D&D 5E [Forgotten Realms] The Wall of the Faithless

[Ilbranteloth]

Since those in Kara-Tur are not subject to the Wall, apparently all you have to do is travel East. Problem solved.

It's been a long time. Is that documented somewhere? I'm still not entirely clear on the monstrous and demo-human pantheons either.

Actually, just checking my sources again - Kara-Tur was never updated to the 2nd Edition, which is where the Fugue Plain and such was added (after the Time of Troubles), so as best I can tell, all of the Realms dead are subject to it since that time.

Ilbranteloth

 

[I'm A Banana]

Evil is just as valid an option however as Good. Drop any concept of Good/Evil, because the Wall is not either.

The FR stories and heroes seem to point that in FR (like in most heroic fantasy), Evil is not as valid as Good. Lolth-worshiping Drow and Tiamat-worshiping cultists and Elemental-worshiping cultists and the like are the bad guys you fight, not your potential allies.

That is what you are really saying here. Noble doesnt matter. The most pure Paladin who denies the injustice of the Gods, DESERVES the Wall, because the devout Evil Priest? Hes Devout. He's going to chill with Bane, or Cyric.

Right, and that's incompatible with D&D alignment and heroic fantasy in general. There's no motive to be heroic in this world, no motive to do good over evil, no motive to fight against Tiamat or Elemental Evil or Lolth. They're all fine. It's the dragonborn that need slaying. Apparently.

Thats the Wall working as intended. Its not wicked. Its not evil. It is an impartial mechanism to ensure the Gods are not forgotten.

If it's making good people suffer, it's evil, by D&D's standard. Otherwise that villain who tortures all orphans equally to make a serum from their wailing tears that will prolong his life so that he can finish a great castle is just an impartial agent ensuring that his castle is built, too. FR, like D&D in general, doesn't seem cool with that.

Since those in Kara-Tur are not subject to the Wall, apparently all you have to do is travel East. Problem solved.

My impression was that Torilian religions that were not Faerunian were worshiping the same gods, just under different names/styles (not unlike certain ancient polytheisms who were like, "Yeah, Helios and Horus are the same thing, right? That big glowing disc that lights up the sky?")

I see alignment as a description, not a definition, which is well supported in the current ruleset.

That distinction is irrelevant, though. Whatever you want to call it, it's still something that the game cares about your character having, and that FR cares about your character having. Evil is for antagonists, Good is for Protagonists (the Factions in AL bear this out).

But the Wall doesn't care about what alignment you are. You can be a Good person and be Walled just fine. The Wall trumps alignment. It matters more. That makes alignment extremely unimportant, just as Valhalla would. Nothing in the world cares if you help orphans unless you do it in the name of some deity, and if you kill orphans in the name of your deity, it's the same as if you save them.

That doesn't produce heroes that Do The Right Thing, that produces protagonists that care more about "faith" than about what is Good, and that produces some protagonists that would seem monstrous to D&D players. A world where Torquemada is a figure the PC's should be welcomed to play as is a world that can't use D&D alignments as FR does.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

The FR stories and heroes seem to point that in FR (like in most heroic fantasy), Evil is not as valid as Good. Lolth-worshiping Drow and Tiamat-worshiping cultists and Elemental-worshiping cultists and the like are the bad guys you fight, not your potential allies.

Right, and that's incompatible with D&D alignment and heroic fantasy in general. There's no motive to be heroic in this world, no motive to do good over evil, no motive to fight against Tiamat or Elemental Evil or Lolth. They're all fine. It's the dragonborn that need slaying. Apparently.

If it's making good people suffer, it's evil, by D&D's standard. Otherwise that villain who tortures all orphans equally to make a serum from their wailing tears that will prolong his life so that he can finish a great castle is just an impartial agent ensuring that his castle is built, too. FR, like D&D in general, doesn't seem cool with that.

Evil is for antagonists, Good is for Protagonists (the Factions in AL bear this out).

But the Wall doesn't care about what alignment you are. You can be a Good person and be Walled just fine. The Wall trumps alignment. It matters more. That makes alignment extremely unimportant, just as Valhalla would. Nothing in the world cares if you help orphans unless you do it in the name of some deity, and if you kill orphans in the name of your deity, it's the same as if you save them.

I get what you're saying. But I still think it's off point. It's still focusing on the game and rules rather than the setting.

The D&D game standard (and in the cosmology of the Realms) is that things like murder, stealing, making people suffer, etc. is evil.

Note that people suffering is not evil in and of itself, and people suffering due to their own choices (like walking through fire or being stuck in the wall for being faithless) is not evil.

So yes, because simply being good in the Realms is not enough, people theoretically would have the same incentive to be evil as being good. And in a game, where people are 'optimized' and never have an incentive to pick or do something that isn't 'optimized' it presents a challenge for game design.

But that's not even really a failure of the game design as it is gamers. There are an endless number of threads asking for help on their 'character build' because they don't want to make a mistake and pick something that's not as good as something else. The problem is, that the people of the Realms are just like the people of our world. Real people don't 'optimize' themselves. They do what they want. Otherwise we'd all be the perfect weight, spend the day only doing things that make us the most money, and never purchase or do frivolous things.

As an example for my players I recommend that they look at what their average day or month looks like. How much time do they spend doing what they SHOULD do vs what they WANT to do. Not simply going to school or work, but being 100% present in that work. Finishing 100%, as quickly as possible, and then looking for more work and finishing more work. What do you spend your money on? Look around the house, are there decorative items? Furniture? Knickknacks, pictures, games, junk food, etc.?

What does the average PC spend their time doing? What do they spend their money on? Do they systematically get better, or do they find themselves looking back and say, 'Wow, what happened to the last 10 years? I expected to be 6th level by now.' When they get back to town do they pick up new furniture, buy a new horse, pick up a new tapestry for the dining hall, send the kids to a private tutor, etc? Do they even have a house? Usually the money is spent on buying new weapons, magic items and potions if possible, and a trip to the tavern.

When you find a treasure horde with jewelry, fine wines, rare silks from Kara-Tur, etc. are you excited or just want to know how much you can sell them for?

Being evil is just not in most people's nature. Sure, given the opportunity most of us will do some things that the D&D cosmology considers evil. But realistically, how many people actually follow that path? Not because we think we're going to go to hell, or get stuck in a Wall for eternity, but because it's just not what most of us are comfortable doing. Plus it's hard. Very hard. Society and religion alone promote being good, because that is good for all of us. Not to mention that for most of us, if torturing orphans would subject us to an eternity with Bane or Bhaal, we'd be terrified. For most people that would be worse than serving Kelemvor (which really doesn't sound that bad), and possibly worse than the Wall.

Most people don't live their life worried about what happens to them in the afterlife, other than a general overriding morality that derives from their religion. Most live their life focusing on what will happen today, tomorrow, and maybe next year. The more organized might think a little farther ahead. If every decision people made was based off of what happens in the afterlife, the world would be a different place.

Again, it's the difference between game and setting. A lot of people build and play a character based on the rules. I'm coming at it from the opposite direction - use the rules to support the story of the characters and the world they live in.

The rules say it's more beneficial to kill the groveling and surrendering goblin than to let it go. I'll gain more experience and possibly some treasure. But my moral center says that killing, other than in self-defense, is wrong.

The rules say that improving my Perception skill is better, but I like animals and grew up on a farm so I'm spending my expertise on Animal Handling and Medicine. Will it benefit me in the game? Maybe, maybe not. But I don't care, it's part of who I am as this given character.

As I said before, for mortals, alignment is a description. Like I am male, have brown hair, blue eyes. I also happen to be neutral good (which is where I think the majority of people fall). My being neutral good has no impact on my afterlife in the Forgotten Realms. I've said mean things, I've stolen things, I've killed small animals without cause. I've even killed the surrendering goblin. Those don't move me from neutral good, they are simply failures in my ability to live up to the standards I've set for myself and the things I believe in.

Alignment describes your moral center, and your intent. What you strive to be in a perfect world. It's not a perfect world.

D&D the game is designed for the players to be the heroes. That is, the ones fighting 'evil' whether it's an oppressive overlord, and orc horde, or an actually evil demon prince. Why? Well, partly because of our society. But mostly because it works better that way. If the players are all playing selfish, in-it-for-themselves, backstabbing murderers that will destroy all who don't follow them, the game falls apart.

Evil in archetypal fiction always views Good as a weakness. And Good always prevails through love, kindness, and working as a team.

Just because the Wall trumps the alignment system doesn't make it evil. Nor does the fact that the Realms afterlife is based on your faith and actions in your mortal life. It just is. And just like our world, people lean towards good, and heroic actions are good, villainous actions are evil. Good generally prevails simply because they work better together over a longer period of time. Short-term evil may survive, but the fate of evil isn't fun and games. They often live shorter lives, die more violent deaths, and live in strife for eternity in the domains of their Evil Gods.

Ilbranteloth

 

[Scribe]

I disagree that Evil alignments are not as valid as Good. Just because the overriding story (meta story/setting?) follows the traditional High Fantasy trope of Good overcoming Evil, doesnt mean Evil cannot be played well and as valid. Bane's entry specifically shows how an Evil Deity can have positive (for the majority) impacts on a region in the Realms.

Being a Devout worshiper of an Evil Deity is totally valid, and certainly just as valid as a Atheist viewpoint.

 

[MG.0]

I disagree that Evil alignments are not as valid as Good.

Agreed. While heroes are a major trope of D&D, anti-heroes can be every bit as interesting.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Here is the problem I think I am a banana is having.

He thinks the worlds of D&D like the Realms or Greyhawk are good places that have evil in them. That is not the case. They are neutral places that favor nothing. Good and Evil just both appear in it and come into conflict. In greyhawk evil controls half the map even.

You think that because that good people suffer even though evil and neutral people suffer as well it is unfair. In actuality it is fair, to let good people off would be biased for good.

Not one of the gods of the dead has been good. Jergal simply did not care what happened with the faithless and false souls and left them to wonder, where they would eventually be taken by fiends. Myrkul was evil and tormented the souls and put the fear of death into the mortal world promising torment to any in his realm (Even sending avatars to funreals once in a while just to terrify people and remind them that he would collect them eventually as well), eventually building a wall of the souls that were his to with as he pleased. When Cryic became god of the dead he was just as bad as Myrkul and continued to put the fear of death into mortals. When Kelemvor took the spot he decided to get rid of the fear of death that Myrkul and Cyric had created and make death not seem like a bad thing and to reward the brave. However this backfired with his priests spreading his doctrine brave and heroic mortals lost their fear of death, resulting in many of them dying for the simple reason they had learned that Kelemvor would reward them. Even if they worshiped no gods who would accept them throwing their lives away they would still did so knowing Kelemvor would reward them. Kelemvor changed his stance quickly knowing he had to put fear of death back into the brave and noble or else eventually only the cowardly and unworthy would be left to run the world. This system also drained his fellow gods of worshipers. Kelemvor decided to make the fugue a place were the unclaimed would not find punishment, but neither would they find joy just people with similar outlooks. The false would be punished depending on how badly they had betrayed their god and the faithless would end in the wall.

As Kelemvor said "No one should love death, death should never be preferable to life."

 

[Hussar]

Why not let the players play who they want and see if you can make it work? Setting is a guide, it doesn't have to be as absolute as you are making it. Every piece of fantastic fiction starts with someone doing something they're not supposed to be doing...so why take that core concept away? Think about it.

"No no no...Hobbits simply do not go on adventures!"

Now, this is a somewhat different issue, and one that's easier to answer IMO.

I'm sick to death of stock D&D settings. I really, really am. Our Darksun campaign, our Dragonlance campaign and now our Forgotten Realms campaign are only different in window dressing. The characters, by and large, could be imported from setting to setting without any real change. Sure, the flavour of those characters would change, since some of them are very embedded in a specific setting, but, from a higher POV, yeah, there's absolutely no problem shifting one character from setting to setting.

And, as I said, I'm absolutely sick of it. I've been gaming in kitchen sink settings for far too long. I want a setting where the setting actually matters, where you can't simply plop down Wizard #23 into the game and nothing changes.

So, no, it's not, "Hobbits simply don't go on adventures", it's, "This is a world where hobbits have all been wiped off the face of the planet by zombie squirrels." Don't bring your gnome priest of Garl Glittergold into my Darksun campaign please. Make a character that actually FITS with the setting, rather than playing against the setting for the fifteenth time.

Every single group I've ever played in, including the current one, I see the same thing. DM sets a setting, whatever that setting is, and you get four players who make characters that are either embedded in the setting or are at worst neutral to the setting (yet another Man with No Name, fish out of water character), and then there's always that one guy (who is, admittedly, sometimes me ) whose character isn't just neutral to the setting but is actually openly hostile, in that it runs either directly counter to the setting, or is badly, badly out of sync with the feel of the setting (playing a psychotic murder hobo in a Dragonlance campaign as a recent example).

Look, I'm not against intra-party conflict. That's fine and great. But, that conflict shouldn't be so fundamental to the character that it just stands out so badly that it has to be lampshaded session after session. The Shardmind in Darksun - yeah, you look like a walking diamond, but, we'll ignore that by throwing a cloak over you so that you aren't instantly murdered in the street. The kobold bard that is suave and good natured and acts in every way like a gnome, but, is a kobold and the player expects to be treated well and get along with everyone the party meets.

I'm frankly just sick to death of players that feel that playing the "anti-setting character" somehow makes them interesting and unique. It's the lazy way out. I mentioned this upthread - it's easy to stand out when you play a Cylon in a Star Wars campaign, but, that doesn't make it interesting. It's an old and tired cliche that I'm just really tired of. Make a character that fits with the tone and background of the setting, make that character with ties to that setting, and THEN make your character unique and interesting. That's the challenge.

 

[MG.0]

"This is a world where hobbits have all been wiped off the face of the planet by zombie squirrels."

I'd play in that game.

play a Cylon in a Star Wars campaign

Pretty sure I saw one of those in the latest Star Wars movie, masquerading as a Storm Trooper.

 

[Hussar]

...because they're good? Because a setting about fantasy heroics values being good? Because alignment indicates that good is...you know...a good thing to be?

/snip

If FR was interested in promoting some sort of non-traditional-D&D values system where something other than being Good was encouraged, it would look very different mechanically and fictionally from what it looks like now. For one, the pantheon wouldn't be nearly so haphazard.


He doesn't HAVE TO punish anyone! It's up to the gods and/or Ao to have this unjust system or not, and those are all NPC's whose opinions can change - whose opinions can BE CHANGED by PCs. In a world of heroic fantasy, heroes fight injustice, which would include the Wall just as it includes the Cult of the Dragon or the Cult of Elemental Evil or the Demon Princes who invade the Underdark.

Most of the good gods though are not gods of "good". Most of them do not have "good" as part of their portfolio. Chantea, goddess of agriculture, for example, might be Neutral Good, but, her portfolio has zero to do with alignment. Any non-evil farmer would probably say prayers to her to bring in a good harvest. Should she die, until such time as her portfolio was taken up by someone else, all the crops would die.

Does that make it coercion to offer prayers to Chantea? After all, if you abandon her, and everyone else does the same, everyone in the world would die. How is that not coercion on a level far more direct than The Wall? Shouldn't we be battling that? That's monstrous. She's holding the entire world hostage - worship Chantea or everyone dies is a pretty darn evil thing. Yet, we pass it off as no problem.

Even Cyric is not the God of Evil. He's a god of evil things. It's an important distinction. There are no "alignment gods" in Forgotten Realms and I think you've made a mistake in ignoring that fact. In Greyhawk, Pelor is actually the god of Good, credited with creating much that is good in the setting. FR doesn't really have "alignment" gods. You don't worship Bhaal because you are evil. You worship Bhaal because you are a murdering psychopath, regardless of your actual alignment. Worshippers of Cyric don't even have to be evil, just CN.

I'm still not really clear, to be honest, why "heroic fantasy" precludes the idea of every "hero" has to be devout. Good grief, doesn't that describe MOST heroic fantasy? Conan worshipped Crom. Elric renounced the gods and chose Arioch. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings is pretty much agnostic in the texts, but, the Simularion makes it pretty clear that everyone has chosen a side. I'm actually drawing something of a blank on fantasy heroes which flat out deny faith without consequence. Where the character denies the gods, in a setting that has gods, but, this has zero impact on the character.

I'd argue that the reverse is far, far more common.

 

[Hussar]

I'd play in that game.



Pretty sure I saw one of those in the latest Star Wars movie, masquerading as a Storm Trooper.

Missing the point though. I'm very much not saying you can't do it. Obviously you can. I've seen it done, again and again, in campaign after campaign. And I'm incredibly tired of it. It's lazy character design. "Hey look at me, I'm different because I'm bending the genre". Whoopee. Anyone can do that. To me, it's a much more interesting challenge, and makes for a much more interesting campaign, when everyone works within the constraints of that campaign and tries to make interesting and unique characters within those constraints.

That you saw them does not change my point.

---

A further thought occurs just to better illustrate my point. I think this example of a Cylon in a SW game really drives my point home.

In BSG, the theme of what is a human is a major element of the show. Are cylons "alive"? If you wipe a cylon's memory, is that murder or is it the same as wiping the hard drive on a computer? This is a huge element of the show. Any BSG RPG game I played, I would expect this to be a pretty big theme in the game.

In Star Wars though, this issue is 100% absent. Wiping a droid's memory is no more a moral issue than re-installing Windows. It's done casually without the slightest hint of a moral issue. More importantly, in the shows, it appears that the droids themselves are 100% okay with it. They might not like it - "please don't wipe my memory" but, they don't seem to have a whole lot of issue with it. Droids are treated as 100% machines. Smart machines, but, still machines with no more autonomy than my cell phone or my car. It's 100% not a theme in Star Wars.

Now, adding it to a SW campaign might be very interesting. I'd certainly play in that game. I find the issue fascinating, and a campaign with that as a major or minor theme would interest me greatly. So, it's not like I'm against the idea in and of itself.

But, if the GM says, "Ok, we're going to play a smugglers SW campaign, and we're going to buckle our swashes and chandelier our swings" I would not expect this theme of "what is a person" to play a role. It's completely out of place with the base theme of the campaign. A player who brings his Cylon character to this campaign obviously hasn't bought into the campaign. That player is trying to change the campaign at the outset. Adding that character to the campaign means that the campaign will be very different than what the GM originally brought to the table. Now, if everyone else and the GM is groovy with that, then fine, no problem.

Where the problem occurs, IMO, is when four players bring in swashbuckling heroes ready for actions of daring do and one player brings in his Cylon. It just doesn't fit with the campaign. It's especially egregious when you don't do group character generation and the other four players are now blindsided by this one character. No one wants to be "that guy" and tell a fellow player that his or her character doesn't fit with the campaign, mostly because most groups default to the GM for that decision. And the GM might not want to be "that guy" either. So, we wind up with two different campaigns going on at the table. One where the four players are playing and one with that one player off doing his own thing, even if they're all at the same table at the same time. It leads to very difficult situations at the table. Often times, it can lead to campaign ending situations.

To me, it's no different than that guy who brings his urban hating druid to an urban thieves campaign or a psychopathic evil character to a high heroic campaign. It's disruptive and, imo, very selfish. It shows a lack of buy in to the campaign that's being played and a strong inclination to try to drive the campaign into directions that the campaign isn't really set up to go.