March 31, 2007
My Thoughts on Art in Paper Role Playing Games
Katie (sort of) tagged me for a meme about what art in paper rpg's attracts women to games. The post that inspired the meme is here and the rules for the meme are here. That said, I'm not deeply interested in following the rules to the letter. Instead I thought I'd just talk about the topic, since I'm in what I think is a relatively unique situation for this.
I was exposed to a lot of gaming art in my childhood. Both of my parents are gamers and I spent 4 days every year at GenCon, surrounded by piles of what I believe people call cheesecake nowadays. Pictures of barbarian women in chain-mail bikinis do nothing for me personally, but I don't feel inherently offended by them. To some degree I think I've developed a tolerance for skin in gaming art. I also feel the need to point out that things are not as bad as they used to be.
When I was a kid, the gaming industry was far more male than it is now. I have amusing memories of early RPG covers, some of which my parents own, with far more offensive and skin heavy pictures than what you'll find today. To some degree I think a prone woman being menaced by a large alien while showing a lot of nipple was just what people expected to be on the cover of a sci-fi rpg back then. Also there were far fewer women to complain. The fact that sex sells hasn't changed, just the tolerances of society and the make up of the gamer demographic.
I'm not saying that I like "the less armor women wear the more protection they get" theory of character design, but even having mild feminist leanings, this stuff just doesn't upset me much. I try to be on the look out for more realistic and flattering art at conventions and I go out of my way to buy from and complement artists who provide it, but I also recognize that most of the artists are just trying to make a living. Sexy women sell, to both women and men, and I can't begrudge artists wanting to eat.
More in the spirit of the meme, I spent a little time thinking about what art actually does attract me to games. The answer is, not much of it. I tend to like cover art that is less people and more stylized or representational of the game or setting. For example, I really like the covers of Garden Station 4 and Snow White. I think the folks at Shifting Forest did a good job of picking art that evokes the dark/gritty feel of the LARPs (especially Snow White) while still maintaining good overall composition and balance.
Other games in my collection whose cover art I actively admire include:
Cat: A Little Game About Little Heroes
I like this cover for the fact that it is simple, has nice colors, and the title is very easy to read.
Cold Hands Dark Hearts
This is one of the few covers with people on it that I like. The image is a nice dim color set while still having some bright splashes to attract attention to the girl and the title.
The modern run of D&D core books
I really like the worked metal and jewel encrusted style of the current D&D core books. Most of them seem vaguely art nuevo (which I like) and they just generally have good composition while having a lot going on. Sometimes the guys who made most of the covers come to GenCon. If you get a chance to see their work in person I would highly recommend it, since it's even more stunning as sculpture rather than flat art. Here's a link to the 3.5 players handbook if you don't know what I'm talking about. I'm also a fan of the internal sketches in this series of books, many of which hearken back to the style of Victorian naturalist field journals.
The current lines of d20 Modern and Future
Both of these lines use a semi realistic drawn style for their character illustrations that appeals to me. The characters are generally portrayed as, well, people rather than icons or stereotypes. I think it was the right decision since they are putting out a game that is meant to be fundamentally "modern realistic" (well until you start adding magic and elves and such back in...). Here are the core d20 Modern and the core d20 Future books as examples. I'm not saying there is no skin showing in these pictures, but if you walk around a mall in the summer time I don't think you could say there is no skin showing in modern society either...
The previous incarnation of White Wolf's World of Darkness
Many of the core books were given strong color sets and more stylistic images that easily identified the lines they were in. My special favorites were the use of the lovely stained glass motif in the Changeling line (example) and the series of portraits they used for the Kithbooks (example). The stained glass, well I just think it's beautiful. The portraits appeal to me because they are both caricatures and understated pretty pieces in harmonious (mostly warm) color sets.
Bunnies & Burrows : The Fantasy World of Intelligent Rabbits
And I don't mean the GURPs edition. I have a very early edition of this book that was pinched from my parents. The cover is a blue on blue line drawing of two armies of rabbits waging a medieval style war (complete with shield wall and battlefield banners). I like this cover because it speaks to me about the realism that I should expect in the style of this game. To me it says, this is not a game about playing the Easter bunny or a happy fluffy cartoon; this is a game about playing a rabbit in a gritty fantasy world. You might very well die. (I also like the sketches inside this book, for much the same reason.)
Now after saying all that, I want to mention: I don't buy games based on their covers. I don't think I have ever bought a game based on just its cover (or any one piece of art in it). I am occasionally encouraged to buy games based on lush internal illustration and good composition/layout, but even then I generally want to know more about what the game is like before I sink money into it. Some times I will even buy books were I do not like the cover or internal art, if I've had a particularly good play-test session or a recommendation from someone I trust.
I also learned a long time ago, that you don't chose gamer friends or a gamer group based on a system you want to play. A good GM can make anything good, and similarly, a bad gm can make the best designed game seem like a horrifying eternity of boredom (I won't even go into the stuff worse than boredom).
Addressing the other question that was mentioned in the Yudhishthira's Dice post, I have never seen a picture of a woman and said "I want to play her." I generally create a rough personality and back story for a character before I think much about her image. I just don't particularly feel a draw towards being an image that someone else has already dreamed up. That said, I wanted to point folks towards the art of Katherine N. Garlick as my amateur favorite for female characters. I particularly like her work titled Dragon's Ire. Awesome armor and super color sense. My pick for a professional artist to match would probably be Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (although she was an amateur back when I first discovered her). Her style involves a lot of movement and outlining in a semi-art neuvo style. It's all lovely.
Now I'd like to take a minute to discuss the unspoken question of the art that does turn me away from games. There is some and generally it has to do with more than just raw display of skin. I rarely see drawn art that bothers me enough that I couldn't ignore it. What I have seen is a whole lot of really crappy photo art (some manipulated and some not). The best-worst example of this that I can think of is the Book of Erotic Fantasy although I've seen similar things show up in some LARPing books.
I actually have no major issues with the cover of the book. I don't think it's stunning, but I don't find it offensive either. After all, succubi have a long established place in gaming art. The thing I find frustrating about the Book of Erotic Fantasy is the crap that passes for art inside of it. Looking through the pictures in there reminds me of a modern set of sexy bedroom costumes (and not in the pretty artistic way, more in the actual catalogue way). Some of the pictures didn't even try to be fantasy themed so they just ended up being semi-naked women with nothing at all special about them. Many of them were poorly composed and costumed, which is a personal pet peeve of mine. If I want porn I can get it free on the Internet. Porn is not what I wanted out of this book. I wanted some treatment of erotic themes and gender roles/issues in a fantasy world. I'm not even going to go into the text of the book here, because it failed even worse than the illustrations.
In general, I don't think that good fantasy photo art can be made with just some costumes and a camera. It requires a sense of composition, a good expressive model, and a minimal understanding of the art of photography at the very least. I have seen photo fantasy art that I liked, but it is often overwhelmed by the amount of crappy stuff there is out there. After all, it is awful easy to get your hands on a digital camera these days.
On a final note, I want to mention the game Everway. One of the core premises of the game was that players could draw images and ideas from a vast collection of really nice art cards. This was the central to character generation. Everway was also gifted with a good set of writers and some stunning artists. I still have their art cards squirreled away because of the sheer variety and beauty of them. There is some cheesecake, but there are also a lot of female characters who are both reasonably dressed and appear to be interesting, strong women.
You know what happened to Everway? It died. Very quickly I might add. The game had issues, but in my mind this is one of the best examples of a lavishly illustrated and female friendly game available. And it died. Art is not enough by itself.
While I love reasonable costumes and strong female characters, I think we (gamers of both genders) need to accept that things are not going to change over night. It's not reasonable to expect artists to not use sex sells to put food on their tables and it's not reasonable to expect magazines or game makers to completely ignore the skin factor that does attract some people to their products. I do think we have a right to complain and encourage the industry to present better art on average, but we need to be realistic about the market pressures that have caused things to be the way they are now. If you feel strongly about this issue, go out of your way to buy things that you think represent the sorts of art that should be in games whether or not you are interested in the actual games. Monetary pressure is going to get change a lot faster than complaints.
Comments:You said: "Monetary pressure is going to get change a lot faster than complaints."Post a Comment
Word.
Also, Everway was awesome. It is too bad about all the horrible decisions that lead to its death.
posted byBrand Robins : April 4, 2007 12:27 AM
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