Changes to Devils and Demons

[Mephistopheles]

I'm hoping that this doesn't insult the Planescape fans here. I think PS is a novel take on D&D cosmology, and cool in its own way. But anyway....

I'm a Planescape fan but I'm not insulted. I can recall feeling the same way you describe when reading about demons and devils in the 1E MM. Because the information was sparse there was a lot of room left for mystery and wonder. The more something is explained the less mystery remains and the known becomes relatively mundane in comparison. This is something that Lovecraft exploited expertly in a lot of his writing.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

At a minimum you have to go out of your way to explain why the Baatezu of the Planescape setting are exactly like the Devils of the standard setting but with slightly different names and backstory.

You have to do that with any setting which doesn't use the Great Wheel cosmology, though, and technically speaking both of the currently published official settings - the Forgotten Realms and Eberron - fall into that category. Of course, that the Forgotten Realms have been separated from the Great Wheel is not an uncontroversial decision, but the fact remains.

Likewise, Dark Sun doesn't take place in the default cosmology - and back when they had to pretend that it did for the sake of consistency, they had to make up awkward explanations for why it didn't fit with Spelljammer or Planescape.

Likewise, Dragonlance was never written to make use of the Great Wheel, and it was poorly shoehorned in there.

Likewise, Ravenloft has no meaningful connection to the Great Wheel, and attempts to define it within that context (including the imprisonment of Vecna within it) always detracted from its uniqueness.

I'm a huge fan of Planescape, but for me its coolness never depended upon its use as a "metasetting" encompassing all the published D&D worlds. Its coolness was dependent upon its own idiosyncratic elements - everything that was made up for the setting itself.

I like the sound of these changes from the point of view of making Fourth Edition a more accessible, flexible game. We can always rewrite the flavour for a Planescape setting in the future, just as we have to do it now for Eberron or another non-Great Wheel setting.

 

[RichGreen]

It is a historical fact that the Great Wheel cosmology is NOT essential to D&D. The Great Wheel cosmology was first published in The Dragon #8 in July 1977. In other words, D&D had already been published for THREE AND A HALF YEARS before Gary Gygax's Great Wheel article was published. Further, in the last sentences of said article Gary wrote: "I think it best to do nothing more than offer the idea for your careful consideration and thorough experimentation. This writer has used only parts of the system in a limited fashion. It should be tried and tested before adoption."

Thanks for this reference -- just checked it out on my Dragon CDs. The article doesn't even name all the Outer Planes!

Cheers


Richard

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Also, the Manual of the Planes came out during 1st edition. This 1st edition rulebook very much cemented the Great Wheel as the "home" of the D&D settings. If you really want to get technical, calling a fighter a fighter and not a "Fighting Man" would then not be intrinsic to D&D either.

The original MotP came out in 1987... nearly 10 years after the AD&D PHB (1978)! So please don't try to imply that this book is closely tied to the core of 1E D&D.

 

[Gez]

Etymologically speaking, yes, but that's about it.

Devil comes from an old Indo-European root for "god" (compare "divine", "diva", "deva", etc.); demon comes from the Greek word for "spirit". Which may be why "the Devil" is more often used than "the Demon" to refer to Satan, and why "demons" is more often used than "devils" to refer to minor denizens of Hell. "Devil" implies a greater power than "demon."

 

[S'mon]

If you prefer the old fluff, is there a problem I'm not seeing in keeping it for your own campaign? I don't see any negative consequences for doing so, but I may be missing something.

I'd rather that this kind of cosmology fluff was kept setting-specific, not in the rules manuals (including MM). Monster descrptions in the MM should be kept generic IMO, without reference to specific cosmology, other than that other planes exist and demons come from somewhere nasty.

 

[delericho]

For me, the Devils and Demons lost their "evil mojo" in 2nd ed. dur to too much information. When it comes to other planes & otherworldly terrors, for me, less is more, just as HPL and REH did it. Knowing about their politics and wars them them pedestrian.

"Less is more" is absolutely a good thing from the players' point of view. However, for a DM to properly use a given element, he really needs information about it. You cannot pit your PCs against Demogorgon in a fight they have a chance to win unless you have stats for Demogorgon. Does having stats make Demogorgon less dangerous, Evil and mysterious? To the DM, yes, but to the players it should not.

So, in detailing the Lower Planes and the arch-fiends for use, of course 2nd Edition had to reduce the mystery, and hence the terror... from the point of view of the DMs who were going to use that material and therefore needed that information. For the players, who shouldn't be accessing that material, it shouldn't make any difference.

(Of course, there is the problem that many players look into things they really shouldn't, and many players are also DMs, and so will read that material. I don't have an answer to that point.)

To draw an analogy, consider the scariest 'creeping horror' film you know. From the point of view of the audience, it's scary because the information isn't present. From the point of view of the director, though, there isn't that same fear - he knows exactly what's going on (and necessarily must, to do his job). For this analogy, the players are the audience; the DM is the director.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

The thing with changes is I'm more in favour of changes that Add, rather than changes that Subtract. So any change that Adds to something that was there is better than ones that takes away from anything that was there.

 

[Just Another User]

Yeah, but it's fluff that will almost certainly also apply to Forgotten Realms, Eberron, any Planescape reissue they do, and any new published setting. It also makes all that wonderful fluff in the two Fiendish Codices we all just bought completely useless.

No, I don't like this change.

And that is why they did it, probably, so people had to buy the new books rather than keep using old edition materials (3.x, 2nd or even OD&D) (unless they want to do a lot of works on it, of course) .
I'm going out on a limb and saying that they proobably will be doing the same to many of the other monsters, at least the non-generic ones (aberrations, drows, other kind of outsiders, some undead, etc, etc.)

 

[Klaus]

Random aside: In 6th-grade social studies class, I did a presentation on demons and devils in history and religion. (About as deep a presentation as you'd expect from a 6th-grader. )

Part of the presentation was a posterboard with various bits of info on it. As an artistic touch, I xeroxed pictures of various demons from various books and pasted them around the border of the poster. One my sources for pictures (but not information ) was the 1E Monster Manual.

The succubus picture drew an interesting frown from the teacher...

Got you beat, dude!

The Great Wheel and the Blood War got me an A+ in Philosophy 201 in college!

"YAY!" for the Blood War!