D&D (2024) Here's The New 2024 Player's Handbook Wizard Art

 

[Older Beholder]

Forget the Warforged, I think my next character will be a bespectacled Plasmoid.

 

[Gradine]

Now I want to make a character who is to eyeglasses what early-to-mid-00's jrpg characters were to belts.

 

[ezo]

Now I want to make a character who is to eyeglasses what early-to-mid-00's jrpg characters were to belts.

When I first read this I thought you were saying you want to make a character who IS eyeglasses!

It would be a "kick" to make a sidekick expert PC / NPC who is a sentient "animated object" eyeglasses, and then have the PC wearing them.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Forget the Warforged, I think my next character will be a bespectacled Plasmoid.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But everyone gets to decide what they consider beautiful, it's entirely subjective.

If someone protrays an elf as "beautiful", they're most likely going to describe what is beautiful to them. If an elf is met by someone, that elf will be whatever it considers beautiful.

Exactly. So why is it that Yaarel felt the need to say that because elves embody beauty, elves would never need glasses? An entirely subjective quality (beauty) that can include wearing glasses, and yet it is being used to be exclusionary.

Really, I don't see anything like my statement in their post...

If you're talking about some other "it", I have no idea what you're talking about. Of course, I find the entire exchange about what is beauty, glasses (again... ) and such... well, strange.

EDIT: You know what, forget it. I had a long post with quotes about that exchange, but you will never understand apparently so why bother.

Ah yes, the "you will never understand" argument. Always pleasant to find.

Here is a link to Occams post. It covers what I said, what Yaarel said, and is directly addressing their denial of having said... exactly what they were quoted saying, https://www.enworld.org/threads/heres-the-new-2024-players-handbook-wizard-art.703288/post-9306352

 

[Parmandur]

Glasses are very attractive, I don't wear them myself, but thems the rules.

 

[MNblockhead]

Warning: the following is an old man yelling at the clouds, and probably adds nothing of value to the discussion. Feel free to skip it...

After 1100 posts on this painting, I'm left with the sudden realization that I miss the old days. Which, at my age, is nothing new. But specifically, I remember what D&D art meant to me and my friends as teens in the 80's.

I loved every new piece I could get my hands on. A new Dragon magazine was a gift for the new art alone. Which is why I probably ended up spending a large portion of my life illustrating rpgs. My friends and I poured over them all. Much like people are doing here, yet we somehow managed to do it with a sense of wonder.

If something didn't jibe with the rules, we didn't complain. We didn't gripe that by the rules a 1hd Skeleton couldn't burst through a door like that, or that an Animate Dead spell couldn't summon that many zombies. Or wonder how that Paladin got into Hell by himself anyway.

We would have loved this painting. We would have speculated about whether the that was Mage Hand holding the staff, or maybe it was a magical floating staff (the wizard equivalent of a Dancing Sword). Maybe they were Glasses of Telekinesis, and she can levitate anything she looked at! And before you knew it, someone would have ran off and statted those items up (maybe to be found in the next dragon hoard we liberated).

Maybe it's because we were just kids, and assumed that the grownups must know what they were doing. Maybe because as an art student I already understood artistic interpretation. Or maybe because the game itself went out of its way to encourage us to customize the game, to make it our own. It told us to make our own settings, homebrew our own monsters, create our own spells so that the know-it-all players would be surprised.

I don't know. Maybe the game has changed that much over the years, and that level of ownership isn't being encouraged. Maybe things are meant to be much more locked down. Maybe that's why floating staves, or flat glasses, or fancy robes are creating such an uproar. It's hard for me to tell, since I've internalized so many different editions over the decades.

Anyway, the point of this isn't to tell anyone they are wrong in what they like. I don't think there is a point to this post at all, really. Just an old man being nostalgic, probably blinded by rose-coloured glasses of my own. But it made me think. And what's the point of having thoughts if you can't inflict them on an entire internet full of strangers...heh.

Thanks for reading, those who did, and hopefully you'll forgive an old fella waxing nostaligic. And now, I think I'm going to go dig up my Dragon Archives and browse some art .

1. The grognard representation among the more active posters in EN World is high (Hello! )
2. There are still plenty of fans who love the art in the new books (also )
3. You may be remembering the past through rose-colored glasses or just had more positive friends you played with. I remember plenty of criticism of art in different games in 80s. Teenagers can be quite cliquish. I remember those of us who got into more dystopian and grimdark games like Warhammer, crapping on other games, including the art. Lots of people will tell you about the Vampire the Masquerade players getting snooty.
4. I enjoy being an annoying old dad crapping on some of the anime my son is into and he gives as good as he gets. It sort of a sport. Who can make the a good enough diss to trigger the dissee. It's all good if done with love (for your friends and family if not their crappy preferences in art ).

 

[MNblockhead]

Since we've gone way of the deep end in this thread, I'll might as well keep swimming.

Do elvan eyes telescope better than other species in D&D? Is it not reasonable to assume that a species evolved to operate in the woods in low light or darkness might benefit from spectacles when reading small print or maps up close?

If one has to use loupe to look for flaws in a gem or a telescope to better study the night sky, we don't assume that they have a disability. They are just enhancing their natural, normal eye sight for purposes for which their eyes didn't evolve (which I would say includes reading, far fewer people would be wearing glasses if most of us were still illiterate). No restoration magic is going to "fix" your eyesight so that you don't need to a loupe, telescope, or--I would argue--reading glasses.

I see no reason to except elves from the need for lenses to enhance their sight in certain situtations. Whether different species have different strengths and weakness when it comes to their average, natural vision is mostly left up to the world-building of the DM, which the exception of say, whether you have dark vision, true sight, etc. Certainly, whether any species is more prone to needing reading glasses to pour over arcane tomes seems up to the DM.

 

[ezo]

Exactly. So why is it that Yaarel felt the need to say that because elves embody beauty, elves would never need glasses? An entirely subjective quality (beauty) that can include wearing glasses, and yet it is being used to be exclusionary.

That really wasn't what he was saying... and if you read it as that, I'm not surprised given your responses so far.

Ah yes, the "you will never understand" argument. Always pleasant to find.

The truth is hard to face sometimes.

Here is a link to Occams post. It covers what I said, what Yaarel said, and is directly addressing their denial of having said... exactly what they were quoted saying, https://www.enworld.org/threads/heres-the-new-2024-players-handbook-wizard-art.703288/post-9306352

Yep, I am well familiar with it. It was one of the post I had quoted before I deleted it all. Basic idea, you read more into his posts than he said, and you seem to like to do that IME.

But, that post doesn't say a thing relating to my post about people projecting.

Since we've gone way of the deep end in this thread, I'll might as well keep swimming.

Surf's up! Hope you don't wipe out.

 

[Reef]

1. The grognard representation among the more active posters in EN World is high (Hello! )
2. There are still plenty of fans who love the art in the new books (also )
3. You may be remembering the past through rose-colored glasses or just had more positive friends you played with. I remember plenty of criticism of art in different games in 80s. Teenagers can be quite cliquish. I remember those of us who got into more dystopian and grimdark games like Warhammer, crapping on other games, including the art. Lots of people will tell you about the Vampire the Masquerade players getting snooty.
4. I enjoy being an annoying old dad crapping on some of the anime my son is into and he gives as good as he gets. It sort of a sport. Who can make the a good enough diss to trigger the dissee. It's all good if done with love (for your friends and family if not their crappy preferences in art ).

Oh, I freely admit my rose-coloured glasses. I certainly wasn't trying to rain on anyone's parade either. It was more just old memories coming out.

And to be fair, I did indeed dig out my Dragon archive. While browsing through, I glanced at the Letters section. And discovered that the sort of discussions going on here aren't as recent as I believed...they just use to happen a lot slower