Quote from: Spinachcat;1134765I like art that's meaningful to the game/setting in some manner.

I agree that great covers do sell games. That's foremost in Palladium's business model. Brom was worth every dime for the Nightbane cover.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]4574[/ATTACH]

Every thing that Brom does is worth every dime. He brought Dark Sun to life and is one of the greatest RPG artists ever.

Quote from: VisionStorm;11347891. That's not the actual definition of "straw man".

It is the actual definition of a strawman. A strawman is when someone doesn't respond what was actually said, but instead replies as if the other person made a different argument, which is usually a variant on the real argument, but weaker, or transparently flawed. It's an example of putting words in someone else's mouth. You should be able to figure out on your own why it's considered a logical fallacy. It's also a conversation ender, because it's impossible to have a discussion when one side is ignoring what the other side says. It's like talking to an annoying wall.

Quote from: VisionStorm;11347892. You're the only one "fabricating" things here by impugning my motives and reframing my points as some sort of malicious attempt to mischaracterize what you said, as opposed to expressing my OPINIONS on what I consider the inevitable end result of what you're suggesting.

I didn't say anything about your motives, nor did I reframe any of your points. I pointed out you based your argument on something I never said.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789And all after you went off on Shrieking Banshee a couple posts ago about how ridiculous a standard it would be to have to add an "IMO" disclaimer to every statement made in a forum conversation. Yet here you are, descending into idiocy cuz you can't tell the difference between my opinion and me putting words in your mouth that you never said.

Shrieking Banshee, out of nowhere, decided to attack me. I responded, proportionally. No idea why Banshee did that. It was out of the blue. And I know what part of your post is your opinion, and which part was putting words in my mouth.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789OMG! Where did I say that a setting presented via art plus text was not an inherent characteristic of long descriptions? That statement appears nowhere in my post! Your argument is a straw man!

Your entire post is invalid, because straw man!

You should follow your own advice, and look up the definition of strawman. That's not even close.

You've alluded to the idea that I dismissed your entire post, because of your strawman, several times. You're mistaken, I dismissed your strawman, and addressed your other arguments. You should realize that, because you responded to the points I made. For instance...

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789And yes, contrary to what you assert you absolutely can convey at least a portion of that name-related stuff through art. Assuming that by "names" you mean stuff like cities, you can include an image of a city in order to illustrate its architecture and portions of its cultural makeup by displaying the way that people dress, their skin tone and facial features, and other characteristics that hint to their ethnic makeup, what their markets look like, the types of decorations they use, etc. All of that can help convey new players the types of places their characters may visit or originate from faster than a description. And the fact that you still need a written description to get the in-depth details does not refute anything I just said.

... this is responding to one of my points.

You're correct, you can convey some of those specific types of details in art. That's fairly obvious. But those details aren't necessary. They're not essential to running the setting. That's a distinction I've been trying to make: Those are the kind of details that can be easily made up on the fly, and in fact the game works better when they're made up on the fly.

Also, art is often terrible at presenting that kind of information. Yes, you can pick up some general ideas of style, complexions, and so on; but art tends to be unrepresentative, inconsistent, can be hard to interpret, and is usually focused more on things like showing action than on conveying concrete information. And to give a good overview of any of those topics, the art really needs to be presented in a more diagrammatic form, say a line of figures separated by sex, age, and social class, showing different styles of dress. Even then, some (textual) discussion is almost necessary. Architecture probably works better, because cityscapes can show a lot; but crowds where a wide variety of people can be easily distinguished are rarer, probably because drawing that many human figures can be an enormous amount of work.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789I was talking about new people and potential players. Though, I suppose it could apply to GMs shopping around for a setting as well. But here you go on about how that's "not how I think", etc. and try to rationalize how the cover art simply attracted the GM as a marketing scheme rather offering any meaningful contribution to "convince" the GM (despite "convincing" them enough to buy it), which kinda goes back to Shrinking Banshee's earlier statement about you presenting your opinions as fact. It's not how you think, therefore art can't possibly play a role in helping convey a setting enough to convince someone to buy or play it.

This section is completely irrational. The phrase "that's not how I think" was a caveat that marked the whole section as an opinion. It's literally got an "IMO" built right in, but you're interpreting the IMO as a statement of absolute fact. That's upsidedownbackwards.

And I'm not rationalizing anything, I'm explaining my reasoning. Which is more or less the point of having a discussion. Would you like me to start using loaded and dismissive words in every sentence? It might be a fun exercise.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134789The fact that imagery can be powerful does not mean that therefore art compels you to play the game only a certain way or that you can't imagine things beyond it. Not every scene that exists in a world can be presented through art--at least not in a way that would be feasible to accomplish and fit into one book. There's too many possibilities to illustrate everything. "Preconceptions" sounds like a personal failing, not a problem that's intrinsic to art.

All you're really telling me is that you personally can't let go of an image in your head or look beyond it, therefore art depicting a setting shouldn't exist.

I never said it was impossible to imagine things beyond a piece of art, or that it compelled a certain type of play. The word I used was "hard", and I talked about "conceptions" and "preconceptions", which are tendencies or biases, not absolutes. You're not reading what I said, you're substituting very different words and responding to that.

Quote from: Haffrung;1134777I expect the only time an artist drawing women is given the instruction that "no skin should be exposed except the face" is if they're doing a catalogue for the Amish.

I've never much cared for excessive cheesecake in fantasy art. Nudity doesn't bother me at all though. There's a difference. I generally like the art in the LotFP products... where most females are depicted in period dress, and when there is nudity it's not 'sexy' (IMO).

But I'm also pefectly happy with no art at all... if the text is designed well (Classic Traveller) and not too bloated (D&D 5e).

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134790Every thing that Brom does is worth every dime. He brought Dark Sun to life and is one of the greatest [strike]RPG[/strike] artists ever.

Fixed that for you.

For me, the most interesting thing about the first thread (I'm not going to bother with the second) is how few ENWorlders actually understand that a publishing company cannot pay you money it doesn't have. There is no higher authority to appeal to. A union won't help. It's simple mathematics: The pie is this big. And that's that.

I've been in industries where incomes have dropped. I've been in industries where incomes have increased. Guess where I focus? I'm 51 now and I can remember having conversations with Dad in high school about what fields interest me and which of those fields were better than others. Those sorts of conversations are a normal part of growing up.

I don't understand why the Owens of this world simply cannot grasp that the field they have chosen does not pay well and cannot pay well and that, therefore, the wisest course of action is to take your skills (or acquire new/improved skills) and go somewhere else. Even a beggar soon learns to move from one street corner to another if his plastic cup is getting filled.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;1134737Bah. Next you'll be telling me that cavemen and dinosaurs never lived at the same time.

  Uhh, they were not Cavemen, they were Alien Astronaut humans with lasers and Cyborg right arms that rode dinosaurs.  Is that not common knowledge?

Quote from: Pat;1134797It is the actual definition of a strawman. A strawman is when someone doesn't respond what was actually said, but instead replies as if the other person made a different argument, which is usually a variant on the real argument, but weaker, or transparently flawed. It's an example of putting words in someone else's mouth. You should be able to figure out on your own why it's considered a logical fallacy. It's also a conversation ender, because it's impossible to have a discussion when one side is ignoring what the other side says. It's like talking to an annoying wall.

A straw man is an intentional mischaracterization of what someone said with the purpose of attacking a weaker but superficially similar argument. It's not just responding to a different argument (which I disagree even happened), but specifically intentional, rather than just a honest misunderstanding of what the other person was trying to say, for example. Which is why...

Quote from: Pat;1134797I didn't say anything about your motives, nor did I reframe any of your points. I pointed out you based your argument on something I never said.

...yes you did. The fact that you called my argument a "straw man" then doubled down by accusing me of "fabricating" thing (which also implies intentionality) means that you did impugn my intentions and reframed my points into a different type of message than what I was actually trying to convey. You retard.

Quote from: Pat;1134797Shrieking Banshee, out of nowhere, decided to attack me. I responded, proportionally. No idea why Banshee did that. It was out of the blue. And I know what part of your post is your opinion, and which part was putting words in my mouth.

Banshee pointed out a contradiction in your argument and made an observation about you framing your opinions as objective fact. All accurate assessments and descriptions of what you were saying, IMO. Then you went off on him like a raving lunatic. You truly are an oxymoron.

Quote from: Pat;1134797You should follow your own advice, and look up the definition of strawman. That's not even close.

You've alluded to the idea that I dismissed your entire post, because of your strawman, several times. You're mistaken, I dismissed your strawman, and addressed your other arguments. You should realize that, because you responded to the points I made.

I was being sarcastic and imitating your style of argumentation by clinging to an insignificant portion of your post that wasn't exactly what I actually said (or even mentioned in my post at all) and calling it a "straw man". You mongoloid.

Quote from: Pat;1134797You're correct, you can convey some of those specific types of details in art. That's fairly obvious. But those details aren't necessary. They're not essential to running the setting. That's a distinction I've been trying to make: Those are the kind of details that can be easily made up on the fly, and in fact the game works better when they're made up on the fly.

Also, art is often terrible at presenting that kind of information. Yes, you can pick up some general ideas of style, complexions, and so on; but art tends to be unrepresentative, inconsistent, can be hard to interpret, and is usually focused more on things like showing action than on conveying concrete information. And to give a good overview of any of those topics, the art really needs to be presented in a more diagrammatic form, say a line of figures separated by sex, age, and social class, showing different styles of dress. Even then, some (textual) discussion is almost necessary. Architecture probably works better, because cityscapes can show a lot; but crowds where a wide variety of people can be easily distinguished are rarer, probably because drawing that many human figures can be an enormous amount of work.

You're still missing the point that the purpose of art isn't to convey concrete information or replace text descriptions, but supplement them by providing visual examples of what the world is about to fill the audience's imagination and inspire potential players who give zero fucks about reading the damn thing. The vast majority of people are visually oriented, not a tiny subset of uber-nerds that prefer to get their descriptions from written material. And from a business standpoint, which is part of the purpose of publishing game books to sell them, you want focus on the common denominator, not just a tiny subset of the population that will never be large enough to return your investment, much less make you a profit.

And most of these "limitations" of art that you're mentioning, like sometimes being inconsistent, are issues of art direction, or potentially limits in the skill of individual artists, rather than fundamental issues of art itself.

Quote from: Pat;1134797This section is completely irrational. The phrase "that's not how I think" was a caveat that marked the whole section as an opinion. It's literally got an "IMO" built right in, but you're interpreting the IMO as a statement of absolute fact. That's upsidedownbackwards.

And I'm not rationalizing anything, I'm explaining my reasoning. Which is more or less the point of having a discussion. Would you like me to start using loaded and dismissive words in every sentence? It might be a fun exercise.

You've been doing great so far.

Quote from: Pat;1134797I never said it was impossible to imagine things beyond a piece of art, or that it compelled a certain type of play. The word I used was "hard", and I talked about "conceptions" and "preconceptions", which are tendencies or biases, not absolutes. You're not reading what I said, you're substituting very different words and responding to that.

No, I am responding to what you said. You're just clinging to words and phrases that you take issue with and missing the forest for the trees. As you tend to do every time you accuse people of "straw men".

Quote from: Zalman;1134866Fixed that for you.

Accurate. Though, it took me a while to notice you used strikethrough on "RPG". But yeah, Brom's greatness transcends RPGs and moves across the entire fantasy genre and illustration as a field of art itself.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891A straw man is an intentional mischaracterization of what someone said with the purpose of attacking a weaker but superficially similar argument. It's not just responding to a different argument (which I disagree even happened), but specifically intentional, rather than just a honest misunderstanding of what the other person was trying to say, for example. Which is why...

...yes you did. The fact that you called my argument a "straw man" then doubled down by accusing me of "fabricating" thing (which also implies intentionality) means that you did impugn my intentions and reframed my points into a different type of message than what I was actually trying to convey. You retard.

Not true, there's nothing that says a strawman has to be intentional. In fact, defining it based on intent would be creating a new fallacy, because it would involve ascribing motives to the other person, instead of addressing what they actually said. And arguments based on the supposed internal state of the other person aren't good arguments.

And while fabricated does imply a deliberate action, it doesn't follow that that all the results of the creation were intended by the creator. Saying something is fabricated and responding to it, as I did, does not require saying anything about the creator's intent, and I didn't. So that doesn't support your argument.

Also, I have no way of knowing what you're "trying" to say, except via the words you used to express them.

So no, I did not saying anything about your intentions, nor did I reframe anything you said. I addressed what you actually said.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891Banshee pointed out a contradiction in your argument and made an observation about you framing your opinions as objective fact. All accurate assessments and descriptions of what you were saying, IMO. Then you went off on him like a raving lunatic. You truly are an oxymoron.

There was no contradiction, and reading what I said as a statement of absolute fact was ridiculous. Since he Banshee was using a nothing argument as a vehicle for a few indirect jabs like "yapping", I called him out for it. I don't believe in passive-aggressive sniping. If someone's being an asshole, I try to show them respect by saying it to them directly.

Note you're doing the exact same thing here, making nonsense arguments without even a pretense of a supporting argument, and mixing it in with phrases like "raving lunatic", and the way you used "oxymoron". And you've been doing it non-step for several posts. So you're an asshole, too.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891I was being sarcastic and imitating your style of argumentation by clinging to an insignificant portion of your post that wasn't exactly what I actually said (or even mentioned in my post at all) and calling it a "straw man". You mongoloid.

No, I pointed an actual strawman argument you made. You did not.

And you haven't dropped the argument. If it's so insignificant, why are you clinging to it?

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891You're still missing the point that the purpose of art isn't to convey concrete information or replace text descriptions, but supplement them by providing visual examples of what the world is about to fill the audience's imagination and inspire potential players who give zero fucks about reading the damn thing. The vast majority of people are visually oriented, not a tiny subset of uber-nerds that prefer to get their descriptions from written material. And from a business standpoint, which is part of the purpose of publishing game books to sell them, you want focus on the common denominator, not just a tiny subset of the population that will never be large enough to return your investment, much less make you a profit.

And most of these "limitations" of art that you're mentioning, like sometimes being inconsistent, are issues of art direction, or potentially limits in the skill of individual artists, rather than fundamental issues of art itself.

No, I didn't miss that point. It's a separate point, which I made earlier. I also made the marketing argument before you did.

BTW, the part about "you want to focus on the common denominator"? I've never talked about what publishers should be doing. I've only talked about how people think and react to art, and what I find important. So that's another instance of you putting words in my mouth.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134891You've been doing great so far.

Nope. When I call someone an asshole, I call someone an asshole. I don't play games like that.

Quote from: Scrivener of Doom;1134871For me, the most interesting thing about the first thread (I'm not going to bother with the second) is how few ENWorlders actually understand that a publishing company cannot pay you money it doesn't have. There is no higher authority to appeal to. A union won't help. It's simple mathematics: The pie is this big. And that's that.

Everything you said was factual and correct, thus Cancel Culture mobs will be descending shortly to punish you.

What we're seeing is the result of two generations who received progressive/communist indoctrination in school and no economic education.

I'm sure there will be no negative repercussions for society. Zero. Nada. None.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134885Uhh, they were not Cavemen, they were Alien Astronaut humans with lasers and Cyborg right arms that rode dinosaurs.  Is that not common knowledge?

Sadly, most people don't know Kung Fury is a historical documentary.

"It's the Viking Age. That explains the Laser Raptor." is my favorite line.

[video=youtube;bS5P_LAqiVg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bS5P_LAqiVg[/youtube]

Quote from: Pat;1134897When I call someone an asshole, I call someone an asshole. I don't play games like that.

This is true regarding Pat.

But I'm mysterious. When I call someone an asshole, I might secretly think they're a dickhole instead.

A community service announcement from Spinachcat.

Quote from: Hakdov;11345331981 Sears Christmas Book

https://christmas.musetechnical.com/ShowCatalogPage/1981-Sears-Christmas-Book/0664

Those hardback prices dont jibe with that was seeing in game stores and department stores way back.

Quote from: oggsmash;1134885Uhh, they were not Cavemen, they were Alien Astronaut humans with lasers and Cyborg right arms that rode dinosaurs.  Is that not common knowledge?

Now you're just giving me an excuse to post Dino-Riders art.

I rest my case.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1134790Every thing that Brom does is worth every dime. He brought Dark Sun to life and is one of the greatest RPG artists ever.

He is good, but he is no Elmore.

Quote from: Pat;1134897Since he Banshee was using a nothing argument as a vehicle for a few indirect jabs like "yapping", I called him out for it.

Perhaps I shouldn't have said yapping, I should not have dismissed your preferences in such a way and perhaps in such a way, I made the conversation more aggressive.

But I stand for everything else I said, I still see your beliefs as oxymoronic and you are trying to frame your preferences as objective, and while demanding merit to the views that you self describe as subjective, you then put no merit to the preferences of others that would also be subjective, and under your own logic would not need an 'In my opinion' tag.