D&D General Is there an increase in "godless" campaign settings?

[Thunder Brother]

A "god" is a personification of some important feature of the cosmos, who demands hierarchical servitude.

Two things are going on. Both the symbol of what is important. And the social enslavement.

Emphasis mine. From where are you drawing these definitions?

Not trying to be argumentative, I'm genuinely curious. Despite how passive aggressive "I'm genuinely curious" may sound.

 

[Yaarel]

Emphasis mine. From where are you drawing these definitions?

Not trying to be argumentative, I'm genuinely curious. Despite how passive aggressive "I'm genuinely curious" may sound.

The concept of gods is inherently an institution of slavery.

In ancient texts, the terms "slave", "servant", are the slaves of the divine "master", "lord", "owner".

The hierarchization of spirituality during the Bronze Age, is because of the emergence of human hierarchies, monarchies, indentured servants, and captured slaves.

 

[Flamestrike]

At the risk of hijacking the thread and going off topic... What is a god if not a powerful being/outsider?

Omnipotent.

Take Bane for example. Once a mortal, and has been killed as a God once already.

He didnt create anything and doesnt know anything about anything. He's not Omnipotent at all.

The closest thing in Faerun to a God is Ao. The 'Gods' are just middle management.

 

[Thunder Brother]

Omnipotent.

Take Bane for example. Once a mortal, and has been killed as a God once already.

He didnt create anything and doesnt know anything about anything. He's not Omnipotent at all.

The closest thing in Faerun to a God is Ao. The 'Gods' are just middle management.

Bane is a god under most definitions of the word.

Omnipotence is a very narrow definition for a god (or deity, to use the better term), and really only comes out of a monotheistic tradition.

If a powerful being that often personifies an aspect of the world and can give power in exchange for worship isn't a god because they lack omnipotence, then we're operating under very different, and possibly incompatible, definitions.

 

[Yora]

D&D in particular has always had plenty of gods, but never really dealt with religion and faiths. Gods have their assigned field of responsibility, but they never actually do anything.

Which I guess is partly due to the source references. We have a few surviving stories from Greek and Germanic myth in which gods appear, but know barely anything about faith and religious practice. Indian religion is probably the best surviving example of ancient Indo-European religion, but western fantasy writers generally know very little about it.

So what we get is the Olympian Soap Opera stuff and little else. Which frankly adds very little to a setting and doesn't affect PCs.

 

[Azzy]

In my homebrew, I've taken the approach that it is unknowable if the gods are real, but I've also played with non-tradition D&D religions (pantheons) so I kinda needed to take that approach. One the main religions is very much monotheistic, but there are various animism, shamanism, polytheism, ancestor cults, etc. religions.

 

[Flamestrike]

Bane is a god under most definitions of the word.

Not my definition.

He's not omnipotent or omniscient, didnt create reality, and doesnt judge people on death (thats Kelemvors job).

He's just a dude. A powerful dude, but a dude.

He (like all the deities of Fareun) are middle management for Ao (who is the only actual god who sets the rules for them to follow, created everything, and and can unmake them as Gods or turn others into Gods as he sees fit).

Its like how the Maiar are not Gods in Midde Earth. Only Eru is. The others are just servants and middle management for the one true God.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

If a powerful being that often personifies an aspect of the world and can give power in exchange for worship isn't a god, then we're operating under very different, and possibly incompatible, definitions.

Here's the problem though - "in exchange for worship".

That's the issue, the one you're apparently glossing over and/or don't realize is important.

That's not how the gods themselves in a lot of settings, including most of the ones discussed, present what's going on. Nor is it clearly what the writers are thinking a lot of the time. The trouble is, you have multiple concepts of divinity colliding. And "personifies an aspect of the world" is some extremely vague stuff which actually does not accurately describe a lot of mythological gods.

In the FR, for example, worship doesn't work the way you describe. It's essentially at gunpoint. Gods offer you literally nothing. Not a damn thing. Nowt. There's no exchange. You have to pick at least one to worship, or else your soul will be shoved into the shredder when you die (where other souls can go to various heavens/hells and potentially be reborn or w/e). Depending on who is writing, failure to select at least one god to worship may have bad consequences in life (not, seemingly, from the god, but from "the system").

On top of that the FR gods don't really seem to "personify aspects of the world", as much as they seem to be powerful beings who have attempted to claim aspects of the world. But they still don't offer you anything. You just have to pick one and hope maybe they're decent to you, but it's a one-way relationship. You honor them, they do absolutely nothing for you. They don't even save your soul from the celestial shredder. That's done by the celestial bureaucracy (or Kelemvor, depending on who you ask - Greenwood seems to exclude Kelemvor from the process) in exchange for you picking a god.

The whole thing is a goddamn hideous mess that exists because people tried to fuse a Greco-Roman "bunch of gods who have personalities and are total wankers though I guess we have to claim some of them have Good alignments even though they clearly don't act Good" with Christian (not even Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic) concepts like you being damned for eternity if you failed to worship capital-g God, or in this case, at least one of these Greco-Roman jerkboys. And there's the full jerkboy action where if you fail to honour other gods, they're allowed to be as spiteful and vile to you as they like, should you be in their "sphere", even if they're supposedly "Good".

It's a goddamn mess. And "a goddamn mess" describes most of the D&D pantheons. I mean, what you're describing, a being that gives power in exchange for worship could equally be described as a demon, or a spirit. Adding in the rather dodgy "personifies an aspect of the world" is somewhat nonsensical. It's not actually connected in any way to the latter. Like, if a demon decides to "personify an aspect of the world", is he now a god? I don't think so mate. I mean, by your logic, one of the Fey who personifies "the summer" or whatever whilst granting powers to Warlocks is "a god".

On top of this, the FR gods aren't even "top of the tree". Ao is - i.e. Alpha Omega - i.e. by implication the Christian God (at least in initial concept). Though as more has come out about him, Ao has moved away from that towards sort of the concept of The Watcher from Marvel, except more interventionist and powerful. So that further muddies the water.

Dragonlance similarly has a bizarre hybrid of Greco-Roman and Christian beliefs (again, not Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian, really - Mormon, to be specific, hence the golden discs), where the writers are simultaneously trying to have a pantheon full of bad-natured gods (still some Good aligned despite being cruel) yet to hew to Christian concepts of the divine being inherently righteous. In DL it's even more confusing because the "sins" the people of DL were punished for by an asteroid strike and the gods abandoning them are hard to understand as actual "sins". It's just like one of those confusing Biblical-style punishments. And to have that at the heart of the setting is even more bizarre.

But this isn't other people being difficult - it's you taking an extremely simplistic view (which fuses two concepts which have no business being fused) which doesn't actually fit how pantheons work in most official D&D settings.

I can't even think of an official D&D setting that fits the simple, clean model of gods you describe.

D&D in particular has always had plenty of gods, but never really dealt with religion and faiths.

The Forgotten Realms is a major exception to this and is basically the "default" D&D setting now. It has extreme detail on the actual faith/religions. Trouble is, the FR gods are such a bunch of utter jerks (even the supposedly "Good" ones) with few exceptions (for example maybe their Christ-analogue is okay, though he is confusingly called Ilmater, like a Finnish god, even though he's basically Issek of the Jug from Fritz Leiber, another Christ-analogue). So it's very hard to believe people would worship them in the ways described (i.e. willingly, positively, rather than fearfully). It's very hard to take the "Good" gods seriously because they're such utter scumbags, too. I mean, good grief, Clangeddin, god of literally genociding your enemies, is Lawful Good. I just don't know how to respond to that one. Virtually every G-aligned god in the FR has done more messed-up stuff than many of the lesser E-aligned ones, and they all let the celestial shredder continue to operate, which pretty clearly is Evil.

 

[Thunder Brother]

Not my definition.

He's not omnipotent or omniscient, didnt create reality, and doesnt judge people on death (thats Kelemvors job).

He's just a dude. A powerful dude, but a dude.

He (like all the deities of Fareun) are middle management for Ao (who is the only actual god who sets the rules for them to follow, created everything, and and can unmake them as Gods or turn others into Gods as he sees fit).

Its like how the Maiar are not Gods in Midde Earth. Only Eru is. The others are just servants and middle management for the one true God.

Okay then, we're operating under incompatible definitions of what a deity is. You prefer the more restrictive, monotheistic definition. I prefer the more open-ended polytheistic definition.

Note: From here on out I'm going to be using the term deity, to avoid any misunderstanding regards "gods" and "Gods" (because for some that capitalized G really matters).

I would totally define the Ainur (Valar and Maiar) as a deities, and I imagine others would as well. The presence of an all-powerful creator deity in the form of Eru doesn't diminish their importance with the story. Melkor, Ulmo, Mandos, Tulkas and all the rest play key roles in the mythology of Middle-Earth and Arda. To dismiss them as "middle management" is silly.

You're coming at this discussion with under the assumption that only the creator deity really matters, while I'm coming at this from the opposite assumption. To me a creator deity is often irrelevant because if they actually flexed their power, then the story wouldn't exist. An omnipotent, omnipresent deity is constrictive. Eru could have snuffed out Sauron if he wanted, but then you wouldn't have the story of the Fellowship.

Here's the problem though - "in exchange for worship".

That's the issue, the one you're apparently glossing over and/or don't realize is important.

That's not how the gods themselves in a lot of settings, including most of the ones discussed, present what's going on. Nor is it clearly what the writers are thinking a lot of the time. The trouble is, you have multiple concepts of divinity colliding. And "personifies an aspect of the world" is some extremely vague stuff which actually does not accurately describe a lot of mythological god.

In the FR, for example, worship doesn't work the way you describe. It's essentially at gunpoint. Gods offer you literally nothing. Not a damn thing. Nowt. There's no exchange. You have to pick at least one to worship, or else your soul will be shoved into the shredder when you die (where other souls can go to various heavens/hells and potentially be reborn or w/e). Depending on who is writing, failure to select at least one god to worship may have bad consequences in life (not, seemingly, from the god, but from "the system").

On top of that the FR gods don't really seem to "personify aspects of the world", as much as they seem to be powerful beings who have attempted to claim aspects of the world. But they still don't offer you anything. You just have to pick one and hope maybe they're decent to you, but it's a one-way relationship. You honor them, they do absolutely nothing for you. They don't even save your soul from the celestial shredder. That's done by the celestial bureaucracy in exchange for you picking a god.

The whole thing is a goddamn hideous mess that exists because people tried to fuse a Greco-Roman "bunch of gods who have personalities and are total wankers though I guess we have to claim some of them have Good alignments even though they clearly don't act Good" with Christian (not even Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic) concepts like you being damned for eternity if you failed to worship capital-g God, or in this case, at least one of these Greco-Roman jerkboys. And there's the full jerkboy action where if you fail to honor other gods, they're allowed to be as spiteful and vile to you as they like, should you be in their "sphere", even if they're supposedly "Good".

It's a goddamn mess. And "a goddamn mess" describes most of the D&D pantheons. I mean, what you're describing, a being that gives power in exchange for worship could equally be described as a demon, or a spirit. Adding in the rather dodgy "personifies an aspect of the world" is somewhat nonsensical. It's not actually connected in any way to the latter. Like, if a demon decides to "personify an aspect of the world", is he now a god? I don't think so mate.

On top of this, the FR gods aren't even "top of the tree". Ao is - i.e. Alpha Omega - i.e. by implication the Christian God (at least in initial concept). Though as more has come out about him, Ao has moved away from that towards sort of the concept of The Watcher from Marvel, except more interventionist and powerful. So that further muddies the water.

Dragonlance similarly has a bizarre hybrid of Greco-Roman and Christian beliefs (again, not Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian, really - Mormon, to be specific, hence the golden discs), where the writers are simultaneously trying to have a pantheon full of bad-natured gods (still some Good aligned despite being cruel) yet to hew to Christian concepts of the divine being inherently righteous. In DL it's even more confusing because the "sins" the people of DL were punished for by an asteroid strike and the gods abandoning them are hard to understand as actual "sins".

But this isn't other people being difficult - it's you taking an extremely simplistic view (which fuses two concepts which have no business being fused) which doesn't actually fit how pantheons work in most official D&D settings.

I can't even think of an official D&D setting that fits the simple, clean model of gods you describe.

The Forgotten Realms is a major exception to this and is basically the "default" D&D setting now. It has extreme detail on the actual faith/religions. Trouble is, the FR gods are such a bunch of utter jerks (even the supposedly "good" ones) with few exceptions (for example maybe their Christ-analogue is okay, though he is confusingly called Ilmater, like a Finnish god, even though he's basically Issek of the Jug from Fritz Leiber, another Christ-analogue). So it's very hard to believe people would worship them in the ways described (i.e. willingly, positively, rather than fearfully). It's very hard to take the "Good" gods seriously because they're such utter scumbags, too. I mean, jesus, Clangeddin, god of literally genociding your enemies, is Chaotic Good. I just don't know how to respond to that one. Virtually every G-aligned god in the FR has done more messed-up stuff than many of the E-aligned ones, and they all let the celestial shredder continue to operate.

Apologizes for the sloppy quoting, I'm still new to this website.

Beyond the absolute basic, I don't know jack about FR, so I apologize if you assumed I was approaching the discussion from that perspective. I know Bane only from the Baldur's Gate video games, and he passes my duck test for a deity. Beyond that, what I do know is that FR is an absolute mess cosmologically and religiously, the product of people who imitated those who came before them without the understanding of what they were imitating.

Okay then, let's operate under a better definition of a deity, because the single off-the-cuff example I used is obviously lacking. Taken from Wikipedia, quoting anthropologist C. Scott Littleton, "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". I hope this definition can clarify further discussion, at least in respect to where I am coming from.

I didn't know that my off-the-cuff comments would provoke such a response. I hope your rant was therapeutic.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life

Okay so here's the problem - that phrase doesn't apply to 99% of D&D gods.

So essentially what you're saying is that you're coming at this using definitions, which are irrelevant and confusing to the vast majority of the subject matter. In the real world, in anthropology, that's a very useful definition, and helps even separate gods and spirits to some extent - though the line is unclear - in D&D? It isn't. Hence the confusion.

So we're just left with "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively"

Which describes:

A) Most PCs above about level 8.

and

B) Most "serious" monsters and certainly all adult dragons.

And this is exactly why people are saying D&D's gods aren't gods. They aren't elevating anyone's consciousness. They're just big thugs, and one day, if you kill enough people and loot enough treasure, you could quite literally join them. Many editions of D&D have had explicit rules for doing so! Its a sliding scale of power. There's no intrinsic difference between an incredibly powerful wizard and an god.

You see this in Dark Sun, too - the top wizards there are so powerful that they are indeed granting spells. But are they gods? I mean they're not by your definition there - but again, who in D&D is?