Dungeons and Dragons 4: Epic Fucking Fail

W. t. f.  Seriously.  What the fuck did they do to this game.  I just got my books yesterday from Amazon and spent the day at work going through the PHB and all I can say is epic fucking fail on every level.  The gameplay streamline is shite, but I won’t go into that now because its the layout and design that really makes me want to stab out the eyes of a WotC employee, in this case Stacy Longstreet who apparently didn’t get the fucking memo that the art directors job is to provide art direction.  This book has about as much direction in the art department as the Donner party had in the not getting lost in the mountains department.

These books have absolutely zero visual coherency.  From the the horribly generic hand drawn fantasy illustrations to the horribly generic software rendered fantasy illustrations , none of it goes together to sell the setting.  Instead it looks like it was held to the exacting standards of a 5th grade math notebook illustrator.  Don’t let the good cover on this book confuse you, the inside looks like garbage.  I’ve seen better artwork adorning crpg manuals from the 80’s.  I can’t fathom why WotC, who employs some of the best artists in the industry for their Magic the Gathering line, can’t seem to come up with a single illustration for this book that doesn’t scream ‘immature product development!’ or ‘we didn’t give a shit about this product!’.

Those of you with a copy, lets turn to page 34 and look at the drawing accompanying the Dragonborn race.  Does anything jump out at you?  The female Dragonborn has boobs. Boobs. WHY THE FUCK DOES A REPTILE HAVE FUCKING MAMMARY GLANDS??  Can you explain this for me?  Purely within the context of this fantasy realm, do female dragons wear giant brassieres to keep their massive, scaly, dragon-titties from flopping around while they’re devouring entire villages??

Next example, page 36.  Dwarves. This dwarf has a two dimensional axe.  At least I think thats an axe, although my friend Jeremy who is more or less an expert on medieval weaponry might have strong opinions to the contrary.  Whatever it is, whoever drew it needs to A) take a fucking fundamental drawing class and B) stop playing WoW for at least as long enough as it takes to come up with a moderately fucking original take on this fantasy setting staple. DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS INSPIRED WOW, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND

Skip to 213.  Lets look at the armor.  Looks like they took the shitty ‘edgy’ non-functional armor designs from 3.x and completely raped any last pretense of style right out of their ridiculous, recently-deceased corpses.  216, Weapons.  Admittedly not as bad as the atrocities preceding them, they still look like something found in a sketchbook of a failed Disney artist.  Speaking of sketchbook, what the fuck is up with this trend toward ’sketched’ weapons anyway?  Too busy drawing tits on dragons to include some fucking finished artwork for this page?

46: Another two-dimensional weapon.  48: Why the fuck do all the weapons in this book look like they were made from sheet metal and crayon?  224: An Elf with down syndrome.  258: Holy shit something that wasn’t inspired by WoW artwork, thanks EverQuest!

This travesty of art and design is inexcusable in the face of products such as Black Industries cum Fantasy Flight Games Dark Heresy book.  You only need to hold the two side by side to see which design team actually gives a fuck about their product and which one is trying to cash in on the cashcow fanbase of a derivative product that just happens to be making more money.

I was going to write about the first year college student page layout but I’m sick of talking about this subject.  Rest assured, you could probably do better with a copy of MS Publisher and a Sunday afternoon.