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Originally Posted by RPGnet Reviews
Maybe I'm getting jaded, but releasing a second Forgotten Realms book on the exact same topic as a previous one tells me that either they're running out of ideas or are just praying that their consumer base has collectively developed selective memory loss.
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Even though it's been well over a year since anyone addressed this topic, allow me to address it now, as I am one of the authors of said rehash.
When I was first asked to join the Champions of Ruin project, I shared the same concerns - that it would be but a rehash of Lords of Darkness and Book of Vile Darkness. But as you will see if you compare all three books, Lord of Darkness deals almost exclusively with evil organizations, while Book of Vile Darkness is a book of generic evil adaptable to any campaign. Champions of Ruin is a Forgotten Realms product.
During development discussion, we talked about Book of Vile Darkness and whether or not we wanted to expand on it or draw from it or move away from it. In some ways, we accomplished all three. A huge portion of BoVD is devoted to demons, devils, and their worshippers, while CoR spends somewhat fewer pages detailing demons and devils of the Realms. As for the evil organizations, the editor of the book asked the writers to expand upon some of the organizations covered in Lords of Darkness as well as giving us new organizations. The Eldreth Valuuthra, for example, was covered in Lords of Darkness - I expanded it and brought it up to date for 3.5, including a change in the heirarchy and a new ally.
First and foremost, the Champions of Ruin was originally meant to be a player's book, whereas Lords of Darkness is more like a DM's gazatteer. It so happens that at the time I was asked to write for Champions of Ruin, I was developing an evil-character campaign for my players. A lot of what I had already developed went into this, including the first chapter detailing the motivations, or what I prefer to term the "excuses" for evil. I was trying to address the fact that few people, outside of demon worshippers, consider themselves evil. More often, people think of themselves as good but misunderstood. Even if they spend their evenings tossing first born children into the glowing belly of a burning idol, they're only doing it for the sake of the village and to assure a good harvest.
I was sick to death of the concept of the evil character slaying his fellow party members in their sleep. I was also sick of the concept of evil as a different but equally relevant philosophy, a choice not of behavior but of the particular gods one chooses to worship. The "I'm just like you only I worship a different god" trend that's been developing in gaming of late. I wanted to make evil EVIL. Quite a bit of my stuff never made it into the book, and for good reason - it was too evil. But there you are. Wizards aka TSR is still dealing with the devil-worshipping accusations of the 1980s, and so it must tread lightly in these domains. Just so you know, the original title of this book was Champions of Evil.
So if this book seems like deja vu, it's only because you've been reading the Reader's Digest version. This book is Realms specific, and specifically evil, though none dare name it so.