D&D (2024) New D&D Edition's Player’s Handbook Cover Reveal

Game Informer has revealed the cover to the 2024 Player’s Handbook.

The cover features a gold dragon behind the old-school D&D characters Strongheart the paladin, Mercion the cleric, Elkhorn the dwarf fighter, and Molliver the thief. Ringlerun the wizard is absent (then again he got his showcase on one of the 1E AD&D Player's Handbooks), but a drow mage appears to have joined the party!

 

[mamba]

Conversely, all fantasy is scifi.

how so?

Star Wars is not even sci fi… it is fantasy in space. Star Trek on the other hand is sci fi. Aasimov’s Foundation is sci fi.

No one will mistake Lord of the Rings for sci fi… I’d like to see you make that case if all fantasy is scifi

 

[Yaarel]

how so?

Because the Scifi channel (Syfy) includes all genres of speculative fiction. So do many public libraries.

Star Wars is speculative science involving midichlorians. Any rational approach to mysticism is speculative science. Any rational approach to magic is speculative science. Any sufficiently advanced science is magic.

There is no discrete line between hard science fiction and dreamy fantasy.

 

[mamba]

Star Wars is speculative science involving midichlorians.

Star Wars existed before midichlorians, they were not mentioned once in the original trilogy. I guess I also disagree about the speculative science part here, there is nothing remotely scientific about m. in Star Wars. They do not get explored in any way, they are just used to handwave away how someone has ‘the force’

Any rational approach to mysticism is speculative science. Any rational approach to magic is speculative science. Any sufficiently advanced science is magic.

I can maybe buy this, even though it certainly stretches the mantle of science fiction, but there is plenty of fantasy literature that does not follow a rational approach to explain its mysticism / magic / ….

And while any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic (an important word you missed there), that does not mean all magic is rooted in science either

 

[Reynard]

Conversely, all fantasy is scifi.

Other way around: all scifi is fantasy, because it deals with things that don't exist.

Not all speculative fiction is fantasy or sci-fi. For example, Handmaid's Tale is speculative fiction without either science fiction nor fantasy elements -- it simply speculates about what may happen under a certain set of sociological circumstances.

 

[Gradine]

Actually, I am pretty oblivious. But based on recent discussions, its code or a dog whistle of sorts. It is kinda nice to be falling behind in modern slang, but I need to be careful before I start sounding like my grandfather telling people to put on their rubbers because it's muddy outside.

Things start to make a lot more sense when every time someone says "Marvel posing" you instead hear "Marvel casting"

 

[MonsterEnvy]

The elf in the picture is a named character from Greyhawk. Yolande the Queen of Celene. She's a Grey Elf which is a High Elf subtype.

 

[GreyLord]

which begs the question whether Star Wars even is science fiction…

A knight with a sword rescuing a princess from an evil sorcerer…

It never was.

It's Space Opera, a different field than Science Fiction.

It's not differentiated out from the Science Fiction section all that often though, but then, why would it be when retailers places groupings like Fantasy and Science fiction together.

Space Opera is basically fantasy in a Space Like Setting, rather than using any science as a basis or even keeping to the laws of physics and reality.

Other examples would be things like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and others.

 

[Parmandur]

It never was.

It's Space Opera, a different field than Science Fiction.

It's not differentiated out from the Science Fiction section all that often though, but then, why would it be when retailers places groupings like Fantasy and Science fiction together.

Space Opera is basically fantasy in a Space Like Setting, rather than using any science as a basis or even keeping to the laws of physics and reality.

Other examples would be things like Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and others.

C. S. Lewis tried to popularize "Romance" for that sort of story, but it didn't take off.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Honestly, I kind of gave up on the idea of clearly differentiated genres a while ago. Broadly, the categories are useful, but when you start getting to specific works, it can progress down many a strange path.

For example, under the Genre of Fantasy, there is the sub-genre of LitRPG (which is generally characterized by the addition of game elements and numbers into the core telling of the story and world) and within that is the sub-sub-genre of Dungeon Core stories (where the main character is generally the core of a growing dungeon) but even in that you have "person as dungeon" where the "dungeon core" is a monster or person, horror genres within that genre, cozy fantasy genres within that genre, isekai elements...

The deeper you dive, the more everything just... blends.

 

[Parmandur]

Honestly, I kind of gave up on the idea of clearly differentiated genres a while ago. Broadly, the categories are useful, but when you start getting to specific works, it can progress down many a strange path.

For example, under the Genre of Fantasy, there is the sub-genre of LitRPG (which is generally characterized by the addition of game elements and numbers into the core telling of the story and world) and within that is the sub-sub-genre of Dungeon Core stories (where the main character is generally the core of a growing dungeon) but even in that you have "person as dungeon" where the "dungeon core" is a monster or person, horror genres within that genre, cozy fantasy genres within that genre, isekai elements...

The deeper you dive, the more everything just... blends.

LitRPGs make me.feel old and cranky.