#teaching with comcis

[j-richmond]

Why aren't comics more common in TTRPGs?

(This is about game design and presentation) In school one of the things I discovered is that I have trouble absorbing info from a big text book. And most TTRPGs are presented as text books. Once I understand the basic information in the book (chemistry textbook or RPG sourcebook or whatever) I can deal with the book on my own terms. I can dive into individual parts and learn, and slowly absorb the book as a whole. But I need help to get there. I need an access port. Sometimes this comes in the form of someone explaining the book to me. Explaining the rules of the game or the outline of an essay. This is great, and gives me a way in so I can absorb and master the book myself. But I don't always have someone in my life who can do that. Interestingly, I don't have this problem with novels at all. Narrative feels easier to access, at least for me.

In school I also discovered Scot McCloud's Understanding Comics. This is a pretty fantastic book which I'd recommend to everyone. It helped me understand how I process information. More importantly, it helped me understand the different people process information in different ways. I hadn't realized that at age 16, although I was starting to suspect it. Before I started making comics or games I used to be a teacher. As a teacher I could see that some of my kids were struggling with the information I was giving them, in the same way I had struggled in school. I started using comics in class to help reach these students. I'd draw little comics on my handouts or on the whiteboard to explain what we were learning. The goal wasn't to provide an entire lesson in comics form. I'm not Scott McCloud! Instead, I was trying to find an access point for my students. An on ramp. A port of entry to the ideas and material we were covering so they could engage and eventually absorb the information. It worked so well. It worked like magic. Why don't we do this more in TTRPGs? I used comics in my early games, Panty Explosion Perfect and Ocean. These were narrative comics, not rules comics, but the goal was to provide both an example of what play looked like (from a narrative standpoint) and a point of access for players who weren't sure what the game was or how to engage with it. My thought was that if you understood what the game was supposed to look like it would be easier to approach the rules. (A short comic from Ocean. The book has a bunch of these)

When my brother Nick and I started working on The Magical Land of Yeld I knew I wanted to use comics more directly as a teaching tool. Especially because part of our target audience was new and younger players who might look at a big text book (Yeld is a giant 400 page hardcover) and just bounce right off it. Like I did in school and like I often do with big games. So I needed to teach with examples and illustrations, and especially comics.

The first comics you'll encounter in the Yeld book are narrative, and designed to get you into the ideas and themes of the game. But in the first few pages we also start sprinkling in rules comics. These are presented along side the rules text. They don't replace that text, which is important. The text explains the rules in greater detail, and includes information that just couldn't be added in a single page comic. Instead, the comic is intended to be a point of access to the rules text. A player can read the comic, understand the basic concept, and feel comfortable engaging with the text. That's the goal, to make players comfortable and to make the rules text accessible.

We use comics to teach basic game mechanics, but we also use them to explain specific player facing systems. Sometimes these are things that really do need a comic to explain them, but sometimes we use comics as lures to draw player attention to mechanics that we're afraid they might otherwise not engage with. For example, in playtesting we found that when characters died during a fight the player would just sit there for the rest of the fight and not engage. It turned out, since you don't do anything in D&D once you die (except slowly die more), most players assume that's how all games work! So they hadn't even noticed that in Yeld you become a Ghost and get to ghost around and do fun Ghost stuff! I decided to create a comic that not just explained this but drew attention to it and showed why it was a fun (and important) part of the game!

Structure of play isn't always obvious to players, especially if they're new to TTRPGs or have only played D&D. You pick up habits from the games you play the most, and since most gamers play nothing but D&D there is a tendency to assume EVERYTHING works like D&D. Yeld doesn't, so we decided to take nothing for granted and make comics that very specifically show what a session of play looks like. In this example, it may not look a lot different from D&D, but the adventure is specifically divided into 5 parts. The comic illustrates these parts in a way that is easy to understand. The accompanying game text explains each part in more detail and illustrates how they are important to play. The comic serves as a ramp that gets players to the info they need.

Not all of our comics are player facing. Yeld has a rotating GM (which is awesome, btw), and this means every player gets a chance in the Game Master roll. Which means every player needs to understand how this roll works. Comics like this one, which explain how to build monsters to use in your game, help make the process easy to understand. Again, its about building a point of entry for players. A player might say "I don't want to GM, it sounds to complicated!" But its not. You just need to make it easy for them. Make the mechanics and responsibilities easy to understand. Show why they're fun! In Yeld, its important that each player takes on the GM role from time to time, since we're building a story together. Making it look fun is important! Comics help with that. What's more fun than comics?

Narrative comics are important too. At least for Yeld. I don't think every game benefits from them (although I always love seeing them). Narrative comics show players what the game is supposed to look like. What the characters do and say. What environments they visit. Narrative comics set a tone. Narrative comics let new players understand what a game is about immediately! We can hand a Yeld book to a new player or customer and they know what's up in seconds, just by reading a short single page comic. That's a powerful tool. So why don't more games use comics? Part of it is that game creators are usually not comic creators. There's not a lot of crossover. That always surprises me, but both disciplines take a lot of work. Who has time for both? Even when you have game designers that are comic creators, they often don't include comics in the games (Lancer???). I don't think this means game designers don't recognize the value of comics. I've had this conversation with so many game designers, and they usually agree that comics are useful tools. But if you don't know how to make comics, making comics for your game can be daunting. What rules should you focus on? How do you present that information in comic form? How many comics should you make? How do you hire someone to make comics, anyway? Hiring artists is expansive, btw. You know that, of course. Hiring an artist to make a set of comics for your game could cost you thousands of dollars (or more), depending on what you want. Of course, you can try to make your own comics. And you should! Really! A poorly drawn comic is not necessarily a bad comic. The point is to get your information across to your reader. to provide a point of access. You don't need great art for that (although great art can help attract people to your game). Stick figure work just fine. Here's an example, the layout for the Tea Dragon card game. Another artist took this layout and redrew it in their own style. But my goal here was to be simple and concise with my explanation of the rules. To make the game accessible.

There's a few more pages of this, but you get the idea. The purpose is to explain, and make the player comfortable with learning more. The art matters to the extent that it serves this goal. In fact, flashy or complicated art can get in the way! You'll notice in that most of the Yeld rules comics I posted above the art is pretty simple, with solid color backgrounds. You want to make your comics as easy to read as possible, and that includes avoiding clutter, overpacked word balloons and messy layout. Readers are easily distracted. It doesn't take much for them to set down a book at all. A complicated phrase or hard to read font can often be enough. And once they set a book down they may not every pick it up again. That's more true for a big text book than it is for a comics, but its still true for a comic. So our goal is to make our comic the easiest, smoothest point of access it can possibly be. So easy and smooth that the reader can slide right into the rules text without noticing! Here's my general process for creating a rules comic. This is from my friend Brian's game Scofflaws. I start by taking the basic mechanics that need to be illustrated and breaking them down into panels. The goal is to make each panel readable and not overwhelm the player. At this point I'm just doing a rough sketch. It may not eve=n be readable, but that's fine!

Next, I refine the text and art. I decide on the exact language I'll use, and I finalize where characters and other elements will be placed. As you can see, the actual layout didn't change much here. Sometimes it changes a lot!

Finally, I create the finished art. Honestly, the previous step was just fine. It explanans the rules I wanted to explain. But this last step allows me to add in some narrative flavor. The first panel contains a complicated background in order to present the game's setting. The characters look like the kind of characters you'll play in the game. This isn't nessacary for presenting rules, but it helps present the game as a whole. You want players to engage with every part of your game. The last thing you want them doing is picking up your dungeon crawling game and going "Oh, this would be great for playing Star Wars!"

(I probably shouldn't have chose than shade of red for the background. It makes the text a bit hard to read!) So again, why aren't we seeing more comics in games? Its not as if they don't exist at all, and I'm personally always excited to see them. I recently opened the Final Fantasy RPG box set and was so happy to find the rules were accompanied by cute comics. And there's lot of other examples (maybe you can post some in the comments). But I think comics are a clearly underused tool in game design and presentation. And as a comic person, let me tell you that you're leaving a valuable tool on the table if you're not considering using comics. Are they right for every game? Maaaybe not? But I think MANY MANY MANY games could benefit form them. Are they expensive? They can be. Are they hard to make? They can be. Are there people you can go to for advice? Hey, my door is open.

[ship-my-pants]

ROUND TWO part two

[phoenixstartedthefire]

I love Bart Allen with my entire heart but as someone who speaks spanish, the hard H he puts on hermano is killing me.

[jeanjauthor]

Girl Genius (story by Phil & Kaja (Kay-ya) Foglio (Foe-lee-oh), art mostly by Phil Foglio, colors by Cheyenne Wright) won the first 3 Hugo Awards for Best Graphic Novel for a reason.  Absolutely smashing art & storylines those 3 years.  They deliberately bowed out of the competition for the following year...and didn’t win any following years (Monstress has also won 3 years in a row, apparently.)  But they are still very much beloved by the scifi/fantasy community.

Not all webcomic artists work like the Foglios, with a creative team of two writers, an artist, and a colorist, but many have an artist/author who plots the story, blocks out & sketches the panels, inks the final sketches, and then hands it off to someone else to do all the coloring.  A Girl And Her Fed used to be a one-woman job, but is now being written by the original creator, K.B. Spangler, and drawn & colored by Ace.  (This has freed up Spangler’s time & alleviated her frustration with having to teach herself drawing on the fly, and she has been busy writing & producing novels, too.)

The now retired webcomic Schlock Mercenary, by Howard Tayler, was a one-man operation, wherein he did the pencils, inks, and colors pretty much by himself, though his style was mostly “newspaper comic strip” format, replete with double-strip Sunday comics.  Howard produced over 20 years of Schlock Mercenary without missing a single day, though many times he admits he came very close to running out of his buffer. (Stockpile of pre-made comcis waiting to be posted day by day...which is not an uncommon happening, and many artists will take a little hiatus from regular posting so that they can refill their buffer; he is one of the few that never did.)

And speaking of comics, Lynn Johnston, the creator of For Better Or For Worse, would do all the sketching, inking, and lettering herself, but now has a system where she’s doing the inking and someone else is doing the lettering.  (She is, however, re-posting older comics pretty much from the beginning these days in chronological order, as she’s getting up there in years.)  Whereas Schlock had larger story arcs tying it pages together for months at a time, FBoFW was more episodic, but you could still see the characters grow, age, and change over time.

Creating & drawing comics is not easy, and can lead to burn-out among artists, as happened with Spangler before she brought Ace on board.  But what multi-member teams like Girl Genius have had going for them, and solo artists like Schlock Mercenary, was the people backing them up, whether directly involved like Cheyenne & Ace, or indirectly like Howard’s wife, brother, children, etc. (They’ve helped him sell the graphics novels, etc.)

Artists...get yourselves a support team to help back you up.

You deserve background support & your own cheering session.  You’re entertaining a lot of us, so please let some of us help you out.

Overall, the average update frequency for long-running webcomics is around one page per week, so when you're archive-bingeing a comic that's been running for twenty years, most of the time that's like nine hundred pages – you can shoot through that over the weekend.

Then, of course, there are the exceptions.

[comicsbeat]

And let’s wrap things up! This may not have been the biggest survey ever, but it had perhaps the widest participation ever, and I’m very proud to showcase so many people from so many levels of the comcis industry from creators to retailers to journalists to publishers. 2018 has already been wild but it’s going to be another banner year for comics.

To read the first four parts of this survey go here. 

J.T. Yost, publisher Birdcage Bottom Books

2018 Projects: We’re gearing up for a Kickstarter campaign in January to fund all of the stupendous comics we’ve got planned through 2018. We’re focusing on artists flying under the radar that we feel are deserving of a wider audience.

We will be publishing:

“In The Future, We Are Dead”, a graphic novel by Eva Müllerthat focuses on her obsession with death

“The Complete Matinee Junkie”by Jordan Jeffries, a book collecting his previous four years of matinee attending comics diaries along with the current year (in progress) along with lots of bonus material

“Goat Song”, a bizarre piece of fiction about an unexpected infection by Larkin Ford

“Thonger Dongers” by T. Yost, a third collection of short comics drawn for various anthologies

“Nate The Nonconformist Has A Rival!” details high school rivalry at its worst and most immature by Stephanie Mannheim

“A Lone Dear At The End Of The World” by  Bradford Gambles alternates between the hush of an abandoned mall reclaimed by nature and loud, crass consumerism

“Pictures of Bananas and Funny Bugs”collects more truly unique work by New Yorker cartoonist Sara Lautman

What was the biggest story in comics in 2017? For me, the biggest story was the depressing realization that the #metoo movement extended to what I’d previously considered a welcoming and non-threatening comics community. What will be the biggest story in comics in 2018? In an echo of editorial cartoonist Thomas Nast’s takedown of Boss Tweed, comics will be the undoing of Trump and his entire administration (a man can dream).

Guilty Pleasure: I don’t feel guilty about my pleasures (I’ll readily admit to my love of Degrassi Jr. High), so I’ll just say the comics related project I’m most looking forward to is the collection of Laura Park’s work.

Who or what inspires you? Josh Bayer is an inspiration in that his need to draw seems compulsory, his knowledge of comics history is extensive, and his ability to share through teaching is admirable.

Sue, journalist, DC Women Kicking Ass

2018 Projects: 2018 mid-terms

What was the biggest story in comics in 2017? A tie! The meltdown of Marvel – sales wise, creative wise (bye Bendis), executive-wise ( Bye Axel, hello Akira Yoshida (oh sorry CB Cebulski) and the #metwo movement hitting comics and Eddie Berganza finally getting what he deserved 5 years ago.

Guilty Pleasure: Infinity War – how can Marvel get their movies (mostly) so good and their comics struggle.

Who or what inspires you? Wonder Woman! The comic is suffering from a writer who shouldn’t be writing it, but it was great under Rucka/Scott/Sharpe (also the movie was great).

 Martha Thomases, writer

2018 Projects: Second Hand Rose, with Richard Case.

What was the biggest story of 2017? #MeToo, Eddie Berganza

What will be the biggest story of 2018? #MeToo spreads to include the people who covered for Eddie and others.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Black Panther! Also, being seen as a writer more than a journalist.

Who or what inspires you? Irmina, by Barbara Yelin. I’m not prepared to see it’s the best book, but it provoked me to think of history in new ways.

 Charles Vess, cartoonist

2018 Projects: For the past four years I’ve been illustrating the first ever collected edition of Ursula K. Le Guin’s six multiple award winning Earthsea novels with direct consultation from the writer. ‘The Books of Earthsea’ from Saga Press (a division of Simon & Schuster) will be published in October of 2018, the 50th anniversary of the publication of ‘A Wizard of Earthsea’, the first book in the series. The collection will feature some 60 color and black and white illustrations that will depict her world, its characters and her dragons as close to the way Ursula has always seen them as possible. What a journey it’s been!

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Reading as much of Luke Pearson’s Hildafolk and Anti Watson’ Glister as they’ll give me.

Who or what inspires you? Mike Mignola, Michael Wm. Kaluta and Jill Thompson

Mairghread Scott, writer

2018 Projects: I have two new graphic novels coming out from First Second in March and April. City on the Other Side with artist Robin Robinson, a YA fantasy adventure that follows a young girl trying to stop a war between the after, and Science Comics: Robots and Drones with Jacob Chabot, a look at the history of robots and Drones and how they work. I also have written an animated feature called Marvel Rising: Secret Warriors featuring, Ms. Marvel, Squirrel Girl, Patriot, America Chavez, Inferno and Captain Marvel that I am really excited to share with everyone.

What was the biggest story of 2017? The women who came forward about Eddie Berganza and that DC finally did something about it.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Probably all the other companies being forced to clean house of their Berganza and the female talent that will finally start feeling safe to pitch at those comic companies.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Watching Great British BakeOff and eating cake.

Who or what inspires you? Alex De Campi, that woman is just so damn fearless.

 Larry Marder, cartoonist

2018 Projects: Beanworld Omnibus :summer 2018. Beanworld Book Five: 2019.

What was the biggest story of 2017? Robert Kirkman’s Secret History of Comics.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Some sort of inevitable crash.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: B-movies on TCM.

Who or what inspires you? Jack Kirby. It’s always Kirby.

Henry Barajas, writer

2018 Projects: I’m working LA VOZ DE MAYO with Jason Gonzalez and contributing to JH Williams’ III anthology WHERE WE LIVE.

What was the biggest story of 2017? Men harassing women in comics. The comic book industry has had to deal with some persons that overstayed his welcome after numerous allegations. It’s interesting how the events and victims became whispers and shy “con-versations” until Buzzfeed took it public. It doesn’t stop with that one. When you find one roach, you probably haven’t seen them all. Thankfully, women have been speaking out and exposing the bad eggs.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Betty and Veronica will get married.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Line Webtoons. I love their drive. They’re hungry and taking chances.

Who or what inspires you? David and Maria Lapham. They’re making the best noir comic that everyone should be talking about.

Christian Beranek, writer

2018 Projects: Kelci Crawford and I will be launching the Tiny Unicorn ongoing webcomic and prepping a YA GN series. In addition, Tony DiGerolamo and I have some new stuff in the works at The Webcomic Factory.

What was the biggest story of 2017? The #MeToo movement and the diversity in comics debate leading to editorial shake-ups at the highest levels.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Re-invention.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: It’s been 15 years since I’ve played a video game. Maybe I should give one a go!

Who or what inspires you? Kelci Crawford, my partner on Validation, continues to get better and better with her work, which in turns makes me better.

Kat Kan, librarian

2018 Projects: In addition to my work as a school librarian and as the Graphic Novel Specialist for Brodart Books & Library Services, I write the Graphically Speaking column for Voice of Youth Advocates. The February 2018 column will mark my 24th anniversary of writing about graphic novels and comicbooks for libraries serving teens.

What was the biggest story of 2017? The failure of the Big 2 to truly invest in diverse characters and comics; many series were cancelled in late 2017, usually citing low sales. The publishers have ignored the fact that the target audience tends to buy trades, and that libraries constitute one of the important markets for such books.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? The Excellence in Graphic Literature Award is a new initiative of the Pop Culture Classroom – the awards for various age levels and an overall award will be given at the Denver Comic Con. Among the awards is the Mosaic Award, which will celebrate diversity in comics. I’m on the Advisory Board; the EGLs are juried awards. Also, indie publishers such as Lion Forge will continue to grow. Lion Forge has learned lots of lessons from the past, mostly due to its staff – most of whom have worked in the comics industry for years.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Possible travel to professional conferences, particularly the American Library Association Annual Conference in New Orleans. Also, helping my middle school Library Book Club students create their own STEAM-based comics characters and stories during the second semester.

Who or what inspires you? Jim McClain – I mentioned him last year as well, I think. Despite many personal and professional challenges, he continues to hone his craft in his “spare” time. He ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for SOLUTION SQUAD – a superhero comicbook that makes learning math FUN! Jim continues to work on creating marvelous lesson plans – including the STEAM-based comics characters project I plan to use with my students. He does all this while teaching math full-time and being one of the best people I know.

Peter Kuper, cartoonist

2018 Projects: Kafkaesque a collection of 14 adaptations of Franz Kafka short stories, including ‘In The Penal Colony’, ‘The Burrow’ and ‘Before The Law’ to be published by W.W. Norton , Fall 2018

What was the biggest story of 2017? English edition of Alack Sinner: the Age of Innocence by José Antonio Muñoz and Carlos Sampayo

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Emil Ferris My Favorite Thing Is Monsters 2 (Vol. 2)

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Binge watching

Who or what inspires you? Jose Muñoz

Kyle Pinion, journalist

What was the biggest story of 2017? Marvel’s no good, horrible, very bad year. It’s been a long time since I can remember a comics publisher flailing this badly over the course of 12 months – be it creatively, in terms of overall leadership, the PR gaffes, you name it, Marvel somehow found a way to screw it up. Their ongoing rudderless nature is something everyone in the industry should probably be worried about. The original Marvel Now!, with all its energy and critical acclaim, feels like it was a decade ago.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? To be honest, see above. Can the Cebulski era of Marvel right the ship? What can be done differently? Unlike DC, Marvel still hasn’t bothered to make amends with the retailers, whose trust they’re blowing to smithereens, and if they were to relaunch/reboot, what shape will that take exactly? The Legacy launch was a complete bust; so what’s the next step? Do they have the talent in place to get readers excited for whatever it is? Will the long dormant Fantastic Four finally re-emerge thanks the Disney-Fox deal?

A second story worth keeping an eye on is just how big Brian Michael Bendis’ presence will be at DC. I’m sure he’ll wind up with a number of big name titles, but what of Jinxworld? Could that potentially be another pop-up imprint at the publisher? And perhaps even more pressingly, will he join Geoff Johns on the movie/tv side of things in some advisory capacity?

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: The return of the Legion of Super-Heroes. In whatever form it takes. It HAS. TO. HAPPEN….(I hope). It’s not even a guilty pleasure, I just wanted to mention it somewhere in here.

Todd Allen, analyst

What was the biggest story of 2017? What did Marvel go and do this time? (Seems like every other week there was a problem.)

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Depends on whether the whispers of mass shop closing are well founded or not. If so, that could be it. Other obvious possibility is whatever Marvel does for a relaunch/reboot.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: Akira Yoshida returning to write Milli Vanilli comics.

Lara Antal, cartoonist

2018 Projects: Two graphic novels – Adult Memoir about Parenting and Loss, written by Rick Louis (see except below)

Middle Grade about an all-girl punk band and their ghost guitarist

What was the biggest story of 2017? Middle Grade graphic novel market is booming.

What will be the biggest story of 2018? Graphic novels are up – mini comics are down.

Guilty Pleasure of 2018: More magical middle grade graphic novels! These are the comics I dreamed of as a kid and I’m glad they finally exist.

Who or what inspires you? Ghosts by Raina Telgemeier — I’m sure I’m not the only one going to mention Telgemeier but I really appreciated the simplicity and solid storytelling. It’s not going to change your life, but it’s very GOOD, and that’s a feat in itself. I find in comics especially the basics of good story telling can easily be obscured by artwork, and popular characters/properties, and popular creators.

The Beat’s Annual Creator Survey, 2018 Edition, Part Five: chock full of preview art And let's wrap things up! This may not have been the biggest survey ever, but it had perhaps the widest participation ever, and I'm very proud to showcase so many people from so many levels of the comcis industry from creators to retailers to journalists to publishers.