From the article archive
Appearance
Introduction
For a hobby that deals with people playing fictional characters going off on adventures (among other things), the subject of personal appearance is sadly neglected. I know not what assumptions are made, but it would appear that appearance does not cross the mind of most designers, except in passing. In my own collection I have found but three games that deal with the subject in more than a very general way. Two of them -GURPS 3e and Synnibar- have charts for rolling up hair, eye, and skin color, while Aria has some charts for build, frame, and weight. Beyond that most RPGs that deal with appearance generally advise the player to choose coloration, build, height etc. as they feel fit. This can lead to problems. Especially among characters that come from the same race and ethnic group.
So I present this guide to appearance in RPGs. It is not scientifically rigorous. It is intended to help player and GM in deciding on how groups and individuals look. In the next section we will look at the very foundation of our appearance.
The Frame: Or, "Why do humans have such delicate bones?
Skeletons basically come in two types, "gracile" and "robust". Gracile (from the same root that gives us, "graceful") indicates a light, slender skeleton. Humans have a gracile skeleton, regardless of build. Robust indicates a skeleton with thick, heavy bones. Robust animals tend to be heavily muscled. The Neanderthal was a robust animal. Thanks to their robust skeleton the Neanderthal was (as far as we know) capable of superhuman feats of strength. A modern day example of an animal with a robust skeleton is the lowland gorilla.
So there you have your first choice, will the race be gracile or robust? Elves by and large are gracile. Dwarfs are usually robust. Of course, there may be some variation among different gracile and robust races, with elves being more gracile than humans, and dwarfs more robust than gnomes.
Build: Or, "Aren't you rather squat for a gracile race?"
Build ranges between slender and stocky. Slender people tend to be slim, while stocky folk are most often broad in shape. The typical dwarf is stocky while the typical elf is slender.
By and large a slender robust specimen would still be more muscular than a stocky gracile one. In real life the Masai of Africa and the Yanomamo of South America are slender, while the Ainu of Japan and the Pygmies of Africa are stocky.
Height: "Aren't you a little short to be a storm trooper?" Star Wars
This is a measure of how tall specimens of a certain race or ethnic group tend to be. Sometimes individuals fall outside the range, but this is rare. In real life average height in a group ranges from the Pygmies of Africa, who are usually 4' 6" tall, to the Masai (also African) who average around 7'. On the average Nilotic Africans (Which includes the Masai) are the tallest people on earth. On rare occasion a member of another ethnic group can grow taller than usual, or shorter than usual. Most often the extremely tall are that way because of some medical disorder, while the extremely short are that way thanks to a medical condition, inadequate nutrition, or genes.
In popular folklore elves are a short people. In fantasy they tend to be tall. Among RPGs elven height depends on the game in question. Dwarfs are short in just about every source, but in popular culture they are sometimes presented as downright diminuitive.
Weight: Or, why you shouldn't try fitting 1200 pounds on a 5' 10" gracile frame.
In case you're wondering, it can't support the weight. The skeleton of a 5' 10" human is simply not strong enough to support that much flesh. A robust humanoid of the same height might be able to handle it, but since we don't have any robust humanoids in real life, we may never know.
Weight for the most part depends on the specimen's frame, build, and height. A robust, stocky, tall humanoid will be heavier than a gracile, slender, short one. For that matter, a robust, stocky, tall humanoid will be heavier than a gracile, stocky, tall humanoid. As a general rule, robust specimens will weigh more than gracile ones, stocky will weigh more than slender, and tall will weigh more than short.
The Aria RPG has a good set of guidelines for determining weight based on height and build, though it does include some categories of "build" that fit more into the subject of "frame". I'll ask permission of the author and see if I can include the guidelines in a follow up article.
A Short Pause
We've covered the subject of frame, build, height and weight. Next we'll be looking at the subject of skin, hair, and eye color.
Pigmentation: Or, "You can thank your greatgrandmother for that, she burned like nobody's business." Man to his blonde granddaughter.
A warning to all of you who wish to research the color of human pigmentation on the Web, the information to be found is contradictory, incomplete, and all too often wrong. What I've been able to learn is presented below.
You've probably heard of "melanin". Did you know there are three types? Allomelanin is found only in plants, and shows only in special circumstances. Animals have two types, eumelanin and pheomelanin.
Eumelanin gives us the various shades of brown, ranging from black (very rare) to a pale flesh tone (not quite as rare, but still very uncommon) Pheomelanin gives us a range of colors from yellow to red. It is thanks to pheomelanin in the skin that the American Indian has a reddish cast to his epidermis, and the East Asiatic ranges from a pale yellow to a dark yellow brown.
Exactly how skin, hair, and eye color is determined is confusing and not that well understood. In general it is understood that eumelanin takes care of the various shades of brown, with pheomelanin accounting for the other colors. Shades such as hazel (eyes), bronze (skin) and auburn (hair) are apparently the result of some combination of eumelanin and pheomelanin
One general rule that can be relied on is, the more sun a group gets, the darker the members will tend to be. Thus the people of Equatorial Africa are darker than those who live further north or south. This doesn't always hold true. The Australian Aborigines living in the temperate regions of the continent are much darker than folk living in similar regions around the world, this being largely due to personal preference in mating partners. But by and large pale sun means pale skin, while bright sun means dark skin.
In terms of variation, the darkest people in the world are the Trobiand Islanders. They are a tall, slender people who are the only humans in the world who are truly black. At the other end are small groups of Nordics and Soumi who are very pale, the closest thing to true white a human can get without being an albino.
As far as I've been able to learn, everybody has some eumelanin in his skin, so everybody has some brown color to his hide. Some ethnic groups also have pheomelanin, giving them (as I noted before) a reddish or yellow shading.
Things get more complicated when you're talking about hair. Here pheomelanin can be the only pigment found, which is how we get blondes and red heads. BTW, "red-head" is a misnomer. The hair of a red-head is a shade of orange or some combination of orange and brown. It is possible for a human to have red hair, but as far as I know such a situation has never occured in real life. In an RPG this need not stop you.
Then you have eye color. Here brown eyes can range in color from black to hazel (possibly including some yellow) with blue eyes ranging in hue from deep sea blue to ice blue, and green eyes varying from deep green to pale green. Gray eyes would appear to be the result of blue mixed with a small amout of brown.
In gaming elves tend to be fair of skin. Except for the drow and similar races, who tend to be black. Dwarfs tend to a shade of brown; light, medium, or dark depending on the game designer. Orcs are often either a very dark brown, reddish brown, or yellow brown. Goblins often include green, which is not a skin color found among mammals. So we'll call it a fantasy melanin that interacts with yellow pheomelanin to give us green.
For the most part light skin tends to go with light hair and eyes, but there are exceptions. Among East Asiatics black hair is found with fair, yellow skin. The trick here is to be consistent. If an ethnic group does not have certain colors, then those colors will not appear. For example, in an elven ethnic group light amber (a light golden brown) hair is unknown, so if a player wants an elf PC from that group with that color hair, the odds are he (the elf) has an ancestor from another elven ethnic group, or possibly non-elven ancestry of some kind.
Hair: The drain cleaner manufacturer's best friend.
Hair itself can make for a lengthy article. Since this article is long enough as is, I'll resist temptation.
Before we get to the different kinds of hair to be found on humans (and related races in RPGs) let me cover the subject of body hair.
Contrary to popular belief, there are few locations on the human body that don't have hair. The soles of the feet, the palms of the hands, a few other locations. In addition, young children are just as "hairy" as adults. It's simply that in children (with rare exceptions) body hair is much shorter, paler, and finer than adult body hair. During puberty body hair starts growing longer, darker, and thicker, and so we say that a pubescent child is starting to grow hair in places he didn't before.
In both male and female this thicker, more noticable hair appears in the groin, the arm pits, the arms themselves, and the legs. Arm and leg hair is usually lighter and finer than groin and armpit hair. In males the hair also becomes noticable on the face and chest, and sometimes the back. Again, there are exceptions.
Europeans have the thickest beards by and large. American Indians are usually unable to grow one, while Eastern Asiatics most often have sparse beards. The Ainu, on the other hand, have some of the thickest beards around. Which fact lead early ethnographers to classify them as whites. It is now now they are a sub-group of Eastern Asiatic, one that exhibits a most unEastern Asiatic trait.
Where head, beard, and groin hair are concerned, most often the three "patches" are similar in color, thickness and shape. But not always. It is possible for a woman with light blonde head hair to have darker blonde or even brown groin hair. Or, the beard hair of a man could be flatter (thus curlier) than the hair on his head or groin.
This leads us the the four characteristics concerning the appearance of hair; color, thickness, length, and shape.
Color we've covered above. Thickness concerns how thick the hair shaft is. Fine hair is thinner than regular hair, and thick hair being, well, thicker. Length is how long the hair is. this being governed by the hair follicle. Body hair tends to be shorter than head, beard, arm pit, or groin hair because of the follicles it grows from. Head hair can grow extremely long, possibly forever, but all other hair is limited in length. In an immortal or otherwise longed lived race that crop growing from the scalp might reach hundreds or even thousands of feet depending the care it receives. Shape is involved with how "curly" hair is. the rounder the hair the straighter it is, the flatter the curlier. Round hair (the shaft is (almost) perfectly round) is straight. Flat hair is extremely curly (also known as, "kinky") Almost, but not quite, round hair is most often, "wavy", where the hair appears to have waves much like that of a large body of water in it.
In a particular race or ethnic group the different types of hair will usually fall within certain parameters. One group of dwarfs may have tightly curled, light colored head hair. In the men facial hair is darker, thicker, and curlier. Their chest and back hair is usually thick, very curly, and as light in color as the hair on their head. A blonde or reddish fur if you would. In both genders armpit hair is tightly curled and darker than the hair on their heads. Arm and leg hair tends to be finer and lighter. Groin hair is much like scalp hair. Among the men hairy abdomens are fairly common, but not universal. Sometimes abdomen hair appears to merge with grown hair. In another group of dwarfs the only visible hair is that on the head. Scalp hair in this people is black, fine, and wavy. Hair on the rest of the body is so light and fine it appears the dwarf is bald. With the sole exception being in the armpits and groin, and even there it can be hard to see in bad light.
As you might have noticed, this part of describing a race, ethnic group or individual can get involved.But it gets worse.
The Face: "A mug like yours could make a train run backwards up a dirt road"
In this part we'll deal with head shape as well as the face.
Where the skull is concerned the two extremes are, round and long. There are shapes inbetween of course. A long head tends to be longer between the forehead and the back and shorter between the ears. A round head tends to be the same length on both axis. Now that that's out of the way, we'll go on to the face.
With the face one needs to be concerned with the following elements, the shape the forehead, cheeks, lips, and chin.
The shape of the face is largely determined by the shape of the skull. Those with round heads tend to have round faces, while those with long heads will generally have long faces.
Where the forehead is concerned, there really isn't that much difference. How "high" a forehead is depends on the person's hairline. The lower the hairline, the lower the forehead. At the same time, certain races (orcs and goblins for example) may actually have lower foreheads than elves and humans. This doesn't mean they necessarily have smaller brains. The real world Neanderthal had a lower forehead, yet his brain with (if anything) larger than that of the modern human.
Cheeks can be broad or narrow; high, low, or medium. A high cheek is one where the upper edge of the cheek bone comes close to the lower edge of the eye socket. In the other cases the upper edge of the cheek is further away. This has a noticable effect on the shape of the cheek, and can be hard (if not impossible) to alter or conceal.
Lips can vary in how thick, dark, and wide they are. The width of the lips depends entirely on how large the mouth opening is. In humans the dark skinned ethnic groups tend to have thick, dark lips. The light skinned groups tend to thin, pale lips. Again, there are exceptions.
The chin can be small or large, jutting or recessed. Or some variation thereon. No human has ever been born chinless. The chin is a feature found in all humans not suffering with some disorder. Neanderthals were truly chinless, relying on their thick jaws to perform the same function the chin does among modern humans.
In most RPGs dwarfs tend to be round headed with broad faces, "medium" foreheads, medium cheeks, thick lips of moderate coloration, and large semi-protruding chins. Elves are (in contrast) long headed with narrow faces, high foreheads, high cheeks, thin, pale lips, and small, protruding chins. In your campaign your races may have features that vary from the above.
So there you have an all too brief, incomplete look at appearance in RPGs. If there is enough interest I will put together another article covering the effect society can have on how a person looks. For example, why hair tends to be longer among the upper class than in the lower classes.
I've rated this article a seven because it could have been more informative, more complete. I simply don't know as much as I'd like on the many subjects that made up this article. so an expanded version may be coming up, depending on what I can learn.
Next Sunday I'll be submitting the follow up to this piece. covering the effect society can have on basic appearance. Perhaps including a bit on costuming. In coming weeks articles on society in RPGs and other fun things.
Monday Writing Practice will return, with the continuation of the short and incomplete history of the Babylonian Empire.
Alan Kellogg
For a hobby that deals with people playing fictional characters going off on adventures (among other things), the subject of personal appearance is sadly neglected. I know not what assumptions are made, but it would appear that appearance does not cross the mind of most designers, except in passing. In my own collection I have found but three games that deal with the subject in more than a very general way. Two of them -GURPS 3e and Synnibar- have charts for rolling up hair, eye, and skin color, while Aria has some charts for build, frame, and weight. Beyond that most RPGs that deal with appearance generally advise the player to choose coloration, build, height etc. as they feel fit. This can lead to problems. Especially among characters that come from the same race and ethnic group.
So I present this guide to appearance in RPGs. It is not scientifically rigorous. It is intended to help player and GM in deciding on how groups and individuals look. In the next section we will look at the very foundation of our appearance.
The Frame: Or, "Why do humans have such delicate bones?
Skeletons basically come in two types, "gracile" and "robust". Gracile (from the same root that gives us, "graceful") indicates a light, slender skeleton. Humans have a gracile skeleton, regardless of build. Robust indicates a skeleton with thick, heavy bones. Robust animals tend to be heavily muscled. The Neanderthal was a robust animal. Thanks to their robust skeleton the Neanderthal was (as far as we know) capable of superhuman feats of strength. A modern day example of an animal with a robust skeleton is the lowland gorilla.
So there you have your first choice, will the race be gracile or robust? Elves by and large are gracile. Dwarfs are usually robust. Of course, there may be some variation among different gracile and robust races, with elves being more gracile than humans, and dwarfs more robust than gnomes.
Build: Or, "Aren't you rather squat for a gracile race?"
Build ranges between slender and stocky. Slender people tend to be slim, while stocky folk are most often broad in shape. The typical dwarf is stocky while the typical elf is slender.
By and large a slender robust specimen would still be more muscular than a stocky gracile one. In real life the Masai of Africa and the Yanomamo of South America are slender, while the Ainu of Japan and the Pygmies of Africa are stocky.
Height: "Aren't you a little short to be a storm trooper?" Star Wars
This is a measure of how tall specimens of a certain race or ethnic group tend to be. Sometimes individuals fall outside the range, but this is rare. In real life average height in a group ranges from the Pygmies of Africa, who are usually 4' 6" tall, to the Masai (also African) who average around 7'. On the average Nilotic Africans (Which includes the Masai) are the tallest people on earth. On rare occasion a member of another ethnic group can grow taller than usual, or shorter than usual. Most often the extremely tall are that way because of some medical disorder, while the extremely short are that way thanks to a medical condition, inadequate nutrition, or genes.
In popular folklore elves are a short people. In fantasy they tend to be tall. Among RPGs elven height depends on the game in question. Dwarfs are short in just about every source, but in popular culture they are sometimes presented as downright diminuitive.
Weight: Or, why you shouldn't try fitting 1200 pounds on a 5' 10" gracile frame.
In case you're wondering, it can't support the weight. The skeleton of a 5' 10" human is simply not strong enough to support that much flesh. A robust humanoid of the same height might be able to handle it, but since we don't have any robust humanoids in real life, we may never know.
Weight for the most part depends on the specimen's frame, build, and height. A robust, stocky, tall humanoid will be heavier than a gracile, slender, short one. For that matter, a robust, stocky, tall humanoid will be heavier than a gracile, stocky, tall humanoid. As a general rule, robust specimens will weigh more than gracile ones, stocky will weigh more than slender, and tall will weigh more than short.
The Aria RPG has a good set of guidelines for determining weight based on height and build, though it does include some categories of "build" that fit more into the subject of "frame". I'll ask permission of the author and see if I can include the guidelines in a follow up article.
A Short Pause
We've covered the subject of frame, build, height and weight. Next we'll be looking at the subject of skin, hair, and eye color.
Pigmentation: Or, "You can thank your greatgrandmother for that, she burned like nobody's business." Man to his blonde granddaughter.
A warning to all of you who wish to research the color of human pigmentation on the Web, the information to be found is contradictory, incomplete, and all too often wrong. What I've been able to learn is presented below.
You've probably heard of "melanin". Did you know there are three types? Allomelanin is found only in plants, and shows only in special circumstances. Animals have two types, eumelanin and pheomelanin.
Eumelanin gives us the various shades of brown, ranging from black (very rare) to a pale flesh tone (not quite as rare, but still very uncommon) Pheomelanin gives us a range of colors from yellow to red. It is thanks to pheomelanin in the skin that the American Indian has a reddish cast to his epidermis, and the East Asiatic ranges from a pale yellow to a dark yellow brown.
Exactly how skin, hair, and eye color is determined is confusing and not that well understood. In general it is understood that eumelanin takes care of the various shades of brown, with pheomelanin accounting for the other colors. Shades such as hazel (eyes), bronze (skin) and auburn (hair) are apparently the result of some combination of eumelanin and pheomelanin
One general rule that can be relied on is, the more sun a group gets, the darker the members will tend to be. Thus the people of Equatorial Africa are darker than those who live further north or south. This doesn't always hold true. The Australian Aborigines living in the temperate regions of the continent are much darker than folk living in similar regions around the world, this being largely due to personal preference in mating partners. But by and large pale sun means pale skin, while bright sun means dark skin.
In terms of variation, the darkest people in the world are the Trobiand Islanders. They are a tall, slender people who are the only humans in the world who are truly black. At the other end are small groups of Nordics and Soumi who are very pale, the closest thing to true white a human can get without being an albino.
As far as I've been able to learn, everybody has some eumelanin in his skin, so everybody has some brown color to his hide. Some ethnic groups also have pheomelanin, giving them (as I noted before) a reddish or yellow shading.
Things get more complicated when you're talking about hair. Here pheomelanin can be the only pigment found, which is how we get blondes and red heads. BTW, "red-head" is a misnomer. The hair of a red-head is a shade of orange or some combination of orange and brown. It is possible for a human to have red hair, but as far as I know such a situation has never occured in real life. In an RPG this need not stop you.
Then you have eye color. Here brown eyes can range in color from black to hazel (possibly including some yellow) with blue eyes ranging in hue from deep sea blue to ice blue, and green eyes varying from deep green to pale green. Gray eyes would appear to be the result of blue mixed with a small amout of brown.
In gaming elves tend to be fair of skin. Except for the drow and similar races, who tend to be black. Dwarfs tend to a shade of brown; light, medium, or dark depending on the game designer. Orcs are often either a very dark brown, reddish brown, or yellow brown. Goblins often include green, which is not a skin color found among mammals. So we'll call it a fantasy melanin that interacts with yellow pheomelanin to give us green.
For the most part light skin tends to go with light hair and eyes, but there are exceptions. Among East Asiatics black hair is found with fair, yellow skin. The trick here is to be consistent. If an ethnic group does not have certain colors, then those colors will not appear. For example, in an elven ethnic group light amber (a light golden brown) hair is unknown, so if a player wants an elf PC from that group with that color hair, the odds are he (the elf) has an ancestor from another elven ethnic group, or possibly non-elven ancestry of some kind.
Hair: The drain cleaner manufacturer's best friend.
Hair itself can make for a lengthy article. Since this article is long enough as is, I'll resist temptation.
Before we get to the different kinds of hair to be found on humans (and related races in RPGs) let me cover the subject of body hair.
Contrary to popular belief, there are few locations on the human body that don't have hair. The soles of the feet, the palms of the hands, a few other locations. In addition, young children are just as "hairy" as adults. It's simply that in children (with rare exceptions) body hair is much shorter, paler, and finer than adult body hair. During puberty body hair starts growing longer, darker, and thicker, and so we say that a pubescent child is starting to grow hair in places he didn't before.
In both male and female this thicker, more noticable hair appears in the groin, the arm pits, the arms themselves, and the legs. Arm and leg hair is usually lighter and finer than groin and armpit hair. In males the hair also becomes noticable on the face and chest, and sometimes the back. Again, there are exceptions.
Europeans have the thickest beards by and large. American Indians are usually unable to grow one, while Eastern Asiatics most often have sparse beards. The Ainu, on the other hand, have some of the thickest beards around. Which fact lead early ethnographers to classify them as whites. It is now now they are a sub-group of Eastern Asiatic, one that exhibits a most unEastern Asiatic trait.
Where head, beard, and groin hair are concerned, most often the three "patches" are similar in color, thickness and shape. But not always. It is possible for a woman with light blonde head hair to have darker blonde or even brown groin hair. Or, the beard hair of a man could be flatter (thus curlier) than the hair on his head or groin.
This leads us the the four characteristics concerning the appearance of hair; color, thickness, length, and shape.
Color we've covered above. Thickness concerns how thick the hair shaft is. Fine hair is thinner than regular hair, and thick hair being, well, thicker. Length is how long the hair is. this being governed by the hair follicle. Body hair tends to be shorter than head, beard, arm pit, or groin hair because of the follicles it grows from. Head hair can grow extremely long, possibly forever, but all other hair is limited in length. In an immortal or otherwise longed lived race that crop growing from the scalp might reach hundreds or even thousands of feet depending the care it receives. Shape is involved with how "curly" hair is. the rounder the hair the straighter it is, the flatter the curlier. Round hair (the shaft is (almost) perfectly round) is straight. Flat hair is extremely curly (also known as, "kinky") Almost, but not quite, round hair is most often, "wavy", where the hair appears to have waves much like that of a large body of water in it.
In a particular race or ethnic group the different types of hair will usually fall within certain parameters. One group of dwarfs may have tightly curled, light colored head hair. In the men facial hair is darker, thicker, and curlier. Their chest and back hair is usually thick, very curly, and as light in color as the hair on their head. A blonde or reddish fur if you would. In both genders armpit hair is tightly curled and darker than the hair on their heads. Arm and leg hair tends to be finer and lighter. Groin hair is much like scalp hair. Among the men hairy abdomens are fairly common, but not universal. Sometimes abdomen hair appears to merge with grown hair. In another group of dwarfs the only visible hair is that on the head. Scalp hair in this people is black, fine, and wavy. Hair on the rest of the body is so light and fine it appears the dwarf is bald. With the sole exception being in the armpits and groin, and even there it can be hard to see in bad light.
As you might have noticed, this part of describing a race, ethnic group or individual can get involved.But it gets worse.
The Face: "A mug like yours could make a train run backwards up a dirt road"
In this part we'll deal with head shape as well as the face.
Where the skull is concerned the two extremes are, round and long. There are shapes inbetween of course. A long head tends to be longer between the forehead and the back and shorter between the ears. A round head tends to be the same length on both axis. Now that that's out of the way, we'll go on to the face.
With the face one needs to be concerned with the following elements, the shape the forehead, cheeks, lips, and chin.
The shape of the face is largely determined by the shape of the skull. Those with round heads tend to have round faces, while those with long heads will generally have long faces.
Where the forehead is concerned, there really isn't that much difference. How "high" a forehead is depends on the person's hairline. The lower the hairline, the lower the forehead. At the same time, certain races (orcs and goblins for example) may actually have lower foreheads than elves and humans. This doesn't mean they necessarily have smaller brains. The real world Neanderthal had a lower forehead, yet his brain with (if anything) larger than that of the modern human.
Cheeks can be broad or narrow; high, low, or medium. A high cheek is one where the upper edge of the cheek bone comes close to the lower edge of the eye socket. In the other cases the upper edge of the cheek is further away. This has a noticable effect on the shape of the cheek, and can be hard (if not impossible) to alter or conceal.
Lips can vary in how thick, dark, and wide they are. The width of the lips depends entirely on how large the mouth opening is. In humans the dark skinned ethnic groups tend to have thick, dark lips. The light skinned groups tend to thin, pale lips. Again, there are exceptions.
The chin can be small or large, jutting or recessed. Or some variation thereon. No human has ever been born chinless. The chin is a feature found in all humans not suffering with some disorder. Neanderthals were truly chinless, relying on their thick jaws to perform the same function the chin does among modern humans.
In most RPGs dwarfs tend to be round headed with broad faces, "medium" foreheads, medium cheeks, thick lips of moderate coloration, and large semi-protruding chins. Elves are (in contrast) long headed with narrow faces, high foreheads, high cheeks, thin, pale lips, and small, protruding chins. In your campaign your races may have features that vary from the above.
So there you have an all too brief, incomplete look at appearance in RPGs. If there is enough interest I will put together another article covering the effect society can have on how a person looks. For example, why hair tends to be longer among the upper class than in the lower classes.
I've rated this article a seven because it could have been more informative, more complete. I simply don't know as much as I'd like on the many subjects that made up this article. so an expanded version may be coming up, depending on what I can learn.
Next Sunday I'll be submitting the follow up to this piece. covering the effect society can have on basic appearance. Perhaps including a bit on costuming. In coming weeks articles on society in RPGs and other fun things.
Monday Writing Practice will return, with the continuation of the short and incomplete history of the Babylonian Empire.
Alan Kellogg
Recovered from the Gaming Outpost database backup. Original wording is preserved; damaged punctuation and presentation markup have been repaired. Historical links without a local match point to the Internet Archive.