D&D 4E 4E Devils vs. Demons article

[Desdichado]

If it doesn't have armed and dangerous hobos, it's not D&D!

[smallcaps]RRRaaarrr!!![/smallcaps]

 

[D.Shaffer]

That's as unoriginal run-of-the-mill standard fantasy cliche as you can get. Beaten to death a 1,000 times in hundreds of P&P games.

This is going to sound flippant here, but DnD is THE baseline game for FRPG. All those gaming cliches and conventions? DND started them. When people want to point out how their fantasy game is different from others? DND is the one they usually use for a comparison. For all intents and purposes, DnD IS what people use as an example of generic fantasy.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Ok, and now tell me again that 4th edition planes Hell and Abyss is original and not a copy-paste rip off from Paradise Lost.

Well, it's been in public domain for a while now, so 4e is not technically ripping off anything .

 

[occam]

All I've really seen so far is erinyes/succubi. That requires one Tome of Horrors monster entry and it's fixed. Hell, five minutes editing the succubus entry myself and it's fixed...which is what I intend to do, by the way.

I have not seen a compelling reason why I couldn't use the Great Wheel. I've used the Great Wheel for GURPS Fantasy before, so why not 4E?

Of course you'll still be able to play in the Great Wheel; I intend to, assuming I make the move to 4e. But having to redo a bunch of monsters and the like, game-mechanical constructs that are already in the books but that I can't use because the new backstory has modified their concepts too drastically, would be annoying. But that's what it would be, an annoyance, not a roadblock.

 

[occam]

This reminds me of those "what is the essence of D&D" threads in which people accuse others of not playing "real" D&D because they don't use orcs or paladins or flumphs or something.

The real questions we should be asking are these:
Does it have dungeons?
Does it have dragons?
Does it have transients who kill things for money?
Do you roll a d20?

Nailed it. I mean, other than Planescape fans (like myself), how many players dealt directly with the hierarchy of demons or devils, or cared exactly where the Abyss and the Hells were located in the multiverse, or how they were created and by whom? And of those players, how many would refuse to play in a game in which those were different?

And that's only a problem assuming you're somehow forced into playing in the new cosmology. If you want to play in the Great Wheel, play in the Great Wheel. Ignoring and recreating fluff is easy; every campaign setting does it.

My concern is more with the possible mechanical changes that will need to be reversed.

 

[occam]

I suspect, btw, that one reason WotC is so keen to describe non-alignment-based differences between demons and devils is that alignment itself is going to be tossed out on its fanny or radically changed.

There would be some benefit to doing that... but tossing or radically changing the alignment system would REALLY make running Planescape in 4e... well, extremely difficult, at the very least.

 

[Mirtek]

If you liked the previous lore, you could just as easily have stuck with 1E or 2E.

The only reason to buy 3E is if you thought it was a better game system than the previous editions. And the same will be true of 4E.

Lore != Game rules

New game rules = new edition
completly different new lore = new game

I agree with this, but -- and I hate to keep harping on this -- I think WotC's plans for 4E include a very large helping of creating new IP that they (and Hasbro) can exploit in creating spin-off products, particularly computer games, and that will further differentiate the D&D brand from the generic fantasy that exists out there in the wider world.

D&D is a victim of its own success. By being the first and most widely played fantasy RPG, its original distinctiveness -- that strange blend of pulp fantasy, science fiction, and horror, with a Tolkienian gloss-- is now pretty the standard interpretation of fantasy, both in games and in novels. D&D created a whole new genre of fantasy and, because everyone embraced it (even when they were reacting against it), D&D no longer feels "special" compared to other fantasy out there.

And so they try to change that by giving it the most generic standard background they could think off?

The problem with today's web article is that it's not terribly well written. It uses far too many superlatives ("all demons do this," "all devils are like this") and allows for zero nuance. I REALLY doubt that the actual final cosmology will be so rigid, so it's just pointlessly pissing people off when it probably never meant to in the first place.

--Erik

So the whole point of these new changes is pointless anyway?

Look! We clearly defined their roles. Demons do X and devils to Y, no more confusion! *cough* Except for the demons over there who actually still do Y and the devils over there still doing X

 

[DandD]

Lore != Game rules

New game rules = new edition
completly different new lore = new game

So this means Ebberon is an absolutely completely different game compared to the Forgotten Realms, compared to Planescape, compared to Dark Sun, compared to Ravenloft, and so on, although they share the same ruleset, but not the same background lore? They're all D&D-games, and that's thanks to the rules. Background lore is easily tacked on.

And so they try to change that by giving it the most generic standard background they could think off?

Seeing as the three Core rulebooks of D&D 3.X already tried to be absolutely generic standart, I don't see any problems at all.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Lore != Game rules

New game rules = new edition
completly different new lore = new game

I think you're confusing "game" and "setting".

 

[see]

The real questions we should be asking are these:
Does it have dungeons?
Does it have dragons?
Does it have transients who kill things for money?
Do you roll a d20?

So, er, the Palladium Fantasy Role-Playing Game is D&D?