Scribe
Legend
There absolutely is something "gentler, wholesome, and cute" about them.Your distate for a certain pallette aside, there's absolutely nothing "gentler, wholesome, cute vibe" from them.
We seem to be at an impasse.
There absolutely is something "gentler, wholesome, and cute" about them.Your distate for a certain pallette aside, there's absolutely nothing "gentler, wholesome, cute vibe" from them.
Not enough skulls?There absolutely is something "gentler, wholesome, and cute" about them.
We seem to be at an impasse.
you act as if khorne does not just steal all the skulls from off everything.Not enough skulls?
As you say, 1e and 2e also has bold colors.
- Consistently over-saturated colors. Not just bright: over-saturated. I do home theater as another hobby and calibrate my own screens and audio. No way on planet Earth would I accept a post-calibration image that looked like the one above. That whole thing looks like everyone in it went to a drug-tripped Neon Superhappy Funtown. We had stuff like this in 1e and 2e, but not so persistently.
Agreed. I like some characters showing off their body, but there needs to be about the same frequency of men and women doing it.
- Only the male characters wear revealing clothing here.
The following is unfair of me without going thru the images:
- (The big one to my mind) About half of them are grinning or smirking. When did a smirk become endearing??? It isn't. And those that aren't grinning hold facial expressions of extreme self-confidence. No one in this image looks nervous or afraid in the least. Everyone seems fully assured of their own overflowing competence.
These are the funguses that grow in the Underdark from the magical radiation from the luminous crystals. Its a thing.
- I've seen psychedelic mushrooms before, but never quite that large (though in that old Alice in Wonderland module they seemed huge if only because the PCs were shrunk down so much).
There are, of course, images of villains and monsters in 5e!
- It's only showing heroes: no villains appear here, and certainly none take center stage and, oh...actually defeat the heroes. This is something I've noticed a lot. Not universally, but a lot (the cover of the 5e PHB has a gorgeous villain on it, for instance, so of course this point isn't universal).
Again this is only a small sample of portraits chosen at random. I wouldnt read too much into absence of armor.
- Where's all the heavy armor?? Seriously. I see one character that has what could be called heavy armor (but not really); all the others have none or light armor only.
I cant help but think that the above paragraph seems like misplaced reallife politics.Overall, I'd say 5e art has bought into the contemporary Cult of Omnicompetence: everyone is always great at whatever they do and ultimately decent-hearted. Where are the screw-ups who manage still to be good at something the party needs? Where are the scoundrels that don't secretly have a heart of gold? And why is everyone so insufferably self-assured? This is one of the points Stefano Rinaldelli made just before opening this thread, and yes, he did get unfairly dogpiled for it, as did beancounter. I don't think they deserved such treatment for the sin of questioning a prevailing orthodoxy. People who relish cultural critiques shouldn't be so fragile when the tables turn and their favored sub-culture starts to receive one: it's a simple matter of the goose and the gander.
My take on it is:With all that said, though, it's still the case that the new art doesn't really bother me; it merely isn't the art I would use, and that's hardly a big deal.
I mean you can disregard what I've said, how I qualified it as what I believe, and then make a definitive declaration while trying to make some strange implication, but you are not really presenting anything in that case.Not enough skulls?
Again this is only a small sample of portraits chosen at random. I wouldn't read too much into absence of armor.
That's exactly right, and it turns out the image was a pastiche of chosen pictures from Tasha's Cauldron. So I went and looked through the book, and sure enough there's a much more even distribution than the posted image suggests.Agreed. I like some characters showing off their body, but there needs to be about the same frequency of men and women doing it.
This is a small sample and I dont read too much into what these handful of portraits happen to be.
I don't think that's unfair; I think it's fine, and I agree that would be offensive (or at least lame, anyway). But I don't remember 1e looking like that; I remember it having lots of pictures in which everyone in a party was freaking out. I think it's connected to the fact that back in 1e character death happened often, you know? Failure--truly catastrophic failure--was a much realer and more immediately pressing possibility. My impression (just an impression) is that the current art matches this change in the overall game aesthetic.The following is unfair of me without going thru the images:
But what if, the 1e images only had male Fighters look confident, while male Wizards looked concerned, and female anything looked helpless? That would be highly offensive.
Yep! I was very relieved upon leafing through Tasha's to see that fighters still wear serious armor.Again this is only a small sample of portraits chosen at random. I wouldnt read too much into absence of armor.
Okay, let's get just a little fussy and careful about our categories, yes? Cultural critique is not at all the same thing as politics. Do they often run together in people's minds these days? Yes, and much to everyone's detriment.I cant help but think that the above paragraph seems like misplaced reallife politics.
I'm fine with that. I strongly favor a "something for everyone" approach.Ultimately an ecclectic mix of styles is probably for the best. Something for everyone.
D&D including 5e tends to be ecclectic.
The restoration of the Sistine Chapel shocked some people. After scraping away the centuries of soot and grime, people couldnt believe how colorful and highly saturated Michaelangelo made his frescoes.Too much color. Color is for children. I've had myself surgically modified to only see in greyscale with white corrected to Vanta Black.