Comments on: GMing with Pictures

By: Jonas Karlsson

Jonas Karlsson — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 14:42:48 +0000

I don't remember if it's in the rules of Primetime Adventures or not, but for a game I produced called The Return I had the players choose what actor would play their character. I even made a fictional poster for the show. The three guys are brothers who wanted to inherit their father's Scottish hotel and the woman is their mother, an NPC important enough to get her own picture. The way we did it the players described the actors and I hunted down pictures afterwards with Google.

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:24:13 +0000

More links to image sources is always a good thing — thanks!

By: Walt C

Walt C — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 15:18:49 +0000

A couple of years ago, I started an urban fantasy campaign set in London. I created a Powerpoint “opening credits” sequence with a song and used lots of pictures of London (mainly cribbed off the net).

I asked the PCs to pick real life people to play them. They could choose anyone from any point in their lives. I added those characters to the credits.

I’d been “casting” RL people, primarily actors, for my NPCs for some time now. I found that it saves a lot of time describing NPCs and makes them easier for the PCs to conceptualize.

I’ve also found that using RL people can play with my players’ emotions a bit. One of my players has a crush on Jessica Alba. His PC was born-again Christian whose belief in his faith fueled his powers. I introduced an NPC detective that looked like Ms. Alba. He was instantly smitten with trying to date her. When she turned toward Mecca at prayer time, his reaction was priceless!

By: cadia134

cadia134 — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 08:18:10 +0000

Another good source for NPC, or even PC pictures is
mugshots.com

Photos of people at thier best

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:05:03 +0000

When I specifically go looking for a person, I look more for what they represent. I threw in elf pirate into google and found this
http://kauler.com/games/wow/011%20-%20Pirate%20chick.jpg
picture, which I built my npcs around. Or I got this picture
http://www.flickr.com/photos/beckerman/190063266/
from flickr by typing in pirate. Once I showed the group that picture, they seriously debated letting themselves be boarded by the pirate group attacking. Their reaction would have been completely different without the image present. The picture got across the idea I wanted. Trying to get it across with words alone, the players were still thinking of their actions out of game, bringing the in game idea (the female pirates) out of game, got them thinking in a way their characters really might.

In general when I do it, I have an idea of the concept I want to represent with the image. I can’t completely rely on the image, just use it as a starting point. If you throw black dragon into google you get a hundred pictures, I quickly find that one that will give me a starting point,
http://www.silverdragonstudio.com/dragons/Black-Flight.jpg
and then go on to describe the “long sinuous neck that stretches out from underneath the bridges columns.
http://www.ashladle.org/archives/foster_city_bridge.jpg
The hot snuffing wind that comes from the dragons notstrils, as it tries to search you out, moves the water underneath the bridge, rippling it, and causing small waves to splash up against your legs. ”

Thanks to the photos, people come to a common thread of thought. The dragon I wanted to talk about was a chinese dragon, but just describing a black sinewy dragon might get some thinking of a european dragon, and some thinking of a chinese one. The bridge was a wholly different concept than players in a fantasy world would think of right off the bat. Their actions after seeing the picture took into account the terrain, which they hadn’t done before they saw the bridge.

I put on the wiki a bunch of the resources I use to find pictures
http://www.treasuretables.org/wiki/index.php?title=GM_Software
It’s not by means all the resources available, but it’s a good set of the most common ones.

By: ScottM

ScottM — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:29:17 +0000

I’m terrible about pictures– I made a concerted effort for one campaign to grab an actor from a Character Actor page, but found it was taking longer to find pictures than to do all the mechanical prep.

How long do you spend hunting up pictures of people to get to 60%? Is it a process that experience makes much more efficient from a time point of view– or is it just worth the time to you?

By: drow

drow — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:35:00 +0000

i did this extensively two campaigns ago, building an online encyclopaedia of locations and NPCs with illustrations. most were drawn from anime or videogames, usually altered or composited in photoshop as needed. it worked really well to help me keep things consistent, and a couple of the players enjoyed mining it for hidden connections.

By: Ben Quant

Ben Quant — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 14:34:17 +0000

I find this whole area an intriguing one. My usual game is Pendragon (fantastic, check out the new edition and the Great Pendragon Campaign if you haven’t yet!) Recently, however, I picked up a copy of Everway, the basis of which is a stack of cards with fantasy art on to provoke inspiration and even determine the outcome of events. Haven’t played it yet, but characters are generated and due to start soon. Vision cards are used extensively in the formation of characters and made it a unique experience and set the tone for the game nicely…