D&D (2024) New Dungeon Master's Guide Cover Features Venger (From the D&D Cartoons)

The cover of the 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide has been unveiled.... in the Mirror, a mainstream newspaper in the UK.

The cover art features villains (as opposed to the heroes on the Player's Handbook cover revealed last week), with skeletons in the foreground, the classic villains Skylla and Warduke in the mid ground, and then Venger from the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon looming in the background, and right at the back lurks a dracolich.

The DMG will be released November 12th, 2024.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

I guess if the cover is the lone selling point, print it and make a dust jacket for your 2014 printing.
For me (a forever DM), this is the most important release of the trinity because it's the one that needs the most updating from 2014. So far, I need more than what's been previewed.

I initially said it was the only core book I planned to buy

 

[CellarHeroes]

Yeah, this is starting to remind me of the new Top Gun movie. A whole lot of "hey remember that thing" and very little substance.

 

[Lidgar]

Its OK. I get doing a montage of iconic NPCs, but (like the PHB cover) the execution falls flat IMO.

If they wanted to play on nostalgia, I wish they just did modern takes of the 1e covers to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

 

[Remathilis]

Its OK. I get doing a montage of iconic NPCs, but (like the PHB cover) the execution falls flat IMO.

If they wanted to play on nostalgia, I wish they just did modern takes of the 1e covers to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

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They were used for 3.5s PHB2 and DMG 2, and there have been lots of variants of that art. We can move past the idol and the efreet already.

 

[Hatmatter]

Yeah, this is starting to remind me of the new Top Gun movie. A whole lot of "hey remember that thing" and very little substance.

I think I can understand your frustration, Cellar, but it is the cover of a role-playing game book...and Top Gun is designed from conception to be a big-budget action thriller that is a sequel predicated upon its progenitor from the '80s...for how much substance is the audience looking (or even capable of digesting)? Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer still exist. Todd Haynes is still making films. RIP Jean-Luc Godard.

And Lidgar: sure I also have a nostalgic delight in the 1st edition covers; I started with the Basic D&D Moldvay set and quickly transitioned to those...but it is the 50th annviersary of the first printing of the game, not those particular books (or maybe it was those books I started with, then Moldvay, and then back to AD&D as I first started in 1980 and I have read that the Moldvay set was published in 1981...it was a long time ago). I know you know this, but nostalgia for those covers animated some artwork during the 3rd edition era, as is evident in the pages of Art & Arcana. So, at this point, it would be unoriginal nostalgia.

I suppose this thread is likely not a good one for me as I was brought up internalizing "don't judge a book by its cover" and, at this point, we have little else on which to evaluate the merits of the revised DMG.

Cheers, everyone!

 

[Retreater]

If they wanted to play on nostalgia, I wish they just did modern takes of the 1e covers to celebrate the 50th anniversary.

Have you seen the Castles & Crusades tribute covers?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

Have you seen the Castles & Crusades tribute covers?

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I have always liked those.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, this is starting to remind me of the new Top Gun movie. A whole lot of "hey remember that thing" and very little substance.

I haven't seen Maverick, but by all accounts it is a superior movie to the original (not hard, in the case of Top Gun)?

 

[CellarHeroes]

I haven't seen Maverick, but by all accounts it is a superior movie to the original (not hard, in the case of Top Gun)?

The majority of the things I've heard about TG: Maverick (and I also saw it) that people liked had to do with references to the previous movie.

I admit that if I was at a store and saw that cover I would be compelled to pick it up. Then as I'm reaching for it, and realizing what it is, I'd probably let out an audible "Oh Wizards, you almost got me!"
Which I figure is what they're going for.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Boy, they're really leaning into those cartoon characters. Hopefully they do more to put them in the public's eye than dump them on a FreeVee channel you have to know exists to hunt down and then hope is showing them.

For the 50th anniversary, it'd be nice if someone fixed Venger's hat. Or maybe that's a new artifact: The Horn of Venger.