Art: Does It Matter?

[Mike Holmes]

I agree that art can be an informer of sorts in RPGs. Despite not being a fan of art, I get that idea. I mean, on a simple level, if I see a picture of an Orc as having a piglike nose, then I'm likely to describe orcs that way, I guess.

But that would be my point. I think that art (as opposed to diagrams or maps) can only convey two things. One is tone. That's a lot of what Ralph was getting at, I think. A game can be conveyed as dark or light, or whatever by the art. The other thing that can be conveyed is actual data in terms of what things look like in the world. As in my Orc example above. It may, in fact, be important in play that the shorter mountain is pictured as closer to the city than the taller one. In this way, I think art has some effect like maps. That is, they are data as to what the "reality" of the gameworld is like.

The question that I have is to what extent these things are neccessary to establish in the text. I mean, if the designer wants to nail them down, that's fine. But I don't see it as particularly neccessary. Much less neccessary than would be explained by the inclusion of art in game texts.

Further, I think that art in most RPGs is actually rather haphazard. Rarely are the artist and the designer one and the same. Moreover, I think that the artists usually don't have any idea precisely what the designer is trying to convey. Sure, with Vampire, you have an agreement, but I think that's because the designers were trying to match a genre that was already associated with an art movement. Even then, however, I'd say it's hit and miss.

The point is that I personally feel like the art in most RPGs is actually there for marketing purposes only. It's about as useful to me as the blurb on the back page in terms of informing me about what play can be like. And that I don't need.

Note that text can be like this as well. I think that art in the form of bad gaming fiction in texts is already a cliche. These, too, do not manage to portray anything that makes me feel like I can play the game better after reading it. Basically, the game is played from the rules portions of the text. These directly inform how to play. Art only indirectly informs, and to the extent that it's hard for these forms to be clear about what they're saying they'll tend to be more hit and miss than text. In any case, I think that text can always do what the art is attempting to do. It might take a lot of dry words, but I have no problem with that.

So, can art be done better, can it really be part of the game in terms of getting things across regarding how best to play? Maybe, but it's not an easy spec to meet, I think.

Mike

[Mike Holmes]

P.S. Oh, and before somebody hauls off and calls me "non-visual", I'm mildly dyslexic. That is, I think visually instead of symbolically for the most part (and It makes typing a chore!). Maybe I just don't need art, because I'm constantly turning everything I read into a picture in my head? Interestingly, Alex recently identified himself as hyperlexic. :-)

Mike

[greyorm]

What is it about an rpg book that makes you want art, whereas when you read either fiction books or rules for non-rpg games, you are generally fine without it?

That's where your assumption goes completely wrong, at least in regards to me. I wish more books had art in them, lots more art. I'm not talking about comic books or graphic novels, but illustrated novels. And not just a couple illustrations here and there, or at the beginning of chapters, but illustration-laced-text. That would just soooo rock.

Honestly, I think alot of the reason art is popular in game books is that it provides extra incentive for the buyer to purchase and feel good about the purchase later. Most people collect game books, they don't play with them. Pretty art at least makes the purchase worthwhile to some degree, when the book ends up sitting on a shelf for years.

[Lxndr]

Raven>  That really wouldn't be a horribly clashing case of signal (text) to noise (art)?

IT sounds like you're agreeing with Mike in your second paragraph - that most art in game books is strictly for marketing, rather than having any greather point.

(Of course, I am a collector as well as a player.  Art devalues a book, in my eyes.  But that's why, I guess, I'm the anti-Raven.  Or you're the anti-Lxndr. Or something.  We're opposites, anyway.)

[greyorm]

Raven>  That really wouldn't be a horribly clashing case of signal (text) to noise (art)?

That's like saying all you need for a good movie is the dialogue, and forget the visuals. The art is part of the signal, part of the creative vision focused onto the medium by the author. It says, "See? This here is what I'm writing about! Lookit how cool that is!" It does stuff text can't, and when you add text to it, both do even more...they're mutually supportive.

I can't even remotely understand art as "noise"...even logically, heck, mankind was creating complex cave paintings and decorated pottery before he even had a fully formed language.

IT sounds like you're agreeing with Mike in your second paragraph - that most art in game books is strictly for marketing, rather than having any greather point.

I would say that's some of it, but in all honesty, I remember gaming books according to their art. You know what I recall most about the D&D basic set? The art. The 2nd Edition AD&D Player's Handbook? The art. What distinguishes Exalted from Immortal from Vampire? The art.

And I'm not talking abstractly here, either, or in some sort of ephemeral style or mood related sense; I mean I really, really see the art in my head when someone says, "Vampire," or "D&D," or "Immortal."

That's my first, primal, association...not mechanics, not mood, not text, not rules...the art. That's how I remember games.

[matthijs]

Lxndr,

To me it seems fairly obvious - from this thread, from game reviews, etc - that people have very different views of why art is important/not important in a game. A lot of people think it is, for one reason or an other. Some people think it isn't. And a very few think it's actually bad for the game. All in all, that would probably mean that the best choice for commercial purposes would be to include art, even if you personally don't care much for it.

My view on art in gaming books is that it has a strong signal effect. It tells you a bit about 1) how serious the product is (good, professional art is often accompanied by good, professional text), and 2) the authors' view of their product. If there's a lot of drawings of half-naked barbarians of either sex, well, you know what the game is about. If the art is mostly dark, brooding, good-looking people with fangs, done in stylish black and white, hey, once again you hardly have to read the text to know whether you'll like the book.

But WRT (what I believe to be) your main point: Does art in any way help you understand how to play the game? Well, it won't clarify rules questions. But it will help a lot of people understand the "spirit" of the game, and make decisions that fit the game better.

A game that depicts player character types standing on top of dead monsters, or slashing their way through hordes of humanoids, will tell players that they'll probably win most fights; just get in there and start hacking; tactics aren't important. A game that depicts heroes with severe bruises and wounds, being forced back by realistically depicted human opponents, will tell players that, hey, perhaps we should think twice before attacking if the odds are against us.

- Matthijs

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

This thread is getting dangerously close to a list of more-or-less individualized reports or self-descriptions. Matthijs is right - no "centralized tendency" seems to be emerging.

I also think some of the points I made in Dying Earth and covers might be of interest.

So Alexander, if you can think of a way to focus the discussion a little more, that's great and we can keep the thread going. If not, then it's probably time to hold your nose, make whatever choice you'd like, and close the thread.

Best,
Ron

[madelf]

As an artist, I should probably be weighing in heavily on the "more art, art is good" side of the discussion. But I'm not going to. Not exactly.

Art in a game book should be considered a tool. Just as the text should be considered a tool. They both have their uses, but each performs a slightly different function.
Here's an analogy...
Let's say text is a wrench and art is a hammer. Let's say the game is a piece of machinery. If you want to get a bolt out, you NEED the wrench. You can probably get by without the hammer, and in fact the hammer alone will be worthless to you. Heck, using the hammer badly could even break the machinery. But if it's a good tight bolt, then using the hammer to assist the wrench might make it break loose easier. Of course not every bolt on the engine will be tight enough to warrent the hammer.

What am I getting at? Art can help the text if used properly. But art does not need to be used simply for art's sake. Ideally it should have a reason for being there.
For instance....
Art doesn't convey game mechanics all that well, if there's a lot of art in the mechanics section, it's probably there as filler. (Which is ok if you want it, but hardly neccessary) But where art pulls it's weight is in setting. The proper art can convey the feel of the setting in a way that text alone cannot, or at least not as fully.
It won't effect play as far as the mechanics go, but it will often effect the flavor of the setting.

(I should note that some games are so integrated between setting and mechanics, as opposed to flavor being relegated to a setting "section", that art is useful all the way through to maintain the feel. Where the setting is presented will vary from game to game)


I don't know if that'll help clarify anything, but I though I'd offer my opinion.

[greyorm]

This thread is getting dangerously close to a list of more-or-less individualized reports or self-descriptions. Matthijs is right - no "centralized tendency" seems to be emerging.

Actually, I am getting to a point here, I'm just waiting for to hear the reactions Alexander might have about the last bit of stuff (I don't want to bring up too much in one post for fear of clouding the issue with multiple points of input).

[Lxndr]

For my particular focus, I'm still wondering if Matt (or anyone) can answer the specific question I put forth on the bottom of the first page.  To quote myself:

Matt, I'd be interested if, either in here or PM, you selected a particular work from the above list, so I could reference it, and explained how exactly a particular illustration served to explain something that the text did not adequately explain (and furthermore, could not adequately explain). Is that possible? I simply cannot see a connection between art and "how the game operates" and a specific example might, might help me make that connection.

It's possible a concrete example might help.  Then again, it might not.  Although this was directed at Matt, I wouldn't mind seeing another individual doing that with a product that I could direct reference.

On to Raven, since he's getting to a point here ->

I have to admit, I rather like the idea of audio dramas, and am kind of saddened that they, well, completely died out after the advent of television. I'm overjoyed by the existance of Seeing Ear Theatre and am kind of depressed that it's pretty much dead.  In other words, I can wholeheartedly support the idea of removing visuals and keeping only dialogue.  :)  Too many movies these days attempt to use special effects and other visuals instead of worrying about dialogue. The analogies in the rpg world are easily apparent.

On the other hand, I don't think you're really making an apt analogy.  A movie integrates text and art in much the same way a graphic novel/comic book does - it's all one entity.  A roleplaying game manual, on the other hand, is a set of coherent text interspersed with tangentially-related images.  I suppose that'd be like listening to movie dialogue while watching a slide-show of similarly tangentially-related images?

I can't even remotely understand art as "noise"...even logically, heck, mankind was creating complex cave paintings and decorated pottery before he even had a fully formed language.

Similarly, wasn't mankind grunting long before he created the spoken language? Grunting, while it still manages to communicate, is still noise.  Once we managed to get some sort of written, textual language, it became dominant. There's rather practical reasons for that.

That you see and remember gaming books according to their art is really so totally baffling, I have nothing to say about it other than this sentence.  I have no reason to disbelieve you, but I cannot comprehend that way of thinking. I'm interested in seeing where you're going with this.

and now on to the Three Ms:

Mike Holmes> I've only said that there's some correlation between various hyperlexia checklists and my own experiences. While I meet all of the "all hyperlexics have the following characteristics" line, I'm the exact opposite of several "some hyplexics have" lines. Specifically a strong visual memory (I don't picture what people look like, and while if I look at a photograph of someone I've met I'm likely to remember it's the same person, I could not really manage to describe how a person looks, because I'm unable to make any sort of visual construct).

Unlike you and your dyslexia, I've never been diagnosed.

matthij>  You're mostly saying what other people have already said - that somehow, the art in a game actually informs some of their play decisions. I still don't make the multiple mental leaps that are probably necessary to see how that could possibly come about.

(My view on the signal effect you mentioned is that "good, professional art" in a game book is, in most cases, pretty much a transparent attempt to sell more books, and oftentimes is used in the place of useful text and/or to pad the page-count, which in turn passes on a higher cost to me, the consumer. It's a symbol of some sort of avarice, similar to slapping a hardcover on a game book.)

madelf> I'm not very handy. I don't know what you're talking about with bolts and wrenches and hammers.

[Valamir]

Hmmm, I tried to give a pretty concrete example using Pendragon, but you weren't familiar with that one...so let me invent one.

You're reading a new game book...call it any one of many pseudo medieval fantasy RPGs.  You're likeing the mechanics, they seem straight forward and interesting by whatever standards you hold for those and you're starting to think...hmmm, I might want to try running this game.

Now you come to a piece of art.  Lets call it a full page line illo.  Lets also assume for the sake of arguement that you actually stop to look at it rather than brush it off as noise and move on.

Its a picture of a warrior.  He's wearing piecemeal armor, with lots of spikes and skull heads.  He has a spikey mohawk with a chain running from nose to ear.  He's leaping through the air with an improbably big sword with lots of cut outs and serrations.  There are visible "swoosh" lines from his swing.  His eyes are glowing brightly and he's exposing a mouth full of sharpened teeth.

That picture is telling you what the author's vision of a typical warrior in this fantasy setting looks like.

Now rewind.  Same game.  Different picture this time.

This time its also a picture of a warrior.  He's standing solemnly with long free flowing uncut hair and a full mustache that extends below the jaw.  He's wearing tartan blousey trousers and his bare chest is covered with swirling spiral tatoos.  He's leaning on a sword with a long hilt, simple unadorned cross guard and straight blade.  A round wooden shield sits on the ground at his feet with a deep hack taken out of it.

That picture is telling you what the author's vision of a typical warrior in this fantasy setting looks like.


Now, can you honestly say that this conveys no information to you?  Can you honestly say that looking at the picture doesn't give you a sense for the type of world you'll be playing in?  One over the top fantasy punk.  The other a much more historical world.

I'm not sure I could even comprehend a "yes" answer to this.

[greyorm]

Alright, here's my point, and what's telling me I may indeed be on to something is the following:

I have to admit, I rather like the idea of audio dramas

That you see and remember gaming books according to their art is really so totally baffling...I cannot comprehend that way of thinking.

There's a theory in teaching that divides people's learning into three categories: visual, tactile, and auditory. A visual learner learns by seeing it done, a tactile learner learns by doing it, and an auditory learner learns by hearing it explained.

Auditory learners are in the minority, something like 5% of the population. Visual learners make up the highest percentage, followed at a distance by tactile learners -- evolutionarily, this makes sense, since our ancestors were creatures which learned through mimicry and observation (though Ron is free to interject his undoubtedly more researched opinion on that, it's really completely tangential to the point).

Now, this isn't to say that a learner of one type can't learn things the other ways, only that their tendency is to learn a task or information more quickly and easily via their preferred method. As well, no one is an all X type of learner, there are degrees of preference, thus including the other types in instruction also helps by providing extra stimulus to the student, but I digress.

My point is that I wonder if these learning preferences don't leak into other aspects of our lives as well, being as they are hardwired into the brain, streaming perceptual data into a person according to their distinct routes and thus coloring the experience of reality as well as what a person gets out of it.

Gamers who don't like art in their game books seem to be in the vast minority of hobbyists; perhaps this has something to do with their preferred perceptual/learning method? To a heavily-biased auditory learner, text would just be "noise" because there's nothing there to "hear", whereas you can "hear" text easily.

Now, I bet you're thinking I'm a visual learner, right? Nope. I scored high on both visual and tactile, and very low on auditory. I learn best when I actually DO it, and prefer to just jump in and get my hands dirty, rather than watching someone do it/showing me how.

However, I never understand systems until I actually explore them myself. This is a pattern particularly evident in matters of gaming: Ron explained Sorcerer to me a number of times, and it wasn't until I actually sat down with the dice and played that things really fell into place. Same thing with my other games.

Incidentally, this might explain why my wife always complains I'm not listening to her! Heh. Just kidding.

I can read or be told something a few dozen times, and I am rarely sure of myself regarding the task or the information until I do it myself/put it to use myself (at which point I usually surprise myself, but again, I digress).

So, that's my point: this art/no art preference and disconnection between individuals regarding it stems from our perceptual wiring, what we get out of reality and how we get it. Though I can't support that without a lot more data and blind testing, it seems to make a certain amount of sense given your statements above, the percentages, and basic psychology.

Similarly, wasn't mankind grunting long before he created the spoken language? Grunting, while it still manages to communicate, is still noise.  Once we managed to get some sort of written, textual language, it became dominant. There's rather practical reasons for that.

Ahh, yes, good point...but we abandoned grunting in favor of speech, yet we continue to create art, which says something about art's endurability as a medium of expression yet having to be surpassed.

[A.B.W]

Oh, boy first time post. Be gentle.

Lxndr, I'm not sure you've got a fair challenge there.  I'm a little color-blind.  There's a chunk of spectrum including some blues and some purple that I see as more or less all the same thing.  I have to take other people's word for it that THIS is blue and THAT'S purple.  If I get really good lighting and otherwise ideal conditions, I can kind of sort of tell the difference.  Sometimes.

There's no way for someone to satisfy me if I say "I dare you to come up with some blues and purples that anyone, even me, can easily tell apart."  They can come up with shades that satisfy most people most of the time, and that's as good as it gets.  It's not their fault, either.  Biology happens to be against me.

I also dislike big orchestras.  I'm really good with chamber music, where I can pick out each individual instrument as well as following the overall results.  Put more than a dozen or so instruments on stage and get them all going, and it just kind of dissolves into noise for me.  The same thing goes with most choral music, too.  This is a shame, because I like classical music and opera a lot.  I just can't manage to make sense of some kinds of input.  If I tell someone to write a symphony that caters to my limitations, they're going to end up using a lot of rests and basically turn the symphony back into a chamber group, which is a waste.  The right thing to do is for me to say "I'm sorry, I know I'm not going to much fun out of that" and leave it for others.

If art really doesn't stick with you, then it's probably not possible for the rest of us to produce examples of art that stick with you.  Because by definition it doesn't for you.  and if art doesn't, for whatever reason, signify the kinds of thing about the world and play that text does, then it just doesn't.  But they do for a lot of people.  If I were designing a game, I'd feel okay having an artist use those shades of blue and purple on the cover because I know that they're fine for most folks and I'd appreciate the rest.  If I were programming a season of concerts, I'd include some symphonies and choral numbers because I know that they mean a lot to other people.  

When I see game designers talk about their work, it seems like they pretty much all spend some time on things that they may not be most wild about themselves but that will help others get enjoyment out of the game.  Maybe this is just one of those things.

[Lxndr]

Raven -> Yeah, I've taken those tests and scored phenomenally high on auditory, with kinesthetic (what you called tactile) coming in second, and visual barely making an impression at all.  I'm with you on systems being understood best when one gets their hands dirty and play around with them.  (Art not being a part of system).  

I think A.B.W.'s point is rather spot on w/r/t me - I'm effectively "colour blind" when it comes to art and how it could impact the majority of individuals.  (Does that put me at a disadvantage?  I don't know.  In exchange for that, I "glom" rather quickly to the important parts of a game book - the mechanics and setting, as Paganini would put it.)

In a related test I took that was trying to consider the validity of a fourth style of learning, "abstract", my abstract score was even higher than the auditory.  Not sure if that theory ever went anywhere, but it rung true with me.

On the other hand (and this is getting a bit tangential) it somewhat surprises me that the population of "gamers" would encompass a high number of visual learners, since what the player sees is the least important part of any game, in terms of Actual Play.  All a player gets to see is the other players sitting around the table.  Conversely, players get to do things tactily (rolling dice, manipulating the character sheet) and audially (listening to the speech of, well, all the players).

For my part this thread is done, with the answer being:  "Apparently, Art Does Matter, But Not In Any Way That Can Be Adequately Explained To The Questioner."  I can accept that.  I do want to answer Ralph though.

Ralph>  I can quite honestly say that the amount of information I would get from those pictures, as it relates to my later interpretation and understanding of the game, would be next to nil.  In point of fact, if I managed to notice the picture, I'd look at it, either appreciate it or deride it, then turn the page and the picture would all but immediately flee my consciousness, leaving no impression.  Five minutes later, someone could ask me about the picture in that section and I'd go "huh?  what?" and flip open the book to check.

Heck, from how you've described the two pictures, I can easily see them being in the same game without any sort of cognitive dissonance.

The only game that's ever really used art in a way that I can truly understand it being there is Everway.  And even in Everway, the art in the actual rulebook(s) is extraneous - only the vision cards are what matter.

(And at least on my part, this thread is closed.  Thank you all for your valiant efforts, but I think I've reached my threshold in terms of how much I'll be able to internalize this - it is an alien reaction)

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

Thread's closed!

I'm mainly posting to say "Welcome!" to A.B.W., and to confirm Alexander's authority to close this thing.

Best,
Ron