D&D 5E Opening Page of the PHB

[Unwise]

Hmm, are you ok today mate?

My rambling musings were unclear. I agree the vacant and bored look on his face is out of place. I find it uninspiring, out of place and a bit creepy.

That being said, I like the goblins, the clothing style (inapproriate darkness aside) and general styling of the character. It makes me hopeful of seeing some really interesting characters in the rest of the books.

I could swear I have seen those exact goblins before, the falling one in particular I could swear has been cut and pasted into the picture from another one. It's bugging me not remembering.

 

[evileeyore]

I have no experience with Conan. I don't care about Conan. Conan is about as relevant to me as gas-lamps and horse-drawn carriages: an interesting historical anecdote, and nothing more.

You are dead to me!

Alternate post:

Mumble-grumble kids these days not respectin their elders! Why in my day we drove our enemies before us, saw them off our lawn, and shook our canes at them!

 

[pemerton]

I like the picture, and agree that it has Conanesque/S&S resonances.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

The picture is great on a number of levels.

1) It looks pretty badass. Period.

2) Opening the PHB with diversity (in this case a dark-skinned black human with dreads) is awesome.

3) Especially as said human seems to be a Ranger, but is far from the usual Aragorn or Forest Elf stereotypes.

4) General framing seems pretty rocking, too, like he's tearing through the page.

5) Blood! Makes the whole thing a bit scarier and more real.

I'm not so sure about the spikey-muscle-goblins, but I suppose we will have to live with those for this edition.

Agree completely with [MENTION=6683099]dd.stevenson[/MENTION] re: expression - it's standard "martial arts face" (the Matrix is particularly full of this if people want examples, but it happens in most movies with much fighting in).

 

[delericho]

A very nice piece. Oddly, it reminds me an awful lot of the start of chapter pieces in the Firefly RPG. Which isn't a bad thing.

 

[CrusaderX]

It's OK. I don't care about a person's skin color, so the Ranger dude doesn't really impress me. I think the goblins are the best part of the piece. I really like their new look.

 

[I'm A Banana]

There's nothing else going on here: bored guy, dying gobbos.

I see where you're coming from there, but that's part of what makes it fun for me.

The dude is a power fantasy, like most fantasy artwork, looking empowered and in control and unflappable -- he's a consummate badass, killin' gobbos without breakin' a sweat.

As the inside cover pic for a book all about the cool things your characters can do, the rules that will help you realize that power fantasy in play, I think that's a relevant image.

That can get dull if that's all you see, but I think it's fine in context here. Hopefully they're not all like this -- and given the other 5e artwork, I don't believe they will be. Most 5e artwork so far has shown PC's on the losing side, or monsters.

 

[Nebulous]

really awesome piece of art, i love it.

 

[Imaro]

I like the pic... it has a very strong sword and sorcery vibe and gets us out of the D&D only equates to medieval Europe mindset from the 1st page, which IMO is nothing but a good thing.

 

[Alessandro Guarita]

This is image is so badass that I'm using it a facebook cover.