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General Tabletop Discussion
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Graphic Design and the Aesthetics of Tabletop RPGs
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<blockquote data-quote="Blue Orange" data-source="post: 9195540" data-attributes="member: 7025997"><p>Thank you for being avant garde while at least being readable. I still remember the black backgrounds on White Wolf books...ugh. Not to mention the illegible writing in HoL. Magenta and blue of course echoes the synthwave aesthetic of the 2010s and the CGA graphics of the 1980s. The worm is huge, and so is its text.</p><p></p><p>Graphic design's a subtle thing, and can really date the game. The oldest RPGs look like mimeographed typed sheets, and as we get into the 80s people start being fancier, culminating in some of the overdesigned books of the 90s. Getting into the 2000s, you can make all your pages full-color, which gets into the fancy page backgrounds of 3-5e D&D and 6-7e Call of Cthulhu. It's hugely impacted by the technology of the time--your white-on-black would be totally inappropriate for a printed book where you'd use huge amounts of ink, but is great for a screen in a dark room. </p><p></p><p>But back to your question...I'd say the graphic design works at a subtle level, so it's harder to appreciate than, say, the art (DiTerlizzi says 'Planescape', Brom says 'Dark Sun'). The tables and blocky typeface of 1e D&D gave it the feeling of a Serious, Difficult Game, whereas the light blue highlights and rounder typefaces in 2e gave it a friendlier feel reflecting its younger target audience. When it was readable, White Wolf's heavy use of black really did give it a goth feel. The heavy shading of Call of Cthulhu's older editions gives it a horror feel where you can't see or understand everything, and the wide variety of fonts and colors used in 21st-century D&D books gives it the feeling of the superhero game it is. As for 3e vs 5e, I'd say the bigger typefaces and more frequent pictures reflect the attempts to simplify the game and give it a wider audience.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Blue Orange, post: 9195540, member: 7025997"] Thank you for being avant garde while at least being readable. I still remember the black backgrounds on White Wolf books...ugh. Not to mention the illegible writing in HoL. Magenta and blue of course echoes the synthwave aesthetic of the 2010s and the CGA graphics of the 1980s. The worm is huge, and so is its text. Graphic design's a subtle thing, and can really date the game. The oldest RPGs look like mimeographed typed sheets, and as we get into the 80s people start being fancier, culminating in some of the overdesigned books of the 90s. Getting into the 2000s, you can make all your pages full-color, which gets into the fancy page backgrounds of 3-5e D&D and 6-7e Call of Cthulhu. It's hugely impacted by the technology of the time--your white-on-black would be totally inappropriate for a printed book where you'd use huge amounts of ink, but is great for a screen in a dark room. But back to your question...I'd say the graphic design works at a subtle level, so it's harder to appreciate than, say, the art (DiTerlizzi says 'Planescape', Brom says 'Dark Sun'). The tables and blocky typeface of 1e D&D gave it the feeling of a Serious, Difficult Game, whereas the light blue highlights and rounder typefaces in 2e gave it a friendlier feel reflecting its younger target audience. When it was readable, White Wolf's heavy use of black really did give it a goth feel. The heavy shading of Call of Cthulhu's older editions gives it a horror feel where you can't see or understand everything, and the wide variety of fonts and colors used in 21st-century D&D books gives it the feeling of the superhero game it is. As for 3e vs 5e, I'd say the bigger typefaces and more frequent pictures reflect the attempts to simplify the game and give it a wider audience. [/QUOTE]
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