Our latest Geek Pick of the Week takes a gander at the new book, Lore & Legends: A Visual Celebration of the Fifth Edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game.
As the Holiday season approaches, we’re bringing back our Geek Pick of the Week. Each week leading up to Christmas, we’ll be highlighting a cool product we’ve found that we feel would be the perfect gift for geeks of all kinds. Use these to help fill in your own wish list or find the perfect gift for the nerds in your life. Click HERE to read more about previous Picks of the Week!
Dungeons & Dragons has had an impressive last few years. It’s garnered more mainstream interest thanks to its inclusion in shows like Stranger Things, the success of Critical Role (and other D&D streams), along with a new movie and line of toys for collectors to enjoy.
Much of the iconic game’s modern success can be traced back to the release of the 5th Edition of the game back in 2014. It improved on the core gameplay, making it far more accessible to newcomers (thanks to it’s open playtest development), while still appealing to long-time players. It was a major success that not only revived the D&D brand overall, but ushered in a new era of tabletop gaming.
The newest book from Ten Speed Press/Random House, dives deep into the development of D&D’s 5th edition through to honor it’s impact and show fans how it came to be. Coming from authors Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, and Sam Witwer (with a foreword from Tom Morello), Lore & Legends serves as a “sequel” of sorts to last year’s Dungeons & Dragons: Art & Arcana. Suffice it to say, if you enjoyed that release, you’ll definitely have want to get your hands on this one.
Where Art & Arcana put the focus specifically on the art work of the tabletop franchise and D&D’s overall impact on pop-culture, Lore & Legends gets a bit more specific in chronicling the journey of how the 5th edition came to be. More so, through the various interviews with the designers and artists, fans get a better idea of exactly how it broke barriers and saved a dying game.
This thing is a certified TOME. Coming in at 416 pages, being an over-sized hardcover, Lore & Legends is absolutely massive. It’s also insanely gorgeous as it features hundreds of different pieces of artwork, which shine thanks to the larger scale format. So even if you ignore all the various interviews and analysis (which I don’t suggest), it can still be enjoyed as a simple “coffee table” book for people to flip through.
Before I sat down to read it, that’s exactly what I did. I opened to random pages and enjoyed the different artworks and behind the scenes photos. Even without the context behind them, I was able to thoroughly enjoy the visual journey and appreciate the wealth of things D&D has brought to the table in terms of nerd culture.
When you do get to the meat of the book itself, you’re confronted with an impressive breakdown of the game’s history and how this specific version set itself apart from the 80s juggernaut. Generally speaking, I’m more of a casual D&D fan myself. I read some of the books and enjoy the stories, but never really got into the tabletop game.
Even so, Lore & Legends didn’t leave me behind and still presented a comprehensive narrative of the game’s creation and what the different editions mean for it. I can only imagine that long time fans will get even more out of the experience as the authors pull back the curtains on the 5th edition in a reverential, yet candid, way.
All in all, it’s a really great book and it’s not just for Dungeons & Dragons fans. While it’s definitely a no-brainer to pick up for any D&D fan on your shopping list this year, I suspect just about any nerd would be more than happy to find this under the tree and get something out of it.
Lore & Legends: A Visual Celebration of the Fifth Edition of the World’s Greatest Roleplaying Game is available now (launched October 3, 2023) online and at major book sellers. There is also a really swanky Collector’s Edition of the book launching on November 28, 2023 that’s currently up for pre-order.
[Post includes affiliate links]
