Process Video: 2024

Step-by-step video showing the creation of Stan!'s homage to the 2024 DMG

I really love Tyler Jacobson’s cover painting for the new edition of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. It’s a little more of a “glamour shot” than most of the images I’ve chosen over the course of Season 1, by which I mean it’s a posed shot as opposed to an image showing characters somehow in action. (I’ve leaned heavily to the latter over the course of the previous fifty images.) But it probably the most prominent placement that these three characters—Venger, Skylla, and Warduke—have ever gotten in a D&D game product.

They’re important characters—among the ones that introduced the first generation of mass-market kids (as opposed to those of us who came in through the existing pathways of wargames, board games, and minis games) to the game of D&D and the hobby of Tabletop RPGs. For years, the “serious fans” snickered at them and pushed them into a dark corner where the “embarrassing” parts of the hobby are kept. But as time passed, and as the kids who were introduced to D&D through the Saturday morning cartoon, action figures, and coloring books went on to become “serious” fans, too … the brought their love of these “kiddie” characters along with them.

I don’t know that Venger will ever be held in quite the same regard as Orcus, Strahd, or Lord Soth … and I doubt Warduke will ever be as dearly admired as Drizzt Do’Urden, Tanis Half-Elven, or Elminster … but I’m glad that they now definitely have a place in the spotlight among the classic D&D characters.

Subscribers to this newsletter got to see this drawing early, whereas the general public are only just getting their first glimpses of it today. But there’s still something left that’s JUST for the paid subscribers—a process video showing the step-by-step creation of this cartoon homage. (If you’re currently a free subscriber, now would be a great time to upgrade.)