Whither the Art?

[Jared A. Sorensen]

The subject of RPGs-without-art* reared its head in the post http://209.68.22.156/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2521">A .PDF Query and I wanted to focus more on this subject.

First of all, I think one assumption of RPG design/publishing is that artwork is automatically needed. Needless to say, I disagree with this but I don't want to debate the merits/flaws inherent in gamebook art. Instead, I'd like to discuss how art is used in books and maybe introduce some alternatives to artwork.*

Traditionally, artwork in RPGs has served several purposes (with some overlap in catergories).

1) Padding. Graphics take up space on the page that doesn't have to be filled with text. Artwork is also seen as "added value" so the padding is often quite effective (even if it's fluff).

2) Show, don't tell. Rather than take up space with tons of text, artwork can be used as a shortcut -- the thing is shown as an image rather than described.

3) Ornamentation. Pictures are pretty (or interesting, or gross, or scary) to look at, 'nuff said.

4) Advertising. Pure flash that appeals to the reader in "pre-buy mode" as he or she flips through the book.

5) Illustration. As in "illustrating an example" -- functional graphics, such as a map or a floorplan or a diagram of some sort. Character sheets fall into this category as well.

6) Ambiance. The pics in the various White Wolf games (especially Vampire) establish a mood and a style (the whole gothic-punk milleu).

7) Navigation. The artwork serves to tell the reader what section he/she is in and/or is used as a reference point when looking through the text ("I know the section on vehicle combat is near the cool picture of the hover-tank...").

8) Showcasing. I think some artists have material published in game books for reasons strictly related to the social-dynamic of the game "company." This would include stuff like the author putting a friend's drawing in the game (either because he wants to show off his friend's work or he owes the guy a favor or whatever).

9) Storytelling. The artwork somehow complements or furthers the text in some way.

I'm sure you could name more (and by all means, please do!). Like I said, I won't attempt to defend or defame any of these reasons to include artwork.

Now...

What are the reasons not to include artwork? Time and money, mostly. I had a fantastic artist interested in drawing for InSpectres. The problem was that it wasn't a done deal and I didn't want to wait...so I said fuck it and released it with a simple cover image (done by yours truly for the low, low price of "free 99." Anyway, to continue the list thing...

1) Time. Not just to produce but also to format, layout, etc.

2) Money. Again, not just to pay the artist but all the associated costs involved (two words: full color).

3) Availability. Find the person to do the art, get them interested enough to commit to do the art and get them to deliver the art. Tough.

4) Ownership. Not related to any kind of legal thing. It's just that sometimes, depending on another human to help create your game is a major hassle. I like to collaberate...but when it comes down to brass tacks I like full-on ownership. It's my responsibility to do it and I don't have to wait on someone else before I can proceed.

Ah, once again my superior posting skills have produced a fragmented, awkward POS post. Mmmm...maybe we can turn this into something useful.

- J

* Sounds like "Mothers without Partners," don't it?

* Shit. I totally forgot this part. Uh, alternatives: Just Say No to RPG artwork (extreme radical nutcase choice...I like it!), iconic art (where the only graphical elements are akin to navigation and explanation features...no character artwork, no action scenes, no full-page spreads...just little icons, like on a web page). Huh...talk amongst yourselves.

[Matt Snyder]

Jared -- I'll take a stab at this, especially since I'm the fella who said it was "silly to avoid art," and therefore, I suspect, at least one voice that seeded this post from you.

Oh, and as a warning, I've not seen the InSpectres PDF, though I have seen some of the nice art on your site and those wonderful business cards/nametags.

The point I'd like to add to your list of uses for art in games kinda includes all of the ones you listed. That is, I think art should be considered as part of the holistic package, the entire presentation of the game product. On the one hand, this is a no-brainer. Everyone assumes it, right? On the other hand, there are few folks who seem to get it right. Case in point: Chaosium's latest edition of Stormbringer. I'm a huge Elric fan, and I like the previous editions of the game. As a game, the latest edition is good. But, man, I loathe the production value. It's a hodge podge of old and new art. It just reeks of slap-dash efforts to compile a new product and edition, and doesn't seem to have a uniform look and feel. It just does a terrible overall job of absorbing me into the game book and the multiverse. Blech. If I'm that turned off to a game I otherwise really like, am I going to buy it? Buy future products from them? Do I feel like I've wasted my money? Will I be willing to spend less than I would otherwise? Um, yeah, very likely.

I can't stress this enough. Visual consistency in design is crucial. That doesn't mean it needs to be rigid and boring, nor does it mean every game must look as good as, say, Nobilis. It means the work must look and feel like a whole product. Such a holistic presentation, I believe, is a POWERFUL tool in presenting one's game. Style IS form, form IS style, all that academic hogwash. You get the idea.

I think we Forgers let this point slide, because production value is one thing we indie chaps can't afford and because not everyone can make a fantastic layout. Art is pricey, so is layout. But, I'm here to say I think our games suffer for it when we go for "good enough," when in fact it might not be. Hey, if you're not interested in selling copies as a gauge of success, I understand that. But I'd be very surprised to hear folks say they don't want people to check out their games, or that they TRULY don't care if someone decides NOT to download their game 'cause it didn't "look good." Whether you like it or not, it matters. It really does.

This may or may not apply to InSpectres. Like I said, I haven't seen the pdf. But, from what I'm hearing, and based on what I've seen on your site, InSpectres is likely looking good. Jeezus, I just gotta buy that damn thing!

Finally, although I said it was silly not to include some art or iconic/graphic treatment on a PDF, that DOESN'T mean I think it's silly not to include art in an RPG product/book/whatever. I'm NOT advocating the "Must have art" routine, just that without art, why not use a leaner, more compatable file format?

iconic art (where the only graphical elements are akin to navigation and explanation features...no character artwork, no action scenes, no full-page spreads...just little icons, like on a web page

Oh, Jared, one other point -- you've nailed something I've always wanted to do design-wise. A book/game/whatever that uses iconic art or images and nicely set type. I love that you referred to using that imagery as navigation or explanatory cues. Now if I can just find the time and right project to try this one!

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi Jared,

I'm not a publisher, nor do I play one on t.v.  So what I'm about to say is simply the response of a bibliophile.

I'm glancing over my shoulder at several non-fiction books on my shelf.  Several books on acting.  A biography of Captain Sir Richard Burton.  A book on the cult of Honor in the Southern United States.  Essays by Eisenstein on film making.  Some books on Italian Renaissance occult traditions.  Okay, hang on... I'm going to now check something....

Okay.  The Burton book, the Southern book, a couple of the acting books have pictures in them (photographs and drawings).  The books on the occult written about the occult looking back to the past have diagrams and pictures.  The primary source material about Renaissance occult (by Ficinio and others, just essays) do not.

And of course, most non-fiction books don't.

What I've learned is this:  Most fiction and essays written with strong metaphore and wit (say Ficinio and Emmerson), won't have illustration.  But technical manuals, histories, biographies -- that is, books about a subject without being the subject itself do.

I'd offer that RPGs often have illustrations because they're following in the tradition of books that don't give us the direct pleasure of primary source material (a novel, an essay by Ficinio about how Mars and Saturn bicker with each other for our attention), because the pleasure is in the reading right there.

But technical manuals (and RPGs are technical manuals), no matter how well styled the writing, are a shadow of the subject being discussed.  The Burton biography is great, but pictures of the man, or a photograph of the tent that stands as his grave stone makes it better -- because, bluntly, it gives more substance to something that can never have substance.  We can read about atoms -- but I'm not experiencing atoms.  So I flip to the center for something a bit more tactile and sensual -- a diagram, an image of atoms, something....  

By the way, I have no idea why this is the case.  But I'd offer that RPGs, not writing about actual games, let alone the experience of playing, need to evoke something being written about and not your game.  And you're only going to get to your game if enough is evoked to hook you into playing.

So, I think the RPG tradition of illustrations is in a long tradition of illustrations in secondary material about a primary source.  (With RPGs being somewhat fucked in that they are secondary sources about primary material which doesn't actually exist yet), and so need all the help they can get.  And the illustrations encourage us, with sensory pleasure, to desire to create sessions out of the book -- despite the fact that until we play we really don't know what we're getting into.  The illustrations add juice to a reading that ultimately is not the thing we want, but only a guide or best guess at the thing we want.  To know Burton, to play the game, are the primary experiences.  All else is effort, and we need all the help we can get.

Take care,
Christopher

PS RPGs are even stranger than instruction kits for quilts or flying cars -- in the thing built already exists somewhere.  You're group's session really doesn't exist anywhere -- and won't until you make it.

[Ferry Bazelmans]

Why to include art...

6) Ambiance. The pics in the various White Wolf games (especially Vampire) establish a mood and a style (the whole gothic-punk milleu).

Personally, this would be the only reason for me to include artwork. To bring across my vision of the game's atmosphere, the feeling it should impart on its players.

Also: genre conventions.

I think if you're writing a manga- or anime-related roleplaying game, you're pretty much married to the obligatory drawings of overly large eyes and wee little nosey-woseys. :)

Same goes for cartoon games etc.

What are the reasons not to include artwork?

Discrepancies with the vision of the designer. No matter how beautiful a piece is, it is never "exactly" what the designer meant when he wrote the game. It can come close, but that's it. Now, I know this is contrasted to what I wrote above, but I have always been willing to set aside my personal vision and look at what feeling or atmosphere art evokes. If it lines up with what I want, I'd include it. However, if I were to strictly follow my own vision (assuming I can't draw for the life of me - and I can't), I wouldn't include artwork at all.

Did that make sense? *ponder*

Fer

[Christopher Kubasik]

Hi everyone,

On waking up I had another thought about this:

My favorite illustration in all of the Sorcerer books is the one of the guy holding his head in his hands in grief, the corpse (?) of a womon on the floor before him, a demon head smiling on the shelf behind him.  Is it the best piece of drawing in the books?  Not really.  But it's a I think the best Sorcerer illustration.  Why?  Because it evokes the game's Premise: "How far will you go to get what you want?"

How far did this guy go?  What did he want?  I don't know the answer to these questions, but I know they're being asked in that scene right there on the page.

More... It's an illustration about RELATIONSHIPS -- the triangle formed between the man, the demon, the woman... And the more I go over the Sorcerer material, the more I realize that's the driving force of the game.

My runner up illustrations (off the top of my head, mind you, just the one's that stick with me...) are the woman on her knees with the dagger behind her back as the guy enters the tent in S&Sword, and the demon carrying the smiling girl in S&Soul.  Again, in both cases, a relationship is present.

(To really nail the dagger picture, I'd want a demonic face on the hilt of the blade, perhaps...  And I'd say the illustration in Sorcerer of the guy at the computer with the demon rising behind him would work "better" as Sorcerer picture if the guy had a huge fucking grin on his face...."How far would you go to get what you want?")

Compare this to, say, Tim Bradstreet's wonderful portraits from the first Vampire: TM.  (I haven't seen subsequent editions.)  I think this actually harkens to Jesse's "Sidekick" thread.  How many illustrations in RPGs carry no relationships in the illustration?  How many players are perhaps led to evoking a loner in play because the illustrations evoke  people who look great alone, but are never seen in an emotional or social context.  Again, when you pick up an RPG, you really don't know where you're going to end up, so you look for any clues you can.

Sorcerer is about the Premise and about Relationships -- so any pictures along those ideas are the important ones.

I'd add that "great" drawing isn't nescesarily what it's all about.  The Bradstreet work is great.  But in a game supposedly about clans, secret societies and so forth, do all those portraits  help evoke the game?

Look, in contrast, at the illustrations for the Risus 1.5 PDF file.  Those litttle hand drawn stick figures running around the pages clearly say, "Sure we're simple, but we're FUN!"  And I'd offer that's what S.John was shooting for in his design.  Great art?  No.  Absolutely married to evoking the purpose of the game?  Yes.

This, of course, all goes back to -- What is your game about?  Why are you designing it?  The rules do matter.  What's this game's premise?  And so forth.  Because if you can't answer those questions you'll just grab "art".  But if you can answer them, you'll know what kind of art you need to help the players evoke the game you've built.

Take care,
Christopher

[Zak Arntson]

Valid Reasons for including art:

Information, Advertising, Color.

Information - Icons, Chapter Headings, diagrams, monster illos, etc. Ease navigation and use of material.

Advertising - If you're selling a PDF that can't be flipped through, put your "cool" art on the website instead. Books on shelves need art as advertising, but that's by virtue of flippability.

Color - Some games really need this. InSpectres, not so much. We have all seen Ghostbusters. We are all regular people. We can readily imagine a game of InSpectres. Clinton's Paladin may not need color art. We can all imagine a pseudo-historical medieval society with knights and witches and undead. Elfs needs art. That awesome picture of the elf accidentally cutting the monster's head off, well it sums up the play style nicely (so would it fall in Information?). Judge Dredd needs art. It's such an off-the-wall setting that you need those illustrations to hammer in how strange the setting is.

The best part is, if your Color and Information art are good enough, bam! Automatic advertising. This is where it's at, because it sucks to pick up a book by virtue of its art and realize the art has little to do with the actual game. (case in point: Vampire's art provides lots of color, but Vampire's system doesn't support the brooding goth with lots of angst)

[Matt Gwinn]

Another reason to include art in a game is to help navigate through the pages.  When I want to find a specific rule or set of rules in a game I don't use the index, I look for the pictures I know are in that section.

When I want the combat rules in D&D 3E I look for the picture of the big ass dragon.  I do the same for many games that I'm familiar with.  A game with no art better have a hell of an index or be organized very well, because let's face it, it's easier to identify a quarter page illustration than a page number or paragraph hedding.

,Matt

Kayfabe!! Available for purchase now at
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Have I no shame?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi there,

Although the basic question of this thread is a good one, some of the discussion is covering old ground. These might offer some insights.
Art necessity
Dying Earth and covers
Elements of a great cover
Pure visuals

(Also, Jared, if I'm not mistaken, your point about the use of art as a place-finding device, which Matt has also stated, was first posed to us by Greg Stafford.)

Best,
Ron

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Well, my aim is not to say "yes/no/greg stafford said it first" re: my post. My aim is to add more to the list so we can try and figure out how to best approach the subject of art in rpgs. Like, what are YOU primarily using artwork for in your games, etc.?

[hive]

Reputation factor. Art = high production values. While this is not exactly true, alot of gamers believe the standard. Cut out the artwork and you're going to alienate alot of potential buyers.

The game i'm working on now is incorporating artwork on every page (200+ page book). Why so much?...alot of it is image recognition & design. It's a flavor book and using brand building tactics so that when people flip through it will stick in their mind. Will it work?...we'll just have to see...

-
h

[Dav]

Jared (et al);

I feel that artwork is necessary for a commercially viable product.  The reasons being as you listed originally, thus let us leave that area alone.

Reasons for NOT having artwork usually, to my mind centers around money and laziness.  Of course, there are plenty of games that do not require art as a communicative device.  And, let's face it, if you have a 12-page PDF for $1.50 online, flash you ain't, so let us disregard flashy, coolness factor for the need on PDF-published games.

I think that smaller (48-page and down) PDFs can get away with mainly iconic graphics and a cover piece with little to no complaint.  In fact, the theory of "keeping file size small" is nigh appealing to many consumers of PDF games, and we all know that art is the great bloater.

AND, for those who think that you won't get sales without art... mainly, you're right.  Though, as hive (hey hive, been a bit) can tell you from GenCon 99 (or 98, I forget), we had The Box RPG, custom made, for sale, $1.  (They were cardboard boxes with "The BOX RPG" written on the side).  People were willing to buy them.

However, to the overall point:  I think file-size is a good excuse (and maybe even good reason) to skimp or eliminate art from electronic games.

Dav

[hive]

Material Component Products NEED artwork. They are in direct competition with other products on the shelves. If you make a product artless, chances are that you are going to use that slant in marketing (Look...no fatty art!) but that slant will eventually run thin and seen as an angle from gamers.

Digital Component Products should have artwork. PDF books can inject line art every other page without bulking out the product. Dial-up users can complain if 3mb is too large to download but chances are that the wait is worth the money that you shell out (line art is printer-friendly also for you home-grown printers).



Personally, i would have love to make The Box RPG digitally but i think people would have a hard time printing on cardboard boxes. Maybe if i made a 'Label Your Own Damn Cardboard Box' expansion....


-
h

[Michael Hopcroft]

One of the first thing I did when I started work on heartQuest was line up artists who would hopefully convey the genre I was trying to experess. How successful I was only those who read the game will be able to tell.

Some of the art in HeartQuest is very good. I love the cover (which has the main characters from the three sample campaigns on it, even though the artist didn;t know it at the time she drew it!) and think it will grab the eye. (Cute girls always grab the eye).

I also love some of the other art. recenrlty there;s been a last-minute scramble for art to fill the book and it;'s given me interesting results as new artists keep being brought in. The main downside to all this is that the more art I use the mpore I have to pay our in royalties with each copy sold.

I can't imagine doing an RPG about shoujo manga without a lot of art. It helps set the mood and the tone, which is what I'm selling.

[Valamir]

The main downside to all this is that the more art I use the mpore I have to pay our in royalties with each copy sold.

What was the motivation for paying out on a royalty model as opposed to a flat fee per piece?

[Matt Snyder]

The main downside to all this is that the more art I use the mpore I have to pay our in royalties with each copy sold.

Yeah, what Ralph said. Can you explain your contract/arrangement with artists at all? Often, RPG publishers pay a fee for use of the artist's work in, say, all editions of the game (though not always!), promotion, and maybe translations. Fees for a half page of art be anything, of course, but they typically range from $25-$75, at least in my experience.

The contract you have that grants royalties to artists, as far as I can tell, is the exception rather than the norm, especially in indie publishing. Can other folks back that up? Michael, can you explain your rationale for the royalties arrangement? I'm curious to hear why.