Watering Down the Bad Guys

It's days like this that make me miss AD&D 2nd Edition and their total ban on anything demonic or related to the planes of the Abyss or Hades. I will get to my thoughts in a minute, but let's get some background first.

George was doing a read through of the Pathfinder Campaign Setting World Guide, and he did a 'state of the world' report to me, just for fun. Demons figure prominently in the world, and when I came to think of it, demons figure prominently in most Pathfinder adventure paths too. Demons here are the 'big bad' and it seems I just can't get away from them in the setting or published materials. Cheliax, the Worldwound, and a bunch of the enemeies in the Adventure Paths are all demonic figures, and I had a feeling that I misses the days where demons were special, extremely rare, and extremely secretive entities that were more manipulators than the en-masse-enemy-de-jour. I mean, this is Paizo's choice, and I accept it, but I like my infernal forces to be special, one-of-a-kind enemies, such as a demon who lives at the bottom of a dungeon and manipulates goings-on there indirectly.

Switch over to D&D4, and the initial situation is a little better, especially if you limit the game to the basic books. In the 4E Dungeon Master's Guide, we have rules to build custom monsters, and we used these to build 20th level human mercenaries, 16th level plant monsters, and all sorts of other non-demonic bad guys. Just playing with the basic book, you could run an entire campaign without playing the demon card, and just have enemies based on whatever you want. We ran a campaign like this for the longest time, with various bad guys popping up, and with demons playing a lesser role in the background - but still as threats.

Old habits die hard, and it does get worse in Heroes of the Elemental Chaos, a supplement on the demonic side of the 4E World. Here, the planes of hell are laid out in detail, with an uncharacteristic description of demonic planes and their populations of billions of demons laid out. Nothing kills a game like creating hopeless places like this and expecting DMs not to be overwhelmed by the sheer size of what was just dumped on their carefully created campaigns. Yes, DM Fiat applies, you don't have to use it, but this is the official world, and demons have just been promoted to a major role in the ecosystem of the world and its monsters.

I do wish for a world where demons were special again, rare, and existing as the manipulators in the background, not troops on the battlefield. I guess it's a natural progression of demons as the bad guys, you seen it with the Drow as well. In the beginning, the Drow were wicked creatures of the underdark, sadistic evil elves, very rare and special when met. Then the drow became the enemy-de-jour, and you seen them everywhere, armies were on the surface world, and they appeared frequently in modules and on magazine covers. We then had the drow-as-antihero phase, and then today's drow as everyhero phase - they are part of the normal race mix. They have to invent creatures to replace the sadistic evil drow on old-days, like the githanki or something. Demons and their tiefling pop-PC-choices are following the same path, and sooner or later, you'll see something branded as 'worse than demons' appear, like the demons of the demons.

Back to the main point, demons are really prevalent in modern-day gaming, almost too prevalent. I miss the freedom to define the campaign's big-bad as anything you want it to be (aka 4E original 3 books OR Pathfinder minus Golarion), and not have later supplements redefine the world. It is enough to just have dragons and their humanoid servants be the campaign's enemy, or evil mages and their armies, and just leave it at that. There is a point where you need to step back and say, "We need to support referee's and their choices on what's important, and be sure the game company is not dictating a favored enemy or play style."

By making demons the big-bad, it tends to water down everything else in comparison. It feels like Dark Elves in Golarion are window dressing, humanoids are servants of demons, undead are second-fiddle players to demons, and dragons are not really important at all to the world and its history. 4E is a little better with the balance of importance of enemies and their factions, but we do tend to slide towards 'Orcus being the big-bad' at times, and it trends towards gods vs. demons in the end-game. All factions should threaten the world equally, undead lords in Pathfinder should be able to trash the demon's plans, the dark elves could rise and assassinate a demon prince, and even a dragon could get into the fray and kick serious tail. The world should be dangerous, and all enemy factions should be a threat.

Yes, what's in your campaign is your choice, but it is hard to get away from some of these things if you are playing the official releases. Those releases create a 'shared world' for all the players, and control their expectations. If all of a sudden, you see a game with custom enemies and the game doesn't support it, you may run into players that would see that as derivative or off-the-beaten-track. My preference is for freedom and custom enemies, special and rare when they need to be, and respected and celebrated as unique and powerful foes.