Why I feel so abysmally let down by the "Ravnica" news...

[solamon77]

Honestly, if be surprised if we ever got a reboot of Planescape. That setting was such a passion project for the people who created it and those people don't work for the company anymore.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My view is the opposite. Personally, I think a lot of the 5e art looks like garbage, where as the art from Pathfinder looks great. Certain artists in 3rd edition that WotC employed I absolutely hated (Crabapple and England), but there was a bit of good art. I liked a lot of the art in both editions of AD&D, but like billd91 said, some of that art looked cheap and bad. My opinion is that Pathfinder's art has been 90% awesome, where as the non-landscape art for 5e looks like crap. Most notably: the Halflings in the PHB, and the various giants in the MM.

All art is subjective and tied to opinions.

That being said, some of the artwork for 5e monsters is so much better than previous art, in my opinion.

Bodaks are a big one for me. I remember seeing bodaks in 3.5 and thinking "Why are there weird aliens here" and they never seemed scary to me, just Grey's with bigger bodies. 5e Bodaks though? Those things are creepy and cool and I love them.

I think I also prefer this editions dragons, even though frankly the best dragon art is never the DnD dragon art.

 

[Zardnaar]

Good art is in the eye of the beholder. The quality of the art from AD&D, both 1e and 2e, was uneven and, in many cases, pretty cheap-looking. You may not have like the style of later editions, but I'd say that the overall consistency improved considerably over the years from TSR's earlier days to now. That may mean that, if you don't like the style, its consistency may work against it - in your eyes.

More the full colour stuff once Easly and Elmore jumped on board. Early stuff and some of the B/W stuff was terrible. 3E was more consistent did have some nice pieces though like the 3.5 Draconomicon I just rememebr things like the Manual of the Planes and Epic level covers vs something like the 2E PHB which while not great relative to some other art from that er was stiil better IMHO.

 

[Hussar]

Good grief. 3/3.5 e had what? 10 hardcover, full color books per year? There's a mountain of 3e art and a lot of it is fantastic. I've never understood the nostalgia glasses that people insist on wearing when looking at older stuff.

I'll stack the 3.5 Tome of Magic art vs pretty much anything published before that. That is one gorgeous book.

 

[Zardnaar]

Good grief. 3/3.5 e had what? 10 hardcover, full color books per year? There's a mountain of 3e art and a lot of it is fantastic. I've never understood the nostalgia glasses that people insist on wearing when looking at older stuff.

I'll stack the 3.5 Tome of Magic art vs pretty much anything published before that. That is one gorgeous book.

I have 60 AD&D books and around 80 3.x books on the shelf. When I think of meh to bad 3.X art I mean things like the Complete series, the class books, Epic Level Handboook, even the 3.0 core books.

The best 3.x art is the monster books like Draconomicon etc. I still find the interior full page AD&D 2E colour art better than most of the 3.X stuff.

My dislike of Pathfinder art is mostly the WAR stuff- core rule, Pathfinder II, the Ultimate series ettc a lot of the APs have very nice covers. I also don't like the WAR 4E covers and most of his stuff in 3.X as well altough I don't mind his The Dragon 4E Darksun cover that is not to bad.

Overall the 5E books are the best looking and most consistent but I still love the best of the AD&D era say mid 80's to mid 90's type stuff which I find better than the best of most f the following editions although 5E covers do give them a good run for the money like XGtE.

 

[oreofox]

All art is subjective and tied to opinions.

That being said, some of the artwork for 5e monsters is so much better than previous art, in my opinion.

Bodaks are a big one for me. I remember seeing bodaks in 3.5 and thinking "Why are there weird aliens here" and they never seemed scary to me, just Grey's with bigger bodies. 5e Bodaks though? Those things are creepy and cool and I love them.

I think I also prefer this editions dragons, even though frankly the best dragon art is never the DnD dragon art.

I agree the bodak in Volo's looks better than the one from 3rd edition MM, but it still looks like crap (to me). That particular art style they used for the Volo's bodak (same as the MM giants, and a number of various other monsters) just looks terrible. It's like they painted with mud. The overall design of the Volo's bodak is better, but the way it looks thanks to the art style makes it look terrible. I greatly dislike looking at that particular style used as much as I greatly dislike looking at Wayne England's artwork from 3rd and 4th editions (though I admit he can make weapons and armor look decent, whereas his characters and creatures look bad. Everything looks forward, with a very circular or eliptical mouth. Like he took inspiration from that iconic Tomb of Horror's door decoration. I admit, his stuff as well as the bodak from Volo's are done really well (better than I can do), but they still are very unpleasing to my eyes). My favorite from the 3rd edition era was Steve Prescott, and the ogre from the 5e MM I like the look of.

As for Zardnaar's complaint about WAR's art, I agree and disagree. I like his art, but sometimes his designs can look bad. Mostly with the wrists and mouths. His goblin design for Pathfinder is horrible to me, though Paizo seems to like it. And I guess that's all that really matters? I love Elmore's art from 2nd edition, though.

I highly doubt I will purchase the Ravnica design, as a planet that is one city is as bad as Star Wars's planets (one that's a desert, one that's nothing but water, one that's nothing but forest, nothing but city, nothing but lava, nothing by air. Yes I know these can be real, at least some of them, but they really take me out of the game/movie/whatever). I hope it does well for WotC, but part of me hopes it doesn't. For years I never knew MTG had actually lore settings. I just thought they were the names of blocks of cards (like Ice Age, Urza's whatever, Arabian Nights, etc).

 

[Keefe the Thief]

No offense to the OP, but threads like these are why I took some time off from talking about D&D on forums. "Abysmally let down"? I would feel like that if the D&D team had held up a sign saying "Dragonlance is coming back" in a low quality webstream and once the real reveal comes we see that it actually is "DargonLance", a new RPG line about a wisecracking lizard detective called Lance Dargon. THAT is when I feel abysmally let down.

What we get is an excellent Eberron rules pdf and a side setting for another Wotc franchise. A pretty cool city-planet. In the old days, cross-promotion was EVERYWHERE. This is mildly-annoyed time if you don't like Magic for me (for me - I'm not telling anyone how to feel about this).

Sometimes I ask myself what would happen if, say, the Jakhandor setting books would have been announced these days. Not a classic setting we have been waiting for since 1883 but barbarians vs. wizards? People would lose their shirt.

 

[Hussar]

I have 60 AD&D books and around 80 3.x books on the shelf. When I think of meh to bad 3.X art I mean things like the Complete series, the class books, Epic Level Handboook, even the 3.0 core books.

The best 3.x art is the monster books like Draconomicon etc. I still find the interior full page AD&D 2E colour art better than most of the 3.X stuff.

My dislike of Pathfinder art is mostly the WAR stuff- core rule, Pathfinder II, the Ultimate series ettc a lot of the APs have very nice covers. I also don't like the WAR 4E covers and most of his stuff in 3.X as well altough I don't mind his The Dragon 4E Darksun cover that is not to bad.

Overall the 5E books are the best looking and most consistent but I still love the best of the AD&D era say mid 80's to mid 90's type stuff which I find better than the best of most f the following editions although 5E covers do give them a good run for the money like XGtE.

With that number, I'm assuming you're lumping 1e and 2e together.

The fact that you're focusing on some very, very early 3e books - the Complete books, Epic level Handbook, and Draconomicon, seems like you're being pretty specific here and ignoring any 3.5 books. None of the examples you listed are 3.5. Did you skip 3.5?

Because, again, I'm here to tell you, as pretty as some of the 2e art was, it doesn't hold a candle to the latter era 3.5 stuff. Or even come close to 4e art. And, frankly, while there are a few misses in 5e (looking at you halflings), the 5e art has been bloody fantastic for the most part.

 

[Zardnaar]

With that number, I'm assuming you're lumping 1e and 2e together.

The fact that you're focusing on some very, very early 3e books - the Complete books, Epic level Handbook, and Draconomicon, seems like you're being pretty specific here and ignoring any 3.5 books. None of the examples you listed are 3.5. Did you skip 3.5?

Because, again, I'm here to tell you, as pretty as some of the 2e art was, it doesn't hold a candle to the latter era 3.5 stuff. Or even come close to 4e art. And, frankly, while there are a few misses in 5e (looking at you halflings), the 5e art has been bloody fantastic for the most part.

No I have around 60 2E books, 1E I have all the hard covers+ a few adventures so maybe 30 odd books.The 80 odd 3E books includes 3.0+3.5 but I am missing some of them (lent out and not returned IIRC), but excludes Pathfinder (6 books+ PDFs).

I have more 3.5 than 3,0 books buit few of them have great covers. I do have the Draconomicon, the Fiendish Codexes but at the time I missed a few later ones but they still tended to use the brown type art like Book of 9 Swords which I only got after 4E came out.

To this day IDK what Magic of Incarnum, Tome of Magic look like (I have the 2E ToM) and I have most of the FR books except towards the end when the quality went to crap (the Moonsea onwards). I think Drow of the Underdark was one of the last 3.5 books I got, I stopped buying them when the quality was falling off a cliff (Complete Psion and Mage were meh).

I think the 2E Tome of Magic book looks better than the majority of the 3.5 books so not sure what books I missed form 3.5 that had good art. I do remember at the time discussing with one of my players we were kinda shocked at the art relative to late 2E books mostly in regards to the covers.

Did not massively like the sepia dungeon punk look 3E had either. Interior art for 3.5 was often not bad but even then you have WAR stuff in a few and still not a fan of his. By good 2E art I mean the full page colour art they spread through the books. The 3.0 PHB has not aged well, the 3.5 one doesn't look to bad its just not great.

Its like the 4E books a lot of the interior art was nicer than the cover.

And you can improve the old stuff as well.

 

[cbwjm]

With that number, I'm assuming you're lumping 1e and 2e together.

The fact that you're focusing on some very, very early 3e books - the Complete books, Epic level Handbook, and Draconomicon, seems like you're being pretty specific here and ignoring any 3.5 books. None of the examples you listed are 3.5. Did you skip 3.5?

Because, again, I'm here to tell you, as pretty as some of the 2e art was, it doesn't hold a candle to the latter era 3.5 stuff. Or even come close to 4e art. And, frankly, while there are a few misses in 5e (looking at you halflings), the 5e art has been bloody fantastic for the most part.

I feel like early 3e/3.5 had the better artwork than the later era 3.5 books. I remember looking through some of the books when they were churning them out at a rapid pace and thinking that the quality of the artwork had really gone down from the initial 3e books.