D&D (2024) New Dungeon Master's Guide Cover Features Venger (From the D&D Cartoons)

The cover of the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide has been unveiled.... in the Mirror, a mainstream newspaper in the UK.

The cover art features villains (as opposed to the heroes on the Player's Handbook cover revealed last week), with skeletons in the foreground, the classic villains Skylla and Warduke in the mid ground, and then Venger from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon looming in the background, and right at the back lurks a dracolich.

The DMG will be released November 12th, 2024.

 

[Birmy]

Red Dragon seems likely, I suppose. "Use lots of drafons" ertainly seems to be the order of the day.

Heck, the Monater Manual could reuse the lineup from the original 70's MM in a new array and be pretty effective

We've had dragons (dracolich counts) on both covers so far, so this tracks. I assume they would lean heavy on iconic monster types (mind flayers, giants, mimics... maybe they skip the beholder this time, since that's on the current MM cover). If they do a progression of challenge types again, like on this cover, maybe they have goblins or kobolds in the foreground with whatever high-CR creature they choose in the back. I suppose we'll find out any week now.

For the alternate cover, I want pictures! PICTURES OF FLUMPHS!

(Seriously, though, a bevy of flumphs rendered like the PHB alternate cover would be gorgeous.)

 

[Yaarel]

Next we will see a book with the cartoon Dungeon Master in the cover, with the title "Dungeon Master's Guide to Dungeon Mastering"

Heh, maybe the Cartoon Dungeon Master will show up in the Players Handbook as an example of a multispecies: Dwarf-Halfling.

 

[Yaarel]

Hey look! It's more Gen X nostalgia marketing! I'm out.

This is also recognizable trademark stuff for intellectual property branding. Especially the Cartoon. And. For an "anniversary edition", a nod to the past seems appropriate enough. Gygax himself worked on the Cartoon.

 

[Reef]

I'm not sure it even was broadcast in Canada, but then I was like 3 years old when it came that series came out.

It was. I loved it. But like others here, I was 11...

 

[Yaarel]

This has been the MO for D&D for quite some time. I'm a Gen X but I do not suffer from nostalgia. How many different versions of the same thing do we need? Doesn't anyone else think its time for a new direction for the game?
What do I know?

I honestly think a call out to the past is a good idea for the 50th anniversary edition of the core books. The splatbooks that come afterward can move on to feature new stuff.

D&D has always been a mix of old and new, something for every age group.

 

[niklinna]

Hi Niklinna, I can't speak for others, but I thought you were being funny because, in my experience, the cartoon was never meant to be taken seriously.

Yeah, the cartoon was silly, but it was still sending a message, and it was particularly sending a message when it came to Eric. This toy review sums it up pretty well:

Everybody needs that one friend they hate, right?

Eric the Cavalier may seem like a coward but Eric is a hero at heart, wielding the magical Griffon Shield.

Poor Eric; he was the butt monkey both in and out of the show. In-universe, it's implied he's the rich kid at school, whose father doesn't have any time for him, and that he just sort of invited himself along on the amusement park trip that ended up sending them all to The Realm because he doesn't have any real friends. He dislikes being trapped in this alternate reality, and since he isn't shy about letting that be known, all the other kids feel free to mock him for the way he feels. When he complains about the things they're going through, worse things happen to him. And that's because, out-of-universe, some parents' group insisted that the show needed a "message," and that the message should be "the group is always right... the complainer is always wrong." Yeesh. That's what passed for "pro-social" in the early '80s.

[he enjoys lording his wealth over all the poors he knows] Eric was given the role of Cavalier, which seems like a joke on Dungeon Master's part: like, yes, a cavalier is a name for a knight (originally any mounted horseman, from the same Anatolian-by-way-of-vulgate-Latin root that also led to words like caballero, chivalry, and cavalry), but in Elizabethan English, its meaning was expanded to also pejoratively encompass a knight's haughty attitude. So the stuck-up rich kid is cavalier? He sure is!

...

The cartoon writers hated what they were forced to do with Eric, but they found a way around it: yes, he still complained, and yes, he was still diagetically punished for it, but the writers' subversion of the mandate as the show went on was to usually make Eric right: like, he'd say that going into a magic swamp was a bad idea, the other kids would bully him into going along with them, and then it would turn out going into the magic swamp was a bad idea, and it got them into more trouble than avoiding it would have. But by not drawing attention to that part, the show kept the parents' groups from getting mad at them. Nice!

And on top of all that, silly as it was he had no weapon, only a shield, he used that shield time and time again to protect his friends. Subverting the parents' groups, indeed! I'm glad I looked that up, actually, because I had forgotten just how many times he warned the other kids and yet saved their butts when their bad ideas got them in trouble.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Y'know, I'd just about kill for dust jackets of the 1E revised covers for all my 5E core books, whichever version they end up being.

That seems like a really good licensed product: Dust jackets of all the previous core books throughout the ages, built to fit the 2024 books and sturdy enough to be actually used.

 

[Michael Linke]

I'm not in love with this cover, I think because all the figures are about the same size. I feel like it would be more dynamic with more variation there.

But it doesn't rally matter to me.

What? Venger, from head to toe, measures 260px on my screen. Warduke is at least 310, maybe 330, depending on how long his legs are meant to extend past the skeletons in front of him. Skylla is 250px tall.

Not only are the three characters' depictions actually 3 different sizes, but we know they're definitely not all the same height, as the smallest representation isn't the one that's furthest away.

 

[Azzy]

That seems like a really good licensed product: Dust jackets of all the previous core books throughout the ages, built to fit the 2024 books and sturdy enough to be actually used.

Yeah, I'd buy 'em.

 

[Reynard]

That seems like a really good licensed product: Dust jackets of all the previous core books throughout the ages, built to fit the 2024 books and sturdy enough to be actually used.

Licensed? Pff! Have you been on Etsy?