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World of Design: The Lost Art of Making Things Up
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<blockquote data-quote="Haffrung" data-source="post: 8122431" data-attributes="member: 6776259"><p>Actually, lego is a prime example of the decline of imagination. The overwhelming proportion of lego kits today are basically modelling kits. The picture of what you're supposed to build - almost always an object from lego's licensing partners like Star Wars or Harry Potter - is right on the box. The instructions are inside. Kids build the cool thing from that cool movie they saw, and then break it up and buy another kit. That's lego's business model today.</p><p></p><p>I'm not sure creativity itself is in decline. Modern tools can help people with music, artwork, adventure design. Give them access to advice and resources.</p><p></p><p>However, it seems pretty clear that <em>imagination</em>, that is literally creating images in your mind, has been in decline for decades. With the transition from a literate culture to an image-centric culture, we no longer needed to use internal tools to make pictures. Since TVs became commonplace, we've had all the images we need piped directly into our minds. So the neural networks responsible for creating those images internally have atrophied, or never been developed in the first place.</p><p></p><p>You can see this in fiction. Novels written in the mid-20th century were far more descriptive - part of the author's job was to conjure detailed pictures of landscapes and action in the minds of the readers. Whole pages were devoted to descriptions of a house facade, dusk deepening in a forest, the carriage of a train. That's no longer the case. Descriptive passages in fiction today are far less common or detailed.</p><p></p><p>In RPGs, this has meant that setting, and describing that setting, has become less prominent. Compare Gygax's lengthy outpourings of purple prose - whole paragraphs describing the eerie appearance of natural underground caverns - with the far more utilitarian and sparse descriptions in adventures today. You can read pages long reviews of RPG campaigns today, reviews that cover presentation, formatting, plots, NPC backstories, tactical challenge, etc., that barely talk about the physical environment that the adventure takes place in. The sense of immersion players might get from a ruined city, how evocative the mountain stronghold of the giants is - this doesn't fit into the dozen or so adventure elements reviewers opine on.</p><p></p><p>The confusion around exploration mode highlights the disconnect with modern players. Why does it matter what PCs do between encounters? What value is there in describing travel, or roleplaying the PCs exploring a necropolis? Let's get to the good stuff - the action scenes - and then lay out everything with minis or digital representations.</p><p></p><p>That's because RPGs are no longer about creating movies in our mind's eye. They're about characters and backstory and optimization and tactical combat and satisfying climaxes with big bad guys. They're not really about imagination anymore.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Haffrung, post: 8122431, member: 6776259"] Actually, lego is a prime example of the decline of imagination. The overwhelming proportion of lego kits today are basically modelling kits. The picture of what you're supposed to build - almost always an object from lego's licensing partners like Star Wars or Harry Potter - is right on the box. The instructions are inside. Kids build the cool thing from that cool movie they saw, and then break it up and buy another kit. That's lego's business model today. I'm not sure creativity itself is in decline. Modern tools can help people with music, artwork, adventure design. Give them access to advice and resources. However, it seems pretty clear that [I]imagination[/I], that is literally creating images in your mind, has been in decline for decades. With the transition from a literate culture to an image-centric culture, we no longer needed to use internal tools to make pictures. Since TVs became commonplace, we've had all the images we need piped directly into our minds. So the neural networks responsible for creating those images internally have atrophied, or never been developed in the first place. You can see this in fiction. Novels written in the mid-20th century were far more descriptive - part of the author's job was to conjure detailed pictures of landscapes and action in the minds of the readers. Whole pages were devoted to descriptions of a house facade, dusk deepening in a forest, the carriage of a train. That's no longer the case. Descriptive passages in fiction today are far less common or detailed. In RPGs, this has meant that setting, and describing that setting, has become less prominent. Compare Gygax's lengthy outpourings of purple prose - whole paragraphs describing the eerie appearance of natural underground caverns - with the far more utilitarian and sparse descriptions in adventures today. You can read pages long reviews of RPG campaigns today, reviews that cover presentation, formatting, plots, NPC backstories, tactical challenge, etc., that barely talk about the physical environment that the adventure takes place in. The sense of immersion players might get from a ruined city, how evocative the mountain stronghold of the giants is - this doesn't fit into the dozen or so adventure elements reviewers opine on. The confusion around exploration mode highlights the disconnect with modern players. Why does it matter what PCs do between encounters? What value is there in describing travel, or roleplaying the PCs exploring a necropolis? Let's get to the good stuff - the action scenes - and then lay out everything with minis or digital representations. That's because RPGs are no longer about creating movies in our mind's eye. They're about characters and backstory and optimization and tactical combat and satisfying climaxes with big bad guys. They're not really about imagination anymore. [/QUOTE]
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