Creepiest D&D Content

[SgtCarnage92]

On topic: The...implied relationship between the father and daughter- pair of Archdevils. Fierna and Belial, i think it was. The picture just weirds me out in Fiendish Codex II

Yeah, that was a little squicky to me too. Then I realized it was archdevils I was dealing with and incest is the least of the things we have to worry about from them. The picture is very...suggestive...but they do represent desire...so it sort of works.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Why not just use wights?

Wights are fixed at 4HD and are absurdly deadly as a horde, what with the energy drain. Zombies aren't supposed to be particularly dangerous individually. It's the horde that scares the crap out of you. The template also means that you can have important individuals that are still zombies.

I think there was a wight template in SS that might work too, but I don't have that book anymore.

Excuse my pedantry, but it's "pedantry" not "pendanticism".


On topic: The...implied relationship between the father and daughter- pair of Archdevils. Fierna and Belial, i think it was. The picture just weirds me out in Fiendish Codex II

If you think the FC2 pic is bad, take a look at the shot of them in BoVD.

[SgtCarnage92]

If you think the FC2 pic is bad, take a look at the shot of them in BoVD.

*checks artwork in both books* That's the picture I was thinking of when he posted initially...

[willpell]

Yeah, that was a little squicky to me too. Then I realized it was archdevils I was dealing with and incest is the least of the things we have to worry about from them. The picture is very...suggestive...but they do represent desire...so it sort of works.

Well yes, incest is a pretty minor bit of nastiness compared to mass murder or what not - IN REALITY. But from where I sit, wanting to slaughter a few hundred fictional people is a lot less wicked than wanting to slaughter a few hundred real ones, while wanting to shag your fictional sister is not very much less squicky than wanting to shag your real sister. Either way, it's less like a real crime and more like a "thoughtcrime", so being fictional doesn't reduce the impact much.

[Mordokai]

Well yes, incest is a pretty minor bit of nastiness compared to mass murder or what not - IN REALITY. But from where I sit, wanting to slaughter a few hundred fictional people is a lot less wicked than wanting to slaughter a few hundred real ones, while wanting to shag your fictional sister is not very much less squicky than wanting to shag your real sister. Either way, it's less like a real crime and more like a "thoughtcrime", so being fictional doesn't reduce the impact much.

I'm... having a REALLY hard time trying to tell what is it that you're trying to say here.

[Novawurmson]

I'm... having a REALLY hard time trying to tell what is it that you're trying to say here.

I believe the intent is as follows:

A. In reality, mass murder is generally far worse than incest.
B. The desire to mass murder is far less disturbing than actually murderering hundreds of people
C. The desire for incest is about as disturbing as actual incest.

Therefore, simulated incest is more disturbing that simulated mass murder.

Correct?

Edit: Another way to think about it: If I say "I'm going to kill all the orcs!", there's a very clear separation between when my character is going to do and what I as a person am going to do, especially because genocide is a crime that has to be committed. Merely thinking about genocide is not a crime (and a good thing too, because we seem to think a lot about it in 3.5/PF games XD).

However, if I say, "I'm going to sleep with my daughter!" there's a much higher "ick" factor because even considering such a thing is mostly seen as repulsive in polite society, and the difference between fantasy and reality is much thinner. While none of us will ever literally kill an orc (without a severe disruption in what we know to be real), one of us could possibly commit this very real taboo - not saying any of us will, but the possibility of the action is there.

Similarly, if my character said, "I'm going to murder all the orcs," and then went on to use real-world racial epithets to describe the "orcs," it would quickly become uncomfortable, because the boundaries of fantasy and reality just blurred until the point where they're insignificant.

[willpell]

I believe the intent is as follows:

A. In reality, mass murder is generally far worse than incest.
B. The desire to mass murder is far less disturbing than actually murderering hundreds of people
C. The desire for incest is about as disturbing as actual incest.

Therefore, simulated incest is more disturbing that simulated mass murder.

Correct?

Pretty much yeah. There are degrees, of course; the murder is more disturbing the more detail you put into the bloodshed and the victims' reactions and so forth. On the incest side I don't want to say too much, but without recalling the details of diabolic reproduction, it's probably not entirely the same thing for ancient immortal beings who didn't exactly grow up behind a white picket fence among loving parents (EDIT: I wrote that having forgotten that one of the fiends in question was the parent, so this point doesn't really stand anymore); to me the ewness of incest is in the idea of a family relationship going into inappropriate territory, but family probably doesn't mean much to devils in the first place and there's much question as to whether anything they do qualifies as "appropriate". But in general I'm inclined to think that incest is conceptually disgusting and thus disgusting even when it is no more than a concept, while violence is not that problematic as long as it remains abstract.

The rest of your post pretty well supports my position, although I wouldn't have gone into orcs because that imposes too much of a separation between the concept of "person" and the thing you're talking of killing (though the sideline about racializing them is a good point to have made). Even if you're saying "I'm going to kill all the humans," though, it seems less bothersome as long as it remains fully fictitious; you imagining killing people doesn't hurt them, but you imagining a sex act places the emphasis on you, on your capacity to want such a thing and the effect that this desire has on you. Wanting to wreak violence is maybe not entirely healthy, but it's something our species' history has prepared us for, so the very idea we'd think about it isn't too horrifying, but the issue of what turns a person on is more intimate to them and more suggestive of their private sensibilities.

[Novawurmson]

I specifically used the orc example to transition into the racism comparison :D

Getting back to the point of the thread, I think the idea that "races" and subraces can be inherently good or bad, and that they can be judged instantly on the basis of the color of their skin or scales is increasingly creepy to me. Refer to the OOTS comic about how it's totally cool to kill a dragon as long as its scales aren't shiny :P

Also, Urgathoa (warning: mild gore) is one of my favorite evil deities. I really like how her followers run the gamut of "affable hedonists" to "plague-worshiping abominations."

[willpell]

Getting back to the point of the thread, I think the idea that "races" and subraces can be inherently good or bad, and that they can be judged instantly on the basis of the color of their skin or scales is increasingly creepy to me. Refer to the OOTS comic about how it's totally cool to kill a dragon as long as its scales aren't shiny :P

"Creepy" isn't the word I'd use there, but I do think it's one of the more wrong aspects of D&D and I wouldn't game for very long with anyone who nails it very hard. With dragons, they are different species with different habitats, so it's somewhat justified; you don't kill a red dragon because it's red, but because there's a very long history of red dragons randomly burning small cities to the ground and kidnapping princesses to eat and such. And for any race that's explicitly been created by an evil deity, whether Tiamat or Gruumsh or something, you can say that malice is in their blood and they don't really have any free will. But at the very least, you need to do a good job of backing this up with observable behavior patterns, and it starts to fall apart fast if you send any signals to the contrary, such as using the Sanctified Creature template from BOXD on even a single member of a species, thereby proving that they're NOT irredeemable and so you should be redeeming them instead of killing them. Any time there isn't a very clear supernatural source of evil, killing creatures just because they're *said* to be always evil is definitely not behavior I'm going to be cool with.

[JediSoth]

The first time D&D Content creeped me out was in the AD&D 2nd edition book that went into the ecology of Mind Flayers (I don't recall the title, it was part of the series that spawned I, Tyrant for a similar book on Beholders). Their reproductive process was nasty and creepy. It involved putting their larval form into the head of a humanoid, resulting in a very painful, slow, and graphic transformation into a mind flayer.

Come to think of it, it wasn't all that dissimilar to that episode of NuWho where the Doctor & Donna were on the planet of the Oods and that guy (who was played by Percy from Blackadder) was changed into an ood 'cause he was a jerk.

[MickJay]

The entire concept that personal advancement is most quickly and efficiently attained by killing other beings. Want to learn how to weave baskets? Kill a few bears. Want to learn to sing and all the animals are already wiped out? Slaughter a goblin village. Want to make a magic belt? Why not wipe out those peasants?

[JediSoth]

The entire concept that personal advancement is most quickly and efficiently attained by killing other beings. Want to learn how to weave baskets? Kill a few bears. Want to learn to sing and all the animals are already wiped out? Slaughter a goblin village. Want to make a magic belt? Why not wipe out those peasants?

Hey! I slaughtered my way through college! That village of pixies barely had enough XP for my capstone class.

I've said too much...

[Zeful]

The entire concept that personal advancement is most quickly and efficiently attained by killing other beings. Want to learn how to weave baskets? Kill a few bears. Want to learn to sing and all the animals are already wiped out? Slaughter a goblin village. Want to make a magic belt? Why not wipe out those peasants?

3.5 has less simulation elements than minecraft. Taking the rules as a representation of a reality is your issue, not one with a ruleset that's not even attempting to simulating reality.

There's a reason FATAL is treated with such scorn, it tries to simulate a world, D&D has never attempted such.

[Sith_Happens]

There's a reason FATAL is treated with such scorn, it tries to simulate a world, D&D has never attempted such.

Um, yeah, I think the problem lies more in (a) what sort of world it's trying to simulate and (b) how atrociously poor of a job it does at trying to simulate anything at all...

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

Um, yeah, I think the problem lies more in (a) what sort of world it's trying to simulate and (b) how atrociously poor of a job it does at trying to simulate anything at all...

And the fact that the simulation was often taken too far. I never want to know the anal stretching capacity of my character.

[Zeful]

Um, yeah, I think the problem lies more in (a) what sort of world it's trying to simulate and (b) how atrociously poor of a job it does at trying to simulate anything at all...

Well, yes, but I couldn't figure out a way to say that while pointing out D&D was never a simulation of any scale.

[Eldest]

GURPS. Much better example of a simulation, if you needed to bring one up at all.

[SgtCarnage92]

Hey! I slaughtered my way through college! That village of pixies barely had enough XP for my capstone class.

I've said too much...

Eh, I just suck up to the professors enough to get roleplay XP and then proceed to murder just enough kobolds in the warrens under campus to get credit for the course. They breed fast enough that it isn't a problem.

[Zeful]

GURPS. Much better example of a simulation, if you needed to bring one up at all.

The point was to show that deliberately taking non-simulation rules as a simulation is a bad thing. By making the comparison of what he was saying to FATAL, I figure he's more likely to understand what he's doing is wrong and why than with a GURPS analogy.

[tbok1992]

SHHHHH! They finally stopped bickering. Let's talk about something else... Flesh Golems always creeped me out. I realize it's basically the idea behind Frankenstein's Monster, but the picture always got me.

Actualy, Blasphemes from the 3e libris mortis and 4e's Open grave are a lot closer to the Frankenstein's Monster, as they're actually intelligent.

Yeah, that was a little squicky to me too. Then I realized it was archdevils I was dealing with and incest is the least of the things we have to worry about from them. The picture is very...suggestive...but they do represent desire...so it sort of works.

Well, they do explicitly say in The Book of Vile Darkness (or at least my copy) that they are at least rumored to be incestuous.

[Slipperychicken]

When you say something like that, a link to home page or download or something similar usually goes a long way towards evoking more wish to try it, if you catch my meaning, winkwink.

Here's yer link. 4 Pages late, because I attempted to have a social life in meatspace this week. I wasn't trying to advertise it, because I wasn't sure if linking it was forum-kosher (I got a violation for linking dndtools a while back, and have been erring on the side of caution ever since).

[Marlowe]

On topic: The...implied relationship between the father and daughter- pair of Archdevils. Fierna and Belial, i think it was. The picture just weirds me out in Fiendish Codex II

I had heard of this before, and I didn't bother looking up Belial (I already read "Paradise Lost") but I did look up Fierna.

So her "Evil" seems to consist of,
1, She's an archdevil.
2, She likes to "have fun".
3, She likes fire.
4, She's obediant to her elders and superiors.
5, She wears skimpy clothes.
6, She's still learning responsibility appropriate to her position.
7, There's gossip about her.


She can't help point 1. And possibly not point 7. As for the rest, THAT's evil? Most PCs should be so evil.

That in itself is creepy.

EDIT: How did I type "COLOR", instead of "QUOTE" by mistake? Especially since I don't spell "colour" that way.

[123456789blaaa]

[QUOTE=Marlowe;13977195]

On topic: The...implied relationship between the father and daughter- pair of Archdevils. Fierna and Belial, i think it was. The picture just weirds me out in Fiendish Codex II [/COLOR]

I had heard of this before, and I didn't bother looking up Belial (I already read "Paradise Lost") but I did look up Fierna.

So her "Evil" seems to consist of,
1, She's an archdevil.
2, She likes to "have fun".
3, She likes fire.
4, She's obediant to her elders and superiors.
5, She wears skimpy clothes.
6, She's still learning responsibility appropriate to her position.
7, There's gossip about her.


She can't help point 1. And possibly not point 7. As for the rest, THAT's evil? Most PCs should be so evil.

That in itself is creepy.

The second fiendish codex is hilarious. You've got Glasya, the popular girl that everyone likes who's rebelling against her father while her father tries to placate her. You've got Fernia the vapid wild party girl who still loves her daddy but really wants to be like the popular girl. Her father Belial is the controlling father who's terrified of her getting out from his control and wants to keep her away from Glasya. There's even a sentence in the book where it says that Fernia (or was it Glasya?) was actually going out with Mammon until her father forbid her. Now she's angry at Mammon for not fighting to stay with her.

I'ts like the archdevils of hell are in a teen oriented sitcom.

[SgtCarnage92]

[QUOTE=123456789blaaa;13977430]

The second fiendish codex is hilarious. You've got Glasya, the popular girl that everyone likes who's rebelling against her father while her father tries to placate her. You've got Fernia the vapid wild party girl who still loves her daddy but really wants to be like the popular girl. Her father Belial is the controlling father who's terrified of her getting out from his control and wants to keep her away from Glasya. There's even a sentence in the book where it says that Fernia (or was it Glasya?) was actually going out with Mammon until her father forbid her. Now she's angry at Mammon for not fighting to stay with her.

I'ts like the archdevils of hell are in a teen oriented sitcom.

I...never thought of it that way...wow. I guess one of the writers was watching re-runs of Dawson's Creek while writing the book.

[Arbane]

I'ts like the archdevils of hell are in a teen oriented sitcom.

Being stuck in high school forever sounds pretty hellish to me...

[hamishspence]

I think a point is made in FC2 that "having fun" for archdevils, tends to involve a lot of mortal-torture.

[The LOBster]

I'm just going to echo what people have said about PF Ogres. Plus, I'm hardly politically correct, but darn near every time someone attempts Rape as Drama only succeeds in making me ticked off at the author, not the villain. Plus, having ogres just kill people for "sport" would be just as horrifying without the trigger factor, and you could even twist them killing people for laughs as being kinda hillbilly-ish.

As for other stuff that creeps me out about D&D, the illustration of Torog from the end of the Underdark book in 4e freaks me right the hell out.

[Chainsaw Hobbit]

s for other stuff that creeps me out about D&D, the illustration of Torog from the end of the Underdark book in 4e freaks me right the hell out.

That was probably the the most brutal thing ever sneaked past the censors into a D&D book.

[Marlowe]

I think a point is made in FC2 that "having fun" for archdevils, tends to involve a lot of mortal-torture.

I think if Archdevils were in the regular habit of kidnapping people from the prime material plane "Sailor Nothing" Yamiko-style for their own amusement, that should be more explicit. Because it would be a regular feature in the adventuring world that should be standard story hook. A lot of us have never seen FCII. Or FCI. Or TBOVD. As it is, Fierna seems to be mostly interested in having sex. If we were talking about Sharossa, it might make more sense.

Fierna's mortal sin appears to be Sloth, or rather, lack of ambition. Since she's already got everything she actually wants.

But yes, the decadent rich-girl teenager interpretation holds some weight. But I'm not going to call someone evil for being that alone.

[Noedig]

Torog seems rather offensive to all five of the sense.