D&D 5E The 5E Art is Awesome

[JWO]

So what?

Most RPG players are male. There are more female players in the hobby than in the past, but the hobby will probably always be one that primarily attracts males, no matter what they do with the art. Why not market to your customer base?

Because the market is growing and diversifying and it's in a company's best interests to foster an environment that's less hostile to their customers/potential customers.

You say that it will probably always 'primarily attract males' but I don't think that's necessarily true. The female gamer market is growing all the time, who's to say that it won't eventually equalise?

 

[Sacrosanct]

Because the market is growing and diversifying and it's in a company's best interests to foster an environment that's less hostile to their customers/potential customers.

You say that it will probably always 'primarily attract males' but I don't think that's necessarily true. The female gamer market is growing all the time, who's to say that it won't eventually equalise?

Related point (and not to comment on whether or not the hobby should be more appealing to women--it clearly should be), but often a stat gets trotted out about how woman gamers are making huge grounds into gaming as far as numbers go. The reason for this is because all those numbers to identify "gamers"? They include all types of games. So when you hear that there are just as many women gamers as male gamers, it doesn't mean there are as many women playing Call of Duty or WoW. It means that total figure includes games like Candy Crush and Farmville---games that are played by women as a huge majority. Of course, this is about video games and not TTRPGs, but I don't think we have had any studies done to quantify gender break downs in TTRPGS like we have in video games.

 

[halfling rogue]

I'm sincerely trying to understand your point of view here, but I'm not really sure how you can go "overboard" with diversity. Like, diversity is just having an equal amount of various ethnicities and cultures; how can something be "too equal"? Equality is equality, right?

Likewise, the idea of diverse artwork being some kind of "agenda" doesn't make much sense to me, either. What agenda could simply having a large variety of people possibly be pushing, and would such an agenda even be bad? Like, "agenda" just seems to be this word people use when they want to make the fact that something is being done with a purpose sound ominous. So, what, they're trying to be more inclusive? Why is that bad? Acknowledging the existence of non-white races doesn't really say "propaganda." If it did, then every book's artwork would be propaganda, including the more homogeneous ones, only for erasure rather than diversity.

What is the correct way to handle diversity in a book's artwork? Are you sure you aren't just reading more into this than you need to? I'm not really sure what they could've done differently here while still being this diverse.

Overboard is probably the wrong word, or at least it was unclear in how I used it. Propaganda and agenda were really what I was trying to convey.

But I was using the terms 'propaganda' and 'agenda' in a very neutral way. You read some motive behind them that I wasn't putting there. I tried to be clear. I like the art and I don't have qualms with the motive for such agendas (ie. diversity) as agendas, but I think it would be silly to deny that they weren't aiming at it. You took me as saying that Propaganda in the PHB is negative because they put lots of non-white characters in it. I'm not saying that. Read my statements again. I like the art. What I am saying is that the Propaganda in the PHB regardless of what the motive or agenda is, is something I'd rather not be thinking about every time I open the book or admire a particular piece of art. The art should serve the game first, which is the purpose for the art. If it is used for another purpose, or another purpose transcends the purpose it was originally used for, then it becomes propaganda driven by a particular motive or agenda. It can be pure or nefarious. I'm not claiming their agenda was either pure nor nefarious, which I think you are assuming I am. I was simply just trying to express the feeling I got when reading it. The feeling wasn't "D&D!" it was "DIVERSITY!". The fact that I'm disappointed in that doesn't mean I'm not for diversity.

 

[redrick]

Related point (and not to comment on whether or not the hobby should be more appealing to women--it clearly should be), but often a stat gets trotted out about how woman gamers are making huge grounds into gaming as far as numbers go. The reason for this is because all those numbers to identify "gamers"? They include all types of games. So when you hear that there are just as many women gamers as male gamers, it doesn't mean there are as many women playing Call of Duty or WoW. It means that total figure includes games like Candy Crush and Farmville---games that are played by women as a huge majority. Of course, this is about video games and not TTRPGs, but I don't think we have had any studies done to quantify gender break downs in TTRPGS like we have in video games.

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make re: rpgs. Are all the woman-gamers playing some sort of rpg that doesn't count? What rpg even is that?

Honestly, I don't think it's relevant, but, every woman I've ever met who played rpgs played D&D at least a little.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make re: rpgs. Are all the woman-gamers playing some sort of rpg that doesn't count? What rpg even is that?

Honestly, I don't think it's relevant, but, every woman I've ever met who played rpgs played D&D at least a little.

My point is that I don't think we'll ever see women make up 50% of all D&D players, and when we look at figures we do have (like the video game industry), we need to look at how those numbers are broken up. As I said, you can't look at a number that says there are as many women gamers as male gamers and assume that that figure is true for a particular genre, because that base number is based off of ALL games, some of which are played by a strong majority of women over men gamers (like Candy Crush).

 

[halfling rogue]

Because the market is growing and diversifying and it's in a company's best interests to foster an environment that's less hostile to their customers/potential customers.

You say that it will probably always 'primarily attract males' but I don't think that's necessarily true. The female gamer market is growing all the time, who's to say that it won't eventually equalise?

To "foster an environment that's less hostile" assumes that what was done before is hostile. I don't think that cheesecake art is fully hostile. I personally played with a woman who played because she could play a "cheesecake" character. "I want to play her" she said pointing to the picture. When asked why she said, "Because look at her boobs! They're huge!"

I'm not saying that is always going to be the case, but it does lend credibility to the idea that it is not always hostile. (also lends credibility to the idea that not every picture needs to be realistic to play a fantasy game)

 

[neobolts]

How many of those women were in an environment where they'd be routinely exposed to sprays of acid, fire, poison, etc? Traveling through woods with brambles that will scratch stupidly exposed thighs, midriffs and cleavage? Someone once said sensible clothing for a dungeon should be about what you'd wear to cook the greasiest bacon in the world during an earthquake in.

The type of clothing and areas of bare skin aren't going to wreck verisimilitude for me. I think a mix of pratically dressed and alluringly dressed characters is a more genuine reflection of the genre. I also think it's important to strike a more even gender balance when it comes to these depictions, when only feminine characters are cheesecake there is a clear bias. RPGs are a form of escapism, and unless I'm running a specific concept, my character's are likely to reflect what I would like to look like or what I find desirable.

If I ran art for a game, I'd want a mix of gender, mix of human ethnicities, and mix of practical/impractical dress. I honestly think Pathfinder is doing the best job of this at the moment. WotC has the representation part of the equation right, but seems hesitant to let some of the characters look like the "greek gods" they should be.

Other thoughts on this edition's art: The art quality is superb for this edition. The lack of captions on pictures was a good call too. The sample maps at the end of the DMG are a nice touch and the cartography is beautiful.

 

[redrick]

Yep.

That's one reason I don't like the phrase "the male gaze." Women spend just as much time looking at other people's bodies as do men. They tend to be a little bit better at hiding it, but they do it all the same.

Sorry, talking about "male gaze" is maybe a bit of a short-hand, at it leads to conversations like this.

Criticizing the "male gaze" in art isn't actually about saying men "gaze" more than women do. Maybe they do, maybe they don't, I don't know. It's saying that, overwhelmingly, popular media tends to satisfying the straight male gaze and not the female gaze. Are their beefcake men in fantasy art? On television? On billboards? Absolutely. But there are also lots of men who are decidedly not beefcakey. On the other hand, the representations of women tend to be very limited to women who would visually please straight white men. Or even titillate them. We see all sorts of fantasy art featuring corpulent old men, or even just somewhat plain men, or ruggedly ugly men, or toothless men, or what have you. The only images we see of decidedly unattractive women in our fantasy art (even 5e) are of monsters. What did one of the players say at my table one time? "Ugly bitches die."

So I'm certainly not objecting to images of attractive women in fantasy art. I'm not objecting to images of women wearing the equivalent of friday-night garb. But I am objecting to the dominance of those images, because they help to reinforce the idea that, "these images are here for us." (And us ain't you.)

I use a lot of art for my game. I have a strict no-cheesecake rule when it comes to material that I show to the players. If one of the women playing in our group wanted to use a scantily-clad image for her character portrait, on the other hand, that would be totally fine. It's up to her. For myself, I just don't want to be imposing this standard on the game — women will always be sexy and dressed to show that off.

 

[redrick]

EDIT:

Sorry, @Sacrosanct, I may have glossed over your original post and misread it a little bit. I see you were specifically replying to @JWO's assertion that the video gaming hobby seems to be approaching some sort of parity and that those numbers might carry over into rpgs. And suggesting that some of the increase of women in video games is coming from a broad expansion of the kinds of video games out there. (Women didn't come to video games. Video games came to women?) And that there's no reason to see the results of that expansion having any effect on table-top games, because table-top games aren't following the candy crush model. So I apologize for some of my venom.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

So what?

Most RPG players are male. There are more female players in the hobby than in the past, but the hobby will probably always be one that primarily attracts males, no matter what they do with the art. Why not market to your customer base?

I hate that attitude, that D&D is a straight white boys club, and should stay that way because that's how it's always been. Come on guys...