There's a rather good Tumblr feed called In Male Dress. It features many photos from a wide variety of re-enactment and other sources. Some of these feature women wearing different styles of armour.
At some point or another I'll get around to doing a sequel to my earlier post bemoaning the silliness that is the so-called 'breastplate' one sees far too often in RPG artwork. In the meantime, a glance over the images from this Tumblr feed should hopefully show that such things aren't required. If anything, photos from reality are way cooler...
Twilight: 2000 is an RPG born out of the Cold War.
I was born in 1969, and the Cold War started to come into focus for me in the
late 70s and early 80s – and I didn’t like it at all. The one thing that really
terrified me was the threat of nuclear war. I grew up near a major air base
(RNAS Yeovilton) and a principal aviation factory (Westland Helicopters), so I
knew that I would be vaporised should the Cold War turn hot. Because of this,
life did sometimes feel like there was a lid on it – sure, I carried on with
things (going to school, playing RPGs, listening to heavy metal, watching a lot
of bad straight-to-video movies, etc), but there was always this nagging sense
that somewhere in the background things could get nasty very quickly. Various
themes from the time fed into that sense – the Falklands War, the Soviet Army
fighting in Afghanistan, the Lebanese War and various other conflicts covered
by the news on TV. TV also did much to add to my fears by showing programmes
such as Threads...
To this day, watching it still makes me uncomfortable. The US attempt at such scariness, The Day After, was (to my mind, then and
now) somehow watered down and almost more like sci-fi. British TV was once very
good at creating gritty, stark programmes and I don’t think anyone really
topped their output.
I remember reading an issue of White Dwarf at school in 1984
and seeing an advert for Twilight: 2000, deciding then and there to buy it
whenever I got the chance. I liked the idea of a game where you had to try and
survive after World War III. As with my recent Ebay trawling for Car Wars, I’ve
just gotten my hands on a pretty decent copy of Twilight: 2000...
I've included the FFE compendium (top right) as I'm a completist. Note the original game dice.
If you’re not familiar with the game’s back story, there’s
an overview here.
What follows is an overview of the 1st Edition rules that I’ve
played the most – I’ll state here and now that this version does a better job
than later reworks. Over the years I’ve read various articles slating it as
both a game and a system. Some think that nowadays the game seems ‘unrealistic’
(and this is coming from people who probably don’t use the same critiques for
D&D etc), because the world it creates no longer seems plausible. Others
think that the system is clunky. I don’t share the view of either point. Firstly,
I don’t think people are really judging the game for its ‘What if...?’ value. Like
all RPGs, the game works from a certain premise. Sure, real world events
overtook the premise of Twilight: 2000, but that doesn’t make it defunct. You
could still play it for the story it’s trying to tell. Nowadays, it’s simply a
fantasy that has links to certain realities.
As for the game system, one of its strengths is the way it
tries to model some quite complex concepts (combat, illness, survival,
radiation), and I don’t think that any other RPG has topped the way things were
done in Twilight: 2000. Skills are easy enough – your character (some form of
military personnel) starts with some, and you can buy others on a point for point
basis. As these work around percentile values, there’s nothing difficult about
it. These percentages affect the outcome of an action or event, and are modified
on the basis of whether they are Easy, Average or Difficult to carry out. This
covers anything from riding a horse, to making things, to firing weapons. At
the same time, even high level skill values don’t make you some sort of god.
Your rolls are always modified by the difficulty of the task at hand, so
success isn’t necessarily a given. As the game is strongly based around its
combat system, some may feel that it’s a bit complicated. On the surface, this
is true – especially so of modelling the effects of rounds striking vehicles.
However, some basic familiarity with it soon pays off. If anything, things can
happen fast and can be resolved quickly, especially as the game seems more
geared towards firefights. You just have to take various factors into account –
range, whether you can fire before the other guy, etc. At the same time, combat
very much has the potential to be lethal and players who understand this have
to think and plan what they want to do, certain in the knowledge that resorting to
combat has some stark consequences. Death is somewhat likely, and surviving
with wounds isn’t a given. The environment is just as likely to finish you off
as a bullet if you get things wrong.
To my mind, this forces players to be a bit more cerebral
about combat. The same can’t be said for many RPGs. As I was the referee for
our Twilight: 2000 sessions, it was always interesting to see my gang of
players trying to figure out consequences before the fact. This was especially
so because when playing other RPGs they tended to have a much more cavalier,
gung-ho approach of the ‘shoot first...’ variety. On top of all of this, the
world setting in the game pitched the players against odds which were never in
their favour. They were, after all, trying to survive in a (probably) foreign
country that had come off the worst for nuclear exchanges and many years of
bloody fighting. As soldiers, no-one was telling them what they should do – the
last radio message from their HQ was ‘Good luck. You’re on your own, now’. The
game, sensibly, provides no moral compass for what they should do. Because of
such factors, it was a challenge to play and referee as an RPG.
We played Twilight: 2000 a great deal. As it was a GDW game,
it was strongly supported by reference material and scenarios and these did
much to add flavour to the experience. My guys managed to survive quite well
over the years. Most of them were from the US infantry (i.e. Rasche, a giant
Yiddish-speaking Spec 4, and Markowitz the medic), although we had one or two Warsaw
Pact deserters - all being led, in a way, by a British combat engineer. Nomadic
for most of the time, they teamed up for a while with a NATO-friendly Polish
commander who was trying to rebuild his area of control. They finally managed
to rejoin a more organised NATO force, only to then be moved to the Middle East
in an effort to secure Iranian oil fields...
I decided to get the FFE compendium of the 1st
Edition stuff because it seems to have some interesting extras (i.e. details of
the games sales figures, various scenarios) and it’s handy for me to have
everything bundled together. At the same time, it’s great to have the actual 1984
issue of the game back in my hands again. It’s actual approach to the subject
(and I think this was lost in later editions) is sobre and measured. This is
particularly true of the interior artwork, as there’s no attempt at going for clichéd
approaches to the subject matter. One other factor of note is that it features
women on the box cover who aren’t in silly poses and are depicted as sensibly
as the male figures.
Could it still be played today as an RPG? Well, you may have
to explain the Cold War to players born after 1990 – or research it yourself if
the same time-frame applies to you. Even if you narrow your approach to the way
things were in the 1980s, taking some time to research the period would pay
off. To be honest, if you’re more familiar with the idea of ‘The War on Terror’,
the idea of the Cold War isn’t all that different – it could be said that the
latter is just not as nebulous and as open to interpretation as the former. It
would also be possible to abandon the idea of playing in the post-apocalyptic
world of the original game and instead use the rules to play in some other
setting. There are conflicts, old and new, in which the game system would still
work.
One thing to always bear in mind, however, is that is first
and foremost a game about survival...
As I've said before, the way women are depicted in many fantasy RPGs is usually pretty poor. I was going to consider how this tends to revolve around the artists apparently being obsessed with showing cleavage no matter what, and that the depiction of women in armour was not immune from this. This was then going to segway into the impracticality of such designs - but someone has beaten me to it.
As that article points out, the type of armour shown in the above photo would cause problems to the wearer should she fall forwards. Even with a padded jack underneath, the amount of damage caused by blunt trauma wouldn't be at all pleasant. You also don't really want to have anything that acts as a handy channel for weapon strikes against vital organs. Traps and channels on armour, shield bosses and weapons are there to snag or interfere with the path of an attack in some way. Ideally that means that the attack is kept away from the vitals, limbs, etc. A similar principle occurs with another armoured thing - tanks. Certain parts of a tank can, if not designed correctly, act as 'shell traps' for incoming rounds. Sometimes this traps those rounds near vital areas, such as the drivers position. Not good.
The article makes note of female armour in Mass Effect 2, but I'd say that that's also barking up the wrong tree. First and foremost, it's pointlessly sexualised in a way that the man's armour is not. If the same thing was done with the man's armour - say, the inclusion of
a large, protruding armoured codpiece - most people would say 'That
looks ridiculous'. But for some reason this sort of silliness generally isn't pointed out
when women's armour is sexualised. Secondly, it's not at all practical for someone who may need to lie prone when firing a weapon, take cover, crawl, etc (and the same rule would apply to the armoured codpiece). Take an illustration from modern body armour - here, for example. Note that there's no mention of women needing an armour that both seperates and supports. It just needs changing in a few key areas to better match the anatomical differences. The same factors would apply to women wearing armour in a fantasy RPG setting.
What does this mean for an artist wishing to avoid the common cliches? Well, the simple fact of the matter is that there's pretty much little difference in the way that men and women look whilst wearing armour. This is especially so with plate armour, and if a full-face helmet is worn. However, that doesn't mean that there aren't subtle visual cues. If we consider the fact that, even in a fantasy RPG setting, men and women fighters would have had to have trained with their armour since an early age we could perhaps take our cues from modern imagery. One possible consideration could be male and female athletes from the same sports. There are similarities in their body shapes to a certain extent (depending on the sport), but there are also differences. At the end of the day this boils down to a couple of factors. One: an understanding of anatomy (hint: breasts aren't solid masses). Two: observation of how things can look in real life and drawing on that for inspiration. Three: developing an understanding of what's being observed (for example, how is the armour constructed? Is it part of a layered suit?). Whilst I might hesitate to say that many RPG artists lack such skills, it does seem that they are willfully abandoning them in order to follow a more hackneyed approach. That doesn't ultimately send out the right sort of signals, both about the outlook of the artist nor whatever RPG is using the artwork.
One other factor that seems to feed into this is the way women are portrayed in other fantasy art. I'd say the main culprit is comic art, of the super hero variety. Super heroines tend to wear 'boob socks', and it seems that the fashion has been translated into armour somewhere along the way. Maybe with a nod towards being slightly less silly, but silly nontheless.
But it's not all doom and gloom. We don't have to be stuck with chainmail bikinis and those breastcup cuirasses. There are depictions out there of women in armour that aren't rubbish. For example...
The above image is of Theresa Wendland, and comes from here
And here's a more naturalistic pose (okay, it's not armour but there is a weapon involved)...
I wish I knew where this originally came from. I dug it out from Tumblr somewhere and haven't been able to find it via Tin Eye...
See? All pretty good! And not a chainmail bikini in sight. Okay, so perhaps some of the above are a little stylised. What if we consider how a woman might look when engaged in combat with a sword or other weapon? Here's one interesting video, featuring Theresa Wendland:
Their training weapons are a bit heavier than actual fighting versions, but you get the idea. Note the stances, attacks and parries used in the above clip - all apparently sourced from actual fighting treatises from the Medieval period. And a tad different from the sort of fighting stances one sees women posed into for RPGs. Here's something a little more florid, although equally of interest and featuring Virginia Hankins:
Hopefully all of the above demonstrates that we don't have to keep treading the well-worn Dreaded Path of Ye Olde Fantasy Clichés. Artists can chose not to go down it, and hopefully one day more of them will. Women don't have to be dressed up in silly 'armour' and costumes for RPG settings. It just takes a bit of time and effort, and less of a closeted mindview as to how women are depicted.
Although it focuses more on artwork from comics, anime and digital RPGs, those providing artwork for paper 'n' dice RPGs should take note. As I pointed out in one of my previous blog posts, the depiction of women in RPGs is usually awful. Escher Girls does a great job of showing the same sort of silliness going on in other types fantasy artwork. For me, this works well on several levels:
- It shows that there seems to be little interest in actually depicting women in any sort of realistic manner, either thematically or physically.
- It shows how bad a lot of artwork is. Many artists either have no idea how to actually draw, and/or ignore anatomy in order to create some very weird poses. These are also sexualised, for some reason or other. Okay they can't draw men either, but they don't seem to try and make them fit into such poses. I suspect that what's actually going on is that artists are copying other artists, rather than learning how to to draw. This may explain why modern comics seem to be distorting things even more than older comics. Or, it may be that 'how to' guides by established artists also have a poor attitude towards the subject.
- It's thought-provokingly funny. By deconstructing the various images, it shows how badly done most of them are and at the same time makes it very clear how far such imagery goes in it's crassness. This works especially well when the the characters are changed to being men. It's also interesting to see how changes can be made in order to make the images actually work.
Mixed in with all of this are a variety of posts which consider what's going on in the imagery and what it suggests about the various attitudes and assumptions involved. As with the Gaming As Women blog, it does a very good job at holding these things up for consideration.
The world of RPG art is still pretty much making the same mistakes as
many comics, anime, etc. It's obviously not because it's trying to treat
the subject matter with any sort of balanced consideration. Or maybe it's just laziness. Either way, it should be easy enough to fix if enough time and consideration is given to the subject. It would also help on a technical level. Artists should be familiar with anatomy. They should have been to life drawing classes - or should plan on going to some. Don't simply copy what others have drawn. If instead you can only copy from photos, find some good ones. Even somewhere such as Flickr has enough stuff to pick from that doesn't rely on clichés.
One thing that's always bugged me about RPGs - especially those with a fantasy setting - is that they can tend to be chock full o' clichés. Not so much in how they read as a system or a world as such, but how they present themselves to potential players (and everybody else, for that matter). I noticed this as a new player back in the 80s, and it still seems to be a thorn in my side today. It doesn't seem to be as much of a 'problem' for, say, sci-fi or horror RPGs. Okay, this may be more about artwork than anything else, but art can sometimes be it's own strong theme within any given RPG. We can't deny that it's used in RPGs as a way to help frame the overall vibe of the game - but it seems that some clichés just won't go away. So let's consider a few of them...
Women
Let's face it, women are usually portrayed pretty bloody poorly in a lot of fantasy RPG art. This isn't just the case in '70s era D&D, where the social mores of the time were a little... different (not that that excuses it). It's still the case nowadays. WotC and Paizo are both guilty of this with D&D and Pathfinder. Much as they may try and wriggle out of it (i.e. see this interesting post over at the excellent Gaming As Women blog), they still tend to churn out the same old crap. Or variations on it. It's not exactly original nor is it something that sends out any sort of positive signals. Do I blame the artists? Well, yes and no. Maybe they just like to draw scantily-clad women. Or maybe their art directors say they should draw them that way. Either way, it's lazy.
The interesting thing is that the game world of D&D etc doesn't really mention anything about the role that women have in them. Okay, maybe these can be inferred in some way, but that's perhaps down to who's playing the game. Things seem to be inherently less polarised than real-world modern societies. But the way RPG art handles things tends to ignore this and instead plumps for tried and tested fantasy portrayals. To my mind this actually makes things less interesting. It seems that such portrayals have missed the plot.
Equipment
What do I mean by equipment? Well, I mean clothing, weapons, armour and general kit. There seems to be a tendency in modern versions of fantasy RPGs - and, again, D&D and Pathfinder being obvious examples - to seem to want to go down the World of Warcraft/Japanese digital RPGs route. That is, equipment is portrayed in a rather silly way, and some bits tend to get ignored completely. So the overall picture of any given character type focuses on certain things at the expense of others.
Let's take armour and weapons, for instance. Originally, D&D took it's influences for such things from the Medieval period, and with good reason. The way armour and weapons evolved up to and throughout that period fits the setting well, whilst at the same time suggests a plethora of styles and designs. However, this tends to get ignored. Your average depiction of a fighter-class person tends to owe more influences to Frank Frazetta than anything else. Or, as I mentioned above, World of Warcraft in mordern versions of some fantasy RPGs. Thus we see depictions of madly impractical armour and weapons - huge swords and double-headed axes, armour that you can probably only stand up in because of the spikes, huge curved sections, etc. Again, who's to blame? Well, I'd say artists. It seems that people haven't done some actual - even basic - research. Perhaps all that actual history just isn't enough. This is a real shame because if they stopped looking at how other lazy artists have done the same thing (a copy of a copy of a copy...), they'd see that armour and weapons from history can be interestingly eccentric. To give one example: many moons ago I created some artwork for the 'Ultima Thule' sourcebook for Ars Magica. I dug into my research and looked at how Viking and Scandinavian clothing, weapons, etc should look. This fed directly into my illustrations. All of that was then undone by the cover artwork, which decided instead to resort to clichés. The Viking even has a horned helmet. Oh well. Anyway - have a look atthis page on medieval weapons and armour. Lots of odd designs there, but all evolved to be that way from practical use. This doesn't have to mean that it's boring. Similarly, if we have a look at the historical artwork of an artist like Angus McBride we can see that there's a variety of interesting shapes, designs and colours.
As for other bits of kit, things tend to get worse. Practicality is out the window. If a woman is wearing anything, it tends to be scanty in some way. If it's a magic user or magical character class, they wear some sort of elaborate cassock - unless they're a female magic user, in which case they wear something scanty but long-flowing (i.e. see the Pathfinder core rulebook cover). You rarely see 'in-action' scenes with the characters lugging about the stuff we all know they should have: rope, baggage, lighting, bedding rolls, etc. No-one seems to be wearing anything that would help you in a cold, dirty, inhospitable dungeon environment. Why can't someone depict a magic user in a more practical garb? A cassock-like thing doesn't seem all that sensible to me. Imagine the draughts, for starters.
To sum up (for now)...
Okay, this may seem like a bit of a rant. Perhaps I'm taking things too literally. But why should the depictions in fantasy RPGs be doomed to stick to clichés? It seems a bit half-arsed. Things don't seem to have changed all that much since the '80s. It's all a little too staid and predictable. Whilst I'm not saying that fantasy RPGs have to take their influences from medieval stuff, it might actually help drive things along more original paths. Failing that, is it perhaps too much to ask that something more imaginative gets added to the mix?
That's it for now - until I can write about some other stuff along similar lines. Please feel free to pick holes, disagree, etc...
