D&D 5E Toward a new D&D aesthetics

[Scribe]

Your distate for a certain pallette aside, there's absolutely nothing "gentler, wholesome, cute vibe" from them.

There absolutely is something "gentler, wholesome, and cute" about them.

We seem to be at an impasse.

 

[Azzy]

Remember, kids, this is grimdark:

 

[Azzy]

There absolutely is something "gentler, wholesome, and cute" about them.

We seem to be at an impasse.

Not enough skulls?

 

[Mind of tempest]

Not enough skulls?

you act as if khorne does not just steal all the skulls from off everything.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Too much color. Color is for children. I've had myself surgically modified to only see in greyscale with white corrected to Vanta Black.

 

[Yaarel]

1. 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.

As you say, 1e and 2e also has bold colors.

If everything was orange and highly saturated, no one would think twice. The combination of diverse hues and high saturation makes the colors bold.

I like the vibrant stylization.

Technology makes it easier for 5e to have more images that are colorful than 1e.

1. Only the male characters wear revealing clothing here.

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.

1. (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.

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.

1. 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).

These are the funguses that grow in the Underdark from the magical radiation from the luminous crystals. Its a thing.

1. 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).

There are, of course, images of villains and monsters in 5e!

A main change is that factions are the design space for alignment, not race. We saw this in Witchlight, where the frog people are any alignment, but their order of knights is Lawful Good.

Also, every individual has an alignment and some are Evil.

In any case, portraits of heroes looking cool, is a genre in every edition of D&D.

1. 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.

Again this is only a small sample of portraits chosen at random. I wouldnt read too much into absence of armor.

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.

I cant help but think that the above paragraph seems like misplaced reallife politics.

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.

My take on it is:

The choice between a consistent stylized look versus an ecclectic mix of styles is a dilemma.

An overall look - like Brom doing Dark Sun - is awesome ... if one happens to like that style. I like Brom, so a win. But what if I didnt? That could be offputting.

Ultimately an ecclectic mix of styles is probably for the best. Something for everyone.

D&D including 5e tends to be ecclectic.

 

[Scribe]

Not enough skulls?

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.

 

[BRayne]

Again this is only a small sample of portraits chosen at random. I wouldn't read too much into absence of armor.

Not chosen at random, it's the work of one specific artist in one specific book.

 

[Guest 7034872]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Again this is only a small sample of portraits chosen at random. I wouldnt read too much into absence of armor.

Yep! I was very relieved upon leafing through Tasha's to see that fighters still wear serious armor.

I cant help but think that the above paragraph seems like misplaced reallife politics.

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 absolutely do think we live in a much more emotionally narcissistic age today than even the 80s (which itself was dubbed the "feel good generation"--about as sharp a critique of "kids today" as a WWII codger could make). I do not, however, think this stems from anything political. I think it stems from social media and the now-total dominance of the digital age.

Ultimately an ecclectic mix of styles is probably for the best. Something for everyone.

D&D including 5e tends to be ecclectic.

I'm fine with that. I strongly favor a "something for everyone" approach.

 

[Yaarel]

Too much color. Color is for children. I've had myself surgically modified to only see in greyscale with white corrected to Vanta Black.

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.

Some complained that "Art should be brown like a violin."



Actually, a similar thing happened in Nordic Archeology. After the chemical analysis of the viking period textiles came in, everyone was shocked by how colorful the clothes were, solid bold colors from every hue of the spectrum! Judging by the jewely colors, the shift toward vibrant colors happened just before the viking period.