Intro Adventure Covers: 5E

  We’ve finally reached the present day, with Dungeons and Dragons’ Fifth Edition. A compromise between 4e, 3e, and the OSR, D&D 5e managed to displease the hardcore fans of every one of those editions...and so of course it is wildly successful with enormous numbers of consumers worldwide. Any criticism levied against the game edition itself or its extremely bland and generic art should acknowledge that the whole thing works as a commercial product beyond the wildest dreams of anything TTRPG that ever came before. That includes the D&D Starter Kit and it’s very generic little adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver. It’s inspired a lot of new people in some very standardized but still very fun directions, so I guess more power to it.
  Stylistically, we're now fully into the corporate "brand image management" era. Smooth, slightly blurred, with all the colors muted and no doubt carefully workshopped in committee. The environment isn't a dungeon, but a crumbled ruin is certainly compatible with the D&D oeuvre and I'm giving full points for a most excellent dragon. Billowing robes and the sense of motion in the entire cover illustration certainly have us in the "action is happening" category, which I appreciate seeing.
  As with Pathfinder before there's no power disparity here between the heroes and the monster. The green dragon is titanic in scale, muscular and vast. It's breathing out a breath weapon, which unfortunately isn't traditional fire but rather poison gas, but at least it looks like something powerful enough to activate the magical protection of its opponents. Corporate carefully balanced the party composition with the most archetypal of parties; human male fighter, human female magician, elf female magician, dwarf fighter (presumably male because WotC isn't woke to female dwarf beards yet). A very enjoyable fight for a balanced party against a monster of appropriate Challenge Rating, fortunately the Bounded Accuracy math of the system will ensure everyone involved has a Corporately Approved Amount of Fun before the heroes succeed. With proper use of Inspiration, only two characters will go down to be revived later in the round.
  This cover art is perfect for 5e...it's competent, well-built, interesting, smooth, and very flat and generic. I can say it's not to my personal taste but it is objectively to the taste of the majority of customers. There are precisely the correct number of pants.