Dragon Magazine #343 Cover Art

Cover Art By William O'Conner

The original art is much, much better than the blow-up they used for the Cover. I'm not particularly partial to Dragons so it isn't my favorite piece he has done, but I do like his style.

I'm jumping around with these Dragon issues. Normally I like to plod on from issue to issue in sequence but my life and collection of books and gaming material has been very randomized lately. I have the CD-Roms with the first 250 Dragon issues. While I scavenge ideas from anywhere I found them 3e took the game in places I was sad to see it go, lots of big swords and armor with masterworks, and dire this and that. There has always been plenty of farce and silly in D&D but when 3e came out it certainly made me feel to old for the game and now that I am really to old I don't care anymore. 1e was a masterpiece, people without half the talent, luck or what-have-you kept and keep trying to improve it. Good luck with that I say with highlights of irony and sarcasm.

Not caring about the underlying system makes these post-modern D&D magazines, now pre-5e mid-regeneration issues easy for me to shred for the content, or what I can find of it. Certainly not this cover though it is better art than many of Dragon Magazines lamentable Covers from issue #1 onward. Although I dislike the 100% WotC D&D content as proclaimed on the upper left corner I think they did better with the artwork when they weren't trying to do Western Manga style with the fore-mentioned unlikely sized swords and perhaps overly pointy armor.