D&D (2024) Comeliness and Representation in Recent DnD Art

[michaeljpastor]

I said sapient, not sentient, and sapient beings don't do that in any meaningful sense of the term, since there is no programming, which implies externality. But this really isn't the thread for navel-gazing.

I don't see a difference.

 

[Xeviat]

Two not necessarily related things:

(1) I am very happy that the range of characters shown in the official D&D art is much more inclusive in just about every sense than it used to be (appearances akin to the variety of IRL racial/ethnic groups, breaking streotypical gender roles, everyone gets practical clothes, dare I mention glasses, etc...).

(2) I am very happy DnD ditched physical attractiveness being tied to Charisma with 4e and 5e.

A recent thread touching on (1) made me wonder a bit about its intersection with (2). What are the examples in the WotC D&D art of young adult human protagonists who don't fit with the Hollywood stereotypes of human physical attractiveness?

Do we have young adult human characters of all classes that are portrayed heroically but are significantly above or below the BMI recommendations? Who don't appear to be particularly athletic? Who have acne or acne scars? Who have non-combat induced scars? Who have obvious vitiligo or hemangioma? Who don't look like they've had braces on their teeth earlier in life? Who look like they wouldn't be cast as a sorority or fraternity member in a stereotypical movie of the sort?

If there aren't, are there any reasons not to? Does it feel awkward to even look through the art to try and locate ones that you don't think fit what others think of as conventionally attractive? Why is this all so hard?

[I had no idea where to shove this prefix wise, so put in where the thread that inspired it was at.]

Technically, anyone drawn with sizable muscles is going to weigh more than the "recommended BMI", as will many who are taller or shorter than average. BMI is very ill conceived (you can see that the equation uses height squared, but mass is relative to height cubed, so numbers outside of a narrow band are very skewed). Athletes regularly show as high BMI because of their muscle and bone density too.

 

[Gradine]

Technically, anyone drawn with sizable muscles is going to weigh more than the "recommended BMI", as will many who are taller or shorter than average. BMI is very ill conceived (you can see that the equation uses height squared, but mass is relative to height cubed, so numbers outside of a narrow band are very skewed). Athletes regularly show as high BMI because of their muscle and bone density too.

BMI is worse than worthless because it communicates absolutely nothing about the actual health of the individual, so all it really does is convince doctors that it's not worth actually diagnosing patients.

 

[Hussar]

I gotta admit, where does this definition of "sapient" come from? Sapient seems to have arisen in recent years as something different from sentient, but, I have no idea what that difference is.

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I gotta admit, where does this definition of "sapient" come from? Sapient seems to have arisen in recent years as something different from sentient, but, I have no idea what that difference is.

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

No, you got it backwards. Dogs are definitely sentient (able to perceive and feel,) but not quite sapient (intelligent.) Humans obviously are both.

In context of D&D, sapience corresponds to things like humanoids and other creatures understood to have roughly human-like (or greater) intelligence. Sapience is somewhat arbitrary, but it is basically the distinction between animals and people.

 

[Fifth Element]

I don't see a difference.

Cool. I do.

 

[Fifth Element]

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

That's backwards. Sentient is able to sense the world around you and react to it. Sapient is able to think about your own sentience abstractly.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I don't see a difference.

Have you tried rebooting?

 

[Voranzovin]

I gotta admit, where does this definition of "sapient" come from? Sapient seems to have arisen in recent years as something different from sentient, but, I have no idea what that difference is.

Humans are sentient. A dog is sapient - it is capable of perceiving the world around it. But, I wouldn't call a dog sentient.

As I understand it, it's the other way around. Sentience is defined as the ability to perceive or feel things. Dogs are almost certainly sentient, as are pretty much all other mammals and large swaths of the rest of the animal kingdom.

Sapience is the ability to reason abstractly, which dogs definitely can't do!

I think the reason why you're seeing sapience catch on in the same cases you would previously see sentience used is that talking about "sentient life" as a synonym for "of human-like intelligence" gets a bit silly when you realize that you're including Aardvarks.

 

[Hussar]

That's backwards. Sentient is able to sense the world around you and react to it. Sapient is able to think about your own sentience abstractly.

Not in any dictionary I've ever seen.

Sapient is a largely deprecated word that has long fallen out of use.

Sentient describes the ability to think about sentience. That's WHY you use the word sentience and not sapience.