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Feb 14, 2012 -- 9:57PM, Guest872980744 wrote:

Doug. if you said that goblins could be omitted in Innistrad, and ditto for elves I suppose, why are there dragons in Innistrad? Couldn't they be left out too? I'm sensing a lil bias here (to dragon fans) but let's be fair. if you include angels, demons, wurms and dragons, where are the sphinxes/leviathians? what about Loch Ness???

you would argue that sphinxes and leviathians are not suitable in this context but so would dragons too. you could have made a flying mythical devil for example. dragons are so overused and they all seem to work the same - firebreathe

I would rather accept a ghost dragon, and that could actually fit the horror trope. it should be blue-based since it's a spirit 

It seems like Innistrad is to Magic as Raveloft is to D&D: it's still the same fantasy game, just with a thick coating of horror tribute. In D&D, you still had armored warriors, barbarians, and bards, all wielding +2 weapons and carrying scrolls and the odd wonderous device as in the basic fantasy game, but everything else that could change to lend the flavor of horror end did. In this case, you still have a Magic world filled with Dragons, Gryphons, (and if the art is to be believed, sea serpents,) etc., but everything that can be bent towards horror has. Mostly, that seems to mean getting rid of anything that humans could talk to without fear of being eaten. No elves, goblins, merfolk or other sentient creatures. If it's not human, it can't be spoken to or reasoned with, and it probably wants to kill you. It's just a question of whether it's a dumb beast that wants to eat you, a large, clever beast that wants to eat you and every other human, or a malicious entity bent on destroying everything that makes up humanity.

Feb 15, 2012 -- 2:56AM, Shamsiel wrote:

Besides, angels and demons are not that prevalent in gothic horror either. Innistrad is based on traditional medieval horror as well, so dragons make sense.

Innistrad is pulling from a few sources, all of which can be summed up as "horror as I remember it as a kid". Frankenstenian undead, vampires, werewolves, and a lot of one-offs are gothic, but the flesh-eating zombies, Delver of Secrets and Gutter Grime s are all strictly B-movie territory. I would say that angels, demons, and devils -- while more important to medieval notions of horror -- are all still somewhat gothic. Satanic cults and the (big-D) Devil himself come in pretty regularly, even as late as works like Young Goodman Brown. For me, the most medieval touches of the set are green: it has Essence of the Wild as the green man figure, and a number of huge, fog-shrouded monsters that remind you that unknown, untamed nature is utterly terrifying. Man builds bonfires and walls not to scare off other men but to keep away nature itself.

Feb 15, 2012 -- 5:18AM, HairlessThoctar wrote:

This block has made a fan of devils out of me, I'm glad to see a little behind-the-scenes of them.

I do wonder why they didn't just use imps as demon's peons like they usually do?

Best guess: imps fly, and red weenies don't. Imps and demons are also very similar visually except for size -- imagine a child-sized demon that doesn't look like an imp -- so that's a novelty point in favor of devils.

Feb 14, 2012 -- 9:21PM, Alter_Boy wrote:

Devils sound a lot like gremlins.

Gremlins (black), Goblin and Devils (now red -- yeah, we remember Stone-Throwing Devils ) and Oafs (green) are all pretty similar: they're all small humanoids that are just smart enough to break things. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There's room enough for the trope across colors.