Fiendish Codex I: Hordes of the Abyss

[BOZ]

Honestly, we're probably better off for the 1e material from before combined with the subsequent material that divorced itself from what might have been too tempting a crutch to rely on rather than going wholly original. Pros and Cons of both, but we've got both the 1e stuff and the Planescape material and what it added to the 1e stuff directly.[/IMG]

and thus we are left with loads of possibilities now in 3E.

 

[BOZ]

also there is the abyss ant from Monstrous Compendium annual 1

the alu-fiend and the cambion would like to be mentioned more, i'm sure.

plus: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=78968

 

[Drowbane]

Hmm, I must be tired... I misread the title originally...

I thought this was perhaps a Sourcebook about Erinyes...

 

[Steel_Wind]

One thing to keep in mind (Erik touched on this in one of his posts above) is that during 2nd edition (and by extension, Planescape), TSR abandoned the word "Demon" (and "devil," etc.). Now certainly, a lot of great material about the lords of the Abyss came out of Planescape, but a lot of the history and real-world weight of the concept of "demons" was lost when the designers had to abandon real-world occult tradition as a source of inspiration.

And the result was this wierd sci-fi approach to the Hells and other Planes. By throwing out the occult and religious feel, it was divorced from Western history & culture and it no longer resonated within any part of me (colon excepted).

I utterly despised the result. I wouldn't put it on my shelf if you gave it to me for free.

What? Disliked Plansecape you say? Yes. I truly loathed it. Words fail to convey the sincerity of my conviction about this point.

The classic "Nine Hells" by Ed Greenwood in Dragon 75, 76 and 91? That grabbed me. That resonated. That's what my D&D game wanted to be about.

Do the same for the Abyss with the same Nine Hells flavour and I'm there. If not? I'll pass.

 

[Shemeska]

And the result was this wierd sci-fi approach to the Hells and other Planes. By throwing out the occult and religious feel, it was divorced from Western history & culture and it no longer resonated within any part of me (colon excepted).

I utterly despised the result. I wouldn't put it on my shelf if you gave it to me for free.

Sci-Fi approach? *boggle*

How much of it have you actually read out of curiousity?

What resonated with me about the PS material was the sense of scale, the absolute grandness, the true depths of evil the fiends represented and an actual exploration of those themes and concepts which hadn't honested been examined before. Be it the infinite and unending conflict between Baatezu and Tanar'ri, evil turning upon itself in genocidal fury over law and chaos, the near religious fanaticism of the yugoloths towards abstract evil, the interplay of gods and mortals, and the contrast between ferver towards abstract philosophy with the harsh, hellish reality of many of the planes and how idealism still managed to flourish even while others succumbed to despair or madness.

And PS didn't do away with any of the occult or religious feel. Demogorgon was there. Baphomet and Orcus were there. Asmodeus and the other Lords of the 9 were there, and even more fleshed out than they had been previously.

I honestly don't see in any way how it lost what you saw lacking in it. There are certainly some aspects of the material that I'd have approached differently, and some folks are certainly welcome to have stylistic differences with it. However I'd be tempted to say that a majority of the complaints I see from folks who profess a dislike of the Planescape material are simply the result of lack of exposure to the material, and a kneejerk reaction to things that happened in 2e but previous to Planescape such as the demons and devils issue. PS gets blamed for a lot of stuff it didn't do, and knocked for elements that don't honestly represent the vast bulk of its material.

 

[demiurge1138]

Let's see... just getting this all out of the way. I like Planescape. I like it so much, in fact, that I am running a Planescape campaign, despite the setting's entropic decline long before I could actually go out and buy the books. I also like the 1e flavor of the lower planes. And I even like the take on the Abyss shown in the Gord the Rogue books. I think that the lower planes have a lot of room for tinkering, from the philosophical (Planescape) to the more medieval (Book of Fiends) to the not-terribly-influenced-by-much-else (classic Gygaxian Abyss).

That said, I look forward to the series of Fiendish Codexes with great anticipation. The Demon Lord articles have made me salivate, and I've been cackling with glee from the first tiny rumors of this product's existence.

Now, if only they'll make the yugoloths more balanced and interesting in Fiendish Codex III than they were in the MMIII...

Demiurge out.

 

[Henrix]

Ahhh! I just finished reading Lords of Madness yesterday (while at home with a cold), and was thinking about what monsters would be next, and realized that demons and devils must be in the works.
And then I thought, hey, hope that is Monas secret project!

And here I see that it is so, and that it is Erik and James Jacobs who are doing it! Fantastic!

 

[Sundragon2012]

I am certainly interested in this book and though I think that Planescape had some good qualities I really saw it as the late TSR's attempt to pounce upon the the then popularity of the Shadowrun/Cyberpunk jaded attitude that was popular at its inception.

I think that the vastness of the setting was groundbreaking, I thought that gods being real gods who couldn't be killed, I thought that a City of Doors was great.

I loathed that they took that "cant" and wrote even fiends into speaking in what should merely have been the Sigillian version of Cockney english. Great for atmosphere in Sigil but when it spread to the planes I thought it very stupid indeed.

Please EriK and James avoid like the plague the "fiends in love" thing that some folks seem to think sensible. Make them the incarnations of absolute wickedness, depravity and evil and not just a planer race with hopes, dreams, loves and regrets.....bleech!!! Inscrutable, absolute, vicious, chaotic, souless horrors bent on evil and evil alone ok Erik and James.....pleeeeeaaasssee????

Fiends are evil...more evil by nature than the worst of humanity and they don't have loving relationships. Now that is utterly divorced from our Western mythology regarding such things.

And please, please no demon princes named Alvarez, I am sorry but names matter and I have a hard time taking seriously a demon prince with a name so like a real Latino/Mexican name. Its like giving an arch devil a strongly ethnic name like Czerniakowski (Polish)....it just seems silly.


Chris

 

[JoeGKushner]

Why not 666?
One for each layer of the abyss?

160 pages is fine since it covers just the demons.

Very disappointing if correct. Not only is the page/price ration, if similiar to other WoTC books weak in comparrisson to their other model of 224/$34.95, outer planar creatures need a lot of extra care and feeding in terms of environment, plot seeds, and other utilities to make them useful as opposed to just making them statistics. One of the things I've enjoyed about the other parts of the series, Lords of Madness, etc... is that they give fairly good coverage.

Love to be proven wrong, but 160 pages doesn't seem enough to cover "just the demons".

 

[philreed]

My interest in demons has only recently been reawakened so this is excellent timing for me.