Changes to Devils and Demons

[Kaodi]

OK, I get the idea of any publicity is good publicity, but there are usually exceptions. How exactly is it that being identified as some sort of devil worshipper is good for your fellow gamer? I mean, I don't recall hearing about Trump ever insinuating that he worshipped demons for the sake of the publicity...

Though I suppose that if angels were identified as generic servants of many different gods, it could relieve the pressure, a little.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

I think these are pretty interesting changes. I like how the murdered god's divine realm became the Nine Hells - it's like Heaven being corrupted, giving the story a really dark twist . And I like how devils will tend to adopt a more humanoid form - it's only a cosmetic difference, but it helps distinguish devils from their demon counterparts IMO.

 

[(contact)]

To clarify, I would almost be surprised if there were no fundamentalist group that latched onto the whole, " We killed God " aspect of the devils background. Yes, similar things happened in other religions, but there aren't exactly a lot of devout followers of the Olympians running around. It's like asking for a resurgence of anti-D&D movement.

Which, honestly, isn't very scary anymore. Fundamentalists are against a lot of things, and while D&D may currently not be the rabble-rousing prod du jour, even if it becomes so, I don't see it hurting sales.

My best guess would be the baseline D&D consumer is 22-35 years old, and makes up his own mind about whether or not a D&D book is going to damage his spiritual well-being.

 

[Li Shenron]

Irrelevant for me.

Explanation of monsters' nature and origin is the kind of fluff which I actually enjoy reading a lot, because it can give me inspiration for writing adventures and campaigns. But at the end of the day, I'm free to pick what I like, discard the rest and make up as much fluff as I want.

For instance, when I started gaming I was intrigued by the wacko cosmology of the great wheel and blood war. Two years later, I was bored by the wacko cosmology of the great wheel and blood war Lately I've been assuming very different things, like Hades, Hell and Abyss being on top of each other: Hades be the entance to Hell where the souls of the damned are gathered, Hell being the eternal punishment for those souls, and Abyss being a place below Hell where mortal souls never go, but where devils or other outsiders may be sent as their own punishment.

In this new case, fine for me to say the gelugons are demons (to be honest, I do hate devils that look like insects, it makes no sense to me). Fine for me to say that Succubus are devils, but at this point I see no reason to keep the "devils are always LE" mantra. I like that Succubi tempt humans not because they want to gain a soul for hell/abyss/whatever, but "just because", which is quite CE if you ask me.

I'm not sure about Erinyes, but I seem to remember that they are spirits of fury and vengeance and have nothing to do with tempting the mortals, and maybe they are such in D&D only because of some designers mistake/ignorance?

 

[Wormwood]

I just hope they leave Baatezu and Tanar'ri alone!

They could probably release a 4e Planescape book as a sop to the fans of the current cosmology.

 

[(contact)]

I'm a long-time Planescape fan, and I love the new ideas. I particularly like the notion that the devils are trapped in the Hells and need some mortal assistance (coughdiabolicalpactcough) to win their way free. Love it.

One of the core conciets of the Planescape game was that whatever you thought you knew, the planes would have some more mysterious secret or deeper truth that could be revealed.

If I ran a Planescape campaign, I'd take one of two tacts: either the new changes to the cosmology is the dark of things, and the PCs are the first of their acquaintence to discover it (adventure hook), or the new ideas are the common chant, and the PCs know the *real* dark, which is the old cosmology.

Turn the 4e rollout in to an adventure.

 

[(contact)]

Lately I've been assuming very different things, like Hades, Hell and Abyss being on top of each other: Hades be the entance to Hell where the souls of the damned are gathered, Hell being the eternal punishment for those souls, and Abyss being a place below Hell where mortal souls never go, but where devils or other outsiders may be sent as their own punishment.

That's great fluff, and it turns the evil planes into a Gygaxian dungeon; the lower you go, the worse it gets.

 

[Shade]

They could probably release a 4e Planescape book as a sop to the fans of the current cosmology.

Yeah, they could.

But it seems kind of pointless to have to reprint the statistics for succubi and whatever other demons and devils they retcon to fit where they've been for 30+ years.

And since it's one campaign setting per year, and FR is first and Eberron second, the first chance these fans can be satisfied is 2010.

This is a bad, bad move.

 

[Wormwood]

This is a bad, bad move.

For some. A good, good one for others.

 

[Desdichado]

Merging succubi and erinyes is a mistake. A really bad mistake. I can't immediately see how to reconcile this with the material already out there, and even produced in the past year.

Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't that the point? They're not trying to reconcile with material already out there, they're trying to clean up material already out there and make it make more sense.

I'm with Moog---I really dislike the Great Wheel, and as far as I'm concerned in my campaign, a fiend is a fiend is a fiend, and I make no distinction between devils, demons, yugs, oni, or any other variety. So I'm actually cool with them creating a reason for me to care about the distinction, because previously I never have.