D&D 5E Should the next edition of D&D promote more equality?

[pemerton]

On the issue of STR gaps, STR in D&D measures more than lifting capacity. It also measures ability to run, jump and swim, and the ability to wield and strike telling blows with melee weapons ranging from knives to poleaxes. And oddly enough it doesn't measure how far objects can be thrown, though it does measure the force with which they can be hurled. And while it measures some aspects of musculature, it doesn't measure others - eg the ability of muscle mass and strength to protect joints, organs etc from injury (this aspect of physical resilience is taken up by CON).

Suppose that the typical man has STR 10, and hence does an average of 2.5 damage with a dagger. A -2 penalty to STR would then mean that the typical woman has STR 9, and does 1.5 damage with a dagger, on average, or 3/5 of what the typical man does. Add in the -1 to attack, and this might reduce damage to half? Is that realistic? I don't know, but it looks a little suspect to me. Maybe it's just my own ignorance, but if anything I would expect STR difference to be more significant with larger weapons, whereas the mechanic of a STR penalty in D&D is going to have the opposite effect, because of the tendency of the die roll to overshadow the STR adjustment: eg upgrade from a dagger to a cudgel, and the ratio of average damages at STR 10/8 becomes 4.5 to 3.5, or the woman doing more like 2/3 of the average damage that the man does.

My own view is that it's a non-issue. If a certain group doesn't want strong women, for whatever reason, they can refrain from building such characters - and in the case of PC builds, they can achieve this outcome by allocating their points, or their high dice rolls, to other stats.

 

[urLordy]

AT THE STORY LEVEL

I believe that modern fantasy stories DO promote gender equality.

However, AFAICT, fantasy stories generally do not accomplish this by homogenizing male and female heroes to be equally physically strong.

Brienne was cited, but IIRC in the novels, Jaime and others mocked her height and musculature as very much masculinized, definitely not shorter and svelte like the female fantasy adventurer stereotype. If female fighters (at a gaming table, in a fantasy novel, or film) were often described like Brienne or some brawny sinewy weightlifter, I would be onboard with that, but that hasn't been true IME. So there's quite the disconnect there when highly muscular females are being referenced on this thread but the "average" female fantasy fighter character is not described in those terms.

Instead, I believe that fantasy stories promote gender equality in the way they frame situations, by putting men and women in situations where both can accomplish their goals by different means.

For example, a man might test his strength in arm-wrestling contest with a strong male orc, but I can't recall many stories or movies where a woman (or halfling or a wizard, for that matter) was ever *required* to arm wrestle a strong male orc in order to win an important quest (unless the halfling or wizard could use magic, for example, and then we've established equality again)

Comic book stories kinda do that. Female superheroes are often just as physically strong as their male counterparts (The Hulk, Thor, etc. not included) -- NOT by illustrating equal musculature but via some sort of mutation or power.

In real life, a weaker man or woman can open a can using "technology" (running hot water, etc.) just as successfully as a stronger person trying to force it open using raw strength. I think a fantasy story can be faithful to simulationist goals with parallel tools (ie magic) and situations (scene framing), without homogenizing men and women to all look like bodybuilders.

AT THE RULES LEVEL

I like the idea of rules that support the story that the group wants to tell. If the fantasy story is promoting gender equality, the administration of the rules should support that. Luckily, it's never come up before IME, so I don't worry about it. I can't recall anyone giving their halfling or wizard or female fighter a strength of 18 and then pitting them in arm-wrestling contests against opponents twice their size.

 

[Alzrius]

Perfectly understandable, given the context.

In this case, I think ideology would play a big part of determining what is in the game. Creativity or curiosity or whatever-one-calls-the-urge-to-debate-about-what-the-effective-differences-between-a-katana-and-longsword-should-be-is can also play parts. Certainly a DM who says "No Dwarves in this campaign world. And My Elves are Different." is most likely doing so from non-ideological motivations. (Although, d12 preserve us, some of the responses in various racial threads might make that suspect.)

Let's step it up a notch. What would it tell you if someone asked "What sort of Intelligence penalty rule should I implement for dark-skinned humans?" Would such a rule make the game more realistic? Certainly there are folks who feel it would, and there is even some "scientific" work that supports it. Would you applaud a game utilizing such a rule for its simulationism or verisimilitude? Could the author of such a game come here and say he wrote that for the sake of "realism"?

For me, I think it would tell me more about the author than the world.

I'm very wary of trying to determine the motivations and beliefs about artistic creators based on their works (be they games or whatnot) as I don't think that most forms of artwork are very transparent (even presuming that the author is attempting to make their intentions known to begin with) in that regard. Why someone does something isn't something easily divined (and, according to the people who say that we're controlled by our subconscious urges, isn't even something we ourselves are aware of).

Insofar as your example goes, the question that's being asked is how to create a rule that best models reality. Obviously, if there's a point of debate regarding what the nature of reality is in regards to some particular aspect, then there's going to be a debate the the rule is incorrect because it's modeling something that isn't true. I suspect, however, that that's getting more into the nature of reality vs. perception, rather than the merits of any particular ideology over another.

That, however, is getting beyond what I was originally debating, as I noted before - the original supposition held that there was a difference between men and women in terms of Strength, and that a penalty akin to the penalty between races was too large to accurately measure it, at which point I began asking that, given that reasoning, what sort of rule would be more accurate.

That doesn't mean that I think that the people who made those original assertions earlier in the thread are sexist.

In regards to the example you posted, I'm going to cautiously say (since this is a hypothetical, and lacks the contextual clues of a real scenario) that I wouldn't read any personal ideology into the question posed (given my propensity for playing devil's advocate, that'd be quite the unfair assumption on my part). I would disagree with the underlying assessment of reality in that regard - if the author says "yes, but putting that aside for a moment, how would you model such a rule" would be something else again, as I don't see anything wrong with theorizing about something that I personally disagree with.

Yes.
Ideologically on two grounds:

D&D should be as broad as possible, adding more fiddly bits (like a gender-bias STR rule) tends to narrow that.
I personally consider the institution of such a rule objectionable on sexism grounds.

Certainly. I want to make it clear that I don't have any objection to ideological standards, per se. I just like to consider such questions separately from other metrics of evaluation (which doesn't seem to be a popular opinion, at least not these days).

WRT verisimilitude: That's in the eye of the beholder. For me, such a rule doesn't make much sense, and as such would tend to drop me out of gamespace (at least as often as it came up, anyway). That opinion has changed over the course of my lifetime and I've gained more experience IRL. I wouldn't be surprised if the same wasn't true for a great number of players over the lifetime of this game.

No doubt. That goes back to the above "the underlying presumptions that this is attempting to model are flawed."

BTW, thanks for playing Devil's Advocate. Its really sharpening my thoughts on an issue that I hadn't considered in a while.

It's been fun for me, too. This is what the debate should be like, in my opinion.

Look at the cover of the 4e DMG2. There are two people who dominate that scene - a man and a woman. They are descending a steep stone stairway cut into the side of a cliff; across the valley from them is a sinister-looking fortress of some kind. The woman is wearing a midriff top with a lot of cleavage displayed, and the artist has her posed with her back arched, so that her breasts project forward, further amplifying her cleavage.

Specifics help to narrow the discussion in terms of how easy it is to relate to something, but rarely help to provide more context insofar as the image itself goes. (Also, I don't have the DMG2, and Google Picture search is returning poor results for it; so I'll phrase my results in terms of the cover of the 4E PHB 1.)

Ultimately, a lack of context allows for the viewer to input whatever context they want (for whatever reason suits them; it's worth once again noting that whatever context they create is not necessarily a reflection of the viewer's beliefs). As such, I suspect that this is going to boil down to opinions about why the characters in said picture are dressed the way they are, positioned the way they are, located where they are, etc. Unfortunately, there's not going to be any answers here that are more or less logical than any other, since they're all going to be based off of unfounded assumptions.

Some of my thoughts on this illustration. First, it seems to me that there is no dispute that this woman is drawn in a sexualised way, in the sense that she is deliberately presented as a sexually attractive figure. Second, the artist has made some degree of effort to achieve this result - the woman's arched-backed pose is not the most natural way to depict a person descending a cliff-side stairway. Third, this sexualisation appears to have little to do with the context. For instance, there is no indication that the woman is flirting with anyone else either in the scene or off-canvass. I guess it's possible that the two people are not actually adventurers about to assault or infiltrate a ruined fortress (in the typical mode of D&D adventurers) but are in fact on their way to a party in the fort where her mode of dress would fit right in, but even if that were so it still doesn't explain why she is stopping for a sexy stretch half-way down the cliff.

The first two points here aren't relevant to the discussion at hand, as we're trying to ascertain (futilely, I think) the context of the picture; that is, the in-character understanding of what's going on here. We're not talking about why the artist made the choices they did, we're talking about if they make sense for the situation.

The problem here is that we have absolutely no idea what the situation is. There are no reliable positive indicators as to what's going on, so anything is theoretically possible. She might very well be flirting with someone. Or her awkward positioning might be that she's stumbled and is in the midst of correcting her footing. Or she might be acting that way because she's just been charmed by someone off-canvas. Or any of a hundred other possible explanations.

(It's also worth noting that in that picture, the dragonborn's dragon-wang is hanging out; what context can we draw from that?)

mythago has made the broader points I would have made about censorship, so I'll focus my response to this pictrure more narrowly. The cover of DMG2 is an illustration on the cover of a commercial product. It therefore serves a range of communicative functions: the main one is conveying, in somewhat general, abstract and allusive terms, the subject matter of the contents; a related one is marketing the work, that is, making it an attractive object of consumption for likely consumers; a somewhat secondary function is conveying, in some fashion, the artist's ideas about fantasy adventuer, the human form, etc.

I'm not sure I agree with this last point, as the artist doesn't necessarily have (when making art to order) total freedom in what they depict, depending on the specificity of the art order that they've received. For that matter, there can be external factors that limit the decision-making aspect of whomever does make the decision to use that artwork as well (e.g. "none of these pictures are very good, but we go to press in two weeks...just use this one, and we'll live with it").

If, from the publisher's point of view, the cover fails in the first or second of these functions that is, in itself, a good reason to get rid of it and try again. If, from the purcahser and user's point of view, the cover gives a misleading impression of the contents of the book, that is also a reason to get rid of it, I think. And for me, as a purchaser and user of that book, I think it does give a misleading impression. It implies that the book has sexual themes or content or concerns that in fact it doesn't. It is a misleading cover. That in itself is a reason to revise it.

I'm not sure I agree with the point you're making here, as you're saying that there are (amoral) market-based decisions for deciding that something doesn't work, and that it should be altered. You say that this is the prerogative of the publisher/distributor, which is understandable...and then you equate that with the prerogative of the customer, which is not. Just because an individual consumer thinks that the cover does not effectively market the product is no reason for the publisher to change the product (e.g. it's their decision, not yours).

There is also the broader question of whether illustrations that sexualise women is therefore sexist. As a general proposition, I don't know that is true.

I think it's more apt to phrase this as "depicting women's sexuality" rather than "sexualizing" women, as it's possible to display someone in a sexual context without objectifying them. That said, there's not going to be much (if any) consensus on objectification versus display, or qualities of inherent bias therein.

But I think there is something sexist, and potentially demeaning, in the more narrow idea conveyed by the cover of the DMG 2 - namely that, even in fantasy adventuring contexts, it is women's sexuality and sexiness that is their most salient characteristic. Two people might have different views about the morals and politics of lingerie catalogues, or of pornography, yet still agree that there is something weird about so much D&D art being so obviously obsessed by women's sexuality, when that sexuality plays so little role in the game as presented in the rulebooks and most adventures. However uncertain we may be about detailed contexts, we know enough about the overall context of D&D as a mainstream fantasy adventure RPG to know that sexuality is not the main thing addressed by the books.

Even presuming they agree with those presumptions, that's not an issue of ethics. That's an issue of marketability, "truth" in advertizing, and customer expectations.

TL;DR: D&D pictures are full of (faux-)mediaeval weapons; and armour; and castles; and orcs; and dragons; and dramatic displays of magic; and prominently displayed cleavage, breasts, thighs and belly-buttons. What does that last set of things have to do with the fiction that the game rules and texts are actually concerned with?

Not very much, to be sure. But does that make pictures that have such things inherently immoral? I say no.

That is not really true. First, deontological morality categorises classes of action by their (typical) effects - for instance, killings are wrong because they (typically) resut in the radical undermining of some particular individual's interest in living his/her life. Kant explains the wrongness of lying by considering the consequences of a universalisation of acting on the principle that lying is permissible (namely, all rational communication would become impossible).

I completely disagree here. Deontological morality categorizes classes of actions based not on their effects, but on the nature of the actions themselves, as measured by negative or positive duties. Kant holds very clearly that the consequences of an action cannot be considered a factor in measure of the morality of an action; instead, he tells us, an act is good when it is an act of "respect for moral law" (which is his way of saying "in accordance with duty").

Second, deontological morality categorises individual actions by reference to their effects, too - I don't think anyone would categorise attempted murder as being as serious as murder, for instance.

Deontological morality in no way categorizes actions based on their effects/outcomes/consequences. The difference between "murder" and "attempted murder" that your drawing here is a legal one, nor a moral one.

It's certainly true that deontologists are not going to measure "results" or "consequences" simply by reference to aggregate measures of welfare or utility. But I don't see much of that sort of analysis in this thread. The dominant line of reasoning that I'm seeing is that gratuitously sexualised art wrongs or demeans women because of the conception of women that it commuinicates. That is a perfectly tenable form of deontological argument.

What you're saying here is that you're holding that "portray women in an empowering fashion in artwork" is a positive duty; that is, it's a moral action if you do that, and an immoral action if you fail to do so. I don't agree with that - someone can create "cheesecake" artwork without it being considered an act of immorality. I believe that creative expression of any type is, fundamentally, without a moral dimension (though if one chooses to add such a dimension, that's a virtuous action that goes above and beyond the call of duty). Moreover, even if that wasn't the case, there's a negative duty in the form of "do not suppress free expression" that, as the highest level of duty (e.g. negative) compels that it win out when in conflict with a positive or supererogatory action.

Of course, you might very well disagree with what actions have what moral dimension in terms of what duties they fulfill, which is fine. It's natural for people to rank things differently, even when using the same system of moral philosophy.

 

[Umbran]

Once again, I'm not suggesting that it is.

Problem is, the only applicable reason for this particular change (in the WotC published game - keeping the original point of the thread in mind) is for its realism. With the effective limits we have from the precedents of Halflings and Gnomes, the difference between human males and females should be small, so that it lends insufficient tactical differences to gameplay to be interesting.

So, while you *could* have that upper limit for females, it still seems like you *shouldn't* - at which point I question why worry about it?

Censorship as "wide-scale social disapproval" was my way of discussing censorship by way of not allowing something to have a venue (e.g. intimidation). I'll admit that I could have phrased that better, certainly, but hopefully this clears that up.

That's getting really close to, "It is not appropriate for you to personally disapprove, because your personal disapproval is part of the wide-scale disapproval, and that counts as censorship.

If you want to say it is not appropriate for people to disapprove of things they find morally or ethically repugnant... well, I'd say that your disapproval of their disapproval is itself then censorship! The serpent swallows its tail, and the whole argument disappears in a puff of logic.

 

[bogmad]

Insofar as your example goes, the question that's being asked is how to create a rule that best models reality

Use a rule system entirely different than the ability score system of D&D; play a different game. Pretty simple answer. Otherwise you're creating a very specific rule for this one aspect of "reality" while completely ignoring so many more that break simulationism so much more. And when you focus on the one bit while ignoring others it's easy to be construed as advocating some specific agenda, which I don't think is your intent at all.

I think it's more apt to phrase this as "depicting women's sexuality" rather than "sexualizing" women, as it's possible to display someone in a sexual context without objectifying them.

I'd argue the phrase "depicting women's sexuality" is not an accurate term when the image doesn't really match to women's sexuality at all. Liefeld-ian anatomy and context-less cleavage for the sake of showing cleavage doesn't depict women's sexuality, but instead depicts men's conception of what is sexual

 

[Alzrius]

Problem is, the only applicable reason for this particular change (in the WotC published game - keeping the original point of the thread in mind) is for its realism. With the effective limits we have from the precedents of Halflings and Gnomes, the difference between human males and females should be small, so that it lends insufficient tactical differences to gameplay to be interesting.

So, while you *could* have that upper limit for females, it still seems like you *shouldn't* - at which point I question why worry about it?

There's no practical context to be sure. It was just an intellectual exercise.

That's getting really close to, "It is not appropriate for you to personally disapprove, because your personal disapproval is part of the wide-scale disapproval, and that counts as censorship.

I've already clarified (in the post you quoted) that personal disapproval is completely different from actually acting to suppress something. The two aren't close at all.

If you want to say it is not appropriate for people to disapprove of things they find morally or ethically repugnant... well, I'd say that your disapproval of their disapproval is itself then censorship! The serpent swallows its tail, and the whole argument disappears in a puff of logic.

I'm glad we both agree that I haven't said that, then.

Use a rule system entirely different than the ability score system of D&D; play a different game. Pretty simple answer. Otherwise you're creating a very specific rule for this one aspect of "reality" while completely ignoring so many more that break simulationism so much more. And when you focus on the one bit while ignoring others it's easy to be construed as advocating some specific agenda, which I don't think is your intent at all.

It's not my intent at all; I'm glad you recognize that. Likewise, the discussion was taking place regarding that specific rule because that's the rule that was brought up; it wasn't meant to be taken as exclusionary (e.g. this rule and no others).

I'd argue the phrase "depicting women's sexuality" is not an accurate term when the image doesn't really match to women's sexuality at all. Liefeld-ian anatomy and context-less cleavage for the sake of showing cleavage doesn't depict women's sexuality, but instead depicts men's conception of what is sexual

I suspect that this is a matter of personal opinion. Problems of anatomy aside, there's a contextual element (e.g. she dresses herself, so she's choosing to dress that way of her own accord) that's different from the representative element (e.g. she's dressing that way because the artist wants her to be viewed as a sex object).

The former, in my experience, tends to be ignored or decried as an excuse to justify the latter. That's not to say that it can't be, but it can also be an element of characterization.

Of course, all of this is still getting away from my original point, which is that artwork doesn't need to justify itself in a moral context anyway, regardless of what it depicts.

 

[El Mahdi]

See, this is a problem though. Le Maosheng is FIVE TIMES the size of a halfling. A halfing is about 25 pounds, tops out at about 35 IIRC. A halfling is literally the size of a two year old human child. There is no realistic way for that character to have anything approaching top end human strength.

But, we accept it as part of the game. Note, gnomes are in the same basket here as well.

But, like I said, if being 1/4 the size of a human results in a -2 strength score, how in the heck can you justify any modifier between male and female humans?

The system is just nowhere near granular enough to encapsulate this.

Not that I think you are arguing for sex based stat adjustments. I just think that some people are.

I agree with you completely on the idea of a penalty for female characters. I didn't always, but looking up the stuff I did (I had that stuff in a pdf from a previous, similar thread: Size and Weight to Strength comparison and analysis of D&D characters.pdf ), I changed my mind.

However, as to Halflings, it depends on the edition you're using. In 4E, Halflings are described as being an average of 4' tall and weigh 80 lbs. I don't think it would be outside the realm of possibility for a 4E Halfling to be 4 1/2' to 5' and weigh more in the realm of 100 lbs. or a little more, and have an 18 or 19 strength. Halflings in my games are physically more like the ones in 4E (though I don't actually use 4E), so that's the basis I was coming from. In 3E or earlier, yeah, it would be a stretch for me to envision such a small character with extraordinary strength, but I'm sure I could find a way to rationalize it for a character that wanted it. I could even see it for Gnomes. For me, Gnomes have always been like the Nelwyn from Willow. Reading the books in which Lucas continued the story of Willow (renamed Thorn in the books), Nelwyns are described as very short, can't walk or run very fast, but have an inordinately high upper-body strength for their size. If a character wanted a Gnome with an 18 strength, I'd probably rationalize that way.

 

[urLordy]

Halflings in my games are physically more like the ones in 4E (though I don't actually use 4E), so that's the basis I was coming from. In 3E or earlier, yeah, it would be a stretch for me to envision such a small character with extraordinary strength, but I'm sure I could find a way to rationalize it for a character that wanted it. I could even see it for Gnomes. For me, Gnomes have always been like the Nelwyn from Willow. Reading the books in which Lucas continued the story of Willow (renamed Thorn in the books), Nelwyns are described as very short, can't walk or run very fast, but have an inordinately high upper-body strength for their size. If a character wanted a Gnome with an 18 strength, I'd probably rationalize that way.

I had a gnome wizard PC and role-played him under the assumption that he was tough as nails but, due to his small relative mass, his strength was subpar in the narrative (even if his Strength score was average by the rules). In other words, I wouldn't opt for a Str check if I could help it. I'm happy to embrace the imaginary flaws or limitations of an imagined character. It's more interesting for me than imagining "I'm just as good as you in every way". Equal but not the same and all that.

To rationalize an 18 Str gnome, I would imagine him with a very dense stone-kissed skeleton, or maybe a gravity-like connection to earth (and with the latter, I would even voluntarily lower his strength score if his feet weren't touching the ground or sailing on a boat).

 

[El Mahdi]

There's all kinds of evidence for gender differences in strength...

Actually there isn't. There's all kinds of evidence for gender differences in average strength...which is a completely different animal. It means that on average, women tend to be weaker, smaller, lighter, etc., than men. However, it does not mean that it's impossible for a woman to be as strong as a man, or as tall as a man, or as heavy as a man, etc...on the contrary, such women can and do exist, they are just a much smaller percentage of the larger population. *Strongest documented Man = approximately 22/23/24 Strength, Strongest documented Woman = approximately 21/22 Strength...and that's in a highly regulated professional sport. As far as I know, there was no regulating body testing for performance-enhancing substances or performing full-physicals and genetic testing in non-modern times, and definitely not in D&D. There may be more of a science to such things today, but people trying to get an edge or maximize potential is far from a modern development; and adventuring groups probably don't care about genetic anomalies or wether someone is 100% male or female. You want realism? THAT is Realism!

Besides, Adventurers are far from the Average; They are the Extraordinary Exceptions in Society!

So, if you say you want realism...really want realism...then why don't you come up with an ability score generation system that truly takes into account such percentages. Let's say that an 18 Intelligence is equivalent to about a 180 IQ. The "realistic" thing to do would be to make a randomization that only makes it possible for someone to have an 18 Intelligence with a 0.000005% real-world chance (when rolling stats with a straight 3d6 method, getting a natural 18 has only a 1 in 216 chance, or 0.46%). That would make it about 347 people in a world of 7 billion with an 18 Intelligence (in a medieval or D&D world, make that about 15-25 people in the whole world). Or how about making the chance of a male character possessing a 23 Strength a more realistic 10,000 in 7 billion chance (and I'm probably being incredibly generous saying there are even 10,000 people in the world with a 23 Strength). BTW, 10,000 in 7 billion would be a 0.000142857% chance to have a 23 Strength!

Also, do you limit characters from having a Strength of higher than 23/24 (except through extraordinary means like Magic...)...? If not, that's not realistic. (edit: I see in a previous post that you cap at 25, which is close to reality, but still higher)

If you aren't using a "realistic" randomization for Ability Scores (which I'm betting you just use one of the typical d6 procedures, or point allocation), then why in the world would apply a penalty only for Female Character Strength?!?!

It makes no logical sense...

Adnering to "Realism" is pretty much an "all-in" type of thing. Otherwise all you're doing is picking and choosing what you want to be "realistic" about. Then the question becomes, why are you cherry-picking only certain things? What biases are at work in your decision making?



Strongest Documented Man = 22/23/24 Strength
Strongest Documented Woman = 21/22 Strength
*I used an expanded range of strengths here in this post, as opposed to my previous post or my pdf, because the numbers I used in those were averaged from the different editions and rounded off. Due to the abstractness of D&D Ability Scores, and the variances between different editions, it's impossible to 100% quantify D&D Strength in real-world terms...which is yet one more strike against the so-called "realism" of penalizing female character strength scores.

Tallest Documented Male Basketball Player = 8' 0"
Tallest Documented Female Basketball Player = 7' 2"
*(I went with basketball players, and not just tallest people, as adventurers need to be able to fight...being 9' tall but essentially cripled defeats the purpose...)

Weight (not even going there...never comment on a woman's weight)


Are these differences significant enough or really worth the trouble and grief to codify with a penalty? Especially when such a penalty is actually both logically and mathematically unrealistic?!?






[MENTION=128]Mishihari Lord[/MENTION] - Post has been edited to fix math and due to reading a subsequent post of yours (that I didn't see until after I posted this).

 

[pemerton]

The problem here is that we have absolutely no idea what the situation is. There are no reliable positive indicators as to what's going on, so anything is theoretically possible. She might very well be flirting with someone. Or her awkward positioning might be that she's stumbled and is in the midst of correcting her footing. Or she might be acting that way because she's just been charmed by someone off-canvas. Or any of a hundred other possible explanations.

I don't agree with this at all. Not only do I have some idea what the situation is - namely, it is two adventurers approaching a ruined/haunted fortresss via a cliff-side stairway - but the whole point of the picture, the book etc is to signal and reinforce that situation.

Even suppose that, in the imagined story, she were to stumble and correct her footing, why has the artist shown us that moment? It's the fantasy illustration equivalent of post-Oscars "nipple slip" or "underwear seam" photographs.

you're saying that there are (amoral) market-based decisions for deciding that something doesn't work, and that it should be altered. You say that this is the prerogative of the publisher/distributor, which is understandable...and then you equate that with the prerogative of the customer, which is not. Just because an individual consumer thinks that the cover does not effectively market the product is no reason for the publisher to change the product (e.g. it's their decision, not yours).

In the context of commercial production in a market economy, their decision should be influenced by the views of potential customers (incuding me, but more importanty including potential purchasers who were put off by the artwork).

I think it's more apt to phrase this as "depicting women's sexuality" rather than "sexualizing" women, as it's possible to display someone in a sexual context without objectifying them.

To the extent that this is true, I don't believe that it's true of the illustration I mentioned. As [MENTION=6695559]bogmad[/MENTION] indicated, this is not a depiction of a woman's sexuality.

Even presuming they agree with those presumptions, that's not an issue of ethics. That's an issue of marketability, "truth" in advertizing, and customer expectations.

<snip>

But does that make pictures that have such things inherently immoral?

Who is saying that pictures of breasts, or thighs, are inherently immoral? The posts I've read are saying that sexualised depictions of women in the context of fantasy adventure RPG illustrations are politically/morally troubling.

I completely disagree here. Deontological morality categorizes classes of actions based not on their effects, but on the nature of the actions themselves, as measured by negative or positive duties.

The nature of actions includes their results, at least where these are inherent or necessary (eg a killing necessarily thwarts another's interest in life; lying necessarily undermines rational communication).

In one standard contemporary account of duty-based ethics (Oxford Aristoteleanism a la Raz etc) duties are grounded in human interests. In Kantian versions, duties are grounded in the interests of rational beings (eg in participating in rational communication).

Kant holds very clearly that the consequences of an action cannot be considered a factor in measure of the morality of an action; instead, he tells us, an act is good when it is an act of "respect for moral law" (which is his way of saying "in accordance with duty").

To the best of my knowledge Kant does not assert that attempted murder is as serious as actual murder.

And Kant derives the moral law via his universalisation principle, which asks whether a maxim of action is permissible in part by reference to the consequences of universalising that maxim.

You are confusing the claim that deontologists reject (namely, that contingent consequences of an action - particularly its effects on aggregate welfare - are all that matters to its morality) with a claim that they deny (namely, that the consequences of an action are never relevant to its value). A month or so ago I was at a paper by John Tasioulas (Professor of Philosophy at UCL and a leading moral philosopher in the contemporary Aristotelean school) where he made this very point in response to a question.

The difference between "murder" and "attempted murder" that your drawing here is a legal one, nor a moral one.

I think that every contemporary theorist of the criminal law would take the view that the legal difference captures a moral one. Though there is no doubt that the phenomenon of "moral luck" is a curious one (eg the target of my shooting bends over at the last minute, so I miss and fail to kill him/her, and hence do something not as wrong as I might have).

What you're saying here is that you're holding that "portray women in an empowering fashion in artwork" is a positive duty

I didn't assert that at all, nor imply it. I did imply that "portraying women in a sexualised way in contexts - such as fantasy adventure RPG illustrations - in which sexuality has little relevance is a breach of a duty owed to women not to wrong or demean them." This does not entail anything about other contexts, nor about what the parameters of permissible illustrations might be.