On Book Art and Phobia Accessibility

[Easl]

James Jacobs wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Do you think content warnings with page numbers at the start of the book are too high-effort? :P

I do, honestly, and unfortunately. Verifying page number references is one of the last steps of the process before sending a book to the printer (it has to be, since up until that point, shifting pages still happen), and we're always pressed for time at that point...

Put that stuff in the forum announcements here. It gives you a couple months' extra time and zero printing complications (but, forum message complications instead ;).

You guys already put out a high quality stream of "Book X out next! We are excited to give you a preview of it now" forum messages. Those messages seem like a natural place to discuss not only the coolness of the new content and art, but if the upcoming book includes snakes or spiders or Geiger-like or vaguely horror genre content too.

[Temperans]

Imagine you are writing a book with 100 pages of content (aka not blank). Each of those pages having 1 to 30 different things that need to be properly referenced. That is 100 to 3,000 things that need to be properly referenced. Lets assume its just 1,500 for simplicity.

Each of those 1,500 might have 1 to 10 different cross references that need to be checked. Thats 1,500 to 15,000 references. Okay lets assume 7,500, lets assume it takes an hour for 1-5 pages depending on how many references that's 1,500 to 7,500 hours. So assuming 3,750 hours, that's ~156 days working 24 hours a day. That is about 6 months of constant work to make sure something is well referenced.

Even if we double the speed, that is about 3 months of constant work. Even if the speed is 10 times faster, that would be 15 days working 24 hours a day. 24 hours a day translates to 45 days working 8 hours a day, but realistically its only 6 hours of actual work due to meeting, breaks, and misc so 60 days (2 months) for a single person. A team of 4 might lower it to a month (diminishing returns), just for making sure references are done properly and edited correctly.

Then you also have: writing, art, formatting, conception, delays, reworking, talking with the printing press, marketing, and everything needs to be done in a tight deadline.

*********************

For reference a writer that has a lot less things going on can write a book in 4-8 months. Paizo is writing multiple books that need to be cross-referenced to make sure everyone is in the same general page, and releasing 3-6 books every month. With every month having a 96 page adventure path that must be tied in to every other book in said adventure path.

[MadScientistWorking]

Easl wrote:

James Jacobs wrote:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Do you think content warnings with page numbers at the start of the book are too high-effort? :P

I do, honestly, and unfortunately. Verifying page number references is one of the last steps of the process before sending a book to the printer (it has to be, since up until that point, shifting pages still happen), and we're always pressed for time at that point...

Put that stuff in the forum announcements here. It gives you a couple months' extra time and zero printing complications (but, forum message complications instead ;).

You guys already put out a high quality stream of "Book X out next! We are excited to give you a preview of it now" forum messages. Those messages seem like a natural place to discuss not only the coolness of the new content and art, but if the upcoming book includes snakes or spiders or Geiger-like or vaguely horror genre content too.

They do that already....

[ZamuelNow]

As someone else who is arachnophobic but understands that some spider concepts are cool, pulling this out from the OP:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

3. Stop making the art so hard to avoid. Put it on splash pages, or block it off more carefully.

An interesting example is Beginner Box vs Troubles in Otari. In BB's GM Guide, there's big splashes of spiders but they are fairly easy to cover up. In TiO, I did the personal diligence of asking if there were any and got the page number but with the art and text being interwoven, the page is effectively unusable. Making changes to new material will obviously be a way off but formatting is something to consider in the future.

[Jonathan Morgantini]

Removed some more baity posts, and quotes. Please keep the conversation civil and on topic.

[aobst128]

*sad anadi noises*

[The Raven Black]

aobst128 wrote:

*sad anadi noises*

Remember that Anadi developped their shapeshifting abilities specifically to avoid triggering negative reactions to their spider-like appearance.

[aobst128]

The Raven Black wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

*sad anadi noises*

Remember that Anadi developped their shapeshifting abilities specifically to avoid triggering negative reactions to their spider-like appearance.

I'm aware. Arachnophobia probably still makes them at least a little bit sad.

[The Raven Black]

aobst128 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

*sad anadi noises*

Remember that Anadi developped their shapeshifting abilities specifically to avoid triggering negative reactions to their spider-like appearance.

I'm aware. Arachnophobia probably still makes them at least a little bit sad.

But I do not think thay cast blame on the arachnophobic people. Anadi seem extraordinarily aware of people's feelings and quite emphatic.

[aobst128]

The Raven Black wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

*sad anadi noises*

Remember that Anadi developped their shapeshifting abilities specifically to avoid triggering negative reactions to their spider-like appearance.

I'm aware. Arachnophobia probably still makes them at least a little bit sad.

But I do not think thay cast blame on the arachnophobic people. Anadi seem extraordinarily aware of people's feelings and quite emphatic.

I am also aware of that. Anadi are prescious. My original comment was not meant to really add anything to the discussion. I just thought it was funny.

[PossibleCabbage]

The Raven Black wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

aobst128 wrote:

*sad anadi noises*

Remember that Anadi developped their shapeshifting abilities specifically to avoid triggering negative reactions to their spider-like appearance.

I'm aware. Arachnophobia probably still makes them at least a little bit sad.

But I do not think thay cast blame on the arachnophobic people. Anadi seem extraordinarily aware of people's feelings and quite emphatic.

The entire premise of the Anadi seems like a riff on arachnophobia.

- To wit, there is a group of extremely large spiders with human-level intelligence whose society is based on "we should help each other out"- they like making friends.
- They run into some sapient bipeds who are beyond *freaked out* that a spider about half the size of a minicooper is trying gift them hand-knit scarves as presents in order to make friends.
- The Anadi are very sad that the bipeds didn't want to make friends and become isolationist as a result.
- Over time they come not to think "there's something wrong with the bipeds" but "there's something wrong with us" and literally master transformation magic in order to turn themselves into the likeness of the people they want to befriend.
-When an Anadi does leave Nurvatcha to go out in the wider world, they have to pretend to be someone else in order to make friends. In the back of their head, whenever they meet a new person, they have to wonder "will this person accept me as I really am?" So it has to be a tremendous relief for any Anadi when they "come out" as a very large spider to their peers and are accepted.
-Like they literally don't allow non-Anadi into Nurvatcha except for one city because they want to be able to be themselves in their homes.

Like the whole thing is that they are nice, they want to make friends, they don't really want to hurt anybody, and they understand that people are likely to recoil in horror if they ever show their true form.

[Jonathan Morgantini]

Removed some baity back and forth

[ZamuelNow]

Bumping this since it applied to something else. The PF2 adventure Dawn of the Frogs has a really good sidenote about being careful about arachnophobia and lists ways to rewrite the encounter that has a giant spider so it's a better experience for those players...yet the booklet also has a large picture of a spider a few pages before. That seems like mixed messaging. And considering it's in the last chapter, that header image feels like it should've been used for the final fight against [redacted] and not a random wild animal that isn't even connected to the adventure's theme.

[AestheticDialectic]

ZamuelNow wrote:

Bumping this since it applied to something else. The PF2 adventure Dawn of the Frogs has a really good sidenote about being careful about arachnophobia and lists ways to rewrite the encounter that has a giant spider so it's a better experience for those players...yet the booklet also has a large picture of a spider a few pages before. That seems like mixed messaging. And considering it's in the last chapter, that header image feels like it should've been used for the final fight against [redacted] and not a random wild animal that isn't even connected to the adventure's theme.

Ironically you've made me want to seek this out to check out the cool spider

[Ajaxius]

ZamuelNow wrote:

Bumping this since it applied to something else. The PF2 adventure Dawn of the Frogs has a really good sidenote about being careful about arachnophobia and lists ways to rewrite the encounter that has a giant spider so it's a better experience for those players...yet the booklet also has a large picture of a spider a few pages before.

Then the reality is probably that an arachnophobe probably can't run it as a GM, but it's nice that there are tools so that a non-arachnophobe GM could run it for an arachnophobe player.

That's the sad truth of phobias. Like, I'd love to enjoy Edmund McMillan games for their incredible game design. Alas, I have coprophobia. It's simply not an option for me.

As quoted elsewhere in this three-year-old necro'd thread:

Kobold Catgirl wrote:

Turns out problems are complicated.

[Ajaxius]

That being said, if Paizo is still looking for solutions, they could always start categorizing adventures by phobias (assuming they're not already.)

For example, you could have a big spreadsheet that shows that AP XYZ has arachnophobia and thalassophobia, while AP ABC has coulrophobia and claustrophobia, etc. You organize that list by date, and see if there's a common thread in recent adventures that might be keeping certain -phobes from having a playable adventure, and make an adventure that caters to that underserved group (obviously excluding the socially-unacceptable -phobes.)

[PossibleCabbage]

It genuinely feels like Paizo is better off catering to broad demographics rather than specific consumer's strong preferences, because it's not abnormal in this hobby for your consumers to buy some of your books but not all of them (e.g. more people buy rulebooks than adventures.) You can trust consumers, to an extent, to seek out the stuff they'd like and avoid the stuff they would not- you might want to make this easier for them though.

Especially since a lot of people's phobias touch on things that might be "fun scary" for other people, and sometimes you want a game like this to be scary in a fun way. Like "murderous clowns" are a staple of horror fiction, Spirit Halloween, and Professional Wrestling because most people don't have debilitating coulrophobia. People who have this issue are generally able to choose contexts where they're unlikely to be confronted by it.

For an absurd example, "Anatidaephobia" is literally from a Far Side comic based on a linguistic construction. It's (probably) not common enough to be recognized outside that context, but maybe someone has severe anxiety about it. This is absolutely not something Paizo should take pains to avoid.

I think the best thing to do is simply to give content warnings in the Player's Guide (and also in the front of the book for a non-adventure) and trust people are able to make their own decisions.

[James Jacobs]

Ajaxius wrote:

That being said, if Paizo is still looking for solutions, they could always start categorizing adventures by phobias (assuming they're not already.)

For example, you could have a big spreadsheet that shows that AP XYZ has arachnophobia and thalassophobia, while AP ABC has coulrophobia and claustrophobia, etc. You organize that list by date, and see if there's a common thread in recent adventures that might be keeping certain -phobes from having a playable adventure, and make an adventure that caters to that underserved group (obviously excluding the socially-unacceptable -phobes.)

We'll continue to add content warnings and suggestions like this going forward, but "categorizing adventures by phobias" is a really complicated ask, considering just how many phobias there are to contend with. Currently, for the more "common" ones (such as arachnophobia) we try to address them, but when it comes to art—well... we also need to pick and choose things that'll make for dynamic and compelling subjects, and often that means we illustrate scary stuff. Since the art in an adventure is meant more to inspire the GM than it is to serve as handouts for the PCs, that means that we essentially are leaning on the GM of each game to help us out in the task of adjusting and curating content specifically to their table. The GM knows their players' phobies better than we do, after all.

That said, a community-driven spreadsheet like this for GMs who are concerned about which products have what triggers is a pretty interesting idea. Not one we have the time or resources to create and maintain, alas, but something like the webiste "Does the Dog Die?" for movies but for RPGs?

[graystone]

PossibleCabbage wrote:

For an absurd example, "Anatidaephobia" is literally from a Far Side comic based on a linguistic construction. It's (probably) not common enough to be recognized outside that context, but maybe someone has severe anxiety about it. This is absolutely not something Paizo should take pains to avoid.\

My example is hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia... the fear of long words. ;)

James Jacobs wrote:

That said, a community-driven spreadsheet like this for GMs who are concerned about which products have what triggers is a pretty interesting idea. Not one we have the time or resources to create and maintain, alas, but something like the webiste "Does the Dog Die?" for movies but for RPGs?

This sounds about the best option to be honest. Anything past a having trigger warnings for the most common phobias is impractical on your end.

[PossibleCabbage]

I think the point is that "warning people with a specific phobia" has to start with action by the person with that specific concern. Like if anybody asked me "hey, does this book have art of spiders in it" I'd probably be willing to flip through a book I own and look for spiders assuming I'm not too busy. But it's weird to just keep a log of "pages 27, 81, and 109 have a spider on them" just in case.

[moosher12]

Phobias will always be a messy subject I think. There are many common traps to fall into that will upset someone. Especially when you leave the realm of common phobias and enter the realm of specific phobias, you never know what seemingly innocuous thing could be a landmine that leads to a panicked player.

Best I think can be done is to let GMs curate for their players which adventures are fitting or not. One thing I always do is advice my players to privately tell me if they have any sensitivities to avoid, so I can quietly remove them from any adventures, or propose a different adventure if a surgical removal is not possible.

As someone with their own set of common and specific phobias, this is the sort of thing I know I'd appreciate player side.