Dungeons and Dames 2021: Is this sexy D&D done right?

Sinopa Publishing listed their 56-page illustrated Dungeons and Dames 2021 pin-up book on DriveThruRPG last month.

It’s the first edition, and the contributing artists get royalties for each sale. Those artists include Alexia Veldhuisen, Kelsy Cowan, Lotus Blair, Rebecca Coulthart, Warren Brown and others. We can see these names mainly on other Sinopa titles.

As you’d expect, sexy characters featured are drawn from high fantasy races; Tieflings, dryads, fauns, and other exotic but humanoid women. The art is a mix of line art, greyscale illustrations and some as digital colour paintings. It’s the latter that makes up the previews.

While the art here is absolutely pin-up, with as little as coins or strands of air placed strategically at times, it’s only pin-up. There’s no suggestion that DriveThruRPG has unmarked and extreme adult content here, but the content is clearly intended to excite.

It can be a challenging balance for marketplaces like DriveThruRPG to get right. Last year, A House Full of Gay Vampires was briefly pulled from the DMs Guild after concerns it was too sexual. However, OneBookShelf did say that the title would be appropriate for DriveThruRPG. It was just the co-branding with Wizards of the Coast that triggered the review for the DMs Guild.

In the flair up that followed, plenty of examples of how sexy art is common in fantasy RPGs, even titles intended for the D&D audience, and how it is mainly art intended for straight men.

In that sense, Dungeons and Dames 2021 is no different, no more adult, just clearly labelled pin-up. Nevertheless, the $10 purchase won’t be to everyone’s tastes. Some might be surprised to see it listed at DriveThruRPG.