So THAT's why Regdar gets no love...

[Glyfair]

As for the notion that Redgar getting slain repeatedly was racially motivated, those whose job it is to be on the front line, do die a lot.

I do remember someone from WotC gleefully pointing out what sort of torture all the iconics went through in the art from Dungeonscape. They seem to have this focus on torturing all the iconics. Redgar certainly would get the brunt of that as one of the center stage iconics (even after the initial focus on him at the beginning of 3E).

Any other focus on Redgar certainly deals with the fact that he was "unwanted" and forced into the position rather than just his race (which is a factor, but a tangential one). So, I agree that such focus is only incidentally racially motivated.

 

[the Jester]

Heh, I wondered why there were two Fighters. Still, it kinda worries me how the people on that site talk gleefully about seeing Regdar maimed and dead in the artwork. Like violence is the solution to perceived...I'll stop there. Forum rules and all.

Dude, you're talking about a game whose basic theme is killing things & taking their stuff.

 

[Leatherhead]

Interesting, so marketing gets to make decisions over creative teams, and artists "fight back" with passive aggressive behavior.

 

[Barastrondo]

Do you want to know the REAL reason Regdar gets no love?

You ought to dig up (contact)'s Liberation of Tehn storyhour.

Just sayin'

Hahahahahaha!

Oh, he got love. Spindly, wheezy, unctuous love.

 

[Erik Mona]

...even extending into the 4E book -- where there are no pre-built characters! .

When all is said and done, the lack of "iconic" characters is the greatest 4e mystery to me.

Given how helpful they are to art orders and branding and how easy it is to license and merchandise their images, their absence is an enigma.

Someone must have put their foot down on this matter, and that person made the wrong call.

--Erik

 

[pawsplay]

Interesting, so marketing gets to make decisions over creative teams, and artists "fight back" with passive aggressive behavior.

"Here's what I think of your dear little Regdar," is not what I would call passive aggressive.

 

[pawsplay]

The only other optimal marketing choice would have been a white female in skimpy clothes, and that would have been much worse.

Four words: Samus is a girl.

 

[Ahglock]

Four words: Samus is a girl.

Power armor does not equal skimpy clothes.

 

[pawsplay]

Power armor does not equal skimpy clothes.

Exactly.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Given how helpful they are to art orders and branding and how easy it is to license and merchandise their images, their absence is an enigma.

I'll grant you the first, but Jesus, Erik! When did Wizards of the Coast ever license or merchandise the iconics? A short series of unsuccessful D&D novels and a couple of named droplets in the collectible miniatures ocean? Maybe a calendar or two?

Paizo with its Pathfinder iconics has already beaten out everything Wizards of the Coast ever did with the D&D iconics except writing them into a novel or two.

It would be pretty trivial to turn the Fourth Edition class portraits into iconics, if you wanted to do that. I hope they don't, because they're pretty boring: all white-skinned (if they can be, and even the tiefling warlock looks less red-skinned than white with firelight casting a colour shadow), 75% male (only the ranger and warlock are female), et cetera.