Hello everyone,
I wanted to shoot some quick feedback to WotC about the high-quality of their current DnD products. They rock!
I was especially impressed with the kid-friendly illustrations in the MM. My 8-year-old cousin-once-removed is visiting this week and I could see future DnD nerd written all over him, so I did my duty and taught him 5e.
He picked it up extremely quickly, much to the confusion of his grandma (my aunt).
Since I own so many monster manuals, I was worried that I couldn't let him look at the pictures because exposed breasts are often a common theme in Monster Manuals.
While I don't care about that for myself, and do not object to sexual content, I didn't want to show my cousin something his grandma or parents would find offensive or inappropriate.
So I was pleasantly surprised with most the illustrations, featuring fully armored Driders, mariliths, succubi, and covered Dryads.
Unfortunately, there ended up being one illustration the grandma objected to: the Harpy. Although no nipples are shown, she is naked and the majority of her breats are uncovered. To the illustrator's credit, she is not exploitively sexualized in any way, simply naked as harpies tend to be.
This feedback is intended only for WotC's own information. I think they were aiming for a style that could be taught to kids without too much worrying about the appropriateness of the illustrations, and I think they succeeded incredibly. I think the Harpy illustration was a slight miscalculation.
I think there will always be something that someone disagrees with. If they had put the harpy in a mumu, it would have been some other monster showing cleavage.
Reminds me of the freak-outs from the 80s of people claiming D&D supported devil worship because there were devils in the MM.
But overall, I agree. It's a book that I think can be enjoyed by all ages which is fantastic. I also appreciate the other books showing a variety of races, styles of dress, and getting away from the "classic" sword and sorcery depiction of every woman being dressed in a chainmail bikini.
LOL! I remember that.
Really, 5e has some of the best art direction ever, when it comes to gender representation and racial diversity. (There are only two exposed midriffs in the entire PHB, for instance; while such characters are perfectly acceptable, having every woman dressed like a Edgar Rice Burroughs cover really strains credulity. Similarly, the "boobs and butt" pose is completely absent, while it was prominently featured on the cover of the 4e PHB1, along with a host of other poor choices.)
I'd be willing to wager you would see more exposed breasts in any book about Greece, for instance, than you would in the MM. And, gasp of gasps, studying ancient cultures is part of various school curricula, beginning around... age 8 (yes, I know this varies by location, but still.). I sense overblown moral panic.
OoftaMeg wrote:
Sure they cut down on sexily dressed women, but there seems to be no shortage of shirtless guys. Just check out the angel section. Although what's up with the barbarian? What the heck is he wearing anything for? And where is his bulging muscles?
And I'm sorry, but the succubus is way overdressed. And why no nymph? How can my nymph obsessed ranger be nymph obsessed if there are no nymphs?
In my opinion, if your elderly aunt approves, you have done something wrong.
And what is the obsession anyway? I swear Americans have it backward*. Years ago my brother-in-law rented Starship Troopers** and we watched it with his family. Blood and guts everywhere. Limbs flying, heads ripped off. You know what they objected to? Yep, the shower scene. Adults in a co-ed shower talking. And you can see them all from the waist up! Oh noes! 
They need to bring the sexy back.
* I am American.
** The movie totally missed the point of the book. Like, every point of the book.
LordTwig wrote:
You know, creating a child-friendly setting with child-friendly versions of all the monsters aimed primarily at elementary school children probably wouldn't be the worst of ideas...
Make very cartoony images, be forgiving with the mechanics, remove any references to automatic death upon losing or such... You don't "kill" the monsters generally, you "knock them out" or "vanquish them" like in comic books. There could be some sort of mystical prison or something that you send the baddies to.
Just make it as unobjectionable as possible while still keeping the mechanics and the system more or less the same.
There has to be a market for that and it would help hook younger players earlier.
At least it wouldn't be if the company had a larger staff and was putting out more products.
Zalbarthemad wrote:
Noon wrote:
If you know an artist who can do a credible emulation of Michaelangelo, have THEM do the barely-attired monsters. (He made it work with David.)
Noon wrote:
Zalbarthemad wrote:
My OP aimed for a neutral and exposition-focused tone, I didn't intend to express moral panic.
I don't object to companies featuring any images they want. Object was to explain the reason one piece of art was objectionable, and a possible hindrance to indocrinating... I mean expanding to... new players.
Hebitsuikaza wrote:
Imaculata wrote:
Nudity is natural, clothing is the child-labor perversion. It took some pretty odd people to convince the world that women's bodies were so disgusting and horrible they needed to be covered.