P:axMagellanic
Member
RIP DnD post 3rd edition.
A totally different civilisation painted this. Now long gone I fear.
D&D seems a bit different lately…
- Thread starter EviLore
- Start date
A totally different civilisation painted this. Now long gone I fear.
Hypereides
Member
Infantilized beyond recognition. Kinda looks like some low-key fetish fanart.
But, hey, at least now we don't have to be concerned about all those "problematic" depictions and aspects.
But, hey, at least now we don't have to be concerned about all those "problematic" depictions and aspects.
Dr.Morris79
Gold Member
spookyfish
Gold Member
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mitch1971
Member
The irony of this artwork is that any of those characters could be gay, etc, even the dragon could be a beef curtain cleaner, (it is your character after all) yet it seems today you have to smack someone over the head with a +4 dildo of inclusion just to 'hammer it home' that we are GAAAAAAAY!!RIP DnD post 3rd edition.
Boozeroony
Member
Bold marketing strategy. Let's see how it turns out.
diffusionx
Gold Member
It's crazy how all these things end up looking and feeling EXACTLY the same. If you told me that was promo art for Dragon Age Veilguard I would believe you.
TintoConCasera
I bought a sex doll, but I keep it inflated 100% of the time and use it like a regular wife
Woke shit aside, that piece of art is fucking terrible. Pastel colors all over the place and no shading at all. Who likes that?
DKehoe
Member
I can't speak too much to the Vistaini stuff because because although I'm aware changes were made I haven't looked too much into them since I'm actually in the middle of playing a Curse of Strahd campaign that started before those revisions came out and is still ongoing. By that scope you can probably imagine it's heavily homebrewed by by our GM this point but all the same I've avoided reading the book itself My understanding was it was some small tweaks to not have them painted as all being shady since they're clearly based on a real life ethnic group. But like I said I can't really talk about that specific aspect in much detail.
With the Orc stuff, the big change was that they're no longer inherently evil aligned right? I don't see the problem with that. It gives the DM room to have good orcs if they want. I think in a game like D&D, where the mechanics are so combat focused, the "well, actually, those bandits had families they were just trying to feed" angle and making everything totally morally grey can deflate things and sometimes you just want an enemy you can feel unambigously good about unleashing hell on. But by opening up the possibilities for Orcs it puts the decision for what they're like in the hands of the GMs and players rather than having it be dictated by WOTC. If people want their orcs to be brutal and beyond reason then they can still do that. I don't think it's too bad if WOTC want to present alternate ways to go with them other than the more traditional depiction of an orc.
Does the art in the OP resemble the tone of any of the games I've played in? No but that's ok. I don't need everything around the game to perfectly align with my tastes.
There's plenty people can criticise WOTC for and if you personally disagree with those decisions you mentioned then that's fair enough. But, for whatever reason, D&D seems to often end up the subject of moral panics. People saying that these kinds of decisions are evil just seems so over the top to me. I know from talking to you before that you are genuinely into tabletop stuff. So I do think you're making your points in good faith and I respect that. But I also think there's a contingent of people who will prop up anything as part of their "the west has fallen" schtick and that's the stuff that gets a bit pearl-clutching and I find particularly tiresome when it rolls into my own interests.
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LordCBH
Member
I wouldn't as much say it's them not being inherently evil, as much as it seems a lot of the "tribalistic" parts of them seem very very toned down now. As far as "inherently evil" I don't really like to ascribe that to most races in the game, as I definitely like that is limiting. Factions within races that could be inherently evil? Or tribes or groups? Absolutely! But rates as a whole doesn't jive with me just from a mostl story perspective.
IMO, at the end of the day, the most fun with D&D is homebrewing stuff anyway, but WOTC making bizarre changes just makes it easier for me to go "yeah lemme homebrew an entire game".
Like most of the actual systems are still really good, even if I'm not a huge fan of something like picking which stats you want booted as opposed to each race favoring different stats. But that hill I won't die on. I'll just homebrew it a bit differently.
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AREYOUOKAY?
Member
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Kacho
Gold Member
I knew there was a problem when I was delivering a birthday present to someone's gay boyfriend named Miguel in Dragonflight.Where did things go so wrong with all things fantasy?
And don't get me started on Chromie or what they did to Nesingwary or the overall furification of WoW in general
Platinumstorm
Member
Disclaimer: I don't play d&d.
Observation: when I'm on local subreddits I see a lot of posts for lgbtq friendly d&d groups: some that are exclusive to lgbt.
I do not understand how that image affects how anyone here who is unhappy plays their own d&d game.
Observation: when I'm on local subreddits I see a lot of posts for lgbtq friendly d&d groups: some that are exclusive to lgbt.
I do not understand how that image affects how anyone here who is unhappy plays their own d&d game.
Khadgar's wheelchair is infuriating. It's also designed after a wheelchair that looks primitive which makes it even worse.
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Madflavor
Member
I play DnD with my group once a month, and we all ignore the stupid shit WotC have been doing for the past few years, and I'm very certain the vast majority of players do. The rulebook is a framework, but the group (mostly the DM) dictates the rules.
That all being said, DnD has been in a position these past 5+ years that was a "strike while the iron is hot" situation. It was growing in popularity especially in a post covid world. They've been fucking morons to market DnD the way they have been. They've had a chance to introduce DnD more into the mainstream, instead they choose to cater to a very small demographic.
That all being said, DnD has been in a position these past 5+ years that was a "strike while the iron is hot" situation. It was growing in popularity especially in a post covid world. They've been fucking morons to market DnD the way they have been. They've had a chance to introduce DnD more into the mainstream, instead they choose to cater to a very small demographic.
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TransTrender
Gold Member
Yep I was looking for this comparison picture.Where did things go so wrong with fantasy?
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
the most Evil creature in the game loves all the gay stuff.
RetroGamingUK
Member
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
This would make a good avatar if anybody is looking for one
Reizo Ryuu
Member
The inclusion of the beholder in there is so ironic, it's almost some kind of high level meta commentary.
DKehoe
Member
By inherently evil I meant the actual alignment. If I remember right they changed it so that they (and maybe the same for Drow?) no longer have a fixed alignment that covers the entire race and that was something I had seen people complain about.
As for the more tribalistic aspects, I think most of us have an idea of that style of orc from classic fantasy media like Lord of the Rings. And I think that can be a totally worthwhile style to include in your game. When you're DMing in your own homebrew world there can be a temptation to put a totally unique spin on everything but often things go smoother if you're using touchstones that your players will immediately pick up on rather than always needing to launch into lengthy explanations and needing to remind your players how things work. But my take on some of the recent depictions was that they're there to help spark ideas in the minds of DMs and players for what they could do with them that might be a bit different than what most people think of when they think of an orc.
Also, just looking at the Orc listing from the 2024 Players Handbook on it says
So I think that does still give you that nomadic, tribalistic aspect to them. Yeh it probably is more toned down in the past but that is perhaps just to give more creative freedom so people don't feel locked into something.
LordCBH
Member
Honestly? I think the beholder is like 85% of my issue with the artwork. The other 15% is almost entirely the quality lol
Curious, how would you feel about a post looking for "cishet ONLY" games?
My issue with this type of stuff is that the "I must see an EXACT COPY OF ME in the game" attitude is at direct odds to the core concept of the game as escapist fantasy. Just playing yourself through interactions turns DnD into a therapy session, which then dragged in the "session zero", "trigger warning", and "any class/race can be anything" nonsense which really diluted and polluted the gaming experience.
Can you pull out the rules and adapt them to your specific needs, sure, but when so much of the 'official' content headed that way, the Forgotten Realms in particular lost their 80's/90's vibe entirelly, I'm sure Greyhawk and others went the same way.
But hey, if they are still selling books and digital license subscriptions, then it's working for them. I personally fell off 5e a few years back and have just been pawning off all my 5e books to my niece ever since, WOTC has lost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars from me leaving most of their content behind.
But there are plenty of other options out there so it really doesn't matter to me if WOTC keeps heading down this path. Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford have left, IIRC, so we'll see what legacy they have or if DnD pivots. Seems like WOTC revenue has peaked and is now falling from the 2023 high (hard to find 2025 data though) so seems like they might be moving to a 6e to try to revitalize the brand.
The Cockatrice
I'm retarded?
Even the gay people find this retarded. Their target demographic does not exist, but hey good luck going bankrupt.
Nintendo's Witch
Member
Bi&Bi
Eesha
Member
Sadly, Negative Publicity is still Publicity.
DnD initially created lots of "inherently evil" things so you could kill and loot them with no guilt. And characters like Drizzt took the "Cool evil race" and turned it into a UNIQUE cool conflicted hero. And so EVERYONE wanted to subvert expectations with illusionist dwarves, barbarian gnomes, half-orc pacificist healers, and halfling assassins. Fine for home-brew, but that sort of thing, IMHO, dilutes the murderhobo economy of DnD and kills the flavor of the established worlds.
Plus there was the ludicrous association of orcs with tribal savage "black people" (though now I guess it's more with russians fighting in ukraine) that drove the push to de-"inherently evil" the orcs so as to not make the claim that an entirety of a race could be born bad and thus be worthy of indiscriminate slaughter.
Can't wait for puppy headed gnolls, kinder gentler wights, calm rational banshees, and gelatinous cubes that just want to clean your dirty laundry.
Eesha
Member
well, in hentai there's the slimes that only melt the clothes off whit no harm to the flesh, they could use those.
DonkeyPunchJr
World’s Biggest Weeb
I always thought this was an example of the woke dipshits being the actual racists.
"OMG look at those big, scary, violent sub-humans. OBVIOUSLY they're supposed to be black people! The writers must be so racist!"
Platinumstorm
Member
I would find it odd since the assumption would be most if not all of the people in that game would be straight. Simultaneously, that's ok for someone like that to do that. It's a part of their private life. I'm in the US, private life doesn't have the same protections that public life does, so it's fair game for either example. I think it's more acceptable for LGBTQ people to find a specific group since they're a more vulnerable population. I don't, however, think that's how you go for it if you're looking for equality. Whatever the case, that's their business, not mine. I don't actively seek out areas in my life that could be cause for conflict, so it's hard to blame either group.
"My issue with this type of stuff is that the "I must see an EXACT COPY OF ME in the game" attitude is at direct odds to the core concept of the game as escapist fantasy."
Responding to this in terms of World of Warcraft. There's a woman in the game who in blind in an eye and lost an arm. She's actively fighting, she's a warrior, and I don't really see a problem with her. Could a mage or a gnome do something, sure, but it's not really hindering her much.
Khadgar is one of the most powerful mages in the game. He's choosing to just exist in a wheelchair when he could levitate, or probably fix himself. I can't speak for others, but if I was wheelchair bound and I couldn't ski, hike, or mountain bike, and I was a powerful mage with access to healers who can resurrect people from brink of death, you can be damned sure I'm going to have them fix my spinal cord. I would feel insulted if I were in a wheelchair with this example.
Platinumstorm
Member
I don't understand.Excellent list of PS3 games there, sir
Kacho
Gold Member
You mistakenly quoted RetroUK from another thread in your post
DKehoe
Member
Like I said above, I do really think there is a value in having enemies that you don't feel guilty about killing and looting. The game is built around that dynamic and so I don't want to be made to feel conflicted about finally getting to unleash Fireball after a level up. If my toolkit is full of hammers then give me some nails to hit!
Yeh, the orcs as black people stuff was ridiculous and reflected more on the people making that claim. Tribal, nomadic orcs could just as easily have a Celtic, Germanic or other cultural vibe to them. A lot of people's fantasy games are going to go between the safety of built-up towns and then the danger of the wilderness and so the roaming bands of orcs are a natural fit for that.
I believe the change in Orc and Drow alignments came from those then being playable races, whereas gelatinous cubes aren't (yet! I'm holding out for a future release that will let me cube it up!). I don't think there's anything wrong with removing that restriction though. Like you said there are characters like Drizzt who are good people that come from shitty societies and that's a natural archetype to want to play with. So rather than the game standing in the way it instead lets that decision fall to the DM and players. If a DM has decided that in their world all Orcs are senseless killing machines and so that's not an option for the PCs then so be it. The way it now is gives that flexibility rather than it being dictated from upon high.
graywolf323
Member
there's been a push for a while now to get rid of creatures as being inherently evil (e.g. the Amazon LOTR show and orcs)
except for white men of course, beholders and orcs are now just misunderstood but white human males? they're responsible for everything bad in the world
ResurrectedContrarian
Suffers with mild autism
yeah but their specific target demographic is: gay and retarded
Platinumstorm
Member
Ah, thanks.
StreetsofBeige
Member
Haha. Looks like all those gay ass cosplayers took over cover art.
Back in the day my bro bought this. He bought other sets too. We never even played this one, but it was just cool to check out the manuals and stats. This set was actually an advanced set for high level characters. lol
All of us got into playing CRPGs, but the foundation was actually D&D board games. Funny thing is even if you dont play DND, reading some of the $20 books back in the day like Monster Manual and Players Handbook are actually realy cool. It might be odd to flip through books that have to do with a game you'll never play, but just seeing the artwork and stats and nuances is actually cool.
Back in the day my bro bought this. He bought other sets too. We never even played this one, but it was just cool to check out the manuals and stats. This set was actually an advanced set for high level characters. lol
All of us got into playing CRPGs, but the foundation was actually D&D board games. Funny thing is even if you dont play DND, reading some of the $20 books back in the day like Monster Manual and Players Handbook are actually realy cool. It might be odd to flip through books that have to do with a game you'll never play, but just seeing the artwork and stats and nuances is actually cool.
I did the same.Haha. Looks like all those gay ass cosplayers took over cover art.
Back in the day my bro bought this. He bought other sets too. We never even played this one, but it was just cool to check out the manuals and stats. This set was actually an advanced set for high level characters. lol
All of us got into playing CRPGs, but the foundation was actually D&D board games. Funny thing is even if you dont play DND, reading some of the $20 books back in the day like Monster Manual and Players Handbook are actually realy cool. It might be odd to flip through books that have to do with a game you'll never play, but just seeing the artwork and stats and nuances is actually cool.
StreetsofBeige
Member
My bros started off buying the red basic set then kept buying them to the black masters set. Then stopped. They also bought monster manual, players handbook and a much thinner supplemental book about how a DM can do treasure.
I was too young to play this stuff, but dabbled a tiny amount. But after half an hour we'd quit. But they and friends tried it a bit more with the basic set in probably like 1982. It didn't go far. I think it's due to the continuity of the game and someone has to be DM which they probably decided they dont give a shit about. But everyone loved just playing cards or scrabble or risk and normie games like that.
But we all loved video games and CRPGs. So the interest was there. We all just preferred gaming on PC for this shit than doing it pen and paper as a group.
Found the treasure guide. I couldnt even a cover of it on the net. But I'm positive it was a thin blue booklet. But maybe I'm wrong and the blue part was just the snake and that was the cover.
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IDKFA
I am Become Bilbo Baggins
Serious question here, because I'm not or ever have been a D&D player, but isn't it the case that this progressive stance has actually improved sales and player numbers?
GW appear to be slowly inching towards the same path as well. I think it's just a sign of the times. This is what a large part of the fan base wants.
AJUMP23
Parody of actual AJUMP23
Required for members with under 50 post.
Eesha
Member
The problem resides in the EXTREMELY Vocal minority that resides in Twitter/Bluesky/whatever, were GW/WOTC only watches the positive reactions.
And if you dare give a negative reaction, you get hit by a "Leave the Multi-Milion Company Alone" Defence force that buries your bad influence.
thankfulyl is (very) slowling changing...
StreetsofBeige
Member
Who knows. I dont follow DND sales so maybe modern day cartoony DEI sales are better.
But for many companies, as long as the sales make it worth it they'll change.
Apple is the posterboy. For decades they were the rebel computer brand with unique specs, programs and PC people were losers. The loyal fanbase agreed. Then Apple noticed if they cleaned up the design, made it with PC parts and promoted their products like iPods (which started off their resurgence in like 2002 or 2003) where iTunes even worked on PC, they noticed sales could be humongous if you go for the normie crowd instead of being a rebel in a corner with a niche group of customers and graphics design employees.
And Apple never went back to that rebel image every again. It's all mainstream now trying to sell to the most people.... I'm a doctor, I'm a teacher.... we all use Apple tv ads. And they hired U2 to promote their iPods. Probably the most mainstream band in the world.
Apple doesnt care one bit if any hardcore user from 1984 hates modern Apple if they can score 100 new customers for every old fart user lost.
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