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

[pemerton]

They've really made some IMO unimaginative changes that really put a kick to the junk into a more complex and dynamic take on the planes. We're going back to extraplanar dungeons for heros of the appropriate level to adventure in, which I find really unfortunate.

I don't think this is a remotely fair characterisation of what James Wyatt has to say on pp 16-17 of Worlds and Monsters.

I would have thought that someone who likes planar adventuring, and wants it to become more popular, would embrace changes to the cosmology that allow the integration of planar adventuring into ordinary adventuring, especially at low levels. And the Feywild and Shadowfell are set up (according to Wyatt) expressly to permit and facilitate this.

It may be that the new cosmology does not and never will have the same detail of story as the old version. I am not persuaded that it has less thematic interest and complexity - for a start, its explicit use of Greek creation myths and Northern and Western European faerie myths lets it tap into a huge range of literature from the get-go, which entirely concocted stories about Yugoloths and Blood Wars do not. But both these things, and especially the first, are not the preeminent concern in designing elements for a gameworld. The first question has to be "Is it playable?" A world in which anyone below high levels can get to the planes only via the very narrowly applicable conceit of Sigil is not (IMO) one which passes that test.

 

[robertliguori]

I always liked the Blood War. I like the difference between demons and devils. Devils want to steal your soul...they trick, seduce, and deal you out of it. Demons want to destroy and devour your soul...they rend you appart and eat your essense.

But they both want your soul. I can see how this breeds war.

I won't lament it being gone, however. Devils and demons will still be in opposition to each other, but they won't strickly be warring. I can deal with that.

This, I think, is an excellent summary of the position of the anti-Blood-War side's premises.

Us pro-Blood-War people, I believe, are starting from the premise that exemplar outsiders simply do not have recognizable human motivations. It's not that demons want to destroy things, and this makes them evil, it's that they are fundamentally expressions of evil, and therefore destroy things. The Blood War, to me, was an expression of the fact (stated upthread) that given a choice between being evil and acheiving their goals, fiends will not only choose to be evil, but will turn on and dismember any one of their number that suggests "Why don't we try talking to them? You know, for the greater evil?" Part of the point of the Blood War, to me, is to drive home that the lowliest drug-pusher who nonetheless knows not to use his own stock has an advantage in temptation over the most ancient and subtle fiend.

It drives home the fact that humanity (well, humanoid-type-ity) has a tangible, palpable advantage, and that the ability to be morally-complex in an absolute black-and-white world makes you special.

 

[Hussar]

This, I think, is an excellent summary of the position of the anti-Blood-War side's premises.

Us pro-Blood-War people, I believe, are starting from the premise that exemplar outsiders simply do not have recognizable human motivations. It's not that demons want to destroy things, and this makes them evil, it's that they are fundamentally expressions of evil, and therefore destroy things. The Blood War, to me, was an expression of the fact (stated upthread) that given a choice between being evil and acheiving their goals, fiends will not only choose to be evil, but will turn on and dismember any one of their number that suggests "Why don't we try talking to them? You know, for the greater evil?" Part of the point of the Blood War, to me, is to drive home that the lowliest drug-pusher who nonetheless knows not to use his own stock has an advantage in temptation over the most ancient and subtle fiend.

It drives home the fact that humanity (well, humanoid-type-ity) has a tangible, palpable advantage, and that the ability to be morally-complex in an absolute black-and-white world makes you special.

That's great.

Unfortunately, it's not terribly well supported and is mostly just your own ideas. Alignment in D&D is black and white. Moral complexity doesn't work when good and evil are tangible forces. Also, every demon or devil write up is explicitly understandable and their goals are almost entirely clear. Demon X is going to do Y to achieve Z. Any complexity beyond that is the fabrication of the DM, not the source material.

My biggest problem with demons and devils in 3e and earlier editions is that they are pretty much entirely interchangeable. You could rub out the L and put in a C in front of the E in the alignment and not change anything else. So many of the out planar evil guys are bland as all heck. There's no difference between them.

Hopefully that will change.

 

[Dire Lemming]

Pemerton. I think you're completely missing the point. I for one like planar adventuring for what it is. Not how popular it is. Making it into something totally different from what it is and significantly more generic so that it will be more popular with people who don't like it now is not something I support, because it means that I won't enjoy it any more.

I really like chocolate cake but wouldn't support the removal of chocolate from it because cake without chocolate is more popular.

 

[Oryan77]

I like the people here who are bad mouthing the Blood War and vocalizing how they would be glad to see it gone....as if that change in 4e will effect their campaign when they never used the war in the first place. And calling the war uninteresting and bland cracks me up. If the Blood War is uninteresting, you guys must have some amazing wars going on in your campaigns!

How about posting the details of your wars on Enworld so we can see how much more interesting and original they are? They must be some incredibly original wars if something like the Blood War doesn't even get your creative juices flowing!

Honestly, who cares what they say about the Blood War in 4e. I ignore half the crap they wrote about the planes in 3e and I still feel like I'm running a true Planescape campaign.

 

[Oryan77]

changes to the cosmology that allow the integration of planar adventuring into ordinary adventuring, especially at low levels.

I've been running planar campaigns starting out at level 1 for 11 years now. They've never needed to make any changes for this to be accomplished. I guess if a DM thinks that the only adventuring on the planes is when you have to fight a Pit Fiend, then I guess I could see why WotC would need to develop fluff to help hold his hand. But the planes are much more complex than simply being an environment filled with high level demons & devils. It's not hard at all to make it work.

A world in which anyone below high levels can get to the planes only via the very narrowly applicable conceit of Sigil is not (IMO) one which passes that test.

Man, for a game that is all about imagination and creativeness; a lot of people sure do have a narrow view about how the game works. Sigil is not the only way for low level people to end up on the planes.

 

[Soel]

I like the people here who are bad mouthing the Blood War and vocalizing how they would be glad to see it gone....as if that change in 4e will effect their campaign when they never used the war in the first place. And calling the war uninteresting and bland cracks me up. If the Blood War is uninteresting, you guys must have some amazing wars going on in your campaigns!

That goes both ways. You could just as easily ignore the dropping of the blood war as a plot device. Even better, maybe have the blood war begin as a result of happenings in your campaign. Start one up! Or maybe, one of the sides actually won! Explore the consequences...

I now just see the blood war as it exists in previous editions, to be a tired and nonsensical thing, and not one that players can easily have a meaningful effect on. Its a war of attrition, that surely immortal beings of great intelligence and wisdom would have deemed to be, at the best, full of little returns for resources expended.

 

[Dire Lemming]

I figure it's a metaphor for the inherently self destructive nature of evil.

 

[small pumpkin man]

I like the people here who are bad mouthing the Blood War and vocalizing how they would be glad to see it gone....as if that change in 4e will effect their campaign when they never used the war in the first place. And calling the war uninteresting and bland cracks me up. If the Blood War is uninteresting, you guys must have some amazing wars going on in your campaigns!

How about posting the details of your wars on Enworld so we can see how much more interesting and original they are? They must be some incredibly original wars if something like the Blood War doesn't even get your creative juices flowing!

Honestly, who cares what they say about the Blood War in 4e. I ignore half the crap they wrote about the planes in 3e and I still feel like I'm running a true Planescape campaign.

You have, like many Planescape players, entirely missed the point. The great wheel (most of it, anyway) and the blood war are fine and interesting in Planescape, the problem is when they were shoved into other settings.

In Planescape, the Great Wheel provides an interesting and layered Taoistic morality, where belief controls the universe, and alignments are palpable forces. Shoving "Planescape Lite" into "Greyhawk Lite" or other post 2e setting merely emphasizes good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, and everything's a black and white fundamentalist's wet dream.

In Planescape the blood war emphasizes things like Evil's violent treacherous nature, the fact that Evil can never truly be defeated, the fact that Law and Chaos are Very Important, and a bunch of other things that matter to that setting. Shoving it into Greyhawk Lite or other post 2e setting is just pointless. Many players don't even know the difference between demons and devils, why do players care if they're fighting each other, why would players care about the details about a war they can never influence, and that is unlikely to influence them on their home plane? Not to mention many players consider Law and Chaos to not mean anything at all. (I'm not going to argue whether or not they do, but the point is, many players consider the terms confusing and meaningless, thus an eternal fight between the two isn't going tobe something they're interested in).

Your point about ignoring the 3.x stuff is quite valid, everyone I've ever seen talk about how interesting the blood war is has referred to 2e products, I don't know anyone who's only read the 3.x products and been interested by the Great Wheel, especially before the fiendish codex stuff (which was at least a little bit better). In fact I don't know anyone who really liked using MotP or the Core Rulebooks planer stuff who didn't just use it to convert earlier fluff to 3.x.

Planescape is a great setting and I'd like to see it released again, but it's a setting, not a cosmology, wheras the 4e cosmology is designed to actually be used as a cosmology, and is being written by people who are actually interested in it (again, as opposed to many 3.x planer stuff seemed) which will hopefully make planer stuff actually intriguing for newbies.

 

[small pumpkin man]

I figure it's a metaphor for the inherently self destructive nature of evil.

Except of course, that's not so much a "metaphor" as a "fantasy cliche", since the majority of "evil" people in real life get along fairly well, (at least with their buddies and people who agree with them) and don't actually spend more time killing each other off than annoying normal people.