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Many of us enjoy the work of our friends over at worldbuilding.SE, and their ad here has been well-received. I wonder if we'd like to reciprocate with an rpg.SE ad to run in their community promotion? (Monica Cellio has invited us to do so.)

The thought I had was something that blends imagery native to each stack, and referencing some sort of transition from building a world to playing in it.

Here's Century Gothic font, re-drawn icosahedron. Pending the font choice, I think this is the final effort I'll be putting into it. Thanks for all the feedback so far, everyone.

icosahedron

The pending suggestion was to look at the fonts, as the original was a bit... vanilla. Three possibilities:

century gothic trebuchet sitka heading

These are Century Gothic (UL), Trebuchet (UR), and Sitka Heading (LL). Whichever we settle on I'll tidy up the centering; leave a comment below if you've a preference.

(Note these still have the chunky/aliased icosahedron. Just look at the fonts.)

Feedback requested on at least these fronts:

  • should we put a community ad over there?
  • different transitioning image(s)? Background for them? (Starry background->our site's grid-background?)
  • other taglines/phrases?
  • better artists: create better image ideas?
  • which font?


Old versions, critiqued below First thought:

rpg->wb-green

this might be way to suggestive of CRPGs, and just lead to a lot of confusion.

So another idea:

rpg->wb-yellow

third idea, but RPG's icosahedron was too faded:

rpg->wb-orange faded

converging... but there's a sky-artifact that obscures the incomplete planet and the rpg.se address is a little clunky. (Back in the first iteration I thought the simple font and full URL lent a nice console/terminal effect, but now they're just cruft.) On the right I've made the bottom line a little less clunky, and replaced the planet-image with a better original.

rpg-wb-orange strong enter image description here

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Oh, we don't have one there yet? Perhaps use their background and our colors? \$\endgroup\$
    – Smurfton
    Jan 20, 2016 at 17:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ Maybe take some art from meta.worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/2916/… \$\endgroup\$
    – Smurfton
    Jan 20, 2016 at 18:12
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Smurfton This is the first year that WB will be running community ads, so we've never before had the chance! \$\endgroup\$ Jan 20, 2016 at 19:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ Where are you getting your dodecahedron from? I can make my own, but... \$\endgroup\$
    – Smurfton
    Jan 20, 2016 at 21:13
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think the more aggressive/complete transition from the first pair works better than the ghostlier transition in the new one. Otherwise nice though. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 20, 2016 at 23:25
  • \$\begingroup\$ @SevenSidedDie like the second (rightward) orange one? \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Jan 21, 2016 at 0:17
  • \$\begingroup\$ Yeah, like that. Looks more like a change, while the left looks more like an overlap. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 21, 2016 at 0:27
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    \$\begingroup\$ feedback from a WB.SE mod \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Jan 21, 2016 at 4:12
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    \$\begingroup\$ Hi from Worldbuilding :) I like your ad, especially the 2nd version above (the clearer fade looks better I think). The new tagline is good too. If you post it I'll upvote it :D \$\endgroup\$
    – Tim B
    Jan 21, 2016 at 9:34
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    \$\begingroup\$ I definitely prefer the version on the right, where the fade is more pronounced (the world fades totally to transparent, the die fades totally to opaque). Could we maybe get some anti-aliasing though? \$\endgroup\$
    – KRyan
    Jan 21, 2016 at 15:23
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'd like to submit this tagline: "Free QA Testing!" \$\endgroup\$ Jan 21, 2016 at 16:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ @KRyan did a simple antialias on the icosahedron-layer, but I'm not sure it's much better. This is my first time doing these sorts of things, though, so I'm not sure I'm making the most of GIMP. \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Jan 22, 2016 at 0:52
  • \$\begingroup\$ @nitsua60 You may want to redraw the dice lines yourself using a vector line tool. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 24, 2016 at 1:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think this latest one looks splendid. Thanks for all the effort you've been putting into this. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 24, 2016 at 2:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ The font that the rpg.se logo uses is called Morpheus. kiwi-media.com/fonts.html It's a shareware font. It would be good to use that as the site name font, if nothing else \$\endgroup\$
    – Tritium21
    Jan 24, 2016 at 10:03

2 Answers 2

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Yes, we should run an ad or ads

All the yesses.

Feedback on designs

I like the overall design! The top-left to bottom-right fade is just the right visual flow to both catch the eye and imply the message of build-then-game that we want to convey.

I like the background as-is. I do like the idea of an additional background transition, but it might make it too busy. And specifically, I think transitioning to a grid background would give the wrong impression: we associate that with play grids and grid paper used during play, but viewers are more likely to associate that with “building” and wonder why it's on the wrong side of the transition, confusing the visual message.

I like the art in general. Having different colours for different messages is a nice touch that will make them stand out as distinct, should we submit more than one and more than one get accepted.

Another reason to not worry about the art: perfect is the enemy of good enough. This art is plenty good enough, and it would be good to just get an ad or ads over there sooner rather than later. We're also not locked into these ads forever should we come up with something amazing farther down the road.

Taglines: Hmmm.

The taglines don't work for me though. They're good starts, but carry unintentional messages:

  • build complete. start game? [y/n]

    I agree, this would often be misinterpreted to mean that we're about computer RPGs. We get that misunderstanding enough that we don't want to encourage it in any way. (I actually really like it otherwise: it's pithy and cute, so the unintentional message is all the more a pity.)

  • if you build it, we will play it

    This implies something we don't offer: that they can find people here to pitch their worlds to / form a play group with. They might want to play with their world, and RPGs are a good avenue for that, but we should avoid implying that we're a whole site of people just waiting to play in the ad-clicker's world.

Alternative ideas that dodge these problems:

  • Play with your world
  • Game in your world
  • Build a world, and then visit it
  • Done building? Now game in it.
  • Set your world in motion

I don't think any of these are brilliant! More ideas would be helpful.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ good point on the second tagline I'd proposed: I was going for a sort of "Field of Dreams" allusion, but definitely missed the mark. I like "Set your world in motion" a lot! \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Jan 20, 2016 at 21:53
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    \$\begingroup\$ "Set your world in motion" is a beautiful tagline. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 21, 2016 at 15:22
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As a enthusiastic lurker of both sites, a semi-regular contributor of worldbuilding.SE and the creator of the original ad I say:

Yes please!

There should definitely be an ad for rpg.SE on worldbuilding.SE and your idea is excellent.

Execution

Generally the design looks good, I have a few small points of critique though:

  • The font is a tad bland, perhaps you could use a D&D related font like Vecna. (Though that one is only free for non-commercial use, you could ask opensource.SE for advice on this issue.)

  • The night sky is slightly visible at some points (the top right mainly) and distracts me a bit.

  • The bottom right side of the planet should probably fade to black, so it really only shows the die.

  • rpg.stackexchange.com is a bit long, the relavant information is rpg and the fact that it's a stackexchange site, this could be conveyed much more succintly and then be printed larger. I'm partial to rpg.SE, but that's just a matter of preference I suppose.

Other than that, I think it's fantastic. set your world in motion really is a gorgeous phrase and very fitting. The idea of using the design of our own ad is brilliant, the way it's combined is very effective. and I think the contrast betweenthe simplicity of the new elements and the complexity of the planet really demands attention.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Thanks for the feedback--I like all of the points you made. I'll give another try at punching it up today. (The current one isn't yet using the planet you posted over on WB.SE, so I believe that should fix the sky-issue.) \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Jan 22, 2016 at 12:22
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    \$\begingroup\$ I would prefer not to see a D&D related font, please! It's not the only RPG, and not every setting is a D&D-ish Vecna-ish setting, and it's already the default and that doesn't need reinforcement, and I don't want to do even more to make people think "tabletop RPG = D&D". As someone who prefers and sees the value in dozens of other RPGs and sees the benefits and damage D&D does to the whole hobby, it does everyone and the entire hobby a favour (and makes people think) by picking anything but a D&D-ish font. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 22, 2016 at 13:45
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    \$\begingroup\$ Also, to the last bullet point, we could just go with the title: "RPG Stack Exchange", or "Role-playing Games Stack Exchange" or "Role-playing Games SE". It's longer but the web address was never the important part on an ad linking to our site. :) \$\endgroup\$ Jan 22, 2016 at 13:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ @doppelgreener fair enough, the current font is just a tad mundane. It obviously doesn't need to be a D&D related font, but something with a little character would be nice. Maybe an understated sci-fi font? \$\endgroup\$
    – overactor
    Jan 22, 2016 at 16:51
  • \$\begingroup\$ @overactor There are possibilities for making it more elegant, I agree. :) Sci fi, some classy Serif font, a prettier Sans Serif font, something stylised in another way... lots of good options. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 23, 2016 at 6:19
  • \$\begingroup\$ @doppelgreener serifs appeal to me, but at this size they just never seemed to show up well. I think that might also be partly the color scheme, but don't really know... =\ \$\endgroup\$
    – nitsua60 Mod
    Jan 24, 2016 at 1:01
  • \$\begingroup\$ @nitsua60 Typfaces with serifs tend to also be narrower in stroke, which is great for large blocks of text but awful for titling. A heavier-stroke seriffed typeface (like Garamond Bold) might work though. \$\endgroup\$ Jan 27, 2016 at 20:20

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