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

[Chainsaw]

I always thought the original 3.0 Player's Handbook Regdar was either black, hispanic or some mix of those and white, but I couldn't quite tell. I figured the ambiguity was an intentional effort to avoid just these sorts of issues! Ha!

In art (and politics), I suppose people often see want they want to see.

 

[buzz]

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.

I think that's tangential; it says nothing about what that market will buy. If it did, books with cheesecake drow elf women wouldn't sell, either.

The data WotC marketing would need to produce is sales figures for various books with different covers, and be able to demonstrate that covers featuring white males consistently sold more. (Just like they were able to justify Dragon Magic because products with the words "dragon" and "magic" consistently sold better.)

Thing is, I don't really buy that their data backs this up.

 

[buzz]

She's the only black iconic, but what about Regdar, Alhandra, Hennet, and Naull?

Regdar: white (most often depicted unambiguously so, otehr than Lockwood's initial work).

Alhandra: White.

Hennet: White.

Naull: who? (Googles around) Oh, her. Does she even count? I mean, yeah, but she's not really an iconic, is she?

 

[buzz]

As to the value of iconics... I don't know if there's any obvious advantage. We all certainly seem to be able to identify them, and even have strong opinions. Does that really affect my enjoyment of the game? I'm not sure, other than the shared fan experience, like talking about Meepo.

The Pathfinder iconics... I dunno. I have the first PF adventure path, and I couldn't even tell you their names. To me, they're just sample PCs at the end of the books.

 

[Cadfan]

The pathfinder iconics aren't really iconics. The point of iconics is that they're generic. They're "iconic" of what the class is generically like. This is why we often got pictures of the iconics in hypothetical future realities- you know, "Here's Mialee as she might have looked in a war campaign. Here's Jozan in a horror campaign." Etc. The pathfinder iconics are really just pcs.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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?

The overwhelming majority of rap music -- which overwhelmingly features black performers -- is bought by white people. This is not a new phenomenon: Run DMC'S "Raising Hell" album predates 2E.

This was not a good marketing decision on TSR's part. It was an indefensibly stupid and demonstratably ineffectual marketing decision.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The pathfinder iconics aren't really iconics. The point of iconics is that they're generic. They're "iconic" of what the class is generically like.

Elminster is iconic. Drizzt is iconic. Tasslehoff is iconic. Raistlin is iconic. Mordenkainen is iconic.

"Iconic" does not mean generic.

I agree that WotC really wanted "generics," and they got them, which was bad news when they decided they wanted to do novels starring them. Even in house, the misused terminology tripped them up.

Personally, I like the 1E iconics (and Pathfinder iconics, although their gnome concerns me somewhat) a lot more than the 3E generics.

 

[Vocenoctum]

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?

Well, the problem with this thread is that a lot of this topic was already covered when Lockwood mentioned something a week or three ago.

And, lets be honest, historically speaking there probably weren't a lot of "black knights". No one is writing about Rokugan's books not featuring enough racial diversity either.

So yeah, "put a white guy on the cover" is silly, but at the same time "because people can identify with it" doesn't just mean "because they're white".

I don't think D&D should be limited to replicating Earth's racial patterns, but that doesn't mean different ethnicities just appear togethor in a middle age setting either.

 

[buzz]

I don't think D&D should be limited to replicating Earth's racial patterns, but that doesn't mean different ethnicities just appear togethor in a middle age setting either.

D&D is not a middle age setting. D&D is D&D. If people can swallow elves and fire-breathing dragons easier than they can a racially diverse fantasy world, there is something fundamentally wrong.

(And it's not like medieval Europe was all blonde and blue-eyed, either. Moorish Spain, anyone?)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

D&D is not a middle age setting. D&D is D&D. If people can swallow elves and fire-breathing dragons easier than they can a racially diverse fantasy world, there is something fundamentally wrong.

(And it's not like medieval Europe was all blonde and blue-eyed, either. Moorish Spain, anyone?)

This is especially true given what TSR was publishing in this period. Both the Forgotten Realms and Mystara, for instance, are explicitly multi-racial settings.

Al-Qadim, Planescape and Dark Sun have no reason to feature WASPs on the cover, either.