What We Lose When We Eliminate Controversial Content

[Bagpuss]

I thought our point here was to learn something about how the people playing these games feel, not win a rhetorical battle. So what is "the evidence"? The evidence is, for one, the women who tell us they don't want to play the game or feel uncomfortable because they dislike the art style with their overrepresentation of stereotypically beautiful, slim women who are on average a lot younger than the men, and who are more often dressed in revealing outfits drawn for the titillation of stereotypically male viewers than the other way around. And you can grab almost any TTRPG release, even today, flip through the art and see that these women have a point. So what I would say is: listen to the women and marginalized voices around you and what they have to say, and you will hear a wide range of opinions. That's much more important than us exchanging our own personal views on a forum.

Right so, by that reckoning (first part in bold) all of the art in Reasonably costumed women in fantasy art • r/ReasonableFantasy is still a serious problem, (please have a look though a couple of pages and see if anyone isn't young, slim and beautiful). The second part in bold we've shown that it isn't the case in TTRPGs for about two decades, although I will happily admit it is still an issue in fantasy art in a more general context.

If you flip through almost any TTRPG release from the last 15 years, I agree you will see slim and/or athletic young female characters, but not many if any drawn clearly for the titillation of male viewers. It is selling a fantasy, and generally that fantasy for most people is being young, athletic and healthy. Very few people want to play overweight, old, decrepit adventurers, so they won't be illustrated.

Judging by what you've chosen as an Avatar here you're not one to complain about slim, young character images.

You ever consider none of the men look like the people that play the game either, I've yet to see an image that looks remotely like me (except as perhaps a tavern keeper, or evil noble).

I think it will forever be a "serious problem" if you ever expect "fantasy" art not to represent people's fantasies of being young, healthy and beautiful.

That's not to say you can't have more representation, and that's pretty clearly happening if you look at the indie press TTRPGs where you often get overweight (yet still young and with flawless complexions) heroines illustrated, still not many overweight heroes oddly enough.

 

[Bedrockgames]

So, with that posit, the question to consider becomes: How is that sexuality displayed and handled? What is the way that sexuality is expressed in the game?

I was not the biggest Vampire fan so more devoted Gamemasters and Players can answer that better than me. I played Vampire and read the Masquerade when it came out---which impressed me a lot because it seemed so gameable in concept, and I loved the more intuitive approach of dice pools. Not sure if my first exposure was the first or second edition book though (I recall it being given to me on the bus by a friend in freshman year of highschool which I think would have been around 91). I have to say, Vampire did a lot of things, not just art, that brought people in. I think the art though when I think back on it as a player in white wolf campaigns (and here I am strictly going by memory leafing through the book to make my character or look up an ability), is it really connected to the aesthetic of the 90s more than D&D did at the time (VtM had a very grunge and 90s goth aesthetic, while D&D still largely had something that felt more 1980s). Also I think women coming in with Vampire had more to do with changes in the culture overall, and with women deciding they wanted to play. This was the riot grrrl era. I met a lot of women who had an attitude of "I can do this too, so let me join", which I think also helped move that dial quite a bit. And as I said as well, at least with a lot of the TSR stuff I was into at the time, which obviously isn't vampire, there were a lot of women writing the novels, co-designing, editing and writing for the game lines.

Most of the women I knew playing at that time were either in White Wolf campaigns or in stuff like Ravenloft. The interests among them I saw spanned a pretty wide range (from the aforementioned Riot Grrrl, to Dragonlance fans who were more interested in standard fantasy tropes). Again though this is just what I was seeing from a very narrow section of the gaming community in the area I lived in (which would have been north of Boston at that time). I can't really speak to what it was like elsewhere.

 

[MGibster]

Judging by what you've chosen as an Avatar here you're not one to complain about slim, young character images.

::tweets whistle and throws yellow flag on field:: In a round about way, I think she's arguing that there's limited representation in body type when it comes to women in RPG art.

I think we can all agree that more avatars should be orky like mine.

Most of the women I knew playing at that time were either in White Wolf campaigns or in stuff like Ravenloft. The interests among them I saw spanned a pretty wide range (from the aforementioned Riot Grrrl, to Dragonlance fans who were more interested in standard fantasy tropes).

Most of the girls and young women I gamed with who played Vampire in the 90s had absolutely zero interest in AD&D. I think Vampire brought a lot of people to gaming who wouldn't have been caught dead (undead) playing AD&D.

 

[Bagpuss]

::tweets whistle and throws yellow flag on field:: In a round about way, I think she's arguing that there's limited representation in body type when it comes to women in RPG art.

There is "overrepresentation of stereotypically" fit and attractive male characters as well. It's fantasy art, not Walmart.

I think we can all agree that more avatars should be orky like mine.

Well that goes without saying.

 

[Gradine]

Lol. True. There are probably more male pecs than female midriffs in most of the 80s action movies

The point here is that both of these are primarily geared towards the male gaze; scantily clad women were objects to be ogled/won, while scantily clad beefcake men were there for projection/male power fantasy.

The overall cultural impact being that while unattainable body standards existed (and still exists) for both men and women, the day-to-day impacts affect women far more than they do men because at the end of the day the audience is still, primarily, straight men, who still, primarily, hold disproportionally more levers of power in society (and not just in the media).

 

[Umbran]

But the other danger is throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

What baby?

There is no shortage of racy fantasy art in the world. It isn't like it goes away if it doesn't appear in the major rulebooks from the larger RPG publishers.

But what I see in a lot of these conversations is an idea that more sensual, more sexy art, even art that just is a study of the beauty of the human form, is something we need to be concerned about.

In books that include 12-year-olds in the target market? Yeah, we kind of do.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The point here is that both of these are primarily geared towards the male gaze; scantily clad women were objects to be ogled/won, while scantily clad beefcake men were there for projection/male power fantasy.

The overall cultural impact being that while unattainable body standards existed (and still exists) for both men and women, the day-to-day impacts affect women far more than they do men because at the end of the day the audience is still, primarily, straight men, who still, primarily, hold disproportionally more levers of power in society (and not just in the media).

I mostly agree with you, but it's also more complicated than that.

For example, it's been true for some time that the prevalence of both scantily clad women and scantily clad men are both symptomatic of the male gaze- just not always the straight male gaze. Moreover, questions of power dynamics and body image are interwoven tightly in culture, and as we've seen by the baleful effects of social media, even when the creators and consumers are women, there can still be a disproportionate and harmful impact.

I think that these issues of power, sex, and representation are necessarily fraught and more complicated, and the way that they intersect with culture make it difficult to tease out; a perfect example of this is the issue of when a particular image is empowering or demeaning, and how we can make that determination absent information about the dynamics of the creator (as we saw earlier when people were discussing Beyonce).

TLDR; critiquing the low-hanging fruit has been easy- we are getting to the point where it's getting harder to disentangle various things, as we can see when we are having conversations about the male gaze when most D&D art today is much less risque than what you would see walking around or on social media.

 

[Imaro]

I greatly appreciate the art that Faolyn posted above but I can also appreciate Clyde Caldwell's cover of Azure Bonds.

It's funny that when Beyonce struts her stuff semi nude and suggestively in her music videos she is considered "fierce" and a "strong" woman and standing up for women's rights - but hey a little cleavage in D&D and we lose our minds as everyone reaches for their puritanical pitchforks.

Lol... is it a woman who is creating said artwork or choosing that artwork for the publication? Otherwise it's really not an apt comparison.

 

[Faolyn]

I won't speak for @Faolyn, but let's ask her. Faolyn, are you proposing that sexist art be banned? Do you want to implement prohibitions on any published content based on your opinions about the appropriateness or value of that content?

No, I don't believe it should be banned, but I also don't think it's appropriate. There's a time and a place for that type of art, and the typical gaming book usually isn't it. Especially the typical image of the scantily-clad women in battle because it's stupid. She should be covered in scars and suffering from wardrobe malfunctions right and left because boobs flop all over the place, and I've already explained why a chainmail bikini makes for a very bad sports bra.

If, for some reason your book needs a woman in revealing clothes in a situation where such an outfit is appropriate (I dunno; a bar maid in one of those medieval wench dress that only barely cover the breasts, or maybe someone from a culture that normally wears little clothing because of the climate, something like that) then sure. That would be an appropriate place. In actual battle? Heck no. And art like that should be balanced with art of women who are sensibly dressed--unless you want people to think you and your product is sexist, that the art just there to titillate a very specific group of people, at the expense of another group of people who are often marginalized and judged solely on their looks. "Tradition" isn't a good answer here because lots of traditions are bad.

 

[Imaro]

Re: Beyonce and female empowerment, I always found that argument a little weird. Is she really dressing like that because she wants to and it makes her feel empowered, or is she dressing like that because that's what's expected of her as a woman in the entertainment industry? Is she choosing those outfits herself, or is there a costume designer behind the scenes putting together her ensembles? A lot of times it feels like her and entertainers like her are selling a "female empowerment fantasy" more than they're actually being empowered women. But I don't know, I can't claim to follow any of them close enough to have a strong opinion about it one way or another.

But then you have artists that choose not to dress like that (Billie Elish when she first started out... Alicia Keys...India Arie and so on) that are big names and stars in the music industry.