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

[WayneLigon]

I would love to see actual data that supports marketing's decision.

Census data, probably. More than 75% of the US as a whole is white. I would feel safe betting that a significantly higher percentage of gamers are white; if I had to guess, I'd say 90-95% and feel I was being generous.

They can take the safe route, which is to produce a book with a white male on the cover. A certain percent of whites will look less favorably on the book because of this, as will a certain percentage of non-whites. The gamble is: which is safer in terms of sales?

 

[Alzrius]

I'd read a while back something, somewhere about how Regdar wasn't part of the original iconics. I've tried to track down that article many times, but can't remember anything else about it. Still, this is penetrating regarding WHY he was suddenly added in.

As to the value of iconic characters as a whole...I have mixed feelings. I was surprised to find that I did, in fact, derive some sense of enjoyment that the same characters were regularly featured in the art across the books. That said, I also took it for granted that there were stereotypes in there that would appeal to the largest demographics - it's something of a necessity (or perhaps necessary evil) when your product is a niche one, as RPG books are. Yes, Regdar is the white male that white males are supposed to identify with, and yes, Seoni is the scantily-clad big-boobed sex object said white males are supposed to lust after. I don't believe that there's any sort of sinister intent to belittle women or other ethnicities; it's just companies trying to appeal to the people who are already most likely to buy their products.

(As an aside, I've often wondered if part of the requirements for each release of Paizo's Pathfinder was that every book has to have at least one full-body piece of art depicting a sexy woman - not that I mind, personally. )

The real question, to me, is are these tactics inherently offensive (and harmful)? That is, is there a social effect to always showing the main fighter character as being a white male? Does it have an impact on women (and men's perception of women) when most of the females depicted look like a sex-fantasy? That, I think, is much harder to determine.

 

[Matt Black]

I like iconics (or at least, I like the iconics that I like). One of the primary joys of D&D is watching your crew of familiar characters grow through their adventures. The use of iconics gives this feel, especially if the iconics evolve.

I'd also like to give a thumbs up for the Pathfinder iconics. They're more interesting than the 3.x ones. Even the white males among them.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

But what most of the gamers are not is racist or sexist. They probably wouldn't mind having, for example, Ember as the iconic lead.

I think you ahve a seriously deluded idea of the thoughts of most gamers. It would have seriously hurt sales. Tordek wouldn't have.

 

[pawsplay]

Samus wore a bikini in her first game, take that as you will.

You don't see the bikini unless you beat the game. Up until that point, many players did not even realize Samus was female. Since then, sometimes you see Samus in armor, sometimes in a bikini, and it doesn't matter; Samus is still Samus, and we all know Samus is a complete badass. Samus's armor is cool. Etc. Samus is basically Iron Man. Sometimes we see Tony Stark with fewer clothes on, too, but it doesn't impinge on his iconic status.

 

[Scribble]

Agreed. I didn't even know what an iconic was until I read ENWorld for a length of time.

But yeah - I think that's the problem I have, that I couldn't put my finger on/articulate for the longest time. It was "why is artwork in the last little while so boring to me?". That's it!

I think what bored me was the fact that the art was geared more towards illustrating something as opposed to just art.

Older edition artwork, to me, seemed like a momentary pause in what I was reading to see a scene that inspired my creativity... Made me think, hrmm who are those characters and what are they doing in this place?

3e stuff always tended to be too specific... Oh that's redgar, and he's cleaving... something... (as they also tended to lack any kind of a background.)

Not that it was "bad" just not my style.

Maybe it's the captions that did it?

 

[beepeearr]

Chalk me up as another who always thought Regdar was black (but then again, I watched scourge of worlds though), I always thought Alhandra and Kerwyn where hispanic and Nial and Hennet where asian. When I first looked at the PHB I thought Jozan was the only white human Iconic.

 

[pawsplay]

Older edition artwork, to me, seemed like a momentary pause in what I was reading to see a scene that inspired my creativity... Made me think, hrmm who are those characters and what are they doing in this place?

That specifically reminds me of the demi-human art in the Red Box Basic set, three adventurers pausing to sit and converse on their way to... somewhere.

One of the things I always liked about Talislanta is that it's countries, cities, and folk were most often illustrated by scenes rather than portraiture, or worse, model illustration.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I wouldn't really label it 'TSR-logic'. In the 80's and 90's you had mainstream book publishers that would regularly 'white-wash' covers that featured black characters and not include author pictures with the back-flap bio if that author was black (unless that book was slated to sell in the African-American section). (And I say specifically black rather than 'non-white' because that's usually the only point things break down; you could find a number of asian characters on book covers in the same period since that was also the big 'japan-o-phile' phase of fantasty and SF).

Sorry, I think you missed why I was saying that. TSR's leadership didn't respect their readers at all, and didn't seem to feel that expanding the audience was a valid goal, which is why I say it's TSR logic. I had forgotten about the general "white-washing", though, that is a valid point, and something which I think most people are completely unaware of.

And I can appreciate how some readers might not like the iconics, but I'm positive it is a minority opinion.

I think you're right in very specific sense. For the people who like the Paizo Pathfinder series, most of them also like or are neutral to the Paizo iconics. However, I think this is largely because Paizo's iconics are pretty cool, and nowhere near as dull or irritating as WotC's ones. Also, they only pop up "where they should" as it were, which is to say, in books where they're the "default" PCs. Rather than making it so the vast majority of illustrations in every single book of a game have the same couple of dozen characters in them, over and over again. Personally I find that stifles my imagination (obviously not a problem with a pre-written adventure), and generally bores me rigid. Not a single one of my players likes any of the iconics, and indeed, it was one of them who brought up that this "Badly-dressed wizard with big hair" kept appearing in all their books and it was annoying them (regarding Mialee).

Also, even though you also have a white, male, human fighter as the "first" iconic, and he is perhaps the least interesting or memorable of them, he at least has the merit of not having a ridiculous chin-beard

 

[GreatLemur]

I guess I never bought enough books, because I'm still used to thinking of Regdar as ethnically ambiguous. I don't really remember white Regdar. But, yeah, the tendency of artists to take an ambiguous character and skew them whiter and whiter with each iteration is a familiar one, particuarly from mainstream comics. Angel Salvadore from X-Men comes to mind.

Also, for the record, I'm entirely disgusted with the idea that I, as a white male, can only identify with other white males.

Use language that appeals to people without a college education.

Oh, wow. That was insulting to basically everyone.