But, with regard to the OP...

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866886In old school and old school renaissance games, there isn't much of a distinction between demons, devils and other categories of anthropomorphic personifications of evil. There may be some statement about demons being born evil and devils being fallen angels, but both ultimately serve Chaos/Evil.

Since Planescape came out, the new school games (e.g. 3.x/PF, 4e, 5e) have made attempts to distinguish between demons and devils. Demons are rapacious reavers, devils are lawyers, and daemons or whatever fill the gaps.

There was an attempt to distinguish them well before Planescape.  The alignment division is a good bit older than that; demons were CE, and devils we LE.  Alignment to alignment was the aesthetic.  Whether or not you find that convincing in execution for every demon or devil since, well that's a whole 'nother demon-kettle of devil-fish.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866886I never really liked the new school approach. I found it unnecessarily restrictive and ultimately unsuccessful. The former because it led to things like Pathfinder pigeonholing demons into the seven sins and daemons into causes of death; why should alignment determine that sort of thing? The latter because demons and devils and whatever still look more or less interchangeable since they don't have any overarching aesthetics, they still have hierarchies with imps at the bottom and balrogs at the top, they still fight each other over souls, etc.

I'm super unclear on what you mean by "the new school approach."  And in my confusion, I can't see anything here that "led" to Pathfinder's approach to demons and devils.  I'm not terribly familiar with Pathfinder, so maybe you can help connect the dots for me.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866886I'm not saying the new school approach doesn't work, but all the attempts I've seen have been too lazy to remove the lingering similarities. I personally blame this on writers basing the monsters off alignment rather than trying to make those monsters stand out before an alignment is tacked on to justify their place in the cosmology.

Still confused.  What does alignment have to do with devils being related to sins and demons related to death?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866886What do you think?

EDIT: I am referring to the problems I mentioned beforehand. How would you address the problem of demons and devils in new school games looking and acting too similar? It's not enough to simply say they're anarchists and fascists, because that's already stated.

To illustrate this better: in Pathfinder one of the devils is a baby fly centaur and one of the demons is a man in a tuxedo with the head of a fly. If you didn't have the book in front of you, it would be easy to forget which they're supposed to be.

So are you saying you should be able to build a taxonomy of outer plane denizens based on physical characteristics? That wouldn't make much sense to me.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866925To reiterate, I've no problem with making anarchist and fascist fiends into separate races. However, attempts that have been made still suffer from too much similarity. And I quote:

QuoteThroughout demons' and devils' existence in the D&D game, resemblances between them have been stronger and more numerous than differences. Both species are extraplanar forces of evil that seek souls to supplement their numbers. Each breed has wretched and implike creatures at the bottom of the hierarchy and godlike archfiends at the top. Each member of both species has a wide array of similar (and often superfluous) supernatural powers. Most demons and devils are superior to members of typical PC races in every way, including incredible intelligence. Their purposes in the material world have always been similar.

Furthermore, if you didn't have the book in front of you it would be impossible to tell most demons and devils apart. They lack any kind of unifying aesthetic because the writers make things up as they go along.

What are you quoting? Without citation I don't know what the point is.  

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866925If you had to redesign the art direction for demons and devils so that it is possible to tell them apart by visual identity, how would you? What sorts of motifs would you pick in order to set them apart?

Personally, I wouldn't bother.  My take is that if there is going to be a particular aesthetic (and all along I was assuming here that you meant an aesthetic in the sense of the underlying principles of monster design, not just the visual aesthetic), with devils and demons this would be something of a metaphysical nature.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;866945But, with regard to the OP...



There was an attempt to distinguish them well before Planescape.  The alignment division is a good bit older than that; demons were CE, and devils we LE.  Alignment to alignment was the aesthetic.  Whether or not you find that convincing in execution for every demon or devil since, well that's a whole 'nother demon-kettle of devil-fish.



I'm super unclear on what you mean by "the new school approach."  And in my confusion, I can't see anything here that "led" to Pathfinder's approach to demons and devils.  I'm not terribly familiar with Pathfinder, so maybe you can help connect the dots for me.



Still confused.  What does alignment have to do with devils being related to sins and demons related to death?



So are you saying you should be able to build a taxonomy of outer plane denizens based on physical characteristics? That wouldn't make much sense to me.



What are you quoting? Without citation I don't know what the point is.  



Personally, I wouldn't bother.  My take is that if there is going to be a particular aesthetic (and all along I was assuming here that you meant an aesthetic in the sense of the underlying principles of monster design, not just the visual aesthetic), with devils and demons this would be something of a metaphysical nature.

My point is that if one goes to the effort of distinguishing between anarchist and fascist fiends to the point of making them different species, then they need to be visually distinct and not easily confused with one another.

Pathfinder goes to enormous length to distinguish between demons, devils and daemons. Demons personify sin, daemons personify causes of death, and devils... don't really personify anything beyond vague tyranny. (It's also arbitrary: why can't neutral or lawful evil fiends personify sin? Or lawful and chaotic fiends personify death?) The whole attempt is undermined by them sharing the imp-to-balrog ladder hierarchy, fighting over souls to increase their numbers, and the random grab bag of designs that make them look interchangeable.

Well, I don't know about all devils being lawyers. But I didn't realize the general notion that devils tend to be more cunning while demons tend to be tougher was a new school type of idea.

(Going by 1st Ed here) Devils have innate powers like charm, suggestion, and illusion. Demons do not. But all devils can be harmed by silver weapons. Demons take no damage from silver weapons (other than the weakest of demons who can be harmed by normal weapons) and they take reduced damage from attacks like fire, cold, and gas.

Sure. There are exceptions. The pit fiend, though a devil, seems tougher than all the generic type I-VI demons. On the other hand, the succubus demon is surely at least as cunning as the generic lesser and greater devils. But overall, the generalization holds well.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866959My point is that if one goes to the effort of distinguishing between anarchist and fascist fiends to the point of making them different species, then they need to be visually distinct and not easily confused with one another.

I get from this that this your preference, but I don't see any substantive argument as to why it should be true.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866959Pathfinder goes to enormous length to distinguish between demons, devils and daemons. Demons personify sin, daemons personify causes of death, and devils... don't really personify anything beyond vague tyranny. (It's also arbitrary: why can't neutral or lawful evil fiends personify sin? Or lawful and chaotic fiends personify death?) The whole attempt is undermined by them sharing the imp-to-balrog ladder hierarchy, fighting over souls to increase their numbers, and the random grab bag of designs that make them look interchangeable.

I'm not qualified to comment on Pathfinder stuff, so I nothin' there.

To each other, the differences are the most important thing in the universe, but to outsiders they're just piss-fighting over who gets to run Hell.

So, the American two-party system, basically.

JG

Quote from: James Gillen;866969To each other, the differences are the most important thing in the universe, but to outsiders they're just piss-fighting over who gets to run Hell.

So, the American two-party system, basically.

JG

"Go ahead, throw your vote away!" - Kang

Quote from: Natty Bodak;866965I get from this that this your preference, but I don't see any substantive argument as to why it should be true.

Monsters families share motifs and morphology to indicate that they are related. Dragons are giant lizards with wings and breath weapons. Modrons are walking polyhedrons. Slaad are giant clawed frogs. Angels are winged humanoids. Elves are fair pointy-eared demi-humans. Drow are black elves. Eladrin are celestial fey. Guardinals are animal-headed humanoids. Formians are giant ant centaurs. All these groups have distinct, unifying visual identities.

Demons and devils have no unifying visual identity. They can only be described as a random set of chimerical creatures. This puts them in contrasts to all other monsters categorized in families.

Does that not strike you as odd? Why should demons and devils look like haphazardly stitched together assortments of random body parts?

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;866971Monsters families share motifs and morphology to indicate that they are related. Dragons are giant lizards with wings and breath weapons. Modrons are walking polyhedrons. Slaad are giant clawed frogs. Angels are winged humanoids. Elves are fair pointy-eared demi-humans. Drow are black elves. Eladrin are celestial fey. Guardinals are animal-headed humanoids. Formians are giant ant centaurs. All these groups have distinct, unifying visual identities.

Demons and devils have no unifying visual identity. They can only be described as a random set of chimerical creatures. This puts them in contrasts to all other monsters categorized in families.

Does that not strike you as odd? Why should demons and devils look like haphazardly stitched together assortments of random body parts?

It doesn't strike me as odd at all, no. Demons and devils are metaphysical creatures of nightmare that come from manifold mythologies, with manifold bizarre configurations, many of which are described as protean. They are grouped together, in my mind, not because they share physical phenotypes, but because they share magical & metaphysical phenotypes.  I wouldn't expect a demon with a bent toward seducing people into canniblaism to look anything like a demon whose whispers of insecurities worm their way into your brain until you throw yourself off a bridge so the world isn't bothered by your sadsack existence anymore.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and defend the hordes of man-bear-pig-looking  creatures created by people to fill up pages in a monster manual somewhere, while also noting that a lot of that goes on outside of the demon & devil crowds, but as long as there's something "demonic" or "devilicious" (whatever those meansin a given setting), I can overlook the man-bear-pig laziness.

I'd rather see more effort going into folks trying to figure out what representation of the demon's/devil's form would be most obviously or subtly aligned to its motivations.

But to recap, I see no reason why they have to share any physical characteristics to tie them together.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;866977It doesn't strike me as odd at all, no. Demons and devils are metaphysical creatures of nightmare that come from manifold mythologies, with manifold bizarre configurations, many of which are described as protean. They are grouped together, in my mind, not because they share physical phenotypes, but because they share magical & metaphysical phenotypes.  I wouldn't expect a demon with a bent toward seducing people into canniblaism to look anything like a demon whose whispers of insecurities worm their way into your brain until you throw yourself off a bridge so the world isn't bothered by your sadsack existence anymore.

Now, I'm not going to sit here and defend the hordes of man-bear-pig-looking  creatures created by people to fill up pages in a monster manual somewhere, while also noting that a lot of that goes on outside of the demon & devil crowds, but as long as there's something "demonic" or "devilicious" (whatever those meansin a given setting), I can overlook the man-bear-pig laziness.

I'd rather see more effort going into folks trying to figure out what representation of the demon's/devil's form would be most obviously or subtly aligned to its motivations.

But to recap, I see no reason why they have to share any physical characteristics to tie them together.

I don't disagree with you, but certain parts of your argument are flawed. Not because of any error in your logic, but because D&D doesn't follow that line of logic.

One: The appeal to real world mythology fails because you are selectively applying it to demons and devils but not to modrons, slaad, or angels. Slaad are personifications of pure chaos, but all look like giant frog men. Demons are better personifications of chaos than Slaad are.

Two: real world mythology doesn't distinguish between demons and devils. D&D does. If devils are supposed to be lawful, then they should look like it as modrons and archons do. Otherwise the distinction between demons and devils comes off more like, as someone said above, a painfully artificial political pissing match.

Three: if you're going to take the perfectly reasonable approach of basing a demon/devil's form on its motivations, then there is no reason to arbitrarily distinguish between the two. Let demons vary in law/chaos alignment rather than trying to shoehorn a race into every square of the alignment chart.

In other words, I take a very binary view of the distinction. Either you have demons who come in every form and alignment and origin like in real world mythology, or you have demons and devils and whatever that look and act clearly different from one another a la the difference between modrons and slaads or archons and eladrins. Anything in between only highlights the artificial nature of the distinction and that peeves me off.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867078I don't disagree with you, but certain parts of your argument are flawed. Not because of any error in your logic, but because D&D doesn't follow that line of logic.

I assumed this was a commun understanding around these parts, but I suppose I should I explicitly state this:  D&D is not a monolithic thing.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867078One: The appeal to real world mythology fails because you are selectively applying it to demons and devils but not to modrons, slaad, or angels. Slaad are personifications of pure chaos, but all look like giant frog men. Demons are better personifications of chaos than Slaad are.

Of course I am selectively applying it to demons and devils, because the question at hand for this particular point was "why don't demons and devils have some visual aesthetic that ties them, respectively, together?" There is no real world mythology for modrons or slaad, so one can't be applied to them.  As for angels, well who knows why most D&D angels are that vanilla.  Even the bible has angels with 6 wings all being covered in eyes.

At any rate, just because there are creature types that do have some sort of common visual aesthetic, that doesn't mean that all must.  James Randi to the rescue here on why you "can't prove a negative."

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867078Two: real world mythology doesn't distinguish between demons and devils. D&D does. If devils are supposed to be lawful, then they should look like it as modrons and archons do. Otherwise the distinction between demons and devils comes off more like, as someone said above, a painfully artificial political pissing match.

So this point has nothing to do with why devils and demons don't each have their own consistent visual aesthetic, but it is the core of your original post.  Let me re-highlight that D&D is not a monolithic thing. Some versions of D&D do have alignment as not only a primary differentiating factor, but also as essentially an origin. For example, the Great Wheel cosmology has several outer planes that are (more or less, with certain version) devoted to one of the 2-axis alignments, and each of those planes gives rise to inhabitants who personify those alignments in some fashion.  The Abyss is to chaotic evil and demons, as  the Nine Hells is to lawful evil and devils.  

But, but, but, some versions of D&D do not do this.  Take 4E's World Axis cosmology as a counterpoint.  Demons (origin: elemental (meaning they are native to the Elemental Chaos,) keyword: demon) are native to the Abyss, which is a particularly evil-infested region of the Elemetal Chaos, while Devils  (origin: immortal (meaning they are native to the Astral Sea), keyword: devil) are native to the Nine Hells, a particulartly evil-infested region of the Astral Sea.  In this cosmology, and with the 4E take on alignment, there is a division of alignment.  Demons are Chaotic Evil, while devils are Evil (there is no such thing as Lawful Evil in 4E).  But the alignment thing is very much secondary differentiation.  It's the origin that makes the difference.

You don't have to be saddled with the anarchist/fascist thing unless you want to be.  Throw off the yoke, I say.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867078Three: if you're going to take the perfectly reasonable approach of basing a demon/devil's form on its motivations, then there is no reason to arbitrarily distinguish between the two. Let demons vary in law/chaos alignment rather than trying to shoehorn a race into every square of the alignment chart.

This is true. There is no mandatory requirement to distinguish between the two, however, the World Axis cosmology gives an example of a very clear differentiation above and beyond their motivations or their alignment.  And this particular cosmology has the benefit of, as you say, "not trying to shoehorn a race into every square of the alignment chart.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867078In other words, I take a very binary view of the distinction. Either you have demons who come in every form and alignment and origin like in real world mythology, or you have demons and devils and whatever that look and act clearly different from one another a la the difference between modrons and slaads or archons and eladrins. Anything in between only highlights the artificial nature of the distinction and that peeves me off.

I can't argue away your feelings, but I can provide some counter-examples that show different ways of doing it that aren't plagued by the rock-and-hard-place position you seem to have put yourself in.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867078One: The appeal to real world mythology fails because you are selectively applying it to demons and devils but not to modrons, slaad, or angels. Slaad are personifications of pure chaos, but all look like giant frog men. Demons are better personifications of chaos than Slaad are.

Well, if there were a prison for all of the most vicious murderers in the multi-verse, I wouldn't expect the inmates to look anything alike. That is in no way inconsistent with there being another prison for all the hardened criminals of the frog universe. The diversity in the first prison in no way precludes everyone in the second prison looking like frog-people.

This is definitely my pet-peeve when it comes to revising RPGs. Making everything overly-symmetric.

Quote from: Natty Bodak;867093I can't argue away your feelings, but I can provide some counter-examples that show different ways of doing it that aren't plagued by the rock-and-hard-place position you seem to have put yourself in.

Quote from: Lunamancer;867101This is definitely my pet-peeve when it comes to revising RPGs. Making everything overly-symmetric.

Sharing a common motif doesn't mean that a monster family has to look bland. Random chimeras versus identical clones is a false dichotomy. It is perfectly possible to have freakish chimeras that look related to one another.

Take a look at the Angel/Demon artwork by Wen-M. Despite sharing a basic humanoid body plan, those demons look fairly diverse. That is the sort of aesthetic I imagine a race of lawful evil fallen angels would share.

Take a look at this shaper concept art for Rift: Storm Legion. While being chaotic amalgamations of body parts, these creatures still look like they are related.

BoxCrayonTales, I think we all understand that you want devils and demons to phenotypically resemble each other in the same way that D&D Dragons or Giants tend to phenotypically resemble each other.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867109Take a look at the Angel/Demon artwork by Wen-M. Despite sharing a basic humanoid body plan, those demons look fairly diverse. That is the sort of aesthetic I imagine a race of lawful evil fallen angels would share.

These look kind of similar. Because they are by the same artist. In the same way that almost any two Frank Frezetta drawings look kind of similar most of these drawings look similar. But Kate Henderson doesn’t look like any kind of fallen angel. She looks like a cute anime inspired girl-next-door. Now the winged humanoids tend to phenotypically resemble each other. But I can’t say I find them obviously the same type of creature e.g. Michael and Verrier don’t really seem like the same kind of being to me. Which isn’t surprising since Verrier is one of the only drawings (other than Kate) that isn’t a winged humanoid.

QuoteTake a look at this shaper concept art for Rift: Storm Legion. While being chaotic amalgamations of body parts, these creatures still look like they are related.

Of course they look related. As I said they are all by the same artist. In addition, all the creatures have single heads mounted on a torso that is bilaterally symmetric and multiple tentacle-like appendages. Beyond the artist's style, those are common visual elements i.e. they phenotypically resemble each other. But should all demons of chaos have single heads, bileaterally symmetric torsos, and multiple tentacles? In my view that is not chaotic enough to represent all types of demons. So for me this fails as a broad representation of demon types. These are too similar.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales;867109Sharing a common motif doesn't mean that a monster family has to look bland. Random chimeras versus identical clones is a false dichotomy. It is perfectly possible to have freakish chimeras that look related to one another.

What I meant was is just because Slaads share a common physical motif doesn't automatically imply that Demons should. That would be the symmetry I was referring to. Slaads may well be my favorite monsters from D&D. I have no problem with them sharing a common physical motif. I have a problem with the expectation that other families of extra planar creatures should.

Quote from: Bren;867129BoxCrayonTales, I think we all understand that you want devils and demons to phenotypically resemble each other in the same way that D&D Dragons or Giants tend to phenotypically resemble each other.

These look kind of similar. Because they are by the same artist. In the same way that almost any two Frank Frezetta drawings look kind of similar most of these drawings look similar. But Kate Henderson doesn’t look like any kind of fallen angel. She looks like a cute anime inspired girl-next-door. Now the winged humanoids tend to phenotypically resemble each other. But I can’t say I find them obviously the same type of creature e.g. Michael and Verrier don’t really seem like the same kind of being to me. Which isn’t surprising since Verrier is one of the only drawings (other than Kate) that isn’t a winged humanoid.

Of course they look related. As I said they are all by the same artist. In addition, all the creatures have single heads mounted on a torso that is bilaterally symmetric and multiple tentacle-like appendages. Beyond the artist's style, those are common visual elements i.e. they phenotypically resemble each other. But should all demons of chaos have single heads, bileaterally symmetric torsos, and multiple tentacles? In my view that is not chaotic enough to represent all types of demons. So for me this fails as a broad representation of demon types. These are too similar.

My problem isn't with chaos demons (though I do think they could benefit from being based more on Bosch or Warhammer) but with lawful devils. Being lawful, they should share some kind of common motif like archons and modrons do.

Maybe this picture of more asymmetrical entities is a better example? That's what I want for devils: regardless of how warped their body gets they should still look like they were originally designed by the same architect.

Quote from: Lunamancer;867133What I meant was is just because Slaads share a common physical motif doesn't automatically imply that Demons should. That would be the symmetry I was referring to. Slaads may well be my favorite monsters from D&D. I have no problem with them sharing a common physical motif. I have a problem with the expectation that other families of extra planar creatures should.

I would argue the opposite. Slaad should actually look chaotic, not stagnant orderly giant frogs, if they are supposed to be anthropomorphic personifications of chaos. I would expect individuals to vary wildly across forms like this, this or this.