Orcus [Ghostwalk]

[Olive]

And to completely contradict greymarch, I'd suggest staying away from the BoVD if you're doing anything to do with demon princes or devil lords. The BoVD Orcus especially is a complete mockery of old school Orcus(Orcus with the rippling pectoral muscles of Ren Hoek? COME ON!)

And to completely contradict blackshirt5, I'd recomend the BoVD for demon princes, and PrCs for worshipers of those princes.

But to contradict greymarch, given that the link above draws on the 'official' sources he mentions, it would be a great place to get an understanding of orcus in the DnD game.

 

[blackshirt5]

oh, i love the PrCs. I just don't like Orcus in that one, and don't like the other demon princes. I prefer ToH(but that's not 'official'!).

 

[teitan]

Ok, the BoVD is a great book for using the Demon Princes and Arch Devils, but the artwork is questionable in its attempt to cause shock and damage to your psyche, these illustrations look like something from Chaos Comics as opposed to cool artwork that we would take seriously. The flavour was all wrong. The Wayne Reynolds stuff still rocks hardcore though.

I haven't seen the Tome of Horrors material, but I appreciated the lengthy discussions of the rulers of the underworld imensely that are in the BoVD, especially the thinly veiled references to the Planescape stuff Monte worked on and the rest of the line. Did the Tome of Horrors include this sort of flavour text?

Jason

 

[BOZ]

uh... i don't remember what the flavor text said, but there was quite a lot of it. *casts summon Scott Greene and/or Clark Peterson*

 

[senodam]

Or for the best of both worlds, take the nicely done stats and background stuff from both books and use em all- one is Orcus, the other just an avatar. Which is which is up to you.

 

[Arnwyn]

I would avoid them if you can.

Nice try, but the "History of Orcus" link includes info from *all* the sources you listed above.

 

[Nightfall]

Personally I like both Orcus' in both books for different reasons. My own preference, however, is to use another "unofficial" source the Demon Prince Template and "TheSerge" conversion that's currently up on the Deities and Demi-gods WotC board. (Course I'll be making a few changes but overall it's good.) In any case arnwyn is correct. Al did use as much official sources as possible (aka WotC sources) than "non-official" sources.

 

[Grazzt]

Official doesnt mean what it used to thanks to d20/OGL, etc.

If by official you mean MADE BY WOTC, then yeah, check out the Book of Vile Darkness or whatever..... (though I think Orcus and the rest are pretty weak in the BoVD myself).

However, the version of Orcus that appears in the Tome of Horrors is OFFICIAL.....official for Necromancer Games products...and since he is OGC in the Tome, he is (or can be) official for any other company that feels like using him.

Doncha love it when everything works out well?

 

[TrubbulTheTroll]

"Official" is for the anal-retentive. There's lots of good stuff floating around the web, as a matter of fact, you could probably have answered your question by judicious use of google instead of posting here.

Sigh! This should be simple but why don't you unofficial guys just accept that some of us just enjoy official more. Unofficial has that fake kinda ring to it. Like margarine compared to butter. Like Oleo compared to real grease in my potato chips. Like Diet Coke to the real thing. Like sorting through photocopies instead of holding an actual book

And who cares that the guys who designed D&D3 have their own companies that make d20 rules? Are you saying that these same guys who made the rules I love can actually write rules outside of Wizards that I'll love? Um - I don't think so.

The plain truth is this: I can only trust that which is a) written by guys who work for Wizards and b) published by Wizards. Simple. Got it? Sheesh!

 

[Nightfall]

Or for me: Anything done by Scott and guys I like and respect that have at least a modicum of talent and some great imagination.