Before we start this, I’d like to ask a question I’ve been wondering about for a while now: WHAT THE FUCK IS A TIEFLING? Apparently it and the Dragonborn showed up somewhere between 3rd Edition and now, and I don’t understand why. Admittedly, the fact that I’m an Old Fart is part of the problem here, but D&D, derivative as it may be, has developed into its own genre, and that genre has a very broad but specific collection of influences, none of which include dragon people or whatever the hell Tieflings are. There are literally hundreds of existing D&D creatures that could have been tapped if the designers wanted a wider variety of character races, but instead they chose to just shoehorn in some made-up shit that has never existed in D&D, any of the D&D game worlds, or any of the traditional source material.

I think the departure from the D&D genre is also why I couldn’t get into D&D Online. I’m not much of a video game player, but the D&D video games have consistently addicted me, at least for a while. In the early days (starting with Pool of Radiance on the Commodore 64), I’d play them all the way to the end. More recently (up to Neverwinter Nights Online), I’d play them as often as I could for a month or two and then get bored. With D&D Online, I played about two weeks. I think the main problem is that it just didn’t feel like D&D to me. It had airships as commonplace things (instead of as weird storied inventions of the knomes/whatever the human version of knomes in the Forgotten Realms was called--Lanthans or something), robots, and a bunch of shit that made it seem like “not D&D.” Or at least, not *my* D&D. Again, Old Fart.

As I mentioned last week, the remaining races are the “uncommon” ones: Dragonborn and Tieflings (true, if by “uncommon” you mean “have never been seen by anyone in most D&D worlds before, but suddenly there are a dozen of the fuckers in every bar), Gnomes (ok, that’s true, nobody says “oh boy, I’m going to play a gnome!”), Half-Orcs (ok, maybe, but I think classifying them as “uncommon” is borderline true at best), and Half-Elves (bullshit, those guys are everywhere in most games, maybe more common than Elves themselves). 

Dragonborn

Hey, they found a quote for these guys too. The book is from 2013. They couldn’t even find a classic literary source like Elaine Cunningham. So yeah, the dragonborn are dragon guys. They breathe fire (or whatever). It’s really a “what it says on the box” kind of thing. Want to play a dragon man? Here’s a dragon man for you. The sparse information about Dragonborn society is basically a rewrite of all the Dwarf stuff about clans. There’s also a sidebar that tries to convince us that Draconians from DragonLance were Dragonborn despite Draconians being completely different from Dragonborn. This race is exactly the kind of power gamer fan service I expected it to be. Yes, Dave, we’re all very impressed with your 18 Strength and acid breath. Now fuck off. 

Gnomes

If I could ask Gary Gygax one question, it would be “Why Gnomes?” I mean, what are they there for? Did Gary worry that there was a significant segment of the gaming population who really wanted to play a short guy but couldn’t handle the sheer manliness of Dwarves or the sheer...uh...Bilboiness of Hobbits? Who are the Gnomes for? This is the one question even Jon Peterson will never uncover the answer to. 

DragonLance gave the Gnomes a purpose by turning them into D&D’s mad scientists, which kept “I’m going to play a Gnome” from being universally met with a response of “Why would you do that?” Third Edition kind of latched onto the Krynn version of Gnomes, but 5E hedges with two subraces: The Rock Gnomes, who are pretty much just Krynn Gnomes, and the Forest Gnomes, who are closer to a red-hatted Wil Huygen/garden gnome, just a little bigger and slightly less cutesy. The Rock Gnomes invent, the Forest Gnomes cast illusion spells and talk to chipmunks. The one thing I do like about the Gnome entry is that it makes them sound fun to play, or at least fun to meet. The writers don’t come right out and say “Gnomes should be comic relief,” but it’s heavily implied. Gnomes definitely get the award for Most Improved Character Race for this edition.

Half-Elves

Bastard. Half-Breed. Orphan. Mongrel. Mudblood. Unlovable Gutter Trash. Zamboni. These are just some of the names Tanis Half-Elven was called in the first two paragraphs of the DragonLance Saga, but we all know that for all the talk of them being moody and sad, Half-Elves are a nice go-to race when you want some extra powers but don’t want to have to deal with all the baggage the comes from trying to role-play a character who isn’t human. The Half-Elf description here focuses on the whole “of both worlds, but really of neither” (single Affleck tear) thing and that they can grow beards. Ability-wise, the designers seem to be nudging Half-Elves toward the Bard Class (as a past player of many Half-Elven Bards, I support this decision). They get +2 Charisma and +1 to an ability of their choice, darkvision, bonuses against charm and sleep spells, and a couple free skills. No big surprises here, but no weird changes, either. 

Half-Orcs

The Half-Orc entry starts out by presenting the typical Half-Orc as the legitimate child of a loving interracial couple whose tribes formed an alliance. This is a nice change of pace from the “all half-orcs are rape babies” origin that’s been the standard in previous editions. Well played. There’s a nice bit about how their scars tell a story and another one about how their tendency toward evil is due in part to literal influence from the Orc god Gruumsh. Instead of just being angry combat machines, Half-Orcs “feel emotion powerfully” in general. They laugh heartily, love passionately, and dance like nobody’s watching. It’s kind of a Conan vibe. Overall, Half-Orcs are much better developed than in previous editions. This has the side-effect of making them at least slightly less conducive to bad allegory, which I think everyone who saw Bright can agree is probably a good thing. If the Gnomes didn’t sound so goddamn delightful, the Half-Orcs just might have edged them out for that Most Improved award. 

Tiefling

Ah, the Tiefling. For players who want to play a Drow, but way Drowier. Look, I get it: They were a 4E thing, 4E desperately wanted to be MMORPG: The RPG, and a bunch of MMORPGs let you play demons. Sure, it might not fit into “My D&D,” but I can understand the capitalist impulse to  incorporate newer influences into the genre, especially those with a huge audience. But couldn’t you have just called them Demons? At least it’s a real word. I think a big part of my problem with Tieflings is the dumb, meaningless name. “Tiefling” is a stupid made-up word that sounds like what they’d call a baby llama in Little House on the Prairie, or maybe a fancy scarf that a dandy would wear to a cotillion. Something about it as a D&D race is just like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. 

The description here doesn’t really tell me much beyond the “they’re fucking demons” part I already knew. Ok, they’re not technically demons, or even half-demons, more like they have demon blood. That’ a little better, I guess; at least some versions of Merlin and a few other characters from traditional D&D influences shared that with them. They’re resistant to fire, can cast a few spells, and have darkvision because everybody but humans has darkvision. Oh, and all that potential for sloppy allegory that disappeared from the Half-Orc? Don’t worry, the Tiefling description has plenty of it to go around. 

Next week: Classes. This is going to be a slog. 

Chapter 2 describes the PC races for the new version of Dungeons & Dragons and starts up with about half of page of fluff about character races wherein the writers adorably try to pretend that different races appear as PCs in roughly the same proportions that they appear in game fiction. The multiple mentions of the rarity of Drow is particularly amusing given how often they show up in games. After some notes about the format, we’re off to the races. 

Dwarves

They’re short. They’ve got long beards. They’re into rocks, metal, and forges. Their society is orderly. They love gold and think elves are flighty. So not much new here except for more focus on the importance of clan affiliation than I remember in the core rulebooks of previous editions. One tidbit about Dwarven society that was new to me (or maybe I read it in the Complete Dwarf Splatbook when I was in high school but forgot) is the idea that a Dwarf’s name (which is always the name of an ancestor) belongs to his clan, not himself, and that he’s expected to live up to the name. That’s kind of neat. 

There aren’t a lot of changes on the ability front. The only really new thing is that Dwarves get Tool Proficiency in either smith’s, brewer’s or mason’s tools (though oddly not miner’s tools). It’s almost like they read the expanded Qerth tables and realized “Hey, giving Dwarves some of those craft skills we’re always talking about Dwarves having is a pretty good idea. We should steal it.” But since the expanded Qerth table for Dwarves has never been published (look for it in The Comprehensive Dwarf, coming sometime in the distant future if Leighton and I live long enough), I’m forced to conclude that this innovation was a case of parallel development. The other change is that Stonecunning (3E’s combination of all the Dwarf’s “knows a lot about rocks” abilities from previous editions) has been downgraded to just knowing historical information about rocks. Man, I never thought I’d miss “Detect Grade/Slope,” but I kinda do. Is there such a thing as Phantom Useless Ability Syndrome? 

Every race (except Humans) also includes subraces. For Dwarves, the choices are Hill Dwarf and Mountain Dwarf (Duergar are mentioned in a short sidebar, but aren’t allowed as PCs). Each of the Dwarven subraces gets an ability bonus and an additional racial ability (Wisdom and toughness for Hill Dwarves, Strength and armor for Mountain Dwarves). It’s also mentioned that Mountain Dwarves are taller than Hill Dwarves. This seems like an odd outcome of natural selection given that Mountain Dwarves spend more time underground where being tall would make it harder to navigate cramped passageways. I guess that’s just the kind of thing that happens in a magical world of adventure. 

There’s also a sidebar with the classic racial stereotypes alongside each Race description, but it only includes the Big Four: Dwarves, Elves, Halflings, and Humans. Because fuck Gnomes. 

Elves

As we all know, Elves are so pretty they’ll make you swoon. They’re also graceful, agile, fierce in battle, intelligent, good with animals, trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Elves are noted for their skill in warfare, magic, gardening, interpretive dance, poetry, music, architecture, literary analysis, hunting, basket weaving, found object art, cooking, macrame, and Mrs. Pac-Man. Also, they live forever and poop ice cream. 

After all the overwrought prose about how nifty and cool elves are, we come to the “Names” section. Whereas Dwarves recycle the same names over and over again, every Elf creates his own special little name that’s just for him upon reaching adulthood. Because apparently they’re going all-in with this “every race as unique naming traditions” thing. And apparently these naming conventions are consistent across all populations of that race across all D&D worlds. Well that just stopped being kind of neat in a hurry. 

Elven special abilities haven’t changed much since third edition other than to fit the new rules, though they have lost their bonus with swords and bows (which I think was still there in 3E). Well, at least until you get to the subraces. High Elves get bow & sword proficiency, plus a cantrip, an extra language, and an Intelligence Bonus. Hey look! Wood Elves get the sword and bow proficiency, too (along with increased speed, woodland stealth, and a Wisdom bonus). You’ll notice that all the Elves have three sub-race features in contrast to the Dwarf’s one. Because game balance, I assume. 

Ok, so really it turns out that the Drow are the only subrace that doesn’t get the traditional bow & sword bonus. Well, at least they don’t get it with 75% of the traditional Elven swords and bows. Their proficiencies are with rapiers, shortswords, and crossbows instead. They also get super-duper darkvision and the classic Drow spell abilities (Dancing Lights to start, Faerie Fire at 3rd Level, and Darkness at 5th Level). Also, Drow are totally rare you guys. You probably won’t even meet one (unless they make up 80% of your party, that is). Unlike the other subraces, Drow have a disadvantage in the form of sensitivity to light, but it’s considerably less brutal than in previous editions (basically just a penalty to attack rolls and perception checks; I’m reasonably sure sunlight used to cause damage like they were really pretty vampires or something). 

The Elf section ends with a sidebar about how swell Drizzt is, because of course it does.

Halflings

I haven’t been mentioning the art so far this post because I think we’ve already established that I’m not a fan, but holy shit the Halfling picture is horrific. If Rob Liefeld decided to create a sepia-toned watercolor of a female version of Warwick Davis about halfway through make-up for Leprechaun in the Hood, it would look like the Halfling picture on page 26. I mean...just...fuck. 

For those of you just tuning in, Halflings started out as Hobbits, but Gygax immediately ran into the problem of Hobbits wanting fuckall to do with adventuring (he also ran into the problem of the Tolkien Estate being very litigious, which is why Hobbits became Halflings). To solve this problem, ol’ Gary latched onto the theoretical adventuring job of the original adventuring Hobbit and decided that Hobbits made great thieves. As you may know, the D&D meaning of “thief” is considerably different from the Hobbit usage, where it meant something along the lines of “not really a thief at all, but Bilbo’s sneaky and clever and Gandalf wants the Dwarves to take him along so that’s what he’s telling Thorin.” This led to a weird split-personality for Halflings: They're simple rural farm folk who just want to stay home and smoke their pipes, but they're also world-wise master thieves who will rob you blind and bang your mom. It's always been weird, and I remember 3E trying to fix it by downplaying the Hobbit stuff in favor of something closer to (but less annoying than) the Kender from DragonLance. This didn’t last. In 5E, these little fuckers are Hobbits again. Or sometimes nomadic Hobbits. For some reason they keep bringing up halfling nomads. 

Halfling names are just regular old names, and Halfling abilities are variations on the old standbys. The only thing that looked new to me was the Lucky ability, which lets them re-roll 1s on attack rolls, ability checks, and saves. There are two subraces for Halflings (Lightfoot and Stout), each with a modestly Dwarven pair of sub-racial bonus features. 

Humans

I haven’t mentioned it yet, but each race description starts with a quote from a D&D novel. So far we’ve had two from R.A. Salvatore and one from DragonLance. Humans get Elaine Cunningham’s Elfshadow, which seems like a step down. Oh well, at least it’s not Rose Estes. Anyway, you can probably guess, that the description of Humans is all about how versatile they are and how much range they display in terms of whatever characteristic is being discussed at the moment. 

Where the other races so far have just had names, the Human section is titled “Names and Ethnicities” and once again talks about how there are a bunch of different types of humans. To demonstrate, it describes the 9 human ethnicities of the Forgotten Realms, complete with physical descriptions and common names. Some of these (Calishite, Illuskan) are vaguely familiar as nationalities that I remember from all those Forgotten Realms books I read in high school. At least one (Shou) was familiar as the generic name for the Realms version of Asians. The rest were (or at least seemed--it’s been a long time) new to me. Apparently the Forgotten Realms got a visit from some (probably idealistically icky) old-timey anthropologists when I wasn’t looking. 

By default, Humans get +1 to every ability score. It’s a boring and generic racial feature, but from a min/max perspective it’s not too shabby. A slightly more interesting option is a variant rule for gaming groups who use the (apparently now) optional Feats rules. Under the variant, Humans get +1 to two different ability scores, a bonus Skill, and a bonus Feat. The Skill and Feat are both “of your choice,” so I assume the ability bonuses are the player’s choice as well. I would have expected them to be based on heritage or culture, especially after they’ve gone through the trouble of listing all those ethnic groups, but can see how a “Vikings get +1 Strength, +1 Constitution, Sailing, and Shield Bash” kind of set-up could veer into racist stereotypes very quickly, especially since many of those Forgotten Realms ethnicities have clear real-world analogs. It’s probably best to reserve the broad stereotypes for the fantasy races. 

But Wait, There’s More! 

For those of you who are keen students of alphabetical order, you’ll note that Gnomes and the two Half-something races haven’t been mentioned yet, much less the weird shit from 4E. That’s because the races are divided into two sets. The given explanation is that the races we’ve seen so far are the common ones and the others are “uncommon” (and not necessarily approved for all games, so ask your GM), which makes sense if you ignore the fact that Half-Elves are often even more common than Drow. I suspect the real reason has more to do the fact that making Dragonborn the first race in the chapter would have just been weird. Anyway, I applaud the decision for two reasons: (1) Making the first race on the list Dragonborn would have been weird: and (2) it gives me an excuse to break this chapter down into two posts. I’m really not mentally prepared for Gnomes just yet, much less the Star Wars Cantina races.

Next Week: Bastards, Gnomes, and the Weird Shit from 4E! 

Now that I’ve dumped on the cover of Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, it’s time to actually open the book. The first page is a piece of art that’s similar (and similarly unappealing, in my opinion) to the 3E art: noncommittal water-colory backgrounds, indistinct linework, and just kind of bleh. Then there’s the usual front material (credits, table of contents) and a Preface where Mike Mearls congratulates D&D for being D&D. 

The Introduction includes all the stuff you find in every RPG introduction (make believe, dice abbreviations, how the game works) as well as a few things you don’t. Some of these, like a plug for published settings, a section explaining a bit about “The Three Pillars of Adventure” (Exploration, Social Interaction, and Combat), and a few paragraphs about magic all make sense here. The thing that doesn’t really go in the Introduction in my opinion is the explanation of the core d20 mechanic and a few other explanations of game rules. These seem like they should be in the main book to me. 

Aside from the weird choice of including core mechanical concepts in a section that’s usually written to be skippable, I can’t complain much about the introduction. The information is all there, the “How to Play” section is a solid half-page instead of the couple of sentences most games provide, and there weren’t any errors that made me think the book had been so haphazardly put together that it wasn’t worth my time. [Side rant: I never made it past the first paragraph of d20 Modern because of a basic grammatical error that any competent editor should have caught; I think it was “their” instead of “there” or vice-versa. I might have overlooked it in a game by a smaller company, but WOTC is supposed to be the industry leader. They can afford professional editors who don’t let glaring mistakes slip past, especially on the first page of the book.]

After a couple of forgettable full-page art pieces (what did compositional focus do that hurt you, Wizards of the Coast?), we jump right into character creation. The first chapter provides a step-by-step summary of character creation mostly uninterrupted by crunchy bits. Classes, Races, and even ability scores are described in detail in later chapters. There’s also a running example of a player creating a character named Bruenor (obviously Battlehammer, because apparently R.A. Salvatore is still a thing). It’s no Sample of Play Theater, but I can see how it would be helpful for a new player. 

Step 1, “Pick A Race” isn’t particularly informative. It basically spends 3 paragraphs saying “Pick a race and write down your racial abilities.” Step 2, “Pick A Class” provides a little better look into the game system’s structure. In addition to class features (the current name for the standard class abilities we all know and love), a class has “proficiencies,” which seems to be the new term for “all that class stuff that isn’t class abilities.” Proficiencies cover armor, weapons, skills, saving throws, and “sometimes tools.” Other than the “sometimes tools” part, looks like just a new collective name for some well-worn game concepts. A little later in the section (after Level and Hit Points, which work just like always), it describes the Proficiency Bonus, which is +2 for 1st-level characters. Apparently it applies to all your proficiencies (examples include things like attack rolls for a weapon you’re proficient in and saving throws you’re proficient in). Class and background apparently determine the character’s proficiencies. Without having read any further, I hope there’s some degree of customization involved beyond just choosing a class and race. The idea of all 1st Level Barbarians having the same X abilities at +2 seems like a step back. 

Ability Scores have been moved from their usual spot at Step 1 to step 3 in the process (after race and class). While it’s a minor change, I like what it says about the game’s priorities. For one thing, it acknowledges race and class are the traits that define your character, not the numbers you randomly rolled on a 3d6. It also eliminates the “play the class your rolls force you to play” model of the old “roll 3d6 six times in order” method. Now you can actually choose the kind of character you want and assign your ability scores to fit the concept. Speaking of ability score generation methods, this edition limits itself to 3 ways of determining abilities: The classic “4d6, drop the lowest” roll with the scores assigned according to the player’s choosing; A set of default scores (15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8) that the player assigns to whatever abilities he likes; And a point-build method of the “I see what you’re trying to do but I’m not sure the payoff justifies the wonkiness” variety. 

Like 3E, 5E ability scores give you a single modifier for all ability-related rolls (no “Bend Bars/Lift Gates” or “Resist Disease” percentages). This time around there’s even the added feature of a formula for determining the modifier if you don’t have the table (which goes to 30, but there’s no mention of whether that’s a hard maximum or not) handy. There’s a table with an extremely brief overview of what each ability means (Strength measures “natural athleticism, bodily power” and is important for “Barbarian, fighter, paladin”) and which races have a bonus to the stat in question (no racial penalties are listed, so I assume those are a thing of the past). The section promises that the abilities will be more fully described in Chapter 7. Chapter 7 is in about the right spot for one of those “Incredibly Boring Details That Nobody Cares About” chapters, so these descriptions are probably right where they belong, tucked in between the vision distance table and the encumbrance rules. 

Step 4 is “Describe Your Character” and includes several new bold-faced terms that look like they might fall into the general vicinity of role-playing mechanics. There’s the never-going-away (but seemingly even more downplayed this time around) alignment and three new (to D&D, or at least since 3E) traits: ideals, bonds, and flaws. There’s not much information about them here. The last bold-faced term, background, is definitely a rules trait, and the section even explains that it gives you a background feature, proficiency in two skills, and maybe a language or tool proficiency. This step shows the first sign of something new (to D&D) in this new edition (or at least since 3E), and I’m looking forward to finding out more in  “Chapter 4: Personality and Background.” The second section of Step 4, “Your Character’s Abilities” basically tells the player to use his ability scores as hooks and gives some so-obvious-it-feels-like-padding examples of what characters with high and low scores in each ability might be like. 

Step 5 is “Choose Equipment.” Each Class and Background has a set of default starting equipment for the character, but players who really love accounting can still buy their equipment piece by piece like in the old days. You can also have Trinket for free, but you’ll have to refer to Chapter 5 to find out what the hell that means. There’s also a word of warning that you can only carry so much stuff and a note to see Chapter 7 for the carrying capacity (aka encumbrance) rules, because sometimes things work out exactly how you expect them. The step then moves on to sections about Armor Class (10 + Dex Bonus + Armor) and Weapons (melee weapons (mostly) use Strength, missile weapons (mostly) use Dexterity). 

Step 6 is “Come Together” because reasons. It’s a paragraph long and basically tells you that your character is a member of an adventuring party. 

After the overview of character creation is a section called “Beyond 1st Level,” which provides the (universal) level advancement table, explains what happens when you level up, and breaks different level groups into “tiers of play” (basically power levels) with brief descriptions. 

Next week: Elves & Shit! 

Before I start what may very well turn into a way-too-long review of 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons, I'm honor-bound to mention that Hex Games released the third PDF in our American Artifacts series (cleverly titled American Artifacts 3) earlier this week. For those not familiar with the series, each American Artifacts PDF collects 20 magical items from American history, folklore, and pop culture. Each entry describes the item, its history, and its abilities, then provides QAGS rules for the crunchy bits. Previous artifacts have included Stagger Lee's hat, Gary Gygax's dice, Ben Franklin's robot, and Geronimo's skull. In the latest edition you'll find things like the original Bowie Knife, Teddy Roosevelt's big (moose-summoning) stick, and the (magically reconstructed) guitar that Jimi Hendrix burned in that poster that hung in your college dorm room. Although written for QAGS and geared toward the Hex Ficton (The world of Hobomancer and many other Hex titles), the items can easily work in any game setting with an America. 

Last week's post provided a pretty good summary of my experience with D&D up until 3rd edition: played the hell out of it from 4th grade through high school, started discovering other games (or more accurately, people willing to play other games) but still played regularly in college, and stopped playing sometime in the mid-90s. I read 3rd Edition out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised, but never got around to playing it unless you count a very brief Pathfinder campaign a few years ago. Outside of a demo game that my friend Stacy ran, I pretty much missed 4th Edition entirely. I planned to do the same with 5E because I still can't wrap my head around a $50 rulebook (I am old), but found it on sale and decided to take a look. 

Now, let's talk about cover art. American Artifacts 3 has a beautiful piece of cover art (by Jeffrey Johnson) featuring Teddy Roosevelt scaring off The Devil by summoning a giant spirit moose. I love that cover more than life itself, but I could say that about all three covers in the series (the first was The Devil making his deal with Robert Johnson, the second featured sword-wielding, time-travelling William Faulkner squaring off against Old Scratch). As I mentioned in the 3rd Edition review I posted last week, I was less-than-impressed by the cover art on that one, so let's take a stroll down memory lane and right into the modern era of D&D. 

Let's start off with the one that I saved my $1 a week allowance up for 13 excruciating weeks ($12 + 60 cents tax) to buy when I was just a wee lad: 

Oh, yeah. Erol motherfuckin' Otus. At first Otus's work seems kind of weird-looking, but the more of it you see the more you realize that it's not weird-looking because he's not a good artist, it's weird looking because it's very uniquely stylized. Just look at this cover: we've got a wizard and a warrior, they're in a dungeon, and they're fighting a dragon. It literally reinforces the title of the game and makes it look exciting as hell. It's got everything you need. 

When I found out that Advanced D&D let dwarves have classes instead of just being dwarves (I mean, dwarfing is fun and all, but dwarfing AND fighting sounded like a riot), I got myself a copy of the Player's Handbook (second-hand from a kid at school, if memory serves). It looked like this:

The cover art for this one is by David A Trampier. The dead thing *could* be a dragon, but if so it's a pretty puny one. Those of us advanced enough for this book know that dragons aren't something you fight everyday, though, so leaving dragons off of the cover gives us a more representative view of play for us more mature players (6th-graders). We're still in a dungeon, and we've got all the main character classes represented, with my favorite class, the Thief, getting a bit of spotlight. Though Trampier had no way of knowing it, the gemstone-eyball stealing would soon gain extra cool points when Indiana Jones made his debut. This one isn't as polished as some of the other covers, but it's a classic that gets the job done. 

Since I'd dutifully ripped my old Basic rulebooks up and compiled them in a binder with appropriate sections from the other rulebooks using those convenient pre-punched holes, I picked up the new version of the Basic Set when it came out. I doubt Gygax intended the whole "here are some holes to make things easier" feature as a way of guaranteeing that a lot of people would end up buying the books twice, but it worked on me. Most of you know that it had this cover:

Larry Elmore was part of a group of artists that took D&D's art game to a whole new level. This is clean, professional stuff like you'd see on the cover of a novel from a major publisher. The cover here only hints at the dungeon, but the dragon about to either kill or be killed by his Warduke-esque opponent is front and center. The layout, with the hero's leg and the dragon's claws breaking the frame, makes an already exciting piece of art even more dynamic. Otus is kind of posed and Trampier's cover is mostly static, but in Elmore's cover there's shit happening, which makes the game seem fun and exciting. I may be biased because Elmore is a fellow Kentuckian and genuinely nice guy (he hung out for a couple of beers with us after he did a signing at the store where I used to work and we've crossed paths at lots of cons), but for me this is the gold standard in D&D covers. 

Through the inevitable swapping and bequeathing of books that happens in any gaming group, I also eventually ended up with the second cover of the First Edition Player's Handbook:

This one's another Kentucky boy, Jeff Easley (who sadly I've only met once, and just long enough to get a couple of books signed--including this one, I believe). Easley's work as the crispness of Elmore and company, but has kind of a retro fantasy art feel thanks hazy, misty, or in this case magic glowy backgrounds reminiscent of Frank Frazetta's stuff. No dungeon or dragon here, but this wizard pretty much screams "Why don't you sit back and pour your self a big goddman mug of MAGIC?" Like the Elmore cover, it's also very active and makes it feel like cool stuff has to happen in this game. 

Of course in 10th grade I bought the 2nd Edition Player's Handbook the second it came out. Google's not giving me any decent-sized cover pics, so here's the art without the words: 

Another one by Easley, this one is both dungeon and dragon free and has what my high school art teacher would call "ice cream mountains." While the color scheme is a little muted (we'lll get to that soon), the strong contrasting colors make the central figure stand out and the artwork is action-oriented enough that it screams "ADVENTURE!" It's not as strong as some of the previous covers, but it's a solid entry. 

There was a second 2E cover (A barbarian breaking some shit, I think) but most of my thoughts about it are similar to my complaints about the new edition. As I mentioned in my review, the 3E cover made the game look arcane, complex in a not fun way, and generally not like something a random non-gamer would think they need in their life. I couldn't even tell you what any subsequent covers looked like. I'm sure I've seen them, but they made no impression on me. 

Now let's look at the 5E cover: 
This cover, by Tyler Jacobson, is part of a trend I first noticed several years ago at GenCon when I was forced against my will to visit the dealer's room and saw a rack with dozens of game books that were all either a vague blur of blue or a a vague blur of orange (with the occasional vague blur of brown or green thrown in). It was some Zak Snyder shit, and especially with so many books side by side together, it was just a big blur of vague color. Not a single character or monster or structure or landscape or anything stood out on any of the books. At a glance, the whole rack could have just been multiple stacks of the same handful of books. You had to take a close look to realize they were multiple titles with different art work. 

A couple of weekends ago, I picked up and flipped through this book in several different stores, bought a copy, brought it home, left it on my desk in plain view for about a week, and still had no idea what was on the cover until I picked it up to start reading it. When you look closely enough to decode the cover, you'll see that it's an elf...magic user? who might be hovering in mid-air while she waves a glowing ball of magic energy (one of the few things that isn't orange or brown) at a..giant or something I guess who's  lunged in some kind weird and almost certainly impractical pose (I think his hat may be a dragon). They're in hell or something, not a dungeon. About the third time I looked at the cover, I noticed there's also a black guy with a sword stuck down in the corner. YAY DIVERSITY! I mean, it's probably based on insincere corporate calculation and the minority character is literally marginalized, but it's a start I guess. There's also some kind of worm or bug thing that's just kind of hanging out watching from the background. What's his deal? This cover says to me "here's an orange blur" and does not especially invite me to open up the book with great expectations of adventure. But I guess I'll try to do that next week anyway. [Note: The image above is considerably more distinct than the physical version of the cover. I don't know if someone's tinkered with the settings or if something got lost in translation somewhere in the printing process, but the digital image is a lot less one big blur.]