https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/exalted-funeral/old-school-essentials-demonic-grimoire
This is a book I have been wanting the OSE team to do ever since they were B/X Essentials, in the way, way early days, when they were just developing this game. I still have my BXE books, and they mark the beginning of what would become something truly amazing and special.
Demons and devils were never in BX; they were always an AD&D thing, and it was understandable why they were left out of the original game and even OSE. Games like Labyrinth Lord had them, and that captured the era when we had them in the Monster Manual, and we just ported them back into our BX games back in the day. Demons and devils were always the ultimate bad guys in any campaign, the "final boss" behind any group of evil doers, and wickedness that always deserved to be stamped out and vanquished without question.
Unlike today, where every humanoid race eventually becomes a character option and is removed from the Monster Manual, there is no redeeming a demon or a devil. There is no amount of cultural whitewash to make a demon or devil acceptable and "fun for the whole family." They keep trying to normalize them with Tieflings and those silly cosplay horns and pastel skin they throw carelessly all over D&D art these days, but that is Satan's blood that made those horns and hooves, and they will forever have the taint of evil upon them.
Sorry, art department, the definition of pure evil isn't negotiable.
Redemption? Sure, but you lose the horns and hooves. You can't wear them to be cute. They are linked forever to the Fallen Angel of Lucifer. I am an absolutist about this since I respect the source material.
That source material. You can't accept that demons and devils exist without admitting that God exists, even in a polytheistic world with multiple gods. In pre-Christian days, the Devil was there, too, and the lore always surpasses the silly RPG gamebook. You can't just steal faith as myth, even though it is intertwined; D&D wants to live in a godless, faithless world where demons are valid character options, and alignment does not exist.
Faith is the root of all myth.
Myth is the heart of D&D.
The removal of alignment from newer versions of D&D, ToV, and Pathfinder was also a reason I dropped all of 5E and newer games. You take alignment out of the game, and the basic mechanical function of the battle of good and evil is gone. All of a sudden, a paladin can slaughter a village, pillage, and do all sorts of vile deeds - and still retain their holiness and powers.
The removal of alignment from D&D killed the game. This was a fatal blow. There was no coming back from this. There is no D&D without alignment, and even the simplified three-axis Law-Neutral-Chaos of BX does a fine job. The moral relativists killed D&D because they did not want players to be inconvenienced by the game making value judgments about them.
This is why the Satanic Panic happened. D&D became about "fighting Hell," and organized religion saw it as an intrusion into their domain of faith and salvation. You can play D&D and be a person of faith; they do not conflict.
To remove alignment is to cut D&D's heart out.
In short, the game stopped enforcing a moral code, and players adopted the "get me mine and hustle" attitude seen on TikTok, social media, and OnlyFans. To solve a situation, the game allowed you to choose the evil route, and you were never punished for it, nor should the referee ever punish a character in-game. Sin and wickedness are just another route to profit and success.
And the games added a "say no" option by throwing up an "X" and forcing the referee not to punish their characters for their actions, since consequences are triggering.
This is a great addition to the game, and I backed this. This will keep me from using OSRIC 3.0 as my demo and devil resource, and gives me an OSE-focused book to use as my guide to the darker powers that players will fight against. The other half of OSE is finally here.
Strong recommendation.
