D&D 5E The 5E Art is Awesome

[Staffan]

Dragons, even young ones, are intelligent creatures. They can usually speak common and almost assuredly speak draconic, which makes for a very important difference between it and a cougar. Preemptively killing anything because they are "typically evil" especially when they are intelligent creatures is also evil, from the dragon's perspective their attacks against humans might be justified on exactly the same grounds. It's a very, literally dangerous associative fallacy and on top of that, it is basically racism or specisism.

I think I'll let Roy explain how dragons work in (non-Eberron) D&D.

 

[halfling rogue]

Different strokes; that female samurai is one of my favorite pictures. I found it to be awesome and I immediately started thinking it would be cool to have a character like that! (All just to say that response to art is subjective, I guess...which is hardly news, but bears saying anyway. )

Also, re the picture you posted above, ISTR some debate about whether that was a halfling or a gnome...

Not different strokes. I love the picture too! My response to the art as art was the same as yours. It was just the overall effect. I singled that one out just to illustrate how the overall effect dampened the individual pieces.

Buuut more importantly, regarding the picture... she's most definitely a halfling! look at the nose!

 

[halfling rogue]

I think this is just the nature of the beast. Being diverse is, by nature, a little over the top, when your predecessors were so incredibly racially homogenous. For it to work, there is a bit of a need to "try too hard," because you're compensating for quite some time of really not trying at all. Or, possibly, in some cases, worse. Just remember — it doesn't matter if they selected the samurai picture in part because they were excited about the fact that she was a woman samurai. It's a great picture.

I can see how that line of thinking makes sense, and I can sympathize with it, although I wouldn't call the last couple editions 'incredibly racially homogeneous'. I frankly find it to be in bad taste for an art director/department to choose a piece of art for some agenda. I'm not saying that is what WotC's art director/department did (although WotC has been hugely vocal about it) but that is the effect I feel on almost every page. I don't feel like D&D is diverse as much as I feel like they want me to feel like they are diverse, you know? So it does matter to me why they selected a picture because I want to think about D&D and having fun when I read the PHB rather than "Wow look how progressive and diverse D&D is". Again, it isn't a slam against the art as art but against art used as propaganda. Halfway through the book I was like, "Okay, we get it"

This might appear to look like I hate the overall theme or disagree with their direction, but honestly I dig it. I just think they could've been a bit sharper and less clunky. These are just quibbles really. I can't wait to check out the art in the MM and DMG!

 

[Fralex]

I can see how that line of thinking makes sense, and I can sympathize with it, although I wouldn't call the last couple editions 'incredibly racially homogeneous'.

Well, as I mentioned earlier I just flipped through the 4e PHB to see how diverse the art there was, and there was only one person with black skin (the female halfling in the race section) in the entire book. Maybe the other books did a better job, but at the very least I can say with certainty that the first one was very homogeneous.

I frankly find it to be in bad taste for an art director/department to choose a piece of art for some agenda. I'm not saying that is what WotC's art director/department did (although WotC has been hugely vocal about it) but that is the effect I feel on almost every page. I don't feel like D&D is diverse as much as I feel like they want me to feel like they are diverse, you know? So it does matter to me why they selected a picture because I want to think about D&D and having fun when I read the PHB rather than "Wow look how progressive and diverse D&D is". Again, it isn't a slam against the art as art but against art used as propaganda. Halfway through the book I was like, "Okay, we get it"

This might appear to look like I hate the overall theme or disagree with their direction, but honestly I dig it. I just think they could've been a bit sharper and less clunky. These are just quibbles really. I can't wait to check out the art in the MM and DMG!

I'm sincerely trying to understand your point of view here, but I'm not really sure how you can go "overboard" with diversity. Like, diversity is just having an equal amount of various ethnicities and cultures; how can something be "too equal"? Equality is equality, right?

Likewise, the idea of diverse artwork being some kind of "agenda" doesn't make much sense to me, either. What agenda could simply having a large variety of people possibly be pushing, and would such an agenda even be bad? Like, "agenda" just seems to be this word people use when they want to make the fact that something is being done with a purpose sound ominous. So, what, they're trying to be more inclusive? Why is that bad? Acknowledging the existence of non-white races doesn't really say "propaganda." If it did, then every book's artwork would be propaganda, including the more homogeneous ones, only for erasure rather than diversity.

What is the correct way to handle diversity in a book's artwork? Are you sure you aren't just reading more into this than you need to? I'm not really sure what they could've done differently here while still being this diverse.

 

[Sunseeker]

What is the correct way to handle diversity in a book's artwork? Are you sure you aren't just reading more into this than you need to? I'm not really sure what they could've done differently here while still being this diverse.

I don't see how diversity is an issue in D&D anyway, it's always been a tolkein-esque fantasy with elves, hobbits, dwarves and such, don't those count towards diversity? Don't we want those things and therefore, want diversity?

After flipping through the book, I counted 5 images with distinctly non-white humans. 3 were black. 2 were asian, though one might not count if she's actually an asain halfling or something. Any image I couldn't readily identify the ethnicity of the humans I skipped. Most of the imagery is of white male humans and sometimes white female humans

 

[jayoungr]

The humans in the PHB are supposed to represent cultures of the Forgotten Realms, aren't they?

 

[Klaus]

I don't see how diversity is an issue in D&D anyway, it's always been a tolkein-esque fantasy with elves, hobbits, dwarves and such, don't those count towards diversity? Don't we want those things and therefore, want diversity?

After flipping through the book, I counted 5 images with distinctly non-white humans. 3 were black. 2 were asian, though one might not count if she's actually an asain halfling or something. Any image I couldn't readily identify the ethnicity of the humans I skipped. Most of the imagery is of white male humans and sometimes white female humans

There is diversity even among the non-humans. A dark-skinned elf (or half-elf) is even on the cover.

A quick leaf-through of the PHB yielded 6 black characters (one is a dwarf, in the Guardian of Faith illustration), 4 asian characters and 2 middle-eastern characters.

 

[Jiggawatts]

I will never understand people's dislike for "cheesecake" art. People in real life dress provocatively too. Go to any college campus on a Friday or Saturday night and tell me how you see the girls dressing. I went to visit a friend of mine in Morgantown at WVU this past fall and we went out on the town one night, literally around 75-80% of the girls I saw were wearing dresses or skirts that came no longer than mid-thigh and 4 to 5 inch heels. I've lived in Europe and it is much the same when going out over there as well, if not more so.

I'm not saying by any means that every peice of art should be provocative, and when its done it should make sense within the context of the world, but it definitely has it's place as well. Give us succubus's dressed like skanks, nymphs wearing next to nothing, drow priestesses in fetish wear, and ab'd up shirtless barbarians rocking loincloths. It's all about versimilitude.

With all that said, I have never been a fan of the old school "chainmail bikini", because it's silly and doesn't make sense, but show me a cleric of Sune in her temple rocking a corset and stockings and I'm completely ok with that.

P.S. I hate the Halflings too.

 

[Leatherhead]

The humans in the PHB are supposed to represent cultures of the Forgotten Realms, aren't they?

Abeir-Toril has a bunch of real-Earth proxy subsettings.

 

[The Grassy Gnoll]

All those scantily clad ladies have all actually been Barbarians this whole time, ready to rage with no need for armour. It all makes sense now.
Bra-barians possibly.