So Many Monsters: The Other D&D

The other D&D would be Demons & Devils, natch. Dragons might be (in) the name of the game but in my campaigns and I suspect a lot of others fiends are a much more common high level threat. Having giant fire-breathing monsters roaming the countryside or even waiting underground makes you wonder why humanity hasn't been eaten already, but when you're tromping through a literal hellscape an endless parade of horrors seems acceptable, nay, expected. Moreover, the Great Wheel and its big bads - the archdevils and demon lords - are the closest D&D comes to a shared setting (aside from its monsters, as mentioned). A core D&D book won't tell you about the elven kingdom of Figglinflower (it assumes you'll want to make up your own world, which is awesome) but you might hear about Dispater and his iron city on the second layer of Baator. Priorities!

Which is why it's such a shame that so many core demons and devils are some combination of bland, interchangeable, and just plain stupid. Like, if a cultist summons and loses control of a hezrou, what sort of mischief will it get up to compared to, say, a nalfeshnee, or a glabrezu? What sort of plots would you expect from the followers of Kostchtchie? (And for that matter who the hell reads the folktale of Koschei the Deathless and thinks "Hmm, that's a cool name, but what it really needs is more consonants"?) Later editions improve on this a bit - Grazzt, Demogorgon, and Orcus all get chances to shine, along with maybe Lolth and Dispater - but there's still a whole lot of meh.

Like look at this vrock. This is from 3rd Edition, which at least made it look like a demon. This is about as cool as a vrock gets:

What's your deal, vrock? What powers do you have? What sins do you embody? With what foul rites do you want us frail mortals to debase ourselves? Can you even talk? Looking at this picture I have no idea. It's not just the art either; reading the description I still have no idea. It's a demon. It wants chaos and bloodshed, I guess. Ho hum.

Compare the vrock to this similarly bird-headed demon from Warhammer:

Bestial, pitiless, but clearly intelligent. Rife with forbidden knowledge. Evocative of ancient civilizations, something Old Testament. Almost certainly a powerful spellcaster, and not just from reading the blurb. I imagine it whispers Faustian bargains for arcane power with the voice of Tom Waits. (And this isn't even Warhammer's A-game. A comparison like Jubilex vs Nergal, or any number of dumb brute gods vs Khorne, would be even more one-sided. Granted, the vrock is pretty much the bottom of the barrel on the D&D side, but so is a servant of fucking Tzeentch for Warhammer. Lord of "change"? What even is that? Fuck that guy.)

On a semi-related note I'm kind of ambivalent on the whole demon / devil split. The Blood War is pretty sweet in theory: all the planes fight each other over their differences in ways that reflect their similarities. So the Good planes fight with rhetoric and friendly competition, the Lawful planes fight with influence and proxies (and the occasional righteous crusade), the Chaotic planes fight with what are basically glorified cattle raids, and you never really hear about any of that because the battle everyone always talks about is Evil fighting itself with horrific atrocities and genocide. It's a rare example of alignment not being stupid and opens up lots of "enemy of my enemy" possibilities adding complexity to what could be boring, monolithic evil. On the other hand the art and descriptions are so inconsistent on what's a devil and what's a demon (or yugoloth, or demodand, etc) and what they each want that the distinction's pretty arbitrary, and as mentioned there aren't many on either side with much going for them so it's hard to get too jazzed about fitting them into factions.

As much fun as it is cribbing from Dante's Inferno and its various circles I prefer a Hell with no outer borders, one where Asmodeus can declare himself prince of darkness but there's always some upstart demon out past the edge of the map and an endless variety of torture pits and gnashing caverns to harrow.

Kinda like this, but with more stuff in it

It's been years since I ran a Planescape game (unfortunately) but if I did I think I'd center the lower planar factions around the seven deadly sins. Maybe not the most original idea but it gives each group an accessible hook and something to base plots around. I'll be posting a field guide to Hell next time. Expect a lot of images looted from Warhammer, because Warhammer makes this shit look easy. (Except for Tzeentch. What. An. Asshole.)