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Dungeons & Dragons Lore & Legends

A Visual Celebration of the Fifth Edition of the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game

Part of Dungeons & Dragons

Author Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Sam Witwer, Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed
Foreword by Tom Morello
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Hardcover
$50.00 US
Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed | Ten Speed Press
9.37"W x 12.15"H x 1.37"D   | 81 oz | 4 per carton
On sale Oct 03, 2023 | 416 Pages | 978-1-9848-5968-6
FOC Sep 4, 2023 | Catalog August 2023
Add to cart Add to list Exam Copies
An illustrated guide to Dungeons & Dragons’ beloved fifth edition told through interviews, artwork, and visual ephemera from the designers, storytellers, and artists who bring it to life.
 
When the reimagined fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons debuted in the summer of 2014, the game was on the brink of obsolescence. But within a few short years, D&D found greater success than it had ever enjoyed before, even surpassing its 1980s golden age. How did an analog game nearly a half century old become a star in a digital world? For the first time, Lore & Legends reveals the incredible ongoing story of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition from the perspective of the designers, artists, and players who bring it to life. This comprehensive visual guide illuminates contemporary D&D—its development, evolution, cultural relevance, and popularity—through exclusive interviews and more than 900 pieces of artwork, photography, and advertising curated and analyzed by the authors of the bestselling and Hugo Award–nominated Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana.
© Brian McConkey
Michael Witwer is a New York Times bestselling author known for his work on the Hugo-nominated Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the critically acclaimed Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, and the bestselling Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook. His most recent works include Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, and his debut novel, Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. View titles by Michael Witwer
© Stefan Simchowitz
Kyle Newman is an author and award-winning filmmaker who has directed numerous feature films including the Star Wars-fueled comedy Fanboys, A24 Films’ Barely Lethal, the e-sports comedy 1UP, and the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons documentary for Hasbro, Inc. He has directed the music industry’s top artists, and produced films such as Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. As an author, he is known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the New York Times bestselling cookbook Heroes’ Feast, and its follow-up, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. An honors graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of Film/Television and a member of the Directors Guild of America, Newman resides in Los Angeles with his partner, Cynthia, and their three sons. View titles by Kyle Newman
© Jon Peterson
Jon Peterson is widely recognized as an authority on the history of games, best known as the author of Playing at the World, The Elusive Shift, and Game Wizards. He also co-authored Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook, and Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. He has contributed to academic anthologies on games, including MIT Press’s Zones of Control and Routledge’s Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Jon also has written for various geek culture websites, including Wired, Polygon, and BoingBoing, as well as maintaining his own blog. View titles by Jon Peterson
© Tim Sabatino
Sam Witwer is an American actor and musician, best-known for a series of sci-fi genre roles spanning a twenty-year career. He led the SyFy drama series Being Human, playing down-and-out vampire-gone-straight Aidan Waite (8+3 Hit Dice), and played conflicted Raptor Pilot Crashdown in the Hugo Award-winning series Battlestar Galactica, Superman-killing Doomsday in CW’s Smallville, misunderstood Mr. Hyde in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and antagonist Agent Liberty on WB’s Supergirl. Sam is also well-known for his continuing work for the Star Wars saga, bringing various characters to life in video games, film, and television, including Starkiller in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and a multi-year, Emmy-nominated run voicing the villainous ex-Sith lord Darth Maul. Recently, Sam served as the main character in Sony’s Days Gone videogame. He is a longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, and an avid player of both electronic games and pen-and-paper role-playing games. View titles by Sam Witwer
Dungeons & Dragons launched the great tradition of roleplaying games in 1974 with an unprecedented mix of adventure and strategy, dice-rolling, and storytelling. Wizards of the Coast continues to honor that tradition, bringing to market a diverse range of D&D game and entertainment experiences and influencing numerous writers, directors, and game designers by tapping into an innate human need to gather with friends and tell an exciting story together. View titles by Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed
Introduction


Dungeons & Dragons was released in 1974 and would go on to change the world in ways both big and small. It single-handedly launched the tabletop roleplaying game industry and pioneered gaming mechanics and setting concepts that would be counted among the most influential and foundational of the Information Age. But forty years after its release, it seemed like the world might have passed D&D by. The game had enjoyed a good run, but following its faddish popularity in the 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons had difficulty connecting to a gaming culture that increasingly revolved around consoles, computers, and mobile devices. Ironically, these digital games depended heavily on the very same ideas that the quirky tabletop game had originated, which were now delivered to a tech-savvy audience that was far more interested in pixels than dice. Video games based on D&D’s concepts, such as World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, and The Elder Scrolls, had overshadowed and replaced tabletop roleplaying games almost to the point of obsolescence. When D&D was invoked by popular culture, it was done so as a nostalgic relic of a bygone era.

But not everything was as it seemed. Initiatives were already in motion that would elevate the game to greater heights than anyone could have imagined. In May of 2012, D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast launched the largest and most ambitious tabletop RPG playtest in history, totaling more than 175,000 playtesters by its conclusion. Their due diligence paid off: when the D&D fifth edition Player’s Handbook was released just over two years later, it topped Amazon’s sales charts—not just among game books, but all books. What had seemed like the end for D&D was actually the beginning of an incredible resurgence that has grown by leaps and bounds every year.

Today, fifty million people play the game worldwide; a major feature film and a bevy of TV shows are ample evidence of its popularity. D&D rulebooks, novels, and lifestyle products consistently top the bestseller charts; blockbuster shows, from Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory to Rick and Morty, can’t seem to reference the game enough. Droves of new fans are tuning in every week to watch the game played by livestreamers. In short, D&D is everywhere. The astonishing revival of the game demands an explanation: How did an analog game nearly a half-century old became a star in a digital world? Why did it suddenly connect with our cultural moment?

Answering those questions is the quest that inspired this book. Some of the contributing factors are more obvious than others. Striving to satisfy the true appetites of their customers, Wizards of the Coast assembled an expert team to design and produce the new edition of the game. The result was an elegant ruleset that appealed equally to beginners and old-schoolers, featuring a bold new visual aesthetic that matched the game’s fresh dynamism. Thanks to the rise of social media, countless celebrities in entertainment and technology could proudly credit D&D for awakening them to creative possibilities, helping to convert their fans into D&D fans. Then, a surprising wave of interest in streaming-game spectatorship introduced a new generation to the delights of tabletop gaming, as did a burgeoning convention culture that has nurtured all aspects of geekdom, propelling these events from the fringes to the mainstream. There’s a bit of nostalgia to it as well. Interest in 1980s pop culture has never been greater, and to many, few things define that era better than D&D. But to get to the heart of the matter, we need to delve a bit deeper. That’s what you’ll discover in the pages that follow.

The book you are holding is the incredible story of D&D’s astonishing comeback—both an exploration and a celebration of how it all happened. It is a carefully curated selection of interviews, art, analysis, photography, advertising, making-of war stories, and ephemera that we feel best represents D&D’s fifth edition and the brand’s triumphant renaissance. While we can’t possibly hope to capture every product, moment, or feature of what is now a true phenomenon, our goal as authors was similar to that of the game itself: if everyone has a good time, we all win! So, in the immortal words of the original Player’s Handbook, “Enjoy, and may the dice be good to you!”
Copyright © 2023 by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Sam Witwer and Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
“Mesmerizing . . . Lore & Legends is brimming with eye-popping concept art, photos, maps, archival materials and detailed notes.”—Yahoo! Entertainment

“Featuring everything from the game’s impact on our culture, exclusive interviews, and more than—brace for this, fellow nerds—900 (!) pieces of art, this is an absolute must-have for D&D fans everywhere or any general pop culture connoisseurs.”—Den of Geek

“[Lore & Legends] explores the impact the game has had on pop culture, inspiring numerous other games along with TV shows, books, movies, and actual-play series. The book is packed with art showing how products are developed and the way key characters and settings have changed over the decades.”—Polygon

“Wizards of the Coast has always provided plenty of inspiration in their resources and game modules to fuel the creativity of everyone at the table, and Lore & Legends celebrates that with gusto. The art alone is reason enough to add this tome to collections or even leave out on coffee tables to provoke intriguing conversations that could lead to future adventures.”—Comic Book Resources

“This book is a must-have for those that have been through the changes of this role playing juggernaut . . . In a world that seems to want to divide us, this game brings people together every single day; that alone is worth celebrating.”—Geeks of Doom

“The beautiful, full-color images that fill each page, and the history carefully told by the writers of the book, make this a critical piece for any collection. There is so much to learn about the worlds we have played through, and it gave me a new level of appreciation for the time and energy the creators put into the game to make it available to us as players.”—Gamepur

“A fascinating read for anyone interested in the history and culture of gaming.”—Geek Native

About

An illustrated guide to Dungeons & Dragons’ beloved fifth edition told through interviews, artwork, and visual ephemera from the designers, storytellers, and artists who bring it to life.
 
When the reimagined fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons debuted in the summer of 2014, the game was on the brink of obsolescence. But within a few short years, D&D found greater success than it had ever enjoyed before, even surpassing its 1980s golden age. How did an analog game nearly a half century old become a star in a digital world? For the first time, Lore & Legends reveals the incredible ongoing story of Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition from the perspective of the designers, artists, and players who bring it to life. This comprehensive visual guide illuminates contemporary D&D—its development, evolution, cultural relevance, and popularity—through exclusive interviews and more than 900 pieces of artwork, photography, and advertising curated and analyzed by the authors of the bestselling and Hugo Award–nominated Dungeons & Dragons Art & Arcana.

Creators

© Brian McConkey
Michael Witwer is a New York Times bestselling author known for his work on the Hugo-nominated Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the critically acclaimed Empire of Imagination: Gary Gygax and the Birth of Dungeons & Dragons, and the bestselling Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook. His most recent works include Dungeons & Dragons: The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse, and his debut novel, Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake. He holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, two daughters, and two sons. View titles by Michael Witwer
© Stefan Simchowitz
Kyle Newman is an author and award-winning filmmaker who has directed numerous feature films including the Star Wars-fueled comedy Fanboys, A24 Films’ Barely Lethal, the e-sports comedy 1UP, and the upcoming Dungeons & Dragons documentary for Hasbro, Inc. He has directed the music industry’s top artists, and produced films such as Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made. As an author, he is known for his work on Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, the New York Times bestselling cookbook Heroes’ Feast, and its follow-up, Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. An honors graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of Film/Television and a member of the Directors Guild of America, Newman resides in Los Angeles with his partner, Cynthia, and their three sons. View titles by Kyle Newman
© Jon Peterson
Jon Peterson is widely recognized as an authority on the history of games, best known as the author of Playing at the World, The Elusive Shift, and Game Wizards. He also co-authored Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana, Heroes’ Feast: The Official Dungeons & Dragons Cookbook, and Heroes’ Feast Flavors of the Multiverse. He has contributed to academic anthologies on games, including MIT Press’s Zones of Control and Routledge’s Role-Playing Game Studies: Transmedia Foundations. Jon also has written for various geek culture websites, including Wired, Polygon, and BoingBoing, as well as maintaining his own blog. View titles by Jon Peterson
© Tim Sabatino
Sam Witwer is an American actor and musician, best-known for a series of sci-fi genre roles spanning a twenty-year career. He led the SyFy drama series Being Human, playing down-and-out vampire-gone-straight Aidan Waite (8+3 Hit Dice), and played conflicted Raptor Pilot Crashdown in the Hugo Award-winning series Battlestar Galactica, Superman-killing Doomsday in CW’s Smallville, misunderstood Mr. Hyde in ABC’s Once Upon a Time, and antagonist Agent Liberty on WB’s Supergirl. Sam is also well-known for his continuing work for the Star Wars saga, bringing various characters to life in video games, film, and television, including Starkiller in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and a multi-year, Emmy-nominated run voicing the villainous ex-Sith lord Darth Maul. Recently, Sam served as the main character in Sony’s Days Gone videogame. He is a longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, and an avid player of both electronic games and pen-and-paper role-playing games. View titles by Sam Witwer
Dungeons & Dragons launched the great tradition of roleplaying games in 1974 with an unprecedented mix of adventure and strategy, dice-rolling, and storytelling. Wizards of the Coast continues to honor that tradition, bringing to market a diverse range of D&D game and entertainment experiences and influencing numerous writers, directors, and game designers by tapping into an innate human need to gather with friends and tell an exciting story together. View titles by Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed

Excerpt

Introduction


Dungeons & Dragons was released in 1974 and would go on to change the world in ways both big and small. It single-handedly launched the tabletop roleplaying game industry and pioneered gaming mechanics and setting concepts that would be counted among the most influential and foundational of the Information Age. But forty years after its release, it seemed like the world might have passed D&D by. The game had enjoyed a good run, but following its faddish popularity in the 1980s, Dungeons & Dragons had difficulty connecting to a gaming culture that increasingly revolved around consoles, computers, and mobile devices. Ironically, these digital games depended heavily on the very same ideas that the quirky tabletop game had originated, which were now delivered to a tech-savvy audience that was far more interested in pixels than dice. Video games based on D&D’s concepts, such as World of Warcraft, Dragon Age, and The Elder Scrolls, had overshadowed and replaced tabletop roleplaying games almost to the point of obsolescence. When D&D was invoked by popular culture, it was done so as a nostalgic relic of a bygone era.

But not everything was as it seemed. Initiatives were already in motion that would elevate the game to greater heights than anyone could have imagined. In May of 2012, D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast launched the largest and most ambitious tabletop RPG playtest in history, totaling more than 175,000 playtesters by its conclusion. Their due diligence paid off: when the D&D fifth edition Player’s Handbook was released just over two years later, it topped Amazon’s sales charts—not just among game books, but all books. What had seemed like the end for D&D was actually the beginning of an incredible resurgence that has grown by leaps and bounds every year.

Today, fifty million people play the game worldwide; a major feature film and a bevy of TV shows are ample evidence of its popularity. D&D rulebooks, novels, and lifestyle products consistently top the bestseller charts; blockbuster shows, from Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory to Rick and Morty, can’t seem to reference the game enough. Droves of new fans are tuning in every week to watch the game played by livestreamers. In short, D&D is everywhere. The astonishing revival of the game demands an explanation: How did an analog game nearly a half-century old became a star in a digital world? Why did it suddenly connect with our cultural moment?

Answering those questions is the quest that inspired this book. Some of the contributing factors are more obvious than others. Striving to satisfy the true appetites of their customers, Wizards of the Coast assembled an expert team to design and produce the new edition of the game. The result was an elegant ruleset that appealed equally to beginners and old-schoolers, featuring a bold new visual aesthetic that matched the game’s fresh dynamism. Thanks to the rise of social media, countless celebrities in entertainment and technology could proudly credit D&D for awakening them to creative possibilities, helping to convert their fans into D&D fans. Then, a surprising wave of interest in streaming-game spectatorship introduced a new generation to the delights of tabletop gaming, as did a burgeoning convention culture that has nurtured all aspects of geekdom, propelling these events from the fringes to the mainstream. There’s a bit of nostalgia to it as well. Interest in 1980s pop culture has never been greater, and to many, few things define that era better than D&D. But to get to the heart of the matter, we need to delve a bit deeper. That’s what you’ll discover in the pages that follow.

The book you are holding is the incredible story of D&D’s astonishing comeback—both an exploration and a celebration of how it all happened. It is a carefully curated selection of interviews, art, analysis, photography, advertising, making-of war stories, and ephemera that we feel best represents D&D’s fifth edition and the brand’s triumphant renaissance. While we can’t possibly hope to capture every product, moment, or feature of what is now a true phenomenon, our goal as authors was similar to that of the game itself: if everyone has a good time, we all win! So, in the immortal words of the original Player’s Handbook, “Enjoy, and may the dice be good to you!”
Copyright © 2023 by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Sam Witwer and Official Dungeons & Dragons Licensed. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Praise

“Mesmerizing . . . Lore & Legends is brimming with eye-popping concept art, photos, maps, archival materials and detailed notes.”—Yahoo! Entertainment

“Featuring everything from the game’s impact on our culture, exclusive interviews, and more than—brace for this, fellow nerds—900 (!) pieces of art, this is an absolute must-have for D&D fans everywhere or any general pop culture connoisseurs.”—Den of Geek

“[Lore & Legends] explores the impact the game has had on pop culture, inspiring numerous other games along with TV shows, books, movies, and actual-play series. The book is packed with art showing how products are developed and the way key characters and settings have changed over the decades.”—Polygon

“Wizards of the Coast has always provided plenty of inspiration in their resources and game modules to fuel the creativity of everyone at the table, and Lore & Legends celebrates that with gusto. The art alone is reason enough to add this tome to collections or even leave out on coffee tables to provoke intriguing conversations that could lead to future adventures.”—Comic Book Resources

“This book is a must-have for those that have been through the changes of this role playing juggernaut . . . In a world that seems to want to divide us, this game brings people together every single day; that alone is worth celebrating.”—Geeks of Doom

“The beautiful, full-color images that fill each page, and the history carefully told by the writers of the book, make this a critical piece for any collection. There is so much to learn about the worlds we have played through, and it gave me a new level of appreciation for the time and energy the creators put into the game to make it available to us as players.”—Gamepur

“A fascinating read for anyone interested in the history and culture of gaming.”—Geek Native

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