Quote from: Christopher Brady;888789And as much as I find the use of 'she' as a gender neutral pronoun annoying, one way to sell me off a book is any that uses Wayne Reynolds' art.  That man has no sense of perspective and I wish he'd lay off using wererats as his facial inspiration.

Are you an artist or engineer or something like that? Just curious, as I don't think most people would really notice the perspective. I think I understand there wererats--the people with little space between their lips and chin, right?

Quote from: Tod13;888795Are you an artist or engineer or something like that? Just curious, as I don't think most people would really notice the perspective. I think I understand there wererats--the people with little space between their lips and chin, right?

I draw, well sketch, but I'm not pro quality, however, I notice little things.  Like the pinched faces and the perspective thing.  Mr. Reynolds definitely knows how to use colour though.  He can make the figures pop, but not enough to distract from the other issues he has.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;888797but not enough to distract from the other issues he has.

Like weird females without hips?

http://orig09.deviantart.net/434b/f/2011/013/c/c/seoni_by__wayne_reynolds_by_cyderak-d3745tk.jpg

Quote from: Anselyn;888833Like weird females without hips?

http://orig09.deviantart.net/434b/f/2011/013/c/c/seoni_by__wayne_reynolds_by_cyderak-d3745tk.jpg

And 80-year-old knees where her shinbones should be.

But yeah, given that this is supposed to be cheesecake those hips are baffling. They seem detached and abstracted from every other part of her somehow.

To me that just looks like a bit of a stylistic choice (like he is going for an anime feel or something).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;888875To me that just looks like a bit of a stylistic choice (like he is going for an anime feel or something).

Last thing I'll touch on this:

The problem is that even 'Anime/Manga' knows how anatomy works, limb lengths (even when creating monsters), facial shapes and position of facial features so on and so forth.  And then there's the issues with perspective that he needs learn, desperately.  A good artist takes these tools and makes them their own.  Mr. Reynolds hasn't grasped that.  But like I said, his colour work is amazing, though.

Wayne Reynolds grasps anatomy just fine, all his excellent work for Osprey Publishing is proof of that.  For Wizards and Pathfinder, he's specifically using the DungeonPunk aesthetic.  Whether that was his idea or theirs, who knows, but it's not all he's capable of.

I played the Mutant Blue one. I tried it twice and two game-days. It was tedious. The skill system feels terribly artificial. The whole thing just jarred me out of immersion until I felt like I was playing "procedural, the party game".

I appreciate the problem, but GMing is the solution. Check out GURPS Mysteries for much better approaches to addressing this.

Quote from: trechriron;888902I appreciate the problem, but GMing is the solution. Check out GURPS Mysteries for much better approaches to addressing this.

Amen!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;888334I have the Gumshoe SRD and Mutant City Blues. I'm really grooving on it lately, but I'd like to know how others feel. Would you run it, or run it again?

Personally, I find the "automatically find the clue" mechanic to be more of a bane than a boon. It can be worked around in scenario design (and this is increasingly evident in many of the published adventures from Pelgrane), but it's a solution for a problem that doesn't actually exist which also creates a host of unfortunate tack-on problems.

For example, Trail of Cthulhu spends nearly half a page saying, "Wouldn't it be great if we hadn't modeled all social interactions with the auto-success clue-finding mechanics? That's really awkward when you want to resolve a social conflict that isn't about finding a clue. So... uh... I dunno. I guess let the PCs always auto-succeed in social conflicts. Or, uh... umm... I guess if you want a different outcome, just railroad 'em."

This is counteracted, to some degree, by the truly excellent list of investigative skills and the character creation system which spreads the investigative spotlight around without making anybody into a one-trick pony. Running the system extensively and then swapping to other games made me aware of how much an investigative scenario can be enhanced by a system that has a rich skill selection for it (as opposed to a system where everything investigatory gets shoehorned into just one or two skills).

The biggest problem I had with the system, however, was combat. The combat system is absolutely dreadful: The 1d6 vs. difficulty 3 base test for NPCs attacking PCs is deeply problematic. The balance of the game (and the longevity of the NPCs) doesn't make it feel like I'm actually just playing the opposition and seeing how things work out; it feels like I'm deciding on any given turn whether or not I'm going to auto-hit my target. It doesn't feel like playing a game; it feels like imposing my creative agenda. (And if I choose to just opt out, suddenly NPC skill ceases to matter.)

I'm also confused by a system that has really explicit mechanics for attacks at different ranges, but then lacks any sort of movement mechanic to govern those ranges. (I'm thinking about lifting the range-change mechanics from Numenera Something like: Point-Blank/Close can be traversed as part of another action. Close to Near or Near to Long is an action, but you can also make an Athletics test to go from Close to Long (or vice versa) in a single action.)

On the other hand, the point-spend mechanic seems to create a pleasant back-and-forth dynamic in actual play if you tell the players when spends are available. (Which is what Trail of Cthulhu, unlike earlier GUMSHOE games, tells you to do.) I also think that with a little more practice the structuring of NPC conversations around the use of specific abilities can provide an interesting improvisation structure for clue-gathering/interrogations.

Final verdict? I would never voluntarily select GUMSHOE as the system for anything.

HOWEVER: I'll almost certainly end up running it again, because the published scenario material is so goddamn awesome.

Ken Hite is also doing some amazing stuff with game structures: The Stability/Sanity mechanics from Trail of Cthulhu (including the metagame methods of playing out long-term madness). The Conspyramid and Vampyramid scenario structures from Night's Black Agents.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;888710I can certainly respect preferring to use 'he' (like I said, it used to be my preference in writing), but I really don't see how 'If the GM wants she can ask for a Perception roll' impedes understanding. I can see not liking it, but putting down a book over it seems an overeaction.

There's a few places in Pelgrane books where they swap pronouns while referring to the same person performing an action (i.e., stuff like "If a player attempts an action, he should roll the dice. If the roll is successful, then she will do whatever."). It's rare enough that it's clearly a proofreading failure, but it's nevertheless confusing every time it happens.

And this seems to happen in every book I've ever read that tries to use the alternating he/she "solution" to the pronoun "problem". (The actual solution is to use the gender neutral pronoun "they", which has been used as gender neutral pronoun in English longer than the word has existed. All you have to do is ignore the prescriptivist grammarians who keep trying to ban it, and you're ignoring them anyway with your alternating he/she in any case.)

In this, it's actually much like the clue-finding mechanics in GUMSHOE: It's a "solution" to a problem that doesn't exist, and its implementation actually creates new problems that didn't exist before.

(As a result, I do tend to roll my eyes whenever I see an RPG rulebook attempt to implement it.)

Quote from: Christopher Brady;888900Last thing I'll touch on this:

The problem is that even 'Anime/Manga' knows how anatomy works, limb lengths (even when creating monsters), facial shapes and position of facial features so on and so forth.  And then there's the issues with perspective that he needs learn, desperately.  A good artist takes these tools and makes them their own.  Mr. Reynolds hasn't grasped that.  But like I said, his colour work is amazing, though.

I'm pretty sure I've seen plenty of anime that disregards anatomy, but even so, I think this is basically a stylistic choice (whether it is anime, cartoon, or something else he is going for not sure, but it clearly looks like he is aiming for a style there---and it looks fine to me for what it seems he is trying to do). Can't comment on perspective though.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;888947(As a result, I do tend to roll my eyes whenever I see an RPG rulebook attempt to implement it.)

Rolling your eyes doesn't bother me. There are things that make me roll my eyes as well when I read. We all have things that irk us as readers or just get under our skin for whatever reason. But that is different from tossing a potentially good RPG book in the bin because of one of these things (which at worst is a questionable stylistic decision in most cases). It's the tossing the book over something like this that I don't quite get (I think 5E switches for example and I think if a person refused to read it or play based soley on that, they're likely missing out).

Definitely mixing them up mid-example would be confusing, and I do think that is a risk with swapping. I've tried using 'they' and it just doesn't feel right to me (I know it isn't incorrect and widely accepted, I just don't prefer it when I am writing---though I did just do it in the above paragraph). I stuck with 'he' for quite some time but after a while, it just felt like I'd be addressing more of my audience if I swapped it around (though I do worry about the mid-example issue you raise). Again, I don't hold it against anyone if they choose to go with the male third person. I defended it for years, and I still don't think there is anything wrong with it.

Quote from: Tod13;888795Are you an artist or engineer or something like that? Just curious, as I don't think most people would really notice the perspective. I think I understand there wererats--the people with little space between their lips and chin, right?

To me alot of the faces look very "flat". Not pug flat like some others do faces. But theres a notable lack of contour or nose half the time. The opposite would be Yoshihisa Tagami who tends to draw very prominent noses.

To me its simply a style and is neither good nor bad in and of itself.

This thread reminds me of an old cartoon (which coincidentally also dealt with representation issues concerning duck and rabbit). Just wait till you're deeper down the rabbit hole and people want you to start using 'fae' as a pronoun because they gender identify as Fae and think it's pretty.

But that's not the problem.

The problem is that as a writer you can't ignore this. Pronouns have become political, and any pronouns you decide to use, not use, or use 'wrong', will alienate some portion of your audience, if not create genuine hostilities. As a reader I don't give a fuck which pronouns are used when gender doesn't matter (like in RPG examples), but there is a contingent out there who believes gender always matters. And if you're the kind of person who will stop reading because of the pronouns used, well then good riddance. I have enough actual BS in my life to deal with.

We are in desperate need of a good gender neutral pronoun (besides 'they') in this political climate, because expanding them to cover the entire spectrum of human sexuality is just not an option.

#BitterMuch

Quote from: Tod13;888795Are you an artist or engineer or something like that? Just curious, as I don't think most people would really notice the perspective.

Perspective (which is related to proportion) is one of the first things people notice. Being an Artist or Engineer just means you can spot why it looks wrong and do something about it.

Quote from: Anon Adderlan;889024Perspective (which is related to proportion) is one of the first things people notice. Being an Artist or Engineer just means you can spot why it looks wrong and do something about it.

Do you have an example of the bad perspective? (I actually think Christopher actually did mean proportion, not perspective, but I may have misunderstood. The other people responding seemed to actually mean proportions too. Too me, the proportions are "style" which seems reinforced as the historical paintings have a bit less of the chinless pug-face style.)

I asked the question because in the paintings I looked at, I don't see anything egregious about the use of perspective. Perspective in the paintings I looked at is not 100% accurate, but, as an artist, sometimes you don't want 100% accurate, you want impressive or to bring out some detail. (That's why some people paint instead of render or photograph things.) I had to look for something with bad perspective specifically ignoring the rest of the painting to even see something wrong.

But I might not have looked at enough paintings. There was a sea scene painting with bad design. But...

This painting of a wizard with a dragon behind his chair http://www.waynereynolds.com/Fantasy%20Art%20gallery%201/gallery%20images/17%20pathfinder%20game%20masters%20guide.jpg was really the worse I found. And I don't really see anything wrong with it as a finished artistic piece.