D&D 5E D&D Next Art Column Discussion: May

[Klaus]

New Dragon's-Eye View by Jon Schindehette is up!

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (D&D Art Philosophy)

Note: I'll be helping the moderators in keeping a close eye on this thread. Please contribute in a polite fashion, and let's focus on the art! Thanks for helping make this thread useful for Jon.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sound like some reasonable goals to me!

The first few especially excite me personally, and I am intrigued by differentiated monsters, characters instead of models, and the combo between realism and fantasy (though I see how any of those can go potentially wrong, too).

 

[erleni]

Way to go Jon!!

In a few posts here and on the Wizards forum I said that the most important thing is that D&D art should tell stories and when I found it at nr. 1 in your list it really felt good.

By the way, the physicist Jon Schindenger said that the owl bear is in a quantum state, until a fighter tries to divide the owl and the bear with a greatsword, but all experiments so far failed...

 

[Frostmarrow]

I love that they think this deeply about D&D art.

 

[delericho]

Not really a lot to say here. I agree with almost all of what he says.

But there is one thing...

Differentiated monsters. What are the differences between a ghost, a shade, a wraith, and a host of other incorporeal undead that run around as transparent wisps? I want that defined and I want it to be clear when you see them in a line-up. Even if you don't know the names of the monsters, I want to make sure that you can tell that the creatures are different from each other—not just the same creature with a color shift and a new name.

I think that's the wrong solution to the problem. The problem is that D&D simply has too many poorly-differentiated monsters. Rather than try to differentiate ghosts, shades, wraiths, and all the others in the host (and, for that matter, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, and all the other "low-level humanoid" monsters), surely it would be better to declare that these are just the same creature with different names?

Perhaps even present these monsters as a sort of 'template-lite', where you get the base monster stats, plus a raft of customisable add-ons so that this shade happens to be vulnerable to sunlight, or that orc fights in a berzerker rage gaining a bonus to damage but losing out on AC.

Ultimately, we don't need thousands of monsters that are basically variations on a handful of basic themes - quickly cover the basics and provide us with the tools to go more specialised in these areas, and then spend your time generating new monsters that aren't just a variation on a well-worn theme.

(And, yeah, I know that's not related to the art, as such. But it is related to the article, so...)

 

[Ramaster]

Seems to me that someone at Wizards really doesn't like Pathfinder art.

 

[patrick y.]

That's a pretty good list of stuff, with two caveats.

1) "Realistic" is a good goal, particularly when it continues to be acknowledged that realistic is meant in the context of a world defined by the non-realistic elements. That said, reality is not brown. He mentions hyper-saturated color trends, and how those might be appropriate in video games but not D&D, and that's fine. Gears of War-style ultra-browns are, and should be, equally inappropriate.

2) At this point, I really, really, really don't care what Gary would do, anymore than I care what Stan Lee would do when I'm thinking about a comic book. Gary had his time, and did his thing, and all respect to him... but if I want to play a game that's done the way Gary would do it, I'll just play one of the games he did do.

 

[Klaus]

The problem is that D&D simply has too many poorly-differentiated monsters. Rather than try to differentiate ghosts, shades, wraiths, and all the others in the host (and, for that matter, goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, and all the other "low-level humanoid" monsters), surely it would be better to declare that these are just the same creature with different names?

When most of those humanoids were created, it was to fill "Hit Dice holes", because there was no real way to advance a monster's HD.

Personally, I prefer to give those creatures strong identities to justify their existence. 4E and Monster Vault did a good job with those (especially the goblinoids, kobolds, gnolls and orcs).

Sidenote on goblinoids: I'd prefer if the three goblin races (goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears) have some shared look, so that you could see that goblins and bugbears are cousins.

 

[Kaodi]

Those sounds like pretty reasonable goals for the most part.

So if I may, I think I will make a list of some of the art test submissions that really stood out to me.

[sblock=Shaman]
Anna Steinbauer
Chun Lo
Guido Kuip
Henri Kutvonen
Mark Molchan
Nacho Molina (and given you used that picture on the blog...)
Preston P Jackson
Ursula Dorada
[/sblock]
[sblock=Cook]
Beth Sobel
Jan Filipelli
Jonathan Moore
Milivoj Ceran
[/sblock]
[sblock=Town Guard]
Carlos Cara
Dallas Williams
Denman Rooke
Jacob Atienza
Lukasz Jaskolski
[/sblock]
[sblock=Environment]
Alexander Tooth
CJ Derra
Jaana Heiska
Juan Carlos Barquet
Max Antonov (though the building itself is not very impressive)
Randall Mackey
Sara Forlenza
Shane Madden
[/sblock]
[sblock=Hall of the Dead]
David Demaret
[/sblock]
[sblock=Interior]
Christoper Bradley
[/sblock]

 

[delericho]

When most of those humanoids were created, it was to fill "Hit Dice holes", because there was no real way to advance a monster's HD.

True. Of course, that rationale no longer applies, so perhaps it's likewise time for those monsters to be consolidated?

4E and Monster Vault did a good job with those (especially the goblinoids, kobolds, gnolls and orcs).

Yes, yes it did. And if you're going to have all those different monsters, that's certainly the way to go.

Sidenote on goblinoids: I'd prefer if the three goblin races (goblins, hobgoblins and bugbears) have some shared look, so that you could see that goblins and bugbears are cousins.

Ah, but... are they? Personally, I'm far from convinced that I want baseline-D&D to make that assumption.

And, especially if I also have the easy ability to advance monsters, I'm inclined to think that having three distinct monsters that are essentially the same, and that the fluff assumes are essentially the same, is just redundant. Have one monster, that can be advanced. (Oddly enough, that's your "strong differentiation" argument again - if they're related, they're probably not distinct enough, so they can't justify their existence.)

But YMMV, as always.