steeldragons
Steeliest of the dragons
So I'm signing a lease tomorrow for my new place stateside. As a gift to myself, a copy of the 5e PHB seemed appropriate. The first D&D book since TSR owned the company, a quite bright Sunday afternoon ahead of me and a vanilla shake...life is good.
To start with some cursory observations...I, literally, picked it up about 10 minutes ago and have only paged through as far as the race section.
Having seen the complaints about the pages/inking, I have to say, mine are a bit wavy when looking at the book closed, but are fine open. I've not noticed (and looked carefully before buying) any fading or smeared ink. So that's a good thing.
The cover image: I'm still convinced, at first glance, this is a Frost giant. Yes, I know, it is officially not. And the fiery background and hellhounds help with that. But there is white dragon cape the grey -which my eyes are parsing with blue in there- skin, the decidedly WHITE beard, and the celtic-ish tattooing (a very nice touch, but can be taken as norse-ish in their design)...and, I just realized and assume this lent to my initial perception, the woman attacking the giant is dressed in FURS! If she's assaulting a fire giant, in his lair, why in the nine hells is she all wrapped up in furs?! So, yeah...coulda done a better job with making it a "fire giant" since that is what they are claiming it is supposed to be.
Interior/layout observations: as a layout professional, by and large, I love the interior pages I've seen so far. Good fonts. Clear headers. Nice array of art placed, as far as I have currently seen, in appropriate places. I, personally, lean toward full justification...but the jagged right edge compliments the jagged/water-colored [looking] fading boundaries of a lot of the art...and I can only suppose it must have been deliberate for that reason. Also, I expect full justification is nigh impossible with stat blocks/crunchy bits and such without weird spaces all over. So, all in all, even if I would have justified the text portions, really really nice job.
Now, two things, which I pretty much already knew from other threads, but had not seen the actual offenders:
1: The halfling racial art is far FAR worse than I was imagining. Oh. My. Gods. It's horrifying and whoever made the design decision for this halfling design needs to be run out of town on a rail.
2: and I REALLY can't believe there hasn't been more comments/outrage about this...Drizzt (or any drow, for that matter) as the default/iconic/example ELF character?!?!?!!! ARE YOU FRAGGIN' KIDDING ME!!!! I had seen that he was in as the "iconic" elf and I thought, "Surely they mean next to the stats/block about the Drow elf subrace....or presented next to a High elf to show the diversity...Makes sense he would be there." But NO. the image presented, for the whole of those entering the D&D world/game for the first time are shown DRIZZT as the sample ELF!!!! I am absolutely appalled. Again, and maybe it's the same guy, run 'em out on a rail. Take away their D&D member card. Melt their dice. Abso-frikkin-lutely AWFUL!
[optional 3: not loving the gnome iconic either, but it's passable.
The bottom line for all three of these, of course, is that they don't actually matter. My elves, halflings and gnomes will look exactly like I have always pictured them in my game world.]
That's all I have for now...gonna dive in and see what's in the deep end of the pool. Overall, feeling very good about it and looking forward to a quiet read through.
Happy Sunday all.
To start with some cursory observations...I, literally, picked it up about 10 minutes ago and have only paged through as far as the race section.
Having seen the complaints about the pages/inking, I have to say, mine are a bit wavy when looking at the book closed, but are fine open. I've not noticed (and looked carefully before buying) any fading or smeared ink. So that's a good thing.
The cover image: I'm still convinced, at first glance, this is a Frost giant. Yes, I know, it is officially not. And the fiery background and hellhounds help with that. But there is white dragon cape the grey -which my eyes are parsing with blue in there- skin, the decidedly WHITE beard, and the celtic-ish tattooing (a very nice touch, but can be taken as norse-ish in their design)...and, I just realized and assume this lent to my initial perception, the woman attacking the giant is dressed in FURS! If she's assaulting a fire giant, in his lair, why in the nine hells is she all wrapped up in furs?! So, yeah...coulda done a better job with making it a "fire giant" since that is what they are claiming it is supposed to be.
Interior/layout observations: as a layout professional, by and large, I love the interior pages I've seen so far. Good fonts. Clear headers. Nice array of art placed, as far as I have currently seen, in appropriate places. I, personally, lean toward full justification...but the jagged right edge compliments the jagged/water-colored [looking] fading boundaries of a lot of the art...and I can only suppose it must have been deliberate for that reason. Also, I expect full justification is nigh impossible with stat blocks/crunchy bits and such without weird spaces all over. So, all in all, even if I would have justified the text portions, really really nice job.
Now, two things, which I pretty much already knew from other threads, but had not seen the actual offenders:
1: The halfling racial art is far FAR worse than I was imagining. Oh. My. Gods. It's horrifying and whoever made the design decision for this halfling design needs to be run out of town on a rail.
2: and I REALLY can't believe there hasn't been more comments/outrage about this...Drizzt (or any drow, for that matter) as the default/iconic/example ELF character?!?!?!!! ARE YOU FRAGGIN' KIDDING ME!!!! I had seen that he was in as the "iconic" elf and I thought, "Surely they mean next to the stats/block about the Drow elf subrace....or presented next to a High elf to show the diversity...Makes sense he would be there." But NO. the image presented, for the whole of those entering the D&D world/game for the first time are shown DRIZZT as the sample ELF!!!! I am absolutely appalled. Again, and maybe it's the same guy, run 'em out on a rail. Take away their D&D member card. Melt their dice. Abso-frikkin-lutely AWFUL!
[optional 3: not loving the gnome iconic either, but it's passable.
The bottom line for all three of these, of course, is that they don't actually matter. My elves, halflings and gnomes will look exactly like I have always pictured them in my game world.]
That's all I have for now...gonna dive in and see what's in the deep end of the pool. Overall, feeling very good about it and looking forward to a quiet read through.
Happy Sunday all.
