The Gaming Den

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1190738025[/unixtime]]Reactions? Venting? Death threats?

The old 1E map of the plains is still burned into my brain. You know it might be a good thing to scrap it.

1E really had no back story to the demons/devils, and 2E was never satisfactory. This is probably no better and no worse than anything in the past. The_taken says it is too "Christian" for him, I'd say it's more psudo-Christian as I don't recall deicide and curses a part of Christian lore.

Let's face it, during the Christian middle ages and even up to the age of enlightenment the devil had one vital role, wild, bizzare and often kinky sex! He was often used in the cases of young women (and probably young virgins) accused of witchcraft.

"Admit it, you stripped naked, anointed yourself with magic oil, flew on a broom to a secret location where you and your coven had an orgy with vile devils."

"I did not!"

"What's it like?"

Any wonder why most Christian depictions of devils look far too much like Grek Satyrs to be a coincidence?

This was only changed when Mr. Webster had his famous debate with one. Devils then became evil lawyers for your soul.

Why spend this much time on such an apparently trivial subject? Because you can't really get rid of Devils/Demons, but there is a whole lot of needless complexity in the entire 1E plane system as evolved through planescape. One of the easiest ways to move alignment to the backburner is to demolish the compartmentalized alignments in the upper plains. So you still have the LE Devils and the CE Demons, but I'm betting that the NE critters are history. LN creatues are probably scrapped and since CE is a better source of chaotic destruction than CN they are probably toast too.

I believe the Yugoloths were referred to by name at one point in the mish-mash of 4E stuff, but couldn't pick it out right now.

Any wonder why most Christian depictions of devils look far too much like Grek Satyrs to be a coincidence?

Ah, well this is actually because various mythological creatures of Europe got re-cast as devils as Christianity spread throughout Europe. So the Satyr really did become a devil. Some of the old gods got a slightly better deal, in that they became Saints instead of devils. St Olaf is Thor, and I don't mean that Saint Olaf is sort of like Thor, and picked up some of his qualities. I mean he got a new name and a different outfit, while Loki got stuffed into the bigger grab bag of 'what the devil is like'

But still, I expect frothing at the mouth from the Planescape fans (and others), even though it is just a fluff change. Change is often inherently bad to a large chunk of people.
http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=929306
Ah, there it is. It takes 'em a bit, but they eventually get going. Especially 'I wrote thousands of pages on D&D cosmology' boy.

tzor at [unixtime wrote:1190747166[/unixtime]]

Voss at [unixtime wrote:1190738025[/unixtime]]Reactions? Venting? Death threats?

The_taken says it is too "Christian" for him, I'd say it's more psudo-Christian as I don't recall deicide and curses a part of Christian lore.

Fine, Old Testament where Lucifer betrays God bullshit with Satyrs = The Devil Christian bullshit and a side of Xena is a dirty hacker. It's more of the crap an aunt of mine tried to shove down my throat when the family associated with her, without the forced oral penetration. So I appreciate the fact that WotC is only offering me bullshit, instead of force-feeding it, but I still refuse to eat bullshit irregardless of the plate it's on.

Deicide is iffy-er, but the Old Testament is rife with curses, though sometimes the line between curse and prophecy is thin. But still, families were cursed unto the last generation, Jezebel was eaten by dogs because it was decreed it would be so, and Elijah gave people leprosy for being greedy. Fun times.

Deicide? What happened to Pharaoh's god? Or the golden calf?

-Crissa

It's all relative. This culture hates that, but the fact that most WOTC designers seem to favor.. I dunno.. protecting Judeo-Christian mythos from being adapted to D&D is frustrating.

I'd like to see a Seraph and Cherub, literally, with those names, in D&D. But that won't happen, since the Christian complain groups will come down like harpies and no amount of high priced lawyering can save a company from that kind of zealotry.

I agree, every major religion needs a placement equally in 4e rather than the biased shit I've seen over the years, jihad be damned.

Still, love the directing this thread is going. Thanks for link Voss.

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1190755777[/unixtime]]I'd like to see a Seraph and Cherub, literally, with those names, in D&D. But that won't happen, since the Christian complain groups will come down like harpies and no amount of high priced lawyering can save a company from that kind of zealotry.

If Ars Magica can get away with it, why not D&D?

angelfromanotherpin at [unixtime wrote:1190756424[/unixtime]]
If Ars Magica can get away with it, why not D&D?

Cuz D&D is older and more popular? They came into 'public eye', and as such went under close Jack Chick & Friends scrutiny.

Still, damn straight, angel. They should get away from it, and maybe this is the time to, in 4e.

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1190755777[/unixtime]]

I'd like to see a Seraph and Cherub, literally, with those names, in D&D. But that won't happen, since the Christian complain groups will come down like harpies and no amount of high priced lawyering can save a company from that kind of zealotry.

Anger of Angels from Malhavoc Press had those very thing in it.

http://www.montecook.com/mpress_Angels.html

Now for how good that supplement is, I can't really say since it has been a while since I've read it.

Crissa at [unixtime wrote:1190754952[/unixtime]]Deicide? What happened to Pharaoh's god? Or the golden calf?

Thats an interesting question. How do Christians reconcile there being only one God with the OT mentioning God kicking the ass of other gods?

Trying to remember back to when I read the Bible at least a hundred years ago, and church, Christian school and all that, but IIRC, the heathens worshipped these "false gods" and gained no response, similar to worshipping your pet rock. Similarly, with the whole "Fire starting contest round 1: God vs Baal" (ding ding ding!)

So I imagine the general approach was "They worshipped things that didn't even exist, so nothing happened, and all God had to do was, you know, ANYTHING to outdo them."

What about how Pharaoh's priests actually turned their staffs into snakes? The point of that was that Moses's God was better, not that he was the only one.

Oh snap, you're right. I'm not sure how they justify that one. Anyone with any more recent/in-depth knowledge?

Judaism started as a religion that only considered its God the best out of all the existing gods, so it doesn't actually have a justification-the whole thing with Egypt was basically "my dad can beat up your dad." Plus some other stuff like God freeing them from slavery.

Or alternately getting them enslaved when they pissed him off. Which happened a lot.

If I had a god that played such a direct hand in things, I wouldn't piss him off. But the Bible suggests that the entirety of his followers did at the same time.

I think those parts were about the ancient Hebrews being morons. How we went from that to intelligence accountants I have no idea.

sigma999 at [unixtime wrote:1190755777[/unixtime]]I'd like to see a Seraph and Cherub, literally, with those names, in D&D. But that won't happen, since the Christian complain groups will come down like harpies and no amount of high priced lawyering can save a company from that kind of zealotry.

One of the problems is that there is no common definition of creatures like Seraph and Cherubs and any attempt at defining one is bound to piss someone off. Modern common literature tends to vaguely define the demons and devils but this isn't true for the angels. Are cherubs really just like the cute babies that the artists happened to find "cute" or are they kick ass beings of great power?

Clearly the more things are defined in the common genre and the less people there are who might desire a different model the easier it is to write up. Norse gods are easy, everyone (except marvel comic mavens) will take the standard vanallia representation of them. Greek gods are harder, because there is a lot of leway in how they are inteperted. Roman gods get universally ignored because of copyright violations (mostly on the part of the Romans) and the Grand Unified Pantheon that was in the Library of Alexandrea is as rembered as that language they developed in Europe many years ago; Esperanto.


Meanwhile, just as people love to argue what "level" Gandalf was in the LOTR, one could argue what "level" God is in the old testament. He's really not as flashy as you might think. (Sodom and Gomorrah might be the exception then it's not really described in detail.)

I seem to recall hearing of Cherubs (Cherubym?) looking like enormous floating rings of fire. Armissael (Evangelion. The floating double-helix loop that turns into a worm) was supposedly based off that idea. Supposedly.

And fighting a Celestial that is a circle of fire would be pretty cool.

Aren't Seraphim supposed to be a bunch of glowing (possibly flaming) wings? The ancient imagery is super-trippy, and IMO would make for a great set of monsters.

Koumei at [unixtime wrote:1190801875[/unixtime]]Oh snap, you're right. I'm not sure how they justify that one. Anyone with any more recent/in-depth knowledge?

The ancient Hebrews weren't monotheists in the way the term is used today. Later Christians justified the appearance of other gods in the Old Testament by saying that people were actually worshipping demons (meaning fallen angels) and the demons were the ones doing all the supernatural things. This is, of course, nonsense, but there's very little about that religion that's not nonsense.

Iaimeki at [unixtime wrote:1190825339[/unixtime]]The ancient Hebrews weren't monotheists in the way the term is used today.

That's a good point. One can argue that there is an progression from polytheism towards what is clearly something that starts to look like monotheism through the writings of the Old Testament. Looking at it too quickly, espeically the first five books, can cause you to find red herrings as you leap to conclusions that are probably not the case.

Then you have to consider what might be happening that wasn't being written at the time. There is a good argument that the anchient Hebrews might even have evolved into a bitheism, with two seperate deities for men and women. (The later being generally underground because only the men were writing the history scrolls, running the armies, the government, the temple, etc.)

That is to say when they weren't just following the polytheism of the day, which they did quite often. "This is indeed a stiff necked people." (Yea but so is everyone else in the world. Welcome to humanity Moses.)

Cielingcat at [unixtime wrote:1190811778[/unixtime]]I think those parts were about the ancient Hebrews being morons. How we went from that to intelligence accountants I have no idea.

ANTI-SEMITE!! LOLOLOLBLARRHBGGBLbbllb

But really, Ceilingcat and Koumei summed up the entire internal conversation I had on this same subject just last night.
So no need for me to contribute to that, heh

tzor: Any single description and stat block of Seraphim and Cherubim by WOTC (along with the others in Kabbala heirarchy) would readily be snapped up as canon by most gamers, IMHO.

Koumei wrote:I seem to recall hearing of Cherubs (Cherubym?) looking like enormous floating rings of fire. Armissael (Evangelion. The floating double-helix loop that turns into a worm) was supposedly based off that idea. Supposedly.

And fighting a Celestial that is a circle of fire would be pretty cool.

Yes it would be. Very much so. I have an idea that high-level outsiders could have their true form as some giant abstraction, and their physical representation adapts to the locales they appear in.
For instance, a Solar in D&D might appear as a giant green angel but that would be the equivalent to a mortal's astral projection. If one were to see the true form, it would be some kinda sentient planetary body or dim star the size of a small moon.

Catharz wrote: Aren't Seraphim supposed to be a bunch of glowing (possibly flaming) wings? The ancient imagery is super-trippy, and IMO would make for a great set of monsters.

They have red skin and 3 sets of wings, all burning so bright that looking directly at them is blinding. They cover their body and face with 2 sets and use the middle ones for flying (go figure)
Although I imagine the actual form to be a giant blazing hued star.
heh... "What's the break DC of a planet?"

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dn ... [br][br]It would appear that the 'official' planes are as follows:

Mortal world = where you usually play
Feywild = where fey hang out, lots of nature. Geographically similar to mortal world.
Shadowfell = dead people and ghosts. Geographically similar to mortal world.
Elemental Chaos = all the elemental planes swirled together. The Abyss is floating in there too.
The Astral Sea = All the gods' realms are islands/cities/orbs/planets here. The Nine Hells are one of these.

Discuss

Blah