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Goddamn I didn't expect that question to cause an entire page of discussion but I'm kind of glad it did, there's a lot of stuff that has been brought up that I either never read about when I was reading a bunch of D&D junk novels or that I forgot in the intervening... let's just say years.
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Feb 2, 2024 21:38
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Dexo posted:What if someone could equally be claimed by multiple gods. For the most part Souls are waiting in the Fugue Plane for a Divine Messenger to pick them up, so whoever's agent arrived first will claim it in most cases, unless the soul wants to wait to see if any others show up. For most disputes Kelemvor makes the final decision were a soul will go. Devils also come to the waiting souls and offer infernal bargains if a soul is not confident in their final fate and tire of waiting.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:00
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Souls getting claimed by the hells and recycled into lemurs or eaten are getting the worst end of the deal IMO. Why not just worship an evil god and go to their domain if you're going to gently caress around that much
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Feb 2, 2024 22:04
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i simply introduced the concept of incomprehensible creator gods of unfathomable cosmic power into my setting and made them distinct from garden variety gods that can be spoken to directly by the faithful and attained their positions mostly by getting unlimited spell slots and access to the wish spell. most of my npcs have never heard of the creator gods because their names are unpronouncable and they do not have physical manifestations or even free will. forgotten realms kind of already has this dichotomy but i figured id make it much more explicit
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Feb 2, 2024 22:13
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Valentin posted:nah. all you need is a pre-existing concept for "super powerful magic user" and it immediately becomes clear they all slot cleanly into it. must just be super powerful magic users. like where is the difference between elminster and mystra for jonicus dirtfarm. Why does jonicus dirtfarm not think the word for “super powerful magic user” is “god”? What does the word god mean to him, that mystra doesn’t fit? Why does he think that’s what a god is?
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Feb 2, 2024 22:15
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well because there's lots of super powerful magic users and some call themselves gods and some call themselves demons and some say elementals and some say wizards but there's no particular reason to privilege the title any one of them uses. the cleanest answer is probably "peasants know who the gods are in the forgotten realms and that they are in a special category because every extraplanar entity and magic user is like 'oh that's a god, I'm a demon, he's a yugoloth' and they all agree on those categories" but at that point it all feels a bit tautological
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Feb 2, 2024 22:24
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laughed so hard in baldurs gate 3 when vlaakith wished my party to die in dialogue. wow very powerful of you, defeating us with a 9th level spell. what a truly godlike capability
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Feb 2, 2024 22:26
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You know it really does feel kinda dumb that D&D has both Fiends AND Evil Gods that are distinct from that
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Feb 2, 2024 22:31
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change my name posted:Souls getting claimed by the hells and recycled into lemurs or eaten are getting the worst end of the deal IMO.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:34
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Yusin posted:Devils also come to the waiting souls and offer infernal bargains if a soul is not confident in their final fate and tire of waiting. giving every devil in games I dm attention disorders to explain why they took the world's dumbest deal out of literal sheer boredom
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Feb 2, 2024 22:37
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Valentin posted:well because there's lots of super powerful magic users and some call themselves gods and some call themselves demons and some say elementals and some say wizards but there's no particular reason to privilege the title any one of them uses. But that’s kind of my point, if there’s no reason to privilege a title there’s no reason to care about the title either. Like, in a world where the gods actually exist, “god” is essentially just a species or a job. This guy is an elf, this woman is a goblin, this thing is an ooze, this man is a plumber, this being is a god. I mean, there’s nothing stopping someone holding a completely irrational position, but that does make the position inherently silly. If you live in a kingdom, “King Jonicus isn’t worthy of my loyalty” is a perfectly respectable position, but if you say “King Jonicus isn’t actually king” and King Jonicus is sitting there on his throne with a crown and sceptre and sentencing you to death for treason, that sentence essentially implies you have strong opinions on what a king actually is.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:39
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I guess where we differ is that to my view I'm highlighting a certain kind of conspiratorial thinking (these people/systems serve the same roles and do the same things, they must be connected and also lying about who they are, which easily gets you to "gods aren't real or if they are, those aren't gods") and also don't necessarily consider it inherently silly or irrational. you can easily believe jonicus is a wizard usurper who has falsely taken the throne on the order of thay and also that Kingship is real and there is a True Real King somewhere, even if you've never lived under what you think a Real True King (idealized) is and have only known lovely petty versions of the same and in fact those are the only versions that have ever existed. and depending on the year and the kingdom that could be a perfectly rational and even correct belief. e: if you said "if the gods were real and as powerful as they claim, they would never have allowed us to suffer so under the spellplague, but I know gods must be real. these gods are clearly false weak mortal usurpers who only have power that is a reflection of the true gods" you would be like 60% right about some things and also in my understanding definitely bound for the wall Valentin fucked around with this message at 22:57 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 22:42
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Reveilled posted:But that’s kind of my point, if there’s no reason to privilege a title there’s no reason to care about the title either. Like, in a world where the gods actually exist, “god” is essentially just a species or a job. This guy is an elf, this woman is a goblin, this thing is an ooze, this man is a plumber, this being is a god. Sounds like the kind of questions that gets you a brick shaped slot in the Wall. 
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Feb 2, 2024 22:43
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Reveilled posted:But that’s kind of my point, if there’s no reason to privilege a title there’s no reason to care about the title either. Like, in a world where the gods actually exist, “god” is essentially just a species or a job. This guy is an elf, this woman is a goblin, this thing is an ooze, this man is a plumber, this being is a god. in my setting atheists are like, “kill me if you like, you arent a real god. if you were then heresy would be impossible. real gods are unquestionable.” then they go and worship tharizdun or something
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Feb 2, 2024 22:44
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Further evidence Eberron is the best setting
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Feb 2, 2024 22:51
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scary ghost dog posted:in my setting atheists are like, “kill me if you like, you arent a real god. if you were then heresy would be impossible. real gods are unquestionable.” then they go and worship tharizdun or something I guess my question would be, why do these people believe a real god would be unquestionable? What is it about being a god that would make it so? Presumably your setting’s theists don’t make this sort of claim about the gods.
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Feb 2, 2024 22:55
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do faerun gods walk around talking about being defy-able and vincible? part of the standard greco-roman polytheist package is usually a sense of superiority and inevitability and hatred of defiance. that certainly seems true of e.g. bg3 mystra. I get what you're saying re: theism but the issue is that it's not a "why would a peasant call them not a god" but "why did you call these things gods and bring up the idea of faith in setting if they're not gods in a meaningful or comprehensible religious sense where faith matters, this is abysmally stupid". Valentin fucked around with this message at 23:05 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 22:59
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Valentin posted:do faerun gods walk around talking about being defy-able and vincible? Generally I don’t think Faerun’s gods talk about it much one way or another. If the wall of the faithless is still a part of the setting it’s likely that believers might give this as a solid reason not to defy the gods, but it’s very existence essentially implies that defiance is possible—if it were impossible there would be no faithless to put in.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:04
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Asterite34 posted:You know it really does feel kinda dumb that D&D has both Fiends AND Evil Gods that are distinct from that Another side thing that constantly causes weird story hiccups is that, for better or worse, D&D is pretty much the default generic Fantasy RPG while at the same time also trying to be a collection of specific settings with their own rules and 'dead people go to the wall' story elements that end up being kind of mushed together in a weird homogenous mess because people tend not to realize that 'Baldurs Gate' or 'Honor Among Thieves' aren't D&D capital letters properties but 'Forgotten Realms which is a setting that you can play D&D in' properties. There's also a whole thing where I feel like it is sometimes hard to have mysteries or unknown elements in published works because the players are on the outside looking in and will tend to ask questions like 'so how does that actually work?' They get to see behind the curtain and look at how the machine works and usually want there to be specific correct answers to any of the in-character questions.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:14
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They dance around it a bit in NWN2:MOTB but I got the impression that when Kelemvor tried to get rid of the Wall, Worse Things Happened; I don't get the sense that this was "Faerunites turned away from the gods" (ala Dragonlance) but more like "Portals to the Far Realm started opening everywhere", the later sucks but would be more understandable why the "Good" gods sign onto something as cruel as the Wall.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:15
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Valentin posted:I get what you're saying re: theism but the issue is that it's not a "why would a peasant call them not a god" but "why did you call these things gods and bring up the idea of faith in setting if they're not gods in a meaningful or comprehensible religious sense where faith matters, this is abysmally stupid". I guess where I differ here is that I’m relating to the gods in this setting on a polytheistic, animistic level, where a god is essentially a very powerful class of spirit. These entities have power, their power stretches over certain domains, you can pay them for blessings with sacrifices, you can earn their anger and get cursed, these are attributes of a spirit, and a god is just a spirit that happens to have power over a significant domain of human affairs. I see the weight that’s given to the term “God” in our modern parlance as coming from Monotheism—that’s where we get the idea of false gods; where we get the opposing idea of strong atheism; where we get the idea that a god is something separate from the universe, with unknowable and inscrutable motives. Absent the presence of monotheistic ideas about God, it seems silly to find its antithesis, and I think polytheists in most settings would have a similar position, unless they’re very different from the ancient IRL polytheists that most settings seem to base their religions on. Raenir Salazar posted:They dance around it a bit in NWN2:MOTB but I got the impression that when Kelemvor tried to get rid of the Wall, Worse Things Happened; I don't get the sense that this was "Faerunites turned away from the gods" (ala Dragonlance) but more like "Portals to the Far Realm started opening everywhere", the later sucks but would be more understandable why the "Good" gods sign onto something as cruel as the Wall. Maybe, but it does rather raise the question of how come Toril got along just fine without the wall for thousands of years before Myrkul built it, and how come none of the other regions of Toril other than Faerun seem to feature it in their faith (as far as I know). Reveilled fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Feb 2, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 23:24
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change my name posted:Souls getting claimed by the hells and recycled into lemurs or eaten are getting the worst end of the deal IMO. Why not just worship an evil god and go to their domain if you're going to gently caress around that much That’s true, but it’s also not something most people know. The Devils are not going to mention that the first step of being turned into a new devil is getting turned into a flesh blob and losing your memory and personality. Reveilled posted:Generally I don’t think Faerun’s gods talk about it much one way or another. If the wall of the faithless is still a part of the setting it’s likely that believers might give this as a solid reason not to defy the gods, but it’s very existence essentially implies that defiance is possible—if it were impossible there would be no faithless to put in.
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Feb 2, 2024 23:40
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Reveilled posted:Maybe, but it does rather raise the question of how come Toril got along just fine without the wall for thousands of years before Myrkul built it, and how come none of the other regions of Toril other than Faerun seem to feature it in their faith (as far as I know). Could be similar to the forging of the One Ring, sure the Elves were fine for thousands of years, but then the One Ring's power became load bearing to their lasting power in Middle-Earth; or like Faenor's forging of the Silmarils. Sometimes you in the creation of something, irrevocably change and use up the "talent" in the process of its making. e: I went and rewatched some NWN2 cutscenes and looked at the wiki, one explanation I see is that basically regardless of alignment, The Rules Are The Rules is what it seems to come down to? Even the Good Gods didn't think it was good precedent for a god to overturn the actions of another god? And another implication being that the Gods run off of Faith for sustenance like in Oots so if mortals felt like they didn't need to worship or have faith in gods this could cause the End of All Things. Its unclear of how of this is Good Gods preferring The Letter of the Law over its Spirit or it actually ending up being an existential threat to the cosmos. Raenir Salazar fucked around with this message at 00:04 on Feb 3, 2024 |
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Feb 2, 2024 23:42
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Reveilled posted:I guess my question would be, why do these people believe a real god would be unquestionable? What is it about being a god that would make it so? Presumably your setting’s theists don’t make this sort of claim about the gods. well, the creator gods determined stuff like the fine structure constant. questions of chemistry and quantum stuff are only really relevant with the creator gods, which arent really beings in the traditional sense. yet they have will and machinations and theres more than one of them. like these beings perceive and interact with all of time and space simultaneously with no inhibitions…..they are universes. logically they cant be questioned because they always seemingly intentionally developed the conditions for the questioner to ask the question. one of my big bads is a lich who went around engineering the deaths of minor deities because he believed that if he could do it, then it was a true god’s will
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Feb 2, 2024 23:58
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Raenir Salazar posted:Could be similar to the forging of the One Ring, sure the Elves were fine for thousands of years, but then the One Ring's power became load bearing to their lasting power in Middle-Earth; or like Faenor's forging of the Silmarils. Sometimes you in the creation of something, irrevocably change and use up the "talent" in the process of its making. One of the problems I always had with the “needing faith to exist” justification for the wall though is that it essentially lets the gods off the hook for their actual job, which is doing the blessings they’re supposed to. Like, there’s no reason to stop believing in Lathander, as long as Lathander holds up his end of the bargain and helps you get through labour in exchange for a chicken, or for people to stop believing in Tymora as long as throwing a coin in a fountain actually brings you good luck. And as long as they are doing that, the wall shouldn’t be necessary. Similarly, as much as it might be a matter of The Rules are The Rules, it was Ao who made the gods’ powers tied to faith (it was not always so), and it should be within the power of Ao to reverse that (and if I remember right it’s been at least loosely implied that he did in the Second Sundering). And you’d think that the chaotic deities would be a whole lot less onboard with Da Rules as a justification than the lawful ones, but none of them seem to have an issue with it. But I do think both of those work as an excuse. Even the good gods can fear their mortality, all of them have recent memories of many of their colleagues dying en masse. I see the wall as essentially an act of hypocrisy, the dirty little secret that the good gods try to avoid talking about. I like to imagine that most of them know the wall is evil, they know the wall should be torn down, but they just…don’t. Because doing the right thing scary, sometimes. At least, I think that would make for a good campaign premise. A party of mortals build a new, final crusade, to finally do the thing the gods themselves could not find the courage to do.
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Feb 3, 2024 00:23
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Reveilled posted:One of the problems I always had with the “needing faith to exist” justification for the wall though is that it essentially lets the gods off the hook for their actual job, which is doing the blessings they’re supposed to. Like, there’s no reason to stop believing in Lathander, as long as Lathander holds up his end of the bargain and helps you get through labour in exchange for a chicken, or for people to stop believing in Tymora as long as throwing a coin in a fountain actually brings you good luck. And as long as they are doing that, the wall shouldn’t be necessary. I think there's a couple of things here. Regardless of "how things were", Ao is Ao, and his decisions absolute. It isn't up to other gods to question this any more than we can question Azazoth's dreaming etc. It isn't a question of logic; we have the privileged position of being real thinking individuals in the real world while Ao is the creation of Some Writer Somewhere; but within the context of the Story, it isn't really relevant that He Changed His Mind; he does what he wants and what he wants is Really Important no matter what even if we do or don't comprehend it; he's like the Judeo-Christian/Muslim conception of God in this way. Except he also has other gods that Do Things and he doesn't seem to care what they do in his Sandcastle as long as they don't poop in the sandbox; and pooping in the sandbox is why the Time of Troubles happened. So to our perspective as I mentioned of course it doesn't really make sense to not believe in Tymora, if gods or hot devil ladies existed of course we'd line up, it's like the premise of half of all isekai animes of "Holy poo poo, life won't be boring anymore!" but that isn't our reality, in the story its the status quo of the characters. And if the fantastical is mundane I don't think we can really truly understand; and with routine comes complacency. So once its the case that belief is something that's a Choice, regardless of how illogical it seems like to us, the fact is some non-trivial if not countless number of people provably given the NWN2 campaign have made the wrong choice at some point; and if the consequence of that choice now is the possible end of all things (assuming the gods are responsible for the proper functioning of the concepts of their portfolios like the Greek pantheon were in God of War 3), so if Umberlee died without a successor the seas would go out of control and start uncontrollably flooding the coastal cities and the tides would cease to have any rhyme or reason to them and sea monsters start going berserk, I think as tautological as it is (it is because the writers decided it etc), it makes sense that that's a sacrifice even "good" gods feel forced to make. But also its questionable to what extent even "good" gods have thinking and rationality that matches the mortal conception of it; to use Kantian Ethics as an example here, Kant distinguished ethics between individuals and sovereigns and I think a similar argument can be made for TTRPG "mortals vs gods". As after all obviously it wouldn't make sense if D&D/TTRPGs decided that Utilitarianism was the One True Correct morality system!  Ultimately a lot of this is probably up to interpretation, and thus can be up to the DMs/players to decide if this is How Things Are Supposed To Be or "Gods kinda Suck bro" but I think there's probably enough evidence to support either interpretation or variations thereof.
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Feb 3, 2024 01:13
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It’s all up to interpretation. It’s D&D.
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Feb 3, 2024 06:15
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Yusin posted:Well most don't even choose a patron. One of them that they most closely matched would claim them after death. Like a farmer would likely pray to fair number of different gods over his life, but primarily Chauntea Goddess of Agriculture, and unless his beliefs highly clashed with her, she would be the one most likely to claim him. Yeah, it's not necessarily a conscious thing. I think it's a useful thing to think about when making a character, sort of like a more idiosyncratic Forgotten Realms take on alignment. Reveilled posted:Maybe, but it does rather raise the question of how come Toril got along just fine without the wall for thousands of years before Myrkul built it, and how come none of the other regions of Toril other than Faerun seem to feature it in their faith (as far as I know). The same Avatar sequels that gave us the Wall suggest that all the different pantheons are just different names for the same gods--Mystra is a little annoyed that her church leaders don't understand. But this is contradicted by just about everything else written on the different FR pantheons. That said, I don't think the Wall is a well-known part of Faerunian cosmology. As Yusin says, it's a cruel joke. Its victims are surprised to discover its existence. As far as I know, nobody is saying stuff like "say your prayers to Selune tonight, Timmy, or the Wall will have you." So you may not see priests of Zaltec talking about the Wall because nobody really talks about the Wall. Reveilled posted:But I do think both of those work as an excuse. Even the good gods can fear their mortality, all of them have recent memories of many of their colleagues dying en masse. I see the wall as essentially an act of hypocrisy, the dirty little secret that the good gods try to avoid talking about. I like to imagine that most of them know the wall is evil, they know the wall should be torn down, but they just…don’t. Because doing the right thing scary, sometimes. This is somewhat backed up by the Avatar sequels when Mystra and Kelemvor decide to be proactive and interventionist and get censured by the rest of the pantheon for stepping outside the bounds of their respective spheres. They're basically told to stay in their lanes as goddess of magic and god of death and leave the ending famines and stopping injustice to Chauntea and Tyr. This coincides with Cyric getting acquitted of his insane plot to murder the other gods because he is the god of madness and strife. So like Lathander may want to tear down the Wall and bring a new Dawn to the Fugue Plane, but he knows doing so is going to be seen as an attempt to usurp and replace Kelemvor as god of death, will receive him no support from the other good gods, and may very well result in him getting usurped and replaced again himself.
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Feb 3, 2024 15:40
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Did anyone consider "It's not called Dungeons Sans Dragons" for the thread title or is it a specific quotation
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Feb 3, 2024 17:16
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SuperKlaus posted:Did anyone consider "It's not called Dungeons Sans Dragons" for the thread title or is it a specific quotation A Dracolich with time powers and a one hit kill attack? 
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Feb 3, 2024 18:04
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Oh that's cool some people in Japan recreated the Themberchaud area from the D&D movie. https://twitter.com/Wss502At/status/1753679712503976107
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Feb 3, 2024 20:26
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I have an important question for those who have made centaur PCs before: did they wear pants over their back half
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Feb 5, 2024 20:40
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change my name posted:I have an important question for those who have made centaur PCs before: did they wear pants over their back half Dicks out for Cerunnos, my man Dicks OUT
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Feb 5, 2024 20:47
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Pants on the front half only
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Feb 5, 2024 22:57
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Bogan Krkic posted:Pants on the front half only I'm playing a high-class knight with lofty ideals about justice and romantic honor so I kind of like the idea more, the alternative is too goofy
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Feb 5, 2024 23:16
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Bogan Krkic posted:Pants on the front half only He dresses like an impeccable gentleman from the front and will never acknowledge his back half exists.
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Feb 5, 2024 23:37
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Reveilled posted:I see the weight that’s given to the term “God” in our modern parlance as coming from Monotheism—that’s where we get the idea of false gods; where we get the opposing idea of strong atheism; where we get the idea that a god is something separate from the universe, with unknowable and inscrutable motives. You don't have to be a monotheist to have a concept of false gods. I was about to point to Glycon as an example, but after looking it up it seems that Lucian of Samosata, the main source for Glycon being a hand puppet, was pretty skeptical of most forms of religious belief in general, so maybe that's not the best example. Still, I think a lot of the ideas about God you're talking about can be found in Ancient Greek philosophers who wouldn't have considered themselves monotheists.
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Feb 6, 2024 00:15
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change my name posted:I'm playing a high-class knight with lofty ideals about justice and romantic honor so I kind of like the idea more, the alternative is too goofy Centaurs don't wear pants, they wear skirt things or kilts that hang low enough to cover their privates
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Feb 6, 2024 00:43
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change my name posted:I have an important question for those who have made centaur PCs before: did they wear pants over their back half You could wear Oblivion style horse armor, but it might be kind of a ripoff
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Feb 6, 2024 00:51
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https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/shining/images/e/eb/Jaro.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20090523060945
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Feb 6, 2024 02:36
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