D&D (2024) Here's The New 2024 Player's Handbook Wizard Art

 

[gorice]

D&D has always been wish fulfillment. It just fulfills the wishes of more demographics now.

That's well and good, but what kind of wishes is it fulfilling? 3d6 down the line was not the same fantasy as this.

I think that's one of the fundamental disconnects, here. D&D fantasy is evolving (or has evolved) into something where naturalism isn't welcome, and player characters are superheroic. Traditionally, the trope with D&D wizards is that they sacrifice everything else for their power. They're physically weak, usually elderly, and not especially attractive (unless they're women -- a bit of sexism this art reinforces rather than subverts).

Now the iconic wizard looks like a typical floaty, glowy superhero, right down to the silly outfit and perfect figure. Does she look like she's ever had to sacrifice anything for her power -- aside from skipping meals, perhaps?

I know I'm just an old man yelling at clouds, but I really dislike this shift: aesthetically; because of the relationship with the fiction it implies for play; and because it betokens a fantasy of unlimited, perpetual, consequence-free power and beauty which I think is fundamentally unhealthy.

 

[Parmandur]

D&D fantasy is evolving (or has evolved) into something where naturalism isn't welcome, and player characters are superheroic.

Literally the very first D&D rulebooks used art lifted from Marvel comics, particularly Thor and Dr. Strange.

D&D has always been "superheroic" and never, ever been "naturalistic" in particular.

 

[Reynard]

That's well and good, but what kind of wishes is it fulfilling? 3d6 down the line was not the same fantasy as this.

I think that's one of the fundamental disconnects, here. D&D fantasy is evolving (or has evolved) into something where naturalism isn't welcome, and player characters are superheroic. Traditionally, the trope with D&D wizards is that they sacrifice everything else for their power. They're physically weak, usually elderly, and not especially attractive (unless they're women -- a bit of sexism this art reinforces rather than subverts).

Now the iconic wizard looks like a typical floaty, glowy superhero, right down to the silly outfit and perfect figure. Does she look like she's ever had to sacrifice anything for her power -- aside from skipping meals, perhaps?

I know I'm just an old man yelling at clouds, but I really dislike this shift: aesthetically; because of the relationship with the fiction it implies for play; and because it betokens a fantasy of unlimited, perpetual, consequence-free power and beauty which I think is fundamentally unhealthy.

The shift has been happening since 1974. It isn't sudden.

 

[Shardstone]

I run several games right now and most of my games are split between the genders evenly. I asked the women what they thought of this new piece of art and they essentially said they love how badass she looks. Seems like her being "sexed up" isn't a problem that I'm encountering with the would-be aggrieved demographic. YMMV.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think that's one of the fundamental disconnects, here. D&D fantasy is evolving (or has evolved) into something where naturalism isn't welcome, and player characters are superheroic. Traditionally, the trope with D&D wizards is that they sacrifice everything else for their power. They're physically weak, usually elderly, and not especially attractive (unless they're women -- a bit of sexism this art reinforces rather than subverts).

When would you say all of this was more than 50% true for D&D, when did it flip over from being the "majority" view, to the minority view?

Because I would say, as someone who started running AD&D 2E in 1989, it was certainly before that date.

Wizards were, very clearly not "elderly", because you rolled for age, and you were very young. Further, you couldn't (AFAICR) even choose to start out old despite the stat bonuses it would give you - that wasn't something allowed for or even really hinted at - otherwise every Wizard/Mage/Magic-User would have!

That's well and good, but what kind of wishes is it fulfilling? 3d6 down the line was not the same fantasy as this.

Again, when was the last time 3d6 Down The Line "the norm" for character creation? It was definitely not the case by say, 1993, when I got on the internet. Nor was it the case with literally any group I played with before that. 4d6 Drop The Lowest, Arrange To Taste was immediately the norm - not only did the Canadian woman who taught me to play 2E suggest that, but every group I came across, all of them (and it was at least 7 or 8 before 1993), were either using that, a close variant of that (usually allowing some re-rolls or point-shifting), or a Monty Haul-type system where they got ridiculous stats.

Looking online, in the 1990s, absolutely no-one said they used 3d6 Down The Line - even the people who played the trad-est sounding games didn't use it (in fact they often used odd points-based homebrew methods, or so they self-reported).

So you're acting like D&D is "evolving", but this evolution you're complaining about had taken place almost completely by the early 1990s.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I run several games right now and most of my games are split between the genders evenly. I asked the women what they thought of this new piece of art and they essentially said they love how badass she looks. Seems like her being "sexed up" isn't a problem that I'm encountering with the would-be aggrieved demographic. YMMV.

On the general standards of "sexing up" in the popular media, that is not "sexed up" in any meaningful sense.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I run several games right now and most of my games are split between the genders evenly. I asked the women what they thought of this new piece of art and they essentially said they love how badass she looks. Seems like her being "sexed up" isn't a problem that I'm encountering with the would-be aggrieved demographic. YMMV.

Yeah there's a big difference between fashion-hot or a sexy in a way a lot of women see in themselves and the "cheesecake hot" that was very frequent in early editions. You also sometimes get male artists just drawing something which isn't even hot but looks so uncomfortable or misunderstands female anatomy so much that women are annoyed by it. I don't expect either to be the case here. I think the bustier is a little ill-considered but not in an excessively sexy way, just in a "looks a bit weird" way.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

On the general standards of "sexing up" in the popular media, that is not "sexed up" in any meaningful sense.

Especially compared to early D&D depictions of female characters, even more so for sorceresses/witches.

 

[occam]

OTOH, they've sexed her up way too much. As others have said, the superhero/thirst trap/wish fulfillment stuff is completely over the top. Personally, I find it grotesque.

What are you talking about? You would find a woman dressed like that "grotesque"? Maybe she isn't the problem.

 

[Reynard]

Especially compared to early D&D depictions of female characters, even more so for sorceresses/witches.

It's almost like D&D came out of an inherently misogynistic subgenre of fantasy.