Where are downside mechanics to the degree of, say, Lord of the Pit on the storm scale?

Downside mechanics tend to be unpopular unless very flavorful. We still do them, just infrequently. I’d call them a 5.

You're the Lord of the Pit? No wonder all those Blogs have disappeared. And you were trying to blame Blogatog...

Bwah. Ha. Ha. Ha.

Birthday Question! Can I get some trivia on my favorite Timmy card: Devouring Strossus?

I made Devouring Strossus as a Lord of the Pit variant. I liked the idea that not only was sacrificing a creature an upkeep cost but you could also do it to save the Demon. Happy Birthday!

Do you guys have to sacrifice people to Lord of the Pit every year, and that's the real reason that the you need new workers every year?

Ixnay on the emonday.

In your latest TftP, shouldn't the Lord of the Pit played the Balrog in LotR, not Sauron (or Gandalf, of course)?

Comedy often comes from the character saying the unexpected thing. Lord of the Pit is so clueless, he doesn’t get what Lord of the Rings character he was based on.

Cool, I love Signal the Clans and I'm gonna send you one to sign. :) [Could you clarify which cards you sign? Lord of the Pit would be awesome.]

I will sign any Magic card. Yes, even Hornet Stings. In fact, Hornet Sting might be in my Top Ten for cards I’ve signed.

Regarding the symbol on Lord of the Pit's art, check out Aaron's Random Card Comment of the Day #10. It's on the Revised Edition printing of LotP.

What godavarism said.

Taking off your designer hat for a moment: you've played Magic since the get go. How long did it take you (and your playgroup) to realise that these silly two-coloured lands were in fact better than the Shivian Dragon or Lord of the Pit you had been hoping to open? If this answer is linked to an interest anecdote we'd love to hear it.

My story is actually about a slightly different card but the point is the same. My first purchase of Magic was a starter and four booster packs of Alpha at a convention in Los Angeles. I spent what I though one spends on a new game and called it a day. Flash forward a week - I was hooked.I was out of luck though because Alpha was here and gone. So when Beta came out a month or so later, I ended up buying a box of boosters and a box of starters. They weren’t all for me. I knew that if I wanted to get some of my friends into the game, I was going to have to provide them access to the cards. One of the people I sold packs to was my dad. He’s a long time gamer and the one directly responsible for my love of games. In one of the packs he opened a card called Mox Emerald. I had never seen it or any of the moxes before. Remember at the time rarity wasn’t on the cards so I didn’t have a rare or mythic rare symbol hinting that this was anything special. I couldn’t figure out why you would play this over a forest but I was intrigued because I assumed there was some reason. I traded my dad for it because I didn’t own it yet. I gave him a Fungusaur and you have to understand, as far as I was concerned, I was being very nice to my dad. I had two Fungusaurs and I thought the card was very cool. This was my way of letting my dad have one in a way that felt fair.  It took me a few months to figure out what I had with the Mox Emerald. Once I figured it out I went back to my dad and offered him more cards but he said it was fine as I cared more than him about it. The one caveat to this story is that when magic began the internet was still in its infancy so there wasn’t places for me to go to easily share information. I had to learn it from actual person to person contact in game stores where I played. And that is my story.

Isn't "loners" anathema to the "pay a price" concept of black that was nailed by Lord of the Pit?

The “loners” theme just means that the monsters are not working together. This is supposed to contrast to the humans whose great strength is their unity (represented through things like soulbond).