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<blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 6385329" data-attributes="member: 2205">Thanks; I'll follow up on the link later today when I have a bit more time.&nbsp; I'm actually fairly curious.Posts like this reiterate to me that--in spite of my general dislike for things like the OSR, for instance, or a lot of the ingrained D&amp;Disms that are rife throughout D&amp;D, at the end of the day, my RPing style is really quite traditional after all.&nbsp; I'm deeply suspicious of truly narrative approaches, with mechanics that impact character development of, say, the narrative of the game itself.&nbsp; I very strongly prefer that that be handled without mechanics--the narrative is just the after-the-fact telling of what happened, and character development is handled more like how a novelist handles character development; a personality sketch that evolves as events unfold in game.&nbsp; Character definition and description is limited to very physicals-based metrics; i.e., that can the character actually do and how likely is he to be successful at doing it.&nbsp; Whether or not to do it, though, or what impact that has on the game itself; that's not a mechanical consideration to me.Although I have a very strong preference for playing this way, I'm quite curious about how other approaches work, what they do, and how it turns out, of course.To me, there isn't any point in them being different.&nbsp; Their differences (as well as the differences between both and &quot;daemons&quot;, demodands, and every other kind of fiend--as well as non-fiends but might as well be critters like efreet, oni or slaad) are purely mechanical and impact more what resistances they have rather than what the &quot;story&quot; of them in-game is.&nbsp; For my money, any type of &quot;hell&quot; plane could be peopled by any variety of fiend living and working side-by-side, as much as they work together at all, anyway.I prefer the balkanized approach of the Abyss to the rigid hierarchy of Hell just because is facilitates actually using it in a game more, if nothing else, but I have multiple competing &quot;hells&quot; in my setting, with multiple competing arch-fiends.&nbsp; Devils, demons and more can have allegiance in game to any one of these arch-fiends as their nature permits.Or, in other words--what's really the difference between tanar'i and obyriths?&nbsp; To me, that's pretty much the same difference between all the other varieties of fiends too.&nbsp; Members of one group obviously have some common point of origin--presumably--given a small bundle of shared mechanical traits, but other than that, what difference does it really make?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Desdichado, post: 6385329, member: 2205"] Thanks; I'll follow up on the link later today when I have a bit more time. I'm actually fairly curious. Posts like this reiterate to me that--in spite of my general dislike for things like the OSR, for instance, or a lot of the ingrained D&Disms that are rife throughout D&D, at the end of the day, my RPing style is really quite traditional after all. I'm deeply suspicious of truly narrative approaches, with mechanics that impact character development of, say, the narrative of the game itself. I very strongly prefer that that be handled [I]without[/I] mechanics--the narrative is just the after-the-fact telling of what happened, and character development is handled more like how a novelist handles character development; a personality sketch that evolves as events unfold in game. Character definition and description is limited to very physicals-based metrics; i.e., that can the character actually [I]do[/I] and how likely is he to be successful at doing it. Whether or not to do it, though, or what impact that has on the game itself; that's not a mechanical consideration to me. Although I have a very strong preference for playing this way, I'm quite curious about how other approaches work, what they do, and how it turns out, of course. To me, there isn't any point in them being different. Their differences (as well as the differences between both and "daemons", demodands, and every other kind of fiend--as well as non-fiends but might as well be critters like efreet, oni or slaad) are purely mechanical and impact more what resistances they have rather than what the "story" of them in-game is. For my money, any type of "hell" plane could be peopled by any variety of fiend living and working side-by-side, as much as they work together at all, anyway. I prefer the balkanized approach of the Abyss to the rigid hierarchy of Hell just because is facilitates actually using it in a game more, if nothing else, but I have multiple competing "hells" in my setting, with multiple competing arch-fiends. Devils, demons and more can have allegiance in game to any one of these arch-fiends as their nature permits. Or, in other words--what's really the difference between tanar'i and obyriths? To me, that's pretty much the same difference between all the other varieties of fiends too. Members of one group obviously have some common point of origin--presumably--given a small bundle of shared mechanical traits, but other than that, what difference does it really make? [/QUOTE]

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