I was just thinking what a middle aged adventuress should look like. A grizzled biker chick or MMA Fighter maybe. Definitely not a "land whale" type. I guess the occasional stout wizard of either sex is ok.

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 08:13:28 AM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 12:58:54 AM

Quote from: Eirikrautha on January 21, 2024, 11:30:37 PMI'm kind of surprised you'd pick an example with no women as your example in a thread about ugly women in RPGs....

Goes to the greater logic being examined. Part of the reason unattractive and un-athletic female characters are rare is the general player tendency to avoid such characters whatever their sex. However, the other extreme of unrealistically gorgeous characters (especially if every character in a particular product is so depicted) is likewise worth criticizing, from a verisimilitude/plausibility standpoint.

Yup. And a lot of people are posting pictures of non-ugly, non-fat women -- which is also outside the strict topic. SHARK and Opaopajr both explicitly said that the same standard should apply for men and women - the men should be "beefcake" or "beasts".

I think that for both men and women, it's fine to have attractive PC illustrations, and it's also fine to have some unattractive PC illustrations - for both men and women.

Quote from: S'mon on January 22, 2024, 04:57:22 AM
@JhKim yes I like the grizzled 1e PHB adventurers a lot. But I like Morgan Ironwolf and Aleena too. I agree re Vallejo art.

As I said, I don't have a problem with attractive PCs - just that it shouldn't be the constant standard. I also like Dee's cover for Module A1 which is on topic for the thread.



I don't think Elwita on the right is ugly (it's hard to tell), but she's certainly shown in action rather than posing.

  Its a female with a beard...she is ugly as hell.

Quote from: jhkim on January 20, 2024, 02:05:40 AM

Quote from: SHARK on January 19, 2024, 06:53:20 PM
As for art, well, yeah, I always like yummy looking women. The men need to look like beasts as well. That should be the norm, and the constant standard.

Having said that, on occasion, a very different character is fine, and appropriate. Based on subject matter, etc.

I liked it when the standard for characters looked like this:



These characters don't look like beasts. They look plain, which is fine. I'm not opposed to characters looking like Fabio or Hemsworth, but I don't think it needs to be the majority of all characters.

  The guy in armor looks to be around 6'3" and square jawed and broad shouldered.   The dude cleaning his sword is not as big, but also square jawed and tough.  He is in the background and sitting as well as covered in mail...so it is not so easy to determine physical size.  Wizard looks to be thin and frail...but probably is simply an average sized dude who looks small due to company.   Even the rogue has a square jaw and athletic build.  I suspect the guy in the plate armor is a beast.  The artist just put him in armor as any practical minded warrior is going to wear the best armor he can verses showing everyone he put 50 pounds on his best bench by showing everyone his bare shoulders and chest.   I would agree the vallejo representation tends to overstate men to a degree....but that guy in plate armor is college linebacker sized...and I do not know where you live but that is in NO WAY the average or normal man walking the streets...its a beast.

NO,...they're Not.

There can be a variety of looks - but players practically never ask to play an ugly character.

- Ed C.

Honestly guys, all you have to do is open up Thirsty Sword Lesbians to see the "body positivity" in all of its glory. Or, you know, don't and save your sanity and soul.

Quote from: oggsmash on January 22, 2024, 11:33:42 AM

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 08:13:28 AM

Quote from: S'mon on January 22, 2024, 04:57:22 AM
@JhKim yes I like the grizzled 1e PHB adventurers a lot. But I like Morgan Ironwolf and Aleena too. I agree re Vallejo art.

As I said, I don't have a problem with attractive PCs - just that it shouldn't be the constant standard. I also like Dee's cover for Module A1 which is on topic for the thread.



I don't think Elwita on the right is ugly (it's hard to tell), but she's certainly shown in action rather than posing.

  Its a female with a beard...she is ugly as hell.

That's fine. I just meant that we don't know what she would look like if we could see her face sans beard and hammer-swinging-arm in front of it. Female dwarves having beards was established by Gygax (Dragon magazine #38, 1980) - which is in keeping with Tolkien. That's when Module A1 came out, so it was following canon rather than an artistic choice. I think it was WotC in 3rd edition who reversed that, though I'm not sure.

Anyway, I like the cover, and I don't see a problem with having an ugly dwarf fighter in illustrations. As I said, nothing wrong with pretty characters, but it's fine if there are some ugly ones too.

Quote from: Dropbear on January 22, 2024, 01:02:56 PM
Honestly guys, all you have to do is open up Thirsty Sword Lesbians to see the "body positivity" in all of its glory.

Leading onto the next logical question: What are the sales figures for TSL like? There may be a market for nontraditional beauty depictions, but how professionally viable is it?

And it's worth pointing out that even in the picture from TSL linked above, in post #25, (a) all the figures have symmetrical features and no maiming or facial scarring, (b) nearly half of them are wearing high heels and showing off the shape of their leg, (c) all but one of them have bust-waist-hip ratios where the waist is smaller in the middle, and (d) maybe up to half of them appear to be wearing makeup. In other words, half the deliberate "unattractiveness" of those drawings is in the garishness of the costumes, and nothing else -- if those shapes and faces were put into tasteful and understated fashions instead they would all be reasonably pleasant-looking, and the "nontraditional positivity" they make so much of really doesn't go as far as they think it does.

Big nope here, buddy. Every single one of them, garish clothes or not, are ugly af to me.  I think their art is poor and the characters are highly unattractive because of it. Just goes to show you that tastes vary widely.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 05:05:52 PM

Quote from: Dropbear on January 22, 2024, 01:02:56 PM
Honestly guys, all you have to do is open up Thirsty Sword Lesbians to see the "body positivity" in all of its glory.

Leading onto the next logical question: What are the sales figures for TSL like? There may be a market for nontraditional beauty depictions, but how professionally viable is it?

Thirsty Sword Lesbians made $298K in its Kickstarter, which is slightly more than the $291 for "Old-School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy". That's far from the biggest Kickstarters like Avatar: Legends RPG ($9.5M) or Dolmenwood ($1.4M) -- but it's bigger than most RPG Kickstarters. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/thirsty-sword-lesbians

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/old-school-essentials-advanced-fantasy

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 06:17:38 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 05:05:52 PM

Quote from: Dropbear on January 22, 2024, 01:02:56 PM
Honestly guys, all you have to do is open up Thirsty Sword Lesbians to see the "body positivity" in all of its glory.

Leading onto the next logical question: What are the sales figures for TSL like? There may be a market for nontraditional beauty depictions, but how professionally viable is it?

Thirsty Sword Lesbians made $298K in its Kickstarter, which is slightly more than the $291 for "Old-School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy". That's far from the biggest Kickstarters like Avatar: Legends RPG ($9.5M) or Dolmenwood ($1.4M) -- but it's bigger than most RPG Kickstarters. 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/evilhat/thirsty-sword-lesbians

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/exaltedfuneral/old-school-essentials-advanced-fantasy

The difference is that people actually play Old School Essentials (OSE)

Also, people are actually spending money on OSE adventures and 'zines from Necrotic Gnome and other publishers.  There is an actual market for OSE products as opposed to sholathy money for Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on January 22, 2024, 06:53:36 PMThere is an actual market for OSE products as opposed to sholathy money for Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

My Google-fu has failed me: "sholathy"?

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 06:17:38 PMThirsty Sword Lesbians made $298K in its Kickstarter, which is slightly more than the $291 for "Old-School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy".

What have the post-Kickstarter sales been like? It would not surprise me to find out that most of the people who wanted to actually buy and play TSL got their copy during said Kickstarter.

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 06:59:14 PM

Quote from: Svenhelgrim on January 22, 2024, 06:53:36 PMThere is an actual market for OSE products as opposed to sholathy money for Thirsty Sword Lesbians.

My Google-fu has failed me: "sholathy"?

That was supposed to be "Sympathy". 

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 22, 2024, 07:37:55 PM

Quote from: jhkim on January 22, 2024, 06:17:38 PMThirsty Sword Lesbians made $298K in its Kickstarter, which is slightly more than the $291 for "Old-School Essentials: Advanced Fantasy".

What have the post-Kickstarter sales been like? It would not surprise me to find out that most of the people who wanted to actually buy and play TSL got their copy during said Kickstarter.

The only number that I could find is that as of 2021 Q3 it had sold 13,000 copies, as reported by Evil Hat Production.

Also of note is that even though the Kickstarter made $298K, the number of backers was 8,152.

In their own Kickstarter they list that after all was said and done, they bagged $88K as profit for their efforts.

Which clearly shows there is money to be made, but doesn't really say anything about the staying power of the game and how many people are actually playing it.

Quote from: Habitual Gamer on January 18, 2024, 03:34:25 PM

Quote from: Stephen Tannhauser on January 18, 2024, 09:46:04 AM
I have never seen a single player, either male or female, play a female PC who was overweight or unattractive.

I'll admit it: the one time I played a female character was in 50 Fathoms, where I played some female squid thing.  "Oh, so she had boobs and a vagina right?"  Nope and nope; not that it ever came up, but I figured she would reproduce like a squid does (squirts eggs out on the floor, male squirts on the eggs, no lactation so no breasts, and all of it about as arousing as watching a spastic make a PB&J sandwich*).  Which isn't anything like mammals do, but still much less horrific than octopus reproduction.

(*"Hey!  Spastic squid reproduction on bread is -my- fetish!"  No it isn't, hypothetical internet person, no it isn't.)

Somehow mermaids became less sexy after I read this comic...