Dragonlance [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defenders?

[doctorbadwolf]

The Wall is the source of maltheists, if it exists at all in my FR games.

If the gods are real (and we don’t play in the time of troubles so most people haven’t ever seen a god) and the Wall of The Faithless is part of their cosmology, then the gods are the adversaries of mortals.

A small cult arises, dedicated to killing gods and turning people away from their worship.

 

[Ibrandul]

That's a common misconception.

Forgotten Realms materials were very clear that if you didn't actively chose a patron god, you didn't end up among the Faithless. Instead, your soul would be picked up by a deity of appropriate alignment or relevant portfolio to the deceased.

To be fair, some FR materials are very clear about that.

Others, such as the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, are much less clear. The relevant section of that book says "the truly false and faithless" without explaining what "truly" means.

SCAG also hedges a little closer to the Greenwood-preferred "this might or might not even be true at all" interpretation by opening the whole section with "Most humans believe . . . ," suggesting some variance in belief even among humans and evidently excluding demihumans and other intelligent beings.

FWIW, so far as I know, that's still the only official 5e game book that even mentions the thing.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think an awful lot of it is just down to people making broad assumptions about what's "okay" without either thinking it through, or having even the light philosophical basis to say "Wait, this seems kind of messed-up", instead just leaning into their own cultural biases.

Combine that a lot of different writers with different takes messing with stuff, again a lot of them without being terribly interested in the ideas, or really thinking them through, and you get a mess like the Wall of the Faithless. The Cataclysm seems to be similar but just with one or two writers turning their own perfectly reasonable idea into a bizarre and hard-to-take one.

I think that this is the source of most of the problematic elements of D&D. Lazy trope base writing, probably the writers are dashing stuff out to very short deadlines, with little consideration of the deeper implications of this. No actual malice intended but no real curation of the material, so that people like us with time on our hands go "WTF! that makes no sense"

 

[Maxperson]

In the vein that they view the Cataclysm that the gods sent to the mortal world for Istar's corruption as justified to some extent. Or believe that consigning antitheists and atheists to cosmic building blocks is a necessary evil for the greater good.

Dragonlance has been on my mind lately for various reasons, and between it and Forgotten Realms I notice that the tabletop social circles I notice certain acts of divine violence as a big dealbreaker for people who'd otherwise be interested in the settings. Or they like the settings but would either retcon or alter said aspects, or even cast the gods in a more antagonistic role.

But the number of Wall/Cataclysm defenders I know of can be counted on one hand. And I've been on quite the number of forums.

Has anyone here encountered such defenders? What was their reasoning?

And if any posters happen to be such defenders, I wouldn't mind hearing your rationales.

When I ran Dragonlance in 1e and 2e I kept thr cataclysm. I still run FR and the faithless suffer their punishment. I'm no so much defending those ideas as much as I just don't see a need to change them. They are what they are.

 

[wingsandsword]

To be fair, some FR materials are very clear about that.

Others, such as the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, are much less clear. The relevant section of that book says "the truly false and faithless" without explaining what "truly" means.

SCAG also hedges a little closer to the Greenwood-preferred "this might or might not even be true at all" interpretation by opening the whole section with "Most humans believe . . . ," suggesting some variance in belief even among humans and evidently excluding demihumans and other intelligent beings.

FWIW, so far as I know, that's still the only official 5e game book that even mentions the thing.

I don't play 5e and don't know what they've written about it for 5e.

In the 2e and 3e era materials I'm familiar with, they were pretty clear that you don't get punished for not selecting a patron deity. You get declared Faithless for outright rejecting all the deities in life, by refusing to worship them at any level. Even if you only given them token acknowledgement, or worship ones from beyond Faerun, then something will be done otherwise, such as your spirit going to a deity of an appropriate alignment or portfolio if you didn't bother to declare a specific patron deity but at least gave some nominal worship to the gods in general during life, or your spirit being handed off to another pantheon from a different continent or world to be sent on its way if you were a follower of a foreign god for some reason.

The False were those that were hypocrites, that openly were members of a religion, while secretly holding absolutely no faith in it or outright betraying it. A city guard who was a worshipper of Helm, who regularly took bribes to look the other way while people broke the law or trespassed where he was supposed to guard might be considered false. A follower of Ilmater, who openly was a member of that faith and participated in worship services, but privately was cruel to beggars, dismissive of the injured and disabled, and generally callous towards the sick and suffering might count as False. . .and so could a Good (or at least Neutral) person who joined a Cult of Bane because they wanted the power that came with membership, wanted to avoid the attacks that the cult gave to outsiders, but kept his morals and virtues and worked to undermine the Cult from within, would probably be considered a False follower of Bane, especially if he didn't have some other relationship with some other deity he was "actually" following the whole time.

 

[Ibrandul]

In the 2e and 3e era materials I'm familiar with, they were pretty clear

Agreed. But then, 2e and 3e materials were in general much more detailed than 5e, and with lore materials that often means much clearer also.

(Not edition-warring! I actually like 5e!)

 

[Leatherhead]

And ceasing to exist completely after you die is precisely the sort of thing atheists expect will happen when they die isnt it?

Being slowly and torturously turned into a non-sentient brick is not the same thing as instantaneously joining the void and ceasing to exist.

 

[Ibrandul]

Of course, when it comes to the Forgotten Realms, there are at least two horses' mouths: Ed Greenwood, and TSR/WotC.

But still, from the horse's mouth, just now, in response to a couple of questions I asked Greenwood this morning based on issues brought up in the present thread:

'A very small handful of sentients in the Realms truly don't believe deities exist (less than 0.5%); they would be the "Faithless." Most DO "believe in" all the gods, even if they profess to repudiate them. Many 'cleave to' one deity above others, even if slightly. That 'ever so slightly favored' deity is their patron deity, if they don't openly profess and embrace a patron (as clerics and paladins do). The Wall of Faithless is more of a bugaboo tale told by priests and spread over tavern tables than it is a Great Big Doom.'

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

It is very hard to be atheist in a fantasy world where clerics can turn undeads and can heal by means of divine magic.

I think the faithless wall is an unjust fate for people who worshipped deities who were real in the past, but now they are "in the other side". There was even one feat about the cult of dead gods in the 3.5 Forgotten Realm sourcebook about the ancient empires.

Adon was a cleric who lost the faith, but later he recovered it, or at least he accepted Mystra as patron.

I say it again: The demiplane of the dread may be a more interesting fate for the walls trapped in the wall.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Of course, when it comes to the Forgotten Realms, there are at least two horses' mouths: Ed Greenwood, and TSR/WotC.

But still, from the horse's mouth, just now, in response to a couple of questions I asked Greenwood this morning based on issues brought up in the present thread:

Why should those tiny minority of people be punished, though? That’s the salient question.

There are real life equivalents, but we can’t go into them here.

It’s not unreasonable at all, in such a world, for some sentients to view all the gods as evil.