Non-Iconographic disadvantage doesn't make sense.

[maximara]

The way Non-Iconographic is described doesn't really make sense. It supposedly means you incapable of processing abstract images and symbols. Fine but it is stated "you can process text without difficulty, and may learn written languages normally"

The flaw there is the letters themselves are abstract symbols both in the sounds they represent and what the order is. For example "Boom" means one thing in English and a totally different thing in Dutch.

Then there are words that are spelled the exact same way but based on how the are pronounced have totally different meanings. Bow can mean something that can fire an arrow or what you do on the stage.

sfdebris' The Language of Darmok shows that things are nowhere as simple as we think.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

It does seem unrealistic, but it might be as simple as separating out Illiterate for those concepts that don't include illiteracy. It's easier to add Illiterate back in (with the price determined by the campaign's default literacy level) than to disentangle the price of Illiterate from a more encompassing Non-Iconographic disadvantage.

Or it might just be that Illiterate has different costs in different campaigns.

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by maximara

The way Non-Iconographic is described doesn't really make sense. It supposedly means you incapable of processing abstract images and symbols. Fine but it is stated "you can process text without difficulty, and may learn written languages normally"

The flaw there is the letters themselves are abstract symbols both in the sounds they represent and what the order is. For example "Boom" means one thing in English and a totally different thing in Dutch.

Then there are words that are spelled the exact same way but based on how the are pronounced have totally different meanings. Bow can mean something that can fire an arrow or what you do on the stage.

sfdebris' The Language of Darmok shows that things are nowhere as simple as we think.

It seems to be over-reaching a bit, but it is written as a defect in the brain's structure, so it may be fine as such.

A milder form, say -5 points, would cover people like my mother, who would also probably be described as non-iconographic. In my mother's case, she could read maps just fine, and was okay with heraldic devices (at least those following the European/British pattern), but put her in front of a computer with a graphical interface and she was lost. You could tell her and tell her what each symbol was for, but it just wouldn't stick. She could just barely use an e-reader, enough to open and close it and pick a book by pointing at the cover, but that was it. Anything more complicated and she needed someone to take over and do it for her.

Likewise, if the instructions used diagrams instead of text, she couldn't follow them because "they don't make sense". Actual photographs or plain text were fine though. Once someone opened the library's card catalogue for her, she could type in the keywords and read the results just fine. But drawn instructions eluded her completely.

So, while it isn't necessarily the best wording for what they seem to want to represent, there really are people who can process text but are at least partially non-iconographic.

[Culture20]

A lot of “instructions” these days are done in some sort of weird symbology which makes no sense to me. For example, I can’t grok the symbol my car uses for its “low tire pressure” warning, even after looking up the warning lights. Most of the symbols on my dashboard seem to have no relation to reality. I also don’t understand washing instructions on new clothes. But I’m not non-iconographic by any means, the icon designers just use terrible icons. Ikea and LEGO instructions both use no words but are perfectly intelligible.

[Vaevictis Asmadi]

That's because LEGO and IKEA designers have the sense to just draw accurate pictures of what you're building. They hardly use symbols at all, other than arrows.

Curmudgeon, I found your post very interesting. I really wonder how the neurology of this trait would relate to languages written with logographs and ideographs. Where is the neurological line between an icon symbol and a verbal symbol?

[Anthony]

The intent appears to be illiteracy with certain supposedly universal symbol sets, but in reality that's pretty much just illiteracy with all pictographic languages and pidgins.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

A milder form, say -5 points, would cover people like my mother...

In the case of your mother (as mine as well) I'd posit it possibly being Lower TL. The penalty to her defaulted Computer Operations skill might just be nudging the tablet into "can't reliably operate" territory.

My Mom has the same problems, if she has to operate something often enough (two to three times a week) and for long enough (several months in a row at least) she begins to pick up the iconography and how to navigate the interface (in regards to computer usage anyway). But if she goes too long without needing to use something (she prefers to read printed books) she forgets everything she learned. She has repeatedly learned how to use both her ebook reader as well as the movie viewer on her tablet. But then she'll stop using them for several months and forget it all.

But since she goes online and checks her email and facebook daily, she never forgets how to do those operations. However at this point she's forgotten what her ebook viewer icon is for, despite reading a book series on the tablet a few months ago.

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by maximara

The way Non-Iconographic is described doesn't really make sense. It supposedly means you incapable of processing abstract images and symbols. Fine but it is stated "you can process text without difficulty, and may learn written languages normally"

The flaw there is the letters themselves are abstract symbols both in the sounds they represent and what the order is. For example "Boom" means one thing in English and a totally different thing in Dutch.

Then there are words that are spelled the exact same way but based on how the are pronounced have totally different meanings. Bow can mean something that can fire an arrow or what you do on the stage.

sfdebris' The Language of Darmok shows that things are nowhere as simple as we think.

Letters aren't abstract iconography, they're essentially somewhat-defective* phonography. There is an issue with Non-Iconographic: that it doesn't prohibit literacy with iconographic scripts (and conversely, that Dyslexia doesn't allow learning iconographic scripts), but that's a not quite the same as what you're objecting to.

* == Level of defectiveness can range from 'shockingly' to 'very slightly', depending on orthographic depth: contrast English, Russian and French vs. Spanish, Esperanto and Ukrainian.

[scc]

I've been interrupting Non-Iconographic as meaning if someone changed the font on you you wouldn't be able to tell what letters where which.

[Mysterious Dark Lord v3.2]

This probably does exist.

The neurological condition Prosopagnosia is the inability to recognize faces. People with this condition cannot tell people apart by their faces. they can't even recognize their own face in a photo. This is real.

So an inability to process abstract symbols is not unlikely.