Dragonlance Dragonlance "Reimagined".

[pemerton]

The following is on a D&D Beyond blog post, which so far is all we have to go on:

Thanks for that.

It would be odd for them to mention the gods causing the Cataclysm in their promotional post, if they're intending to contradict that in their actual publication.

Of course odd things happen from time to time - but that post does reinforce my feeling that there is no need to do what @Hussar is trying to do, which is to find an alternative story for the Cataclysm.

EDIT: @Hussar, this isn't a criticism of your project. Just an explanation for why I don't personally feel the need to take it up.

 

[Alzrius]

There's a big difference between imagining the moral permissibility of (say) race-based slavery, and imagining the moral permissibility of (say) monarchical government. That's why we don't have any RPGs where people enjoy being National Socialists, but we do have RPGs - such as all the Middle Earth-based ones - where people enjoy playing characters whose political convictions, in the real world, would mark them as more reactionary than Franco.

I don't disagree, but the distinction in question - that the more odious aspects of such a fantasy setting are there to be fought against, rather than bought into - isn't one that strikes me as being recognized by the push to have such things removed altogether. Anything which contravenes contemporary humanist morality is taken as something which shouldn't be present, whether it's recognition that orcs are innately different from humans, that evil sorcerer-kings will use their magic to create slave races, or that it's morally good for the benevolent gods to hold that all people are collectively guilty for the hubris of their leaders.

 

[Vaalingrade]

But in any event, the gods of Krynn are not acting for a greater good, perceived or otherwise. They are exacting punishment.

Oh.

That changes everything then.

They are just all absolute evil scumbags then.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The whole of the Superman canon makes sense only if Superman is a paragon of goodness - of truth, justice and the American way! Yet he has never stopped mass poverty, mass starvation, mass conflict, or many of the other affronts to truth and justice that are found in the real world and that are replicated in Superman comics and films.

so who here said the good gods were not good because they didn't stop conflict or mass starvation?
related: when did superman throw a mountain killing untold numbers of innocent people?

There are moral and political critiques of the superhero genre that build on the point I've just made - again, Watchmen is one of them produced in the same medium as the genre itself - but if you take those critiques fully on board you have to abandon the genre, casting it aside as romantic or reactionary nonsense.

I wouldn't mind a D&D novel or maybe even an adventure critiqueing and subverting that type of trope...

The same thing is true of JRRT. We are meant to suppose, in enjoying Return of the King, that Aragorn re-establishing himself as king is a moment of great moral triumph; not that it is the perpetuation of a system of human misery and oppression. Likewise in Arthurian stories;, in those versions of Robin Hood in which Robin is an exiled nobleman allied with King Richard; etc.

right cause we keep learning (sometime in there own heads) how good these people are and how they don't do anything to hurt or harm others... unlike the 'cosmic good' gods of krynn.

And the same with DL, just as with JRRT's downfall of Numenor. We use our imagination to step into a world where a people's hubris is a grave sin; where righteous punishment is what the Law of Consequence demands. In using our imaginations that way, we're not endorsing the imagined moral outlook any more than we do so when enjoying a King Arthur story, or a superhero story.

at no point were the Numernoreins (spelling?) all good. you can have bad people grey people and normal people on Numenor.

(Of course, there are real people in the real world who don't need to use their imaginations to step into the moral outlook of DL, because it is one they actually inhabit. This is what I mean when I say that the moral outlook of DL is an extremely familiar one.)

no real world talk please

I don't know what you mean by "as good as one can expect". Someone who is a sincere pacifist or anti-militarist would expect the knights of Solamnia, in so far as they are genuinely good, to eschew the use of lethal violence - for instance, as various real-world religious figures in multiple traditions have done from time to time.

is anyone in ANY thread, let alone this one pushing for pacifist anti militarist knights?!?!

But the setting invites us to imagine that heroic, valiant knighthood is a moral possibility - even a moral ideal! And so when we step into the setting in our imagination we do that. It doesn't mean that we embrace this ideal in reality. We are participating in an exercise in imagination, that draws on a very well known literary and folk tradition.

and yet those 'moral knights' have moral failings that we can easily identify out of game. It's like if superman was still the 'papa spank' misogynist of 1950s... those stories don't work today.

Exactly the same is the case with the Cataclysm.

The whole point of the Cataclysm motif is that those who suffer deserve the punishment. I quoted the bits of text upthread that refers to the gods punishing the people. In the fiction, it's a collective punishment for a collective sin of pride.

okay... then why say it was an over use of GOOD? in what way was it too much GOOD? it seems we all agree it was EVIL that caused it, except the writers.

Likewise, a Superman comic in which Luthor buys column inches in the Daily Planet to place an ad mocking Superman for not stopping any number of epidemics, wars, famines, etc, would be a Superman comic that is coming close to dismantling the superhero genre from within.

These genres rest on certain conceits. You have to accept those conceits for the imaginative projection to work at all.

again, this would only hold true if people disliked cosmic good gods for

 

[Vaalingrade]

related: when did superman throw a mountain killing untold numbers of innocent people?

I would never sell the silver age short, so I wouldn't say 'never'.

That's more of a Reed Richards thing. Let us never forget the time he poisoned an entire town just to dole out a cheeky punishment to some Skrulls, and that infinite number of times he spread a super zombie plague to another universe out of curiosity.

The only thing that keeps Reed from ending All Things Mortal is dealing with Doom.

...

...

Holy crap, Reed is Paladine and Doom is Takisis!

 

[Micah Sweet]

so who here said the good gods were not good because they didn't stop conflict or mass starvation?
related: when did superman throw a mountain killing untold numbers of innocent people?

I wouldn't mind a D&D novel or maybe even an adventure critiqueing and subverting that type of trope...

right cause we keep learning (sometime in there own heads) how good these people are and how they don't do anything to hurt or harm others... unlike the 'cosmic good' gods of krynn.

at no point were the Numernoreins (spelling?) all good. you can have bad people grey people and normal people on Numenor.

no real world talk please

is anyone in ANY thread, let alone this one pushing for pacifist anti militarist knights?!?!

and yet those 'moral knights' have moral failings that we can easily identify out of game. It's like if superman was still the 'papa spank' misogynist of 1950s... those stories don't work today.

okay... then why say it was an over use of GOOD? in what way was it too much GOOD? it seems we all agree it was EVIL that caused it, except the writers.

again, this would only hold true if people disliked cosmic good gods for

Again, what do you mean by "cosmic good"? It sounds like a title, part of Krynn's religious dogma. Elves are considered the traditional race of good, but no one seems to a problem with that not necessarily being true in practice.

And all of this is outside @pemerton 's point about romantic fantasy conventions and their lack of adherence to modern morality, which I absolutely agree with.

 

[the Jester]

Another way of putting it.

Is Batman evil for not stopping the Joker permanently? For not killing the Joker? How many hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dead because Batman refuses to kill the Joker. Is Batman evil? After all, he doesn't do "everything he can do" to stop the Joker. He most certainly could have killed the Joker, or even allowed the Joker to be killed, numerous times.

Yet, people will insist over and over again that Batman is good.

I'm not arguing the "everything he can do" take here, but making a better analogy to the Cataclysm, would Batman be a good guy if he blew up Gotham City to take out the Joker, Two-Face, and Bane?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I'm not arguing the "everything he can do" take here, but making a better analogy to the Cataclysm, would Batman be a good guy if he blew up Gotham City to take out the Joker, Two-Face, and Bane?

The argument to take out Gotham entirely has certainly been made before.

 

[Velderan]

More information from the 2E Tales of the Lance boxed set (page 25 for those who have a copy):

Cause of the Cataclysm

Speculation on the cause of the Cataclysm has ranged widely. How a mere mortal like the Kingpriest might bind the gods, forcing them to measures as drastic as the Cataclysm, is inconceivable. Even so, the Kingpriest apparently did bind the gods. The argument for this assertion follows.

Either the gods were unwilling to intervene before the Cataclysm or were unable to do so. The gods of Evil may well have been unwilling to intervene insofar as the Kingpriest forwarded their plans of Evil. The gods of Good and Neutrality, however, must have desired to intervene before the Cataclysm. The Kingpriest threatened to destroy all Good by corruption from within, and such a destruction would end the Balance and destroy the world. If the gods of Good and Neutrality could have saved Krynn sooner and in a manner less catastrophic, they would have.

Therefore, we must assume that at least the Good and Neutral gods were unable, not unwilling, to intervene sooner than the Cataclysm. Next, we must ask ourselves why they were unable to intervene.

Perhaps the Kingpriest somehow used the gods’ gifts to the world—physical bodies, free will, mortality, and magic—to bind the gods somehow.

First of all, the Kingpriest’s Evil clearly might have lured the gods to Krynn in avatar form. Once in avatar form, the gods would have physical bodies (the first gift) that the Kingpriest could somehow torture and imprison. Such an action would certainly bind the gods to some extent.

Secondly, we know that the Kingpriest played upon the free will (the second gift) of Ansalon’s folk, directing their attention from the true gods to himself—the false god. By robbing the gods of their worshippers, the Kingpriest may have weakened them to a point where they could be controlled. By gaining worshippers himself, the Kingpriest may have gathered enough praise to become godlike.

Thirdly, if the Kingpriest had through praise or magic gained immortality, then he would have broken down the walls that separate humans from the gods. He would have sloughed off his mortality (the third gift). By stepping over this threshold, he might have become a peer of the gods.

Fourthly, when the Kingpriest moved into the Tower of High Sorcery in Istar, he inherited all magely magic (the fourth gift). Furthermore, when wizards and priests left the world, the Kingpriest became the only true practitioner of these arts (except, some would argue, Fistandantilus). The Kingpriest might have used magic to bind the gods.

If the gods were somehow bound and kept from acting before the Cataclysm, perhaps even the Cataclysm did not occur due to their interventions. Perhaps the Kingpriest himself summoned the Cataclysm as the culmination of a bizarre ritual to gain all power. This theory would make some sense out of the fact that the Temple of Istar—the heart of Evil—was not destroyed, but gated to the Abyss. Might the Kingpriest have gone with it? If so, surely the journey would have struck him mad.

Let it be said now and a thousand times, these are mere conjectures. The Cataclysm will likely remain an eternal mystery to mortal folk.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Again, what do you mean by "cosmic good"?

earlier in this thread when I said I didnt think good gods acted good I was told that it was 'cosmic forces' needing 'balance'. I have taken from this that at least some people here think that Krynn good gods are a cosmic force for good.

It sounds like a title, part of Krynn's religious dogma. Elves are considered the traditional race of good, but no one seems to a problem with that not necessarily being true in practice.

because an individual elf has an alignment. So too does each god. If the 'good gods' had Lawful Evil members that they didn't always get along with but did dirty dark things 'for' there partners and the really good gods disagreed but reluctantly put up with them to 'keep balance' with evil gods that would outnumber them without them... I would be cool with it.

And all of this is outside @pemerton 's point about romantic fantasy conventions and their lack of adherence to modern morality, which I absolutely agree with.

stories that don't adhere to modern morality are fine... but don't use out of game out of story words like 'good' then