the veterans unilaterally acknowledge the primary power of good cover images and good visual design for all aspects of the book.

Best,
Ron

[Le Joueur]

I think it's a little off the beam to suggest that text-without-art is a "common" response at this site,

Quite right, just still ruffled by the 'make the pdf smaller cause you don't need art' comment from somewhere.  I retract the point.

Back on-topic, I do think there are ways to use artwork to create something that serves the purpose suggested by Contracycle, but without going down the road highlighted by Laurel.  Do you have any thoughts?

Fang Langford

[Mike Holmes]

I think of art as a "value added" sort of thing. For me, it's completely unneccessary. I do a lot of that "filling in" that's been discussed above, so much so that art just seems superfluous. So I have no problems with games that have little or no art. I don't mind it, however, and if you can make the product look nice, why not? So it's just an extra from my POV.

OTOH, I'm probably very much a minority on this. The other side of the coin is that I've heard lots of people say they won't even touch an ugly or bland product.

So, I'd say its a big YMMV.

Mike

[Ron Edwards]

Hey,

Well, as I said, Everway provides a fine model for review. I've played the game a lot and I think its visual elements, both in character creation and during play, are effective. To relate it to another thread, its Color borders on System, which is exactly what Gareth is driving at. I'd definitely like to see games designed which operate off of the Everway aesthetic, in a mechanics sense.

Zero provides more of the art-house approach, which is to say making the book itself an "artifact" that revs up the user's interest in play. Certainly other games have taken this approach (L5R, Deadlands, Earthdawn and other FASA games, all the Planescape stuff for AD&D2, and the upcoming version of Nobilis) - the book itself is a coffee-table object that someone might enjoy as such, with no reference to role-playing at all. (D&D3 comes to mind as well, especially the Player's Handbook.) Zero and Planescape are interesting because they emphasized the single-artist, single-vision as a major design factor.

I'm not too confident about that route ... Production costs create(d) a real problem for all of these games, as they did for Everway, and Laurel is absolutely right that in many ways, the tactic actually rewarded the failure to play. It's a thorny problem, especially if we're thinking about a playable game and not supplemental material.

I've been giving a lot of thought to Trollbabe lately, and although its primary form will be a black-and-white PDF, that PDF is going to be designed much more like an art-house or artist-gallery book. I'm still figuring out the details, though.

Best,
Ron

P.S. Since playing Everway a lot a few years ago, I have become the image-handout demon-GM. Nearly every session, I have a ton of visual stuff to pass out and often bring in art-books to help convey a tone or even specific images. They are supplemental and intended as inspiration, as I strongly think that our imaginative product is the top priority and don't want to replace that effort with looking at a picture.

[Eugene Zee]

While I like great artwork as much as the next roleplayer, I have to say that, personally a totally art-based roleplaying game might detract from the experience.

When I roleplay I use my imagination in the interpretation of the game, art is a point of reference, style and feeling as opposed to the game itself.  I guess what I'm saying is that a group of players around a table is going to be relying on the ability to communicate and connect with each other and a product comprised of 95% artwork may not be the best medium for that.

Eugene Zee

[Seth L. Blumberg]

Another possible problem with art-centric gaming: what happens when you want to go somewhere for which there isn't a picture? Locations invented by the GM could become much less vibrant than pre-imagined locations due to the lack of accompanying visuals (unless the GM is a skilled artist, which I am diametrically not).

[RobMuadib]

In this way, I see the strength of role-playing games is that the 'purveyor of visuals' works together with the 'players' to end up with a result neither might expect.  That is one of the main reasons I stress sharing over everything in Scattershot.  No matter how advanced computer role-playing games (especially network-based ones, like Phantasy Star Online) have gotten, I have only just begun to see offering that allow customers to create, populate, manipulate, and interact with their own worlds.

Another strength I see in 'print' role-playing games is what I alluded to earlier.  The power of archetypes and fragmentary description (amplified by shared genre expectations) that can create a far more rich visual experience in the mind's eye than many computer games have, and is far more flexible.  Coupling the richness of the participants' imaginations with the feeling of 'really making a difference' in the shared experience makes 'print' role-playing games still very unattainable in comparison with those based on visuals presented by computer hardware.

Fang

Just wanted to chime in here with alot of related observations that your post brings to mind. In terms of CRPG's and computer games in general, yes the games are working towards more interactive and user based creation elements. However, there is a steep cost for both of these.

First, the hardware requirements for these flashier, cooler new games is getting steeper, coupled with minimum of 2 year product development cycles for the games. Second, for these user toolkits and mods for computer game the learning curve is steep. It basically creates a secondary layer of content creators out of the people interested and willing to learn to use the tools, some of which are quite complex (require 3D modeling and design, scripting, and lots of other complicated and time consuming work, not to mention significant hardware.)  Consequently you have a miniscule number of secondary content creators to which the much larger audience of the games is left to use.

The end result of all this is the players intereacting with someone else pre-planned environment, with necessarily limited possibilities, and ones that are even more strictly limited to the mechanics built into the game. I have yet to see a game that lets you fade to a cut-scene when things get boring, etc, you have to walk back to the area in question, etc. At least until we get self-programming games ala the holodeck on ST.

Which brings me to your point, of the immense flexibility of the table-top RPG, especially when all of the participants are empowerd to share in the creation and play of elements. Which is a major theme of my game TMW:COTEC. The idea of teaching the players to create the game elements that interest them, that are supported by "exportable" hard game mechanics that can be shared among other groups, and allowing all of the players to take part in there creation. We are on the crest of stuch stuff with Rune, and somewhat with Aria, and bits of other design element supplements of many other games (3G3 for CORPS, Vehicle stuff for CORPS. Starship stuff in Traveler.)

This is one of the key ideas for my game, allowing players to share the items they have created for their individual worlds, much like FPS players share skins, and maps and mods. But making it much more group involved and relatively easier to learn and produce (no more hacking out how to generate a 3D map, and waiting on your PC to render it all in some toolset., just whip it out with the relatively easy PPD mechanics of the game, and render it on that high-end wetware cpu you keep in your skull.), not to mention extremely low hardware requirements, i.e. Paper, Pencil and Analog Randomizers:)


Rob Muadib

[Misguided Games]

I'd love to get my hands on a copy of Everway.  Some of the things I've read make me think it isn't the kind of game I'd play much, necessarily, but it sounds like a joy to simply experience.

Back to cRPGs for a second.  In our case, there were some deliberate efforts made to try and make Children of the Sun into something that had the hint of a computer game underneath it.  I wanted it to be subtle, but there are some things there.  I think the best example is the back cover of the book.

The back cover was designed to be like the back of a computer game much more so than the back of an RPG book.  I scanned the backs of several titles and sent them to Jac and we talked about what we were trying to achieve.  I'm very pleased with the way it turned out.  There are multiple overlapping character portraits on the left side set at various angles with all the text offset to the right.  

As for the original premise of the thread, would it be acceptable to feature large pieces of artwork with very short text bits scattered about the page illustrating various points?  I'm thinking of something DaVinci-esque or along the lines of the journal from Phillip Jose Farmer's series The Dungeon.