Ha! I talk about polite notices in case the problem isn't bias and y'all go straight for the elephant in the room. All right, I'm not saying to
do this, but I will point out that the "super-similar portraits get rejected" rule could be used if the site wanted to trim the ratio of 10,000 blondes to 1 black teen (I'm not sure there
is a younger black teen, unless that Indian-looking girl is one - certainly if you're out in Historical, you're stuffed). I assume that would be too much work per month and too much wailing from those who need the eyebrows "right", though, so that observation is just pointing out that a systemic solution is possible, in the same way you're pointing out that if the 2 GMs that aren't playing off-the-peg Eurofantasy do enough shovel work they could maybe catch up in a decade or so. Sure. Both these things are true, but we're both doing stuff voluntarily. I get it. Just saying. Not a dig.
Warrax:
Good thoughts. Nothing we haven't run into before, but a perpetual trial for GMs and players alike, to be sure. The best thing is to just start submitting portraits of various sorts even if you don't need them for a specific character. Eventually, the selection will improve.
This is allowed now? I always had the impression the rules meant you had to submit portraits for folk you immediately needed to play.
As for trawling the galleries, boy howdy have I done a lot of that, and can confirm for instance that we have one (1) teen girl of ambiguous long-haired brownness to be all your Native, Hispanic and Desi characters between 12-16. There is one (1) casual-looking young Desi guy, who might be Mexican. Most of our Aboriginal guys are out in the middle of Male Rugged, but if you want ladies there's a choice of my guide, I
think an ambiguous older lady, and...no, that's it. Running a Western, you run out of the entirety of Native portraits with an average party and something like four NPCs, assuming you use that one First Nations lumberjack and say he's on holiday. Want to set something in the Pacific Northwest? Siberia? Well, there's three native Siberians now who can just about pass for Tlingit or something (you're welcome - the boy is stuck out in the modern female category, mind) but otherwise it's like something out of
Cannibal! the Musical trying to get people with the broadest phenotypic traits for the areas. Brought
Masks of Nyarlathotep to Egypt? Better not interact with more than a handful of older male locals, or you'll have to talk to that blatantly-a-cultist weirdo out of
The Mummy (which I love, but because it is a toasted cheese sandwich) *ahem*
@SunRuan - yeah, it is
possible to make fake portraits for non-Young-White-Fashion-model NPCs, but that's kind of like "the back of the bus goes to the same stops", y'know? To reverse that suggestion, why not make Team Perfect Eyebrows use one of the many, many existing portraits and put their ideal version of standard-pretty white lady up big in the description doodad where everyone can see the specific variations of their nose or eyebrows or what have you? At 50x50, I assure you that even if I could tell actors apart...just go for hair colour. Seriously. We don't
need the same celeb again with different hair. Not when you can't have anyone from the entire continent of Asia as a player in
Kids on Bikes without a month-minimum wait.
There was indeed a little joyous blip of grandmas for everyone, and I was excited, but it seems to have dropped off.
Also, if the suite of NPCs just aren't there ready to grab because people are getting by with the second-class rig-up system and never getting round to putting those portraits in it discourages playing anything other than generic Eurofantasy (or putting anything but north-western Europeans in their Eurofantasy). The wait time for everyone to get portraits in (or the insistence on the copy-paste method) for something like
Harlem Unbound would lose you players and maybe sink a game. Then other potential players look about and go "huh, guess they don't play that here" and donate their time/selves to Pathfinder.
Anyway, aside from the elephant - tags? Ease of finding would maybe cut down on the repeats, and if they were coming
in with tags that'd make the backlog/effort to tackle same smaller, was my thought.
edit: dodgy descriptor changed for the results of my trying to find a British Asian-looking dude under 40 without a suit.
This message was last edited by the user at 08:28, Thu 01 Oct 2020.