Excerpts from Worlds and Monsters at Wizards

[Ander00]

More landscapes/complete scenes is something I've often missed in 3E, and I found a lot of the character illustrations to be anything but inspiring. I am glad that it seems we'll be getting some more evocative artwork from now on, though I have yet to see World's & Monsters for myself.


cheers

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I suspect this excerpt will get a few more people interested in picking up W&M. I know some people have some strong feelings about not paying for previews, but this really is a very nice art/essay book about D&D.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If art reliably stays at that level of quality throughout the rest of the books 4e could be seize the title for best RPG art ever.

Whilst I missed landscape art in D&D too, I think that's well into the territory of hyperbole, if you're basing it just on the art in those .pdfs (if you've actually got the book, of course, you may be justified).

I mean, the WAR picture of the skinny female adventurer, even with her dodgy platform-plate shoes, is really grade A+, and the Silver Dragon, whilst I think the Dragon itself is ugly (like it has an ugly face), is a superb piece, certainly high grade.

The rest though? The landscape pieces really, to me, as someone who does computer art, look very "computerised" in a way that drains away some of their power for me, and indeed the "rift to the elemental tempest" one is just kind of "meh". By typical RPG art standards it's good. By almost any other art standards? It's mediocre. The Feywild picture is more interesting, but kind of lacks a sense of scale, for my money.

The Bar-Igua and Dryad pics just look kinda bad to me. The perspective is wrong (I mean, from an objective pov), and they look very flat. Perhaps they're just a particular stage of a piece of work, and will look better later, but right now? C+.

So, if most things are up to the art quality in the first .pdf, you may be right. Otherwise it's just going to be good. I am very pleased to see that they're leaving "figure w/no or vague background" behind, because that was getting increasingly dull (and isn't very D&D - all the most memorable D&D pieces, I think, are "scenes" or vignettes, not just some guy posing).

I like pretty much everything they say in the text. Not a whole lot to say there, except that, like Matt Black I immediately thought "Uh, what? No." at this:

A human-populated empire that resembles ancient Egypt, but with mummies in control, is less interesting than a realm ruled by salamanders, lizardfolk, or even dwarves.

Definately not guys, not at all. Salamanders have to be one of the dullest monsters in D&D history. Lizardfolk aren't exactly exciting. Dwarves are, well, dwarves. Yawn.

Of course, it's an unclear statement. If they mean an ancient-egypt-style realm with Lizardfolk or Dwarves in charge, that COULD be interesting. That's not how I read it, though (due to "a realm" rather than "that realm").

Still, if they're not making a world, then it's unlikely to impact me much.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

Whilst I missed landscape art in D&D too, I think that's well into the territory of hyperbole, if you're basing it just on the art in those .pdfs (if you've actually got the book, of course, you may be justified).

I made sure to look through the entirety of both preview books at the store. I'm one of those people who is very against paying for promotional material, and they tempted even me. Hell I'm still tempted to go back and get them just for the art even though I don't expect to convert to 4e. There are a few that are off or not to the highest standards but they're full of really great art. Really the only thing I can complain about is that Reynolds can't do faces, the rest of his work is beautiful but his faces are just wrong. There was the image with a pair of re-used objects placed too close together, but it was an isolated incident.

 

[IanB]

The bar-lgura and dryad pictures are concept art for D&D minis sculpts from the last set, if I'm remembering right.

 

[amethal]

Interesting stuff. Its nice to get the info first hand for once, since I can't justify spending my limited gaming budget on preview books when there are so many great products out there that I don't yet own.

The feywild looks like a great adventure location, and the description of the feywild's underdark was very evocative.

I particularly liked the information about how they are trying to distinguish devils from demons, but I disagree with some of their conclusions.

The concept of demons as forces of primal, bestial evil who deep down like nothing better than to wade into hand to hand and smash their foes into a bloody pulp is great.

I'm not so sure about the "demons are uninterested in personal power" bit though.

One of the central themes of the Abyss has always been the rivalry between the various demon lords. I think the game loses something if Orcus and Grazz't aren't constantly vying to take Demogorgon's title of biggest badass in the Abyss.

I also feel there's room in the game for the yugoloths to be a force of evil in their own right, rather than just making them a group of slightly eccentric demons. There seems to be a fair bit of yugoloth love at ENWorld, and it would have been nice if the designers had felt able to cater for it. Instead we have a change which nobody particularly wanted and a small but significant number of people are going to hate.

And if erinyes and succubus are too similar (which is a matter of opinion) then I'd rather the designers had put some thought into making them different rather than simply eliminating the erinyes.

To end on an irrational note, the designers deciding to make dragons "cooler" in fourth edition really wound me up. I happen to think D&D dragons have always been pretty darn cool.

 

[pukunui]

I'm not so sure about the "demons are uninterested in personal power" bit though.

I think this is more a reference to your "typical" demon. The Demon Lords are all still there and are still quite intelligent ... there's some great fluff about how Orcus is obsessed with finding the Raven Queen's abandoned Dominion in the Astral Sea in hopes that he'll be able to uncover her true name and thus use it to destroy her so he can become the lord of the Shadowfell, etc etc. That sounds like a "demon interested in personal power" to me. So I wouldn't worry too much about that.

 

[Belphanior]

To end on an irrational note, the designers deciding to make dragons "cooler" in fourth edition really wound me up. I happen to think D&D dragons have always been pretty darn cool.

They've also been a pain to use. First you must learn the generic dragon rules (all their attack types, frightful presence, default immunities, etc.). Then you had to determine the unique spells, skills, and feats the individual dragon has.

By this point you've probably you've probably spent half an hour, assuming you haven't decided to alter its ability scores from the default and you're not cutting corners by conveniently "forgetting" some details. And that's just too much time for a single critter if you ask me, unless we're talking about a recurring villain that will harry the PCs for many game sessions to come.

I'm sure 4e will include rules for creating that one unique draconic villain. But nine out of ten times you just want a big lizard in your D&D to scare your players with, and that shouldn't have to take so long.

So, cool? Yes but only if we're talking about how they look and what imagery they conjure. In actual practice they're more of a bother.

All IMO

 

[pukunui]

So, cool? Yes but only if we're talking about how they look and what imagery they conjure. In actual practice they're more of a bother.

I concur. I don't think that the designers necessarily sat down and said, "OK, dragons aren't cool enough. What can we do to make them cooler?" I think they sat down and said, "OK, dragons are pretty cool creatures, on paper at least, but they're really quite a pain in the butt to actually use in the game, which means that they're not all that fun. How can we make them easier to use and ultimately more fun, both for DMs and players?"

I think the 4e dragons are going to seriously kick butt. They're going to be much easier for a DM to run and much scarier for a player to face, which all adds up to being "cooler", if you ask me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I made sure to look through the entirety of both preview books at the store. I'm one of those people who is very against paying for promotional material, and they tempted even me. Hell I'm still tempted to go back and get them just for the art even though I don't expect to convert to 4e. There are a few that are off or not to the highest standards but they're full of really great art. Really the only thing I can complain about is that Reynolds can't do faces, the rest of his work is beautiful but his faces are just wrong. There was the image with a pair of re-used objects placed too close together, but it was an isolated incident.

Interesting, I'll have to try and get a look at them myself.

The bar-lgura and dryad pictures are concept art for D&D minis sculpts from the last set, if I'm remembering right.

That'd explain why they look so odd. Hopefully that art doesn't make it into any of the other books.