DUNGEON's NEW STAT BLOCK FORMAT

[Ketjak]

A surprisingly large number of our readers are colorblind, and are not always able to read colored text. We still sometimes do it in headers and stuff, but it's something we've got to keep in mind. If all precast spells are listed in red, and someone can't see red (or whatever), I think that guy would be right to complain.

Also, speaking as the captain of the ship, adding a color-coding system for the magazine text would be like opening a Pandora's Box of potential errors, and is not worth the trouble, I'm afraid.

Other folks at other companies may very well disagree, and I wish them luck.

--Erik Mona
Editor-in-Chief
Dragon & Dungeon

Red and green are the two colors most colorblind people can't see as "red" and "green." (Some have trouble with blue and yellow, and some research* shows there's a wider variety than I am familiar with - I am not color blind.) They're browns or greys, generally speaking. They're the same grey or brown if their saturation is the same; otherwise they're distinct.

Again, the considerate designer attempts never to use red and green in important displays. (Traffic lights have two exclusive indicators of current state: color and vertical position.) In general, because of lighting and reflectivity issues alone I'd stay away from using color as an indicator as much as I could.

* Research:

Computer display color recommendations: http://tinyurl.com/922ml (sunglasses required)
Simulation of color blindness: http://colorlab.wickline.org/colorblind/colorlab/

- Ket

 

[WizarDru]

Regardless, Erik's point is that it's a big can of worms to open, and a lot of extra work that also adds a much larger potential for mistakes ("Hey, the attack bonus wasn't Mauve!", "What the...? The SR should have been green!").

 

[glass]

Heh... Y'know, I went through the entire 3e playtest and probably some months afterward thinking Kim was a woman. Kim was cooridinating the playtest at the time. Around the table we would say, "Oh, we better get this week's notes off to Kimmy! I wonder what Kimmy's baking today...?"

Yeah, I thought Kim Mohan was a woman for years too. And Tracy Hickman, and Sandy Peterson, and Lyn Williss...


glass.

 

[ThirdWizard]

A surprisingly large number of our readers are colorblind, and are not always able to read colored text. We still sometimes do it in headers and stuff, but it's something we've got to keep in mind. If all precast spells are listed in red, and someone can't see red (or whatever), I think that guy would be right to complain.

Erik knows of what he speaks. For reference, I have trouble with (usually dependant on shade) - in order of difficulty:

blue/purple [very very bad]
gray/pink
red/green [sideways traffic lights are bad mmmkay?]
black/dark green [I get red and green confused but not black and red, go figure]
orange/yellow

And a few more things I consider non-colors because I can't even tell they exist (like fuchsia, its actually a conspiracy). In addition to these problems, mixed colors that I can technically "see" can give me problems. I have had to outlaw certain dice because I can't read the numbers off the die, a gray/pink hybrid, I think, with red numbers is one of them. It's like it was made to frustrate me.

I'm an extreme case, I think, as there are a half dozen or so colors I have problems with. However, color blindness is common enough and varied enough that it makes it difficult to work around. You can't just avoid red/green combonations, there are a lot of not only color combonations that are difficult for us but there are also other subtleties that can be difficult to work around.

And, my uncle is worse than I am.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

A surprisingly large number of our readers are colorblind, and are not always able to read colored text. We still sometimes do it in headers and stuff, but it's something we've got to keep in mind. If all precast spells are listed in red, and someone can't see red (or whatever), I think that guy would be right to complain.

Speaking as a colorblind person (there are multiple varieties), but the large majority of those who are colorblind can recognize colors pretty well. Having large stretches of a single color is very easy to distinguish. But placing small splotches of colors adjacent to each other that a particular colorblind person, the colorblind person can't easily distinguish which is which.

So a single red word (for those red/green/ colorblind), in a row of black text is easy. But have a row of text that alternates every word red, then green, then red, etc. and you will have a colorblind person probably getting eyestrain. Myself, I'm red/green and blue/gray colorblind. But I'm only a single person. My colorblindness is bad enough that I'm forbidden from being a pilot or electrician. There are a vast swath of military careers that I can't take either.

I've done cartographic work, creating publish quality maps, and there is a resource many of us use called Color Brewer. It is run by a university and it is based on work funded by the National Science Foundation. I HIGHLY recommend any publisher check it out if they are concerned with issues with publishing colors and colorblindness, photocopy friendliness, LCD friendliness, laptop LCD friendly, CRT friendliness, and color printing friendliness. You can ger CMYK values, RGB values, and more. The site is aimed towards cartographers and thematic map production. The point of Color Brewer is to show which specific patterns of colors work best in for certain cases of color viewing.

I must say, that it is rare to hear (the first time in my life actually just now) a publisher express concern for the colorblind. Bravo!

 

[Monte At Home]

Yeah, if I was ever going to do something like that, I'd do it that way. A couple of words or values in a single other color. Not only can most colorblind people note the difference between the other color and black, but any more than that (or more than one second color) and you risk things looking pretty gaudy. Plus, I think that you'd make it so that the second color was a helpful thing (like calling out particularly important info), but not a required thing, so that if you couldn't distinguish the color for whatever reason, the material was still 100% usable.

 

[EricNoah]

Overdoing colored text wouldn't be helpful; nor would using colors to exclusively communicate "mission-critical" information. But calling out certain things in another color might be helpful.

 

[Psion]

Maybe instead of color, using more conventional techniques like bold, underline, and italics.

 

[ThirdWizard]

Maybe instead of color, using more conventional techniques like bold, underline, and italics.

Heh, I circle things on my printouts often. I doubt that would work well in print, though.

 

[EricNoah]

Maybe instead of color, using more conventional techniques like bold, underline, and italics.

Bold is used a lot as it is; italics mean something special in D&D-land. Underlining is about all that's left...