D&D: WotC Unveils a Tentacular New Cover for the 2024 Monster Manual
WotC unveiled the new 2024 Monster Manual cover, with just so many tentacles and tentacle-like appendages all over everything. Yum.
All I’m saying is, the new 2024 Monster Manual (actually releasing in 2025) cover is enough to make anyone crave seafood. There are enough tentacles and tentacle-adjacent things adorning the cover, about to chow down on some absolutely doomed adventurers (and Minsc and Boo). Doomed, unless one of them is casting a getaway spell. You’ll see in just a second.
WotC revealed the cover through IGN, and Josh Herman, head of art for D&D, spoke with the gaming news site about what inspired the new cover and what to expect within. Read on to find out why WotC thinks you’re about to be eaten alive.
The 2024 Monster Manual is Awash with Tasty Possibilities
Look. I’m not the only one thinking about what these monsters would taste like. And maybe it’s all the Dungeon Meshi, maybe it’s that canonical video from WotC about what Gelatinous Cubes taste like, but you look at that cover up there, and you can’t help but think, “yeah, I’d eat that.”
Which, to be fair, is what the monsters likely think when they look at your player character. And that isn’t just me trying to be witty. That’s literally what Josh Herman, head of art at D&D had to say:
“We’re really trying to push open storytelling, so we took the opportunity to include the player as a concept. So the hero in the clutches of the tentacle, we thought ‘Well, maybe that’s you.”
Here, look again…
That’s your character right there on the cover. In the clutches of some unimaginable horror (probably a Kraken, but who can say). Herman went on to say that it was “really important to [WotC] that players feel like they’re a part of this universe and these stories.”
Speaking of part of the universe, Minsc and Boo are front and center, along with the new Wizard (it looks like). And while Herman says they’re “fighting off this army of monsters”, it looks more like that Wizard is about to Plane Shift out of there because that’s really the best course of action if you’re down to two PCs and that many enemies.
The Back cover, meanwhile, shows off a lot of fan-favorite creatures, including Hags, who are enjoying renewed time in the spotlight thanks to Baldur’s Gate 3’s Auntie Ethel. A Modron with a surprisingly, some would even say disturbingly luscious mouth, Mind Flayers, Owlbears, Gnolls, the whole nine yards.
Of course, the 2024 Monster Manual won’t be out until February 2025. But knowing this, IGN and WotC have been calling it the 2024 Monster Manual. Words don’t mean anything, and numbers even less, I guess.
At this rate, we can expect a 2025 core rule update set to be released sometime around 2030.
