D&D General How do you picture your D&D game in your mind?

[R_J_K75]

damn like it must take you forever to get dressed.

I always think the same thing when I see pictures of Nikki Sixx, Steven Tyler, Slash, Axl Rose, et al. Its like youre in your 60s and 70s, time to ditch the eye liner, bracelets, bandanas, scarves, chaps, necklaces, sunglasses, etc. You look ridiculous.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I always think the same thing when I see pictures of Nikki Sixx, Steven Tyler, Slash, Axl Rose, et al. Its like youre in your 60s and 70s, time to ditch the eye liner, bracelets, bandanas, scarves, chaps, necklaces, sunglasses, etc. You look ridiculous.

once I hit that age its sweatpants and t-shirts till I die

 

[R_J_K75]

once I hit that age its sweatpants and t-shirts till I die

Im only 47; already there

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

My introduction to D&D was in the 3e/3.5e era, and the art from that time has a heavy influence on my mental picture of the game.

"I pick their pocket!"

"OK, roll a d100 to see if you find the right one."

 

[DND_Reborn]

First option--all the way.

 

[Mad_Jack]

"I pick their pocket!"

"OK, roll a d100 to see if you find the right one."

"The guards search your pockets..."
"Just the 36 visible ones, the 27 hidden ones, or the six extradimensional ones?"

 

[aco175]

I suck at theatre of the mind, so I'm more like this.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'm interested to see what art style supersedes the "pink-purple steampunk" one, by the way. It's hard to even guess at the moment.

Wild shot in the dark: "medieval-futurist" sleek looks (taking a leaf from concepts like afrofuturism.) Stuff that is a bit too perfectly-engineered. The costume equivalent of a manuscript illuminated by a laser printer. Folding in some of the tail end of the previous style (e.g. neon-light colors, generally from magical sources rather than tech ones; slightly oversized weapons, so you can see more of the filigree etc.; not quite "anime hair" stuff, but a wider spectrum of skin, eye, and hair colors than is natural or could have been produced in medieval times), but shifting to a more streamlined, less bulky/cluttered look. Fewer spikes and accoutrements, even for the "savage" (non-/pre-civic society) characters, who will be denoted with other things like exotic animal furs, stuff made from skulls or bones, or large areas of the body left uncovered (vs. the mostly head-to-toe coverings of characters from civic societies.)

 

[Charlaquin]

It's a very overwrought and hyper-dramatic style that Wayne Reynolds uses. You've got huge, almost excessive detail, heavy, heavy anime influences (I mean one of the guys in that picture is Vampire Hunter D but with a bow), combined with Western comics influences, specifically 2000AD, which he used to work on, and was clearly influenced by the other artists there. It's definitely not at all realistic, so the idea that it's accurately depicting a D&D character is pretty far-fetched unless they have multiple costume managers (aka squires) following them around and helping them get dressed.

Sorry, if I gave the impression that realism had anything to do with why I like the aesthetic (which is not exclusively the domain of Wayne Reynolds, though his work, particularly on Pathfinder does exemplify it), I’ve miscommunicated. The gear D&D characters tend to carry is itself highly unrealistic, and I find something very satisfying about the effort to actually depict it all.

As an aside, I get a similar satisfaction from Mass Effect, especially the first game, because of how the guns fold up so they can all fit on the character’s body, even if you’re using one of every type. They’re incredibly unrealistic designs, but I like that they actually show all the crap the character is supposed to be carrying despite its lack of realism.

On the other hand, you can see the realistic roots before it's taken to this excessive place if you look at British fantasy art in the 1980s and earlier 1990s. There's a sort of hint of this gear-fetishism even in stuff like Lone Wolf - and it took a while for Reynolds to get there - his earlier work was less wild.

Gear-fetishism is a pretty good term for it But, yeah, I like the excessiveness. There’s certainly a point where it can get to be too much, but for me it takes a lot to get to that point.

That said, it's definitely more extreme in terms of how complex and funky their gear and outfits are than both the previous generation of fantasy art's armour, and the following one, the pink-and-purple "steampunk" one we have now. Even the art of stuff like FFXIV and WoW features less ornamentation typically (FFXIV is somewhat closer to Reynold's Pathfinder work than WoW is, I'd personally say).

Yeah, I’d agree that Final Fantasy, basically from VII on, has a similar vibe going on. Tends to have more tech than I go for in D&D, but it’s definitely playing in the same aesthetic space. I’ve never actually played any Final Fantasy, but I do quite like the aesthetics.

 

[Charlaquin]

"I pick their pocket!"

"OK, roll a d100 to see if you find the right one."

Accurate, although more so of Pathfinder’s art than of D&D 3.X’s. The 3e era art certainly has shades of that “gear fetishism” as @Ruin Explorer aptly described it, but it was much more subdued than Pathfinder’s style would go on to be, with distinctly less anime influence. It’s also closer to how I visualize D&D than Pathfinder is.