Dungeons & Dragons Lore & Legends: A Visual Celebration of the Fifth Edition of the World's Greatest Roleplaying Game

by Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson

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 .

Genres: Fantasy, Role Playing Games, Dungeons and Dragons, Art, Gaming, Graphic Novels

416 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2023

About the author

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 D&D Heroes’ Feast cookbook series. His most recent works include Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Dragons, The Legend of Drizzt Visual Dictionary, and his award-winning debut fantasy novel, Vivian Van Tassel and the Secret of Midnight Lake. He also starred on the eOne/Lionsgate cooking show Heroes' Feast, based on his book series of the same name. In 2024, Michael had the privilege of writing the opening feature in TIME’s D&D 50th Anniversary special issue. Michael holds degrees from Northwestern University and the University of Chicago and resides in Chicago, Illinois, with his wife, two daughters, and two sons.

Reviews

[Sean Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

For my money, fifth edition D&D is the best edition of D&D (and I say that as someone who was weaned on 2e and THAC0). This gorgeous tome does a fantastic job of offering insight into just how thoughtful the rollout of 5e has been over the past decade while highlighting the absolutely glorious art.

Highly recommended for 5e aficionados. For the rest of you, go read The Part About the Dragon Was (Mostly) True because it's not entirely horrible (then again, I'm biased).

[Sherwood Smith]

I have never played a complete game of Dungeons and Dragons. This was largely because I first encountered it during the early days of the board game, and my particular story interests invariably wanted to veer off between the choices. It was clearly a game for guys who liked lots of monster fights, an aspect of storytelling I almost always skimmed. Still do, unless it's got humor.

But I knew friends who really enjoyed playing, and who brought their imaginations to their gaming, so that creativity happened in and around the interstices of the game. The board game nearly vanished from my notice as computer-gaming grew in popularity, and then D&D made an enormous rebound, with new creators coming on board who were vitally interested in self-propelled Story.

And here is this absolutely sumptuous new edition of their backstory manual, which goes into all the design and storytelling background. It's fascinating to read the background history of the game, and D&D's evolution paralleling the rapid advancement of tech. This gorgeous book is a story and RPG geek's treasure, cram packed with beautifully produced art.

Bingo! I know exactly what to give my son for the coming holidays.

[D' · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had mixed feelings about this one. This book is very much a celebration of the 5th edition of D&D. 5th edition more than any other edition has really seen the player growth of D&D reach new heights and it's great seeing a book cover this era. The book itself is beautifully done, the pages are glossy and thick and the artwork throughout is stunning. The back half of the book got a bit too self-congratulatory for my taste, I really would have liked more candid discussion about how some of the books and rule changes were received. The little snippet about the OGL simply ignored the biggest Wizards of the Coast story of 2022/2023 being the huge backlash against the proposed licensing changes. There was simply nothing negative at all in the book and that feels intentional. Even the passing reference to the horrible 2000 movie with Jeremy Irons was spun in a positive light. You can love a thing and still be critical of it and the authors played it way too safe.

A gorgeous but flawed book that is far too shallow.

[Francisco · Rating 4 out of 5]

Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson, Sam Witwer - Lore & Legends (2023)
A kind companion to the also lush Art & Arcana (2018), which covered the history of Dungeons and Dragons over the decades since 1974 and across its five editions (plus an Original edition and a 3.5 edition), this volume is a 10 year celebration of Fifth Edition specifically.

A really good inventory of adventures, campaign settings and accessories that came out for the game since 2014's launch of the Fifth Edition, it's also a great source for art, and often art as you've never seen it before, and in the books it's either cropped to fit or covered with lettering which is absent here. 

It's a great book to have, but you need to be aware of what it is, it's a celebration of the game very much told as Wizard of the Coast and Hasbro would like it to be told, it's an official history. Don't go in expecting any discussions of controversies or criticism of business/creative decisions, You won't read about questionable characters like the Vishanti from Ravenloft or the Hadozee from Spelljammer (which are conspicuously absent from the book, even while listing all other Spelljammer races), or any discussion of the OGL question which was all anyone was talking about for much of 2023. This is a sanitised history, and as long as you go expecting that and wanting to look at pretty pictures, then this is perfectly ok. The special deluxe edition, which was the one I got, is a beautiful object to have around, definitely worth shelling out a bit more if you can find it.

[Harrison Bodrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the art and outside contributors. I wasn’t a fan of amount of self-granulation by WOTC. In the previous art book, there were several critiques at the past. This felt hallow in the same regard. No mention of the OGL mess, hadoze or other missteps. To highlight the way the community had made 5E huge without talking on WOTC almost killed their own golden goose.

The increase corporate talk and lack of deep dives or acknowledge how far the game has come. Holds this back to the corporate Love letter it is.

[Hal Johnson · Rating 2 out of 5]

I took away one star for every twenty celebrities name dropped. That probably should have left this book with zero, but I lost count and left it at a merciful two.

[Brandon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this up from the library so I would have some lighter, positive reading while I work through some challenging, dark material as part of my academic semester. This was a welcome break from everything else and a fun romp through the visuals of D&D 5E.

The book does an effective job of providing a history of the fifth edition of the game, from the earliest playtests to the eventual transition to One D&D (now renamed D&D 5E 2024). I really enjoyed seeing how the "world" of 5th edition developed, and the strategies behind which items were released when. It helped me understand the current state of D&D, as well as the company strategy going forward.

It was also really fun to see a celebration of the art in the books and materials - it's one of my favorite parts of D&D and I enjoyed seeing the full spreads, breakdowns, concept sketches, and historical evolutions throughout. For those interested in art or the fantasy aesthetic, this book would be worth at least flipping through.

The "Sundry Lore" sections were my personal favorite, mixing artistic elements with narrative and real-world histories to help the most popular of characters come to life. For the first time, I feel like I understand how the various settings and some of their most popular characters came to be, and how they have been adopted into later editions over time.

My major frustration with the book is that it is obnoxiously corporate. There is, of course, no mention of any negative aspect of the 5th edition, no primer on why previous editions were unpopular, and no reflection on items that sold less well (relative to other products). Some paragraphs just list the names of celebrities involved with live events or streams, that are boring to read and don't add anything to the text. When I think about this book as a corporate product, meant to show to potential sponsors, clients, or partners, these sections make more sense. As a reader, they were very lame. I would have liked a more honest, transparent version of this book more.

On the whole, really fun to read and inspired me to add some things into my home game. Provided a nice break from other work and academic reading, which is exactly what I needed at this point in the year. I would highly recommend it to my friend Tom, and would recommend my friends Matt and Russ at least flip through.

[Fabienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Feast you eyes on this volume, nay tome of Dungeons and Dragons history! Lore and Legends was written by four D&D historians and specialists Michael Witwer, Kyle Newman, Jon Peterson and Sam Witwer.
As a perfect follow-up to Art and Arcana this book takes us through a visual celebration of the Fifth Edition of D&D. The game now more popular than ever has an evergrowing fan base that has exceeded all expectations. From it’s humble beginnings no one could ever foresee the level of popularity this game would one day claim. From movies, to books and online gaming sessions where the players are seen as rockstars, I believe this cements D&D in the everlasting gaming lore as a basis for all popular games this day and age.

The book touches on all these points, but mostly it researches it’s current fame and how it became so prevalent in today’s pop culture. It also shines a light on the people who created it and the fans who still play it to the people who discover it for the first time.

Enriched with magnificent art, rich and insightful information, this book has it all. An absolute must for any Dungeons and Dragons fan.
So at it is said: Enjoy, and may the dice be good to you.”

[Chris Borror · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was meh

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great collection of art and history. I learned a few things about the origins of the game. Definitely a coffee table book.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jolly good use of the library as this is a doorstopper and a good replacement for your upper body workout routine.

A self-congratulatory history of essentially ten years of 5th Edition D&D the focus here is on the stunning artwork (primarily covers) for the relaunched books (most core books have 3, yes 3, covers - standard, gameshop and special, some have a 4th!) which do a great job of stimulating the imagination for anyone who wants to go wild in a fantasy world. This is a book you really should ONLY read as the full cover, full size hardback.

Ironically* the WOTC machine that churns out 3+ books (with wonderful art) per year over the 10's and into the 20's thus providing such a glut of artwork to swim in fails to acknowledge that the constant tweaking, adding, min-maxing, steadily makes the game itself more complicated and daunting to engage with (* although slightly addressed with Starter and Essential releases every ~3 years which trim everything back to the core again), there is a more is always better, complex always richer mentality in the writing.

We leave the story with One D&D in playtest (to become the 2025 revised 5th edition rules) and a somewhat compressed Postlude touching on the 2023 releases and movie.

In general a mostly positive book with gorgeous artwork, often satisfyingly large.

[Itamar · Rating 3 out of 5]

While there quite a lot of good art in this book, and a detailed overview of the various books WotC put out for 5th edition, I find that it feels too much like a marketing tool for WotC.
There's no mention of projects not doing well or being negatively reviewed. There's nothing about the repeated upheavals at WotC/Hasbro (including the infamous OGL fiasco of 2022), no mention of the competition or even any specific interesting or successful DM's Guild content. Everything is hunky-dory in the land of D&D and the impression you get is that Virtual Tabletops and Actual plays are something that has been entirely and intentionally successful for WotC, which is not really the case (especially with VTTs).
In addition, while touted as an art book, there are quite a few pages dedicated to minis and accessories and very little written regarding art direction, the artists involved (other than their names) or the process. I'd also expected more full-page art.
Also, the entirety of 2023 is given much less space than the preceding years.

So overall this is a nice book about WotC's view of D&D 5e, but is not as good as Art & Arcana, possibly because 40 years has more interesting things to write about than 10, and I suspect this book is much more corporate in its conception.

[Ethan Park · Rating 4 out of 5]

Originally sorta just bought this for some art references as well as anatomy practice for making some sheets for a dnd campaign I’ve been working on. I got that, sure, but it was still pretty cool stuff to learn about as well as a little behind the scenes stuff from Wizards of the Coast.

Only major flaw here is id say it’s kinda lame that it’s very obviously only talking about the ups of it all, but I mean that’s what you get from an officially licensed book about a company’s greatest success. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it isn’t the most accurate telling of the forming of the community that dnd has now due to 5th edition

[Sammy Tiranno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully visual, Legends & Lore highlights some of the most stunning fantasy artwork created over the last decade. It also tells the story of D&D’s recent renaissance and continued popularity, with a main focus on all things Fifth Edition. Since it centers on 5e, it’s more of a ‘where we are now,’ and isn’t quite as awesome as Art & Arcana, which was an overall history of the game. With both books being published by Ten Speed Press, they are the same size and of similar design, but the style of their spines doesn’t match, which was definitely a missed opportunity at greater shelf appeal.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gorgeous coffee table book that is essentially a puff piece for D&D 5E. The art is tremendous and it's fun to hear some of the development stories... but if you're really interesting in the history of D&D, I'd suggest Shannon Appelcline's Designers & Dragons series.

[Debbie Payne · Rating 5 out of 5]

TTRPG players will appreciate the well-written account of one of the world's most popular tabletop games. Accompanied by gorgeous art, this guide on the history of Dungeons and Dragons covers MOST of what happened in the last 50 years (with the exception of some foot-in-mouth incidences, like the OGL debacle). The hardcover version would make a nice coffee table book.

[Klingenzeit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Really enjoyed Art & Arcana, which avoided most of the pitfalls this one fell into. Obnoxiously self-congratulatory, low on actual art, full of lists of minor celebrities who did a D&D livestream once.

[LevTheNerd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting sequel to Art & Arcana. While most D&D history books focus on the TSR era, this book is specifically about how 5e brought D&D from a game with a very small fan base to the phenomenon that it is today.

[Jeff Willis · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book wasn't quite what I expected, but it was a fun read. Wizards of the Coast has published a handful of books over the years that talk about how the game has evolved over the years, and there have been similar books published about specific deviations of D&D (like the World of Critical Role book I read earlier this year). And this book was kind of that, and kind of not. It was part history and fan letter to the game from celebrity players and other people in the space who weigh in on what D&D has meant to them over the years... but it's also sort of a campaign sales tool that talks about the different specific sourcebooks that D&D sells?

The parts of the book that were people talking about what the game means to them were great. I thoroughly enjoyed the images of people's home games, or events from years past that proved formative for the game and its current crop of celebrity endorsers. It was fun to watch the history unfold. It was less fun to, every few pages, see a reminder that we can, you know, buy more books if we want. And to have content from those books basically copied and pasted into this book and reformatted to fill space.

D&D has produced a lot of great products over the years, but in recent years they've received some criticism for pushing unnecessary content out to their fans. And I get... they're a company that creates a game product that doesn't require a subscription, or a membership. People can play D&D with a minimal one-time investment and that's not great for a company looking to maintain a bottom line. If they want to re-use art and copy, and if they want to repackage it in different ways, that's a smart way to get the most bang for your buck. My issue is with the way this was just kind of sloppily put together. It felt unfocused and unclear what the point of the book was.

While I enjoyed flipping through it when I had a couple hours to kill at the bookstore the other day, I'm not sure it's going to be a coffee table book that I'm clamoring to purchase and proudly display on my... well, coffee table.

[Daniel Lavan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great art book and walkthrough of the history of DnD 5e!

[Doug McConnell · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for anyone who plays D&D. A combination of history and beautiful art. Makes me want to play even more!

[Jordan · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read, but a bit of a puff piece. I feel like its value will be greater in the years to come, when this history is further in the rear view mirror.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed filliping through the pages and reading the backstory of DnD!! Found out some new and interesting information!

[Diogenes Grief · Rating 5 out of 5]

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Dungeons & Dragons (bought by Wizards of the Coast in 1997, then quickly consumed by the behemoth Hasbro in 1999), I have to feign surprise at its resurgence, being one of those greasy-haired, acne-scarred kids of the 70s and 80s who got roped into such tabletop excursions with my dope-smoking, Boone’s-Farm swilling friends, which carried over in the 90s alongside the super-nerds in my Army infantry company. We would play all night long on weekends, sleep for a few hours once the sun came up, grab some grub then get back into the campaign. This was the first “Satanic Panic” and the GOP loves to unfurl the tried and true oldies. It was that fun and memories of those adventures will cling to my withering mind, hopefully, until my last days on this godsforsaken planet.

Now, I’ve heard things went squirrelly after Second Edition AD&D, and it seems nobody really talks about the third and fourth editions, which is probably good, but such an erasure highlights many of the problems we “classicists” have with this enterprise co-opted by money-grubbing companies and global corporations who historically shill everything they can for a quick buck (the fact that they made a deluxe box set of the “Dragon Heist” storyline that went for $500 and sold out quickly says much about how the entire industry bent in the winds of profit).

Last month, my heavy-metal-battle buddy and his wife asked us if we wanted to try old-school D&D (all of us are huge fans of Baldur’s Gate III, and admittedly playing such a game brought back vivid memories of the bygone past). We quite quickly said “hell yes!”

I had a gift card and was looking through Barnes & Noble’s half-off hardcovers the other day, when my eyes fell upon this massive, mighty tome, a “B&N Exclusive Edition” (whatever that means) for $25. Sold! This is a beautiful book packed with artwork old and new, and in so many ways a very nice time-capsule to the analog past, before technology and the omnipresent internet ruined so much of our individual imagination, critical thinking, and creativity. My friends and I, collectively, had every single thing D&D published before 1995, even copies of Dragon magazine, all lost to time and early Ebay. This book is also a great way to see how the now-famous Fifth Edition came to be, and I was pleasantly surprised to learn about this. I’m wholeheartedly against multiverses of any kind (they’re lazy cop-outs for easy, boring franchising), but I understand what the creators and fans built together here, tying so much of the detached diaspora of the past into a solid, comprehensive, and understandable whole. It’s actually quite a wonderful evolution to behold. Long time coming.

Let’s be perfectly clear here too though. This book is essentially a catalog of merchandise to buy.

I see the wide appeal of D&D, love references percolating through pop culture (Big Bang Theory, Stranger Things, Rick & Morty, etc), but I absolutely loathe the greed of it all. Hasbro will continue to whore out everything in its portfolio for every last penny they can vacuum up. They made $1 billion dollars on a Barbie movie that made fun of the all the things Hasbro is historically known for, and probably sold another $1 billion in plastic toys that will continue to toxify our bodies, our ecosystems, and the planet as a whole. Who got the last laugh, “feminists”, when the “victim” was a blue-eyed blonde guy?

I don’t care about conventions and YouTube live-streams of celebrity campaigns (get over yourselves) and the soul-sucking wasteland of the digital era. I want to share creativity and imagination with close friends, free of screens (except the Dungeon Master’s screen), with good ole pencil & paper and the blue-marbled dice I’ve held onto for three decades. I encourage everyone with a similar itch to give it a go, be ye a middle-aged Gen-Xer or one of the younglings, a veteran of ancient eras or a wild-eyed neophyte. Time-warp back to 1987 and enjoy the personal freedom; sing it, Michael Starr, of Steel Panther’s “1987” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HewOS...). Unleash your imaginations from the shackles of film and video games and let your creativity and enjoyment run free with unsheathed swords and dog-eared spellbooks. \m/

[Jacque · Rating 5 out of 5]

So much information. And the art is incredible.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great art, and goes into very interesting history of D&D as a game, as well as the lore of various settings. Was very enjoyable, and would be great to casually browse through.