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Art Misdirection in Fantasy GM Squared

When I was younger and even more in my feelings than I am now, I remember angrily scrawling a list of People I Was NOT, and it was just one person (my Father, with whom I did not get on) and I hid this “list” in much the same ineffectual way that other, savvier young people hide erotica.  That was at least half my life ago; these days, my Father nods in approval at my wife downloading Signal, and texts me his protest signage to proofread.  Time makes fools of us all.

But my adolescent proclamation wasn’t an entirely useless exercise.  As an Artistic Director of a theatre company, I sit in on a lot of designer presentations, and often the designers in question will bring in reference materials to show the kind of pallette / style / vibe they are going for, to give a preview, talk goals, get on the same page.  While this is one of my favourite parts of first rehearsals (which are almost always 45 minutes too long for my old bones), I feel it’s incomplete without the somewhat pettier counterpart; what it is that you want to avoid.  If your lighting design presentation focuses on trying to achieve a noir sensibility, I want to hear how dark is too dark, or what inspirational dead ends you already know to avoid.  And to return to my original example, if you’re an angry, confused, angry hormonal biracial teen stuffed to the brim with angst and you don’t know WHO YOU ARE, who you aren’t really isn’t a bad place to start.  Knowing what to rule out can be a very useful point in the right direction.

… What the FUCK does any of that have to do with game design.  I’m so glad you (nobody) asked! Seeing as how it’s a Wednesday and not, therefore, a Mechanic Monday or TTRPG Tuesday, I thought I’d use this wibbly undefined time and space to write about Fantasy GM Squared’s Aesthetics, on a spectrum of Want to Do Not Want.  Let’s start with a text list and then maybe I’ll be arsed to put it on a linear graph.

DO NOT WANT:
Cartoony
Funny
Jokey
Satirical
Klemens “Fifth Grade Manga Club” Franz
Uncanny Valley
TMG Games
John Kovalic
Rob Lundy
Eurogame fuckery
Ameritrash Photos with a filter
Buttonshy

DO WANT:
Seiji Kanai
Kyle Ferrin
Kwanchai Moriya
Sports
Cool
Evocative
Elegant
Badass
Guildball
Uniforms
M:tG

In the middle:
Mutant League
Abstract

Bear in mind, that the axis is just “Whether I like it or not”, so the reasons for each element’s place on the graph varies.  That being said, let’s plot out where exactly everything lives in relation to one another:




And that’s that on that.  It’s not a perfect representation of aesthetic but I think that it’s clarifying and a good shorthand, particularly for setting and managing expectations with collaborators.  Alright, time to actually show this to my Fantasy GM Squared co-conspirators and see how much they hate it!

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