Why all the fiendish love?

[Felon]

One of the early newsbriefs is about restructuring of the devils/demons. Asmodeus gets promoted to god-hood. Tieflings swindle gnomes out of a space as a core race. The warlock becomes a core class.

Has our gaming society become so twisted that evil behavior and fiendish heritage has become hip?

Does your post suggest there was some "less twisted" point in time at which gamers and fantasy fans didn't have an interest in dark subjects? Villains and anti-heroes have always been every bit as popular as nights in shining armor. I submit Conan, Fafhrd & Gray Mouser, Elric, Kane, the majority of the cast of Thieves' World, The Black Company, and all those books written from the vampire's point of view.

With its emphasis on killing and profiteering, D&D lends itself to a self-interested style of play. It's one thing to attack as a matter of last resort, it's another to burst into someone's residence and hack them to pieces without so much as an offer of surrender--not to mention stripping the corpse clean of every possession. Would a good person really burn intelligent creatures to death with fire or take their flesh off with acid? D&D characters uses such methods of attack routinely and without consideration. Guess these guess the good guys in a points-of-light setting never heard of the Geneva Conventions.

There's a lot of talk about D&D characters being heroes, but usually they're basically cold-blooded killers and thieves engaging in sanctioned violence.

 

[Rechan]

There's a lot of talk about D&D characters being heroes, but usually they're basically cold-blooded killers and thieves engaging in sanctioned violence.

And for that matter, an evil hero is just as legitimate.

When it comes to Chulu (or whatever chaos-embodied monstrocity bent on eating/destroying the world/plane/multiverse), or the crazed Necromancer bringing his undead army into the kingdom, or any other large scale threat, an evil character has three options:

1) Join up.
2) Flee.
3) Stop it.

1 is an option, but not an option for every evil character. After all, Cthulu's going to eat his cultists too, and those demon worshipers are going to get killed or suffer for eternity, and being undead doesn't sound real fun to every guy this side of the G/N/E scale. The orc horde also has absolutely no 401K plan.

2 isn't an option if you like where you live/have things there that you don't want to lose. Like contacts, allies, bribed officials who look the other way, a reputation, and a history.

So if 1 and 2 are out, then 3 is your option.

Because ultimately, the Crime Boss in the Capital City of the Good Kingdom doesn't benefit when the Kingdom is obliterated by Cthulu, ransacked by barbarians or overrun by demons/devils. If this happens, he's got to either die, flee, or become a real hard core warlord with armed militia defending his resources from monsters. He can't do a (dis)honest day's work. The same reason for that evil wizard. "Crap, my lab with all my research and materials is right in the path of the maurading army. No time to find a portable hole to dump all this stuff in, no time to ferry box after box via Teleport."

And of course there's always "I fight evil because I dislike the competition" or "I need gold, magical items, and power before I can start my own plans." Or the ever popular "I'll go where my employer's gold/magical item reward sends me."

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

There's a lot of talk about D&D characters being heroes, but usually they're basically cold-blooded killers and thieves engaging in sanctioned violence.

Too true.

In my very first session of Basic D&D, behind the very first door to the dungeon, my Legolas-wannabe elf shot and killed an orc. Did I exclaim, "Ah the world is a little brighter having vanquished such a foul creature!"?

Nah... I spiked open the dungeon door and searched the body for loot.

So much for living up to noble standards.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

So if 1 and 2 are out, then 3 is your option.

Yup. The mafia patrolled the docks during WWII.

 

[Rechan]

Yup. The mafia patrolled the docks during WWII.

In all honesty, I don't know if you're being serious.

I do think that a Crime Boss in the Capital in the Good Kingdom would see it in their best interest to help stop some threat looming over the Kingdom. For instance sending a skilled gun or a talented "in and out" man who can get people into the Fortress of Badness, because who better to break into the unbreakable than a professional burglar?

To use another example: Marv from Sin City. Marv is not a Good Guy. He is a Very Bad Man. But he definitely fought much worse evil because it tarnished and corrupted something he cared a lot about. He was willing to sacrifice himself to right this wrong. He just doesn't care about his methods.

Not to mention Ghost Rider/Brimstone/Reaper, the perverbial "Hi, I'm the devil. I own your soul. Now you are my bounty hunter. Go get'm, tiger."

A friend had an idea for a campaign. There exists a religion devoted to the battling of supernatural evil. But sometimes, when battling evil, you must do Bad Things, unspeakable things. And sometimes, the best opponent of evil is more evil. The church of this religion would have a small sect that controls a group known as The Unmentionables, who are fiends, undead, and other "Nasty things" who for whatever reason (Geas, Conversion, Debt, Personal Gain), fight forces of evil/the church's enemies, or whoever their handlers point them at. Much like Alucard from Helsing.

 

[Exen Trik]

First off, just let me say this thread has gotten very very messy. I'm going to try to keep the worst off it off of me.

That said, there's two points I want to go over.
First is that there's something inherently cool about playing a heroic (even if not particularly benevolent) character whose very nature and appearance contradicts it. It's something that you just wouldn't have if you were an Aasimar paladin or the like, turning to the light is just more interesting if it is set against the darkness. And since tieflings are descended (mostly?) from devils, who in this setting were themselves once angels, this theme takes an even deeper significance.

Second, the presence of common tieflings along with the celestial eladrin/elf lineage and the the revamped cosmology points to a setting where planar influence is stronger, and those places outside of the prime are more readily accessible. Maybe not to the point of booking a magic boat into the astral sea to visit valhalla for the weekend (although that sounds like great fun!), but enough to make things more interesting overall. And in such a setting, demons will be about making deals and running schemes left and right, so tieflings are going to be around as a matter of course.

My calmly made points are done, feel free to continue your heated debate.

 

[Theldyrn]

You mean, something like this:

"Moral handwringing of this sort makes me want to put lots of demons, devils, tieflings, yugoloths, cambions, succubi, and a motley assortment of Things That Should Not Be in my campaign."

I think alot of the value that is wrung out of having fiendish elements in D&D comes from there attraction as 'things that should not be'. You hear alot of talk of, "Yay, now I can do something mature in my campaign", and I always wonder just what 'mature' is supposed to mean in that context. I often think that its percieved as 'mature' simply because 'moral handwringers' disapprove of it.

Now if I did put those things in my campaign, it wouldn't be to demonstrate my maturity. Most of the group are over thirty; maturity's assumed by default. Neither would it be to offend anyone. The only reason would be pure, unadulterated entertainment. What irritates more than scabies are people thinking they know why I'd put tieflings or fiends in my game. Amateur psychoanalysing is always tedious and even more wrong.

Friendly to grandmas since 1989

 

[LordVyreth]

You know, I remember having this exact same argument back when that drow article of Dragon came out years ago and the question was whether drows are nearly inescapably super-evil (as the article implied,) or whether they were a viable PC race. To be honest, I find the common geek response to evil races to be neither cheap, poor taste, or whatever you term it, but the opposite. Throughout culture, even in modern days, we have a tendency to label the new, unfamiliar, or alien as evil universally. As geeks, though, we have the opposite reaction. We are presented with a race defined as ultimately evil, and we immediately want to make one good. Granted, attractive or "cool" races are more common examples, but I've seen examples of beholder paladins and pacifist mind flayers as well. Instead of being in poor taste, I think this sort of activity is an paragon of enlightment and maturaity. Sure, many will just play the character to be cool, but it also opens pathways of role-playing and development tied to cultural conflict, the nature and origin of evil itself, and societal abandonment. It's the very definition of good taste.

And, let's face it, most people who play dwarves do so for a Con bonus or the excuse to do a bad Scottish accent. How is that any less cheesy?

 

[Betote]

I find the inclusion of Tieflings to be crude or lowlife. It does not offend me, I just find it below pedestrian, the opposite of heroic, and as Imp put it, cheesy. Something I would expect of 14 year olds looking for something cool to add, not game designers who should be upholding the traditions of DND: the things that make DND great like the core PC races.

They may not be 14-year olds, but they have them as their target audience (What time did most of us begin to play D&D?). So, if they want their game to be sold, they have to put things these 14-year olds would find 'kewl', not things us old grognards would find 'upholding the traditions'.

 

[Imp]

But but but no, that is not my position. I don't believe that tieflings, as written, are only cool to 14-year-olds. I believe that tieflings, as currently conceived, are less compelling to 14-year-olds, or anyone, than just about any other monstrous badass option out there. Does your inner 14-year-old want to play a tiefling, or a drow? A tiefling, or a werewolf? A tiefling, or a vampire? A tiefling, or a m-@%$ing yuan-ti? It is my hope that the 4E designers make them into some sort of Melnibonean analogue at the very least. But it says something about the weakness of the current concept that when setting designers look for a way to insert a Melnibone into their worlds, elves are the go-to race, and tieflings just sit there in the Monster Manual, losing at dominoes to the aasimar again.