D&D General D&D: Literally Don't Understand This
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The Firebird
Commoner
This post, and @Levistus's_Leviathan's, make a similar error...they assume that if someone is complaining about the new artwork they are ok with everything else (Ravenloft, Eberron, Ravnica) that has been published and therefore their position is incoherent. Basically, characterizing the complaints as if they are about this one specific thing and therefore silly and wrong rather than part of a more cohesive viewpoint.
For example, many people that dislike the new direction would also not be fans of other departures from the medieval. And I've talked about this point a few times, but imo the issue underlying the complaint is how easy it is to find games that fit your preference. If you meet some strangers and say "let's play d&d", what is everyone imagining? Is it at all similar?
The converse of a wider variety of games being possible is that the brand identity is less clearly defined. This is unavoidable.
You can respond to this tradeoff in many different ways--and obviously by keeping the brand identity narrow, you are going to make some people who may want to play d&d feel less interested. But I think it is important to note it is a real tradeoff, and people who feel frustrated as a result are not just upset because they are unreasonable people.
(Edit to add, to be more charitable to @Umbran. The fantasy spaceship goodness has coherence with respect to genre from the pulps. I think it is possible to like that kind of genre in d&d without wanting other genres...the ask here is probably as much about genre as historical accuracy).
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Oh, sorry. Gonna poke a hole in this one... big enough to fly a spaceship through.
In Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel, the titular Radiant Citadel connects to 27 different civilizations. The adventure presents connections to 13 of them. One of them has high heels. This does not imply that high heels are present as a common everyday thing throughout the multiverse, or something - one fantasy culture out of dozens has them
In Expedition to the Barrier Peaks, there's a spaceship. Are you going to try to get us to swallow the assertion that whoever built it never built any others? The builders made this one, it crashed, and they said, "Welp. I guess that's it. We didn't make any before that, and we'll not be making any ever again,"? If not, then we have the implication that, in the multiverse, there's one culture out of dozens that has spaceships.
Nobody's asking anyone to actually like the high heels, btw.
We are asking folks to accept that one adventure, out of... scores? hundreds? ... can have them without it being a Big Freakin' Deal.
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Thommy H-H
Hero
Boy, do I have bad news for some of you about the existing prevelance of high heels in fantasy art! At least these ones aren't built into a suit of plate armour somehow. I wonder what it is about this particular picture though that has certain people instinctively deciding it isn't "real D&D"? I guess, like the PHB Wizard and her glasses that provoked similar amounts of circular debate, it will have to remain a mystery.
Now I have the urge to go back and add articles of clothing to my tech timeline at:
D&D General - Technology in D&D, the IRL Timeline, and Pausing It.
Likely a boy's shoe, French or English, mid-17th Century (Bata Shoe museum)
The museum notes: "The heel was not a European invention, instead it originated in Western Asia centuries ago for horseback riding before Europeans adopted it at the end of the 16th century. By [the mid-17th century], heels for men and heels for women had become quite different. Men's fashion increasingly favoured the sturdy 'Polony' heel made of stacked leather, while women's shoes tended [to] feature heels made of leather-covered wood whittled into more sinuous shapes."
1690-1700 France (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
Some other sites note that Catherine de Medici reportedly wore high-healed (not platform) shoes to her wedding in 1533. (Internet is slow/spotty this morning, and so a deep dive for a more modern looking old Persian example is thwarting me).
Other technology from the 1600s (which brings us these examples of fashionable heels) included: flintlocks, newspapers, pendulum clocks, and telescopes. The piano was around 1700. Going back just a bit, tech that came around in the 1500s included common use of Arabic numerals in Europe, the galleon, harpsichords, and violins.
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This is the cover of GDQ1-7 Queen of the Spiders, 1986.
Purple prose is basically a foundational trope for Swords & Sorcery...
Remathilis
Legend
So high heels in D&D is an invention of the drow. Makes sense since that were both matriarchal and a masochistic society.
Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
And looking awesome is one of their ideals.
Remathilis
Legend
Brings be meaning to "slay queen"
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