Agreed -- the perfect situation would be to have a good cover AND a good interior. Editions previous to 3x were pretty much horrible in this regard -- outside of a few pictures that stick in my mind, the women in the illustrations were mostly sexy or obviously not adventurers, when the bothered to appear at all. 3x was better, actually. It completely pisses me off that they've done a mostly good job on interior art in 4e in a lot of regards, and then they slap a fucking Wayne Reynolds sexpot on the cover. On the other hand, I kind of feel like older editions didn't have cheesecake on the cover because women weren't really considered part of the game at all. 3e probably had the right balance, outside of the fact that I didn't really like the style of most of its interior art D:
That 'penalty for too much armor' thing comes up a lot, and not only is it stupid (no armor does not mean no clothes), it's not even true in 4e anymore. Arcane casters to not take a spell failure penalty when wearing metal armor in 4e! They're just not proficient in it and get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits unless they become proficient. It's not special for wizards. Goddammit people.
The few examples of dudely cheesecake in Exalted are usually drawn by two particular female artists, so while they do tend to be things that appeal to that particular artist (manly beefcake types for one, feminine pretty-boys who occasionally sport tons of piercings for the other), they're an honest attempt to draw sexy dudes by people who like sexy dudes.
There are some dude characters who are supposed to be attractive, and having some of the straight male artists try to draw them is a recipe for hilarity, sometimes. You'd think something like 'dashing pirate captain' wouldn't be TOO difficult to pull off, but apparently so.
You're so right about the fetishes, though. They've even let some fetishes slip in that don't make sense in the setting (how can you have a sexy nun character in a world where there are no Catholic nuns?)
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Date: 2010-01-13 10:29 pm (UTC)That 'penalty for too much armor' thing comes up a lot, and not only is it stupid (no armor does not mean no clothes), it's not even true in 4e anymore. Arcane casters to not take a spell failure penalty when wearing metal armor in 4e! They're just not proficient in it and get all of the drawbacks and none of the benefits unless they become proficient. It's not special for wizards. Goddammit people.
The few examples of dudely cheesecake in Exalted are usually drawn by two particular female artists, so while they do tend to be things that appeal to that particular artist (manly beefcake types for one, feminine pretty-boys who occasionally sport tons of piercings for the other), they're an honest attempt to draw sexy dudes by people who like sexy dudes.
There are some dude characters who are supposed to be attractive, and having some of the straight male artists try to draw them is a recipe for hilarity, sometimes. You'd think something like 'dashing pirate captain' wouldn't be TOO difficult to pull off, but apparently so.
You're so right about the fetishes, though. They've even let some fetishes slip in that don't make sense in the setting (how can you have a sexy nun character in a world where there are no Catholic nuns?)