D&D 5E The 5E Art is Awesome

[Sacrosanct]

I don't know that women will ever make up 50% of D&D players, but wouldn't that be nice?

Sure. Did I say anything that would make you think otherwise? I even stated that making the game more appealing to women is an obvious good thing. So not sure why you'd say this.

I'm still not sure how the number of women playing Candy Crush has any bearing on the number of women playing D&D. What is the rpg equivalent of Candy Crush to you? The game that all the women play, that means that their opinions about the world of rpg's and how women are treated in that world aren't valid?

Or is Candy Crush the RPG a putative game that will finally bring large numbers of women to the hobby?

Not sure how I can make this any clearer. Go back and look at the post I was quoting. When someone says, or implies that women are joining gaming in droves, it doesn't mean they are all coming to play D&D. You have to look at the numbers deeper. It would be like saying "There are just as many women gamers as male gamers, so FPS games need to display equal representation in them." But the reality is that the % of women gamers who play FPS are still very much the minority. The games played mostly by women (like Candy Crush) is what makes the "just as many women gamers as men" statement true, but it doesn't make the "just as many women gamers as male gamers in every genre" true.

 

[Sacrosanct]

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...

That's not what he's saying. This is a pretty blatant strawman. We should avoid these types of things. He's saying what he said, that D&D will most likely always be a male dominated game, and like every business model out there in the world, you market to your big demographic. That's not rocket science, nor shocking. And it doesn't mean that D&D can't be more appealing to women in how its art direction goes. Those aren't mutually exclusive things. You can increase diversity in your artwork and at the same time acknowledge who your target demographic will be.

 

[redrick]

Sure. Did I say anything that would make you think otherwise? I even stated that making the game more appealing to women is an obvious good thing. So not sure why you'd say this.

Not sure how I can make this any clearer. Go back and look at the post I was quoting. When someone says, or implies that women are joining gaming in droves, it doesn't mean they are all coming to play D&D. You have to look at the numbers deeper. It would be like saying "There are just as many women gamers as male gamers, so FPS games need to display equal representation in them." But the reality is that the % of women gamers who play FPS are still very much the minority. The games played mostly by women (like Candy Crush) is what makes the "just as many women gamers as men" statement true, but it doesn't make the "just as many women gamers as male gamers in every genre" true.

Hey, yeah, sorry. I read your original post a little too quickly. I've edited my own to take out the venom.

This conversation always devolves a bit into the "this is an issue," and "this isn't an issue" camps, and I've got strong feelings on the subject, but I'm gonna step out of it, because it's verging off topic from the OP and not a battle that needs to be fought every week here. Sorry for snapping at you a little prematurely.

 

[Sacrosanct]

It's all good. I blame the internet for driving people into "us vs them" camps instead of realizing that things aren't nearly as black and white as that. True of just about every internet discussion. It's almost like there's this deeply rooted aversion to reach a middle ground. Which is odd.


That all being said, back to topic, I think 5e did a pretty good job in the art, as far as diversity goes. Like others have said, I'm not a big fan when it seems obvious that diversity seems forced. I.e., make sure we have X% of men, Y% of women, Z% of black, etc. etc. It's nice when things feel organic, and for the most part 5e does that. Yeah, I know there were people out there with no better way to spend their time than to go through and see if the %s of each and every piece of art was exactly equal, but I'm not a big fan of that. It's dumb, IMO. 5e seems clear that it embraces diversity in it's art, which is a good thing, good for the game, good for the hobby, and I don't care if Asians should have been represented 15.5% instead of the 12.2% (making those #s up).

 

[neobolts]

The question at hand is whether 50/50 saturation of a medium is the same as 50/50 saturation of a particular product. I think D&D has moved closer to 50/50 than ever before. They've worked admirably to expand their secondary target demographics.

If movies have 50/50 attendance split, you wouldn't assume that each individual movie has a 50/50 split. But with gaming, it is said that women are half or more of the playerbase, and then wild leaps regarding individual products seem to occur. Companies have hard choices as to how to respond to demographic trends. You can try to make a more broadly appealing product that draws in new people, but risk losing existing customers that feel less targeted by the changes. Or you can try to create new products targeted to an under-served demographic (girl-targeted LEGOs and NERF guns come to mind as recent examples of the latter), but risk seeming patronizing. It is a tricky problem.

 

[Sunseeker]

I was thinking more along the lines that Tolkien's diversity hardly counts when all you've got is white humans, white elves, white dwarves or white hobbits.

1: it's largely based off medieval, nothern-european mythology.
2: you can't apply humanistic social norms to races that obviously have no place for it(elves), races too small to have need for it (hobbits) and races where its never been known to exist (dwarves).

 

[pickin_grinnin]

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...

That's not what I said, and you know it.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

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?

Just to be clear, I'm talking about tabletop RPGs, not other types of games. As someone already mentioned, there are likely to be large differences in the relative percentages of women who play various types of game. The video game market, for example, has a pretty big percentage of female gamers right now. That has nothing to do with tabletop RPGs, though.

There is nothing inherently hostile in cheesecake art, to women or anyone else. Some women dislike it, but there are just as many women out there who don't have an issue with it. Go on DeviantArt sometime and look at the fantasy art done by women. You're mostly going to find idealized bodies, no matter what the artist's body looks like.

Fantasy art in general tends to show extreme, over-idealized bodies, at least when it comes to heroic characters. Men may look like bodybuilders, handsome movie star types, elf-like (more common now with the influence of Japanese illustration), etc. Women may be busty, cutesy, or something else. In any case, the tendency is to show characters who have looks that tend to appeal to a given audience.

 

[Sunseeker]

Fantasy art in general tends to show extreme, over-idealized bodies, at least when it comes to heroic characters. Men may look like bodybuilders, handsome movie star types, elf-like (more common now with the influence of Japanese illustration), etc. Women may be busty, cutesy, or something else. In any case, the tendency is to show characters who have looks that tend to appeal to a given audience.

And honestly, there isn't very much female cheesecake art in this edition, heck there isn't much male cheese either. I don't really think there's a lack of diversity either. Most of the races are female (dwarf, elf(has both female and mary-sue art), halfling, human, gnome (dragonborn might be?), half-orc and tiefling). The classes are pretty well balanced, monk, ranger, rogue and warlock all use female art, none of which is cheesecake, the barbarian, bard and druid have art for both sexes, the female druid art is lightly clothed, but I'm not sure it's cheesecakey. The cleric, fighter, paladin sorcerer and wizard have male-only art. That leaves 4 classes with female-only art, 3 with both and 5 with male-only. None of which are cheese.

 

[MechaPilot]

I like the art as well, but some of the pieces feel a bit too static to me, and some of them feel disconnected due to a lack of background (the druid in the PHB immediately comes to mind as an example of the latter).

I will never understand people's dislike for "cheesecake" art. People in real life dress provocatively too. Go to any college campus on a Friday or Saturday night and tell me how you see the girls dressing. I went to visit a friend of mine in Morgantown at WVU this past fall and we went out on the town one night, literally around 75-80% of the girls I saw were wearing dresses or skirts that came no longer than mid-thigh and 4 to 5 inch heels. I've lived in Europe and it is much the same when going out over there as well, if not more so.

I'm not saying by any means that every peice of art should be provocative, and when its done it should make sense within the context of the world, but it definitely has it's place as well. Give us succubus's dressed like skanks, nymphs wearing next to nothing, drow priestesses in fetish wear, and ab'd up shirtless barbarians rocking loincloths. It's all about versimilitude.

With all that said, I have never been a fan of the old school "chainmail bikini", because it's silly and doesn't make sense, but show me a cleric of Sune in her temple rocking a corset and stockings and I'm completely ok with that.

P.S. I hate the Halflings too.

The issue isn't so much provocative attire as it is appropriate attire. I dress provocatively when I want to, but then I'm not exploring ancient ruins and fighting dangerous monsters.

The issue also has to do with the balance of cake (cheese and beef). I'm talking about an approximate, apparent balance and not an actual equal number of each.

The issue also has to do with the kind of beefcake. The barbarian who is built like Conan and wearing a loincloth has a body fit more for male wish-fulfillment than it is for appeal to females. I mean, I like firm muscles but there is a tipping point where more muscles results in being less attractive: most women prefer the lean swimmer's build to the bodybuilder look.