Skiriki's page

It would be interesting to examine more of why that happened and also why more women began gaming with systems like that. Part of it might just be getting away from the stigma of the stereotypical basement dweller fantasy nerd, but there are likely other...

The way I see it, "Having Been There" myself and owning a ton of WW books (although my roots are firmly in D&D and Rolemaster), it is a combination of things:

1) Right time (the spirit of 1990s was an interesting mishmash of things, best reflected in Lords of Acid song "Real Thing" (for Strange Days movie))
2) Right mood and flavor (see: X-Files, Supernatural, etc, all of them tapping to the spirit of 1990s)
3) Right subculture (tapping into goth subculture gave "not giving a **** about what others outside of Our Tribe thought about it, they're gonna label us anyway and we just won't care" attitude -- remember that prior to this, there had been that Satanic Panic phenomenon, which made lots of publishers skittish (as they hoped to hook on to kid gamers and be all family-friendly), whereas WW went with "free controversy == free advertising") (their target audience was late teens and adults, as reflected by "mature content" tag of the books)

Sorry, return to the discussion now that pet peeve has been raised.

1) False equivalency is false: romance novels are read for getting your jollies off, whereas RPGs are USUALLY for other kinds of kicks, of a sort where you don't roll the small pink d20, if you know what I mean.

2) I do not think that romance novel covers (nor romance novels themselves) should be held as a standard we should aspire to, especially when we want to woo for female gamers to join the hobby; to reach there to complain about them is missing the forest for the trees; to look behind at them is like bemoaning that we should go there instead of going forward to more inclusive, more interesting stuff.

3) I can speak for myself when I say that I have zero romance novels in my personal library, and I find a lot of them extremely distasteful, having read plenty of them in my youth (sometimes, especially way back in Stupid Era -- aka No Mobile Internet or Even Internet -- you got stuck in a situation where the only options are either be bored to tears, or try to read something, and sadly that something wasn't always within my choice).

I understand that others may like them (such as my grandmother, whose books I occasionally read out of boredom avoidance), but a whole lot of that cheap stuff resorts to extremely old-fashioned ideas of womanhood (and in some cases, ethnicity and cultures), which just gives me the creeps.

*snippy*

So, two example pictures of "less cheesecake, more action" (yes, I'm tooting my own horn here, but):

Example #1
Example #2

These are made for a friend of mine, but I personally enjoy playing fighter-y sort of female characters, who can wade into battle and do some serious damage. I am not averse of muscle-on-women, on account of having genes that tell me I need to have broad shoulders and a build like brick outhouse; when I look at art, I want to find pictures I can identify with, and 99% of the time cheesecake sorceresses aren't going to cut it.

(Yes, my gallery has couple of characters of cheesecake variety. This does not invalidate I'm saying, though, as I haven't found time to upload all the not-cheesecake art I've done.)

I want to see people in action, instead of posing for an invisible camera; this action must be reflected in text as well. If a female badass fighter mows through the horde of enemies, I want that action shown, right down to mighty thews and sprays of blood, just like people would tell the deeds of Conan. I do not want to be just told that "she killed 10 hobgoblins", if the male counterpart is getting his exploits shown in detail.

Does this help?

Right—we're starting with the Paizo Dungeons, and then we'll do the Paizo Dragons, and then we'll work backwards as much as we can. More or less, anyway.

Kickbutt!

I shall be waiting, and ordering what's available for now as my cred card is still loaded!

We recently hired someone specifically to create more PDFs. There are many more on the way, though we're prioritizing Dungeon, since they're in higher demand.

-Vic.
.

Ooo, nice. I'm honestly only interested about 3.*E edition/Paizo run of Dragons, so I believe those might be easier to put into the download section..? (As I think they're in original layout format and whatnot.)

Since Dragon magazine is going the way it is going (i.e. "dodo"), will we get more purchaseable PDFs via Paizo before the inevitable?

I'm curious to know this before the 'con season (July-August) hits me, so I can buy as many as I need (read: all I can get)... and 21 PDFs (so far) is, *sniff*, too little. Getting these magazines in paper format just isn't feasible for me at the moment and I have plans to purchase even those that I do have in paper as PDFs if possible.

I have a credit card! And I'm not afraid to use it! ;)

Now, will you give me more opportunities to splurge before my money goes to non-essentials like train tickets, hotel room and 'con tickets? ;)