PDA

View Full Version : Lords of Hell - how do you prefer them?



Couatl
2018-10-22, 03:54 AM
Recently I realized that in my campaigns I use a lot both fiendish codexes - the one for Hell and the one for the Abyss, and players often end up chasing quests somewhere within those realms. In fact I use it so much that the hellish planes are more like secondary material planes than a real otherworlds for my campaign. This, of course has its merits, but it also has it cons.

I like to use the trope for the abyssal and hellish politics where players are either pawns or, to continue with the chess metaphor - lets say, officers and queens in the machinations of different lords. The problem is that now I feel the lords somehow less powerful and devaluated. The mystery around them is broken, they are almost all of them portrayed as active players, actually pursuing agendas. Of course they are still ruthless and hideous looking and powerful and can tear the flesh off your bones with a blink of an eye. Using them in this way makes political games, which are fun - with which one to ally, whom to help, whose plans to ruin, how to escape his/her revenge? But I started to think that maybe passive lords of Hell are better. Ones, who, even if they want to, are not in a shape to pursue any agenda.

If we take Divine Comedy as an example - Lucifer is stuck in a middle of a frozen lake and even if he wants to (and he surely does even if only to escape) he is just not capable to exit it and start establishing cults. He is also suffering, together with all the sinners around him, maybe even more than them. I think I would like to try this approach for a while. To make the big evils in the universe depersonalized and more mysterious and also stuck within their realms and suffering in there, without engaging in any active machinations. This will make politics be moved from the central theme, but maybe it will make for a more mysterious game.

So which one do you think is better? To have, lets say Pazuzu as an active flying vulture-like predator, or to make him a cloud of flying insects constantly burning within a hot cloud of sand and unable to escape it?

TL;DR: What kind of Lords of the Hellish planes do you prefer - active and personalized or depersonalized and mysterious?

hymer
2018-10-22, 04:24 AM
I'm the guy who said that Game of Thrones would have been better if everything outside of Westeros was just omitted as anything more than minor characters and themes. No white walkers, no Daenerys, no dragons. Focus on the power struggle and its consequences, and so avoid the sensation of deus ex machina, however telegraphed from the beginning.
So it won't come as a surprise that I'd find the ineffable lords more to my taste than the others.

But I don't think you can go back. Once you've defeated your first dragon, dragons are no longer as majestic as they once were, even if you were level 8 at the time, but level 3 now. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Once you've vied with the lords of Hell, they are permanently diminished in your mind. All the more reason to make them less active, of course.

Mordaedil
2018-10-22, 04:36 AM
I like to see the Hells and the Abyss as opposites in certain aspects.

Short-term, the Hells are less dangerous, while the Abyss is far more of an immediate danger whenever you visit.

But long-term, the Hells are the ones that sink their hooks into the players and end up having consequences down the line, while the Abyss tends to lose interest the moment they lose sight of you.

It then makes it sort of a gamble of how much time the players have left before they are trapped by the machinations of Hell versus the immediate dangers presented by the Abyss being extremely difficult, but easy enough to evade.

Lapak
2018-10-22, 12:05 PM
I prefer the second option (unknowable, not directly active) when I want the Hells and/or the Abyss in my campaign at all. To have the lords scheming with comprehensible plots tends to reduce the lower planes to something that can be conquered or overcome. It's not one thing to say that it's an infinite plane with infinite devils, but if you can match into Dis and defeat Dispater that feels like unconvincing window dressing.

Speaking generally, I prefer the planes to be inherently hostile to mortals. You can, say, execute a commando raid into a specific part of Hell to rescue a stolen soul, but the sense that you're on a timer where the chance of success or escape drops drastically with any setback is important. That applies equally to the Elemental Planes and the Upper Planes, too: I prefer to give a sense of 'mortals Do Not Belong Here' for all of them. Making the Lords of Hell active in a sense comprhensible to the PCs undermines that almost every time.

blackwindbears
2018-10-22, 12:17 PM
The correct answer to this is the dicefreak's Gates of Hell. The game statistics are rather ridiculous, but the fluff is top-notch. The whole thing sidesteps the issue really well. The lords are variously active or inactive, but they are so far beyond mortals that the distinction doesn't matter. You just hope against hope that they are never active in a way that notices you.

https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/dicefreaks/the-gates-of-hell-t22.html

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-22, 05:06 PM
I like my Lords of Hell like I like my women, standing over my crying form with a whip in one hand and a contract in the other.

In all seriousness, familiarity is the enemy of horror. The more the Lords appear in your game and the more understandable they are the more they'll seem like dudes, so actual appearances should be rare and the parts of their plans the players have learnt should require logic to make sense of (if a mortal can make sense of them at all). Also not all of the Lords will be cunning manipulators or politicians, there will still be the share of brutes and academics among them. The lords can be active, but the less their actions influence the PCs the better.

Quertus
2018-10-22, 06:26 PM
Given that over 90% of my characters would list "god slayer" as a career goal, I think it's obvious which side I'd take in this discussion. :smallwink:

Nifft
2018-10-22, 11:43 PM
I like 'em distant, at least until the PCs are so powerful that they have a chance to beat one in a fair fight. When the PCs are legitimate threats, then the arch-fiends might start taking them seriously.

So the PCs might see a Prince of Hell, but they wouldn't interact directly with one -- they'd meet subordinates (catspaws / handlers / cut-outs).

Old fiends are paranoid -- that's in part how they got to be old -- so this isn't just disdain. It's also a healthy dose of self-preservation.

Couatl
2018-10-23, 02:46 AM
I prefer the second option (unknowable, not directly active) when I want the Hells and/or the Abyss in my campaign at all. To have the lords scheming with comprehensible plots tends to reduce the lower planes to something that can be conquered or overcome. It's not one thing to say that it's an infinite plane with infinite devils, but if you can match into Dis and defeat Dispater that feels like unconvincing window dressing.

Speaking generally, I prefer the planes to be inherently hostile to mortals. You can, say, execute a commando raid into a specific part of Hell to rescue a stolen soul, but the sense that you're on a timer where the chance of success or escape drops drastically with any setback is important. That applies equally to the Elemental Planes and the Upper Planes, too: I prefer to give a sense of 'mortals Do Not Belong Here' for all of them. Making the Lords of Hell active in a sense comprhensible to the PCs undermines that almost every time.

Yes, I fully understand this. Problem is, if I use this approach, then a lot of setting fluff from the Fiendish Codexes is unusable.

Besides there is one big flaw with the incomprehensible logic behind elder things motivation when running a game. The players tend to overthink and try to find a pattern and they usually succeed, because otherwise it wouldn't be a game about them. If you want the logic to be incomprehensible you should either make the fiends appear only once, perhaps just "stirring in their slumber", and do something totally unexpected or make them do unexpected and illogical things all the time. If you use the latter though, you risk deteriorating into comedy really fast. This is the same problem as with the incomprehensible real form that no mortal can withstand, only bigger - "DM: This fiend is so gruesome and illogical it just denies reality, its form makes you mad.; Player: Ok, i understand, but describe it, please. For sure I see a glimpse before getting mad, don't I? After all I am not mere mortal, I am the protagonist."

So the solution seems to be, if you don't want the fiends to seem like just stronger and more hideous characters of Game of Thrones, to not include them at all?

Spore
2018-10-23, 07:10 AM
I like my evil approachable and enticing. What reason would mortal creatures have otherwise to approach devils and their ilk? the devils need souls to generate power for their - well - power plays. Usually no one is insane enough to worship the dark ones, so they are not divine but eldritch or arcane in nature.

They won't present themselves as master torturers or even particularly evil, but rather generous. We had a LE fallen angel (factually a devil for the setting) that helped our (CN/CG) group out with loads of items. She was responsible for most of our character's wealth. In return she just wanted us to kill and torture the people that corrupted her into this devilish form. No contract needed. My character (the only non good one as well as a Tiefling himself) would have eventually been suckered into being her pet if nothing major (a friend's death or worse) was caused by the devil.

In fact my character would like to play the devil as much as they try to play him. And I like it that way. No enigmatic visions that the clerics get. No arcane riddles like the wizard knows. But dealings with actually helpful creatures that prey on your soul.

I don't need devils as the LE version of deities.

hymer
2018-10-23, 09:19 AM
I don't need devils as the LE version of deities.
I just want to be sure I understand completely: I took this to be a question about the Lords of Hell, not the average devils. Does your view apply to the top people as well?

Mordaedil
2018-10-24, 01:14 AM
So the solution seems to be, if you don't want the fiends to seem like just stronger and more hideous characters of Game of Thrones, to not include them at all?
I think you can go against conventional wisdom here if you'd like, but there's a few ways to do it to make it feel right and avoid the "just another villain on the list".

Make them friendly towards the PC's, simply by virtue of the PC's being too insignificant for them to take seriously, make them a larger problem than the campaign that can't be dealt with right now (similar to Elan's dad in the OOTS comic) and don't make the demons or devils the focus of the campaign, but rather pieces that use the players in a big chess game. Make it clear that they are helping the players out of self-interest, but also because it benefits both parties. Don't make them overextend themselves, they should help, but not at a significant cost to their own resources. Keep in mind that their own men are expendable on behalf of there always being more and they also serve as rivals to the leaders of the layers.

Make them paranoid, but not to the point of suspecting the PCs of duplicity. If they work for a rival, they know. And they are ready for it. Do not use the PC's for dealing with internal politics between the layers. Asmodeus should not rely on PC's to deal with Mephistopheles in the 8th layer. At least not unless they actively serve these masters of the layers and are tied to them in an unbreakable fashion. In which case, don't be afraid to kick their butt around a bit.

Spore
2018-10-24, 07:06 AM
I just want to be sure I understand completely: I took this to be a question about the Lords of Hell, not the average devils. Does your view apply to the top people as well?

Yes, though they USUALLY send their agents. I can see an archdevil visiting his 10th level or so champion, just to strike another deal. They have be closer to their subjects because their "rewards systems" are better but their "employee loyalty" tends to not be as strong.

Unless it is enforced by a good contract. But by then the devil has won anyway, my point being that good agents usually are not stupid - or fervant - enough to get into binding contracts.

The Jack
2018-10-24, 11:21 AM
DnD wise
I see the Abyss as something between battle royale and Gungame. The Lords are just the baddest mofos who can afford a little more leniancy with others thanks to overwhelming power.

The Hells are the most orderly and insufferable workplace there is. A lord is a caricature of the nastiest boss ever.

In DnD, it's a bad move to define your character by alignment, characterization should come first, but when it comes to the outer planes, the alignment defines the characterization.

Greymane
2018-10-24, 02:49 PM
I like my evil approachable and enticing. What reason would mortal creatures have otherwise to approach devils and their ilk? the devils need souls to generate power for their - well - power plays. Usually no one is insane enough to worship the dark ones, so they are not divine but eldritch or arcane in nature.

They won't present themselves as master torturers or even particularly evil, but rather generous. We had a LE fallen angel (factually a devil for the setting) that helped our (CN/CG) group out with loads of items. She was responsible for most of our character's wealth. In return she just wanted us to kill and torture the people that corrupted her into this devilish form. No contract needed. My character (the only non good one as well as a Tiefling himself) would have eventually been suckered into being her pet if nothing major (a friend's death or worse) was caused by the devil.

In fact my character would like to play the devil as much as they try to play him. And I like it that way. No enigmatic visions that the clerics get. No arcane riddles like the wizard knows. But dealings with actually helpful creatures that prey on your soul.

I don't need devils as the LE version of deities.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sporeegg. Let the gods be distant and ineffable. Let the demons gnash their teeth and destroy all of creation. The devils? They're here to be your friend. Help you out in a jam, or show you how things ought to be better- for you; but mostly for them.

Unless the party ends up interacting with one of the Blood War crowd of devils like Gelugons or Barbazu (and even then...), I have them act perfectly friendly and amicable with the party. But that's typically through Falxugons, Erinyes and imps. If I ever wrote an adventure, or the party was foolish ambitious enough, that features interactions with the archfiends, I'd definitely have them act civil enough, maybe even friendly in some cases, to the party. The Fiendesh Codex even gives you a good outline of their various personalities, and they seem personable. For evil incarnations of unbending order.

Some more than, others, of course, but let's take Bel for example.

The dude is fighting at the front of the Blood War. He needs powerful magic and manpower, as his forces are outnumbered 20 to 1, and they get by through superior tactics and organization. It pays to treat the mortals carrying enough magic items and magical power to power a small kingdom with civility- maybe you can use them for something? Specialists for a strike on an important demonic position? Send them to collect an artifact from a ruin because you can't spare the men? Etc. And really, by the end of the day, if they're good at doing work for you, maybe you can keep them on. In Bel's Roleplaying entry it even suggests that he gives mortals honest hearings in good faith if they offer to help him, and while he might not gun for corrupting mortals- he's so darn orderly and evil, that it's likely to happen anyway if they just keep hanging around the infernal strategist.

So there's a guy willing to give the players a fair shake, and at least in my experience, doing a solid for the players, even as minor as being important and hearing them out, or being friendly with them and congratulating them after a job well done- that will get them to think the devils aren't so bad. That's the key.

I shoehorn devils in as minor players whenever it's reasonable. But especially when the heroes need a helping hand. Because a friend is always there when he's needed most.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-25, 06:34 PM
As a rule, I tend to roll my eyes at anything sentient being portrayed as far beyond mortal comprehension. Gods, demons, aliens, you name it. It's sometimes done well when the being is portrayed as being less of an agent actively meddling in the mortal realm and more of a sentient natural disaster who happens to be in the same area. So that's one option—Lovecraftian horror who doesn't care about mortals, but they're in the way of whatever it's trying to do.

Of course, that's not suitable for all plots. Sometimes you want the heroes to struggle against the inevitable, or try to survive against a foe that can't be fought, or even try to invent or implement the metaphorical equivalent of geoengineering, but sometimes you just want a bad guy you can punch. In that case, I'd recommend one of the scheming types. Think of them as the evil businessmen from kid's cartoons, but on a cosmic scale. They have secret plans for their own enrichment or empowerment, but don't have the clout as the gods, so they have to wheel and deal their way into what they want.

If you want to go The Inferno, you can do that, too. Keep in mind that you need to establish a dang good reason why they're there, or they're going to come off as sympathetic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing; I'd like to see more stories which point out that torture for eternity is a disproportionate punishment for basically anything. But if the prisoner is a villain, you need to establish why the players should find said prisoner as despicable as Dante found Satan. And while you're at it, figure out how he's the Big Bad when he's imprisoned.

TL;DR: Figure out what kind of villain you want your demon lord to be and run with it. The middle option is probably the most generally-applicable, but the others can work, too.

exelsisxax
2018-10-25, 10:33 PM
I like my evil approachable and enticing. What reason would mortal creatures have otherwise to approach devils and their ilk? the devils need souls to generate power for their - well - power plays. Usually no one is insane enough to worship the dark ones, so they are not divine but eldritch or arcane in nature.

They won't present themselves as master torturers or even particularly evil, but rather generous. We had a LE fallen angel (factually a devil for the setting) that helped our (CN/CG) group out with loads of items. She was responsible for most of our character's wealth. In return she just wanted us to kill and torture the people that corrupted her into this devilish form. No contract needed. My character (the only non good one as well as a Tiefling himself) would have eventually been suckered into being her pet if nothing major (a friend's death or worse) was caused by the devil.

In fact my character would like to play the devil as much as they try to play him. And I like it that way. No enigmatic visions that the clerics get. No arcane riddles like the wizard knows. But dealings with actually helpful creatures that prey on your soul.

I don't need devils as the LE version of deities.



I agree wholeheartedly with Sporeegg. Let the gods be distant and ineffable. Let the demons gnash their teeth and destroy all of creation. The devils? They're here to be your friend. Help you out in a jam, or show you how things ought to be better- for you; but mostly for them.

Unless the party ends up interacting with one of the Blood War crowd of devils like Gelugons or Barbazu (and even then...), I have them act perfectly friendly and amicable with the party. But that's typically through Falxugons, Erinyes and imps. If I ever wrote an adventure, or the party was foolish ambitious enough, that features interactions with the archfiends, I'd definitely have them act civil enough, maybe even friendly in some cases, to the party. The Fiendesh Codex even gives you a good outline of their various personalities, and they seem personable. For evil incarnations of unbending order.

Some more than, others, of course, but let's take Bel for example.

The dude is fighting at the front of the Blood War. He needs powerful magic and manpower, as his forces are outnumbered 20 to 1, and they get by through superior tactics and organization. It pays to treat the mortals carrying enough magic items and magical power to power a small kingdom with civility- maybe you can use them for something? Specialists for a strike on an important demonic position? Send them to collect an artifact from a ruin because you can't spare the men? Etc. And really, by the end of the day, if they're good at doing work for you, maybe you can keep them on. In Bel's Roleplaying entry it even suggests that he gives mortals honest hearings in good faith if they offer to help him, and while he might not gun for corrupting mortals- he's so darn orderly and evil, that it's likely to happen anyway if they just keep hanging around the infernal strategist.

So there's a guy willing to give the players a fair shake, and at least in my experience, doing a solid for the players, even as minor as being important and hearing them out, or being friendly with them and congratulating them after a job well done- that will get them to think the devils aren't so bad. That's the key.

I shoehorn devils in as minor players whenever it's reasonable. But especially when the heroes need a helping hand. Because a friend is always there when he's needed most.


THIS.

Devils aren't scary because they can tear your arms off - any other great ape can do that to a human. They're terrifying and interesting because they're just so human. They have the same sort of desires we have, they've got a complex society based around a lot of rules that don't immediately make sense, and they understand mortals intimately. People are fully aware that they are going to corrupt them at the first opportunity, and get taken in all the time because they're so empathetic that they cause damnation with straight truth and honesty.

The Jack
2018-10-27, 05:18 AM
I agree wholeheartedly with Sporeegg. Let the gods be distant and ineffable. Let the demons gnash their teeth and destroy all of creation. The devils? They're here to be your friend. Help you out in a jam, or show you how things ought to be better- for you; but mostly for them.

So there's a guy willing to give the players a fair shake, and at least in my experience, doing a solid for the players, even as minor as being important and hearing them out, or being friendly with them and congratulating them after a job well done- that will get them to think the devils aren't so bad. That's the key.

I shoehorn devils in as minor players whenever it's reasonable. But especially when the heroes need a helping hand. Because a friend is always there when he's needed most.

Unless CG is just as equally into humans as LE, I don't really like the (good) gods are distant/useless whilst devils are so nice and personal .
I feel it's a popular, edgy and such, but I don't think it really fits society to have LG gods be distant while LE's are playing best friend. Society gravitates towards Lawful in general, so it doesn't make sense that LE and LG would have such different stances/ways of dealing with people. LG and LE both have lawful in the sense of 'Vengence is the normal response to a wrong... but the rest of society won't aprove of that' so a more sneaky 'devil approach' could be used by good or evil, but on the otherhand a lot of arguably 'evil' things are the regular law in society, be it planed obsolescence, purposefully misleading dietary guidance, certain kinds of discrimination or lobbying... and with stuff like this, why would a LE outsider need to show up when a LG one doesn't.

Quertus
2018-10-27, 05:34 AM
Unless CG is just as equally into humans as LE, I don't really like the (good) gods are distant/useless whilst devils are so nice and personal .
I feel it's a popular, edgy and such, but I don't think it really fits society to have LG gods be distant while LE's are playing best friend. Society gravitates towards Lawful in general, so it doesn't make sense that LE and LG would have such different stances/ways of dealing with people. LG and LE both have lawful in the sense of 'Vengence is the normal response to a wrong... but the rest of society won't aprove of that' so a more sneaky 'devil approach' could be used by good or evil, but on the otherhand a lot of arguably 'evil' things are the regular law in society, be it planed obsolescence, purposefully misleading dietary guidance, certain kinds of discrimination or lobbying... and with stuff like this, why would a LE outsider need to show up when a LG one doesn't.

Hmmm... Let me take a crack at this one. It's the question of when parents should intercede, vs let children solve their problems. Because showing up makes you dependent, whereas solving your own problems helps your growth.

I feel Lawful Evil would be happy with a weak populous, too dependent on the government / powers that be / whatever to be willing to risk rocking the boat over some minor ethical squabble. Whereas Lawful Good would want an empowered populous, willing to rock the boat and make large societal changes (say, free the slaves "because it's the right thing do"), trusting society to rebound stronger for their moral choices.

Could this be a plausible reason for such a difference in approach?

Spore
2018-10-27, 07:03 AM
Unless CG is just as equally into humans as LE, I don't really like the (good) gods are distant/useless whilst devils are so nice and personal .
I feel it's a popular, edgy and such, but I don't think it really fits society to have LG gods be distant while LE's are playing best friend. Society gravitates towards Lawful in general, so it doesn't make sense that LE and LG would have such different stances/ways of dealing with people. LG and LE both have lawful in the sense of 'Vengence is the normal response to a wrong... but the rest of society won't aprove of that' so a more sneaky 'devil approach' could be used by good or evil, but on the otherhand a lot of arguably 'evil' things are the regular law in society, be it planed obsolescence, purposefully misleading dietary guidance, certain kinds of discrimination or lobbying... and with stuff like this, why would a LE outsider need to show up when a LG one doesn't.

I don't think vengeance as a normal approach is what you mean but I get it. You mean "justice" in any form. But while LG tries to use the system to protect the weak, LE tries to use the system to protect the strong. LN tries to be as correct as humanly possible.


Hmmm... Let me take a crack at this one. It's the question of when parents should intercede, vs let children solve their problems. Because showing up makes you dependent, whereas solving your own problems helps your growth.

I feel Lawful Evil would be happy with a weak populous, too dependent on the government / powers that be / whatever to be willing to risk rocking the boat over some minor ethical squabble. Whereas Lawful Good would want an empowered populous, willing to rock the boat and make large societal changes (say, free the slaves "because it's the right thing do"), trusting society to rebound stronger for their moral choices.

Could this be a plausible reason for such a difference in approach?

I feel like LG wants a balance between the rights and power of the many, and the mandate of the few. A benevolent king that hears his people's pleas but ultimatively still decides on his own is still deeply lawful good. Good because his reign is fair, and good and just, and lawful because the people (have to) accept him as the sole deciding factor on his kingdom's politics.

Lawful evil in that regard is ruthless and selfish and evil, and lawful because the dictator appointed himself ruler by playing by the book and more often than not, rewriting said book to his whims after he became ruler.

Politics in motion often cannot be displayed in the static alignment grid and games that use alignment have started with NWN or KOTOR to use alignment as basically a karma point system. LG and LE and somesuch can be applied to your character, but a LE ex-Cleric that fell from LN (with a LG god) because he thought his government is too weak to rule over the chaotic country is completely different to a NE slaver, that came into the possession of a larger influence and has now to play by the book and became LE.

Said with (largely badly worded) mathematical expressions: The result is not independant of the way it has been achieved. Alignment is shorthand for the CURRENT status but not goals or the immediate future or past.

Nifft
2018-10-27, 01:48 PM
I don't think vengeance as a normal approach is what you mean but I get it. You mean "justice" in any form. But while LG tries to use the system to protect the weak, LE tries to use the system to protect the strong. LN tries to be as correct as humanly possible.

Hmm. In my games, LN means valuing the whole more than the parts -- keeping the peace, even at the expense of the pieces.

LE means using the system to cause undue suffering. It's not just about protecting the strong, it's about using the system to harm everyone you don't personally care about (which might just be yourself).

LG might value tradition, but the primary concern is helping everyone. It's a peace kept for the pieces. It's a rising tide that actually does lift all boats. LG might protect the strong, if protecting the strong is compatible with protecting everyone -- for example, a level 1 Warrior foot-soldier jumping in front of a disintegrate ray to protect a silver dragon ally, that's protecting the strong but it's not even slightly Evil.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-27, 05:48 PM
Unless CG is just as equally into humans as LE, I don't really like the (good) gods are distant/useless whilst devils are so nice and personal .
I feel it's a popular, edgy and such...
It's not popular because it's "edgy," it's popular because having benevolent gods ready and willing to swoop in and solve mortal problems tends to short-circuit most stories. You need to explain why the gods aren't fixing every little problem, and it's hard to do that without them coming off as either cold and distant or just plain jerks.



Hmmm... Let me take a crack at this one. It's the question of when parents should intercede, vs let children solve their problems.
Problem: Either the gods see each of their followers as "their child," at which point most conflict is snuffed out because just about any conflict with significant stakes would be a good time to intercede; or the gods see entire cultures as "their child," at which point they go back to being aloof and distant from the individuals within those cultures.



LE means using the system to cause undue suffering. It's not just about protecting the strong, it's about using the system to harm everyone you don't personally care about (which might just be yourself).
I don't like limiting Evil to "do harm for harm's sake". It's certainly Evil, but it's not a very plausible kind of evil. That's part of why I like digging into the motivations behind fiends, and often end up making them the victims of higher powers. (It's not that much of a stretch; the primary source material is little more than a big perspective shift away from treating demons and the Devil like victims of an all-powerful bully.)

Quertus
2018-10-27, 07:40 PM
Problem: Either the gods see each of their followers as "their child," at which point most conflict is snuffed out because just about any conflict with significant stakes would be a good time to intercede; or the gods see entire cultures as "their child," at which point they go back to being aloof and distant from the individuals within those cultures.

I mean, I suppose that perspective could give an answer then: evil gods view individuals as their children, good gods view cultures as their children.

Not that I agree with this, mind you, but it would produce those results.


I don't like limiting Evil to "do harm for harm's sake". It's certainly Evil, but it's not a very plausible kind of evil. That's part of why I like digging into the motivations behind fiends, and often end up making them the victims of higher powers. (It's not that much of a stretch; the primary source material is little more than a big perspective shift away from treating demons and the Devil like victims of an all-powerful bully.)

Um, I'm confused. Enjoying causing suffering is a very real thing. Bullying because you're bullied is a thing, that you even bring up. So, what, exactly, is it that you want to disconnect between "evil" and "enjoying suffering"?

Tajerio
2018-10-28, 12:12 AM
Um, I'm confused. Enjoying causing suffering is a very real thing. Bullying because you're bullied is a thing, that you even bring up. So, what, exactly, is it that you want to disconnect between "evil" and "enjoying suffering"?

Well, because there isn't a necessary causal flow from "evil" to "enjoys suffering." That's only one specific type of evil, and probably the least interesting from a narrative perspective to boot. It doesn't have any roots in any larger goals or greater plans. And, as a result, for most people there's no real way to understand the villain's motivations, because most of us aren't utterly deranged.

More interesting, and more common in the real-world analogues from which we draw, is evil that has ends beyond causing suffering. We still object to it--perhaps too many suffer for too little, perhaps the villain is indifferent to the suffering of certain groups, perhaps laudable aims are sustained in a way that requires suffering--but all of this is more easily comprehensible. We've all had to make hard choices and we all have circles of people that we care about more than others, so we can make a closer approach to understanding the motives of the villain for whom suffering is not the aim and motive.

And when the story has a villain of this latter type, many more options open up. It becomes much more plausible for this villain to be at the head of, or actually be, an organization. The villain can turn out not actually to be evil (or at least not that evil), or can be an acceptable temporary ally against some other threat. And, of course, there's the redemption arc, which just doesn't really work all that well with the sadist.

In short, when evil doesn't make its end goal suffering, it tends to be narratively both more engaging and more flexible, as well as more plausible. At least I think that's what GWG was going for.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-28, 08:22 PM
Got it in one, Tajero.

Nifft
2018-10-28, 10:32 PM
Well, because there isn't a necessary causal flow from "evil" to "enjoys suffering." That's only one specific type of evil, and probably the least interesting from a narrative perspective to boot. It doesn't have any roots in any larger goals or greater plans. And, as a result, for most people there's no real way to understand the villain's motivations, because most of us aren't utterly deranged.
(...)
In short, when evil doesn't make its end goal suffering, it tends to be narratively both more engaging and more flexible, as well as more plausible. At least I think that's what GWG was going for.

1 - The necessary causal arrow is between evil behavior -> evil alignment.

2 - Evil which fails to perform sufficiently evil behavior is not evil, so you can go ahead and do all those lovely Neutral things and be "narratively engaging and flexible" -- but you can't also be evil, not unless you do evil.


But sure, you can pick a different evil behavior. Using law to cause undue suffering is my go-to for LE because that's what Hell is like in a large segment of literary representations, including strange Hells like the one from Exalted.

You just can't be evil without ever behaving in any evil way.

GloatingSwine
2018-10-29, 04:38 AM
Um, I'm confused. Enjoying causing suffering is a very real thing. Bullying because you're bullied is a thing, that you even bring up. So, what, exactly, is it that you want to disconnect between "evil" and "enjoying suffering"?

Evil need not enjoy causing the suffering of others. Merely be indifferent to it in the pursuit of something else.

Even on the petty scale, it's more common for people to bully because they enjoy the feeling of power over another rather than directly enjoying the suffering of the other.

On the grand scale of the cosmological Evil, it can translate into Lords of Hell causing suffering in the Prime Material as a result of internal strife between themselves. By increasing Evil in the world, tempting others into behaviours which will increase suffering, they advance themselves in Hell. They don't really care what happens to the mortals, mortals are temporary anyway, but they do care about their own prestige and position among the Lords, including pre-empting and thwarting each other (so an LE inquisition might be causing untold suffering due to the whisperings of one evil in order to thwart the actions of another. The witches really are there, and they really are up to no good.)

Quertus
2018-10-29, 11:03 AM
Well, because there isn't a necessary causal flow from "evil" to "enjoys suffering." That's only one specific type of evil, and probably the least interesting from a narrative perspective to boot. It doesn't have any roots in any larger goals or greater plans.


Got it in one, Tajero.

Hmmm... I suppose that the nature of evil is germane to the thread, so I'll poke at it.

IMO, "good" and "evil" can (often) perform the same acts, but for different reasons. Good can kill. Evil can kill. Neutral can kill. But it's why they kill, it's the answer to "what's my motivation?" that determines whether an act - and whether an actor - is good or evil.

A desire to cause suffering is (sadly) not some strange anomaly in human behavior. It is, in fact, present in more or less everyone. Most every child will bite, or hit, or pull the wings off flies, or otherwise exhibit enjoying some form of harmful behavior. Most every bully exemplifies a desire to cause harm. Most teens will launch needlessly vicious verbal attacks, even on friends and family, for no other purpose than to cause harm.

Or, as Sirius Black said, "We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That’s who we really are."

Anyone can want to take over the world. Anyone can have larger goals. This is not a sign of the direction one's moral compass points. The question is, why do they want to take over the world? What are they really trying to accomplish? (I mean, I suppose you could try to argue the opposite, that every politician who is in charge of a country is inherently Evil, because there is no reason to have such power except to be Evil, but... we're not going there, right? We believe that one can want to control a massive political body, like a country or a world or an outer plane or a religion, and not be Evil, can do so for fundamentally Good reasons, right?)

I prefer evil that, when you dig down to its fundamental psychological underpinnings, the answer to "why" is "because it will hurt people" - especially if that's "people that I don't like".

I prefer good that, when you dig down to its fundamental psychological underpinnings, the answer to "why" is "because it will help people" - even if that's "people that I don't like".

That's the way I like my Lords of Hell - and my Celestial beings.

So... let me see if I can make heads or tails of how y'all like your Lords of Hell.

...

Yeah, no, I really can't. I can make what I have to assume are straw men of your positions: you want "evil", including the Lords of Hell, to simply mean "narrative purpose is to be the 'villian'", and say nothing of their moral compass. Or that you want caricatures of Evil, who just randomly "do evil stuff" with no motivation. But I assume that neither of those is even close to your actual positions. So, can you explain to me what you're really trying to say?


Evil need not enjoy causing the suffering of others. Merely be indifferent to it in the pursuit of something else.

Even on the petty scale, it's more common for people to bully because they enjoy the feeling of power over another rather than directly enjoying the suffering of the other.

... This might be beyond my Psychology training. So let's start really basic. Please explain how enjoying the feeling of power from bullying others meaningfully differs from enjoying the suffering of others.

Because there are those who bully others when necessary, and clearly enjoy it as much as drinking raw sewage. And there are others who clearly get a thrill out of the act. And those who are so inured to it, that they bully without really feeling the suffering at all. So, from a practical sense, from where I'm standing, enjoying bullying seems, to me, to be identical to enjoying the suffering of others.


On the grand scale of the cosmological Evil, it can translate into Lords of Hell causing suffering in the Prime Material as a result of internal strife between themselves. By increasing Evil in the world, tempting others into behaviours which will increase suffering, they advance themselves in Hell. They don't really care what happens to the mortals, mortals are temporary anyway, but they do care about their own prestige and position among the Lords, including pre-empting and thwarting each other (so an LE inquisition might be causing untold suffering due to the whisperings of one evil in order to thwart the actions of another. The witches really are there, and they really are up to no good.)

I mean, sure, the suffering you are feeling may well be incidental to a particular Evil (or even Good) agent. One cannot measure the moral compass of a being by whether or not it has made you suffer. So how is the fact that the Lords of Evil may not even be aware that you exist in any way relevant?

The idea that they just care about the amount of Evil in the world is intriguing. It gives them a fairly alien mindset, like the war between "good" and evil" is just a battle between "green" and "purple", which somehow matters to them for some ineffable reason that is just inherent to their very being. It makes a harsh divide between beings of matter, beings of free will (ie, the PCs), and those of spirit (the Outsiders).

I don't think I'd do this in any game where that central conflict - either between Green and Purple, or between Natives and Outsiders - wasn't intended to be the focus of the campaign.


1 - The necessary causal arrow is between evil behavior -> evil alignment.

2 - Evil which fails to perform sufficiently evil behavior is not evil, so you can go ahead and do all those lovely Neutral things and be "narratively engaging and flexible" -- but you can't also be evil, not unless you do evil.


But sure, you can pick a different evil behavior. Using law to cause undue suffering is my go-to for LE because that's what Hell is like in a large segment of literary representations, including strange Hells like the one from Exalted.

You just can't be evil without ever behaving in any evil way.

I have to disagree. Actions are inherently neutral - it is those acted upon who (somewhat arbitrarily) label the actions "good" or "evil". And I prefer to view it as the "why" that determines whether an action is "colored" "good" or "evil". Saving someone's life because "it's the right thing to do" has a different feel than saving them because "you want to be the one to kill them", "this death doesn't involve them / their family suffering enough", or "this death won't profit you as much as their survival".

Tajerio
2018-10-29, 03:35 PM
Hmmm... I suppose that the nature of evil is germane to the thread, so I'll poke at it.

IMO, "good" and "evil" can (often) perform the same acts, but for different reasons. Good can kill. Evil can kill. Neutral can kill. But it's why they kill, it's the answer to "what's my motivation?" that determines whether an act - and whether an actor - is good or evil.

(...)

I prefer evil that, when you dig down to its fundamental psychological underpinnings, the answer to "why" is "because it will hurt people" - especially if that's "people that I don't like".

I prefer good that, when you dig down to its fundamental psychological underpinnings, the answer to "why" is "because it will help people" - even if that's "people that I don't like".

That's the way I like my Lords of Hell - and my Celestial beings.

So... let me see if I can make heads or tails of how y'all like your Lords of Hell.

...

Yeah, no, I really can't. I can make what I have to assume are straw men of your positions: you want "evil", including the Lords of Hell, to simply mean "narrative purpose is to be the 'villian'", and say nothing of their moral compass. Or that you want caricatures of Evil, who just randomly "do evil stuff" with no motivation. But I assume that neither of those is even close to your actual positions. So, can you explain to me what you're really trying to say?

The short answer, for my part, is that I don't like the Lords of Hell. They do fit your definitions above--motive alone determines morality, and the evil motive of preference is "to cause pain and suffering"--but because they fit those definitions, they've got no fundamental nuance or ambiguity to them. And I'm not very fond of telling stories in which the villain is unquestionably and unrelievedly evil. That, in turn, is because I strongly disagree with both of your definitions. I think they represent only a kind of evil, and miss out on the vast majority of phenomena that could be deservedly described as evil. And I like my stories, even when everything else in and around them is fantasy, to be grounded on how I understand people to be in our world.

If I did use the Lords of Hell, though, I'd play them straight. But I'd probably keep them in the background, and let some more readily comprehensible villain take center stage.

Rhedyn
2018-10-29, 03:55 PM
TL;DR: What kind of Lords of the Hellish planes do you prefer - active and personalized or depersonalized and mysterious?I wouldn't pull too much from Christian hell, it exist in a universe where the good side won and is supreme and could more less just be a metaphor for God ignoring you.

Now D&D Hell, Lawful orderly soul collection for greater power and discipline make for great antagonists. They have a plan and the heroes can stop it even if they couldn't kill the ruler. Things like the Abyss are harder to deal with because the rulers are rulers by sheer might so they can't be toppled or really more than inconvenienced by anything short of killing them.

Though the D&D Abyss makes for great high level Sword and Sorcery setting where each plane is treated like it's own city state. If you mess with one part of D&D Hell, all of D&D Hell knows about it and probably cares. D&D Abyssal Lords would sooner kill each other as kill you, so the party is free to go nuts!

Want to behave like CE characters, but still be the Good Guys? Visit the abyss and channel your inner smite happy paladin.

Spore
2018-10-29, 04:19 PM
Just a short thought snippet that came up tonight in connection to my Pathfinder LN Asmodeus worshipper. Sometimes, people just want strong people in charge to avoid chaos. My character's mantra is the stability of the country and the government over all, if that means worshipping devils then so be it. You always know where you are with devils. There is some kind of safety in Lawful Evil - and a tad bit of Stockholm Syndrome. :)

Nifft
2018-10-29, 04:37 PM
I have to disagree. Actions are inherently neutral - it is those acted upon who (somewhat arbitrarily) label the actions "good" or "evil". Every edition of D&D which I've checked -- 1e, 3.5e, 5e -- seems to disagree with you.

Actions do have alignments, based on intention and outcome.

If intention didn't matter, then Atonement for evil actions would not cost differently for unintentional acts.

If intention were the only thing that mattered, the Atonement for evil actions wouldn't be necessary for unintentional acts.

Acts can be chaotic or evil; lawful or good. Actions do have alignments, and performing enough actions of a specific alignment is how you take on that alignment.


The short answer, for my part, is that I don't like the Lords of Hell. They do fit your definitions above--motive alone determines morality, and the evil motive of preference is "to cause pain and suffering"--but because they fit those definitions, they've got no fundamental nuance or ambiguity to them. And I'm not very fond of telling stories in which the villain is unquestionably and unrelievedly evil. That, in turn, is because I strongly disagree with both of your definitions. I think they represent only a kind of evil, and miss out on the vast majority of phenomena that could be deservedly described as evil. And I like my stories, even when everything else in and around them is fantasy, to be grounded on how I understand people to be in our world.

If I did use the Lords of Hell, though, I'd play them straight. But I'd probably keep them in the background, and let some more readily comprehensible villain take center stage. I find utility in using them as plot elements -- you know that this guy wants horrible things to happen (to everyone, including you), but he's here right now offering you assistance. It will come at a price. Who will pay that price, and can you come out ahead in spite of his best efforts?

And then your competition, the former "honorable foe" faction against whom the PCs had been competing, gets supernatural aid from some other evil. Can you afford to go against them alone? Will getting the devil's help be worse than not?

These can be interesting questions, and in my experience the devils don't need to be morally nuanced to retain this utility.

PCs doing things which they know are a bad idea seems fairly common in games I've seen.


I wouldn't pull too much from Christian hell I mean, which version?

Aside from being a bad idea to discuss real religions, I'd say that there are too many literary variants (even enough variants within the Good Book) that just using that moniker is going to be ambiguous.

My advice would be to pick a specific fictional literary hell -- Dante's hell, for example -- rather than try to lump all of them under the religion. Plus you won't get post-scrubbed.

GloatingSwine
2018-10-29, 06:06 PM
... This might be beyond my Psychology training. So let's start really basic. Please explain how enjoying the feeling of power from bullying others meaningfully differs from enjoying the suffering of others.

It's the context of the personal relationship between the bully and the victim. If you presented the average bully with a random person to kick in the balls they wouldn't do it just to hurt someone because hurting people makes them feel good (though there are absolutely people who would do that because hurting people does make them feel good).

The majority of bullies want the social relationship of power, and often to be seen wielding that power.

(Sadly the most shining example is unavailable due to encroaching on real world politics).

Tvtyrant
2018-10-29, 06:34 PM
My preference is that Demon Lords are essentially demi-gods who gain power from being in their home bases, and that connection can be hijacked if they leave. So Demon Lords put forward millenia long plans to get each other to act, because they know if they can force each other to be personally involved they can be killed or usurped.

Most of their plots involving mortals or hell are really aimed at each other, so you can't do much to bother them.

Demogorgon might spend centuries constructing an artifact that can open a permanent portal to hell, then have it be "lost" in the prime material plane. It corrupts the world around it, so a group of heroes decide to move it to the Abyss so the devils will lose interest in them. The Blood War opens up on the flank of one of Orcus' richer realms. Orcus has to either allow Bel to ruin a large portion of his powerbase or interfere directly, allowing one of Demogorgon's allies to seize his crappiest layer. Orcus turns around and kills that ally, whose realm then defaults to Demogorgon.

Basically Demon Lords are interested only in the Game, but they have nearly infinite time to put circuitous gambits into play.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-29, 07:18 PM
... This might be beyond my Psychology training. So let's start really basic. Please explain how enjoying the feeling of power from bullying others meaningfully differs from enjoying the suffering of others.
One could be satisfied by getting that feeling of power in other ways that don't promote suffering. The other could not. And there are ways to feel powerful that don't involve real people suffering. You can feel powerful by running for student council and winning, for instance; that doesn't harm anyone, but it still empowers you. It just takes more work. But someone who just enjoys others' suffering can't enjoy that without someone suffering, by definition.
TL;DR: It's a matter of flexibility.



I find utility in using them as plot elements -- you know that this guy wants horrible things to happen (to everyone, including you), but he's here right now offering you assistance. It will come at a price. Who will pay that price, and can you come out ahead in spite of his best efforts?
It's true that a flat, boring, 2-dimensional capital-E villain with no particular reason for antagonizing all the good people in the world doesn't automatically doom a story to being terrible. The fact that such villains can exist in a functioning story is not the same as them being not-boring; it just means they don't always distract from the interesting stuff.
Can you describe a story where having a plain Evil villain like that would be better than giving them at least a little depth?


My advice would be to pick a specific fictional literary hell -- Dante's hell, for example -- rather than try to lump all of them under the religion. Plus you won't get post-scrubbed.
Wait, would discussing Dante's Inferno be kosher under current forum rules? It's not an official book of religious canon, but it's definitely a religious book (and not in the allegorical way Narnia is).

Quertus
2018-10-29, 09:44 PM
That, in turn, is because I strongly disagree with both of your definitions. I think they represent only a kind of evil, and miss out on the vast majority of phenomena that could be deservedly described as evil.

Can you give examples of what you consider Evil that are not fundamentally grounded in causing harm?

Killing, as an extreme example, is, like all actions, inherently neutral. Animals kill, and they're neutral. Earthquakes kill, and they're neutral. Most would agree that killing in self defense is at worst neutral, and that killing Evil things, like the devil or Hitler, is Good.

So what makes an action Evil that is not, at its heart, motivated by hurting others? What forms of evil do you find interesting to explore, and that you believe account for the majority of the evil in the world, that are unaccounted for under my definitions?

Tajerio
2018-10-30, 05:45 AM
Can you give examples of what you consider Evil that are not fundamentally grounded in causing harm?

Killing, as an extreme example, is, like all actions, inherently neutral. Animals kill, and they're neutral. Earthquakes kill, and they're neutral. Most would agree that killing in self defense is at worst neutral, and that killing Evil things, like the devil or Hitler, is Good.

So what makes an action Evil that is not, at its heart, motivated by hurting others? What forms of evil do you find interesting to explore, and that you believe account for the majority of the evil in the world, that are unaccounted for under my definitions?

Sure. Let's say we have a king who has a lavish lifestyle and likes to build palaces, and is consequently in financial straits. But just across the border, the neighboring kingdom has a stretch of silver mines. So the king, after proclaiming the appropriate fig leaves about rights and claims, declares war. Hundreds of people die, hundreds more are injured, but at the end, the king has his silver mines. For me, that's evil, but the motive of harming others is absent.

Or let's say we have a countess who's got a river running through her lands, but no lake. That's a shame, because she'd really like to have a castle on a lake. So one day she gets a druid to cast a few spells, and now she's got a dam. The river backs up into a lake, and the people who live within its span have to run for it or drown, and either way they've lost their homes. Evil again, but not from the desire to harm others.

And what about that druid? Well, she was a nixie, and she wanted to make more space for her clan to live without being bothered by humans. The countess's deal seemed like the perfect way to get some more space while being protected from human retaliation. She figured that the humans mostly didn't live that close to the river, and in any case the waters wouldn't rise that fast. So she went ahead and cast the spells. Same deal.

Generally, people do evil unto others because those others are lower on their scale of caring than those who benefit from the deed. Selfishness, tribalism, and indifference are much more reliable motivators of evil than is a pure desire to do harm, and I've tried to illustrate that without using real-world examples so as not to run afoul of board rules. I'll note also that this understanding allows for the possibility of the same person doing both good and evil while not being essentially either, to which your Sirius Black quotation from earlier alluded. The Lords of Hell don't have that. They can't intentionally do good. And for me, that makes them boring.

Rhedyn
2018-10-30, 07:05 AM
I mean, which version?

Aside from being a bad idea to discuss real religions, I'd say that there are too many literary variants (even enough variants within the Good Book) that just using that moniker is going to be ambiguous.

My advice would be to pick a specific fictional literary hell -- Dante's hell, for example -- rather than try to lump all of them under the religion. Plus you won't get post-scrubbed.Variants come more from vague text than anything else. The exact details aren't important so they are not made clear.

Dante's inferno is a decent enough fictional depiction, but as an adversary, that Hell is pretty useless. There are no armies or vile forces arraying to destroy/corrupt the Heavens and Earth. You have the subjugated damned and nothing else.

Now if we wanted to go with a more creative interpretation of Hell being considered hell in comparison to heaven, then that opens up a wide array of options. The central problem though is in every variant of Christian hell, Hell has already lost and is not a significant cosmological force. And I am not talking about just in the D&D 3.5 sense where the 9 Hells and the Abyss just lack deities in a universe stuffed to the brim with deities.

Typically fantasy that wants to pull more from the Mythology side of Christianity (things like Dante's inferno, Kabbalah, Zohar, Paradise Lost, etc.) will also take steps to establish why the big G isn't solving all problems. He left, he doesn't care, this is part of his plan, etc. Some, especially Japanese fiction (like Shin Megami Tensei), will do things like depowering God and/or making him evil/too-good/smite-happy. The issue is, you have to address it some way. Like how in Boruto, you have to address that Naruto exist and you want to follow a protagonist that isn't anywhere nearly as strong, or in DC you have to justify what Superman is doing when anyone else has a big problem. You have to contrive tension when one-sided unstoppable Good forces exist in a universe. (It's part of why Injustice is such a good comic line, Superman stops being good and thus the whole setting is more interesting).

Like take a moment to imagine a D&D campaign where Pelor is the only god and the party wants to invade Hell. OK sure, hell has Devil Lords and Pitfiends, but the most powerful entity in the multiverse has your back. How much harder is it to build tension now? Why didn't Pelor destroy the 9 Hells? If he is limited by power, then why haven't the 9 Hells destroyed him?

ExLibrisMortis
2018-10-30, 08:38 AM
I see the Abyss as something between battle royale and Gungame. The Lords are just the baddest mofos who can afford a little more leniancy with others thanks to overwhelming power.

The Hells are the most orderly and insufferable workplace there is. A lord is a caricature of the nastiest boss ever.

I agree wholeheartedly with Sporeegg. Let the gods be distant and ineffable. Let the demons gnash their teeth and destroy all of creation. The devils? They're here to be your friend. Help you out in a jam, or show you how things ought to be better- for you; but mostly for them.
I like these. I do think Hell has a really good front desk. It's a mob-run pawn shop/payday loan/bail bonds kind of business with marble flooring. For the poor third-level fighter, it's a massively wealthy and powerful institution with the ability to save them from seemingly any tight spot, and for the twentieth-level (evil) wizard, it's an interesting investment opportunity that sometimes comes up with neat unique loot.


I think demon lords and dukes of hell are supposed to be the more approachable versions of evil deities. Unlike deities, they don't run on a divine, domain-based power source, but on a planar essence-based power source--demons are literally extensions of the Abyss, yugoloths are spawned by Gehanna, devils are... a special case, but closely associated with Hell. They're easy to understand from the perspective of a humanoid in a kingdom, group of tribes, imperial bureaucracy, etcetera--any society with a concept of "this is our land". Deities are somehow associated with--and critically important to--"every journey you take" (Fharlanghn) or "every secret you know" (Vecna) which is a lot less understandable, and a lot more creepy, in my opinion.

GloatingSwine
2018-10-30, 09:43 AM
So what makes an action Evil that is not, at its heart, motivated by hurting others? What forms of evil do you find interesting to explore, and that you believe account for the majority of the evil in the world, that are unaccounted for under my definitions?

Actions that are indifferent to the suffering of others.

Causing suffering because you simply don't care enough to prevent it as a consequence of an action that benefits you or people like you.

Most people aren't motivated by hurting others, but a hell of a lot of people don't care enough not to. And certainly by alignment rules that sort of callous disregard is Evil.

Nifft
2018-10-30, 10:24 AM
It's true that a flat, boring, 2-dimensional capital-E villain with no particular reason for antagonizing all the good people in the world doesn't automatically doom a story to being terrible. The fact that such villains can exist in a functioning story is not the same as them being not-boring; it just means they don't always distract from the interesting stuff.
Can you describe a story where having a plain Evil villain like that would be better than giving them at least a little depth? Why are you quoting me to argue against something I didn't say?

That's not even close to ...


I find utility in using them as plot elements -- you know that this guy wants horrible things to happen (to everyone, including you), but he's here right now offering you assistance. It will come at a price. Who will pay that price, and can you come out ahead in spite of his best efforts?

And then your competition, the former "honorable foe" faction against whom the PCs had been competing, gets supernatural aid from some other evil. Can you afford to go against them alone? Will getting the devil's help be worse than not?

These can be interesting questions, and in my experience the devils don't need to be morally nuanced to retain this utility.

... ah-ha, did you read that last line and somehow miss half the words?

Moral nuance isn't the only kind of nuance, obviously.

I can create morally straightforward evil which has non-moral nuances -- and in fact that's what I do.

Mith
2018-10-30, 10:38 AM
Now this is one hell of a ramble and I understand if you do not read it all. But it gets thd idea out of my head.

My take on Devils, and the Lords of Hell, is that they focus on the Big Picture, at the expense of the pieces. Evil arises when you treat peopld as things.

My cosmology starts with a Creation War that is essentially the divide between Law and Chaos. Law in this state is more Creative, versus Chaos simply becaus Chaos is essential Entropy at this stage, and seeks to disperse everything into one ocean of energy. Individual Demons only arisd by being defined by Law.

In time, Law divides itself between those that hold back Chaos, those that maintain relations with Neutral forces (the Wilds and the Elements, and those that seek to nurture life. These develop into LE, LN, and LG as defined by inhabitants of the Prime Material Plane. Outsiders serve in one form, as definitions of aspects of the multiverse, including these alignmdnt forces.

So the LE devils see the Blood War as a seige, and see the Prime as a source of resources from which they could potentially use to sally forth from and slay the Abyss, as once they hold the power to define reality (master the other Planes), they would have the power to render the Abyss as impotent.

But doing so, from the Good side of things means that you lose sight of why the war is fought in the first place. And Neutral powers are too scattered for a concerted effort, even if they cared.

As for why they couldn't win the war in the beginning? It's because mortal life was created as a means of gaining power through worship and soul generation. All these millenia later, and there actually is enough power available to decisively win the conflict, but now everything is more divided to make such an effort nigh impossible.

Quertus
2018-10-30, 10:56 AM
Actions that are indifferent to the suffering of others.

Actions that are genuinely indifferent to the suffering of others are Neutral. Like hurricanes and earthquakes.


Causing suffering because you simply don't care enough to prevent it as a consequence of an action that benefits you or people like you.

Sure, dumping toxic waste in the river to increase your profit margins because you can, when you know it will harm others, is Evil. And it doesn't require getting off on harming others. Fair enough. It just requires "harming others" to not have a sufficiently large negative value... unless you count "greed" as having a root cause of "harming others". So, it depends on how deep you go as to whether it's one motive or several.


Most people aren't motivated by hurting others, but a hell of a lot of people don't care enough not to. And certainly by alignment rules that sort of callous disregard is Evil.

Is it? Or is it Neutral? I guess it depends on the harm, and the awareness? Murder animals, just because you're hungry? That's neutral, right?


Sure. Let's say we have a king who has a lavish lifestyle and likes to build palaces, and is consequently in financial straits. But just across the border, the neighboring kingdom has a stretch of silver mines. So the king, after proclaiming the appropriate fig leaves about rights and claims, declares war. Hundreds of people die, hundreds more are injured, but at the end, the king has his silver mines. For me, that's evil, but the motive of harming others is absent.

I guess this depends on whether you view his greed as, deep down, being motivated by desiring to harm others. (If everyone has a palace, and he needs a bigger palace, then, yes, I call that desire to be better than others as having the same roots). But, even if you don't go that deep, or if he somehow has greed not motivated by a desire to hurt others, then it's an issue of "harming others" not having a sufficiently negative value - especially if there are demonstrably other ways to accomplish the same goal that he passed up.

So, to me, we're probably saying the same thing, but in different ways. But, I admit, your way of looking at it is probably better - or, at least, easier for most people, and therefore better.


Or let's say we have a countess who's got a river running through her lands, but no lake. That's a shame, because she'd really like to have a castle on a lake. So one day she gets a druid to cast a few spells, and now she's got a dam. The river backs up into a lake, and the people who live within its span have to run for it or drown, and either way they've lost their homes. Evil again, but not from the desire to harm others.

So, this is either amazing ignorance, or not placing a sufficiently negative value on harming others.

... I guess, like Neutral being willing to kill animals just because they're hungry, if the countess views the peasants as "not people", then she only has a compunction against harming "real people". Much like the PC/NPC distinction seen at many tables.


And what about that druid? Well, she was a nixie, and she wanted to make more space for her clan to live without being bothered by humans. The countess's deal seemed like the perfect way to get some more space while being protected from human retaliation. She figured that the humans mostly didn't live that close to the river, and in any case the waters wouldn't rise that fast. So she went ahead and cast the spells. Same deal.

I like your motivations. I'm not certain that they're Evil, though. Imagine a Celestian Beaver building that same dam, completely ignorant of the existence of the the town upstream. Same effect, different reasoning. And a Good creature performing a Neutral act.

Or a half-Tarrasque Dire Beaver, vaguely aware of the town of humans and the consequences of its actions, but, with its animal intelligence, not caring, and building it anyway. Same effect, different reasoning. A Neutral creature performing a Neutral act.

I suppose that, Druids casting off Wisdom, a Neutral Druid who was aware of the situation may at least ask the countess if she's aware that the flooding will endanger the homes if not lives of the peasants, but, being a Druid, should probably be fine with culling the weak if the countess acknowledges the fact.


Generally, people do evil unto others because those others are lower on their scale of caring than those who benefit from the deed. Selfishness, tribalism, and indifference are much more reliable motivators of evil than is a pure desire to do harm, and I've tried to illustrate that without using real-world examples so as not to run afoul of board rules. I'll note also that this understanding allows for the possibility of the same person doing both good and evil while not being essentially either, to which your Sirius Black quotation from earlier alluded. The Lords of Hell don't have that. They can't intentionally do good. And for me, that makes them boring.

I... actually have a hard time imagining playing a character who literally can't intentionally do good. To me, that challenge sounds quite interesting!

As a narrative element... as a player, trying to Death Note them out of existence by forcing them to choose the lesser of two goods sounds quite entertaining, too!

I'm still working on working my way to your PoV on DMing such a beast.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-30, 01:09 PM
Can you give examples of what you consider Evil that are not fundamentally grounded in causing harm?
...
So what makes an action Evil that is not, at its heart, motivated by hurting others?
These two statements both seem to indicate what you think Evil is, but they indicate different things. The first suggests that Evil is based around your actions harming people, while the second is based around harming people for the sake of harming people.
If you believe Evil is consequence-based, ie that it's based on whether your actions hurt more than they help or vise versa, then I agree with you (or close enough that there's no point arguing). But if you believe Evil is intent-based, ie that it's only evil if you hurt people to hurt people, then I'd argue that your definition is far too narrow to incorporate much real-world evil.
Take the case of Josef Fritzl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritzl_case), which I'd argue is about as close to textbook Evul as you're going to find in the real world. I won't discuss the details here, but I don't think Josef did what he did because he wanted to hurt his daughter and other children/grandchildren; he did it because he didn't care about hurting them. This is an important distinction, though it might sound trivial. Equating not caring about people we hurt to wanting to hurt them is not only ridiculous, it makes us all evil; we all have negative effects on people who we never meet and hence have no reason to care about.
So what if apathy and malice are distinct? Well, even most standard Evil Villains are driven by apathy as much as malice. No corrupt corporate executive this side of a Captain Planet villain wants to hurt the world just to hurt the world; they just don't care how much they hurt the world if it lets them keep their job and line their pockets. Does this make them not evil? A cultist who drains the resources and health of his flock to keep the church running isn't trying to hurt them, just prioritizing the church over the good of its congregation. Heck, even Hitler was doing his thing more to protect the security and racial purity of the German people than because he wanted to hurt the Jews; at the point where someone can even make an argument that Hitler isn't evil under a given epistemology, you need to re-evaluate your epistemology.

TL;DR: I can't give examples of evil that aren't grounded in harm, but that's not the same as examples that aren't motivated by doing harm.



Sure, dumping toxic waste in the river to increase your profit margins because you can, when you know it will harm others, is Evil. And it doesn't require getting off on harming others. Fair enough. It just requires "harming others" to not have a sufficiently large negative value... unless you count "greed" as having a root cause of "harming others". So, it depends on how deep you go as to whether it's one motive or several.
Greed is a bad thing because it harms others, but it is not motivated by a desire to harm others. Your arguments seem to consistently (though, I assume, unintentionally) conflate results with motivation, ie, assume that everything that happens as a result of someone's actions was considered desirable to them.
But, well, nobody works like that. You would need to be omnipotent (and probably omniscient) to always only get what you wanted out of your actions, with no unwanted side effects. Anyone below that power evel has to accept that sometimes their actions will have consequences they didn't want. Evil is in what consequences you accept, and for what reason.


I guess this depends on whether you view his greed as, deep down, being motivated by desiring to harm others. (If everyone has a palace, and he needs a bigger palace, then, yes, I call that desire to be better than others as having the same roots).
How is a desire to be better than others equivalent to a desire to harm others? One involves making yourself better, the other involves making others worse. Life isn't a zero-sum game, the two aren't even close to related.



I like your motivations. I'm not certain that they're Evil, though. Imagine a Celestian Beaver building that same dam, completely ignorant of the existence of the the town upstream. Same effect, different reasoning. And a Good creature performing a Neutral act.
1. Just because you define your hypothetical example to be done by a celestial being doesn't let you change the morality of an action. I'm not sure why that matters.
2. Ignorance is a critical component that you're just kind of handwaving. Intentionally destroying land is, of course, worse than accidentally doing so. (This is, incidentally, one of the points where I disagree with a strictly consequential moral epistemology.)
In short, this example is completely unlike Tajerio's, and hence needs a much stronger argument to connect it to his.



Like take a moment to imagine a D&D campaign where Pelor is the only god and the party wants to invade Hell. OK sure, hell has Devil Lords and Pitfiends, but the most powerful entity in the multiverse has your back. How much harder is it to build tension now? Why didn't Pelor destroy the 9 Hells? If he is limited by power, then why haven't the 9 Hells destroyed him?
Because the Hells are underground, and Pelor only has power where the Sun shines. That's why evil monsters are nocturnal.
...I meant that as a joke, but it makes way too much sense.



Why are you quoting me to argue against something I didn't say?
That's not even close to ... ah-ha, did you read that last line and somehow miss half the words?
Moral nuance isn't the only kind of nuance, obviously.
I can create morally straightforward evil which has non-moral nuances -- and in fact that's what I do.
I didn't miss half the words in the last line. I understand that devils don't need to be morally-nuanced to make them interesting. My question is simple: Are they more interesting due to lacking moral nuance?
You were talking as if it was a positive quality in a story, rather than one which wasn't always needed. I agree with the latter, but not the former.

Nifft
2018-10-30, 01:23 PM
I didn't miss half the words in the last line. I understand that devils don't need to be morally-nuanced to make them interesting. My question is simple: Are they more interesting due to lacking moral nuance?
You were talking as if it was a positive quality in a story, rather than one which wasn't always needed. I agree with the latter, but not the former.

If the ~only~possible~ opponents were Lords of Hell, then you might have a point about wanting some of them to have ambiguous morality (or whatever). But fortunately, the Lords of Hell are not the only monster at my disposal. I can have blatantly evil pie and eat my morally ambiguous cake, too. Making the Lords of Hell unambiguous doesn't mean that my game will lack ambiguity, which seems to be the mistake you're making.

So anyway, yes: having some unambiguous evil available as one type of NPC is more useful than having only ambiguous NPCs which can't be easily judged. It allows me to very clearly communicate with players. I don't need to spend extra time telling them that any particular Lord of Hell is a bad person. I don't need to tell them that any deal offered by a Lord of Hell will compromise them morally, nor that it will be intended to have negative consequences.

Armed with that certainty, they can engage in encounters with such unambiguously immoral NPCs -- making deals with the devils when they suspect the devils would prefer something more negative happen to the PC's enemies, for example. Paying a cost to advance Hell's agenda, because doing so will advance the PC's agenda more (or so the PC hopes).


Ambiguity can be useful. Clarity can be useful. Having only one or the other is not as useful as having access to both. That seems to be the source of your confusion: you see one antagonist and you assume that it's the only antagonist in the game. The only useless thing in this discussion is that false-binary assumption of yours.

Quertus
2018-10-30, 02:42 PM
@GWG & Co

So, I've been trying to decide if we're saying the same thing differently, or saying different things. I think that the answer is both, depending on the scenario.

In short, I consider things like greed, which causes emotional harm in others by engendering jealousy, to still be fundamentally founded in a desire to cause harm. So it's understandable that I see this umbrella of "fundamentally rooted in a desire to cause harm" as larger than most.

---

On an unrelated note, I really like Nifft's statements about "unambiguous evil". I might implement a few of the details differently, but that simple statement encapsulates something fundamentally important about how I prefer my Lords of Hell. Kudos!

GloatingSwine
2018-10-30, 02:52 PM
Actions that are genuinely indifferent to the suffering of others are Neutral. Like hurricanes and earthquakes.


Natural processes are in no way comparable to volitonal actions. If someone knows that an action will cause harm but does it anyway because they don't care, and they do that on a consistent basis over a significant period of time, or when the harms are particularly great, then their alignment would be Evil not Neutral.


Is it? Or is it Neutral? I guess it depends on the harm, and the awareness? Murder animals, just because you're hungry? That's neutral, right?

Depends how it's done. Do it with reasonable effort to minimise the suffering of the animal, then it is Neutral. Do it without awareness of the harm done to the animal (for instance as another animal) then it is Neutral. Kill animals that you know are capable of suffering and don't make a reasonable effort to minimise that suffering in the kill when you could do so but don't care, the less reputable Outer Planes are on the other line and they've got an offer you might be interested in.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-30, 03:07 PM
So anyway, yes: having some unambiguous evil available as one type of NPC is more useful than having only ambiguous NPCs which can't be easily judged. It allows me to very clearly communicate with players. I don't need to spend extra time telling them that any particular Lord of Hell is a bad person. I don't need to tell them that any deal offered by a Lord of Hell will compromise them morally, nor that it will be intended to have negative consequences.
I'd argue that you can have an unambiguous antagonist without having two-dimensional evil-for-evil's-sake. Take Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender; she obviously needs to be stopped, no doubt about it, but she's clearly a victim of the Fire Lord as much as anyone else. You can understand why she's evil in a way you can't with an "I'm just evil" villain, without needing to ask "Do we need to stop this guy?"


Ambiguity can be useful. Clarity can be useful. Having only one or the other is not as useful as having access to both. That seems to be the source of your confusion: you see one antagonist and you assume that it's the only antagonist in the game. The only useless thing in this discussion is that false-binary assumption of yours.
I am not assuming that there's only one antagonist in a game. I'm assuming that there's only one antagonist in an...antagonist. I see no reason that replacing a Pure Evul Monster antagonist with a similarly-unambiguous but deeper villain would make the plot worse.



In short, I consider things like greed, which causes emotional harm in others by engendering jealousy, to still be fundamentally founded in a desire to cause harm. So it's understandable that I see this umbrella of "fundamentally rooted in a desire to cause harm" as larger than most.
I don't see greed as a desire to induce jealousy in others. I see it as a desire to have stuff, without considering the effects that having that stuff has on other people. Also, when considering said effects on other people, jealousy isn't even on the list; I focus more on things like neglect of friends and family, the tragedy of the commons, fraud, etc. If you can sate your greed without harming others beyond people wanting to be like you, I consider that to be no worse than sating your lust with consensual stuff (which only "harms" other people that want to sleep with your SO).
The idea that greed is bad because it inspires jealousy is...unusual. I'd like to hear more about it.

Nifft
2018-10-30, 03:57 PM
I'd argue that you can have an unambiguous antagonist without having two-dimensional evil-for-evil's-sake. Since I'm advocating the former, and the latter is just your straw man, I think you're unwillingly agreeing with what I said originally -- except you keep trying to pin that straw man on me, and I'm not going to allow that.



Take Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender; she obviously needs to be stopped, no doubt about it, but she's clearly a victim of the Fire Lord as much as anyone else. You can understand why she's evil in a way you can't with an "I'm just evil" villain, without needing to ask "Do we need to stop this guy?" Not sure anyone would pick Azula as a Lord of Hell, but I'm hardly an expert on that series so maybe someone would.

Why do you think Azula would be considered a Lord of Hell, and how would she be more useful in that role than the usual Lords of Hell?



I am not assuming that there's only one antagonist in a game. I'm assuming that there's only one antagonist in an...antagonist. I see no reason that replacing a Pure Evul Monster antagonist with a similarly-unambiguous but deeper villain would make the plot worse. Again with the straw man.

1) Your flashback sob-story doesn't make Asmodeus ~deeper~ just because he's parading around his victimhood while murdering orphans with evil puppies (and I guess your hellhounds also get flashback sob-stories so they're ~deep~ evil murder puppies).

If Asmodeus wears a flag, he's doing so for evil reasons. If he paints himself as the victim, he's doing so for evil reasons. If you show sympathy, you might be giving team evil an opening. Don't apply mortal morals to a Lord of Hell -- as tempting as it is to anthropomorphize everything, doing so can lead to your ruin. He's good at that. He's had aeons of practice on smarter fools than you.

He may have reasons for being evil, but they're not mortal reasons since he's not a mortal. Furthermore, turning him into a mortal wouldn't make him more useful -- mortal antagonist already fill that niche.

So if you want a redeemable antagonist, use a mortal.

But if you want an implacable evil, a morally immovable rock that is working towards the death of truth and beauty, an inexorable hate that desires the ruination all that is good? That's when you reach for a Lord of Hell.


2) Lack of ambiguity doesn't make the game shallow, it makes the game possible. I mean seriously, imagine if all antagonists were ambiguous in multiple ways...

DM: "You see a great wyrm (gold) on a dais."

Player: "Great! We wave hello and ask diplomatically if we can intrude."

DM: "Okay, so you're totally surprised by the blow dart."

Player: "What?"

DM: "Yeah and it gets sneak attack too. You take 17 damage."

Player: "Why would a great wyrm (gold) sneak attack us with a blow dart?"

DM: "Great wyrm (gold) means a small, evil, and stupid humanoid who is good at traps and trickery."

Player: "That sounds like a kobold. Why would you use a name that has an obvious pre-existing meaning to mean something very different? That's frustratingly misleading."

DM: "Well if size and morality and type were unambiguous then all villains would be 2D and boring. Isn't this so much ~deeper~ as an encounter, rather than meeting something you would recognize and have useful expectations about already?"

Player: "Uh, no."

DM: "Whatever. Roll initiative and gimme a Fort save for the poison."


== later ==

DM: "You see a chair."

Player: "I sit on the chair."

DM: "Ha ha, the chair was an open pit, you take 20d6 falling damage. Isn't that ~deeper~ than an unambiguous chair?"

Player: "Screw you, I quit."

Tajerio
2018-10-30, 05:15 PM
Since I'm advocating the former, and the latter is just your straw man, I think you're unwillingly agreeing with what I said originally -- except you keep trying to pin that straw man on me, and I'm not going to allow that.

This would have landed better if not for your subsequent summoning of a Dire Strawman in your own post.

Nifft
2018-10-30, 05:44 PM
This would have landed better if not for your subsequent summoning of a Dire Strawman in your own post.

I think you're talking about the dialog at the end -- is that correct?

That's not a straw man because I'm not accusing GWG of holding the DM's position.

What I'm doing is using parody to demonstrate why the foundation of GWG's argument is flawed. He argues that ambiguity makes antagonists deeper -- and I show how this foundation is flawed, and thus I show why his argument is bad.

You'll notice the difference between our arguments -- he says, "You said (thing you didn't say)?" -- while what I say is, "Imagine this absurd place where your argument leads..."

I mean that should have been spelled out:

2) Lack of ambiguity doesn't make the game shallow, it makes the game possible. I mean seriously, imagine if all antagonists were ambiguous in multiple ways...

Parody isn't the same as a straw man argument.

Tajerio
2018-10-30, 07:03 PM
I think you're talking about the dialog at the end -- is that correct?

That's not a straw man because I'm not accusing GWG of holding the DM's position.

What I'm doing is using parody to demonstrate why the foundation of GWG's argument is flawed. He argues that ambiguity makes antagonists deeper -- and I show how this foundation is flawed, and thus I show why his argument is bad.

You'll notice the difference between our arguments -- he says, "You said (thing you didn't say)?" -- while what I say is, "Imagine this absurd place where your argument leads..."

I mean that should have been spelled out:


Parody isn't the same as a straw man argument.

The problem with this is that I don't see where GWG has said that general ambiguity is always better. He's made a targeted argument about the advantages of moral ambiguity in a villain. You have, for the purposes of making your own point, warped that into an argument made for ambiguity of all sorts. That is both a) an illogical and unwarranted extension of the original point and b) something for which no one reasonable is arguing.

You have then, in further service of this misrepresentation, inserted a mildly diverting dialogue that you claim to be in the nature of a parody. But this can't even maintain the internal consistency of the argument, as it does not in fact depict the consequences of ambiguity lurking around every corner, but features a DM outright lying to his players in violation of the basic norms of the game.

This fits the very definition of a strawman--intentional misrepresentation of the opponent's argument in order to defeat it--and it has the added bonus of not even staying true to its own course in the attempted reductio ad absurdum. It's a true tour de force of bad faith argumentation.

Bacon Elemental
2018-10-30, 07:28 PM
Don't forget the casual sly insult by using the name of the person you're arguing against to describe a "small stupid creature". I don't believe that you did that coincidentally whatsoever.

Nifft
2018-10-30, 07:41 PM
The problem with this is that I don't see where GWG has said that general ambiguity is always better. He's made a targeted argument about the advantages of moral ambiguity in a villain. You have, for the purposes of making your own point, warped that into an argument made for ambiguity of all sorts. That is both a) an illogical and unwarranted extension of the original point and b) something for which no one reasonable is arguing. It's right here:

I am not assuming that there's only one antagonist in a game. I'm assuming that there's only one antagonist in an...antagonist. I see no reason that replacing a Pure Evul Monster antagonist with a similarly-unambiguous but deeper villain would make the plot worse.
He's talking about non-moral ambiguity right there (bold text).

He was also mischaracterizing my position (red text) through parody, which you claim to dislike. That's an actual strawman, since he's pretending that his text represents something of mine. That's actual dishonesty, and it occurs several times.


Now let's see if you turn your scorn on the kobold-in-wyrm's-clothing who has perpetrated actual bad-faith mischaracterization throughout the thread, and has not even had the good manners to amuse the audience while doing so, or if you're just conveniently cropping up whenever GWG finds himself caught out for some reason other than intellectual rigor.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-10-30, 11:13 PM
Since I'm advocating the former, and the latter is just your straw man, I think you're unwillingly agreeing with what I said originally -- except you keep trying to pin that straw man on me, and I'm not going to allow that.
Well, then would you please explain why characterizing your demon lords as "plot elements" and talking about any attempt at explaining their evilness with contempt is supposed to make them sound like anything else?


Not sure anyone would pick Azula as a Lord of Hell, but I'm hardly an expert on that series so maybe someone would.
Why do you think Azula would be considered a Lord of Hell, and how would she be more useful in that role than the usual Lords of Hell?
And you accuse me of making strawmen. I referred to Azula as an unambiguous antagonist, not a Lord of Hell. I thought it would be obvious that her species was about as important to that as her eye color, but perhaps I was mistaken.


1) Your flashback sob-story doesn't make Asmodeus ~deeper~ just because he's parading around his victimhood while murdering orphans with evil puppies (and I guess your hellhounds also get flashback sob-stories so they're ~deep~ evil murder puppies).
...What. The. Frig. You claim I used a strawman? I don't even know where to start with this ****.


He may have reasons for being evil, but they're not mortal reasons since he's not a mortal. Furthermore, turning him into a mortal wouldn't make him more useful -- mortal antagonist already fill that niche.
1. What's a "mortal" reason?
2. What "niche" do lords of hell fill that mortals can't?
3. If you think Lords of Hell can have reasons for being evil, why are you being so condescending towards me for suggesting that they should?


So if you want a redeemable antagonist, use a mortal.
I never said anything about redeemable antagonists, where are you getting this from?


But if you want an implacable evil, a morally immovable rock that is working towards the death of truth and beauty, an inexorable hate that desires the ruination all that is good? That's when you reach for a Lord of Hell.
Why would I want that? That's exactly


2) Lack of ambiguity doesn't make the game shallow, it makes the game possible. I mean seriously, imagine if all antagonists were ambiguous in multiple ways...
I didn't say "Azula is a great villain because she's ambiguous." I said she's an unambiguous villain. I made it clear that unambiguity was fine. My problem was treating characters like plot elements instead of characters, because that leads to boring, two-dimensional characters.


-snip-
...What the actual ****.
1. Insulting me. Why is this cool?
2. Why does a **** DM have anything to do with deeper enemies? What, I mention ambiguity once and you think that means I want DMs who don't explain ****?
3. Why does me bringing up an example of an unambiguous antagonist make you think I want all antagonists to be ambiguous?



What I'm doing is using parody to demonstrate why the foundation of GWG's argument is flawed. He argues that ambiguity makes antagonists deeper -- and I show how this foundation is flawed, and thus I show why his argument is bad.
As indicated by:

I'd argue that you can have an unambiguous antagonist without having two-dimensional evil-for-evil's-sake. Take Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender; she obviously needs to be stopped, no doubt about it, but she's clearly a victim of the Fire Lord as much as anyone else. You can understand why she's evil in a way you can't with an "I'm just evil" villain, without needing to ask "Do we need to stop this guy?"
Wherein I say that unambiguous antagonists are A-OK if done right, and give a concrete example of one which was done right.
Seriously, did you ignore most of my post and focus on the teeny bits that you could turn into a strawman, you immature brat? And if you disagree with this characterization, explain how this:

DM: "Great wyrm (gold) means a small, evil, and stupid humanoid who is good at traps and trickery."
is in any way mature. And also explain how any of that is relevant.

Kane0
2018-10-31, 04:00 AM
I prefer my lords of hell active, but not interactive with the players. The players will certainly know of them and whatever information they choose to release to the masses, but if a PC were a devil worshipper the best they could manage would probably be working for the devil working for the archdevil, or more likely one of their ‘tristed lieutenants’.
So like 2-3 steps removed, close enough to affect and be affected by but not directly so.

Tajerio
2018-10-31, 05:18 AM
It's right here:

He's talking about non-moral ambiguity right there (bold text).

He was also mischaracterizing my position (red text) through parody, which you claim to dislike. That's an actual strawman, since he's pretending that his text represents something of mine. That's actual dishonesty, and it occurs several times.


Now let's see if you turn your scorn on the kobold-in-wyrm's-clothing who has perpetrated actual bad-faith mischaracterization throughout the thread, and has not even had the good manners to amuse the audience while doing so, or if you're just conveniently cropping up whenever GWG finds himself caught out for some reason other than intellectual rigor.

You're persisting in misreading that post. It's still a response to an argument about moral ambiguity--specifically, to your assertions about unambiguous evil. He contends that if an antagonist is to be unambiguously evil, it's still better add some interesting complication specifically to that evil, and makes a reference to Azula for a story of complication by origin. There is nothing whatsoever there that justifies the leap you decided to make to ubiquitous ambiguity.

Having taken a quick minute to review GWG's posts in the thread made prior to yours here, I see only one other instance of which you could legitimately complain besides the one you've mentioned--when he referred to a "flat, boring, 2-dimensional evil villain." That wasn't entirely fair, but you were quick to pull him up on it--aggressively but not unjustifiably--so by the time I read the post things had moved on. Then you pulled him up for the "Pure Evul Monster" line, but this time with a startlingly hypocritical response made in egregious bad faith, which prompted my reply. You'll notice that my original response has no quarrel whatsoever with your identification of a strawman, but only with your subsequent argument.

I am unsurprised to see that you could make only a token effort to defend your argument. And I am equally unsurprised to see you take refuge in hurling a tu quoque, accusing me of being an alt or having a hidden agenda, and doubling down on your earlier insult of GWG by alluding to it once more at the end. There's no shame in quitting the field, but there certainly is in your choosing to press on with weapons like those.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-31, 11:54 AM
Lords of Hell - how do you prefer them?

Well, if you asked the "old gods" of one of my WIP settings, they'd give you various answers, ranging from "naked and willing" to "with a nice sauce and a side of wine" to "as far from me as possible if they want to continue existing" to "purple monkey sword fruit."

supergoji18
2018-10-31, 12:32 PM
I like my Lords of Hell like I like my women, standing over my crying form with a whip in one hand and a contract in the other.

Ah, a man of culture I see! :smallwink:

In regards to the topic, I prefer stories where the villains are relatable, and demons and devils rarely succeed in fulfilling this because they lack so many things that are intrinsic to other living things. They don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't reproduce, and they are immortal. They don't have any desires beyond "do the evulz!" But worse of all, their twisted moral compass (or complete lack of one) makes them incapable of having any sort of feelings that would be justified.

Therefore, I prefer when demons and devils are more "noble." For example, the balor isn't destroying the dwarves in the mines because "evulz!" Its doing it because its defending itself, having been asleep for thousands of years only to have a cavern collapse on it due to the mining operations, and right after the dwarves start attacking it on sight. From this balor's perspective, it is completely justified in its anger. That to me is a more interesting villain than "I am evil incarnate and I shall destroy these dwarves for my own amusement" the way so many demons and devils are portrayed.

Edit: Forgot to add something about the lords themselves... oops!
So regarding the Lords of Hell, with what I said above taken into account, I prefer them to be semi-active and have goals that aren't "spread evil for the sake of evulz and be more evil than the other lords." I like my lords to have a vision they want to realize, each one different from one another, yet some are similar enough to want to ally with each other, while others are so opposite that they can't stand the sight of one another. They all want to make this vision a reality, and all their works are aimed toward that goal. They also understand the necessity of discretion, and so while they have many plots in motion that are public, their more questionable plots are kept hidden.
Their visions aren't necessarily evil, but they are a major inconvenience for mortals and gods. One Lord might be hellbent on revenge against the God of Light because said god killed his family long ago. His anger is justified, but the death of the God of Light would be a huge problem for literally everyone in the entire world. For this reason, the forces of "good" oppose this Lord of Hell.

Beleriphon
2018-10-31, 01:12 PM
The Hells are the most orderly and insufferable workplace there is. A lord is a caricature of the nastiest boss ever.

Are you saying Asmodeus is some horrible combination of Catbert and a competent Pointy Haired Boss? Dear gods, what have you done?

Fun aside, Devils are like Catbert. They are powerful, but its because they have the rules on their side. Demons are like the Pointy Haired Boss: capricious and dangerous because they wield all of the power, but quickly forget or move onto other targets if you stay away long enough.

ExLibrisMortis
2018-10-31, 06:41 PM
In regards to the topic, I prefer stories where the villains are relatable, and demons and devils rarely succeed in fulfilling this because they lack so many things that are intrinsic to other living things. They don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't reproduce, and they are immortal. They don't have any desires beyond "do the evulz!"
In D&D, there are actually several generations of demons, and they vary with respect to their humanity.

The first generation, the obyriths, are the "original" demons, spawned from the Abyss directly, and they are (or were) entirely inhuman. Older demon lords tend to be obyriths, like Dagon, Pazuzu, and Obox-ob.
The second generation, the tanar'ri, was shaped by the obyrith, originally formed from humanoid souls sent to the Abyss after death. These are typically fairly humanoid, if the sibriexes didn't mess up too badly, and through their humanoid 'ancestry', they understand humanoids better and have humanoid sensibilities (they eat, have sex, use drugs, and so on). Succubi, for example, are created/arise primarily from (the evil side of) humanoid lust. Demogorgon, Graz'zt and Orcus are tanar'ri (Demogorgon is, in fact, the very first tanar'ri, if I recall my chronology correctly).
The third generation, the loumara, are incorporeal posessor demons, and relatively new. They are formed from the dreams of dead gods.


It's nice that 3.5 gives you a choice: if you want more of a Lovecraftian "ancient and utterly inhuman with lots of tentacles" feel, obyriths are the demons to go for. If you want vaguely humanoid demons with (twisted/corrupted) humanoid drives, go with tanar'ri. If you want demons that infiltrate society wearing humanoid bodies, go with loumara.

Mr Beer
2018-10-31, 11:28 PM
Lords of Hell - how do you prefer them?

Diabolical, natch

Dragonexx
2018-11-01, 02:02 PM
I never saw a reason why there needed to be a difference between gods and demon lords/archdevils/celestial paragons. Having them all be on the same level (levels 21-25 to be specific) works so much better.

oudeis
2018-11-01, 03:08 PM
In a non-monotheistic setting, the Lords of Hell are gods, or they should be. True gods, not the weak-kneed impostors who need worship to exist. They are as above human considerations as they are indifferent to human existence. The concept of the 'man of wealth and taste' looking to cut a deal has been done to death, as is the idea that the human soul is the most precious thing in the multiverse. This applies to good powers as well as evil.

Also, if you want the denizens of the outer planes to intimidate players, get rid of the stereotypical 'fiendish creature' motifs: red hues, flames, scales, fangs, horns, etc. They aren't intimidating. Show me a creature with impressive horns and I'll show you a whole party of scalphunters looking to turn its head into a helmet.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-01, 04:44 PM
True gods, not the weak-kneed impostors who need worship to exist. They are as above human considerations as they are indifferent to human existence.
...unlike basically every mythological god. Monotheistic mythologies aside, gods tend to be characterized as having human flaws, desiring human worship for one reason or another (often, though not always, existential), and have to worry about some of the same things as humans (albeit on larger scales). When your definition of "god" leaves out most gods that people believe in, you might want to adjust your definition.

...But yeah, the division between demon lord and minor CE deity is more arbitrary than it needs to be. Which is why I don't understand why warlocks are arcane casters.

supergoji18
2018-11-01, 04:56 PM
...unlike basically every mythological god. Monotheistic mythologies aside, gods tend to be characterized as having human flaws, desiring human worship for one reason or another (often, though not always, existential), and have to worry about some of the same things as humans (albeit on larger scales). When your definition of "god" leaves out most gods that people believe in, you might want to adjust your definition.


I agree with this except for the part about desire for human worship for existential reasons claim. I can't think of a single real world religion in which worship is needed for a got to exist. There are creatures that need this, but they are not gods they are monsters. Also, in my experience, it is the monotheistic gods that tend to demand the most worship. Pantheistic gods just don't take kindly to disrespect or hubris.

oudeis
2018-11-01, 05:43 PM
...unlike basically every mythological god. Monotheistic mythologies aside, gods tend to be characterized as having human flaws, desiring human worship for one reason or another (often, though not always, existential), and have to worry about some of the same things as humans (albeit on larger scales). When your definition of "god" leaves out most gods that people believe in, you might want to adjust your definition.


Could you provide some citations for this? This runs contradictory to my understanding of most practices, wherein it's human beings who need the gods (or at least some measure of their good will).

Spore
2018-11-02, 12:06 AM
Also, if you want the denizens of the outer planes to intimidate players, get rid of the stereotypical 'fiendish creature' motifs: red hues, flames, scales, fangs, horns, etc. They aren't intimidating. Show me a creature with impressive horns and I'll show you a whole party of scalphunters looking to turn its head into a helmet.

I kind of agree. This is really tangential but I love the way Elder Scrolls does their gods/aedra versus their demons/devils/daedra lords

Just a short head's up for people who don't know TES. Aedra are ethereal, detached from their creation, they represent constancy. Daedra are heavily involved in mortal affairs, they represent change. Daedra tend towards evil, and Aedra tend towards...well, good to neutral.

Daedra range from stereotypical "demon lord of conquest who just wants to get a grip on the mortal plane" over "somewhat good aligned undead slayer" or "king/queen of cannibals" down to "prince of madness". And Sheogorath as the prince is madness comes on as funny and silly and random at the start but he quickly becomes very dangerous despite is mostly human form. Basically an old man in a jester garb with cat eyes, his randomness is what makes him dangerous. He might find you funny one moment, and is infuriated by your lack of creativity the other one, lobbing your head off and placing it in his salad as a "very big tomato". Daedra require attention, and intricate worship. Else you're gonna have a bad time.

But on a very basic level, aedra are not good, and daedra are not bad. They just represent change and constants. (Also there is the eternal light of magic and the hungering void of darkness but that goes too far. But these two are also universal unaligned constants.)

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-02, 08:46 AM
I never saw a reason why there needed to be a difference between gods and demon lords/archdevils/celestial paragons. Having them all be on the same level (levels 21-25 to be specific) works so much better.
It... really doesn't. The power balance/struggle between demon lords and deities is much more precarious when they don't share a power base/source. Tiamat and Bahamut may fight one another eternally, but they both receive power from dragon (well, probably kobold) worship. Asmodeus doesn't care about that--he'll gladly be forgotten, if that means people will become unashamedly LE. Different motivations encourage interesting political developments. Variety is the spice of life, and all that.

@Human(oid) souls being precious: They're not, as of 3.5. They're just the most common type of soul that isn't totally worthless. Souls, in general, serve as lower-plane currency, and the more powerful the soul, the more valuable. The "fiendish creature motif" is one of Mephistopheles' pet projects, by the way--don't insult his style.

@TES cosmology: Elder Scrolls also has the depth of a pancake (especially Sheogorath--lolrandom is not interesting). I do prefer to add a dose of "[good] is not good and [evil] is not evil (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19263956&postcount=2)" to my D&D cosmology, though.

Dragonexx
2018-11-02, 01:17 PM
I'm more referring to them being on roughly the same level of power. Whether they get their strength from souls or worship (or both really) is not that relevant.

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-02, 02:22 PM
I'm more referring to them being on roughly the same level of power. Whether they get their strength from souls or worship (or both really) is not that relevant.
It's related, though. The ability to gain power from worship goes hand-in-hand with a significant gain in overall power, both personal and political. Orcus wants to ascend to godhood because he wants more power, for example. If everyone's on the same level, archfiends and paragons in general lose the ability to "get ahead", and most of the impact of having a divine portfolio is negated. It's more interesting to play up the complexities of godhood: it's a huge responsibility, a gaping weakness, a vast amount of power, and a tremendous amount of influence.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-03, 02:55 PM
Could you provide some citations for this? This runs contradictory to my understanding of most practices, wherein it's human beings who need the gods (or at least some measure of their good will).
Sure.
The best known is probably the Aztec sun god whose name I can't spell, who needs a reasonably constant supply of blood sacrifices to avoid being killed by his brothers and sister. The Epic of Giglamesh refers to gods crowding around a sacrifice when most of humanity is destroyed, heavily implying that they need such sacrifices. At least one version of the Egyptian myth about Sekhmet's origin says that Ra lost his divine powers (though admittedly not his life) when he lost humanity's respect and worship. I've also seen mentions of such beliefs being common in animistic, pantheist, and polytheist belief systems worldwide, from Shinto to vodoun to neo-paganism, but I haven't looked into it enough to have any details.
Three other points worth noting: Gods needing humans is not mutually exclusive with humans needing gods, and there are some religious texts which make a much bigger deal out of their gods not needing worship/sacrifice to survive than you would expect if there weren't other local belief systems where they did. Finally, it's exceedingly common for people to believe that this is true of gods they don't worship, but I'm not sure if that counts or not so I didn't want to list all those examples.



It's related, though.
In a Watsonian sense, maybe, but why should the world designer feel tethered by that? Just because gods get power from worshipers and demons get power from eating souls doesn't mean one needs to be more powerful. And in this thread, we're speaking as world designers, aren't we?

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-03, 05:54 PM
In a Watsonian sense, maybe, but why should the world designer feel tethered by that? Just because gods get power from worshipers and demons get power from eating souls doesn't mean one needs to be more powerful. And in this thread, we're speaking as world designers, aren't we?
Sure, but if there's nothing to gain from worship, why would you, being a powerful demon lord to begin with, bother with godhood at all? As a world designer, I prefer making godhood a meaningful element of the setting, and more or less the height of power (the Lady of Pain does not count); if it's not an upgrade from being a demon lord, I can't have Orcus striving to become Orcus (divine rank 1), which is a fairly crucial part of his persona.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-03, 08:04 PM
Sure, but if there's nothing to gain from worship, why would you, being a powerful demon lord to begin with, bother with godhood at all? As a world designer, I prefer making godhood a meaningful element of the setting, and more or less the height of power (the Lady of Pain does not count); if it's not an upgrade from being a demon lord, I can't have Orcus striving to become Orcus (divine rank 1), which is a fairly crucial part of his persona.
First off, I tend to think of gods as being less like unstoppable forces of nature and more like being kings run through a metaphor machine backwards. They have immense, overwhelming power, but only because their servants give it to them. God, church, and congregation are in a big symbiotic relationship, and any one without the others would suffer. This doesn't mean they're not "a meaningful element of the setting," of course, any more than kings aren't meaningful just because they die. (Not directly relevant to the discussion, but still an interesting point.)
Second, worship doesn't have to be about getting more supernatural powers. It could be about gaining influence in the world, or some kind of legitimacy or prestige, or simply feeding one's ego. (Of course, when you're as powerful as Orcus is, even getting more power is probably about feeding one's ego as much as anything else.)
Finally...if feeding on souls gives you power, and being worshipped gives you power, wouldn't an archdemon who gained worship (or a god who ate souls) be even more powerful? Even if Orcus and Vecna were on the same level, if Orcus could get on a high higher level by securing a congregation while still eating souls, that would be plenty of motivation to do so.

Max_Killjoy
2018-11-03, 09:14 PM
First off, I tend to think of gods as being less like unstoppable forces of nature and more like being kings run through a metaphor machine backwards. They have immense, overwhelming power, but only because their servants give it to them. God, church, and congregation are in a big symbiotic relationship, and any one without the others would suffer. This doesn't mean they're not "a meaningful element of the setting," of course, any more than kings aren't meaningful just because they die. (Not directly relevant to the discussion, but still an interesting point.)

Second, worship doesn't have to be about getting more supernatural powers. It could be about gaining influence in the world, or some kind of legitimacy or prestige, or simply feeding one's ego. (Of course, when you're as powerful as Orcus is, even getting more power is probably about feeding one's ego as much as anything else.)


One of my settings has both, depending on when in the timeline you're looking.

The current deities are post-apotheosis mortals who in part rely on the belief of mortals (just belief will do -- it's enough that people tell the stories and their legends continue and knowledge of them is passed on, they can even argue over which stories are true, etc... offerings and devotions are an added benefit) to maintain their status as actual deities.

The ancient deities they overthrew and locked away were effectively the multiple "souls" of reality itself, older than the form of reality that mortals know and understand, which is why they can't be destroyed, only contained. They can't be destroyed any more than gravity, or mass, or light, or entropy. And beyond a sort of morbid fascination, they largely didn't care about mortals any more than gravity or entropy would, and they don't inherently understand mortal concerns or limitations. To them, being worshiped was a game or a tool or an annoyance or whatever, depending on which one, but on a base level it mattered to them no more than it matters to the Planck constant or a hurricane or 679nm light.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-03, 09:52 PM
One of my settings has both, depending on when in the timeline you're looking.

The current deities are post-apotheosis mortals who in part rely on the belief of mortals (just belief will do -- it's enough that people tell the stories and their legends continue and knowledge of them is passed on, they can even argue over which stories are true, etc... offerings and devotions are an added benefit) to maintain their status as actual deities.

The ancient deities they overthrew and locked away were effectively the multiple "souls" of reality itself, older than the form of reality that mortals know and understand, which is why they can't be destroyed, only contained. They can't be destroyed any more than gravity, or mass, or light, or entropy. And beyond a sort of morbid fascination, they largely didn't care about mortals any more than gravity or entropy would, and they don't inherently understand mortal concerns or limitations. To them, being worshiped was a game or a tool or an annoyance or whatever, depending on which one, but on a base level it mattered to them no more than it matters to the Planck constant or a hurricane or 679nm light.
So, some themes from the Cthulhu Mythos crossed with the cyclic-pantheon-overturning of classical mythology and a bit of man overcoming the "natural" order of things? Nice.

Max_Killjoy
2018-11-03, 10:41 PM
So, some themes from the Cthulhu Mythos crossed with the cyclic-pantheon-overturning of classical mythology and a bit of man overcoming the "natural" order of things? Nice.

Thanks.

Throw in a little "space rock" (King Crimson, Monster Magnet, etc) for flavor, too.

Florian
2018-11-04, 01:55 AM
I never saw a reason why there needed to be a difference between gods and demon lords/archdevils/celestial paragons. Having them all be on the same level (levels 21-25 to be specific) works so much better.

Pathfinder/Golarion has a pretty good reason for this difference: True divinities are fundamental cosmic forces made manifest. For example, Pharasma is not _a_ goddess of life and death, she _is_ life and death. As such, there's only one goddess of life and death, but she might be known under different names, or understood as being two different deities, depending on planet, culture and so on, but we're always talking about the same thing/entity. Thus, true divinities hold the ultimate power because they collectively are the multiverse and shape the rules and functions (and they absolutely don't need worship, are not dependent on it and so on).

Continuing that pattern, each Outer Plane has a true divinity as a representative of the fundamental concept behind it. Asmodeus is Hell, Lamashtu is the Abyss and Yog-Sothoth is the Dark Tapestry, the thing that we commonly call "space".

Really far below that are things like demon lords, archdevils, great old ones, goblin hero-deities or empyreal lords. Powerful entities, for sure (mechanically speaking, the CR 25-30 range, often also using a Mythic rank in the 8-10 range), but they´re not even on the same page as true divinities, far from it. While, say, Lamashtu represents the fundamental concept of change, mutation and monsters, Haagenti and Yamasoth are "just" really powerful outsiders that are good at creating monsters and warping flesh.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-05, 01:28 AM
Pathfinder/Golarion has a pretty good reason for this difference: True divinities are fundamental cosmic forces made manifest.
I want you to study the difference between a Watsonian perspective and a Doylist one (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist) and determine which perspective Dragonexx's comment was written from.

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-05, 04:55 PM
I want you to study the difference between a Watsonian perspective and a Doylist one (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist) and determine which perspective Dragonexx's comment was written from.
That's not helpful. It wasn't clearly written from either perspective. We're discussing both here.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-05, 08:37 PM
That's not helpful. It wasn't clearly written from either perspective. We're discussing both here.
There are absolutely people who have been discussing both angles throughout the thread, but it seems clear to me that Dragonexx was discussing from a Watsonian Doylist perspective. Either that, or he somehow literally never read any explanation ever written for why gods and demons were different, despite being enough of a fantasy fan to frequent a board devoted about 50/50 to a fantasy TRPG and a fantasy webcomic. I know which explanation I think is reasonable...

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-05, 09:15 PM
[...] it seems clear to me that Dragonexx was discussing from a Watsonian perspective.
He also referred to levels 21-25. That's pretty much the definition of out-of-universe perspective, not in-universe perspective (Watsonian, in your terms). I think your argument is shaky.

The way I read it, Dragonexx was saying that there's no justification (in-universe) for them [paragons and deities] being of different levels (out-of-universe). That is, the fluff difference between demon lords and CE deities isn't served by the crunch difference between CR 25 and CR 80. This is a completely reasonable claim, just one I happen to disagree with, and I've given my reasons--primarily in in-universe terms, but implying that the difference in power is great enough to be mechanically represented, as "build power" is a typical parameter to match in- and out-of-universe.

In any case, I think that was all already clear, until you brought up in- and out-of-universe perspectives.

Max_Killjoy
2018-11-05, 10:23 PM
Can we just agree that there was a little miscommunication, and move on?

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-06, 01:23 PM
He also referred to levels 21-25. That's pretty much the definition of out-of-universe perspective, not in-universe perspective (Watsonian, in your terms). I think your argument is shaky.
I didn't say—rereads my last post—I didn't say the thing I meant to say. Dammit.


The way I read it, Dragonexx was saying that there's no justification (in-universe) for them [paragons and deities] being of different levels (out-of-universe).
The way I read it was "I see no reason to write the gods and archdemons as not being beings of comparable power".

Frozen_Feet
2018-11-06, 02:57 PM
I don't run games based on the default D&D cosmology. When various Hell reams make an appearance, they exist as places of ironic punishment for bad people.

So most "Lords of Hell" and what D&D calls "devils" would be supernatural entities passing judgement and reinforcing such punishments. Their motives and actions are fairly predictable and understandable as long as you understand the system of ethics they serve, and balls-to-the-wall crazy and inscrutable if you, well, don't. They are constanstly active, but in a way that's mostly invisible to the player characters. (= you need to either die or incur severely bad karma.)

Then there are "lords" of Hell, or "demons" as D&D would put it, who are part of the convicts, sometimes conscripted to serve in the ranks of the "devils".

These are all manifestations of (chiefly) human sins and vices with theoretically human and understandable motives and goals. But they are motives and goals of some really twisted folks and thus may be counter-intuitive to people who aren't supremely conceited, violent, or otherwise hopeless. Sometimes, understanding the nature of their punishment may be an additional requirement for dealing with them.

For example, there is a demon that has impenetrable skin, no eyes, no nose and no anus. It feels neither hunger nor pain and needs neither sleep nor sustenance. What sin does it represent and what job does it serve in Hell? If you guesses gluttony, go pat yourself on the back. Give a second pat if you also guessed it's the supplymaster of Hell, responsible for giving food portions to the masses from larders filled with endless delicacies.

These "demons" are constantly active, but again, not in a way that would be visible to most player characters. You need to either die and end up in Hell to see most of it, or you need to be enough of a horrible person for some "devil" to offer you good-sounding deal that's really just a way to ironically screw you over.

Dragonexx
2018-11-12, 01:34 PM
I didn't say—rereads my last post—I didn't say the thing I meant to say. Dammit.


The way I read it was "I see no reason to write the gods and archdemons as not being beings of comparable power".

I should specify. I meant that the differences between gods and archfiends are purely categorical. Orcus is a god. Erythnul is also a god. Orcus is also a demon and so is also called Demon Lord/Arch-Demon/Demon God/ect, much the same way you would call Gruumsh an Orc God or Corellon Larethan an Elf God.

PastorofMuppets
2018-11-12, 03:37 PM
Make em like Satan in south park

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-12, 07:22 PM
I should specify. I meant that the differences between gods and archfiends are purely categorical. Orcus is a god. Erythnul is also a god. Orcus is also a demon and so is also called Demon Lord/Arch-Demon/Demon God/ect, much the same way you would call Gruumsh an Orc God or Corellon Larethan an Elf God.
You can run them like that, and from the perspective of Commoner #116, Last Dirt Farm Up the Road, Outer Faroffia, they sure seem the same. I still want to provide some background info, because I think there's some subtlety to the D&D lore that gets lost if you treat them all the same. Thank Afroakuma for the info, mistakes are all mine :smalltongue:.

A deity has a divine portfolio.
A demon prince has control over a layer of the Abyss (typically, exceptions exist).
An elven deity is primarily worshiped by elves. Elven deities are also elf-like, which is probably no coincidence, but they're not elves.
A demon prince is not worshiped by demons. They are, of course, demons.

Erythnul has a portfolio (fear, pain, madness, slaughter), but no big role in demonic politics, let alone control over a layer. He has a divine realm, but it's in Pandemonium.
Orcus controls a layer (113, Thanatos), but he has no divine portfolio, though he has worshipers and a theme (undead, eternal ambition to climb to the heights of power).
Lolth has a portfolio (spiders, drow) and a layer under her control (layer 66, the Demonweb Pits). She's the demon queen and a drow deity simultaneously.

Lolth in particular is a good example of how demon prince-dom and deity-ness are separate and mostly unrelated.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-13, 04:23 PM
A deity has a divine portfolio.
A demon prince has control over a layer of the Abyss (typically, exceptions exist).
But deities also control parts of the Outer Planes, and demon princes are associated with concepts (e.g, Jubilex and slime/corruption/gluttony/sloth). Terminology aside, they seem pretty much the same.


Orcus controls a layer (113, Thanatos), but he has no divine portfolio, though he has worshipers and a theme (undead, eternal ambition to climb to the heights of power).
Wait, why isn't his "theme" a divine portfolio? What is a divine portfolio, exactly? Can you define it without including the fact that it belongs to a god in its definition? (After all, saying "a god is defined by having a portfolio" and "a portfolio is defined by being held by a god" is circular logic, and we don't want that.)


Lolth has a portfolio (spiders, drow) and a layer under her control (layer 66, the Demonweb Pits). She's the demon queen and a drow deity simultaneously.
Lolth in particular is a good example of how demon prince-dom and deity-ness are separate and mostly unrelated.
I'd argue that she's instead an example of how they overlap.


An elven deity is primarily worshiped by elves. Elven deities are also elf-like, which is probably no coincidence, but they're not elves.
A demon prince is not worshiped by demons. They are, of course, demons.
This is a flaw with his argument, though not one which seriously affects his position.

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-13, 06:58 PM
But deities also control parts of the Outer Planes, and demon princes are associated with concepts (e.g, Jubilex and slime/corruption/gluttony/sloth). Terminology aside, they seem pretty much the same.
Well, I have a profession and a home (which I control and maintain), so I'm pretty much a deity and/or a demon prince, right?



Wait, why isn't his "theme" a divine portfolio? What is a divine portfolio, exactly? Can you define it without including the fact that it belongs to a god in its definition? (After all, saying "a god is defined by having a portfolio" and "a portfolio is defined by being held by a god" is circular logic, and we don't want that.)
It's not circular, it's a definition of deity and divine portfolio in terms of the relation between them. A deity is any being with a divine portfolio, a divine portfolio is a set of concepts that a particular deity is associated with, and the key characteristic is the relation between the deity and the porfolio, which is unique: the deity is to a large extent that set of concepts; it is a conscious entity "fused" to the concepts, to the extent that the deity has power and presence anywhere the concept exists. It is impossible, for example, to have death without Nerull knowing about it (seventeen weeks in advance, to be precise) and deriving power from it. Orcus, on the other hand, is the demon prince of undead, but he does not have the undeath porfolio. It's perfectly possible to have an animation of undead that Orcus doesn't know about or benefit from.

Note that Orcus is a special case, having been a deity as Tenebrous in the past. He has lost that mantle, and is plotting away to become a deity again, but under his own name.


I'd argue that she's instead an example of how they overlap.
:smallconfused:

How would Lolth be an example of overlap? None of the the things that make her a demon queen (is a demon spawned from the Abyss, controls a layer of the Abyss) are the same as the things that make her a deity (goddess of spiders and evil drow).

Max_Killjoy
2018-11-13, 07:47 PM
It's not circular, it's a definition of deity and divine portfolio in terms of the relation between them. A deity is any being with a divine portfolio, a divine portfolio is a set of concepts that a particular deity is associated with, and the key characteristic is the relation between the deity and the porfolio, which is unique: the deity is to a large extent that set of concepts; it is a conscious entity "fused" to the concepts, to the extent that the deity has power and presence anywhere the concept exists. It is impossible, for example, to have death without Nerull knowing about it (seventeen weeks in advance, to be precise) and deriving power from it. Orcus, on the other hand, is the demon prince of undead, but he does not have the undeath porfolio. It's perfectly possible to have an animation of undead that Orcus doesn't know about or benefit from.


That almost sounds like a textbook example of a circular definition (bold added).

(And also a very narrow, very specific definition of what makes a deity a deity, that seems to be to be rather D&D-centric.)

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-13, 09:52 PM
That almost sounds like a textbook example of a circular definition (bold added).

(And also a very narrow, very specific definition of what makes a deity a deity, that seems to be to be rather D&D-centric.)
As I already explained, it's not circular. It's defining a pair of things--deity and porfolio--in terms of how they relate to one another. The definition doesn't start until after your bolded segment. If you have trouble accepting the validity, consider this: you can't be an athlete if you don't have a sport, and you can't have a sport if you don't have an athlete. If I give a definition of the phenomenon "sport", I'm giving a definition of what it means to be an "athlete", as well (at least, that's how I would define the pair, YMMV as always with word definitions).

And yes, we're talking about D&D deities specifically. I would think the reference to demon princes being level 21-25 would be a tipoff :smalltongue:.


As an aside, people are too quick to call "circular is wrong", when it doesn't really make sense to do so. Lok at the Wikipedia page on definitions, subheader Fallacies of Definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition#Fallacies_of_definition): "Definitions should avoid circularity. [...] Note, however, that it is acceptable to define two relative terms in respect of each other. Clearly, we cannot define "antecedent" without using the term "consequent", nor conversely". Also look at this blog post (http://www.timvanderzee.com/circular-arguments/) (amazing reference, I know, it's late).

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-14, 03:57 PM
Well, I have a profession and a home (which I control and maintain), so I'm pretty much a deity and/or a demon prince, right?
There's several problems with that.
1. Your home isn't on an Outer Plane.
2. You don't have mortal followers who draw power from you, like both gods and demon lords do.
3. Said power isn't aspected by your "portfolio" the way that the power of both clerics and many followers of demon lords are. (Demon lords servants include mortals with specialized prestige classes, unique monsters, etc. Sure, they also include generic warlocks, but divine servants include generic paladins.)
4. You don't have any supernatural powers at all, certainly not at the level of Orcus or Grummsh.


It's not circular, it's a definition of deity and divine portfolio in terms of the relation between them. A deity is any being with a divine portfolio, a divine portfolio is a set of concepts that a particular deity is associated with, and the key characteristic is the relation between the deity and the porfolio, which is unique: the deity is to a large extent that set of concepts; it is a conscious entity "fused" to the concepts, to the extent that the deity has power and presence anywhere the concept exists. It is impossible, for example, to have death without Nerull knowing about it (seventeen weeks in advance, to be precise) and deriving power from it. Orcus, on the other hand, is the demon prince of undead, but he does not have the undeath porfolio. It's perfectly possible to have an animation of undead that Orcus doesn't know about or benefit from.
You're making a lot of assumptions there. And also pretending that defining divine portfolios to only be possessed by gods, and gods as having divine portfolios, isn't circular. Which I specifically asked you not to.
Anyways. You're wrong on multiple levels. I don't recall anything in D&D suggesting that gods had omnipotence or omniscience over their domains; aside from being contradictory with the obvious fact that all major domains are the providence of multiple gods, it is contradicted by basically every source which goes into detail on gods. You're also wrong because there are rules listed for clerics worshipping various demon lords and devil princes, which include divine domains, which (presumably) requires a portfolio.


:smallconfused:

How would Lolth be an example of overlap? None of the the things that make her a demon queen (is a demon spawned from the Abyss, controls a layer of the Abyss) are the same as the things that make her a deity (goddess of spiders and evil drow).
You're assuming your own conclusions again. Stop that. I haven't accepted that gods are only beings with portfolios (nor have I accepted your definition of "portfolio")
Also, Lolth is an overlap because she's both god and demon, dingus. She's a place where the categories of "god" and "demon" overlap, so she's an example of an overlap. So is Orcus, though in a different way. I didn't think I had to explain that.


As I already explained, it's not circular. It's defining a pair of things--deity and porfolio--in terms of how they relate to one another. The definition doesn't start until after your bolded segment. If you have trouble accepting the validity, consider this: you can't be an athlete if you don't have a sport, and you can't have a sport if you don't have an athlete. If I give a definition of the phenomenon "sport", I'm giving a definition of what it means to be an "athlete", as well (at least, that's how I would define the pair, YMMV as always with word definitions).
Why would you define "sport" as "something athletes do"? I'm not an athlete, and I've played sports. I'd probably define "sport" as something like "a game which requires certain motor skills specific to the sport," and "athlete" using "sport".
So why don't you try defining "god" or "divine portfolio" that way?


As an aside, people are too quick to call "circular is wrong", when it doesn't really make sense to do so. Lok at the Wikipedia page on definitions, subheader Fallacies of Definition (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definition#Fallacies_of_definition): "Definitions should avoid circularity. [...] Note, however, that it is acceptable to define two relative terms in respect of each other. Clearly, we cannot define "antecedent" without using the term "consequent", nor conversely". Also look at this blog post (http://www.timvanderzee.com/circular-arguments/) (amazing reference, I know, it's late).
I'd define "antecedent" as "something which comes before," and "consequent" as "something which comes after". Pretty simple. Of course, you can't really define "before," "after," and other basic temporal concepts without going circular. The more fundamental a concept is, the harder it is to justify circular definitions. And yes, you can argue that gods are fundamental to the nature of reality, but even if I accept that assertion, they're not fundamental the way that time or truth are, they're fundamental the way electrons and gravity are. You can define electrons and gravity in a way you can't define time or truth, and you'll need to make a hell of an argument if you want to convince me that gods should fall in the latter category.
And did you read that blog post? It just said "circular arguments aren't proof that the concept is incorrect," and the conclusion made it clear that circular arguments can't be used as proof for anything.

Frozen_Feet
2018-11-14, 07:31 PM
The joke about portofolios and domains is that they're just arbitrary sets of things. So "portofolios" as a concept is not really meaningfully distinct from "themes", which are similarly arbitrary sets of things.

But gods are distincts from demon lords in the quantity and quality of ways in which they govern over their sets of things. However, the actual rules of D&D don't define these in a particularly concise or simple way, you really need to dig in the nitty-grits of Salient Divine Abilities, portofolio sense etc. None of it extrapolates well to non-D&D games, in fact it doesn't extrapolate well between various editions of D&D.

GreatWyrmGold
2018-11-15, 01:02 AM
If we go back to "any fantasy goes," then the line blurs even more. The powers and vulnerabilities of gods and top-tier fiends across all fantasy overlap even more than they do in D&D specifically...in part because of how many fantasy stories treat their top-tier fiends the same way they would treat evil gods. That's because they fulfill basically the same potential purposes—a potential Big Bad, a solution to the Problem of Evil when there are good gods, a power source for evil characters, something for a past hero to have defeated/sealed away/whatever, etc.

So I ask: Why must they be treated differently?

ExLibrisMortis
2018-11-15, 03:00 PM
You're making a lot of assumptions there. And also pretending that defining divine portfolios to only be possessed by gods, and gods as having divine portfolios, isn't circular. Which I specifically asked you not to.
If you don't understand the definition, that's fine. But you don't get to ask for a non-"circular" definition when you don't understand what circularity is. In any case, the definition is more than "deities have portfolios and vice versa". That's just the preliminary statement. I've already explained that.


I don't recall anything in D&D suggesting that gods had omnipotence or omniscience over their domains
D&D deities are not omnipotent nor omniscient over their domains (that's probably why I didn't actually say that); there are still limits on their consciousness and abilities. D&D deities do, however, sense events related to their portfolio, depending on their magnitude; intermediate and greater deities sense any event, as per Deities and Demigods page 28.


aside from being contradictory with the obvious fact that all major domains are the providence of multiple gods, it is contradicted by basically every source which goes into detail on gods. You're also wrong because there are rules listed for clerics worshipping various demon lords and devil princes, which include divine domains, which (presumably) requires a portfolio.
A portfolio is not the same as a domain. For example, Nerull's portfolio is "death, darkness, murder, underworld", yet his domains are "death, evil, trickery". Portfolios and domains are listed separately.

It's true that various deities compete over their portfolios; Erythnul, for example, still hates Hextor for stealing his portfolio element of "war".

It's true that you can worship a demon prince; if you do, the prince does not grant you spells, just like a cleric of an ideal does not gain spells from a deity.


You're assuming your own conclusions again. Stop that. I haven't accepted that gods are only beings with portfolios (nor have I accepted your definition of "portfolio")
You can "not accept" things all you want, but you're wrong about basically everything else there.


Also, Lolth is an overlap because she's both god and demon, dingus. She's a place where the categories of "god" and "demon" overlap, so she's an example of an overlap. So is Orcus, though in a different way. I didn't think I had to explain that.
...

You remember how I said "Lolth in particular is a good example of how demon prince-dom and deity-ness are separate and mostly unrelated", and you said "I'd argue that she's instead an example of how they overlap"? I assumed you meant that they weren't "separate and mostly unrelated", because why would you say "instead" otherwise? However, it seems that your point is simply that they aren't mutually exclusive, which was obvious from the example to begin with, so... congratulations?


Why would you define "sport" as "something athletes do"? I'm not an athlete, and I've played sports. I'd probably define "sport" as something like "a game which requires certain motor skills specific to the sport," and "athlete" using "sport".
So why don't you try defining "god" or "divine portfolio" that way?
You've played a sport, you're now an athlete, by my definition. The definition works, right? If you don't like the example as-is, add "professional" as modifier to "sport" and "athlete", that probably makes it clearer.


I'd define "antecedent" as "something which comes before," and "consequent" as "something which comes after". Pretty simple.
Actually, that's a pair of circular definitions.


Of course, you can't really define "before," "after," and other basic temporal concepts without going circular. The more fundamental a concept is, the harder it is to justify circular definitions. And yes, you can argue that gods are fundamental to the nature of reality, but even if I accept that assertion, they're not fundamental the way that time or truth are, they're fundamental the way electrons and gravity are. You can define electrons and gravity in a way you can't define time or truth, and you'll need to make a hell of an argument if you want to convince me that gods should fall in the latter category.
...

Slow down, dude. Do you seriously want to discuss "fundamentality" as a scale on which you put time, truth, electrons, gravity, and D&D deities, and then tie necessity of circular definitions into it too? What are you hoping to get out of that mess?


And did you read that blog post? It just said "circular arguments aren't proof that the concept is incorrect," and the conclusion made it clear that circular arguments can't be used as proof for anything.
It... didn't say that. And it didn't make that clear. In any case, it wasn't relevant to the point at hand, just a reminder to keep in mind the difference between validity and soundness.

I don't think you understand what I'm trying to explain, so I'm going to have to stop here.

If anyone's interested in reading about D&D cosmology, I highly recommend Afroakuma's (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?265884-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread!-(You-ask-I-ll-answer)) treads (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?272393-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread-II!) on (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?299450-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread-III!) the (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?317316-afroakuma-s-Planar-Questions-Thread-IV) topic (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?372289-afroakuma-s-Planar-And-Other-Oddities-Questions-Thread-5!) (two (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?418709-afroakuma-s-Planar-And-Other-Oddities-Questions-Thread-VI) more (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?527699-afroakuma-s-Planar-And-Other-Oddities-Questions-Thread-VII)).