D&D 4E Women in 4E

[Mad Mac]

I hardly see a new edition of dungeons and dragons as a reason for social change.

What? You mean the revolution has been cancelled? I have to put away my pitchfork? I'm always the last to know these things, darnit....maybe we can reschedule for when the next Final Fantasy game comes out?

 

[Cadfan]

Okay, I've said it before and I'll say it again: artwork that is designed to sell products to women is far more revealing and outright sexual than anything that's in the core D&D books, and is certainly far more sexual than that book cover.

And I've said it before and I'LL say it again.

Comparing the cover art for D&D with the cover art for romance novels and women's beauty and sex magazines just makes you look foolish. They are entirely different contexts.

 

[pawsplay]

So when my wife told me that she thinks the armour on that PHB cover looked "silly" and was "obviously drawn by a man", she was a poor, innocent victim of "puritanical attitudes towards female sexuality".

Here's a fun experiment. Take her to Boris and Julie's web site. Look at the combined gallery. Let her try to guess which ones are obviously drawn by a man (obviously not peeking at the signatures or the file names).

The site is:

http://www.imaginistix.com/

 

[AllisterH]

Here's a question

What should a female barbarian look like?

 

[Hairfoot]

Thus:
www.millglen.org/c/mgs/Upload/womens_club/wilma-betty.jpg

 

[Gloombunny]

Here's a question

What should a female barbarian look like?

More muscular than most guys think looks good on a woman, for starters.

I think male barbarians who run around in a loincloth look ridiculous too, for whatever that's worth.

 

[Minicol]

I've harped about this before, but I still think it's relevant to the image and evolution of the game: I hope we get to see different representations of women in 4E.

While many campaigns I've participated in have had convincing, dynamic female PCs and NPCs, the general theme of women in D&D is "eye-candy in chainmail bikinis". I think art has a lot answer for (see attachments).

RPGs (and D&D in particular) are never going to have a wide female audience - no chicky is ever going to sidle up to you and whisper in your ear that your tactical use of fireball made her hot - but I think that by taking women seriously in published game material we can reduce the widespread image of D&D as an escapist refuge for misogynist social retards.

I'd like to see art and description of squat, scarred female fighters wearing proper armour, and perhaps even some she-mages who don't have "Tenser's pert D-cup support" memorised each day.

I know that many players consider fantasy demi-porn as one of the pleasant perks of the game, but I'm willing to give it up in order to add some dimension to the campaign world.

Any takers?

Actually I have some women as players for some years now, and they have never ever mentioned the subject. :\

Either they have a sense of humour, or they don't care as long as the game is fun.
Or has it occured to you that women might like this as well ? After all, porn is not a male-only activity.

Now I have seen a lot of women object to roleplaying, their reasons were :

- too much spending
- Takes my significant other away from me
- This is a beer game
- I take care of the kids while you go gaming with your stupid unkempt friends.

I never heard about chainmail bikinis being a problem, and anybody is really so insecure over its love life on such a silly subject, maybe they should check if there are not any other deeper issues involved ?

I'll add, that there is a site called Twisted Links that sells actual chainmail bikini.

 

[Minicol]

By the way, I don't mean to pick on Paizo. I love their stuff, and I prefer their art over the PHB. And it's a wider trend - women tend to be more sexualized in art than men. Hell, I have a bunch of Reaper Minis in front of me - and the males are all wearing pratical armour, while two of the three women minis in front of me are wearing bikini pieces or "cleavage armour".

(I also have a man in a conan-look, basically naked; and a very cool-looking woman in leather armour that isn't implicitly sexual, so there is at least a little bit to say for Reaper, right there).

So, yeah, I'm going to have to go with the OP. There *is* a sexualization of women in the art of D&D that is not present in the same degree as men, if not in the actual rules/content of the game itself. And, yeah, I'd like to see some dwarven women in the art. And a few scarred lady fighters (and not "sexy scars", either!). And I'd rather have women be found in about 50% of the pictures, not the 60-70% I'd think there is now.

I agree with your points and I'll add two things :
- You should remember that there are plenty of countries in the world where women can't show their skin, or even their eyes. Where they have no freedom, no rights, no nothing. And I DON'T want to see any of this in D&D. Freedom of clothing is a perk of occidental lifestyle.
- Actual medieval women clothing was far from sexy and except for some noblewomen would be rather unappealing.

The is a videogame RPG out there called two worlds : there are women in the game, but they are restricted to a few NPCs in drab clothing that are insulted if you try to speak to them, so there is basically no interaction. I do not think this makes a better game, far from it.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Here's a question

What should a female barbarian look like?

How about...

...or this...

...or an "equal oppotunity skin" pic...

or one of the 3E classics?

There is one thing about a character's looks...they are supposed to make the player think "Damn, I'd LOVE my character to look like that...I'd love to look like that myself sometimes!". And for guys, a buff and strong body that doesn't need to be hidden can be a drawing factor...same goes for women with a sexy body that doesn't need to be hidden. Sometimes I wonder if those illustrations aren't misunderstood as "eye candy" for the opposite sex, while they actually are aimed at those players who'd want to LOOK like that muscled, bare-chested barbarian that has scantily-clad women hanging from his arm, or like the sorceress who's not only powerful enough to blow a guy's brains out, but does so by pure looks already. *shrugs* After all, they try to sell us a game where you PLAY those characters, not spend hours looking at them drooling.

 

[GSHamster]

Actually I have some women as players for some years now, and they have never ever mentioned the subject. :\

To be fair, women who already play D&D wouldn't have a problem with it. If they did have a problem with it, they wouldn't play.

We'd have to find women who were sort of interested in playing, but chose not to, in order to determine if cheesecake has a negative effect.

D&D does have a stigma for being the province of less socially adept (especially with the opposite sex) young men. What are the markers for that stigma? How do we convince people that it's not just for the awkward geeks?

One potential suggestion is that the presence of hyper-sexualized female art contributes to that stigma. Saying "all my female/male players are fine with it" does not help, because they do not hold that stigma. They are players, after all.

You could argue that comic books went through the same thing. Women in comics are cheesecake, for the most parts. But comic books now have a lot of fairly high-class works. Things like Watchmen and Sandman. These are books that a comic lover could point to as counter-examples for people who think comics are juvenile. And pretty much all of the really good comics/graphic novels do not treat their women as cheesecake.