Dragonlance Dragonlance "Reimagined".

[the Jester]

Huh. So, the gods actually DID directly intervene, removed spells from clerics, and did pretty much everything short of directly coming down to kill the Kingpriest personally, but, that's still apparently not enough. The only way, for some people, for the gods to not be evil is if they literally come down from the heavens and personally kill the Kingpriest.

Or, you know, do anything to prevent the coming mass murder of most everyone.

Yeah, I'm getting the feeling that there's some seriously bad faith arguing going on here. The goalposts keep shifting further and further along and nothing, and no evidence, is allowed to be valid.

The goalposts, as I see them, are firmly planted around "the good gods do something to prevent the Cataclysm". Taking spells away from the Kingpriest only after he did whatever ritual it was- it has been a long time since I read it, but it really doesn't matter- was too little too late, when they could have simply intervened early enough to prevent it. Take his spells away before he summoned the big asteroid, problem solved.

 

[the Jester]

I'm coming to the party a bit late, but does Krynn have disease, or infant mortality? Assuming that it does, then somehow there is a reconciliation of those events with the idea of there being powerful, somewhat active good gods.

Are the gods of disease and death presented as Good?

Whatever form that reconciliation takes, why can't it also be deployed to explain the Cataclysm?

Because the issue is with the gods presented as Good.

EDIT: I mean, in FR isn't the same sort of reasoning needed to reconcile feudal monarchy (eg Cormyr) with good alignment and good gods?

Does FR have a god in charge of good governance? I'm honestly not sure. But I am pretty sure that the FR also includes the "mortals should have free will" approach that most settings at least tacitly endorse.

 

[the Jester]

Given that there's a god of disease (Morgion), I'm not sure that's the distinction you're presenting it as.

Is Morgion Good, Evil, or Neutral?

 

[the Jester]

I'm not sure this distinction carries the weight you're putting on it.

But allowing that it does, wouldn't feudal monarchies like Cormyr in FR and Furyondy in GH have to be subjected to the same scrutiny? I mean, how can those possibly be good in any objective senes?

I'm not sure what bad governments have to do with genocide, but I am sure that allowing bad governments to exist falls pretty far afield from allowing a magical genocide that is basically a mass extinction event to be summoned by priests of Goodness. And one of them is pretty clearly the free will of the mortals in ugly action while the other is magically enabled by the gods.

 

[pemerton]

I'm not sure what bad governments have to do with genocide, but I am sure that allowing bad governments to exist falls pretty far afield from allowing a magical genocide that is basically a mass extinction event to be summoned by priests of Goodness. And one of them is pretty clearly the free will of the mortals in ugly action while the other is magically enabled by the gods.

What does feudal government have to do with free will? People don't choose to be peasants subjected to compulsory labour!

But anyway, as per my post upthread, I don't think the act/omission distinction carries much weight in the context of gods. If they're evil for killing people via the Cataclysm, then they're evil for not using their huge magical power to relieve all sort of suffering that they could trivially relieve. Conversely, if we make up reasons why they can't do the latter - rules about non-intervention, or rules about respecting mortal choices - then we can make up reasons why the former is not murder - rules about the necessity for punishment, and about respecting choices to do bad by inflicting appropriate retribution.

The Kingpriest + Cataclysm motif sits in the same general place as JRRT's downfall of Numenor. Both are about divine punishment for mortal hubris. Both involve punishment on a mass scale - whole lands sunk, destroyed, etc - because that is the literary device that conveys the point. Looking at these through a modern lens, in which collective punishment is eschewed and each individual life lost to the punishment is a wrong, makes no sense.

And, conversely, if that modern lens is going to be applied, then many of the tropes of high/romantic fantasy come unstuck.

Ultimately, it's like arguing that Storm is evil because she squanders her power fighting Magneto and Doom rather than relieving mass suffering. I mean sure, you can make the argument - Watchmen does - but then you're arguing to drop the superhero genre.

But if we drop the high/romantic fantasy genre then I'm not sure that there's much left of DL.

 

[Velderan]

Since the neutral gods were, through inaction, allowing evil to occur, and the "good" gods performed evil to prevent a greater evil

I don't know that any material I've read specifically says it was the gods of good that actually threw the mountain on to Istar. It's always been "the gods" but not which specifically from what I recall.

 

[Alzrius]

Is Morgion Good, Evil, or Neutral?

He's very much one of the evil gods.

 

[Velderan]

The goalposts, as I see them, are firmly planted around "the good gods do something to prevent the Cataclysm". Taking spells away from the Kingpriest only after he did whatever ritual it was- it has been a long time since I read it, but it really doesn't matter- was too little too late, when they could have simply intervened early enough to prevent it. Take his spells away before he summoned the big asteroid, problem solved.

Are you implying the Kingpriest summoned the mountain because that's not what happened..?

 

[Faolyn]

How does that difference make sense in a world with active, powerful gods? I mean, someone upthread was pointing out that the good gods are Nth-level clerics etc. They could use those spells to cure diseases. They could use their Control Weather to stop many natural disasters. Etc.

That would be me. And there's a difference between a natural event (say, a storm) and a god performing the same event via divine powers. If (generic) you want to say the gods can't interfere, except by giving clerics spells, and its up to those clerics to stop natural disasters and cure diseases, that's fine. That's pretty standard, for these sorts of games. But then they can't interfere by going around chucking mountains at people, just because they don't like what those people are doing.

Does the act/omission distinction carry much weight when we're talking about gods?

Yes. Because these gods presumably have a duty to their worshipers, who pray to them for help. Or at the very least, they gods have a duty to the world because they govern aspects of that world.

Given that there's a god of disease (Morgion), I'm not sure that's the distinction you're presenting it as.

I was talking about natural diseases, and even diseases caused by clerics casting spells like contagion. I wasn't talking about Morgion going around spreading disease himself, in person.

As I recall, it was presented as a simple "we'll take you to our god's side, or you can stay here." Naturally, the latter meant that you'd be subject to whatever happened to you, alongside everyone else. That didn't have to mean dying in the Cataclysm though; Crysania was subsequently taken forward in time a hundred years by Raistlin's magic.

So, come with us to be with your god, or stay on Krynn and suffer. Since it seems that it required very high-level time travel magic to escape the Cataclysm, and even if a cleric didn't die or get timeported away, they'd still lose all their powers and, presumably, would have a lot of very unhappily abandoned worshipers after them. Not really much of a choice.

 

[Alzrius]

I was talking about natural diseases, and even diseases caused by clerics casting spells like contagion. I wasn't talking about Morgion going around spreading disease himself, in person.

When the setting has always had a single deity of disease, is there any distinction between "natural" diseases and those made by said god (even if he doesn't spread them himself)?

So, come with us to be with your god, or stay on Krynn and suffer. Since it seems that it required very high-level time travel magic to escape the Cataclysm, and even if a cleric didn't die or get timeported away, they'd still lose all their powers and, presumably, would have a lot of very unhappily abandoned worshipers after them. Not really much of a choice.

The "lose their powers" bit is presumptive. Crysania was still able to use her divine magic after turning Loralon down, including after being brought a century into the future (which was still the past to her, just not as far back).