Tiny Epic Dungeons Brings the Crawl Down to Size

OMG I am so tired of false equivalences, slippery slopes, and both sides arguments. I respect your opinion Shell but I’m not engaging it.

My mom just posted a Facebook meme of Potato Head with a “cancelled” stamp over it. It says “How sad is your life if you are angry about a plastic potato”. And I’m like “should I tell her this is a self own?

“I sure miss my Dick Tater. Trump 2024.”

I refuse to call it "cancel culture." That's their word, intended to demonize it as they tried to with "SJW." No, it's course correction. If we're going to be stuck with a situation where everyone has access to platform, something that was once earned, for better or worse, we're going to need some accountability starting at the ground level and going all the way up. We've already seen what happens when Internet troll culture steps out into the real world. As Michael said, no more of this slippery slope nonsense.

If you all want to discuss this issue, I'm all for it. I'm keeping a tight lid on personal derogatory comments about each other, though, so I was just want everyone to be aware.

25 THOUSAND backers. Twice what they used to get and better than what zombies and pirates got. Possibly due to the minis, but regardless. There is a HUGE positive response to this game and i think the art had a part to play. A large audience likes this stuff and i dont think it is all man children. The art is very similar to TE defenders 2e (some of the same characters i think) and they have had other characters like the medusa in heroes with a similar costume choice. So it isn't a stretch though it does differ a bit from the tone of some of their other games.

Is it for everyone? Guess not. Does it universally offend an entire gender? No. Ms. Hargrave may have made a hit game but her opinion on this is as an individual woman. I solicited an opinion from an individual woman as well. Quid pro quo, Clarice!

I don't see why a diversity of products can't coexist on the shelf. Would i put that box art along side child products like pokemon cards? Probably not, it doesn't seem like a kids game. Would it sit on the shelf with all the other mid to heavyweight games? Absolutely. They adjusted the campaign in response to feedback just like a bazillion other KSs because it was an unintentional consequence of the art and a distraction.

I'd suggest that raising the art issue on BGG and twitter instead of using her significant insider industry pull to go straight to the source does mean Ms. Hargrave is at least partially responsible for the fallout (if there is any) backsplashing on a game company that i don't think has done anything wrong. Guess you guys will be censoring that mayhem nun 'zine article, right? 'Cause those ladies of destruction are FAR more salacious and titillating to the "male gaze" than anything Gamelyn has put out. But I like that stuff too so please don't!

And canceling Frazetta? Really? NO FUN ALLOWED!

News flash folks, it's games. It's fantasy art. It's ALL FUN!!! I'm gonna hoard my Howard, my Burroughs, my 70s and 80s rock album art books, my Elmore and Parkinson, Shirow and Timm, Frazetta and Bell and Vallejo till death!

have i driven enough traffic on the site to meet my quota this month? Hee hee

Seriously, Jason, that you even dare to be the arbiter of what constitues REAL SEXISM is beyond belief. You claim that you have read what Hargrave wrote, but have you? Really? And have you maybe also read what hundreds of thousands of women have shared these past years on hashtags such as #metoo and #yesALLwomen? Have you? Really?

If you had, you would know three things:
1. Really, really awful, hurtful and damaging sexism - what you might call TRUE SEXISM - does not come from nowhere. It begins with the way that we as a society talk to and about women (and men, btw) and how we represent them.
2. What you so easily brush aside as not TRUE SEXISM is maybe not super hurtful in itself, but the sheer amount of it is. Because it's never just a game cover - this kind of representation of women is fucking everywhere all the time.
3. It does not matter AT ALL what you believe constitues TRUE SEXISM or not. You know it's sexism because the people affected by it - that is, women - HAVE TOLD YOU that stuff like this is sexism. And I simply can't understand why it's so hard for you to listen to women when they again and again tell you about how things like this shit feel.

I wonder how much of this is due to nerd culture being so inward-looking. A large swath of hobbyists rarely engage with non-genre media. They read and watch sci-fi and fantasy, look at sci-fi and fantasy art, etc. They'll read Game of Thrones but not actually read anything about the War of the Roses that it's based on. So naturally they assume that "art" means spiky armor with boob windows. When was the last time they ever tried to understand art outside of that narrow kitschy window?

dysjunct wrote: I wonder how much of this is due to nerd culture being so inward-looking. A large swath of hobbyists rarely engage with non-genre media. They read and watch sci-fi and fantasy, look at sci-fi and fantasy art, etc. They'll read Game of Thrones but not actually read anything about the War of the Roses that it's based on. So naturally they assume that "art" means spiky armor with boob windows. When was the last time they ever tried to understand art outside of that narrow kitschy window?

Nerd culture is not completely inward-looking. There is also an unfortunate amount of gatekeeping, especially against women.

I don't have much to add but wanted to thank the community at large for this discussion and for bringing this up in the first place. I am getting worse and worse at keeping a pulse on the news of the boardgame world but I can selfishly rely on TWBG to bring up issues that matter.

Oh and I almost spit out my coffee multiple times during Bran's "dramatic reading." Holy shit. Tragically hilarious.

I think there is plenty of room for people to enjoy Frazetta art or similar. I even think it’s fine for this type of thing to be used as game art if that is how the creators want to present their vision.

I’m not going to judge people for enjoying sexualized content.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem. There is. This kind of art creeps into every representation of women. It’s so pervasive that I’m not sure it’s even registering on many of our brains, it’s become normalized and that is an issue. It doesn’t belong everywhere. It doesn’t belong in the majority of places.

People are not being represented equally in a consistent manner.

When every woman warrior looks nothing like a warrior, that’s a problem. It’s actually a big problem for the way women are thought about, and it impacts how women see themselves.

This is unwelcoming, it normalizes harmful ideas, it limits its audience. It’s past time to change.

You can live in a world with both. But one of these should be the exception, not the rule, and that isn’t the case today.

n815e wrote: When every woman warrior looks nothing like a warrior, that’s a problem. It’s actually a big problem for the way women are thought about, and it impacts how women see themselves.

The issue there is there are (virtually) no warrior women with which to contrast to BILLIONS of warrior men throughout history. Their inclusion into a dungeon crawling combat game in the first place is kinda whack if you think about it. I'm not knocking it, equal gender representation in a fantasy game is great.

I'm saying in THIS GAME they made a choice to have sexy ladies (and i still gotta encourage you guys to look at the expansion figures) instead of shapeless blobs that are female only because the card art suggests it. Thats what you get if everyone is wearing period correct armor.

I think THIS GAME didn't go far enough. The men are atrociously dull compared to the women. Aside from barbarian orc dude we get generic archer guy, run of the mill dwarf, and IIRC some bearded wizard type. I'm not sure there are any men in the expansion other than the knight (kung fu person probably, maybe sorcerer?). If the women are gonna look like an 80's glam rock version of dnd, the men should as well. So shame on gamelyn for caving instead of doubling down

Anyhoo i hear you guys. Consider me properly chastized on this specific issue but Mads, you are barking up the wrong tree if you think i somehow tolerate sexual harassment or assault out in the real world just because i don't get triggered by a minimally provocative game box drawing. I think we can disagree on this point without making that quantum leap.

Your answer to representation of women in fantasy dungeon crawlers is that there are few historical women warriors that you know of to use as an example, and that the inclusion of women in dungeon crawlers is a bad decision, anyway?

jason10mm being against women standing up for themselves is nothing new here .

Regardless, I had to reread that to make sure I was reading it correctly.