Earlier today I found myself at Barnes & Noble doing some light magazine reading. Unfortunately I discovered that they no longer carried the American Conservative and was left with only the Spectator. On my way browsing around the store I happened to find myself noticing several new rulebooks and errata for the 4th edition of D&D. Now perhaps it is just the old curmudgeon in me (if it isn't thac0, its shit) but it appears to my sensibilities that the new, relatively speaking, art direction for D&D is one giant leap backwards. Perhaps its only a matter of taste but stylistically speaking it is very similar to that pioneered by World of Warcraft using bold saturated colors and distorted proportions. Unfortunately, I happen to instinctively despise such a format and find myself nostalgically pining for the good old days. Even as late as early 2000's, D&D still had character as seen from Icewind Dale series with it's lush use of watercolors and thematically fitting art direction. The illustrations in the books I flipped through today seemed almost sterile and derivative by comparison.

Perhaps it is only my unrealistic expectations based on an unwillingness to accept the younger target demographic that WoTC is courting now but it seems that in addition to a dumbing down of the rules, they have also stripped something of the essence from D&D. Perhaps it is unfair to expect every depiction of a warrior to be a world weary realist style where you can see the rust in his mail, nicks on his blade, the mud on his clothes instead of some colourful buffoon encased head to toe in impractical armor with glowing runes of power. Perhaps it is simply that my tastes are too old fashioned. It doesn't change anything though. The trend in contemporary fantasy art is still crap.