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

 

[ezo]

No, they really would.

I highly doubt it, but again, just my opinion. Perhaps where you live, the people you meet, etc. would be different.

Edit: Oh, I have heard of Caroline, but never seen it nor know anything about it. Does it relate to wizards?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

To be fair, I'm not sure what the obvious Gaiman and Riordan Wizards are though.

I’m not sure about Gaiman, but there are a couple type of “Wizards”/Magicians in the Riordanverse. The first and main type are the Magicians, people descended from Ancient Egyptian magicians that use hieroglyphs and godly powers to do magic. The other type are children of Hekate and other special demigods, who focus more on illusion/enchantment magic and using the Mist (magical barrier that prevents mortals from seeing supernatural stuff) to manipulate reality. There’s also Norse runecarvers, that use Norse runes engraved in runestones to channel magic. But magicians don’t really exist in the original Percy Jackson series, the Egyptian, Norse, and other magicians are in the spin-off and sequel series.

 

[Clint_L]

I mean, who cares what the archetypal wizard looks like? The art should represent what D&D wizards look like. Which is more likely to be Harry Potter or Hermione than Dumbledore. Or an attractive Elf or Tiefling.

This art looks a lot more like what D&D wizards look like than Gandalf does, according to my miniatures collection. And all the character portraits from my DDB players.

 

[Azzy]

How can anyone not bring up Wizards of Waverly Place?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

How can anyone not bring up Wizards of Waverly Place?

Yes, exactly. The archetypical wizards for me growing up were the ones from Harry Potter and that show. I didn’t read/watch Lord of the Rings until I was in High School.

 

[Autumnal]

@ezo Many of the people whose names you don’t recognize have sold hundreds of thousands or millions of copies, routinely dominate New York Times lists, win Hugo’s, Nebulas, and such and have been writing for decades. Let’s take that overall list for career start dates.

George R.R. Martin: 1970; 1996 for A Game of Thrones
Terry Pratchett: 1971
Stephen King: 1974; 1982 for The Dark ToweeEoin Colfe
Neil Gaiman: 1984
Robin Hobb (Megan Lindholm): 1983
Robert Jordan: 1990
Susanna Clarke: 1996
Rick Riordan: 1997; 2008 for Percy Jackson
J.K. Rowling: 1997
Jonathan Stroud: 1997
Eoin Colfer: 1998
Jacqueline Carey: 2001
Christopher Paolini: 2002 (he’s forty?!? Dear God, I’m old…)
Brandon Sanderson: 2005 (among other things, the first author to have multiple multi-million-dollar crowdfunding campaigns)
Joe Abercrombie: 2006
Scott Lynch: 2006
Naomi Novak: 2006
Cassandra Clare: 2007
Patrick Rothfuss: 2007 (and a fizzle to match Game of Thrones but that’s another story)
Peter V. Brett: 2008
Kristin Cashore: 2008
Brent Weeks: 2008
Erin Morganstern: 2011

Not a bad spread, that. And the second 50 entries would fill in gaps, and 101-200 more. One thing to note is a bunch of the most popular authors work in YA, in addition to adult fantasy or exclusively, and someone in my cohort (born 1965j is unlikely to know anything about unless they have fantasy-reading kids or for some reason make a deliberate effort to keep up with the field. The same is true for what they’re calling “romantasy” these days. All of which is to say that the universe of fantasy as read by someone who’s at my level of grizzled grognardishness is vastly smaller than the universe of fantasy as read by other people who may well also play D&D and have well-informed opinions about what wizards should look like.

Okay, I did have fun doing this research, and learned some interesting things doing it,but now my brain is going to take a vacation while I get some supper.

 

[gban007]

....

The Sandman (comic book) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

American Gods (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Neil Gaiman - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Sandman in particular (to me) is a big deal.

Stardust book and movie loosely based on book (both great though), Doctor Who episode, Good Omens with Terry Pratchett, both book and now new series based off book. Maybe I'm biased towards English authors, but Gaiman seems up there with Pratchett for renown as such.

 

[Cadence]

Stardust book and movie loosely based on book (both great though), Doctor Who episode, Good Omens with Terry Pratchett, both book and now new series based off book. Maybe I'm biased towards English authors, but Gaiman seems up there with Pratchett for renown as such.

I confess to not having read either of these:

"He is the first author to win both the Newbery and the Carnegie medals for the same work, The Graveyard Book (2008). In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards. It was later adapted into a critically acclaimed stage play at the Royal National Theatre in London."

And I didn't know:

"2023 Time’s 100 most influential people in the world list"

Although, to be fair, that doesn't feel like the thing that would have been back when magazines were a thing.

 

[nyvinter]

Notice how in old-school D&D the most important stats are Strength and Intelligence, but in modern D&D the most important stats are Dexterity and Charisma? I won’t go so far as to claim that that’s because the game is played more by theater kids than nerds now. But it is an interesting parallel.

Honestly, as other have said it was a a slow shift building up. But my theory is that the big push happened when the favoured world interaction shifted away from dungeon crawls towards more urban sandbox campaigns. Deception and slight of hand > brute force and reading scrolls.

Nerd/theatre kid/jock has nothing to do with it unless it's a movie made about the phenomenon that's set in a fictional 1980s.

 

[Azzy]

Okay, I did have fun doing this research, and learned some interesting things doing it,but now my brain is going to take a vacation while I get some supper.

Eat well, good sir.