D&D General A Gruumsh Of A Different Type

[Bohandas]

In fact, if you make Nerull seperate from worship, would he even have any churches? How could he get clerics. It would all be cults and hidden sects.

I'm pretty sure that's canon.

The only evil god who is openly worshipped on Oreth is Hextor.

Never been exposed to either of those things

Beneath the Planet of the Apes

Spoiler

The heavens declare the glory of the Bomb, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. His sound has gone out unto all the land. And his light unto the end of the world. He descendeth from the outermost part of heaven, and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof. There is neither speech nor language, yet His voice is heard among them. Praise Him. Praise Him. My strength and my redeemer. Glory be to the Bomb and to the holy fallout as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen. Amen Amen Amen Amen Almighty and everlasting Bomb, who came down among us to make heaven under Earth, lighten our darkness. Oh Instrument of God, grant us Thy peace. Almighty Bomb Who destroyed all devils And created angels Behold His glory Behold the truth that abides in us. Reveal that truth unto that Maker. I reveal my inmost self unto my God. Unto my God. Unto my God. All things bright and beautiful All creatures great and small All things wise and wonderful The good Bomb made us all He gave us eyes to see with And lips that we might tell How great the Bomb Almighty Who made all things well May the blessings of the Bomb Almighty and the fellowship of the Holy Fallout descend on us all, this night and for evermore. Amen.

Everlasting Bomb

Spoiler

Above christians, muslims, and jews
Above everything and everyone
Ready to steam you
Ready to burn you
Ready to kill everything away
Waiting for weakness
Waiting for anger
Waiting for a reason to become a god
Going to use you
Going to break you,
make you pull the trigger

Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth
Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth

Killing for the nation
Killing for the family
Killing for religion
Killing for any reason anywhere
Taking care of children
Taking care of parents
Everything burns just the same
No need to regret
No need to pray
The Bomb will love you anyway
Goal is destruction
Goal is extinction,
bloodshed in the name of god

Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth
Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth

Almighty
and everlasting Bomb
Almighty

Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth
Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth
Almighty
and everlasting Bomb
Almighty and everlasting Bomb
came down among us
to make Heaven of Earth

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Such a cult would have time attracting members while not being stomped out by the good religions.

Even if gods are independent of followers, such a god would still want followers to exert their will.

Some will, sure.

Great, they are independent of worship. Now what?

Now they function like a religion, and act like gods. They were around before mortals existed, will be around when all the mortals are dust, and interact with and give aid to mortals because they want to.

This means there are gods who don't give a damn about having followers, and gods with big active churches, and this difference has nothing at all to do with how powerful each god is in their domain.

Reads more like a cult than an organized religion

Nah, it reads exactly like a religion. Lots of sacred texts and prayers sound like that.


Doesn't all of this seem more like it'd be on topic in the thread about evil gods, though?

 

[Charlaquin]

Usually gods of destructive forces like death, plague, famine, etc. are not so much worshipped as they are appeased. You make sacrifices to the gods of these things in hopes that they will be satisfied by these offerings and leave you alone. So while I don’t see anyone being like “I’m down with the death of all living things! Hail Nerull!” I do see people being like “Nerull, I’ll kill this cow for you, please don’t kill me.”

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm pretty sure that's canon.

The only evil god who is openly worshipped on Oreth is Hextor.

Great.

So what makes Nerull different from Orcus?

Why is Nerull even a god?

Now they function like a religion, and act like gods. They were around before mortals existed, will be around when all the mortals are dust, and interact with and give aid to mortals because they want to.

This means there are gods who don't give a damn about having followers, and gods with big active churches, and this difference has nothing at all to do with how powerful each god is in their domain.

Same question as above.

What is the difference between Nerull and Orcus then?

 

[Minigiant]

Usually gods of destructive forces like death, plague, famine, etc. are not so much worshipped as they are appeased. You make sacrifices to the gods of these things in hopes that they will be satisfied by these offerings and leave you alone. So while I don’t see anyone being like “I’m down with the death of all living things! Hail Nerull!” I do see people being like “Nerull, I’ll kill this cow for you, please don’t kill me.”

But Nerull wants you and everyone else dead. He doesn't want sacrifices outside of your own death.

Gruumsh just wants the enemies of his followers (mostly orcs) dead.

 

[Mirtek]

Even if gods are independent of followers, such a god would still want followers to exert their will.

He's just patient. More than anything he's patient. In the end he always gets his will in regard to mortals.

 

[GreenTengu]

A fictional nonhuman race is dehumanized? Duh...

The idea is that they embody whatever aspects of humankind that the current writer decides are "the worst" and thus, over the years, have generally resembled whichever group of humans that the current writer or artist believes least deserve to be treated with humanity.

Orcs are not something entirely divorced from reality, but rather the collection of the negative stereotypes the person who holds a negative view about another group of humans has about those they most dislike without any of the mitigating factors that might cause one to feel sympathy for them.

One could easily create an "entirely fictional" race of evil humanoids that are based on the way the Nazis depicted Jewish people. They could be rat people with beady eyes, giant noses, curly, gnarled beards, sneaky and constantly looking to collect and horde gold, etc. Give them another name ans they would be "entirely fictional nonhuman race". The issue is that anyone who took one look at them would know exactly who they were referring to.

If D&D was transparent enough to have a dark-skinned race that was dark skinned with big lips, loved watermelon and fried chicken, were naturally quite lazy and stupid and if one doesn't keep them in bondage and put them to work that they will naturally get addicted to drugs, commit every crime in the book and can't be trusted with weapons-- one put all the disclaimers they want saying that this race is "not human" and "in no way meant to be a negative reflection on anyone" and they could bring up how statistics prove that African-Americans don't actually like fried chicken or watermelon nor do drugs anymore often than white people do... all the disclaimers in the world wouldn't make one bit of difference, it would be so very obvious who the race was designed to refer to and what ideas it was designed to convey.

Orcs can't really be locked in as so specifically referring to a single group of people. After all, they have been used by different writers and artists to reflect different groups they had negative views of over the years. Hobgoblins are a bit easier, in most depictions they have kind of unapologetically been Asians. Or at least they have either been Spartans or Samurai. Which is slightly less worse as those are particularly social groups that set themselves apart from the rest of humanity and considered themselves to be something above everyone else. Though it is still rather odd that just being born a Hobgoblin automatically makes one evil and not enough of them can ever escape that for no one to need hesitate on killing them.

But Orcs? Are they Gauls/Celts? Are they Mongols? Are they Indians? Are they Africans? It super depends on the writer at the time and which cultural influences they felt confident they could have the "evil race" reflect.

And its kind of unavoidable. So long as there is a race who is "just born evil" and they have some sort of culture, that culture is going to reflect some real world culture because humans are simply not creative enough to create a totally new and original culture-- or, perhaps, at least not both create one and keep it consistent across dozens of writers and artists. As long as your fictional race has some sort of identifiable culture-- they are going to be like some real life group, or at least the common stereotypes about some real life group.

And I do find it strange how D&D has found it unnecessary to remove the horror elements from some things.

Vampire and Lycanthropes are about unstoppable disease and how infection can warp one from whatever they once were to being merely a transmitter of that disease. Yet somehow people have no issue with vampirism and lycanthrope being transformed into simply feats and powers that a character could potentially acquire.

Devils/demons are meant to be beings of pure malfeasance who literally feed and reproduce off of evil being done in the world-- yet somehow demonically infected humans, Tieflings, can be a base PC race and any ill effect of literally being, at least in part, a being that is made up of purely evil energy-- that's perfectly fine.

But weirdly-- the common human-like "monster" races that are born into the world through normal means, are not inherently mystical in any way, have to somehow grow to adulthood within an at least semi-functional society, are fully conscious and self-aware and have free will.... somehow those are the things that absolutely cannot be allowed to be proper PC races, must be kept as people that one can identify by physical characteristics and automatically know their lack of morality and slaughter on sight? And if they are allowed to be PCs, they must be designed to be woefully underpowered compared to other PCs and have NPCs mistreat them at every opportunity in order to punish the player for having chosen an "wrong" race?

Since I was 12 years old and picked up my first basic D&D box, that if I thought the Goblins with their big ears and dog-like faces looked cute and I want to play one of those-- why is that either not allowed or I should feel like its impossible for me to contribute to the party for having wanted to play the more unusual looking thing? And if the world is inhabited by 100x as many goblinoids and orcs, like... why is Drow the evil race that can suddenly be good? Why are they inventing this new Dragon-people race wholesale and awkwardly inserting it into the worlds? Why are what are basically robots being prioritized as a proper, balanced PC race?

Even if only 1-2% of the goblins, orcs, hobgoblins, bugbears, etc. were good aligned and friendly to humans-- wouldn't they vastly outnumber these other options? Yet... if we want to play the game, we are officially not allowed to choose them? Or we have to play the game with what amounts to half a level or an entire level penalty if we insist on playing them?

Even if we were to put aside that they are the only peoples who are regularly depicted as non-white and dressed in non-European clothing, just... why? What is so damn necessary to the very essence of D&D that one be able to look at someone with whatever colored skin, know they are evil and be confident that gutting them before even uttering a greeting is the most holy and righteous course of action that they would rather players use magic rabies as super powers than allow a person to play as one of the yellow-skinned or red-skinned people?

 

[Bohandas]

But Orcs? Are they Gauls/Celts? Are they Mongols? Are they Indians? Are they Africans? It super depends on the writer at the time and which cultural influences they felt confident they could have the "evil race" reflect.

Or the Irish, or New Yorkers, or people from Appalacia, or Germans, or Italians, or Russians, or white people from the rural south, oe people from New Jersey. or folks from certain parts of London....

Stupid and and loutish with a tendency to violence is really something that every group has said about every other group, and thus really no more offensive than if D&D has a race that were literally ass-clowns or embodied some other generic insult

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Great.

So what makes Nerull different from Orcus?

Why is Nerull even a god?




Same question as above.

What is the difference between Nerull and Orcus then?

Why should I care, though?

I mean first of all I don’t even use either of them in my games, but even if I did, having one wouldn’t preclude the other in any way.

 

[Kurotowa]

One could easily create an "entirely fictional" race of evil humanoids that are based on the way the Nazis depicted Jewish people. They could be rat people with beady eyes, giant noses, curly, gnarled beards, sneaky and constantly looking to collect and horde gold, etc. Give them another name ans they would be "entirely fictional nonhuman race". The issue is that anyone who took one look at them would know exactly who they were referring to.

The name you're looking for is "dwarves". Tolkien's collection of stereotypes was moderately less vitriolically hateful, but the dwarven refugees of The Hobbit are self-admittedly modeled on the Jewish diaspora. You'll note that more than half the traits you list there still apply.

In general the depiction of dwarves has evolved enough that it's not particularly a problem anymore. Not nearly so pressing an issue of that of orcs and a few others, at least. But it's important to know where the roots lie so we can be sure not to fall back on bad habits.