Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 8727841" data-attributes="member: 6779310">Because so much of RPG play requires mental images, and so much is beyond normal experience, it's VERY much faster to put in a drawing or painting than to spend the wuarter page (or more) that's going to be vague anyway?No, not really. It should, but that really only holds true for novels.Non fiction normally has illustrations. In the case of instructional texts, you get procedural flowcharts, illustrations of start and finish, and often steps between.Historical texts use paintings, drawings, photos, and visuals of source documents.Illustrations help reinforce the text. In RPGs, illustrations reinforce the text, inspire additional non-text elements, show the hard to describe bits, show the things the author's talking about when there's potential confusion eg: "claidhmore" or claymore... some use it to refer only to the scots bastard sword, others to the greatsword, others still to the dress sword of the regimental pattern, and others still in its original use, as the Scots Gaelic for "sword"... When an author labels a blade a claidhmore and depicts it with a basket, you know it's a one-hander. If they show a long angled quillions, it's probably a late Reiver era bastard. If it's straight quillions, odds are it's a late medieval bastard sword or greatsword.And now, how do you describe some of the fantasy weapons, such as the main characters in later (7 & up) Final Fantasy JRPG CRPGs??? Such as Cloud's insane single edged two-handed straight blade? (FF VII) I could call it a "very angular variant greatsword variant of a scramseax" - but that assumes one knows what the latter is - a sword length meat-cleaver with a thrusting point - which makes it still not a great description. But you see a pic of Cloud and the Sword, and you instantly see just how freaking disproportionate it is. Oh, and I'm talking the Buster Sword - a term that's meaningless to most... see <a href="https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII_weapons#Cloud's_broadswords" target="_blank">https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Final_Fantasy_VII_weapons#Cloud's_broadswords</a>Sure, pure text can convey information, but it's not doing all the jobs an RPG needs to do in a corebook... Provide visual cues, provide inspiration, communicate setting information about the look of things, provide a meaningful description of things outside human lived experience...Oh, and even some novels don't go pure text - JRR Tolkien included maps in his novels, specifically so he reader was able to grasp the geographical situation.</blockquote>

Verification