Community

SeraphimDominion wrote:

I would venture to say that you are in the minority here. There have been many studies about creature types in video games, as a parallel, and it turns out that most people want to play humanoid things that are attractive by human standards. That's not a hard-and-fast rule, some people want monstrous or ugly characters, but a large majority of players, when given the choice between say, an elf and an orc, will choose the elf.

So most humanoid-like creatures are going to be attractive and humanlike, differeing in one or two noticeable ways.

Very true when the other options are ugly monstrosities with no consideration for aesthetics. Something can both look non-human AND pleasing to the eye, and that's where the most mistakes are made. Most of these non-humans in these games are poorly done and purposely made repugnant. No wonder no one wants to play them.

When done well though: Take Red from final Fantasy 7, a large number of people I knew loved Red, he was well done, and he wasn't even humanoid at all. If done well a lot of people will flock to play this to do something different. I've known numerous players that beg to play monstrous pcs just because they find the regular races too bland and boring. The usual response: "I'm a human in real life, I want to be something different."

Some even want to be quadrupedal so they can be even more non-human. So say what you will about being in the minority, from the people I've met and played with, we are a damn large minority, but then again, I suppose since we are a "minority" we don't matter, and should be ignored.

Also you need to consider something very important here, in video games EVERYTHING is visual based. You're going to be looking at the character all day. I've known guys that played female characters in video games for the only reason that they think the character is hot and would rather stare at a cute chick all day, not because they empathize with the character or anything of that sort.

D&D is VERY different from a video game, and such studies are mostly irrelevant. It also hurts when the females of these repugnant species are given overtly human traits like breasts. Which causes both males and females to see them as ugly girls and not as entirely separate species. The first thought is female, the next thought is ewe. People don't have that reaction when they see female dogs, hippos, lions, dolphins, bovines, ect, and do you know why? It's because they lack breasts, which for our species is a human sexual cue, and causes us to judge the whole in a sexual feminine light. We don't judge the sexual appeal of cows, dogs, and emus, because we instinctively recognize them as separate species first and there sex is a secondary characteristic. Put breasts on them, and the trend reverses, and we judge them as sexual creatures first and other species second. In fact adding breasts as a "sexual" cue to a lot of species is most likely counter productive to people playing them.

Another thing to consider are that there are different reasons for playing. Escapism is a major reason for playing. Some play women while men, because they like the idea, and want to escape from life as a man. They want to be an attractive woman of course. Some women carry their negative self image into the game, and want to be the attractive person they don't feel they are in real life, so they too will want to be an attractive woman. Some are sick of life as a human entirely, including our appearance standards, they won't want to play anything human at all, but they still want the picture to look good.

The reason I emphasize on the appearance of females, is males can play anything from big orcish lummox and not be bothered by it being ugly, and thanks to half-orcs they ignore that there are female orcs entirely. You'll also notice, that in almost all cases a half-orcs parentage is orc father, human mother, unless purposely trying to be different. We need to stay away from overtly human sexual cues with anything that won't look attractive to our eyes with them. Males are taught their worth comes from action, that enough money and skill can get them any women regardless of looks and are taught to judge women by appearances. For women, our looks matter a lot more than many of us like to admit, and few of us are going to play something so overtly ugly by our standards of beauty. Now is something falls outside our standards of beauty entirely by being in a whole different category of appearance, it will be judged separately because the sexual cues are lacking.

xXOblivionXx wrote:

Although the Shadar-Kai as a concept are awesome, the art looks bland and uninteresting, unlike those picture that look awesome:

...

xXOblivionXx, you forgot this picture from Worlds & Monsters:

Spoiler: Show