The Proper Use of Nudity in FRPG Art

[J.Quondam]

Made out of what? I have to draw the line at synthetic polymers.

Wait... Do they even make mankinis out of anything other than yak hair?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I can think of a bunch of situations where that is not the case.

You can easily be offended by racist art that does not attack your own race for instance.

You can feel that vulgarity is offensive without feeling that it is an attack on you.

Even if it isn’t attacking your race in particular, that you are offended by it probably indicates it is attacking your friends, family or values.

Indirect though it may be, that’s still an attack on you.

 

[Kaodi]

I think that the difficulty for RPG products that some may view as transgressive comes down in part to the reality of group dynamics: for the most part it is hard enough to find a group of people who want to play the same game on the same schedule without factoring in variable tastes and narrative expectations.

Playing D&D or any other RPG is not like paying to go to the movie you want at theatre. It is more like watching the TV in a common room.

I have no idea whether you could even sell enough copies of an erotic coffee table art book depicting a more sexualized fantasy world a la Game of Thrones or True Blood to make it worth it. Not because "free porn" is everywhere - contextual porn is not quite so common as that. But simply because people are probably not going to want to spend the money for a crunchless product. But you cannot gatekeep crunch behind exclusive art choices.

 

[Umbran]

Making money shouldn't be seen as the only drive to produce things.

Strawman - I didn't say it was the only drive. So, what follows after this is not terribly relevant.

By all means, enter into a career of commercial art, but have no care about how your art is received. See how that goes for you.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

what even is an "unintentional attack"?

Exactly what it sounds like- an attack that lands on a target you do not intend to hit.

To use an extreme RW example, a man took a new rifle out on his yacht and went out quite a ways. He fired it towards land. It killed a woman driving along the costal highway.

Same kind of thing happens with all forms of communication, art included. I know of a former klansman who quit the white supremacy movement when he realized the rhetoric of his local leadership included attacks on the developmentally disabled. The man had a brother with Downs. He realized they were coming for HIS family.

Ask an Australian aboriginals person how they feel about tourists walking on Uluru. But if you ask the tourists, few of them actually intend to offend.

There are numerous occurrences of music, film and other art forms that have used elements from other cultures that those cultures find deeply offensive, possibly sacrilegious. It is rarely done with the intent to offend.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

A further thought.

To me, the fundamental question is; Is it better for the hobby to have more people playing?

Again, totally just speaking for myself, the answer is an unqualified yes. It makes the hobby more socially acceptable, it ensures that we still have a hobby in the future, it makes it easier to find players and DM's. It means that there's more money for creatives to bring out more goodies for me to enjoy. So, yeah, it is better for the hobby to have more people playing.

Which, alternatively, means that anything that results in less people playing is bad. Adding nudity to gaming art has not increased the number of gamers over the years - no one says, "Hey, yeah, I totally got into AD&D for that succubus picture." OTOH, removing cheesecake art from the game has coincided with huge growths in the hobby. Additionally, other companies, like Paizo, had moved down this road, pathfinding a route so to speak, even before WotC did it, so, there is a considerable precedence here.

So, in what way does the game or the hobby benefit from using this type of art?

Oh, and on a total side note - I too am a cis white dude creeping up very close to 50. Sigh. So, yeah, take from that what you will. And, I've got a stack of Heavy Metal magazines to prove that I'm hardly a prude when it comes to art. But, again, time and place. I love artists like Luis Royo. Fantastic stuff. Frazetta, Vajello, Julie Bell. All fantastic stuff. Love it to pieces. However, I don't think that they really have a place in D&D material. Or, at least, not without some set up first.

I'm going to try to lay out a different view on the matter...but it's easier to do so via subject matter rather than visuals because I can articulate so mething that is personal to me.

I do not like roleplaying romance in my games. It makes me uncomfortable. I really only have romantic relationships stated matter of factly, never do I indulge in playing out a scene between individuals (PCs or NPCs alike). Same goes for sexy time encounters. It's just a topic that I don't enjoy roleplaying, have no interest in exploring in an RPG, and quite frankly would be happy never existed.

I don't begrudge others from including romance/sex in their games. I'm sure there are many many people who find that the spice that makes the game worth playing.

This in mind, I don't think it is fair for me to advocate removal of something from the game that I dislike just because it's a sore spot for me.

Now, to transition this to pinup artwork in the game, my personal view is that I can take it or leave it. I don't actually pay that much attention to art in general (other than monster art I show to players) and I have yet to run into anything in RPG art more aggregious than what you can see on Witcher or GoT or at the beach.

Where I take issue with your blanket statements is that you are stipulating that some things are factually true ...

1. A majority of female players did not engage with DnD because of artwork contained in it's books.

2. The rise of female players is caused by (at least in part) better depictions of female characters in the artwork.

While both of those statements MAY be true, I don't think we have enough data to actually answer those questions factually. You may see the trends and assign art as a factor, but there very well may be many more female gamers who push past the content they don't enjoy (like I do with romance/sex) rather than treat it as a hard stop to using that material.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And now we get to the "What is art, and what is it for?" portion of our discussion.

There’s no objective definition of art. It’s all subjective.

Art is what the artist says it is. See Duchamp’s Urinal, Mapplethorpe’s Piss Christ, stuff like Andre’s Equivalence VIII, or works by Christo, Pollack Mondrian, Warhol, Rothko, or Kostabi.

But it is equally true that just because it is art to one person, it isn’t necessarily true that it’s art to all people. Maybe not to anyone else. That list above? I don’t even consider all of them artists. But someone does.

(Shrodinger’s cat thus becomes the final arbiter on if something is art or not.)

This is simplified in this case, as we are talking about art for commercial reproduction and distribution. If you are trying to make money at art, and do not care how it is received, you are not going to be making much money. This is art as communication, and proper communication requires consideration of the audience as much as the speaker.

If artists and publishers really don't care what people think of the art, why isn't it in crayon scribbles by a 5-year-old?

I was just addressing the creative freedom assertion above.

Short of actual problems with the laws of physics or man, the only thing actually stopping you from creating something is YOU.

Now, if you want your work to be commercially successful, that’s a different consideration entirely. Than, you do have to take your intended audience’s sensibilities into account.

In an early interview, members of Garbage talked about how their earliest efforts were so experimental as to be unsalable…until Shirley Manson was brought in as the vocalist. Shirley’s head snapped around to tell her bandmate off for implying she was the reason they curbed their experimentation. Backpedaling, clarifying and reframing initiated immediately.

 

[S'mon]

Where I take issue with your blanket statements is that you are stipulating that some things are factually true ...

1. A majority of female players did not engage with DnD because of artwork contained in it's books.

2. The rise of female players is caused by (at least in part) better depictions of female characters in the artwork.

While both of those statements MAY be true, I don't think we have enough data to actually answer those questions factually. You may see the trends and assign art as a factor, but there very well may be many more female gamers who push past the content they don't enjoy (like I do with romance/sex) rather than treat it as a hard stop to using that material.

I have seen trends over the years, GMing a lot in RPG student clubs and then later Meetups in London. Vampire: The Masquerade was the '90s was the first RPG to get a really substantial proportion of female players. It had sexual themes (and art). Running public RPG games at University, I don't remember TSR art being an issue, female D&D players were a minority but that was unlike Traveller - no women played Traveller at all, as far as I can tell. This was not because of the art.
One thing I remember that is not part of the general narrative afaict is that 4e D&D, while not a great success, brought in a much higher proportion of female players than 3e had. The look of the art may have been a factor. And 5e D&D much more again, of course. While I love a lot of Clyde Caldwell art, I suspect that 5e with him as the cover artist would not have had the same effect. IRL, people rarely feel 'attacked' or 'harassed' by commercial art at the kind of levels discussed here, but I do think it has an effect, as do other elements and themes. Eg I'd never seen multiple black players* at one Meetup game table until I played Tomb of Annihilation - and several African people I know commented how much they loved the Black Panther film.

*I later GM'd for one, a young black woman. Her favourite PC Nemesis was a topless busty blonde white Amazon warrior woman (originally an NPC she'd asked to play as a PC) with a photo pic that would meet with STRONG disapproval from many here.

 

[S'mon]

Mapplethorpe’s Piss Christ

An example of art that actually is an attack on someone!

 

[reelo]

An example of art that actually is an attack on someone!

It is not. Who would that be, anyway?