Gender and sexuality diversity in RPG settings

[Satinavian]

The relevant issue here would be The Male Gaze (warning: TV Tropes link) as a concept.

Do said pictures of women make us feel seen, or are they there for the consumption of a presumed male audience (and in the latter case, is that still a dealbreaker, and is it a dealbreaker for every woman?).

It is more complicated.

There is not a lot of money in RPGs and hardly any of the smaller brand ever pay artists market rate. In return (because the artist does it partly for favor/hobby) artists for smaller RPGs tend to get a lot more freedom than would be expected for commissioned work.

Turns out a lot of artists actually like portraying good looking or even sexy characters. I know of several small RPG publishers trying to avoid sexualisation and ending up having problems finding artists doing so or convincing those they had worked with so far. At least without actually paying proper prices. Surprisingly those problems arose with female artists even more often than with male ones but that might be coincidence. Don't know enough cases for proper statistics on that.


So when Takalael states that his commissioned artwork ends up with far more cheesecake than he asked for, yes, that is utterly to be expected.


Personally i like 50:50 men/women on illustrations if the society depicted is meant to be really equal. But i don't claim to be more than a single data point for this matter.