Hi ho, I'm back from my big trip and thought I'd make a few quick comments on what's been going on in gaming news since I've been away.
We've seen big brouhaha around 5e and also around censorship as well. I feel like my previous post about sexism was quite prescient coming as it did before Stuart's piece in his blog Strange Magic about how graphic fantasy art should be and why. There are many questions to be answered when making a piece of art for an RPG. What's appealing? What's practical? What's realistic? What's appropriate for the audience? And when the item is question is for a commercial product there are also questions of propriety and age considerations.
In his post to Mythmere's Blog, Matt talks about the 2 depictions of a statue in the Black Monastery module from Frog God Games. The S&W version appears in it's original depiction of the member in question, while the Pathfinder version has a censorship block over it. Reasons for the change have to do with publishing restrictions for the two games and of course the "right" answer isn't so simple as either "Save the children," or "Free to be you and me."
When my friend SBG asked me to change the banner art for this blog (see last post) I didn't feel it was censorship at all. It was a reasonable request and it was the result of my audience changing. From a personal space for myself alone to a conduit where I share information and opinion this blog was transformed and the indulgent (and blatantly unrealistic and perhaps somewhat offensive) art was not acceptable.
I'd like to argue against setting standards by specious appeals to realism. Yes, the chain mail bikini is ridiculous as armor, it's only possible explanation is for sex apeal. However, historic barbarians probably did wear fur loincloths, and the Spartans certainly did excercise in the nude. Was Franzetta necessarily that far off? As for practical, well, even in a fantasy setting it requires a monumental suspension of disbelief to consider trudging for miles through underground caves in full plate mail. Imagine spleunking in a spacesuit and you'll see how absurd that would be.
In games we want a model, not the real thing itself. At Hack & Slash there is a good post on the evils of realism and while it might go a bit overboard it is a point well taken. In fantasy RPGs we differentiate between damage for daggers and swords, often by making 1d4 and 1d8 rolls respectively. Is this realism, or merely flavor? We could say all weapons do the same damage, or we could make all kinds of rules for weight, penetration, damage versus various sized targets, etc. Who's to say which is most realistic? While many seem to think more rules equals more accurate representation, I think it's only multiplying a missinterpretation.
We can segue neatly into the new 5e contraversy on the lines of rule bloat and loss of fun to minutea overload. Personally, I'm unlikely to move to the new version. Now, I have not played paper 'n pencil games with 3e and 4e rules, but I have played many computer games based on them. My main complaint isn't the complexity but the ease of failure when leveling. These games require hours of number crunching to get a good character build. I've probably spent longer researching perks and bonuses than I have playing. It's not that the later versions of popular fantasy RPGs are too hard, it's that they are too easy to mess up. If 5e can address this and make character development more organic rather than mostly a series of deadends I for one will be very interested.
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