Why D&D Art Matters Way More Than You Think

The main problem I have with the art is that there's no unified vision. There are so many different art styles while being uniformly bland design-wise that it just comes across as uninteresting. At that point, you may as well not have art and just tell the reader to imagine them how they will for their specific table.

One fun fact, there are almost 0 orc enemies in official dnd adventures. Even on settings like Icewind Dale where they would be expected as a random encounter enemy.

Shouldn’t the art be grittier? All the species (was that the term?) have smiles on their faces and look like they are living in domesticated bliss.

51:00. The two problems I have with the illustration of the dwarves is that: 1.) The perspective of the figures relative to the room is all wrong. Our POV of the room is really high up, but our POV of the dwarves is lower, so that we're looking at them as though we were just above head height. 2.) That blacksmith's assistant - the dwarf who's smiling at the baker - isn't paying attention to what he's doing! Look at how hard the blacksmith is hitting that hot metal thing. This is a recipe for a workplace injury.

The Mexican orcs are horrendous, imo. Totally anachronistic for the basic medieval fantasy offering of D&D. Unless One D&D has a DMG that includes steampunk or modern settings right off the bat? But anyhow, these group art pieces are just boring. Just not visually interesting. It’s flat.

22:00 Mark saying that maybe D&D is trying to get more people to play orcs like WOW did with Blood elves and horde... No. WOW had a problem because it was an MMO and the game became globally unbalanced across thousands of servers when too few people were playing horde. D&D has no reason to care how many people do or don't play orcs. It wouldn't unbalance anything if nobody ever played orcs because the orcs "aren't pretty enough." The only unbalance would be if their stats were off-kilter, which maybe they are, but has nothing to do with the art. D&D wants to make orcs more human because they are turning D&D into "cozy" fantasy instead of swords-and-sorcery.

The pike wielding story at the end cracked me up. Like a scene out of a Discworld novel. "The orc strode out of the kitchen wielding a vicious pike. The sight of it made Rincewinds empty stomach rumble and he could only imagine how it would taste freshly cooked with a side of chips."

The Time-Life "Enchanted World" series were my favorites as a kid. Its largely responsible for love of fantasy.

1:06:03 I remember looking at an art like that and as a kid who played Orcs in Warcraft II I went: wow, I could be a human, a thin human or a short human? Isn't that fantastical! I get Stephen's point that it is even more humanized now but dnd choices always were human only. You can have pretty much all of these bodytypes with real humans in real world. It is not fantastical at all compared to what settings like Starfinder could offer

Okay, imaging spreadsheet of all possible genders and bodytypes combinations of humans. Then make the same for each playable species. Would it be possible to point at each of those and tell who that is? Like, how would exceptionally tall gnome would look like? Or a fat elf? Or a dwarf who hits the gym and is unreasonably swole for a dwarf ?

I watched Eye of the Beholder and it was fascinating. My only complaints about it were that It had Satine Phoenix in it for some weird reason and when it started talking about how diverse the art was now I turned it off, but up until that point it was a great watch.

The GM screen is awesome! Makes me think of the art style of Dragonbane.

In general problem with modern D&D, both in art and writing, is that is reeks of modern west coast urbanite sensibility and culture. This is why they code orcs as Mexicans, and dwarfs as Portland baristas. But this is not flavor D&D should have. It should embody motives of the old continent before 1492, it should drove inspiration form pre columbian Eurasia and Africa, with possibly only slight undertone of renaissance in most urban areas, but noting more modern then that.

you know, there's only so many times you can say "This doesn't bother me, it's fine" and be believable when everything you bring up is followed by saying that

Why is a monstrous orc considered offensive?

Oh, I'm really liking this art direction!

This was fascinating!, I missed it live because I was at the hospital, whish I hadn't!

My guess art would be slightly better received if they say there San Citlán orcs from Radiant citadel. Mexican orcs in a Mexican setting. Don’t solve the looking too human problem. Also Radiant citadel needs more support. One anthology book, a small GMguild supplement on release and not sure what other unofficial projects after that? Has some potential as long as it’s getting some annual expansions.

I was puzzled by the tagline of the video until I realized that I consider Lockwood's dragons the truest dragons.

this rate not gonna beat around the bush. alot of the new races designs in the upcoming book is on purpose to look neutral is (and lets face it) the equality standard on everyone looks equal. this includes minimize features like masculine/beautiful looks to be neutral features like rounder, softer, gentler appearences which you noticed for the arts. so yeah they sacrificed most of core known features of said ancestries to be more equal looking. its also appeal to artists that specs on oc (original character) pieces and commissions cause i seen that alot on twitter where ppl want their charfacters drawn to be used on their character sheet. commonly they dont go for big features like longer/thicker beards for dwarfs, rougher/larger tusks for orcs, wider/pointed features of gnomes and such. so they all look near the same besides changes to clothes and accessories. also comes down to if said indie artists knows how to do those features cause if they dont they do list on what they wont commission besides the obvious stuff like dont accept nsfw commissions and so on depending on artist. plus costs cause alot of those ppl charge less for detailed pieces vs the experienced artists that charge extra. of course for sure the ocmpany got a dei branch so this is mandatory on how its presented to the consumer and future products which to some degree its not bad, but it does mean sacrificing stuff like what i said above to achieve said dei goals by company.