How much can you say without words?

"I am Groot"

It's not a lot but context is important and can turn a simple phrase into something funny, deep, confusing, or serious.

Between studying Pragmatics (the use of language in context), and the current 200 word RPG design contest, I'm really thinking about ways to maximise the use of language by providing a quick context, then minimising the remaining word count. 

I'm wondering if it would be too much of a cheat to use images and iconography to get meanings across, it would certainly do the job effectively...but are the images just a proxy for words?

Hmm... This could get dangerous.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 7)

Image
A working computer and scanner...that means it is time to get back to work on the geomorph sequence. A lot of the discussion in this set of tutorials has been focused around square geomorphs. They're the easiest for most people to wrap their heads around.  But my preferred form of geomorph is based around the hexagon, these tend to produce more organic and interesting shapes. This is true for natural environments, but it's no less true for urban environments. The example set of geomorphs above as a simple two-phase system. One edge type is plain, the other edge type has a road piercing the centre. There could be dozens of combinations and permutations for each of the two phases around the hexagonal edges, but a quick look at the variety of buildings and road shapes shows that there could literally be hundreds of possible options when drawing these map fragments. But you certainly don't need to create hundreds of designs for the system to be effective. Usin
Read more

A Guide to Geomorphs (Part 1)

Image
After numerous requests to get back to map tutorials, it's time to start our new series. This time focusing on the concept of geomorphs, modular map fragments that can be mixed and matched. We'll start with a couple of theoretical tutorials before sinking into a few more practical posts. I'm predicting a dozen or so posts in this sequence, but let's see how long it lasts.
Read more