Sunday, January 9, 2011

Visualising your game world / Consistent look and feel part I

Early last year I went on a road trip with one of my buddies, and, with us both being big geeks, we spent a large proportion of the journey talking about gaming.
I'd bought the music for the journey, and commented that we were basically listening to the soundtrack to 'my' World of Darkness. My friend returned that as he'd only ever played World of Darkness games that i'd run, he fully agreed.
Which was good. It meant I was being consistent, at least with the back ground music I played.

So, thinking about this, may I present to you what I think the World of Darkness looks like.
The cover to the Gutter Twins "Saturnalia" album

Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan - The Gutter Twins

Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan

Tom Waits and somebody who looks like Iggy Pop, but probably isn't

Tom Waits

NightHawks by Edward Hopper
This came up on a Tom Waits search, which is good, as I wanted to include it
Edward Hopper's New York Movie




Castiel, from Supernatural. Note the occult symbols in the background
I had to wade through tonnes of 'Wincest' images to get this
The shadows, poor lighting, squalor and constant rain in Se7en fit
nicely within 'my' World of Darkness
The Paper Street house from Fight Club
I would say that this post serves as visual reference document for my games, which is usually easier to produce and more effective than a 500 word essay on the game world. It's also worth pointing out that all RPG books act as a visual reference to the setting, so the above is more my interpretation and presentation of it.
I am also prepared for long time players of my games to (correctly) point out that until about 2004, all my games were set in small towns and backwaters.

In a future post I intend to talk about what my World of Darkness sounds like, once I decide on the best way to link / embed music and video

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