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

[Mistwell]

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.

I came to this thread specifically to hear your opinion on it. Since I knew you'd have something interesting to say.

 

[Umbran]

Only one of them has them constantly.

Only one of them has really been active for so long, too.

When we consider how "constant" these things are, I think we need to be careful there about inadvertently compressing the timeline. There's a hundred twenty five years between the Time of Troubles and the Sundering. How many other worlds have had to come up with new content covering such a span?

That's like looking at our history since... Grover Cleveland was the US President in 1896. So... WWI, the Great Depression, WWII, the Cold War, the Electronic Era. Global disease crises of Flu, AIDS, and Covid-19.

Our own world has effectively been restructured several times over in a similar period of time. What's your beef?

 

[Jaeger]

D&D "Religions" were done badly from the get go:

I think a big contributor is that the standard D&D religions weren't well thought out, and are just sort of a mix of Christian ideas with polytheistic pantheons, then aren't integrated into the game world much. I think if the baseline for the game was either "Christianity with the serial numbers filled off" or something more like traditional polytheistic religions (where people worship gods on an ad hoc basis and in a more "bargaining" style) and that was integrated more tightly into formal game worlds and the semi established standard background, you'd have something more enduring. As it is, the baseline religion for D&D is complicated without being interesting and doesn't add much mechanical or flavor benefit to the game, so it's not surprising that people ditch it.

Others and even myself have gone on about it in other threads. But it all boils down to the fact that most RPG writers have no idea how to portray religions in their games in a meaningful fashion.

Religions in the majority of RPGs are so badly done that if actually taken at face value they would have the PC's act in an alien fashion to how actual people of faith would really act. So people instinctively bounce off of the inherent incongruence of D&D style "religions" as they are really just mostly setting flavor that give some PC's cool powers.

is there a growing number of settings both official and third party where divine influence is less prominent and not taken for granted?

Yes, because largely they cannot write religions any better than the garbage that passes for D&D cosmology, take the path of least resistance, and just sideline the whole thing.

Which is probably the better solution for most.

 

[Mirtek]

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

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

Actually that's not true. If you were faithful enough you don't even make it to Kelemvor's court, because you'll be picked up by collectors send by your deity way before that.

Only if you were not faithful enough you eventually stand before Kelemvor to be judged (possibly be send to the "celestial shredder").

Even then various divine representatives will try to speak out why their deity should get you instead, based on your bevhaviour during your life. Of course not out of benevolence, but because getting souls means getting power

he is confusingly called Ilmater, like a Finnish god, even

Because he is. He moved from the finnish pantheon to join the faerunian pantheon because of some divine politics. Mielikki came from there too.

 

[Yaarel]

Right, but it's hardly a setting where divinity is pushed off to the side and is unimportant. And even though there are brave skeptics running around, it's a world where adventurers can quite easily learn that the gods are real, whatever one thinks of them as people. And it's a popular setting, not one where customers went "ew, gods."

In other words, a counter-point to the OP.

But.

Even for the pious, Theros is more subjective, with regard to how one interprets what gods is. It has a vibe of being the collective unconscious. Do gods create the Humans, or to the Humans create gods. Or is it more like a dialectic coevolution, where the unconscious and conscious continually respond to each other.

Meanwhile, the iconoclasts are as correct as the pious.

It is a setting where gods are culturally important, but the theology for it is nuanced and thoughtful. The player has flexibility for what it can mean for a character.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Because he is. He moved from the finnish pantheon to join the faerunian pantheon because of some divine politics. Mielikki came from there too.

The Finnish Ilmatar is a female virgin air spirit who later became the mother of the main Finnish culture-hero.

The Realmsian Ilmater (note different spelling) is a male-ish Christ/Issek of the Jug equivalent - a bloodied and beaten martyr god who suffers for your sins.

There's no similarity beyond the name. At most, the name Ilmatar was stolen and mispelled by someone making up gods in the 1980s. Loviatar is at least female and evil, though that's the only relationship she has to the Finnish Loviatar. Whereas Mielikki is basically a pretty similar deal to how he appears in the Finnish pantheon. So there was clearly a dude keen to knick from the Kalevala back in the '80s, but only Mielikki was actually taken wholesale. Ilmater is a misspelling of a name with a completely different concept.

 

[Mirtek]

The Finnish Ilmatar is a female virgin air spirit who later became the mother of the main Finnish culture-hero.

The Realmsian Ilmater (note different spelling) is a male-ish Christ/Issek of the Jug equivalent - a bloodied and beaten martyr god who suffers for your sins.

There's no similarity beyond the name. At most, the name Ilmatar was stolen and mispelled by someone making up gods in the 1980s. Loviatar is at least female and evil, though that's the only relationship she has to the Finnish Loviatar. Whereas Mielikki is basically a pretty similar deal to how he appears in the Finnish pantheon. So there was clearly a dude keen to knick from the Kalevala back in the '80s, but only Mielikki was actually taken wholesale. Ilmater is a misspelling of a name with a completely different concept.

And yet Ilmater is supposed to be the very same. An interloper from the finnish pantheon who chose to move over to the faerunian pantheon around the same time Mielikki did. Loviatar also moved over, but mostly to continue a feud with Mielikki and less for the reasons that Ilmater and Mielikki switched.

Edit: Forget what I said about Ilmater, you're right. He's not supposed to be her. Only Mielikki and Loviatar are said to have come from the finnish pantheon. I could have sworn Ilmater too, especially since Ilmater's part comes immediately before Mielikki's in the entry about the finnish powers.

Beyond Mielikki and Loviatar, Tyr is supposed to be the one from the norse pantheon and Oghma and Silvanus are the ones from the celtish powers.

And of course the late Tyche is from the greek pantheon, who took quite some time to discover that she's missing and as of latest entry still did not know where she went. There's an implied subtext that Tyche's split into Tymora and Beshaba wasn't complete accidentally but rather a ruse to hide from the greek pantheon.

 

[Azzy]

The Finnish Ilmatar is a female virgin air spirit who later became the mother of the main Finnish culture-hero.

The Realmsian Ilmater (note different spelling) is a male-ish Christ/Issek of the Jug equivalent - a bloodied and beaten martyr god who suffers for your sins.

There's no similarity beyond the name. At most, the name Ilmatar was stolen and mispelled by someone making up gods in the 1980s. Loviatar is at least female and evil, though that's the only relationship she has to the Finnish Loviatar. Whereas Mielikki is basically a pretty similar deal to how he appears in the Finnish pantheon. So there was clearly a dude keen to knick from the Kalevala back in the '80s, but only Mielikki was actually taken wholesale. Ilmater is a misspelling of a name with a completely different concept.

Ed Greenwood outlines creating a pantheon (specifically the Forgotten Realms' pantheon—befor the setting was published) and discusses how he pieced it together in Dragon Magazine, issue 54.

You're right about Ilmatar and Ilmater, though—there's no relation beyond the similar sounding name.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Actually that's not true. If you were faithful enough you don't even make it to Kelemvor's court, because you'll be picked up by collectors send by your deity way before that.

Only if you were not faithful enough you eventually stand before Kelemvor to be judged (possibly be send to the "celestial shredder").

Even then various divine representatives will try to speak out why their deity should get you instead, based on your bevhaviour during your life. Of course not out of benevolence, but because getting souls means getting power



Because he is. He moved from the finnish pantheon to join the faerunian pantheon because of some divine politics. Mielikki came from there too.

yeah they use our soul according to Planescape to more or less mine faith bitcoin it is honestly horrible and all the gods need to be beaten up, 4e primordials look goon in comparison as they at least do not more or less eat us.


does anyone know how to build a workable system for dnd that lets the gods make more sense from an internal view?

 

[Yaarel]

does anyone know how to build a workable system for dnd that lets the gods make more sense from an internal view?

If you want a polytheistic setting, check out Theros. See what you think.