D&D 5E (2024) Here's The Covers of BOTH of November's Forgotten Realms Books

We've known for some time that in November, WotC will be releasing not one but two Forgotten Realms books--one aimed at players, the other at Dungeon Masters. Thanks to Game Informer, we now have a look at the covers of Forgotten Realms: Heroes of Faerun and Forgotten Realms: Adventures in Faerun. The article showcases more art, and is well worth checking out--and for those who want more, the print magazine has a full feature previewing the books.

 

[Scott Christian]

Frankly your claim that there is any subtlety in the Realms is even less credulous than the claim that it is serious.

FR is the literary equivalent of a Michael Bay film.

I was not arguing subtlety. And I agree, it is like a Michael Bay film.

What I said was the cover has a much stronger influence over how people see the mood and tone of the book, than one random line pulled out of a couple hundred pages of text. I don't think there is anything arguable in my stance. This is one of the reasons people argue about covers and feel instantly "turned off" or say, "I'm not buying this" even though they haven't seen the contents. Covers play an important role in conveying to the reader - this is an encapsulation of the feeling of this book.

Hence, the FR cover conveyed a sense of darkness and danger; it was a bit less fantastical in nature. That conveys the inside. Declaring its mood comedic because one sentence states halflings get high on cheese has far less weight on the mood or tone of the book than the cover art.

 

[Mercador]

Are you referring to an adventure boxed set, like Night Below and the rerelease of Curse of Strahd? Or the 3-book sets they did for Spelljammer and Planescape?
I think you’ll want to look to Heroes of the Borderlands for the former… or Beadle & Grimms. But these aren’t adventure books afaik.

A simple 2-books boxed like the 3 core rule books before 2024.

 

[Scars Unseen]

An unfortunate truth about the internet (and especially Internet forums) is that satisfied people don’t feel the need to talk about their satisfaction, yet unsatisfied people feel the need to voice their displeasure.

Fandoms aren’t all inherently toxic. You just only hear from the toxic lot online because they are the only ones motivated to speak out.

Annnd here I'm going to have to protest calling people who aren't satisfied with a corporate produced product as "toxic." Like I said in another post, labeling people you don't like with negative, dehumanizing terms like that is way more negative than people saying they aren't enthusiatic about official marketing material.

 

[Cergorach]

WotCs could place crisp $20 bills in the back of each book and people would complain it's not a $50.

Then again, I'm increasingly convinced fandom is a net negative for any given franchise. I've yet to meet a a fandom that isn't overwhelmingly critical of the thing they claim to enjoy. Things are always better before, the franchise is always dying, the current owners are incompetent/greedy/hateful and it's the burden of the True Fans to save the franchise from the casuals who are watering it down.

I think the Internet has solidified what petty, vindictive and unsatisfied people the world is really full of.

We would complain that it's a $20 bill and not a Euro bill or a British bill... Not that I buy physical books anymore...

As someone else already mentioned, slightly annoyed, slightly happy or even happy people will often just not comment. And when people are negative, they are often negative about different things. The people that are complaining about 'all the negativity' don't realize that they can't tell the difference between different negativity or the different personalities that spout negativity, they just perceive it as a big nasty miasma, while it isn't.

I'm not exactly happy about the art in the D&D 5e 2024 books. I'm overall very happy with the 2024 rulesset, except I'm extremely disappointed about the inconsistent cohesion of those rules (see the stealth discussions from last year as an example). I had expected better from WotC/D&D for a rules set that's not a new edition, but a revision... That said, I've lived with 35 years of TSR/WotC and Games Workshop rules, so I can take quite a lot of that...

As WotC has decided that they won't sell us pdfs of the 5e books, and there's only a little actually available officially for 5e on FVTT, I'm not buying all that much anyway. And what I'm buying is only $30 per product. I haven't seen an image from the PHB and DMG for a LONG time, as I only own the FVTT versions of that and all of the rules/abilities come without any images. The images are there, I just don't need to access the sections that contain the artwork I don't like. I think the only thing I really see regularly is the art for the items and the monsters. We recently fought a Beholder and I dislike the new Beholder art, I wasn't DMing at the time, but I could easily use other artwork in FVTT for tokens and the full image. The art for Pandelver and Below and Tomb of Annihilation was good enough imho, as what I saw of the Vecna adventure (a friend owns the book and I started to convert it for FVTT).

Was all the art from 35 years ago great? Heck no! there was a lot of Line art in 2e, not all of which was pretty, but that often meant that more attention was given to the full page spreads, of those I didn't like, I could appreciate. A lot of the 3e illustration style I did like, of course, not everything, but enough. Not really so of the 5e 2024 books, but I occasionally do like something a LOT, like the recent Dragon Delves Alt Cover by Justine Jones.

With the current use of VTTs and specifically FVTT, I can far easier ignore, remove, or even replace RPG art in my game/rule book. I could shut my trap as it's not really adversely affecting me anymore compared back when I was still buying physical D&D books. But, as I'll probably be paying for it anyway (or not), why can't I express my opinion? Just because it's not what you want to hear? There comes a time when you have to say, what WotC is producing with D&D is not for me anymore, and I've done that with a LOT of D&D 5e (last physical books I bought for D&D were the PHB/DMG/MM 2014). Heck, I'm a big Planescape and Spelljammer fan, but didn't pick up the 5e versions after all the hub-hub. It's that the actual content of some of the books we can actually live with, otherwise I expect we would have moved on to Pathfinder 2e, last year that was a real possibility (I already bought the pdfs for that), but most of the group grew enthiousiastic about D&D 2024 and here we are now... And to date we've been using the Forgotten Realms we know of from 2e/3e with just some online updates to the current timeline, heck even the maps of FR and the cities we visit come from previous editions (Mike Schley).

For many of us, it's a check of "Am I the weird one?". Which is probably the case, but luckily we aren't alone. You can't please everyone, but I think that the current illustration style is due to an attempt to please everyone...

Some things were better before, not everything. Not every change is a positive one. And there are still people who hated 3e and hate 5e, while prefering 2e or even D&D Basic. They often have made 'peace' with that reality decades ago. Some of us are still balancing on the "Do I even want to play this version of D&D?". There are still things that attract us to this version of D&D, just not everything. And a major disconnect between the illustration style and the user, has a huge impact if that player/DM had to physically page through books with art they hate all the time. It's not so bad if you don't 'care' for it, but it's bad if you actively hate it. I think i would be at the point where I would actually would make/print my own version of the books if we were playing in person without a computer/FVTT.

 

[Remathilis]

An unfortunate truth about the internet (and especially Internet forums) is that satisfied people don’t feel the need to talk about their satisfaction, yet unsatisfied people feel the need to voice their displeasure.

Fandoms aren’t all inherently toxic. You just only hear from the toxic lot online because they are the only ones motivated to speak out.

Which is why I was putting the blame squarely on the Internet and the fact that conflict fuels engagement far greater (either naturally or algorithmically) than positivity. It's the reverse of attracting more flys with vinegar than honey.

 

[Zardnaar]

Which is why I was putting the blame squarely on the Internet and the fact that conflict fuels engagement far greater (either naturally or algorithmically) than positivity. It's the reverse of attracting more flys with vinegar than honey.

Well this one here it seems most here don't like it.
Each edition usually has hit and miss art. I usually don't complain to much because of that fact. 5.5 has more hits than dud in say the MM.

The first pictures fairly bad though imho. I've seen better AI art.

There's also a lot of expectation riding on it. No FRCS type book 15+ years and the last one was a dud.

This means the books are probably going to be compared to the 3.0 FRCS. It's cover holds up today and it's generally regarded as one of the best ever (and 3.0 isn't well regarded generally).

 

[TravDoc42]

On a side note, is that supposed to be a green dragon? The antlers are odd. I wonder if that's a spirit dragon?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

WotCs could place crisp $20 bills in the back of each book and people would complain it's not a $50.

Then again, I'm increasingly convinced fandom is a net negative for any given franchise. I've yet to meet a a fandom that isn't overwhelmingly critical of the thing they claim to enjoy. Things are always better before, the franchise is always dying, the current owners are incompetent/greedy/hateful and it's the burden of the True Fans to save the franchise from the casuals who are watering it down.

I think the Internet has solidified what petty, vindictive and unsatisfied people the world is really full of.

Nooo, what they would complaining about is that all the $20 bills were mysteriously missing from the product they just purchased, while the book store staff seem to have have new cars

 

[Corinnguard]

View attachment 412490
On a side note, is that supposed to be a green dragon? The antlers are odd. I wonder if that's a spirit dragon?

It could be a Forest Dragon.

 

[TravDoc42]

It could be a Forest Dragon.

That looks cool! Where is that from?