Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition - Now your playing with Playtests!

[Reverent-One]

I really don't get why HE brings it up. I get that its his job. I won't blame him for it. But why bring it up at all? Why write an article about sexism If all he says at the end amounts to "I draw women in degrading outfits because it sells better".

Was he trying to bring attention to that?

Because he's trying to figure out what the audience wants.

[Scowling Dragon]

Because he's trying to figure out what the audience wants.

Im sure its pretty freaking obvious. Its a dumb question to ask.

"So do you want your woman drawn in a ridiculous fashion to satisfy your sexual urges?"

[Reverent-One]

Im sure its pretty freaking obvious. Its a dumb question to ask.

"So do you want your woman drawn in a ridiculous fashion to satisfy your sexual urges?"

Except, as he discussed in the article, what is sexist varies. For every complaint about Tisha he gets, there's 10 other people who love her. So he's opening up discussion on a topic to get people's input.

[Fatebreaker]

Im sure its pretty freaking obvious. Its a dumb question to ask.

"So do you want your woman drawn in a ridiculous fashion to satisfy your sexual urges?"

Drawings do not satisfy urges.

But, given a choice between paying to look at ugly people and paying to look at beautiful people in my fantasy escapism game, then yeah, it's scantily-clad lovely ladies all the way.

Why does he ask? Well, it's a free look inside of their customer base. If there's a sudden and unexpected outpouring of hate for fantasy artwork, then Wizards might change the direction of their art style. You can pay folks to do polls, or you can host your own for no real additional cost. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

If nothing else, it helps contribute to the idea that 5e is actively seeking out player input.

Oh, and it has a tertiary benefit of being a plug for Tisha and that comic thingy. I'm gonna go check that out.

(Behold! Marketing!)

[Scowling Dragon]

Its very annoying in a way. Its like if Michael bay said:

"So people, do you want me to stop slutting up all my female characters? Just so you know. For every person that complains about the gratuitous ass-shots I shoot I get ten people that say that megan fox was the best part of the movie"

I doubt that the ten people say "I sure love her sultry outfit". Im sure they said something along the lines of "I like her character and personality".

[Reverent-One]

Nonetheless, getting reading input is a good thing. As he said in the article, they're determining where the lines are drawn and the guidelines they'll follow. They should be talking to the audience about it, rather than simply making all decisions themselves.

[Scowling Dragon]

It was a stupid question to ask. The chainmail bikini is a staple of negativity aimed at RPGs, even the guy knows about it.

So why the hell is he bringing this up? He knows that its degrading, he knows that its a thing done for sales. Does he honestly expect anybody to say "I want the woman drawn sultry and in degrading poses".

What does he expect as an answer?

[Reverent-One]

It was a stupid question to ask. The chainmail bikini is a staple of negativity aimed at RPGs, even the guy knows about it.

So why the hell is he bringing this up? He knows that its degrading, he knows that its a thing done for sales. Does he honestly expect anybody to say "I want the woman drawn sultry and in degrading poses".

What does he expect as an answer?

There's more than just two extremes. As you said, he knows that there are plenty of people who don't like one extreme, but there's more to the art design than just "not chainmail bikinis and DD cups". What he expects to get is each person's personal opinion, a reasonable thing for someone working on setting the design goals for the new edition to want.

[Scowling Dragon]

Again: What is he expecting as an answer?

"I want my women drawn SOMEWHAT sultry. Like a boob hole. But not THAT sultry".

I get this might be an interesting argument about beauty, our standards as a culture ex.

But why title it "Sexism". Why mention "Its OK that I draw a character that goes into a battlezone with nothing but a bra- People that enjoy her boobage outnumber the haters"

This was just a casual mentioning of everything that happens to him as an artist. I KNOW why he must do it. But why make an article about it that does nothing but mention it?

[Reverent-One]

What he's expecting is a range of opinions, if all he wanted was one specific answer, he wouldn't honestly be getting input, but seeking to validate himself.

[Scowling Dragon]

So what does he expect from that range of answers?

[Reverent-One]

I can only assume a range like he got, everything from "no sexy" to "some if it makes sense for the character" or "some as long as it's not the entirety of how the gender is depicted". From a mix of body types, attractive and non, to a higher percentage of more attractive individuals to being mostly fantastic. Then there's the entirely separate desires, such as less clean shaven men since it makes more sense to them.

[Fatebreaker]

SD, here's a question:

What would you have done if you wanted to discuss fantasy artwork with your audience?

And now, here's a few more:

What title would you have used?

What terminology? What definitions?

What information would you have mentioned to help describe your subject?

What would you have asked the audience?

Who is your audience?

What if your audience has different ideas than you do?

What would you have been looking for? What would you have wanted to learn?

Discuss!

[Scowling Dragon]

What title would you have used?

Well first of all, I would have to ask: What is the point of my article? What do I hope to gain that isn't blatantly obvious already?

What do I plan to change?

Not just bring up this rather obvious thing for no reason that changes nothing.

[Fatebreaker]

Well first of all, I would have to ask: What is the point of my article? What do I hope to gain that isn't blatantly obvious already?

What do I plan to change?

Not just bring up this rather obvious thing for no reason that changes nothing.

Okay, so this begs the question: What is the point of your article and what do you plan to change?

I'm legitimately asking you: if Wizards of the Coast came to you and said, "SD, we want you to write an article on fantasy artwork," what does that look like?

[Scowling Dragon]

I would talk about art through the editions. A topic thats a nice nostalgic field trip. How some editions had lower quality art that was better suited and stuff.

Compare monster drawings (Maybe the invisible stalker?). Talk about the importance of art in DnD

[Dienekes]

Its very annoying in a way. Its like if Michael bay said:

"So people, do you want me to stop slutting up all my female characters? Just so you know. For every person that complains about the gratuitous ass-shots I shoot I get ten people that say that megan fox was the best part of the movie"

I doubt that the ten people say "I sure love her sultry outfit". Im sure they said something along the lines of "I like her character and personality".

I am sure nearly no one who liked Megan Fox did so for her character and personality, as she had very little and what she did have was insultingly generic. Mostly I figure if folks said anything at all it would be: Damn Megan Fox was so HOOOTTT! Either way it gets the message across.

As to the article, sometimes articles are just set up to explain the creative process. Why something is as it is, is enough reason to write an article. This goes beyond the potential for gathering some information.

Now personally, I think the "sexy" females look pretty stupid. But not nearly as much as the equipment everyone has. It's ridiculous. It looks nothing like armor, and that sword is horrendously unbalanced to the point of uselessness. But I understand that I'm in a minority on that score and so do not expect to see any change on that score in the near future.

[Fatebreaker]

I would talk about art through the editions. A topic thats a nice nostalgic field trip. How some editions had lower quality art that was better suited and stuff.

Compare monster drawings (Maybe the invisible stalker?). Talk about the importance of art in DnD

Okay. That's a fair topic. Exploring the changes over time within the hobby is fun and has an appeal for followers of any edition.

What if they want you to write an article about the future? What would that look like?

[Scowling Dragon]

What if they want you to write an article about the future? What would that look like?

Id ask them: WHY! You force me to draw cheesecake. Don't make me bring attention to it!

If I had free reign, I would implement a policy of no cheesecake. I mean, yes we all want to draw beautiful men and women. But stripper wear is a different issue altogether.

[Fatebreaker]

Id ask them: WHY! You force me to draw cheesecake. Don't make me bring attention to it!

If I had free reign, I would implement a policy of no cheesecake. I mean, yes we all want to draw beautiful men and women. But stripper wear is a different issue altogether.

That's not what I asked. I asked what you would write about regarding the future of fantasy artwork.

[Scowling Dragon]

That's not what I asked. I asked what you would write about regarding the future of fantasy artwork.

Im not sure there is anything to say without infringing on Hasbro.

I would talk about removing cheesecake, making it more genderally and racialy balanced (where appropriate)...Thats it really.

[Fatebreaker]

Im not sure there is anything to say without infringing on Hasbro.

I would talk about removing cheesecake, making it more genderally and racialy balanced (where appropriate)...Thats it really.

Okay. And why would you write those things?

[Scowling Dragon]

Okay. And why would you write those things?

I honestly don't know. There isn't much to write about art unless there is a major change underway. I can make a really generic article, but I just wouldn't write one about the future period.

[ATEKazul]

I was wondering if anybody had in one of this topics versions made a post that brought up the main divergences that are discussed as liked or disliked in these edition wars and broken them down into their components while comparing them with their equivilents in the other editions?

Has anybody made any lists like this or is it not even possible?

If this could be done I think it could contribute to this discussion by a large margin.


Also don't ask me to do it I mostly collect the books for the story stuff and can't make much heads or tails of the rules.

[Yora]

On the Enworld forums, there are a number of threads which discuss what rules from each edition were really good and should be retained, and which ones were problematic and should be replaced with something new. They are all titled "The Indispensible 3e" and something like that.

[Craft (Cheese)]

On the sexism article: I read it myself when it went up a few days ago, and the author made a point that I think Scowling Dragon is missing.

It's possible to be attractive without being degrading.

Following this, I don't really think showing unrealistically attractive women (keeping in mind that males in art are similarly idealized just as often), by itself, is sexist or degrading. What makes a piece of fantasy art (as relevant to D&D) sexist and degrading? Here are some possible examples:

1. Always showing the female as the one in trouble and needing to be rescued or protected by her male teammates.

2. Having the female characters stand back while the males take care of the dirty work of getting up close and personal with the monsters. At best, the females get to heal or blast with spells from a distance.

3. When showing wounded characters, always showing injured males, never females.

All three of these examples are sexist because they serve to portray the idea that women are frail and delicate and need men to protect them. And notice precisely zero of them require the female to be wearing three band-aids in the process. It's clear that making the females butch and ugly won't solve the problem, so what will?

[Scowling Dragon]

On the sexism article: I read it myself when it went up a few days ago, and the author made a point that I think Scowling Dragon is missing.

I didn't miss the point. I get it. People want to see pretty women/ men. I was just questioning the necessity of bringing up that his character was essentially wearing a leather bikini (Any armor that exists to deflect blows from the breast into the stomach is not armor but a fashion statement).

Also I got this

[Fatebreaker]

On the sexism article: I read it myself when it went up a few days ago, and the author made a point that I think Scowling Dragon is missing.

It's possible to be attractive without being degrading.

I very much agree with this. I've met plenty of strong women who enjoyed fantasy games and fantasy artwork and who never felt degraded. And it's really hard to take the "attractive = degrading" argument seriously when a beautiful, spunky, and very independent woman is enjoying the pretty pictures just as much as you are.

To me, the most important thing about art (in a game) is the fusion of Do I like it? and How does it make me feel about the game?

I'm looking to play a game of escapism and fantasy fulfillment. That's why I'm playing a game that involves magic, or colossal death robots, or dragons, or starships, or whatever it is that's caught my interest -- if I want to play a game about ugly people doing normal things, well, they made a game for that. We call it real life.

If you fill your game with ugly girls, you may pat yourself on the back for defying convention, but you are encouraging me not to play your game. I can see ugly people anytime I want to. For free.

But if you put some hot chicks with lasers in your game, I will pay you real money-dollars to forget about the fact that I have to pay taxes.

[Eric Tolle]

I think that attractive vs unattractive is a false dichotomy that is a diversion from the real issue of sexism, which is outfits and posing. Impractical "sexy" outfits and ridiculous"thrust put the ass and boobs" poses are more of a problem imo, especially when there's a clear difference in what men and women are wearing. For example the iconic Pathfinder sorceress is wearing an outfit that needs double sided tape to stay on, but the male magic users are covered chin to feet with heavy robes. Impractical outfits are a bad idea, especially when they show clear gender bias. Seriously, if the sorceress is dressed like a stripper, why aren't the men dressed like Chippendales or the cover of a romance novel?

Personally I want female and male characters both wearing practical clothing appropriate to the situation. That means no armor with boob windows, and if a character is described wearing armor, a leather bikini won't cut it, especially since in my experience players don't describe their characters in such embarrassing outfits. Also it means drawing female characters in poses that look appropriate to the action, not in a "look at my cleavage and as"pose- 4E cover I'm looking at YOU.

These changes are ones that won't detract from the art and excitement value of the product. D&D has already made strides in getting more racial diversity, so I don't regard this as an impossible task.

[Lord_Gareth]

To be fair, there are sometimes excuses for boob windows. Most of these excuses revolve around magic, but such is life (favorite example: made a character in Shadowrun with an enchanted section of her suit that reflected bullets. The field was over her boob window. Hilarity ensued).