If in the past he had eliminated some unequivocally negative racial characteristics, now he has created characters for a minority that were more than necessary.
To the dismay of some long-time players who resist the world’s evolution and to the joy of a new generation demanding that “Dungeons & Dragons” become more than just a role-playing game still steeped in the stereotypes of the 70s, Wizards of the Coast has decided that the world’s number one role-playing game should grow in every way. While in the past, they removed some unequivocally negative racial features, they have now created characters for a minority that were more than necessary.
It’s not that there haven’t been autistic characters before, of course, but they didn’t appear in the game books in any way; instead, they were born (and probably died, like everyone else) at the players’ tables. In the end, it’s the players who have shaped the course of D&D for years. The game has never stopped being a reflection of its own players. When they asked for more complexity, they got 3.5E, and when Critical Role brought it back into the spotlight, they made special rules for it.
Now, in ‘The Deck of Many Things,’ a deck of cards similar to tarot cards representing different magical items and spells, which is an updated version of what Gary Gygax launched in 1975, it seems fun enough to introduce into a modern D&D session. Furthermore, the deck will come with a book called, of course, ‘The Book of Many Things,’ which is written from the perspective of Asteria, a princess turned paladin who is also autistic.
Makenzie de Armas, one of the designers of this edition, is autistic and wanted to incorporate much of her own experience into it. For example, Asteria can become so focused on a mission or a book that she forgets to eat or creates an enmity by breaking a toy. To put it this way, it’s not just a nod but permeates the entire character and her actions, even though it’s not what defines her.
The book and the deck will be released in the fall in the United States as part of the celebration of the ten years of D&D 5E, an edition that will be challenging to surpass as it has become the standard for a whole generation that may not readily accept potential changes in 6E. They have announced a sort of sixth edition called One D&D for next year, but it will be fully compatible, just in case anyone decides to stray from the flock.
Ilya Shkipin, the artist of the book in question, stated, after a controversy on Twitter over the use of AI, that he did use it to polish some details.
It is not without irony that even a game like ‘Dungeons & Dragons’, based solely on imagination and venturing into fantastical worlds, battling strange creatures, and solving puzzles set by a more or less challenging dungeon master, has fallen into the clutches of AI. Over the months, what began as a fun aid for artists has turned into an anti-creative nightmare, a haven for those who, instead of improving their style or learning to draw, have opted for a computer to do it for them.
It turns out that in the latest book of the franchise, published by Wizards of the Coast, several images generated by artificial intelligence have made their way. ‘Bigby presents: Glory of the Giants’ was released digitally on August 1st, and the physical version will be released on the 15th. The book features new giant enemies, revised rules, spells, and completely new ways to create a character.
The issue arose when Ilya Shkipin, the artist of the book in question, stated, following a controversy on Twitter over the use of AI, that he indeed used it to refine some details, although the majority of the art was painted digitally. Interestingly, Shkipin has been illustrating for various D&D books for ten years and had never encountered any issues like this before.
Wizards of the Coast has quickly moved to safeguard the (more or less) good reputation of their flagship brand by stating that they will review their process and update the guidelines for artists to “make it clear that they should avoid using artificial intelligence art generation as part of their creative process in D&D.” Apparently, they were not aware of what was happening, and after speaking with Shkipin, they have ensured that he will not use AI in the future, leaving this as an anomaly. At least for now.
This isn’t the first time that AI has made a strong entry into the world of tabletop games, nor is it the first negative reaction from the community. Games like ‘Pathfinder’ and ‘Starfinder,’ for instance, made a promise that none of their artists would use AI by contract. On the other side are games like ‘Yavalath,’ created from scratch by a generative AI. Only time will tell who was right.
Dungeons & Dragons continues to expand with new books, this time with one that teaches us all the secrets about dragons.
Dungeons & Dragons has defined modern fantasy in a way we haven’t seen since The Lord of the Rings. It has directly or indirectly influenced the imagination of millions of people to such an extent that when we think of fantasy, we think in the terms first conceived by J.R.R. Tolkien and later embraced by Gary Gygax, the original creator of Dungeons & Dragons, more than any other pair of authors we can imagine. And unsurprisingly, in addition to the importance of dungeons and exploring them, the other thing that wasn’t as significant in fantasy before its existence was dragons.
Dragons have always existed in fiction and mythology, playing significant roles. However, it was Dungeons & Dragons, in particular, that made them the centerpiece of fantasy. That’s why it’s so fascinating that Wizards of the Coast, the company behind the game, has decided to publish a book dedicated to our fiercest adversaries and, on occasion, our most intriguing allies and patrons.
Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons is a 224-page book that aims to expand upon everything we know about dragons and how to use them in our Dungeons & Dragons campaigns. It focuses particularly on how dragons fit into each of the game’s worlds, their purposes, and how the different creation myths associated with them in each world align with the true creation myth detailed in the book. It wants to demonstrate from the very beginning the central importance these creatures hold in the game’s cosmology, not only as antagonists but also as entities that literally shape the world.
All of this translates into new possibilities for players as well. With rules for creating characters who are dragon worshippers or hunters, who have dragon ancestry, who derive their powers from dragons, and even spells related to these most reptilian of creators, Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons ensures that it is possible to introduce these creatures at all levels of the game, both from the player’s and the Dungeon Master’s perspectives. This adds depth and flavor to the overall experience, providing a unique tool for gaming tables that want to incorporate a more draconic touch into their campaigns.
Adding to its appeal, beyond rules and numbers, the book is filled with details about the differences between dragons. A metallic dragon with tendencies towards good is not the same as a chromatic dragon with tendencies towards evil, and within each of these categories, each subspecies also exhibits significant variations in character and preferences. All of this is meticulously explored, even providing maps of what their average lairs would look like based on dragon type, providing comprehensive details that differentiate between the various classes of dragons.
Practically all dragons share characteristics of longevity, wisdom, and a fondness for treasures, but Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons emphasizes that each class of dragon has its own unique approach. Furthermore, the book emphasizes that as dragons age, they are more likely to have ambitions and interests that extend beyond mere accumulation of wealth, even beyond the comprehension of mere mortals.
In addition, Wizards of the Coast takes a daring leap in this book by introducing a third type of dragon: gem dragons. More focused on psionic powers rather than magic, seeking to maintain balance in the multiverse, and positioning themselves as judges and mediators, gem dragons are an interesting inclusion because they break the mold of dragons being either wise heroes or ultimate villains. They are mysterious, enigmatic beings, whose inclusion in any campaign automatically adds a much more exotic touch to any adventure involving them.
Fizban’s Treasury of Dragons is a fascinating read, even for those who don’t play Dungeons & Dragons. Players will find valuable resources in the book if they want to incorporate dragons into their stories in any capacity. For those who don’t play but are interested in role-playing or want to learn how to play Dungeons & Dragons, the book is filled with ideas that help understand the motivations and roles of dragons in a deeper way. That’s the brilliance of this book. It recognizes the importance of dragons in Dungeons & Dragons and not only places them where they belong but also elevates them to an even higher level.
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Surely more than once, tired of always playing a Catan, a Carcassonne or a Trivial, you have thought about getting started in role-playing games.
Using the magic staff you found in the realm of Folvendat, you make your way through the enemies across all dimensions and stand before the door to Avernus. The door is red and heavy, and from within it comes a stinking stench, pure sulfur. Not even Fertrenn’s enhanced eyesight can see beyond it. When you try to open it you find that it is locked tight, protected by Idilssur’s spell,and the magic staff begins to lose strength and power. What do you do?
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What you need to play role
Surely more than once, tired of always playing a Catan, a Carcassonne or a Trivial, you have thought about getting started in role-playing games. You’ve seen how they played in ‘E.T’ and ‘Stranger things‘, but you have no idea how to start, what game you should buy, you don’t even know what it is! Don’t worry: keep an eye on your inventory, roll the dice and get ready to maximize your powers, because we’re going to tell you what it is and how to role-play.
When it comes down to it, the most basic things you need are friends, pencil, paper and imagination. After all, a role-playing game is a collaborative story in which one person narrates what happens and the rest of the players act as their characters would, varying the story. But of course, said like that it is not very funny. Therefore, and although there are dozens of variants, it is normal that each character has some associated characteristics.
Whether decided by the player or decided by luck with the dice, the characteristics (strength, intelligence, charisma, etc.), usually added to the result of a die, indicate whether what you want to do is going to work out well or whether you are about to screw up and send everything to hell.
Imagine that you are a powerful warrior with enhanced attack and strength attributes and that, when you want to attack an enemy, you roll the maximum possible: you will not only hit that kobold with a sword, but you will do it better than expected (hitting the henchman next to him, for example). Now, imagine that you are a very intelligent gnome but with a very low attack that wants to hit a guard in the back and, on top of that, the stealth roll is low: it is more likely that instead of hitting him you hit yourself in the foot and, with the scream, you alert the whole castle. Things that happen.
But a lot of numbers have no real interest if your character doesn’t have a life: you must think about where he comes from, what his goal is, his friendships, his enemies, his alignment, his tastes. Come on, create a life out of nothing that you can play and evade reality. You can also create a nine-to-six worker who spends his evenings watching TV and sending WhatsApps, but the role may fall into the “boring” category.
The master’s degree
Okay, you already have your character. You know how he talks, you’ve drawn a picture of him and you’ve even imagined what will be his star phrase (“Eat my sword, knave!”), but he won’t do anything without the master. Call him Game Director, Dungeon Master or Narrator, the system is always the same and what differentiates the role from a regular board game: there is someone who knows what can happen, makes the decisions of the enemies and non-playable characters and holds your destiny in his hands.
There is a rule written in the role that indicates that the final decision of the master is the one that counts: if you have fallen down a ravine and a fire monster has devoured you, don’t try to change its mind while the monster is digesting. It’s time for your companions to mourn the fallen warrior and for you to create a new character. When you arrive ready to play, the master will have already spent several hours preparing the game, so the least you can do is, at least, have a little respect for him and bring the supplies. Keep in mind that an average role-playing game usually lasts about three hours!
Although you, as a player, will have to learn some basic rules (how to investigate, attack, etc.), it is the master who will have to learn most of the manuals to decide in the fairest way possible. He is also the person who will know your secrets and will dose them throughout the games. Note: you can also be a master. The problem is that this is the job to which very few are destined. It is not paid. Literally.
Some games to start with
Get a few sets of dice (4, 6, 10, 10, 12 and 20-sided, although there may be more) and decide which game to start with. Surely your head immediately went to ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘, and no wonder: it was the first role-playing game in history 50 years ago and is still the king (as proof, the great ‘The Legend of Vox Machina’ in prime video). But although 5E is much more narrative and simplified, deep down you don’t want to study two manuals of 300 pages each before rolling a single die, do you?
There are other options for simpler games that are no less fun or deep. In fact, D&D itself knows this and that’s why it has a starter box with the simplified manual and a story with which to start rolling dice almost immediately. But why not try other options? ‘Fiasco’, for example, is special because it has no narrator. In it, with very few rules, you can create great stories in a group. Of course, you need a very creative group.
Imagine that you are attracted to the idea of playing role-playing games but set in your own world, only having some basic rules. For that there is ‘FATE Accelerated’, a game with which you can literally play whatever you want. Or, why not, ‘Call of Cthulhu‘, whose rules, once you know them, are not so complex compared to the Lovecraftian mystery adventure it can give you.
There are even role-playing games that only have two pages of rules – you can even make up your own if you have the time! At this point, you can play a game playing practically anything you want, from slashers to soap operas (watch out for ‘Passion of Passions’). If you thought role-playing was just about axe-wielding medieval adventures, you’re very wrong: there’s a whole world out there to play! Don’t get overwhelmed, choose a manual to start with, get your friends together… And let the fun begin.
To finish
Once you have finished your first game, you have a question to solve: Do you intend to end it here or do you want to make a campaign and keep the same characters for years (or days, depending on the expertise and type of game)? If you choose the latter, get ready for adventure, romance, unexpected twists, deaths, friends and battles. Or don’t. You decide, after all, how to spend three hours every week with your friends. Isn’t that the best thing about role-playing?
In your usual store you will find hundreds of D&D manuals. And you just wanted to know if you were going to like it! Don't worry: we'll tell you everything you wanted to know about the most famous role-playing game in the world.
Surely more than once in your group of friends there has been someone who has wanted to form a group to play ‘Dungeons & Dragons‘. Since the arrival of Critical Role and the popularity of Twitch, more or less everyone has been curious to leave everything behind, learn a bit of magic, pick up a sword and set off to explore the Forgotten Realms. But of course, when it comes down to it, where to start? In your usual store you’ll find hundreds of D&D manuals. And you just wanted to know if you were going to like it! Don’t worry: we tell you everything you wanted to know about the most famous role-playing game in the world.
50 years ago…
At the beginning of the 70’s, in the United States, board games were reduced to those that families could play: ‘The game of life’, ‘Monopoly’, ‘Connect Four’… The current boom in which we can take a ‘Gloomhaven’ or an ‘Exploding kittens’ to the table is terribly recent. If back then you wanted to find something of complexity you had to go to the tables of the young (and not so young) where they played what some have considered the pre-role-playing game: wargames.
Or, to put it in English, the war games that are still popular today. For example, the humorist Javier Cansado is a great fan of painting figurines and sending them to fight in the Napoleonic wars. These were realistic games in which two armies faced each other: the armies were not made up of fantastic creatures and fighters, but of Napoleonic soldiers or soldiers from the American Civil War at the Battle of Gettysburg. A party, come on. And among those gamers there was a thirty-something so fanatic that he had even set up one of the first conventions in history (the now ultra-famous Gen Con)… in the basement of his house: Gary Gygax.
Gygax did not know that she was destined to change the world of board games forever. In fact, more out of curiosity than anything else he helped create the game ‘Chainmail’, set in the Middle Ages with realistic battles, which had a small appendix explaining how to play with wizards, dragons, orcs, elves or… hobbits. With permission from JRR Tolkien? Of course not.
And you know what happens when you introduce a change, no matter how small, to a group of fans? A large part of them will angrily reject it. Chainmail’ had three editions but it didn’t seem that Gygax was going to become more than just a fan… Until 1974 when he released ‘Dungeons & Dragons: Playable medieval fantasy wargame campaigns with paper and pencil and miniatures‘. And the world changed forever… Even though this was not a role-playing game. Among other things, because nobody knew what a role-playing game was.
You the barbarian, you the archer
Actually, it cannot be said that this first edition of D&D was a role-playing game as we understand it now. In fact, a “referee” was supposed to be able to manage groups of up to 50 people at the same time – imagine doing that in a game right now if it’s already hard for four players to control themselves! This was a wargame at its core, but with one essential change that made it special: instead of moving armies, each person played with an original and unique character, which over the course of a campaign could evolve.
At no time was role-playing assumed as part of the experience, but the players adopted it naturally. Playing Napoleon’s army was not the same as playing Elf Langolier. Five years later, wargames took a back seat: the 80s were to be dominated -always in the United States, mind you- by D&D. In high schools, colleges… And on television.
Although now it may seem to us a thing only of a small group, really D&D, in its day, was an absolute devotion. So much so, that in 1983 began what for many was the first contact with the game: the cartoon series that, although it may seem impossible now, caused controversy in its day because of its violence. In total, 27 episodes co-produced by Marvel and Toei that coincided with the decision that ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ was a public danger.
There was no proof, but that has never stopped a generation from being frightened by what a more modern one does. Overnight, murder cases began to be linked with ‘Dungeons & Dragons’: mothers’ associations even pretended that before every episode of the very innocent series, warnings were issued that the franchise was linked with violent deaths.
Even Tom Hanks’ first starring role was in a 1982 anti-game pamphlet movie called ‘Monsters and Mazes’! In fact, at the time it was thought that playing the game led you to look up how to kill enemies in real life. Patricia Pulling, the mother of a child who committed suicide in the same year that the Tom Hanks movie appeared, claimed that there were 150 D&D-related deaths: “The child who is easily obsessed can end up looting graves while searching for objects needed to perform occult rituals, and is only one step beyond the need for blood”.
It may seem silly (because it is), but in the United States, which welcomed the board game with open arms, it gradually sank into marginalization. It ceased to be a game for everyone and only for a few, viewed with suspicion and a certain fear. Even in Spain, in 1999, ABC even linked it with Hitler and Marilyn Manson. Almost nothing. A year later, the third edition of D&D did not end up pleasing the fans (although more than the infamous 3.5) and the horrifying movie ended up sinking its fame completely.
The return
For a while it seemed that video games, even those based on D&D, had killed tabletop role-playing forever, but then came Twitch, Critical Role, Vox Machina and thousands of games played around the world in podcasts, live, videos, with celebrities, with voice actors, with anonymous. D&D was once again the king of fantasy. And no one could ever throw away its fame again.
And that brings us back to the beginning: if you want to play Dungeons & Dragons, what manuals do you need? If you want a recommendation, you can read most of the online rules on Wizards of the Coast’s own website, but it is possible that, instead of leaving your eyes and to always have something to consult, and in the absence of the Basic Box, you want the Player’s Handbook. This is the essential one, the one that has everything: the race, the class, the archetypes, how to set up each character and the adventures of the world.
As you progress, and especially if you have no idea how to make a game, you will need the Dungeon Master’s Manual and the Monster Manual. These are the three essentials (all three must be of the same edition, preferably 5E), to which you can add all sorts of additions. As for adventures, if you don’t want to create them yourself, there are entire manuals, such as Ravenloft, Strahd or the one that comes in the Basic Box, The Lost Mines of Phandelver (which I personally don’t find amazing, but it is true that, for convenience, it is one of the most played ones).
Dungeons & Dragons’ has become more than just a role-playing game. More and more, people are expressing themselves through their characters, their claims, their internal struggles, their powers and their relationships within their world. If you could be anything, what would you choose to be? What twist would you give to your character? How would you be with others? Maybe it’s time to pick up your die of 20 and find out.
