Back in the days of my youth, Chaosium RPGs would sometimes include size comparison illustrations like the one above from Call of Cthulhu. I loved them, because, in addition to giving me some idea what some of the weirder creatures looked like (if only in silhouette), they also provided a very clear sense of just how big many of them actually were.
I was reminded of this recently when I was chatting with a friend. During the conversation, the topic of dragons and their ballooning size came up – a topic dear to my heart. Compare, for example, this smallish dragon
This isn't simply a matter of me being a grumpy old man yelling at "kids today" and their preference for absurdly large dragons. Rather, it's about the importance of paying attention to scale. If you look at the first of these illustrations, what you see is a "small" beast that, if it were real, would likely inflict a massive amount of damage on anyone that dared attack it. The second dragon, meanwhile, is so unbelievably big that I find it strains credibility to imagine its being under threat by the two puny figures fighting against it – even in a heroic fantasy setting. I have no problem whatsoever with big monsters, but, if one of them is as big as the second dragon, can the characters meaningfully harm it?
All of this is simply to say that I think we, as fantasy roleplayers, frequently think too little about the size of things and how it should impact the events in our adventures and campaigns.
"The second dragon, meanwhile, is so unbelievably big that I find it strains credibility to imagine its being under threat by the two puny figures fighting against it – even in a heroic fantasy setting."
ReplyDeleteClearly it's not under threat, which is why the third puny figure (in the bottom left corner) is running away thinking "OH SH*T!!!"
And the fourth: the fighter (or whatever it was before it got crushed) in its maw ;)
DeleteAlso note: it's set the rock itself on fire (or, it's a napalm-like thing - but a flourine fire is neater concept).
Oh, and I now notice the dragon has chomped a fourth puny figure...this picture makes me think Bilbo Baggins was right about adventures.
ReplyDeleteIt has also, apparently, taken a bite out of the hillside. :D
DeleteI was thinking it had melted the missing bits of rock, which raises some other questions about how squishy little humanoids are supposed to survive one of its attacks. Granite melts at over 1200 degrees Celsius, which is quite a bit hotter than a crematorium's ovens.
DeleteI've always had this same scale concern regarding pit depth and falling damage.
ReplyDeleteIn what system?
DeleteOh yeah, there are theories out there that falling damage is not the total, but should be summed.
DeleteLance, it's not a theory:
Deletehttps://www.dragonsfoot.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=42201
That clears things up, thanks! I'm more shocked that I actually remembered something correctly!
DeleteOne of the things I like about 1st Edition AD&D is that it had scale built into its dragon rules, with their specs on different ages and dragon abilities. Want a dragon that can't speak or use spells, but breaths fire and is a challenge for one or two PC's? You can do it with a young dragon. Want a dragon that sacks a dwarven city single handed and tells riddles with hobbits? A very old dragon fits the bill, or even ancient.
ReplyDeletenot to handwave away, but we do play fantasy, so the weight concerns do not bother me. these are fantastic creatures, and they do things we see as mingboggling.
ReplyDeleteI rarely play RPGs without minis these days, and I find having suitably sized monster figs leads to the players suddenly becoming much more cautious about what they're willing to fight. Even something the size of that "smallish" dragon would have folks looking for ways to avoid a "fair" fight, and I've got a few stupidly huge models that are mostly indications that it's time to run away.
ReplyDeleteSo...if getting people to think about scale is important, try minis.
I agree. I wish I had the space and resources (and painting skills) to make good use of miniatures.
DeleteStorage space remains an issue, but modern plastics are easier somewhat easier to store and much easier to transport than lead or resin figs are. Also (assuming you aren't buying Games Workshop figs) far more economical, especially for larger minis than metal or resin.
DeletePlenty of paint-for-pay services out there if you don't want to do the brushwork yourself, as well as various ranges of prepaints.
I go back and forth about minis. I do love them, but having a sufficient collection for the types of games I run is a pain. Of course it's also moot these days since I've been gaming on Roll20 for the past several years...
DeleteWhen I started with D&D we didn't have minis (even though I had originally rejected D&D for not being a miniatures game...) but by 1979 I was using minis. In college I switched to counters at one point because they were easier to manage, then back to minis for PCs (with counters for opponents). In the 2000s my D&D 3.x gaming started with counters then I collected enough of the D&D Miniatures Game minis...
Maybe the minis will come back out if I end up gaming with my kids.
Much as I love my minis, there is a lot to be set for tokesn/counters/standees and similar options. They've gotten a lot prettier over the years (as have the maps and tiles they live on) but even some of teh early ones were very nice. Denis Loubet's art on Cardboard Heroes from Steve Jackson Games remains a nostalgic fave of mine.
DeleteAgree. The same with Jeff Dee's superhero set!
DeleteSpeaking of Dee, Villains & Vigilantes counters were pretty great for their day. I used them for years in multiple different supers games, and I'd still be doing so if the collection hadn't drowned in a flood.
DeleteWhich loss led to me painting almost everything in Old Glory's Supefigs range, so some silver lining there.
Is the horse weirdly small in the medieval drawing? Or the knight a giant?
ReplyDeleteWas pretty sure it wasn't a medieval drawing and looked around. Seems it's from an early- to late-18th century edition of Caspar Schott's Physica Curiosa:
Deletehttps://www.strangescience.net/stdino2.htm
Either the artist simply wasn't a good one or was broadly copying an earlier picture (and medieval illustrations, by and large, aren't concerned with realistic depictions, especially those involving perspective, but rather size as a symbol for importance eg the horseman in the original might have been someone of some importance so was depicted as being larger than his horse as well as the dragon).
This is St. George slaying the dragon. Considering how he became the patron saint of England, I'd say some people consider him to be pretty important!
DeleteDennis, how do you figure it's St. George?
DeleteHis dog must be very important too!
DeleteDogs, plural. There are two of them.
DeleteI mean, you wouldn't dare tackle a dragon with only one dog to help. Might as well just cut your own throat. :)
Great post,thanks. I hadn't thought about this aspect of the inflationary and narcissistic trends in rpgs. Relates to those goofy, enotmous-bladed swords characters are portrayed carrying in later editions too, I guess.
ReplyDeleteI hope you'll do a post at some point (if you haven't already) on the increasingly impractical, absurd, and haute couture / urban shaman armor and costuming in the art. (Though Dee and Otus were sometimes guilty of this too.)
You could explain part of that trend by changes in the market.
DeleteEarly D&D players got their ideas of what fantasy should look like from book (and album, if you listened to the right bands) covers, movie and tv media from an era before CGI, and often some degree of historical knowledge. The actual art in OD&D is also pretty crude and leaves a lot of room for interpretation and imaginations to take over.
Today's players come from multiple generations who grew up with different influences. CGI has largely replaced practical effects in video, and that's freed it from the relatively realistic restrictions of doing things with makeup and models. Video games have become a common "first exposure" to fantasy tropes, and for better or worse they tend to be very over-the-top and "heroic" - and modern fantasy genre books often imitate that style now. Some of that grows out of the relative crudeness of early game graphics, which made realistic creature sprites difficult to pull off without exaggerated features - which stuck around to some degree even as graphics improved.
The style change in D&D really took off with 3.0, and some of that can be traced to Magic. WotC quite sensibly used many artists from the CCG for the RPG, and their styles (and their art direction) often followed video game influences. And it sold, and sold very well, so they leaned into it even more with 4e. It's a slight exaggeration that 4e looks just like World of Warcraft did in its day, but there's certainly some truth to it.
The general gaming community has become much more demanding about artwork over the years too. Outside of a few OSR products and indie games that are trying to make a stylistic statement, companies can't and don't skimp on art budget, components quality, and general polish the way they could in the 80s. There's less room for player imaginations to work now than the old days when the visuals were rougher.
"Why are dwarves small you ask? So them damn ogres can't fit in our cave. Its an evolutionary defense mechanism. The best part is they keep getting bigger and we stay the same size."
ReplyDeleteTwo thoughts:
ReplyDelete(1) the ginormous monsters ‘work’ if you think of the characters (at high levels) as superhumanly heroic— like, able to punch though a palace wall, lift a mountain, etc. You could call it “anime” but this kind of stuff is also found throughout tall tales and legends — from Paul Bunyan to mythological heroes.
(2) IMHO most D&D mini monsters look *really* small! >_< The dragons aren’t nearly big enough! It’s one area where I feel ‘realism’ clashes with the feel.
When you visit a natural history museum, and see one of those restored dinosaur skeletons, it strikes home how ridiculous it is to attack such a beast armed with a handweapon and a shield.
ReplyDeleteKids today! Everything was better when I was a kid. :)
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Of course, I'm a time traveler from a post-mortality future of universal peace and love doing some historical research into what's generally regarded as the absolute worst three millenia of human existence. The temporal natives around here would make me pity them if they didn't do it all to themselves.
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