Dragonlance Building a Dragonlance character, according to DDB.

[DarkCrisis]

"Mostly" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Unless 100% of everyone there was evil and working to ruin the world, then genocide was not an appropriate response.

Which isn’t even the conversation I’m having. Especially since we’ve had this same talk before. Yes this is very important for you in game worth magic and elves and faeries.

The thing I was talking about is going from the gods make a godly choice to a boo boo. Which makes them inept at best.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Which isn’t even the conversation I’m having. Especially since we’ve had this same talk before. Yes this is very important for you in game worth magic and elves and faeries.

The thing I was talking about is going from the gods make a godly choice to a boo boo. Which makes them inept at best.

I'd prefer for the gods to be inept than maliciously genocidal.

 

[DarkCrisis]

I'd prefer for the gods to be inept than maliciously genocidal.

Good for you. Be sure to use that in your Dragonlance games.

 

[cbwjm]

From memory, the gods of good did try to stop the cataclysm, they sent warnings that went unheeded, they gave lord Soth the chance to stop the king priest, saving the world but ultimately they couldn't stop it, the balance needed to be maintained so it was out of their hands.

 

[James Gasik]

From memory, the gods of good did try to stop the cataclysm, they sent warnings that went unheeded, they gave lord Soth the chance to stop the king priest, saving the world but ultimately they couldn't stop it, the balance needed to be maintained so it was out of their hands.

While this is true, the fact is, it seems kind of short-sighted. "Ok guys, the mortals are out of control, and the King Priest has become so blindingly good that he wants to ask us to destroy all evil, which is totally against our agreement with the rest of the pantheon."

"Well, can't we just go to the K-P and tell him why it's a bad idea?"

"Ah, no, we can't directly intervene. But there's an out, we can get someone he will trust to do it."

"Seems roundabout, I prefer writing messages on the guy's bedchamber wall in burning letters of fire, but ok. Who do you have in mind?"

"Lord Soth, he's a great guy!"

"Great, wonderful, fantastic. Who else?"

"What do you mean, 'who else'? Just him!"

"Uh....now, hear me out. What if this guy gets attacked on the road by bandits, ambushed by followers of the Evil Gods, distracted by needy orphans, or finds out his wife has been cheating on him, sending him into a fit of blind rage?"

"Oh come on, what are the odds of that happening?"

"Dude. Even if you aren't omniscient, I'm pretty sure Gilean is. Maybe we could ask him nicely if we should have another backup plan?"

"No, that would be cheating. We must trust in the Good of mortals!"

One Cataclysm later...

"So, yeah, about that Lord Soth guy..."

"Look, don't talk to me, ok? I have to figure out how to prevent the mortals from dying of famine because their crops have failed for seven years running. Dust! Dust, of all things! It's everywhere, it blocks out the sun, and it dries up the land!"

"Yeah well, that happens when you drop an asteroid on a planet. Whose idea was that again?"

"Ugh, Reorx bet us that he could use an asteroid just large enough to not wipe out all life on the planet."

"Huh. You know, it might have been better if we had. I mean, we can always start over, we got a few extra planets laying around in the crystal sphere..."

 

[Azzy]

- Complete makes the gods look like total jerks.

Well, the shoe fits.

It wasn't just ONE man or nation. Almost everyone was taking the gods for granted.

Oh noes, lets kill millions of people because they aren't fluffing the gods hard enough.

Sorry, indiscriminate worldwide divine punishment is just a vile concept.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Sorry, indiscriminate worldwide divine punishment is just a vile concept.

Yeah. You can have similar events in settings (the Calamity in Exandria, the Mourning in Eberron) without having the good gods be responsible. In Exandria, the Calamity was caused by an evil mage summoning the evil gods to the planet, causing a world-wide war between the good and evil gods (which was catastrophic because of how powerful they were). In Eberron, no one knows why the Mourning happened.

"Big world-changing disaster" isn't the problem. The problem is having the good gods be partially responsible.

 

[humble minion]

I posted my solution to the Cataclysm Paradox in another thread.

The way I'd personally do it is that the good gods can't intervene because they already HAVE intervened. They did it during the rise of Istar and the Kingpriest, to help this burgeoning empire of good and light gain power and spread goodness over the world. But they did all this on cosmic credit - this intervention of theirs means that the Evil gods can intervene with equal strength later. The balance can be written as thing that binds the gods too - an era of good now means that when the see-saw swings back the other way, it's going to be harder and more severe.

So even though by the time of the cataclysm Istar is really only worshipping the gods of good in name only rather than by deed, when the era of Good starts to die, Evil has stored up a really big hammer. The evil gods make their intervention, throw the mountain at Istar, and taunt the good gods that the trajectory of Istar proves that mortals tend toward evil, and tell the good gods that they'll avert the Cataclysm if the good gods supposed champions can prove they still have some innate goodness. The good gods know that their star is in the decline and can't do much about the cataclysm directly, without mortal participation. So the good gods have no alternative but to put their faith in the deep-down innate capacity for goodness and redemption of the Kingpriest and Soth. Oops. The good gods get it wrong, and the Cataclysm happens.

The good gods are horrified at the consequences of their hubris, and the neutral gods (who've sat it out up until now) are furious that so much knowledge, art, nature etc was lost in the Cataclysm, and the two groups band together and force the evil gods into the agreement to leave Krynn.

But really, there's several ways to do it. For instance, perhaps the gods knew that if the kingpriest's ritual was allowed to complete all Krynn would be destroyed as the Balance was permanently upset, and the Cataclysm was the lesser of two massive evils (of course, that doesn't explain why the Kingpriest didn't get squashed by a miraculously falling anvil one sunny Tuesday, leaving the rest of Istar untouched). Perhaps the gods DID send warnings to the kingpriest in letters of fire on his bedroom wall, only to be ignored because the Kingpriest was so deluded by then that he decided it was a trick of Evil. Perhaps the neutral gods and evil gods collaborated to cause the Cataclysm and the Good gods were either outvoted, or were powerless to stop them. Or perhaps there was conflict within the good gods too. Paladine exemplifies majesty, and maybe it was against his nature to stand by as a paranoid and arrogant human usurped the position of the Gods. Perhaps the Kingpriest's ritual would have had the side-effect of actually killing the gods, and it was an act of self-defence.

 

[Thommy H-H]

It is  possible that a brief blog post written in a flippant style by someone who isn't part of the development team for the product is not, in fact, WOTC's final word on the rather controversial moral framework of the original Dragonlance setting.

 

[humble minion]

It is  possible that a brief blog post written in a flippant style by someone who isn't part of the development team for the product is not, in fact, WOTC's final word on the rather controversial moral framework of the original Dragonlance setting.

I strongly suspect that in the end, WotC will consciously avoid having a final word on the controversial moral framework of Dragonlance in the same way they avoided having a say on the messy pantheon of Ravenloft, or the messy and incoherent recent history of the FR gods. Speak in generalisations, provide minimal detail, gloss over the really illogical bits completely, and through sheer lack of alternatives, require individual GMs to decide all this stuff for themselves.