D&D 4E The Blood War in 4E?

[Hussar]

For the most of time, yes. But I think there's certainly room for calculating, methodical demons that hide their hatred and destructive impulses beneath a mask of calm. Hannibal Lecter might be a good model for this kind of a demon, actually: intelligent, persuasive, even refined... but in the end, he still has no grand aim beyond escaping and going back to his routine of art appreciation and homicidal cannibalism.

The problem is, Hannibal Lecter is not CE by D&D alignment IMO. He's NE. He isn't interested in overturning the existing social structure, he's only interested in his own goals. Chaotics don't just ignore the social structures around them, they actively act against them. Hannibal Lecter couldn't care less if the existing society around him is a democracy, theocracy or Stalinist Russia.

Chaotics, particularly beings which embody chaos, should not be seeking to build social structures IMO.

 

[Dausuul]

I see "lordship" among demons as reflecting not a position in some demonic hierarchy, but the lord's direct influence over its domain. A demon lord is a demon of monumental power, whose spirit fills an entire layer of the Abyss as well as countless lesser demons. These lesser demons are not puppets, exactly, nor are they slaves. But the demon lord's will has a huge influence on their desires and decisions; if Orcus wants to attack Yeenoghu, then thousands upon thousands of demons in Orcus's layer feel an impulse to swarm toward the nearest portal to Yeenoghu's layer and lay waste to whatever they find on the other side. Most of them will follow that impulse, though they may stop to amuse themselves on the way.

So, what about Graz'zt? Graz'zt appears more subtle and restrained than the other demon lords, with a veneer of civilized behavior. Underneath that veneer, however, is the same wild madness that fills Orcus and Demogorgon. He weaves elaborate plots, adding layer upon layer of deception, but with no ultimate goal; in the end, the whole thing is a maze without an exit, whose only purpose is to create confusion, chaos, and uncertainty. Graz'zt is the sort of BBEG who drives players absolutely bonkers, because there's never a point when it all comes clear and you understand what's going on.

Graz'zt's city is a place of seeming order, where demons and other Abyssal creatures dwell without the constant warfare that fills the rest of the plane. But behind that facade is a seething turmoil of intrigue, treachery, and bloodshed. Influence shifts from one faction to another with lightning speed, new factions form and old factions splinter, and deals are made in a heartbeat and broken just as quickly. There is no organization and there are no rules. The whole city is made up of assassins, spies, scavengers, and thieves.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I actually had in mind what Kamikaze Midget (I think that's who it was upthread) and others have said about the Blood War illustrating the self-destructive, self-consuming nature of evil. In Blood War play the players don't get to find out, through their roleplaying choices, whether or not this is true, because the game (by way of the Blood War) already gives them an answer.

Well the very nature of the alignment rules and the heavy use of fantasy archetypes gave them an answer long before the Blood War enters into it. It is reasonable to expect a game so heavily influenced by fantasy cliches to adhere to that one, too. Now, if you're getting away from fantasy archetypes in your game, sure, it comes across as heavy-handed, but alignment is only one thing you'd be changing in that case (the very nature of PC classes heavily reinforces archetype, the narrative structure of heroic fantasy reinforces archetype, etc.).

Basically, D&D has long poised itself as Star Wars and LotR in terms of fantasy -- you can tell who the bad guys are because they wear black and shoot red lazers and look ugly, and of COURSE they're going to fight themselves. It resists redefining evil, so everyone can know evil at a glance, unless evil is being particularly tricky.

I like that they're broadening the unaligned category to allow for a larger grey area, but I think it's a bit odd to request that D&D allow for relativistic gameplay wherein the nature of evil is something that can be discovered and may change from world to world. I'm fairly sure 4e will still define Good and Evil (just as more extreme than they are now), at least. I'm pretty sure that D&D characters will know Good and Evil when they see it (unless it's being tricky). And I'm pretty sure Evil will still be self-destructive (demons and devils oppose each other, theives' guilds oppose necromancer-kings, evil deities squabble, primordials fight monsters, etc.).

Getting rid of the Blood War, from what I see, was less about opening up the question of the nature of Evil in the game, and more about severing ties with earlier editions, which 4e is doing in spades. It can be a good thing, because it slices away all those sticky legacy issues, and the Blood War certainly isn't the most important idea they're getting rid of, and it lets them come up with more mythologically appropriate backgrounds for demons and devils. Which I like. So I don't mourn the loss of the Blood War.

I merely defend it for what it was. It wasn't a narrow war of stupid evil that emphasized Law and Chaos. It was the archetype of self-destructive evil as D&D saw it, and that archetype is valuable in a game as rife with archetypes/stereotypes/cliches as D&D is. 4e will no doubt find it's own self-destructive evils, though they might not be as obvious or as emphasized as the Blood War was. This probably isn't a bad thing.

 

[FourthBear]

Graz'zt's city is a place of seeming order, where demons and other Abyssal creatures dwell without the constant warfare that fills the rest of the plane. But behind that facade is a seething turmoil of intrigue, treachery, and bloodshed. Influence shifts from one faction to another with lightning speed, new factions form and old factions splinter, and deals are made in a heartbeat and broken just as quickly. There is no organization and there are no rules. The whole city is made up of assassins, spies, scavengers, and thieves.

This sounds very much like the explanations in Expedition to the Demonweb Pit last year. My main issue with it is that your description of the city frankly resembles very closely what I would imagine a city in the Hells would be like. Clearly, it isn't true that Graz'zt's city has no organization and no rules. They have their own police force, after all. If Graz'zt maintains an organization of spies and agents, you better believe it runs by rules and discipline (or it will be a pretty crappy group of spies). Yes, it is probably far *less* organized than Dispater's city and spies, for example. IMO, at this point the distinctions are getting pretty fine. Most of the time it seems as if people are defining demons (and Chaotics in general) by what they *can* do and devils (and Lawfuls) by what they *can't* do. This whole thread reinforces to me why I'm glad that alignment will be deemphasized and removed largely form the cosmology and rules. Even 30+ years into the game, we still can't get agreement on how to distinguish even the supposedly simplest case: LE outsiders versus CE outsiders. We've got claims that seduction is somehow Chaotic, that running a city is completely consistent with being a exemplar of Chaos, that you can betray your allies and superiors and that's perfectly Lawful (all the devils) and many such.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

It's pretty interesting to see the views held by many about Law and Chaos, and their extraplanar expressions in Demons and Devils. To be honest, sometimes I get the impression that the predominant view is that Demons should be raving, uncoherent machines of violent destruction while Devils should be utterly pedantic schemers and "rules lawyers".

On a more "cosmis" scale, Law promotes order, creates structure, and tries to maintain it, employs clear hierarchies of rules and organizes its allies into rank and file following a delineated set of regulations. In turn, Chaos promotes disorder, destroys structure, creates dissent and confusion, and the only way its ranks of allies are "ordered" is by each and every single one of them clawing its way to its position in any way possible. The Evil part for both Demons and Devils only means that both sides do this for utterly self-serving reasons, completely disregarding (and often enjoying) the pain and despair they cause others while increasing their own personal power.

The fact is that both Demon and Devil could use the same tool to reach their goals. Take seduction. Seduction can be used to bind someone into a contact, as a matter of payment for services rendered. On the other hand, it can be used to seduce someone away from his socially accepted relationship, destroy his moral anchors, and drive him towards destructive behaviour. One is Lawful, the other Chaotic.

Or legislation. Why should only a Devil dabble in the legislative processes of a city-state, for example? A Demon, getting laws passed that slowly drive the city into chaos and confusion, resulting in upheavals, bloody civil war in the street and the destruction of that piece of civilization, all the while garnering the power of individuals or small cults worshipping him for the promise of greater personal power through destruction. There's even a BECMI adventure from way back that had such a scenario, X3: Curse of Xanathon.

Both sides can have networks of spies. Devils will employ an organization with rules and clear hierarchies. Demons will have a vast group of individuals, each with different abilities but all suited towards spywork, and a "hierarchy" based on the personal power of each individual member and its ability to use that power over the rest. The same way, both can have cities under their control. For a Demon, it must be especially ironic to subvert the usually lawful concept of a city and simply let the chaotic tendencies such a construct can have rampart.

And in the end, both sides can have plans for long-term goal, in their own way. Devils probably employ flow charts, long lists of conditions met, meticulously worked steps and alternatives to be employed in case of any step going wrong, files holding information about all major and minor targets, their habits, most probable reactions, etc. Demons don't sweat the details, they improvise. All the time. They set a goal (which mostly includes destruction, disorder and dissention in concert with increasing their personal power), then they start by tugging a particularly effective thread, and simply take it from there as it comes. Since Demons are incredibly apt at navigating the maze of chaotic events, improvisation and convoluted schemes, they don't need the whole ordering and sorting and filing and charting, they simply dive right in and still are on top of events most of the time, manipulating a millioin possible outcomes out of instinct.

Or, to take the comparison from earlier in the thread...while you will find an infinite number of charts, file folders, sorted notes and alternative plans written out in detail in Mephistopheles' "secret planning chamber", you won't find any of that in Graz'zt rooms. Actually, he won't even HAVE such a thing. He's doing it all off the cuff, in his head, and on the spot, adapting and improvising as necessary to reach his final goal, while Mephistopheles will conjure up a note, or a folder, crossing out an option he had planned for decades ago, and filing it away again. And while Graz'zt is planning the fall of a great city state that is riddled with a growing number of small, unconnected death cults to him, Mephistopheles has managed to subvert another senator in the same city to suggest a law that will lead to a police state and the corruption of the ruling class, leading to an iron-handed tyranny of fear.

I can see how it can be that much of a problem to differentiate between Chaotic Evil and Lawful Evil outsiders for those who just started on D&D, an those who simply haven't given the whole thing more interest than is needed for using either as high-level dungeon fodder. But it really surprises me that it is a problem of such magnitude.

 

[Dausuul]

This sounds very much like the explanations in Expedition to the Demonweb Pit last year. My main issue with it is that your description of the city frankly resembles very closely what I would imagine a city in the Hells would be like. Clearly, it isn't true that Graz'zt's city has no organization and no rules. They have their own police force, after all. If Graz'zt maintains an organization of spies and agents, you better believe it runs by rules and discipline (or it will be a pretty crappy group of spies).

Expedition to the Demonweb Pits describes a fairly orderly city, designed to run like a human city with police and guards and all. I agree that it's very much a Hellish-style city (or at least a Prime Material-style one). It's not at all what I had in mind.

The point of what I described was that it has no such structure. The spies in the city are not Graz'zt's spies, they're independent operators, gathering information and looking for a way to make use of it for their own gain. Likewise the assassins. There are no police. There is no military (but everything in the city is ready to defend itself with tooth and claw). None of this malarkey of papers that you can flash at demons for safe passage--come on, what kind of wussy demon lets a scrap of paper stand in its way? Graz'zt's will is enforced, to the extent that it is enforced, not by any organization but by his raw power as a demon lord.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is GR, if you paint demons and devils like that, why bother with two types?

If demons can have long reaching, extensive plans, what makes them different from devils? If they use pretty much the same tactics to achieve the same goals, then it seems a complete waste to have two types of creatures. Especially since physically, they are almost identical as well.

Step back for a second and compare a couple of different monsters with similar schticks. Take an Aboleth and a Mind Flayer. Both aberations, both roughly the same in power (1 CR difference), both "mind controlly mastermind" sort of monsters.

Yet, they don't step on each others toes. The biggest reason is location. Aboleth are aquatic. Any adventure which features aboleth is going to be a pretty wet place. Mind Flayers can be stuck in pretty much anywhere you feel like. Plus, you can fiddle with mind flayers a bit easier - one can conceptualize a mind flayer ninja assassin a fair bit more easily than an aboleth in the same role.

So, despite the fact that stats wise, aboleth and mind flayers are very, very close together, they manage to exist in their own space without trodding too much on each other's toes.

Demons and devils, traditionally, are interchangeable. Like I said before, you could change the alignment of Malcanthet to LE and no one would notice. How many spider demons/devils/whatever do we really need? Glabrezu tempt with wealth - how is that not stepping directly on Mammon's schtick? On and on the list goes.

Sure, you can justify anything given enough free time. But, instead, why not start from a conceptual space where the two different critters are actually different and then you don't have to justify anything.

From the DM's point of view, nothing's changed. If I need a tempter/mastermind fiend, I use a devil. If I need to go Godzilla on something, I use a demon. I haven't lost anything. Now, each monster has an actual niche, rather than being carbon copies of each other.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

The problem is GR, if you paint demons and devils like that, why bother with two types?
...
Demons and devils, traditionally, are interchangeable. Like I said before, you could change the alignment of Malcanthet to LE and no one would notice. How many spider demons/devils/whatever do we really need? Glabrezu tempt with wealth - how is that not stepping directly on Mammon's schtick? On and on the list goes.

Sure, you can justify anything given enough free time. But, instead, why not start from a conceptual space where the two different critters are actually different and then you don't have to justify anything.

From the DM's point of view, nothing's changed. If I need a tempter/mastermind fiend, I use a devil. If I need to go Godzilla on something, I use a demon. I haven't lost anything. Now, each monster has an actual niche, rather than being carbon copies of each other.

Sorry Hussar, but from my perspective there IS no problem...seems my post didn't really bring that over the way I wanted. The point is, they aren't interchangeable, and I'm sure as hell not trying to "justify" anything ...I'm looking at the different creatures the way I think they should be looked at. Actually, if anybody is trying to justify something, it's the 4E design team on the topic of why they are making those changes. If you read my post, you'll have noticed that I tried to illustrate how a devil and a demon can actually use the very same tool to gain either destructive chaos or malevolent order, all with their own self-serving goals in mind (the EVIL part of their alignments). I have no real problem differentiating this, and hence need no "fresh start" that simply goes ahead and paints both types of outsiders in very garish and blatant stereotypical colors like, in my opinion, 4E is going to do in their attempt to "make things clearer". Maybe most people would love something "simpler" in order to not have too much work to be put into the motivations behind either devil or demon, or their interactions, could be. Personally (and in the end, we're all arguing our personal preferences here right now), I never had a problem with devils showing up to the heroes when it was about swatting some world-destroying, chaos-wreaking demon plot that would wreck their own schemes as well, and offer their help...and I have at least one group who didn't mind Asmodeus giving them a helping hand in stopping chaos from spreading.

If I'd take a step back, the only thing I'd look at would be the effect this change will have on the accessability of D&D for a new generations of gamers, and in that regard, a simplification of the outsiders will probably help in not making some people's heads explode. But that's all the positive effect I can see from this change, and the one reason I can accept for it. For my own tastes, I didn't need have problems with the Blood War concept, or the broader concept of demons and devils fighting each other.

 

[Shroomy]

I've been reading this discussion with some intellectual interest, but I have to say this about the Blood War. I'd rather have my fiends much more focused on the Material Plane than on each other, something that the 4e cosmology seems to support (devils need the denizens of the MP to get out of Hell while the demons want to destroy existence).

 

[pemerton]

Well the very nature of the alignment rules and the heavy use of fantasy archetypes gave them an answer long before the Blood War enters into it. It is reasonable to expect a game so heavily influenced by fantasy cliches to adhere to that one, too.

Yes and no.

Now, if you're getting away from fantasy archetypes in your game, sure, it comes across as heavy-handed, but alignment is only one thing you'd be changing in that case (the very nature of PC classes heavily reinforces archetype, the narrative structure of heroic fantasy reinforces archetype, etc.).

Again, yes and no.

The interaction beteween Paladin status and alignment is the most prominent example of what you describe, I think (in principal it could be a problem for Monks, Bards and Barbarians also, but I haven't seen very many alignment threads dedicated to the crisis of the individualist Monk who lost her powers).

Basically, D&D has long poised itself as Star Wars and LotR in terms of fantasy -- you can tell who the bad guys are because they wear black and shoot red lazers and look ugly, and of COURSE they're going to fight themselves. It resists redefining evil, so everyone can know evil at a glance, unless evil is being particularly tricky.

I think of Saruman as the potential counter-example here - a game in which players have the choice of how their PC's respond to adversity, and whether they make trade-offs that involve taking power from dark sources (like Sauron) is to me a potentially interesting one. Saruman's motives were self-serving, but not entirely so.

Alignment rules are the main obstacle to this sort of game in D&D, because once the character becomes Evil the game leaves no room for the belief by the individidual ingame that s/he is nevertheless acting in the right (or at least a reasonable way), and it also tells the player that his/her PC has crossed the line into wrong and unreasonable.

This is probably also true of Star Wars, because the Dark Side of the Force is pretty self-explanatorily wicked - but even there it's not quite as blatant as being labelled Evil.

I think it's a bit odd to request that D&D allow for relativistic gameplay wherein the nature of evil is something that can be discovered and may change from world to world. I'm fairly sure 4e will still define Good and Evil (just as more extreme than they are now), at least.

I hope not. Maybe my hopes are misguided. By the way, this has nothing to do with relativism. Most moral philosophers and ordinary people in the real world deny moral relativism. But obviously they lack the "moral detection" capacity that 3E D&D has (eg, and without running afoul of the "no politics" rule, when a mass murdere performs Know Alignment on himself he doesn't get a result of Evil, does he?).

My issue here isn't absolutism vs relativism, it's simulationism vs gamism & narrativism - ie it's a game design issue, not a meta-ethics issue.

Mechanical alignment gets in the way of gamist play (because it unexpectedly, and from the point of view of the player's own priorities it pointlessly, leaps up and nerfs the Paladin or Cleric or whomever from time to time) and it gets in the way of narrativist play, in which the players (including the GM as one of the players) want to answer the questions - including, perhaps, ones about the truth or falsity of relativism - in the course of their own play.

I'm pretty sure that D&D characters will know Good and Evil when they see it (unless it's being tricky).

Right. This is true also of most of us in the real world, at least within certain paramaters. (It's just that we disagree about it from time to time.) The question is, looking at it from the point of view of the players, does the system tell them what their PCs know to be Good and Evil (as it does at present) or do they get to judge what their PCs know to be Good and Evil (including judging this about their PCs' own conduct). I am arguing that the Blood War, and alignment more generally (which I agree with you is an underpinning rationale for the Blood War) are an obstacle to the latter alternative.

With respect, your way of putting it in the quote immediately above fails to distinguish the (imaginary) perspective of the PCs from the (very real) persepctive of the players, and thus fails to raise the very question of narrative control (who has it, the game designers or the players of the game?) that I am addressing.

And I'm pretty sure Evil will still be self-destructive (demons and devils oppose each other, theives' guilds oppose necromancer-kings, evil deities squabble, primordials fight monsters, etc.).

What I'm advocating is that the question of whether this is a mark of Evil be left as one for the players to resolve in play. An example - some social theorists and political philosophers believe in the notion of "democratic peace" - that democracies don't wage aggressive war. Players interested in this idea could well play a game in which nation A invades nation B. Part of what would be on the table, then, is whether nation A is really a democracy or not (was its invasion defensive, for example, rather than aggressive?). This could make for an interesting modern-day or super-hero game, with espionage, commando, political/social roleplay, etc. Having rules in-game (perhaps a bit like the old Traveller law levels) which gave a mechanical answer to the question of whether or not nation A was a democracy wouldn't help that game, they'd hinder it.

Likewise I have no objection to all the plot elements you are describing. But they are most interesting when the system does not tell me how, as a player, I should interpret and respond to them.

Getting rid of the Blood War, from what I see, was less about opening up the question of the nature of Evil in the game, and more about severing ties with earlier editions, which 4e is doing in spades.

Maybe - but to me they are very much the same thing. The number of changes in 4e which (to me) seem to have the fairly obvious intent of shifting narrative control from the system (and the GM) to the players seem to be to be non-coincidental. 3E started the process by focussing on the mechanics. 4e is continuing the process by focussing particularly on system elements linked to the gameworld. Thus, per-encounter powers remove the GM's control on ability use, as even though the GM still retains control over the passage of time s/he cannot use this to completely control power recharging. Dropping alignment has the effects on the distribution of narrative control we have just been talking about. The sidebar on p 20 of W&M explains how the points of light in the PoL setting can be sources of adversity rather than safety, but only when the players toggle this on (by breaking laws or customs, or choosing to involve themselves in internal conflicts).

Or compare GR's defence of current differences between Demons and Devils, above - this is the sort of difference that only the GM can know and exploit, because it exists deep in the backstory of any plot. Whereas the 4e design team are introducing a difference which is knowable and exploitable by players, because they can visually distinguish a Demon from a Devil, and then adapt their combat tactics accordingly (as - at least we are told - Demons and Devils will fight differently).

Severing ties with early editions is a necessary part of transforming the game system. I think the 4e designers have as their main goal the support of gamist play (they know which side their bread is buttered on). But for me a pleasing (and perhaps not unintended side effect) is the increasing support of a certain type of narrativist play. It'll be more comic book than Graham Greene, but that's OK for amateur Sunday-afternoon authors.

It can be a good thing, because it slices away all those sticky legacy issues

For me, the legacy issues are system issues, not plot issues. I get the same vibe from reading what the designers are writing.

the Blood War certainly isn't the most important idea they're getting rid of, and it lets them come up with more mythologically appropriate backgrounds for demons and devils. Which I like. So I don't mourn the loss of the Blood War.

I merely defend it for what it was. It wasn't a narrow war of stupid evil that emphasized Law and Chaos. It was the archetype of self-destructive evil as D&D saw it, and that archetype is valuable in a game as rife with archetypes/stereotypes/cliches as D&D is.

I don't at all quibble with your defence of the Blood War in these terms. That's why I referred to it in my earlier posts. My objection to the Blood War is not a plot-based or literary one. I don't think it's silly as a literary, metaphorical device (again, it's not Graham Greene, but what RPG writing is?). It is a gameplay one.