D&D 4E Women in 4E

[Jhulae]

Well, her armor (link is work safe) is still fantasy but manages to 1) look almost like a real suit of armor, 2) cover most everything, and 3) lets her be pretty sexy. I'd make a paladin type character wearing something similar with no hesitation.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Well, her armor (link is work safe) is still fantasy but manages to 1) look almost like a real suit of armor, 2) cover most everything, and 3) lets her be pretty sexy. I'd make a paladin type character wearing something similar with no hesitation.

sexy clothing isn't sexy on its own. The face has alot to do with it, and also the pose.

 

[Aloïsius]

I'd make a paladin type character wearing something similar with no hesitation.

It's a black armor, so she is probably a blackguard, not a paladin.

 

[Jhulae]

It's a black armor, so she is probably a blackguard, not a paladin.

She's ... morally ambiguous.. In the panels before the one linked, she was ... with ... the two undressed gentlemen. In the panel following, she kills them both..

 

[Aus_Snow]

It's a black armor, so she is probably a blackguard, not a paladin.

You do know he's gonna hafta slap you down, right?

 

[Jhulae]

sexy clothing isn't sexy on its own. The face has alot to do with it, and also the pose.

Quite true, but point being, she's pretty sexy even in full plate. And not, what's the term? Hookerplate Boobmail. (Not that I find anything wrong with that type of armor either.)

 

[Aloïsius]

Quite true, but point being, she's pretty sexy even in full plate.

That's because she does not use the right type of armor : we can expurge D&D from unwanted sexyness with just some imagination.

Well, some will say that there is a suspicious thing in this armor...

 

[mara]

That's a fair question that deserves an honest answer.

There are several common objections to sex-pot fantasy art in D&D.

1) It objectifies women and is therefore inherently bad.
2) It demonstrates discrimination towards women.
3) Sex-pot fantasy art is ok in its proper place, but that place isn't D&D.

If you believe the problem is number 2, then balancing cheesecake with beefcake is an entirely adequate solution.

If you believe number 1, odds are you disapprove of scantily clad male imagery as well as scantily clad female imagery, so that wouldn't work. Most people who are against objectification on principle don't feel that objectification for all is an adequate fix.

And then there's me, in group 3. I don't agree with argument 1 because I don't mind objectification in its proper place. An artbook entitled "Women of Fantasy, fold out pinups included within!" would be a good place for slavegirl images and other fantasy art which objectifies the women being depicted. Shelley's "Confessions of a Part Time Sorceress" would be an example of a really bad place for lots of slavegirl art.

*snippage*

I think there's some confusion over the meaning of objectification. You can look at someone lustfully without objectifying someone, people in relationships do it all the time. However, women in D&D are incredibly objectified. In the earlier pages of this thread, the damsel in distress was proposed as a demeaning traditional role for women in D&D. I skipped over some of the middle of the thread to get to the more recent posts, so perhaps this was mentioned earlier, but a much more frequent placement of women in a D&D campaign is AS THE REWARD. Adventurers go into dungeon, come out of dungeon, then go to town, where they use the nonmagical treasure to buy ale and pay to rape women in brothels. Heck, there's even a handy table in the old DMG so adventurers can know exactly what type of women they get to rape. Gaming culture (as a subset of broader popular culture) celebrates the use of women's bodies as rewards: for adventuring, for visiting a booth at a gaming convention, for buying the book, for playing the video game. The chainmail bikini babes are just one facet of a much larger problem.

 

[Klaus]

Yup. Just some forearm.

Cheers, -- N

Just FYI:

This picture is a remake of a Jeff Dee illustration from the 1e Legends & Lore entry on Lolth.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Adventurers go into dungeon, come out of dungeon, then go to town, where they use the nonmagical treasure to buy ale and pay to rape women in brothels. Heck, there's even a handy table in the old DMG so adventurers can know exactly what type of women they get to rape.

Wow...do as all a favour and don't ty to bring THAT kind of angle into this discussion, please. If you have a personal chip on your shoulder about prostitution, that's well and good...but isn't connected to gaming in general, and this discussion specifically. And I don't want to see this thread getting closed because it veers off into this mire of a topic. Really. Thanks a lot.