About the Book
An illustrated guide to Dungeons & Dragons' beloved fifth edition told through interviews, artwork, and visual ephemera from the designers, storytellers, and creators who bring it to life.
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.
About the Author :
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.
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 upcomingDungeons & Dragonsdocumentary 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.
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.
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.
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.
Review :
“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
