I don't think that many people are stating that the 4e cosmology IS original. But maybe they are going back to a literary masterpiece and using it as inspiration to reenvision it as something that better places the Demons and Devils into something other than an abstract alignment system that, quite franky has been tossed as anything more than fluff in any game I have played in as late.
Does the alignment wheel/mechanic have it's roots in D&D or did it originate in some other game system or literary source?
It is an oft-houseruled, oft-argued mechanic - just look at all the alignment based threads - and yet there are a LOT of game pieces that it's fingers are buried in. Demons/Devils, the blood war, great wheel, detect spells, protection spells, magical enhancements, etc.
I like Malhavoc's work on these things in Arcana Evolved, yet I also like the idea of a [Good]/[Evil] descriptor, as well as maybe a [Lawful]/[Chaotic] descriptor for somethings that have a minor impact on the game. For example, IMC, we use Detect Evil to only detect items, spells or creatures that have that descriptor. It's a META-TAG instead of a set of morals or belief systems that must be attributed to a living creature. It solves the argument about whether the goblin baby evil just because it was born.
There is dark/vile/truly [Evil] and then there's dirty rotten bastard (not evil, just a bad dude).
