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A big fan of Pathfinder here, but also an avowed nitpicker when it comes to the Golarion setting. It’s because I carebear.
I’m concerned that much of the art and flavor text (in the APs and the Gazetteer) very poorly presents the passage of time. For a setting largely occupied with unearthing ancient civilizations and secrets, this is weird. Take for example this week’s blog about the rise of Absalom. That’s Aroden there, raising the island from the sea, wearing the same long silken robe that everyone seems to favor in Golarion, 10,000 years ago to the present.
You’ll often find well preserved (non-magical) wood and cloth in Thassilon’s dungeons, weapons millennia apart made of the same materials and pitted statues dressed like the iconics.
Homes, masonry, clothing, weapon design, hairstyles – there doesn’t seem to be a thought on the aesthetic divisions between dated, old, historical and ‘frikkin’ ancient’. It’s all just a fantasy hodgepodge: “you know it’s old because it has old writing on it, and you know it’s old and evil because it’s black and spiky.”
This is a plea to consider some sort of palate when representing ancient Golarion. A hint box on designing ancient dungeons? Togas, bronze, weird domes…funny beards, something.
(PS - Absalom has the same Tudor style streets as Magnimar, Riddleport and Korvosa? Isn't it hotter there, and far away?)
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I agree.
This seems to be a general problem in fantasy literature. Stories will feature wars and feuds that have purportedly lasted 2000 years ... you mean as far back as Roman Empire? And fantasy worlds rarely move forward at rate anything like the rate our own world has progressed (mostly technologically, I mean). Magic is sometimes cited as the reason why, but even then I would assume more innovation after all those years. In the last 2000 years we've gone from decently advanced ancient societies (sewers, running water, medicine, literacy) to almost nothing in Europe and back again.
The only satisfying answer I've even found was in one of David Eddings Belgariad books (Polgara I think) where she explained that, because a certain prophesy was unfulfilled, the world was basically stuck and history would keep on repeating itself with different names and faces and with little progress until the prophesy was fulfilled.
Maybe Golarion is stuck?
I too find the odd hodgepodge distracting. Golarion can’t seem to make up its mind. Is it Victorian, Edwardian, Tudor, or something else? I understand that in some places there are highly advanced space-shippy bits – but does that mean there are flush toilets and indoor plumbing? I realize a lot of what we see is artistic license on the part of the artists. But often there is little or no rationale for things that are thrown into modules. Magic in place of technology does excuse quite a bit of what I would consider writer laziness, but then such things should be spelled out as being magical.
Golarion has clockworks, gunpowder, and printing presses. Does it have fountain pens, gas lights, and spring steel? Does it have steam compression powered watercraft? How advanced is ordinary (non-magical) medicine? Public baths? Lending libraries? I’ve seen a preponderance of museums, why? Usually cultures put old antiquities on display – but I’ve yet to see an item of primitive technology that someone somewhere wasn’t putting into everyday use. You can’t fill a museum with ancient armor and swords when everyone is still using them outside.
CJ
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Interesting points, but that's not exactly my gripe. I understand that a D&D setting requires a certain degree of technological retardation to establish a grand sense of history (without making the logical conclusion 'wizards in rocketships'). I can suspend my disbelief there.
But there are still many things you can do to add perspective to fantasy timeline. It needn't even be a matter of advancement, but of lost techniques and bygone styles, just something to establish a sense of time as well as place. I’m not asking for Golarion to mirror real world technologies, but I am asking that they put some things – some items, styles and materials – in a time period, so we might know what ancient is.
I think a good place to start would be special materials. Did they have mithril in Thassilon?
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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It could be that, just like in the modern world, styles come back, perhaps many times, and the current styles in Golarion are simply a resurgence of styles that were popular thousands of years ago. Perhaps the styles have come and gone many, many times, and the current fashions are the 94th time that they have been in fashion.
The other possibility is that since many of the modern Golarion cultures hold some of their ancient predecessors in high regard, that they are purposefully mimicing their fashions and architecture to show that they're as Azlanti as the original Azlanti were.
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In the last 2000 years we've gone from decently advanced ancient societies (sewers, running water, medicine, literacy) to almost nothing in Europe and back again.
Well, technically, there was no decline to "almost nothing". There was no advance ment for various reasons (wars, the odd Mad Monarch, the odd brief outlawing of science....), so kinda like what you are arguing against.
The idea of the darkages as a time when we regressed to pre-roman technology is nothing like true.....
...David Eddings...she explained that...
When did that happen? :D
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It could be that, just like in the modern world, styles come back, perhaps many times, and the current styles in Golarion are simply a resurgence of styles that were popular thousands of years ago. Perhaps the styles have come and gone many, many times, and the current fashions are the 94th time that they have been in fashion.
The other possibility is that since many of the modern Golarion cultures hold some of their ancient predecessors in high regard, that they are purposefully mimicing their fashions and architecture to show that they're as Azlanti as the original Azlanti were.
But how does that establish a sense of wonder or majesty? You're investigating ancient civilizations that dress exactly like you and use all the same stuff?
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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But how does that establish a sense of wonder or majesty? You're investigating ancient civilizations that dress exactly like you and use all the same stuff?It could be that, just like in the modern world, styles come back, perhaps many times, and the current styles in Golarion are simply a resurgence of styles that were popular thousands of years ago. Perhaps the styles have come and gone many, many times, and the current fashions are the 94th time that they have been in fashion.
The other possibility is that since many of the modern Golarion cultures hold some of their ancient predecessors in high regard, that they are purposefully mimicing their fashions and architecture to show that they're as Azlanti as the original Azlanti were.
I think that for 99.9% of gamers, the sense of majesty is tied to gigantic monuments that shot fire over a mile away, and runewells, and stuff like that, more than a comparative clothing evolution. I think that there's a large sense of majesty in the Pathfinder material when dealing with ancient and lost civilizations, but it's focused on the big ticket items.
Your original post seemed to be asking why archetecture and clothing styles hadn't changed, so I just proposed 2 reasons that could explain it. Maybe I misinterpreted what you were asking about.
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While it's convenient to be able to show a picture and say, "It looks like this", in this case Selk, I've bitten the bullet and worked on my descriptive skills. Because you're darned right that there's no way that a 10,000 year old statue is going to look like a 1 year old statue in terms of what the subject is wearing, the style used, etc.
For cities, in general, I try to find "living" cities of a suitable style. It's hard, sometimes, to find London Tudor buildings that look lived in AND don't have a lorry in front of them, but again, I'll suck it up and describe what they see rather than take the handy short-cut of showing them a picture.
Take for example this week’s blog about the rise of Absalom. That’s Aroden there, raising the island from the sea, wearing the same long silken robe that everyone seems to favor in Golarion, 10,000 years ago to the present.
Well, Aroden is the Last Azlant. Many modern Golarion cultures and societies try to model the architecture and dress of the lost Azlanti civilization, so you're going to see Azlanti styles pop up a lot.
Part of it is that civilization in Golarion is much older than Earth. Dwarves came to the surface around 10,000 years ago. Let's assume dwarves had at least Bronze Age technology at this time period (hey, they're dwarves), that means the bronze age came to the surface over 9,000 years ago. By comparison, Europe's Bronze Age was 2-4,000 years ago. Osirion was founded about 8,100 years ago. By comparison, Ancient Egypt on Earth began about 5,100 years ago.
So the benchmarks of early civilization on Golarion are at least 3,000 years older than on Earth. Now you can spin society's evolution since then any way you want, but on Golarion you have magic (which may accelerate or slow a culture's progress) and deities (ditto). I think it's safe to argue that "modern" civilization on Golarion is older than modern Earth civilization, just with magic replacing technology. Telepathy instead of cell phones, teleportation instead of airplanes, planar travel instead of space travel, demonic invasions instead of international terrorists, etc.
Establishing that as our framework for this discussion, let's look at Earth clothing styles for the past 500 years. Men wear pants, shirts, jackets. Women wear the same, or dresses. Hats of various sizes come and go. Upper-class folk and artisants show more "progressive" and radical fashions, while regular people tend to wear variants of the same sort of things people wore 50 or 100 years ago. Take a regular Joe Sixpack in jeans, a t-shirt, and leather jacket and he's going to look very similar to a Greaser from 1950. Put him in a long coat and he could be a laborer from 1900. Replace the jeans with cotton pants and he could fit in with someone in the American Civil War. Or a colonial American. Sure, you have variations in small style elements (button fly vs. zipper, t-shirt vs. button-down).
Go to a third-world country and people still dress much like how they did 100, 200, or 500 years ago. In a fantasy realm, peasants are going to look like peasants. Sure, the aristocracy are going to have some stranger fashions, particularly so you can immediately recognize them as not-peasants, but pants+shirt+vest-or-jacket is pretty much the standard dress for humans for 500 or more years.
Now let's look to the future. While in the pulp era it was common to assume everyone in the future would be wearing shiny metal clothing or spacesuits, that didn't happen, mainly because humans are stubborn creatures and like to have variance in their clothing. Also, as we still live on Earth, we haven't needed to wear spacesuits. While minor details may change in clothing (buttons, colors, length of skirt, and so on), the classic combo of pants+shirt+vest-or-jacket is going to remain popular for a long time because they fulfill a FUNCTIONAL need in human clothing (sectional allows you to swap pieces for fashion and cleaning, length and layers for comfort, pants need to be more durable than shirts, etc.). I predict 50 or 100 or even 500 years from now, people will still look like people ... the fashionistas may have their fashion shows with the ridiculously-oversized shoes, or the clothing made of live plants, or the transparent or metal clothing, but the bulk of humanity needs to be able to go to work and not be laughed out of the office for what they're wearing.
And don't get me started about "retro" fashion....
Even cars ... the first cars had 4 wheels, a bench seat that could hold two people, and a steering wheel. Modern cars have the same, plus doors and a roof (though some don't have roofs). In 100 years do you think cars will have more or fewer wheels? Fit more or fewer people horizontally? The technology serves the form ... whether that form is the human body, the human family, or the billions of dollars spent creating roads to fit a car's shape and size. Just like clothing is built to serve the human shape and size. Form follows function.
So in Golarion, you're going to see pants+shirt+vest-or-jacket crop up a lot. And for spellcasters, the traditional robe is ... traditional, plus it serves a purpose by having a lot of pockets. And people who have to wear armor are going to need clothing that works with that armor. And people with no money are going to wear simple homespun clothes that look much like those worn for the past 1,000 years because they need to be simple, easy to make, and easy to clean.
To sum up: it's easy to look at the hoop skirts of the 50s, or the tie-dye of the 60s, bellbottoms of the 70s, or the big shoulderpads of the 80s, and think "man, fashion has changed SO much in the past 50 years, why does Golarion look the same?" But you're not seeing the forest for the trees ... hoop skirts are a type of dress, tie-dye was done to pants, shirts, and dresses, bellbottoms are a kind of pants, big shoulderpads were attached to jackets. Dresses, pants, shirts, jackets. Made to fit human legs, arms, torsos, and heads.
(The stagnation of technology is more of a boggle for me, not the fashion.)
You could easily find examples of statuary from greece in 500 BCE, rome in 200, florence in 500, and the us in 1800 that are basically the same, all throwbacks to something that was revolutionary in classical greece.
Ancient egyptian clothing and art stayed essentially the same for 3000 years.
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It’s funny that you mention the pants+shirt+vest-or- jacket combination. I’ve gone on diatribes (drunken, geeky diatribes) about the sartorial shorthand of fantasy and sci-fi movies, like Star Trek. No matter where they are, what time they’re in, or the cultural oddities, the extras in any enlightened society are wearing long sleeved shirts and vests. Vests for everyone!
Sean, I think you underestimate the cultural importance of clothing. Your post was practically a dismissal of all fashion as trivial and faddish. Yes, the underlying structure of clothing is virtually unchanged, since human physiology is slow to change (we’re not growing extra heads anytime soon) but the story is in the details.
This is a hard sell to the gaming crowd (a largely print t-shirt and jeans group), but clothing is extremely powerful and emblematic. It tells you volumes about a society’s view on sexuality, marriage, caste, child rearing, trade, wealth, diet, aggression and religion. Even unchanging ‘peasant’ clothing is a story of the crops they farm and the livestock they raise, by extension, a starting point for guessing the fundamentals of their world view. It’s only pants+shirt+vest-or-jacket as much as art is canvas+frame+paint.
When I mentioned Aroden’s robe, I wasn’t railing against all robes. I’m railing against that robe, the silky green one with the severe gold trim and the RAW flourishes. That robe has no context; it’s conceptually adrift, as easy on the shoulders of an ancient Azlanti god as a modern Korvosan shopkeeper.
I know this all sounds especially silly, but I think the art direction needs to be cognizant of these details. They can’t just pigpile the same busy clothes on the same edgy people and not account for where, and when, they’re from. Well, they can, but I wish they wouldn't.
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Sean, I think you underestimate the cultural importance of clothing. Your post was practically a dismissal of all fashion as trivial and faddish. Yes, the underlying structure of clothing is virtually unchanged, since human physiology is slow to change (we’re not growing extra heads anytime soon) but the story is in the details.
I agree with Sean it is not a big deal clothes are clothes if they are going to use printed words in the books I buy, there are alot better things to use them on then clothes. My gaming group and most I know could give a flying You know what about clothes. If your group is into clothes styles then in your prep time come up with some ideas and make some changes. My prep time for my group needs to be spent making the combats as hard as they can be. But please dont ask Paizo to waist important word counts in there great books on the latest clothing people are wearing
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Well, it doesn't necessarily explain the statuary, but the pictures in the books could be described as in game paintings of the places and events they represent. Aroden is dressed like a modern lord of Absalom because that's how the Absolmian artist painted him.
While this is astonishingly common throughout history (at least until the Modern fad for "realism"), and a good solution for some of the art, there are no context clues to indicate these are "in-character" pieces of art.
Selk is raising a very good point, but one that is slightly at odds with what I perceive to be one of the underlying stylistic elements of Pathfinder. Pathfinder D&D is unabashedly pulp and pulp never hesitated to abandon realism in favor of painting something in a more iconic (or cartoony; two sides of the same thing, really) fashion. Pulp had human cultures in the center of the Earth that were functionally identical to cultures that died out thousands of years before; realistically, those cultures would have evolved and diverged and been almost as unrecognizable from their forebears as a surface culture. But Pulp wants you to fight some Romans or Aztec, by cracky, so culture stasis. Pulp had spacemen enjoying the cool refreshing flavor of a Kool-brand cigarette; I think we can all see the issues there!
I agree that Aroden's robes should look different than a modern Absalomi's robe, but also be a clear ancestor of that modern robe, BUT I'm not sure it's worth the effort of having too much mental processing on cultural evolution. I think Selk and I would be willing to pay for the extra effort, but I'm well aware of my minority status in tastes and desires around here, and Paizo, as a business, has gotta cater to the more numerous folks who don't care what anyone's wearing as long as the encounters are fun and challenging.
But, hey, if you do have a regular stable of artists, could you, Paizo Art Director Man, have them keep in mind "Thassilonian Styles", "Modern Styles", "Age of Enthronement Styles" and so on?
Perhaps it's a modern picture, painted by someone living in Golarion, of the event? So he didn't actually wear that, but is just painted as wearing it, cos that's how we like to imagine it?
Kinda like how Jesus is usually portrayed as a white bloke in Western culture.
But please dont ask Paizo to waist important word counts in there great books on the latest clothing people are wearing
I wouldn't mind if a few words were "wasted" if it adds flavor and consistency to the campaign setting.
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I agree with the attention to detail in clothing and style. I'd like to see more of it. I don't think any words need to be "wasted" on it, as it can mostly manifest in the art, and if the Paizo folks decide to spend some word count on that kind flavor, I'm even happier.
Sean brings up good points, and I still find myself more in line with Selk. So, I suppose really my request is for the art director and artists to be conscious of such things, and not to fall into the classic "Fantasy Outfits" trope that I judge often happens. In fact, I'd like them to be more than conscious of it; I'd like them to work a little to highlight the changes.
Obviously I'm not a game designer and whatnot so i could be wrong- but, i think alot of it comes from them wanting to give the designers as much leeway as possible to create what they want.
I can't draw, and I won't pretend I can- but I Can write. And I know a story I write where someone else tells me every single detail won't be -nearly- as good as a story I come up with and write on my own. Someone else may give me an idea, but by and large a story *I* write is better than the story *You* tell me to write, just because I'm not having to worry about whether or not my story meets your expectations.
I assume that artists are the same way. Hiring someone to draw you a male who looks like X doing Y in Z backdrop is probably a big enough pain without strictly making each piece of art adhere to some certain clothing type. And that is exactly what you are talking about. Every single piece of drawn art for the campaign setting would have to exactly match whatever time period in every way, rather than giving the artists some literary license.
If you've ever paid close attention to book covers and compared them to the book /content/ then you know what I mean.
In short, I don't think it's so much the idea of them not caring, as it is them wanting to give the artists some general leeway in what they draw.
just my .02
-S
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This is actually a very interesting discussion.
I can see the problems with clothing as presented, but as raised in the original post, I think Architecture is one of more importance. Cities hundreds of miles apart with completely different cultures should not look alike.
For the art director it could be as simple as having the editors define the styles based upon real world architecture. For example the architecture in PF 6 was very different for Xin-Shalast. That really made me identify it as an ancient city, as the style was so different.
Clothing styles would be harder to nail down, as the art director is dealing with many artists. Also, the research necessary for clothing styles would be considerable.
For most of the art just figure that the artist is contemporary and is using modern styles in depicting ancient events. It has happened in art before.
This is actually a very interesting discussion.
I can see the problems with clothing as presented, but as raised in the original post, I think Architecture is one of more importance. Cities hundreds of miles apart with completely different cultures should not look alike.
I think on Architechture you guys have a good point and if they throw in a little about that its cool and they should look a little differnt but like I said i rather have more fluff about the people themselves not what they are wearing or what there buildings look like
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Every single piece of drawn art for the campaign setting would have to exactly match whatever time period in every way, rather than giving the artists some literary license.
I can't speak for Selk, but it's as simple as:
"This guy is from modern Galt, so he should look sorta Frenchy."
"This guy comes from the Thassilonian Kingdom of Lust, so lots of buckles and assless chaps"
"This guy is Azlanti, and they were crazy for big shoulderpads and the color green"
That's what an art director is supposed to DO - ensure a certain unity of depiction for his line. He doesn't need to specify the precise hemlines of skirts in Absalom 2,000 years ago, but he should absolutely ensure that one picture from Absalom 2708 AR looks similar to another picture from Absalom 2708 AR, and ideally that they both look different from Absalom 4708 AR.
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Every single piece of drawn art for the campaign setting would have to exactly match whatever time period in every way, rather than giving the artists some literary license.
I can't speak for Selk, but it's as simple as:
"This guy is from modern Galt, so he should look sorta Frenchy."
"This guy comes from the Thassilonian Kingdom of Lust, so lots of buckles and assless chaps"
"This guy is Azlanti, and they were crazy for big shoulderpads and the color green"
That's what an art director is supposed to DO - ensure a certain unity of depiction for his line. He doesn't need to specify the precise hemlines of skirts in Absalom 2,000 years ago, but he should absolutely ensure that one picture from Absalom 2708 AR looks similar to another picture from Absalom 2708 AR, and ideally that they both look different from Absalom 4708 AR.
Looks good to me. Except maybe the straps and assless chaps. These Runelords, they're from a time and place where everything was kinda of Chinese and dynastic, right? (at least in some of the artwork). Sorshen, Her High Lustiness, would probably wrap her people in naughty silk bandages and intoxicating body paint. Let's save the black leather bondage gear for the modern Chelaxian boudoir ;)
Kitsch aside, some guidelines would be nice. Imagine the Lord of the Rings movies if they hadn't fussed over costume design to tell the story of the different cultures. It would have looked like Outlaw of Gor.
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Now let's look to the future...
Even cars ... the first cars had 4 wheels, a bench seat that could hold two people, and a steering wheel. Modern cars have the same, plus doors and a roof (though some don't have roofs). In 100 years do you think cars will have more or fewer wheels? Fit more or fewer people horizontally? The technology serves the form ... whether that form is the human body, the human family, or the billions of dollars spent creating roads to fit a car's shape and size. Just like clothing is built to serve the human shape and size. Form follows function.
It's long past the year 2000. I'm still waiting for my flying car!
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RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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It's long past the year 2000. I'm still waiting for my flying car!Now let's look to the future...
Even cars ... the first cars had 4 wheels, a bench seat that could hold two people, and a steering wheel. Modern cars have the same, plus doors and a roof (though some don't have roofs). In 100 years do you think cars will have more or fewer wheels? Fit more or fewer people horizontally? The technology serves the form ... whether that form is the human body, the human family, or the billions of dollars spent creating roads to fit a car's shape and size. Just like clothing is built to serve the human shape and size. Form follows function.
There have been some neat advancements on jet packs in the last year or two - flying cars can't be far behind!
Creative Director
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We do try to get the clothing for characters to represent where they're from; you can expect a lot of non-west European style clothes in the Legacy of Fire adventure path, for example. But as for pictures of ancient times... that's something that we don't do as often. It's a good thing to keep in mind, but as far as the picture of Aroden goes, with his "modern" looking clothes, it's important to keep in mind that he's VERY influential, and even today, after he's been a god and then dead, folk still worship him. His influence is still very much in effect, and that goes for clothing traditions among humans (he was, after all, the god of humanity, among other things).
It's like watching an old movie that's influential, honestly. You watch something like Seven Samurai or the Hidden Fortress by Akira Kurosawa, movies he made in the late 50s, and they look and feel like they could have been made last year since his camera work and pacing were so influential that modern directors are STILL doing movies with his tricks. Sure, the passage of time here is only 50 years or so as opposed to hundreds or thousands of years, but as Sean points out in the thread above, Golarion's got a MUCH longer history than Earth.
Who's to say that 4,000 years from now, bellbottoms won't come back in style, is what I'm asking?
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Creative Director
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You’ll often find well preserved (non-magical) wood and cloth in Thassilon’s dungeons, weapons millennia apart made of the same materials and pitted statues dressed like the iconics.
(PS - Absalom has the same Tudor style streets as Magnimar, Riddleport and Korvosa? Isn't it hotter there, and far away?)
That's a good point regarding 10,000 year-old dungeons with wood and stuff that hasn't aged We DID try to address that in Rise of the Runlords with the fact that Thassilonian architecture was magically preserved, and that in some of the dungeons there were newer additions, but we certainly didn't explain them all.
And Absalom is the center of culture for the Inner Sea region; it makes a certain amount of sense that other cities in this region would use a similar style of architecture.
But in the end... it's also worth remembering that not all of our writers, editors, and art directors are also architects, fashion designers, geologists, archeologists, or shipwrights (although we do have folk at Paizo who actually know a fair amount about a few of those topics). We do our best to make things as realistic and immersive as possible, but now and then we'll do something that someone else out there knows more about. When that happens, it's best to just take it with a grain of salt and move on, and in your own game, fix it for your players when you describe it in-game. (And, of course, post about it here!)
How boring would it be to go into a dungeon only to find big piles of dust where once there were books, weapons, clothing, tapestries, and so on? Part of the game is suspension of disbelief, and while we've all seen some hundred year old materials with historical significance brought back from damp caves somewhere that looks like little more than junk, it would be pretty anti-climactic to fight your way into a dungeon and find the same. Ancient treasures should equal exciting, cool, powerful stuff to discover. It might be believable, but it wouldn't entice me to keep risking life and limb to go explore other places.
I'd also like to point out that King Tut's tomb was thousands of year old, yet it contained some very nicely preserved items, so it is possible. When I'm designing something ancient, I give it the Tut's tomb treatment, with exceptions from certain areas might have been subjected to water, moist air, rampaging orcs, or what have you, and smash up or reduce to dust the items in those areas.
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I'd also like to point out that King Tut's tomb was thousands of year old, yet it contained some very nicely preserved items, so it is possible.
The contents of Tut's Tomb were kept in a very dry, very cool, very dark place with very little native insect life; that's like the perfect storm of conservation blessings. Unlooted Egyptian tombs are BY FAR the exception rather than the rule.
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Kitsch aside, some guidelines would be nice. Imagine the Lord of the Rings movies if they hadn't fussed over costume design to tell the story of the different cultures. It would have looked like Outlaw of Gor.
mmmmm
We need some REALLY good Gor movies now that I think about it. A bit more true to the books :) Really there aren't enough NC17 movies out there.
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I agree with Sean it is not a big deal clothes are clothes if they are going to use printed words in the books I buy, there are alot better things to use them on then clothes. My gaming group and most I know could give a flying You know what about clothes. If your group is into clothes styles then in your prep time come up with some ideas and make some changes. My prep time for my group needs to be spent making the combats as hard as they can be. But please dont ask Paizo to waist important word counts in there great books on the latest clothing people are wearing!
Sean, I think you underestimate the cultural importance of clothing. Your post was practically a dismissal of all fashion as trivial and faddish. Yes, the underlying structure of clothing is virtually unchanged, since human physiology is slow to change (we’re not growing extra heads anytime soon) but the story is in the details.
i agree
the art is excellentalso you the Op mention that Aroden'srobe looks like anyone's else robe... why does'teveryone else just be trying to imitate Aroden...
Aroden was a man then and there, not a god still (he became after that)... still wfor whati have seen, gods eitherdress strangely or they dress to look the role of their cultures... why Aroden would be different? shoul Iomedae dress some strange cristal armor just because she is a godess? or Cayden... he dress as any other regular guy who wants to have a good time...
some cultures changes much their outlook
some others doesn't, as someone mentioned greece, egypt, rome had the same style for a long time, they only changed for a while when meeting other cultures and bringin theirculture to them...
more important
the Op mentions that clothing denotes a lot of things from a culture... maybe that is what the clothes in the art are showing and he just want to change them...
no offense...but i would hate to see radical changes just to amuse and mke happy a few fashion fans... (says someone who believes that following dashion is worthless endeavor, one would never advence that fast)
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Kitsch aside, some guidelines would be nice. Imagine the Lord of the Rings movies if they hadn't fussed over costume design to tell the story of the different cultures. It would have looked like Outlaw of Gor.
mmmmm
We need some REALLY good Gor movies now that I think about it. A bit more true to the books :) Really there aren't enough NC17 movies out there.
Yeah that'll fly in society today =p
I have a friend who does Gor RPing, and we all make fun of him. The movie was hard to watch even with MST3K ripping on it.
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still isee enought diversity ebtween a Ulfen from the north and a Chelexian and a Osirian... which are what i see as central cultures... while in small comunities a few will dress in very aprticular ways in more cosmopolitan parts will take the most common fashion, the most easyor comfortable or adequate, and cities around them will immitate, because they want to be like them or is easier...