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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Janos Antero" data-source="post: 764037" data-attributes="member: 4480">Hrm, in looking at the cover I got a very different interpretation.  Unfortunately since I've read and very much enjoy it, that may have also biased me, regardless though I'll plunge ahead for debate's sake.No offense intended to you personally (as your opinions sound well thought out, and I do respect your right of opinion itself), but I do find judging pornographic nature based on the quality of the artwork itself very subjective and hypocritical.  I think a better way to word the cover than I originally used was to sell sex itself, by showing three attractive scantily clad women.  I do see the central woman as a strong character type (Genvissa is her name btw), but also a very sexually oriented, grab you type.I think dominant sultry women can still sell sex, and the blatantly strong woman in sexy attire is an image that has been captured and used more than once.  The girl on the left of the cover strikes me as a very typical soft submissive woman.  The very young look, trying hard to be tough, but very afraid stereotype.Both are in very sexually suggestive poses, with bare thigh stuck out, one hand framing a hip, another framing/playing with her hair, and the body angles designed to best show off figures.  Even Brutus, the guy in the photo strikes me as cast from the same darkly sexual simmering look that the two ladies have.The picture screams sex to me in a major way, and begs to be picked up and examined even more than the Dragon cover, because the quality of the artwork enhances the sex of the photo.  I find the Sara Doughlass cover to be twice as sexy, and therefore selling me sex twice as much as the Dragon any day.  Hell the cover of the book induced me to buy it, whereas the Dragon I think I'll pass on judging just by the artwork.It just seems odd that pandering in high quality is acceptable, but pandering in low quality isn't.  Except that is just what the art world does, which infuriates me to no end.  To me a nude painting in a world famous museum is just as pornographic as anything in an issue of Playboy.  It is a double standard.The painting may have other redeeming qualities in and of itself, and it is art as well as pornography, but that doesn't make it any less pornographic/sexual than the Playboy.  The fact that those who rabidly hate Playboy can still go enjoy an art museum and say a nude painting isn't pornographic because it has other qualities is silly.Pornography isn't an either/or situation.  A good piece of artwork can be pornographic AND have redeeming qualities.  But I digress...Basically in my opinion, you can't make exceptions in catagorization based on taste, because taste is subjective.  To call one pornography, and the other art... bad!  If people object to this cover of Dragon, I think they should also object to any and all other such works too in fantasy, or at the very least, their particular niche of the fantasy genre.I just don't think poor quality shouldn't determine social acceptability.I can understand objecting to pornography in DnD in it's entirity, but that brings me back to what I was attempting to say earlier, remove ALL suggestive materials from DnD, or the genre, rather than singling out a single medium of the game.</blockquote>

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