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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Puggins" data-source="post: 3745492" data-attributes="member: 12386">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....My first experience with Demons/Devils came from the 1e Monster Manual, and the impressions I got from those entries were... terrifying, really.  Here were mystical creatures of a Biblical nature that existed in a damned reality that mirrored the Judeo-Christian belief in hell.  Just looking through the entries evoked visions of the unknowable fiends from Conan, the Fiends of Chaos from Elric, the Goat-Headed demons (supposedly) worshipped by secret and forbidden cults in the dark, dank corners of the world...  you know, basically the stuff that keeps children up at night terrified of the dark.  Merely placing one of these... things... in an adventure radically altered its complexion- you weren't messing around with greedy and foolish greenskins or oversized insects anymore.  Now you were toe-to-toe with powers beyond your reckoning, things whose knowledge stretched thousands of your lifetimes.  Basically, Lovecraft mixed liberally with western impressions of damnation.  It was both cool and forbidding.  Demons and Devils were special monsters, use sparingly at most.  Count the number of them used in published 1e modules- only Queen of the Demonweb pits used them, and even that module used them somewhat sparingly.Now fast forward to 2e/Planescape.  I go the sense that in order to "sanitize" D&D, Demons and Devils were made far more scientific and mechanical.  Demons became Baatezu, were stripped of their mythical and forbidding origins and became pawns/players in a decidedly pedestrian Blood War, which made them feel more like a 19th century European Power than a race of unknowable horrors from an ageless realm.  Hell became Baator, and became eminently more feasible to traverse.  When a wizard traveled to the Outer Planes, he no longer entered realms beyond mortal ken- he entered something closer to Star Wars space- a reality filled with countless alien races, many with nigh-imaginable power, but all with decidedly pedestrian origins, at least compared to the Old Ones from Lovecraft, or the Biblical Hellspawn.In short, Out went Dante's divine comedy and Lovercraft's Far realms, in came the Jules Verne and David Brin view of the multiverse.I'm not saying it was a bad thing, mind you- TONS of people loved it, but I have to say that a little bit of wonder sorta died within me- the new Demons and Devils were Machiavellian masters of intrigue and power, but weren't the might masters of reality and time that they used to be.Lately, I think some of the 1e flavor has started to seep back in- Malcanthet and some other newer creations (Obox-Ob, Dagon) are decidedly creepy and unholy, and Eberron's Xoriat is a nice nod to Lovecraft.  I see this new fluff as another shift towards the old mystical/unknowable, and I'm really stoked.  I want my players to be decidedly creeped out by the presence of a devil, not to think of it as some sort of extra-dimensional super soldier.Again, no offense to the Planescape crowd- I think PS is edgy and original, but it's not my cup of tea.  This, on the other hand, sounds decidedly awesome.</blockquote>

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