Sunday, April 6, 2014

Dealing with Forgotten Daemons

I don't know if this is heavily protected stuff, but after somebody's posting the other day of the magnificent White Dwarf stuff for AD&D, I went on a tear and checked it out.  It's enchanting and awesome, particularly the Fiend Folio II, the gigantic listing of clever WD monsters that didn't make the cut for the original Fiend Folio.  The FF is my favorite D&D book of all time, probably more due to nostalgia than anything else, since it was the first RPG book of any kind that I ever owned.  A lot of the magic probably had to do with Russ N.'s amazing drawings (seriously, the Sons of Kyuss have damaged me in ways I cannot begin to explain not the band the monster)

This maggoty creep can find anything on the internet, or in a dungeon, or in the Palaces of Alabaster Flesh.
There is one section in there from maybe WD#45 and it's all about a bunch of whacky but sinister demons - entirely unlike the MM and the other TSR demons, generally.  Likely because they are conversions from a previously published article about RuneQuest demonology.  The more I learn of Runequest, and Questworld, the more my eye turns back to my BRP Elric and I'm interested in the other ways that RPGs might have gone if they'd been untethered from statistical analysis and wargames earlier...  Whole 'nother post, I guess.

I musta had some weird whispering coming through the warpgates, or whatever, but I tracked those RQ down, snipped 'em out, and was going to convert them to a shiny new document but it seems maybe like too much work and the illustrations are fanciful and exciting.  The first couple of pages has renderable text, so I guess you could (if you were inclined) suck the words out and make a beautiful new thing with it, but...

Edit: I withdraw this. I don't feel so great about putting the thing up even 35 years later without permission.

I particularly like the bargaining bits, and the flowchart comic for dealing with summoned demons.  The stuff is not entirely new or original, now - but it was probably pretty neat back then, and I like the variety and new/old flavours since all I usually consider are Vrocks and Malfeshnee and Rifts-type stuff and various entirely random things made with the Esoteric Creature thingamabob.  The particular fun is when you get into bonding with the Big Bads and the special powers etc.

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