Pixiepalace

My husband gets the Pathfinder modules in the mail from Paizo and usually I at least glance at the character on the cover when they arrive, but I somehow missed this one! When I finally came across it I was wowed (and annoyed that he hadn’t shown it to me, since he should have known I’d flip for this particular piece of art). You have to click through on this one and see the full piece, the details are amazing. This woman is badass. She’s fully armored and even has a helmet in her hand. Her armor is full plate and I counted at least five visible weapons plus a large heavy-looking shield. She’s got a great, believable sword, a longbow and full quiver of arrows, various small weapons, everything she might possibly need in combat. This is a woman who knows what she’s doing.

And check out that expression on her face! She’s determined and smart too! She may not be the strategist in her party, but she’s certainly not just a “tank” either. She’s got brains under that helmet and is clearly someone who weighs in on the advisability of a given course of action and probably the moral implications as well. I could see her being given a definite set of orders, weighing them in her mind and deciding to not follow them because to do so would be against the code that she holds herself, and likely everyone around her, to. This might easily be a holy warrior, but it doesn’t have to be. She could as easily be a fighter with as strong a sense of responsibility to something as a paladin. Maybe she even works for a crown. Or maybe she’s fighting against them. Who knows? Whatever she’s fighting for, she’s decided to do so after careful consideration and possibly a lifetime of lessons. This would be such a great character to play. I don’t think she’s necessarily the leader of her party (although she certainly could be), but she is definitely not merely a follower either. I love seeing fighters with more to them than just muscle and this woman most definitely fits the bill. An image of a male warrior with this same armor and expression would have drawn my attention too, the fact that she’s a woman is icing on the cake! This is a total win!

As a side note - I’m having trouble finding images for this series. There are painfully few great pieces of art featuring women who I would want to play. I’ve done enough of these that it should be clear what I’m looking for (to see all of them, check out the “I Want to Play Her” page). If you know of a piece of art you think might appeal to me, please let me know! It can be from anywhere. I tend to look for gaming art, but art from novels, animation, comic books, anything really is fair game. I don’t care the source as long as it fits the bill! Leave a link in the comments or send me an email at katie at pixiepalace dot com! Thanks!

I’m always on the lookout for gaming art with images of women that make me want to play the game or, even better, play that particular female character. I was a kid in the era when Ms. Pac-Man and Princess Peach were about the only female characters that were terribly prominent in the video game world. This led me to believe for a long time that video games weren’t really for me. I didn’t really want to be a princess in a pink frilly dress who constantly needed rescuing (What is up with that anyway? Somebody needs to buy Peach some books on how to be self-reliant!). Anyway, we’re beyond that now. These days, women are everywhere in the world of video games. Unfortunately, they still have a ways to go when it comes to being attractive as avatar images for women.

Not too long ago I got an email from NCsoft advertising their various Massive games (I play one of their games, so I get emails from them periodically). For each game there was an accompanying piece of promotional art. The art did not please me very much. At the top of the email was an image for the game Tabula Rasa featuring a man and a woman (it’s the top image in this post). The man is fully armored, is wearing a helmet, and is holding a large weapon out in front of him. He looks ready for action, if maybe not as well protected in the facial area as one might wish. The woman, on the other hand, wears no protective gear on her head at all (except for the stylin’ shades that appear to really be goggles of some kind) and her “armor” is skin-tight leather. Skin-tight to the point where even her nipples are showing. She’s also in a really dumb pose entirely designed to throw her breasts forward. It’s actually pretty uncomfortable to stand that way in real life (I tried it before writing this post). It also looks stupid in real life. So, to recap on this image - the man is armored and looks ready to fight the ‘Bane’ while the woman is dressed and posed like a sex object. Presumably they are both in situations where bullets are flying at them. Yeah, that makes sense.

The next game in the email was Guild Wars, specifically an ad for the Eye of the North expansion. The expansion’s promo art so far has given me the impression that it has sort of a Norse theme. That’s pretty cool. I would have loved to have seen a Valkyrie or something in the ad, but instead I get this girl (see the image to the left). She’s standing in what appears to be a pretty cold place (whites and blues and frosty effects) and she’s in front of a bear-like creature. You’d think she’d be wearing armor or fur or something to protect her from the cold. She’d need protection when she goes out fighting scary ice creatures with her cool bear companion or whatever he is, right? Instead she’s dressed like a stripper in a gold bra, connected by the thinnest strip to a tiny swimsuit bottom of thin straps that seems designed to expose every bit of flesh possible. Her arms are completely covered by cool sleeves, but those sleeves connect to absolutely nothing. Nevertheless, they’re probably the only thing keeping her warm at all. Not that it would help, since she’s still going to die of frostbite long before she even finds the ice creatures, bear companion or no. This is not encouraging, and makes me wonder how that picture can represent the same game as this one. I actually really like some of the promotional art for this game, but it seems like for every empowering piece there are two like this.

Next up are the paired games City of Heroes and City of Villains. There are three people in this image - two men and a woman. This time all three are equally armed with swords of various types (see image to the right). The men, however, are fully covered. One even has serious shoulder armor to protect him, while the other sports more of a corporate-samurai look. On one of the men you can’t see a scrap of skin below the neck while on the other only the thinnest strip around the elbows is visible. The woman, on the other hand, is not so well protected. She’s in a short, pleated skirt (really practical for fighting crime, I’m sure) and a halter top. Her knee-high boots leave much of her legs exposed and her cute little wrist-length gloves aren’t really any protection for her arms. But she’s a superhero, right? Maybe she’s invulnerable. I’ll buy that. It’s that kind of game (although why girls who are invulnerable run around wearing very little and guys still cover up is a mystery to me). The problem still stands that she looks like an overdeveloped schoolgirl while the guys look like grown-men to be taken seriously. I’m not saying that overgrown schoolgirl superheroes shouldn’t exist, I’m just saying maybe this isn’t the best image for NCsoft to have chosen to represent female characters in the game. If you’re going for a bad-ass look to the image (and the weapons, poses and two of the figures’ outfits suggest you are), don’t decide to go with an infantalized image for the one woman - make her bad-ass too.

The fourth game discussed in the email is one I’d not previously heard of - Dungeon Runners. The image in the email (see left) shows a tall, thin redhead wearing a skin-tight cat suit of sorts. It’s cut out from her neck to below her navel and only held shut by a small gold clip. The cat suit is sleeveless, but the woman wears separate three-quarter sleeves, apparently for style since her shoulders are completely bare. A belt that clearly carries nothing hangs stylishly at her hips. Since the game description suggested a D&D-style dungeon-crawling game, I wondered about this outfit. It’s useless as armor, the woman bears no weapon, has no equipment or even a backpack, and generally appears more ready for an evening in a nightclub than a dungeon-crawl of any kind. The few screenshots I could find of this game suggest that the in-game characters appear nothing like this - they look more squashed, cartoony and (shocker, here) armored. So where this piece of art came from and who decided it was good promo art for the game I have no idea. I do know that this particular piece of art does not make me want to play. It makes me wonder if the game follows the classic fantasy gaming rule of inverse armor (where the higher your level, the less skin you cover if you play a female character), which definitely doesn’t make me want to play. If I’m going to be fighting someone with claws or a sword, I’m going to be doing it with a breastplate (or something, anyway) on, thank you very much!

The last game discussed in the email was Lineage II. Now, this game’s primary market is Korea and other parts of Asia and the art is very Anime-like. I realize that asking for non-striper, non-infantalized women is a stretch, but this image still bothered me (see right). The girl in this image is so stupidly dressed that it’s actually really hard for me not to laugh at her. The bodice looks just like a rubber one I saw on a booth babe at Gen Con a few years back. And what’s with the ridiculously armored panties? Seriously, armored panties are about the dumbest thing ever and these ones look like they’ll stab her with their pointy decorative bits. Of course, not as badly as her shoulder piece will if she happens to tilt her head a little too far. And again, what’s with covering up her arm completely and leaving her torso nearly naked? What, arms aren’t sexy so they can be used to kind of suggest armor, but heaven forbid we cover up anything with sex appeal to it! This outfit just doesn’t make any sense at all. I just want to wrap her in a towel and tell her it’s going to be ok.

Seriously, I like videogames. I even like NCsoft’s games. I just can’t figure out what’s up with the art that is used to promote games. I could as easily have picked just about any other major game company to pick on for this post (and the idea for the post had been in my head long before I got this particular email). NCsoft just happened to send me the perfect set of sample images all in one place. The thing is, SOE’s images are just as bad (check out any of the Everquest or EQII promo art). So are Blizzard’s (I’ve even talked about their avatars before). By and large, the art that’s out there is just awful when it comes to portraying women. I’m not saying there aren’t exceptions because there are. NCsoft has even made some of those exceptions. The problem is that if so much of it is bad, it doesn’t exactly draw women to play.

Like I said, I already like videogames. I play them. But I pick up a videogame magazine and generally find myself feeling sick. Flipping through the ads in a typical gaming magazine generally makes me not want to play anything - except maybe Viva Pinata - for several days. This is clearly a problem. And it’s not just a problem with me. There are mountains of articles out there talking about how the gaming industry isn’t reaching out to women, how it isn’t making them feel welcome, asking where all the women gamers are and how to create more of them. Maybe rather than making “girl games”, which pretty much everyone agrees generally suck, the industry could try to better brand the games they have so that women felt invited to play them like men did. I know it’s kind of a radical concept, but we know there are women who like to play these games already. Why not advertise them in such a way that is going to make them appear appealing to other women?

Hint number one: half-clothed women and chest-thrusting poses that look really dumb when tried by real women are not the way to do that.

There is a tabletop roleplaying game called “Little Fears” where you play a little kid fighting closet monsters. The image of Ramona by Tracy Dockray on the cover of Beverly Cleary’s Ramona the Pest strikes me as a great character image for that game! Look at that no-nonsense pose! And those are totally monster-stoppin’ boots! She even has a war wound covered with a cute Band-Aid on her knee! I think she would make a fabulous and incredibly fun character in “Little Fears” or a game like it! I totally want to play her!

Many of Tamora Pierce’s books have strong female characters on the covers because that’s what she writes about, but The Woman Who Rides Like a Man from the “Song of the Lioness” series stood out for me. This cover image is by David Wyatt who has done at least one of the other pieces of art that will appear in this series. I love this piece for a lot of reasons. What makes this image special isn’t just that the girl is dressed in the armor of a knight or that she’s astride a barded horse, although those are remarkable enough in their way. What I noticed first was that she was looking right at the viewer, not off to one side or down. That’s actually remarkably rare (although extremely common for men in fantasy art). I also love her pose! The horse is clearly in motion, but the rider is still in full command, she’s not even thinking about it. Riding comes second nature to her at this point. That’s important, especially if she plans to ride into battle. The other thing I love is the upraised sword being struck by lightning. It’s very much a sign of power and control, since she is completely unconcerned by the lightning and clearly in control of her weapon. Her expression is serious because she’s dealing with a serious situation (most situations involving barded horses, armor, swords and lightning are). A smile would have seemed quite out of place. She’s even able to handle a cat being on her saddle, although that can’t be entirely convenient. This is clearly a competent warrior woman who is well practiced and knows exactly what she’s doing. She will protect those behind her and is prepared for what’s ahead, whatever that may be. I definitely want to play her!

I love this cover so much and I found the girl portrayed on it to be so incredibly compelling! This is the cover of Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos by R. L. La Fevers and the image is by Yoko Tanaka. This girl looks so ready for adventures! She’s dressed as a Victorian schoolgirl, but her exploring pose and the lantern suggest something of a treasure hunter-catacomb explorer spirit (the cat helps with that feel). You just get the feeling that she’s a supremely practical girl. If something scary jumped out at her, she’d look to see what it was before freaking out about it. And rats? Not a big deal. This is a girl who is prepared, smart as a whip and always on the prowl for interesting bits of information. I get the feeling she’d crawl through pretty much any type of dungeon for an interesting scrap of paper. And that’s a pretty awesome character! She’s a leader type, but probably would benefit from a friend who’s slightly on the cautious side (although her natural practicality does keep her in check much of the time). It’s all the better for the fact that she’s probably only about twelve and so she’s also bursting with that enthusiasm and obsession that kids always have about things they’re interested in! She would be an absolute blast to play!

Theron’s cover for Tamora Pierce’s novel Shatterglass caught my attention the other day. It shows a teenage girl in a very proper dress (kind of Victorian in style, but clearly without the proper Victorian underpinnings) standing in a room full of blown glass jugs and serving pieces. A small dragon hangs over her shoulder and she looks back at it with an expression suggesting they are sharing a secret. Her hand is held up, as if she were holding a tray or a plate, but instead of a serving piece being propped there we see the crackle of electricity. This is clearly a girl with intelligence and a command of arcane powers. She is young, not a full blown sorceress, and there is a hint of something secretive about her powers (as if she can’t, or isn’t willing to, let anyone else know about them). She’s got an interesting hair style, too. It shows care and would have taken much time to arrange. This is clearly a girl with a proper life somewhere who is currently something more than she normally appears to be - maybe a rich man’s daughter who found she has powers but can’t show them for fear of her father’s wrath. Many story ideas and character hooks spring to mind from this image. It’s really compelling. I love that it’s a young woman with power. We don’t see that nearly enough! Sometimes you want to play a wizard without having to be either graying or a 200-year-old elf! The idea of a teenager with wizardly powers is very appealing in its way and this girl embodies that idea! I definitely want to play her!

A common thing to hear when a bunch of adult women get together to talk about what they were like as girls is “I was a tomboy, in fact, people sometimes even thought I was a boy!” It’s such a common backstory image that it comes up all the time in fiction, both children’s fiction and adult fiction with children characters. But we almost never see characters in games that convey that personality. Yeah, we get tough, go-get-’em girls who we may have no doubt could beat up the boys around them, but their images are always all girl. For the first time I came across an image of a game character that actually made me wonder if it was a boy or a girl - it looks exactly like a tomboy girl, but since I don’t know much about the game, I don’t know for sure. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at that image and I think she looks a lot like a girl, and she’s certainly posed in a position that conveys more of a sense of a female center of balance. The problem is, it’s hard to really say. It’s a video game, so they can make the character anything they want. For all I know it’s just a really feminine looking boy. Either way, I’d totally play a girl character who looked like that. She’s got a fun teenaged tomboy look and her pose suggests that she’s ready to jump into anything (even if not always certain it’s a good idea). Not only do I think this would make a great character for a video game (and such a character might make me pick up a game I wouldn’t otherwise have tried), but this is an image I could totally see stealing as a jumping off point for a character in a table-top game or a LARP. She’d just be such a blast to play! I definitely want to play her!

Normally I hate the covers of Dragonlance books. They typically have few token women and those are generally either dressed in flowing gowns or largely naked with just little bits of strategically placed fur and chain mail they seem to be considering armor. I never understood the fur loincloths thing. I know it was the fashion for the best and brightest on He-Man, but even there the warrior women didn’t wear them! Anyhow, being as that is what I’m used to from Dragonlance covers, you can bet that I was pretty surprised when I came across Matt Stawicki’s cover for Dragons of a Fallen Sun (a book I’ve never even read, by the way). It has a knight, fully clad in full-plate armor, sitting proudly atop her noble steed who is likewise wearing plated barding. This woman looks like she could hold her own, but is actually probably the leader of a platoon or something. In the background is what appears to be a landscape being devastated by lava. An idyllic city rests at the base of the lava-streaked mountains and right behind the woman’s horse is a flowing river of red lava. This is not a happy, fuzzy scene where bunnies frolic. This is the cite of destruction and devastation. This is a place where a warrior and leader like the woman pictured is really needed and can really make a difference. And doesn’t she look like she could make that difference, even if things are bad right now? I’d believe in her. I’d love to play her. She’s a great almost iconic image of a war leader.

This piece of art has been added to the “I Want to Play Her” page under “Role Playing Games”.

I had a great time at Gen Con this year. It was probably one of the best years ever for me. I really couldn’t tell you why, either. I had a bunch of awesome seminars, a couple of quirky, fun games, and met a lot of great, interesting people.

As far as games go, my experiences this year were generally great. It seems that every year I have one game where the gamemaster doesn’t show up and this year it was a game of Little Fears (an RPG where you play kids fighting closet monsters and other terrors of childhood), which was highly disappointing. I love Little Fears, but it’s not a game I get to play often. Last year no one ran it at the Con at all, so I didn’t even get my one game a year fix of it! This year I was really excited to get back to it, and it didn’t end up happening. Oh well. On the other hand, I had two absolutely awesome Dungeons and Dragons games that I will probably never forget. I will write up both of them in the next week or so and add them to the “Gaming” section of the site (I’ll post when they get added, so if you’re interested, you’ll know when they go up).

I always look for “women in gaming” seminars because they are always fun. There are more and more women at Gen Con every year, but we are still in the minority and some of the guys still kind of ogle like this is the only time of year they ever see a woman. There are a lot of women for whom the Con is the only place they get to interact with other women gamers. The thing is, even though there are a lot of women gamers, they tend not to advertise it and even their friends often don’t know (my husband didn’t know I was a gamer until maybe four years after we met and started dating, so I’m as guilty of that as anyone else). This year there was a great roundtable style seminar held on the subject by the Gamer Wenches, a group of women gamers that has been formed on the internet through forums and their website. We did a bad job of staying on topic, but so much interesting discussion was happening that I’m not sure it really mattered. The women in the room played a wide range of game types and while some had been playing for years, others were comparatively very new to gaming. Everyone was very welcomed and respected, though. It was definitely one of the best women gamer events I’ve been to.

There was supposed to be an event about Women and D&D run by Wizards of the Coast, but it didn’t happen. WotC moved it without telling the convention, which meant that no one knew it had been moved and 30+ people showed up for it, but not where WotC was holding it. This was frustrating, to say the least. Several of us did everything we could to find the damn thing, including going to the “right” room (where no one was by that point) and WotC’s booth in the dealer hall. The people in the dealer booth were very nice to us and apologized, but that really didn’t make it less frustrating. And they certainly didn’t endear themselves to all the many people who *didn’t* get an apology either. I’m not sure what happened on their end, but they really should have managed that one better. I had been thinking about buying their new book on women and D&D at the Con, but after that I decided not to.

WotC did an absolutely fantastic job, however, with the other official seminar of theirs that I went to. It was on Kids and D&D and it was run primarily by James Wyatt. He had a lot of really interesting things to say. He discussed some of the tools WotC makes for D&D and how they can been used to play with kids (the Basic Game, playdnd.com, Miniatures, etc.). He has a kid who enjoys playing D&D and so he had lots of personal experience and stories to relate. It was great! He also brought up Mirrorstone Books and discussed the various books they publish and even some that are coming out in the future. The parents in the room hadn’t heard of Mirrorstone (which I think reinforced to the WotC people there that the marketing for Mirrorstone isn’t so much working in many ways, even if they are doing some things right), but they were all really excited about the books as he talked about them. He didn’t know that they hadn’t brought any with them, but I had previously talked to some of the people in the WotC booth about this. I think maybe this seminar could help reinforce the idea that Gen Con *could* be a good place to bring Mirrorstone books. There were parents there who all had really interesting things to say. One couple was even working on incorporating gaming into homeschooling and had some great thoughts along that line. I was really impressed. Everyone was really open minded and had great things to say, and everyone really seemed to want new ideas and suggestions from everyone else. It was awesome. James Wyatt mentioned that he thinks WotC should try and get the rights to make an RPG based on Avatar: The Last Airbender and I think that would be the best idea! It’s the perfect world to set a game in and would draw in kids and adults alike, which means kids could play with their parents as easily as they could with other kids! And it’s just such a great world with so much rich material to draw from. I hope that he can convince the company to really consider it!

The fourth seminar I went to, although it was actually before the Kids and D&D one, was this year’s Games and Learning seminar from David Simkins. Every year for the last couple of years he’s done a seminar discussing his work and the work being done at the University of Wisconsin - Madison on games in education and the theory behind games and learning. It’s pretty academic at times, but that’s probably part of why I like it so much. It’s always really interesting. This year he talked about the research his department has been doing on World of Warcraft. I found the study of how players show and use scientific reasoning and discourse to be fascinating. There were a number of interesting parts of the research that I would love to have known more about, but given the time constraints there’s just no way he could have gone into them as much as I really would have wanted. Besides, I actually found the second part of his presentation where he discussed his own research into games and ethics even more fascinating. He looked at video games and how they built ethical worlds and presented the player with ethical dilemmas and consequences for their choice. It was really interesting and I hope that in the next few years he keeps working with it. I just find his work and the work of the whole games and learning community really interesting.

I did get to play a few fun games at this convention. Probably the best board game I found was Mystery of the Abbey, which is like a complicated whodunnit where you are trying to identify which monk committed a murder based on clues and questioning other players. Another good game I found was a kids game from Front Porch Classics called Adventures in Oz. I actually bought myself a copy of this one, although I have my doubts that I’ll be able to get anyone to play it with me. It’s a simple game where you need to collect the things listed on your character card, then get what the wizard promised you and get home before the Wicked Witch of the West shows up. It’s all based on the book The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and is bright and fun. They have a similar game based on Cicely Mary Barker’s fairies. Michael bought some decks of the World of Warcraft CCG and got me to play it. Other than the fact that the deck I played with was not really well balanced for playing one-on-one and I wasn’t getting good hands (when I had a hand at all), it seems like a good game with a lot of potential. I think I need to try some different decks or build one from some of the other cards we have and try again.

The convention had more videogames than ever before, but they were all MMOGs. That was fine. It gave me the chance to learn a little more about some of the games Michael’s been excited about that I haven’t been sure of. I was totally not sold on Pirates of the Burning Sea, but after talking to one of their really nice employees and getting her to show me around the game a little I am actually kind of excited to play it. It has some fun new elements to combat, a rather interesting overall system for determining world-changing events, and interesting (if somewhat complicated) ship-to-ship combat. I liked that you can be totally involved in the world-changing events, helping your side take over ports and such, or you can just play by yourself and still be helping your side with all that important stuff just by running missions against the enemy side. It’s really pretty cool. I’m still not terribly sold on Warhammer Online, but I’m less against it now. It does have some cool, interesting elements. I just don’t really think it’s for me.

One of my favorite things at this convention was getting to meet Emily Fiegenschuh, the illustrator of the Knights of the Silver Dragon books, and her husband, Vinod Rams (the illustrator of Mirrorstone’s Dragonlance books). I always really like meeting authors and illustrators, but I was really excited to meet Emily because I loved the Knights of the Silver Dragon series so much and her art was a big part of that. She and Vinod were both super nice and I really enjoyed talking to them!

I had a great Con overall. I got to spend time with friends, play some awesome games, hear interesting ideas and have stimulating discussions in seminars and meet some wonderful new people! I missed some friends who were absent this year, but their absence didn’t keep the convention from being great! I’m glad it was such a great experience. Some years are just not as much fun as they should be, but this is one year I’ll remember for a long, long time because it was an absolute blast! I hope I can keep going for many years to come!

I was drawn to the cover of Morgan Llywelyn’s book Grania because the pirate woman looks powerful and independent, but is not sexualized in any of the typical ways. The art is done by Gregory Manchess and I love it. The woman is clearly a competent sailor (if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be standing with her leg up on the edge of the ship like that), an image further reinforced by her very practical outfit. Nothing is feminine at all about what she’s wearing - it’s a perfectly typical sailor’s outfit that you might see on a man, it’s just on a woman this time. The pose also suggests that she’s in command (or capable of being so). She’s armed, but not heavily so. She’s prepared, but she’s also aware that she’s not likely to need heavy arms on a ship probably primarily peopled with allies. She’s practical. All of these qualities are attractive ones in a potential character - especially a short term one (this woman would make a great character for a one-shot or a three to four session game).

This piece of art has been added to the “I Want to Play Her” page under “Role Playing Games”.