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

[hong]

I'm a Gnome in real life, imagine how I feel.

Bah, your picture looks NOTHING like a gnome.

 

[Glyfair]

When all is said and done, the lack of "iconic" characters is the greatest 4e mystery to me.

Given how helpful they are to art orders and branding and how easy it is to license and merchandise their images, their absence is an enigma.

Someone must have put their foot down on this matter, and that person made the wrong call.

I'll note that after 4E was announced there was a thread on the WotC forums asking whether there should be 4E iconics, and if so whether any or all of the 3E iconics should make the leap. The sentiment in that thread was heavily against having any iconics (to my regret, being pro-iconic).

 

[pawsplay]

4e does have one iconic, but he's a monster.

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

It would be pretty trivial to turn the Fourth Edition class portraits into iconics, if you wanted to do that. I hope they don't, because they're pretty boring: all white-skinned (if they can be, and even the tiefling warlock looks less red-skinned than white with firelight casting a colour shadow), 75% male (only the ranger and warlock are female), et cetera.

You think so? I thought the Cleric was kinda asian-looking, on a weird way

 

[Amphimir Míriel]

4e does have one iconic, but he's a monster.

Rawrr!! Iconic indeed

 

[Jeff Wilder]

I appreciate Monte's post on a level nobody's mentioned yet: I love glimpses like this into the inner workings of a game company.

Oh, and Regdar is also being devoured by the original Ochre Jelly from the D&D Miniatures line. Pretty funny before I knew this back-story, and funnier now.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

You think so? I thought the Cleric was kinda asian-looking, on a weird way

Eh, kinda, or he could just be grimacing in the midst of combat. It's pretty ambiguous, and that's the point: they all look white, there's no explicit diversity.

It's the same way with the races themselves: the dwarves have rare non-human skin tones (grey or sandstone red); eladrin have human skin tones but are overwhelmingly fair-skinned; elves are supposed to be "tan or brown" but are presented as white; half-elves have "the same range of complexion as humans and elves" but are presented as white, one of the halflings looks like she was modelled after a young Penny Johnson Jerald (which is cool); both humans look white (although the woman looks like an attempt to do Asian eyes on a white girl); tiefling skin "covers the whole human range and also extends to reds" but both of them are white.

The issue is slightly confused by the fact that William O'Connor does not use naturalistic skin tones for his illustrations anyway, of course. Both humans, for instance, are pale-skinned and obviously so, but because the artist doesn't paint people's skin to look like people's skin it's impossible to say for sure what he was intending. Maybe the human woman was supposed to look totally Asian (though the European colour of her hair suggests not).

Hell, apart from the halfling, the female dwarf fighter with geisha makeup at the beginning of the next chapter (p. 50) brings more diversity into the illustrations than the whole races chapter.

 

[Leatherhead]

"Here's what I think of your dear little Regdar," is not what I would call passive aggressive.

If that is all there was too it I might be inclined to agree, however there is far more to it than that.

 

[Leatherhead]

Four words: Samus is a girl.

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

 

[Erik Mona]

I'll note that after 4E was announced there was a thread on the WotC forums asking whether there should be 4E iconics, and if so whether any or all of the 3E iconics should make the leap. The sentiment in that thread was heavily against having any iconics (to my regret, being pro-iconic).

Which is why it would be stupid to run a business based off an EN World poll.

--Erik