I was just at the FLGS this afternoon, getting last-minute presents for my bro-in-law. The Conan RPG was a possibility...until I saw the border.
I kept flipping through the book, thinking that the babes-in-chainmail-bikinis-or-less motif was just NOT something I remembered from reading RE Howard way-back-when. And then I saw more pandering to the purile. The woman wearing nearly nothing, on her hands and knees behind a man. What is it with the implied submissive position of women in so many illustrations in the main book? The illustrations where women are not in either an inferior or submissive pose show women with big weapons and armor that would be downright dangerous to the wearer. (Imagine having a metal edge digging into your sternum... there are safety reasons why this sort of breast-cupping "armor" stuff is illegal in groups that do mock combat.)
The main book just isn't something that I want to give to a guy with a 9-year-old daughter in the house. Does anyone have any hard data on how much "artwork" will be in the pocket book, or what's being left out of the main book to leave "all the essential rules you need to play the RPG"?
Note to anyone from Mongoose who might read this:
When you set up the art for a book, keep in mind the female roleplayers...we're rare, but most of us find art like this annoying at best. Also keep in mind the moms, aunts, sisters, girlfriends, etc of roleplayers, and that many of them may judge a book by its art: seeing something that offends them will lose sales. I will not buy ANY Conan book that has that blasted border. And there are a lot of Mongoose books I've left on the shelf because of the preponderance of female near-nudity.