I don't care if they're white,  black, asian, elves, drow, or succubi (hell, bonus points if they're succubi!), just please make sure you (WoTC) include the same kind of fantastic and mouth-watering images as certain past editions had; both for the sake of the principles of high adventure that D&D stands for, for the traditions, and of course for the youth of today; as well as for the purely logical commercial considerations which should be the main driving force in your attempt to create a new edition of D&D (and not some misguided attempt to listen to the simpering whining of a group of people who mostly don't actually play D&D and WON'T play D&D regardless of what you do, and whose only interest is to push forward an essentially anti-gaming agenda).

So please, by all means, make your art diverse, interesting, fantastical, and representative of a variety of races and colours, but don't follow some douchebag's quota-system demands; and please by all means show women in positions of strength and valour, and some of them can even be fully clothed! But don't be afraid to also present the representations of women in your D&D art as hot babes meant to fire up the imagination; this too is part of the imagery of western fantasy, and this shouldn't be whitewashed away for the sake of a group of politically correct pseudo-activists that don't really care about diversity or inclusiveness as much as feeling smug about themselves.   I'm sure that if you do include stunning and impressive art that includes beautiful women; real gamers everywhere (be they white, black, brown, or asian, male or female, or of any part of the gender spectrum) will thank you.

There, now I just need someone to put this thing up on that retarded "online petitions" site.

RPGPundit

I'd sign.  

I think it's great to see a female paladin in full plate, but there's nothing wrong with an ocassional 'damsel in distress', either.

Hehe. So maybe I'll burn in some sort of politically insensitive hell for this, but this thread made me chuckle.

Change.org online petitions.

I'd start it now, but I have to go to work.

I have a few thoughts on this

* Internet crusaders and white knights demanding quotas make me roll my eyes (internet crusades mean nothing.  What you doing in real life to help equality?  And before I get quoted out of context somewhere, I'm a long time member of my local PRIDE group)

* White males telling minorities that they should in fact be offended when they otherwise aren't makes me gag a little (and yes, I have a mixed race immediate family, so I see this a lot, usually by people who are trying to get some sort of "minority cred").

* companies have always tried to appeal to their greatest target demographic.  That's just life that every company does.  And who is the greatest target demographic of RPGs?

that being said...

* I don't think D&D ever had a shortage of "hot babes", so demanding they be included seems a bit off.  Sort of reminds me of those people who complain that since there is BET, there needs to be a WET.  o_O

* I don't think chainmail bikinis and Boris V style art should really be in the core books.  If you want a supplement that focuses on the sword and sorcery theme ala the 70s?  I'm all for that just like I'm for a sourcebook for just about every theme.  But not in core books.  Times change.  They might have been acceptable in the 70s, but so were shows like "Laugh-In".  Nowdays, not so much.

* If you're gonna have hot babes, better have hot men as well.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579719* Internet crusaders and white knights demanding quotas make me roll my eyes (internet crusades mean nothing.  What you doing in real life to help equality?  And before I get quoted out of context somewhere, I'm a long time member of my local PRIDE group)

A person's behavior on the internet could well have impact in the real world, especially in a situation where peer groups can develop.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579719* White males telling minorities that they should in fact be offended when they otherwise aren't makes me gag a little (and yes, I have a mixed race immediate family, so I see this a lot, usually by people who are trying to get some sort of "minority cred").

I get offended when white males are assessed an 'opinion quota', too.  The best kind of tolerance is not situational.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579719* I don't think D&D ever had a shortage of "hot babes", so demanding they be included seems a bit off.  Sort of reminds me of those people who complain that since there is BET, there needs to be a WET.  o_O

The best kind of tolerance is not situational.  Frankly, there should not be a BET as far as I am concerned.  Voluntarily using the 'colored water fountain' because it has a shorter line is just a racist as there being one in the first place.  I liken this to women accepting lower pay.  Yes, there is a glass ceiling for women, and the fault rests squarely at the feet of all those women who settle for lower pay for the same position.  If not for that downward competitive pressure, equality would be possible.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579719* I don't think chainmail bikinis and Boris V style art should really be in the core books.  If you want a supplement that focuses on the sword and sorcery theme ala the 70s?  I'm all for that just like I'm for a sourcebook for just about every theme.  But not in core books.  Times change.  They might have been acceptable in the 70s, but so were shows like "Laugh-In".  Nowdays, not so much.

If it exists in the world, it should probably get represented in the core book.  Personally, I think sexy people can and do happen in a game world.  I think deliberately excluding them isn't very realistic, particularly when you're not going to find such homely examples as, say, Paizo's iconics in any magazine on the shelf.  Even the stars of the Food Network tend to be more charismatic than these heroes.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;579719* If you're gonna have hot babes, better have hot men as well.

Amen, and please put at least one on the cover.  There are almost certainly hot men in the campaign world somewhere, too.

Quote from: mcbobbo;579722A person's behavior on the internet could well have impact in the real world, especially in a situation where peer groups can develop.

I was mainly referring to the guy who gets all indignant on the internet about how certain people aren't treated fairly, but does Jack and Shit in real life to actually do anything about it because it's too much effort or something.

QuoteThe best kind of tolerance is not situational.  Frankly, there should not be a BET as far as I am concerned.  Voluntarily using the 'colored water fountain' because it has a shorter line is just a racist as there being one in the first place.  I liken this to women accepting lower pay.  Yes, there is a glass ceiling for women, and the fault rests squarely at the feet of all those women who settle for lower pay for the same position.  

Sorry, but I really have to disagree with this.  Too often, women (and others) take that lower pay because it's that or nothing.  And you can't eat on nothing.  The above completely ignores exploitation, which is the real problem.  Not the person accepting lower pay.

Come on folks, don't drag this up to a serious conversation!

I fancy Pundit is remote trolling certain areas of the intertubes.

Whenever I read those threads I can't help but be reminded of all the theological examinations I've read where the inquisitor is just dying for their subject to screw up and say something damnable. And if they don't, well, he'll supply it for them.

My general impression of petition threads is that people are fabulously eager to demonstrate how wise, pure-minded, enlightened, and noble they are in ways that actually don't require any effort whatsoever. I don't recall any of the shriekers putting out so much as a Joesky-tax blogpost of actual gaming content that reflects what they'd like to see but to listen to them you'd think they had cover credit on Tekumel. I'd take them a lot more seriously if they actually fired up a word processor or paint program and actually showed us the kind of product that was good enough for their delicate sensibilities. They will never do this, because that would require effort.

All this shrieking irritated me so much that I'm writing a game in answer, Spears of the Dawn. It's not hard to write a game, or to find artists, or to publish it. It requires a certain minimal level of effort, yes, but heaven knows you don't need to be a genius to do it. Hell, you don't even need to be capable of functioning in modern society if some game authors are any indication.

I expect to take another month to finish the game's text. Longer to get the art complete, though I've got $1,500 worth of it parceled out right now and expect to spend another thousand before I'm done. All of the art and the InDesign templates will be released into the public domain after I'm done so other people can try their hand at it and make something better. People say they don't have the money to commission they art they want? If only there were a way to put money toward a project of communal interest.

The whole business just makes my teeth hurt. It's so easy to make the kind of content you want to see, but these people would rather spend their emotional energy polishing their halos with a useless petition site than actually show people awesome things. They're using an entire continent as a prop in their own little psychodrama of purity and extremely visible enlightenment, and I find it flatly offensive. Africa does not need their help, okay? Africa is pretty awesome exactly as it is, and it does not require quota counts established by marginally functional game nerds for multinational corporations to tell a goddamn story. Medieval Africa has were-leopard cults, actual amazon warriors that don't require ahistorical padding to justify, sorcerer-kings, fabulous golden treasures, libraries crammed with books of ancient lore, turbaned chain-armored cavalry lancers, gigantic thatch-roofed palaces, gigantic stone palaces, ruthless intrigue in those palaces, complex theological structures and the most elegant-looking swords in the world. If you can't make compelling gaming content out of that it better be because you're in a coma.

The 5E game development has left me so full of meh I don't even care what the art will be like.

Yes, well that is all well and good, but will your new game have hot babes?

That's all we really need to know.

This is from the 'worst art in RPGs thread'

Quote from: misterguignol;458360Less talk and more pictures, you fuckers.

Anyway, this is hardly the worst art to happen in the history of rpgs, but it's always bothered me:



You'd think that the fact that all vampires in Ravenloft are blue-skinned would be a dead give away.  

Seriously, why is Strahd a fucking Smurf???

But this is an example of the type of art I really miss.  We're not at 'chain mail bikini' levels of exploitation, but it's hard to argue that it isn't an attractive woman.

But this is one of my all-time favorite pieces of fantasy art:

http://dave.monkeymartian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Dragon126DanielHorne.jpg

This is the cover of Dragon 126.  The woman is fully dressed (she's in the snow, after all), and while her outfit is far from revealing she still strikes me as attractive.

Quote from: deadDMwalking;579731But this is one of my all-time favorite pieces of fantasy art:

http://dave.monkeymartian.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Dragon126DanielHorne.jpg

This is the cover of Dragon 126.  The woman is fully dressed (she's in the snow, after all), and while her outfit is far from revealing she still strikes me as attractive.

Heh.  I knew exactly what piece you were talking about without ever clicking that link.  It's one of my favorites as well.  Damn, Dragon has some good art back in the day.

Other covers that resonated well with me?  The wizard on the chessboard and the dragon through the cockpit of an F-14.

I want the games I play to have art of attractive people of both sexes. In fact, ideally I would only have attractive people in the art. I don't want all of them to be sexualised, but there should be a nice distribution*. Why, because I think it's fair to give men and women the same treatment, and also because I like playing prettyboys so I want appropriate art for that.

It's probably unfair for fans of ugly people but, well, sorry? You can't please everyone...

Incidentally Anima art pretty much does this, there are a lot of dark skinned, Middle Eastern and Oriental people in the art, probably more women than men even, and nearly everyone looks really good. It is quite glorious.

*I decided against using the word "spread".

Quote from: Soylent Green;579730Yes, well that is all well and good, but will your new game have hot babes?

That's all we really need to know.

It's old-school D&D with faux-African setting assumptions instead of faux-European ones. Given my unflagging respect for tradition, of course it will have hot babes.