morgue's page

8: Vessicant

9: Mist

Who are these two?

My top three D&D dragons in order:

1. Ashardalon from Bastion of Broken Souls,
2. Infyrna from Dragon Mountain,
3. The Great One from Frank Mentzer's D&D, who may not count due to being an immortal being.

I may add more if I think of more...

Revised numbers and Erik's post are over on the LJ now. Link is
http://community.livejournal.com/gametime/22433.html

Gender aside, I categorized the covers since 323 relaunch by subject matter, which was revealing in its own way.

Really interesting. I guess the (wonderful!) Demononicon series is upping the numbers of demons compared to previous eras of the mag.

And I'm really surprised to see only a single Dwarf in there. Man, for about a decade there was a group-of-dwarves cover every third issue. It was insane.

Your point about message-conveying cover vs. newsrack-friendly cover seems dead on to me, as well.

I'm just excited about that nude Modron on the new issue.

But seriously: in regards to your study, what do you make of the male figure on the cover of 326, wearing less than the female? Is he more/less suggestive? And is he submissive because he is beind her, shielded from the goblins?

Love that modron. I want to take it home with me.

I coded 326 the same for both genders - not-focal appealing avatar characters who happen to not be wearing much. Definitely not submissive.

I intend to do a submissive-recount tomorrow :-) (it's midnight here in New Zealand)

With respect, I think it might extend a touch too wide. The reclining woman on the cover of issue #329 is a medusa, and the man standing behind her is in the act of being turned to stone from having touched her. Not only is she not being submissive, she is actively killing the man standing above her.

Y'know, you and Amber have convinced me - I made the wrong call on 329, and I made the wrong call up above by deciding not to look at it again. I think by that point in the survey I must have started seeing what I expected to see not what was actually there.

So I'm going to go back through every single image I tagged 'submissive' and cross-examine my call on each one.

Thanks!

a point of contention on that score, since you listed two submissive females in this period. I'm guessing that you scored #345 and #340 as "submissive," since one woman is kneeling and the other is being chased by a monster. I think both of these are a long way from a miniature woman in a cage, but it only goes to show how subjective the issue is.

Issues 329 and 340, actually. Someone's already commented on the LJ saying they disagree with the 340 assessment; if 329 was shown there might be disagreement with that too. I'm sticking with both assessments, so it seems clear that my definition of 'submissive' extends wider than that of others. And there's definitely a case to argue that my broad definition hides notable improvement - neither of these two is tiny in a cage, or shackled to a wall, etc. In other words, point noted!

Thanks very much for engaging with this stuff Erik. Would it be okay if I reproduce this post in full on my LJ (linked to here of course)?

(And while you're here, can I say that I'm enjoying Dragon more now than I have in pretty much any era since issues 80-100?)

Have added some edits to that final post to reflect your comment Vic - specifying that cover art is not interior art, and noting the possibility that Dragon's newstand placement also make it different from regular RPG covers.

I think the biggest problem with your argument is that it's all based on the assumption that Dragon magazine covers are representative of gender depiction in fantasy RPG art.

Good points - magazine covers in general are hardly a bastion of female empowerment! These images clearly grab attention and sell copies.

And, in fact, I mentioned in the body of one of the posts that Dragon's cover art trends seemed not to match its interior art trends, which right there demonstrates Dragon cover art cannot represent all fantasy RPG art. I think I better go do some editing of those conclusion comments...

(However, I think that the difference between Dragon-vs-newstand and otherRPG-vs-gamestore is not vast. As some kind of evidence - the most dubious covers have all been on gamestore RPG books; for Exalted, for Conan, for numerous D20 books... Dragon covers haven't ever come close to that stuff. This suggests to me the same logic at work over in the game store scene.)

Thanks Vic!

This is about the representation of women on Dragon covers...

Yeah, I know this subject has come up a lot through the years - I remember countless arguments in the Forum way back when - but I've recently been motivated to return to it.

So I've surveyed the representation of women on Dragon covers from issue 1 to issue 350. How often does that chainmail bikini turn up, really? When was the first time Dragon showed a woman holding a weapon on the cover? Have things improved since 3E, or got worse?

Check it out here:
http://community.livejournal.com/gametime/19820.html

There are seven posts in all. They include lots of cover images so you can see what I'm talking about...

Comments there, or here, are very welcome.

Y'all are right. Even says so in the room description. D'oh!

Cheers!

Heya. would appreciate a second opinion here...

My group includes a Shadowdancer, who has used her Prestige Class special ability to have a Shadow serve her. The shadow roams around as instructed and the player has got into the habit of having the shadow peer, incorporeal, through closed doors to see what's on the other side and then report back.

They tried this trick on the little room with the statue of Malcanthet. I ruled that the Shadow sticking its face into the room counts as 'entering the room', and the Shadow is an intelligent creature, which two facts set off the magical effect.

So, according to the room description, the Shadow goes into the room and "climbs on" the statue of Malcanthet. And will happily stay there forever unless someone else comes in, in which case it attacks in a jealous rage.

So, questions: was I right to rule that the Shadow would be affected? And if I stick with the above ruling, is there anything that will cure the Shadow of its affliction?

Ran a fifth session of Maure last night.

My previous thread was discussing how the gnolls would get back through the unopenable doors - as it happens, the gnolls were all dead before anyone asked questions. However, the group were keen on interrogating the Seekers they later nabbed.

With this info and careful planning, they have taken out the entire Seeker crew and they're now ready for their first raid down into level 3. Their success so far is mostly because they've been so damn stealthy.

That's why I loved the very last thing they did at last night's game. They forced a captive Seeker to touch the Black Hand to see what would happen to him. I rolled a random connection with Eli Tomorast.

So the characters all stood around watching as the Seeker telepathically told Eli everything he could about them! Now Eli knows who they are, where they are, and what they're capable of - and he's pissed. And, unless they mess more with the black hand next session, the characters have no clue what they're in for...

Heh heh heh...

All these posts have been very helpful, thanks!

I like the idea of scrying on the mission for allies - that's the kind of thing you want to keep tabs on anyway. And I also assume that there are semi-regular "patrols"/expeditions out from the dungeon to get supplies.

I also like how all the explanations are variations of:

(1) When finished, go to the Unopenable Doors
(2) Wait
(3) Wait some more

:-)

Hi,
I started running Maure Castle last night. Lots of fun, with the first party fatality in the first encounter - the barbarian up the front ran into the wandering bodaks and rolled a 1 on his Fort save.

Anyway - the answer to this might be somewhere in the text that I didn't see - but the wandering encounter gnolls are delivering a message to the outside. How are they planning to get back in once their mission is complete? How do the Seekers get in again when they leave?

There are, of course, a bunch of answers that would work without giving the gnolls magical keys of opening or whatever (for example, every day at x o'clock someone opens the Unopenable Doors from within to see if the travellers had returned). But if my characters catch the gnolls you can bet they'll pump them for the answer to exactly this question, and I want to have an answer ready.

What have you guys used, it it's come up in your games? And is there an answer in the text somewhere that I haven't noticed?

Cheers!
morgue