Ye Olde Inn

I checked out the Zealot Miniatures models based on their connection to this site and was a little disappointed. Not at the quality, no not at all, they are beautifully done, but by what was offered. When I clicked on fantasy miniatures I was immediately faced with figures of naked and semi naked women. In fact, 7 of the 9 figures featured on the first page were women in various states of undress. Now, I understand that some people would want to make that purchase, but honestly, what does it have to do with hero quest at all? Yeoldinn is the top link on their page. It just seems inappropriate to me, and while I understand that every company makes figures I would deem inappropriate and I just need to buy what I support, by the same token, I don't like that those are the first images I see when I click on Fantasy models. Perhaps some Not Safe For Work or age warning? I can't imagine ever needing nude women for my hero quest game.

My understanding is that Zealot is a top link here because of the "Twisting Catacombs" KickStarter which is producing incredible replacements for the original HQ furniture and doors. If you look at the KS site for this effort, you will not find any such images.

It is embarrassing that fantasy invariably gets pulled in the direction of scantily clad females. If you look at the gallery on this site, you will find several images which are also inappropriate for work, so be careful there too!!! Perhaps we should flag and remove this stuff?

The market is still perceived to be dominated by teenage boys and as long as it is, this will continue.

I had a quick look and found two nude females (Hellenica and Mermaid), plus three bare breasted ones. The others do not reveal more than you can see in any city on a hot summer's day. "Various states of undress" can translate as well into "various state of dress". Of course they are designed for sexual appeal. Why not? I do not feel too old yet for enjoying the sight of a woman.
The Cannibal Tribesman figure is a well built male, showing more naked skin than any of the women except for the two nude ones. Is he "inappropriate", too?

Not to forget the Barbarian, wearing only underpants and shoes. Highly inappropriate if copied by women. My two pictures here, also show a woman. I used her to train painting skin color (after years of Orks that was necessary). So of course i needed a figure with showing skin.

Really, as adults we shouldn't be so upset about nakedness. In fact, we should more be upset about all the needless brutality involved in the use of sharp metal edges (simulated by white combat dice).

From Germany, i was used to a lot of nudity in the summer time; using every day with more than 20° to show up at the beach. However in Germany it is kind of self-regulating because we have lots of fat people who don't want to show off.

Now that i live in France, it is more. They are nearly all super-slim. They wear the lightest clothes possible with the weather. From 18°C upwards you'll see naked legs and arms everywhere - i am freezing just by the look of it. At 25°C upwards the pants and skirts are so short that you can see asses everywhere, as soon as a small breeze is coming up.
There is a law here that you're not allowed to wear wide clothes in the swimming pool - no shorts for example. It has to be tightly fitting and short or you will not be admitted to the swimming pool. Yes. It is written in the law.

Fact is, there is nothing bad about showing skin except maybe skin cancer. For sure there is no reason to be upset by it.

From there, there is another step upwards to the home country of my wife, Colombia. They have warm weather all the year long, so standard cloth is t-shirt with shorts for everybody. Long shorts for men and short shorts for women. So far, nothing special. But. In Colombia it is exceptional cheap to have beauty surgery. Everybody who can afford it, does it. I've never seen so many Balloon Breasts and pimped up arses with superslim stomaches on women. At some point of time they start to look like a duck.

Zealot has lots of replacement HQ furniture, but also 3 out of 4 replacement heroes! Sculpted by Ampersand. We pressured him to do a barbarian too, but he cba'd lol. That, and the fact that Thantos, the owner of Zealot, is a respected member here, is why there are links to both sites.
The fact that Zealot also produces other fantasy and sci-fi models has no connection to the Inn.

If you'd like a Not Safe For Work warning on some imagery here, ask drathe. For Zealot's webshop I can only refer you to Zealot themselves (Thantos).

my only issue with the scantily clad female slaves and women in seductive poses is that they do not make male equivalents.
Sure the Barbarian is a scantily clad male showing off his sexy, but he is also in a pose of agency and control. He is in charge and you best not mess with him. Where is the mini of a barbarian dude in a sexy pose with no weapon like I see with soooo many female mini's?

I wanted to set up a pleasure palace scene. The owner of said palace is a hedonistic mistress who maintains a harem of hot man slaves who are charmed into her service eternally by her sorcery. But I can't set that scene up because the only hot sexy slave mini's are women. Which works fine for a brothel scene or a slave market scene, but that isn't the scene I want.

So my objection on the objectification is that it is a complete one way street.

{I don't care to have someone point to some obscure miniature line that only a small amount of people know about, or a one off mini that is out of print that supposedly refutes my argument. There is a double standard when it comes to miniaures and to deny it is lame.}

I don't view this as a double standard. Look around the internet for a minute. How many pairs of breasts can you see and how many penises? Female nudity sells, male nudity is gross most of the time. That's the same as in every field, not just miniature making. I mean I don't want to sound lewd but nude females are sexy and worth risking you life to save them (in a fantasy game) but for a nude male I wouldn't even waste a potion of healing.
Seriously, no hostility intended but if you want a sexy male miniature you should just make it yourself. Don't expect the makers to do it for a market that probably doesn't exist. Personally, I don't call it double standard, it's just plain natural. What's more beautiful than a round pair of shiny soft tits? Nothing.
Men by nature are supposed to look dynamic and dominating while women are supposed to look sexy and attractive. You can't argue with nature.

Having said that, I don't think nude women fit into the whole HeroQuest setting at all. Perhaps a captive of some kind to be freed, but they don't have to be naked. You can rescue the niece of the king, fully clothed and all, and it's the same effect.

Finally, I want to say that I hate women being objectified, but sometimes they themselves act as objects in a charade to be selectable (getting prepped to present themselves as a fine product, taking selfies as ads to showcase the goods etc). My human male instincts are ok with that but my intellectual as a member of a society is appalled.

That is such a cop out.
They assume that nakid male models won't sell. The meme that male bodies are yucky pervades the culture. Sorry you are so gross. You'd think men would hold themselves in higher esteem.
Sexy male miniatures are not made, due to our model sellers assuming allot of things that do not bear out when critically analyzed. There are a number of articles and essays out that that speak to the vicious cycle of sexist marketing and our game culture is rife with the problems the authors of such articles speak so eloquently about. You might not want to buy sexy male slaves...but I know a number of women who would and we are a large demographic. RPG miniature sellers always seem to forget that we are a very large section of the market and it is silly to ignore our desires in products, just because many men wouldn't buy the product.
It is the way it is due to a rampant and institutionalized sexism that is pervasive in our entire culture. It isn't natural or normal, it is just the results of stifling social conventions and primitive attitudes that go back for millennia. All part of the patriarchal society we live in.

If I would be embarrassed to show it to my wife or mom, or not want my son or daughter seeing it, then it's inappropriate.

Cyn is right. Someday in the future ALL people will look back on "early fantasy" and roll their eyes at the portrayal of women. The same way you may cringe at 1950's hollywood movies portraying orientals for example. It was NEVER funny for them. This is how Cyn and others like her feel when they see this crap. Future generations will laugh at your total lack of social awareness.

I say Cyntia is right in the way that there should be more male "sexy" models as well. The Barbarian in a thousand variants is not enough. If someone has seen "Rome", there they employed that little fact. So i am not for less nudity but more, in equal portions. And I agree, at least for my home nation, men should care more for their belly. Here in France, as i said, it's better... a lot more people are slim.

The Boss of the multinational company i am working in was giving the top ten targets. This year, among "Make more money" "Deliver more products" the usual blabla, among that was also "stay in form". He made very clear that he was talking about body size. In the top 10 targets of the company.

Neither my wife nor my mom can be embarrassed by nudity, by the way. If anybody, it's me in this family.

The problem is not that the models show too much skin.
The problem is, as nearly always, that it is highly unequal in the depiction. Not only male/female but also Skin color inequality and race inequality. You don't see Orc women, Dwarf women are rare but Elf and Vampire women somehow are wide spread. This is rooted deep in the fairy tales of centuries, and therefore automatically inhibit the inequality of that times.

By the way,there are dwarf women, actually. Clothed.

You can see that as problem, but the solution is not an interdiction. It's rather openness. To change something here and there. Ok - that's only my opinion, of course.