D&D 5E Should Planescape split Olympus and Arvandor into separate Layers of Aborea?

[Mecheon]

I really do hate the static unchanging Planes of D&D history so I'm all for it, but I hate actual real life deities being shoved in because why not more so I'm of the 'don't use IRL deities' train

I went through a readthrough of Legends and Lore recently and maaaan some of it was bad. Also like. "Sorry, we already decided we have Hades, Hell and also-Hell so every vaguely mean god gets to live in one of those. No Xibalba. No Niflhel as a frozen realm of the dead because sorry there's already an ice hell. Also all these lawful type gods live in the giant mechanical realm that doesn't match anything from their mythology because its the lawful place I guess, and that's before all the ones we shoved into the Plane of Air". Just let stuff be different. The universe doesn't have to be lawful, it can be chaotic and change

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Almost nobody worships the Olympians anymore, so they would probably get a free "culture pass" to do whatever. Tyr, Tymora, Beshaba, and Silvanus would otherwise have been removed from the Forgotten Realms setting.

More people then you think, Neopaganism is the fastest growing religion in North America, with Greek Reconstructionism one of the largest subsets of that.

But Neopagans don't general make a stink over religious depictions of the Gods and Mythological creatures in fiction.

Also point out that the D&D Beyond Appendix for Gods are still up and available for free.

 

[Stormonu]

Honestly, I'm of the opinion that gods (and their divine servitors, angels) generally shouldn't have alignments. Much easier to use figures like Zeus and Odin if you don't need to reconcile some of their actions in IRL mythology with whatever flavor of "Good" alignment they've been assigned, and it could create room for D&D-specific deities to be more complex and nuanced in their actions and teachings where alignment might otherwise shackle them. For similar reasons, I also think they should deliberately lean into the idea that a character's faith is the source of any divine power they possess rather than the god/religion/philosophy they place that faith in, but that's a different conversation.

Leave alignment for "outsiders" (demons, devils, archons, modrons, slaad, etc.) and define the gods, with rare exception, purely by their domains, relationships, actions, and personalities.

I'm fine with deities being given alignment. Alignment is an overall descriptor that, to me, gives me an aid to determine how someone might react to an off-hand situation. The problem often is that when people or designers view EVERY SINGLE action through that single lens to determine alignment instead of looking at the overall whole. Read the stories if you want more nuance and there will be more interaction between deities and mortals, but for the majority of cases for clerics, paladins & the like just having the deities alignment is sufficient to guide play.

Alignment isn't the best tool for doing characterization in shorthand, and so many games get along without it. But it's a D&D tool, and I would be very unhappy if it was ditched.

 

[Nikosandros]

I really do hate the static unchanging Planes of D&D history so I'm all for it, but I hate actual real life deities being shoved in because why not more so I'm of the 'don't use IRL deities' train

I went through a readthrough of Legends and Lore recently and maaaan some of it was bad. Also like. "Sorry, we already decided we have Hades, Hell and also-Hell so every vaguely mean god gets to live in one of those. No Xibalba. No Niflhel as a frozen realm of the dead because sorry there's already an ice hell. Also all these lawful type gods live in the giant mechanical realm that doesn't match anything from their mythology because its the lawful place I guess, and that's before all the ones we shoved into the Plane of Air". Just let stuff be different. The universe doesn't have to be lawful, it can be chaotic and change

While I'm personally fond of the Great Wheel, I fully agree that cosmology should be campaign-dependent and I'd love to see discussion and suggestions for making up your own (whether from scratch, changing one from D&D history, or being inspired by myth or fiction) in the new DMG.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

5

I'm fine with deities being given alignment. Alignment is an overall descriptor that, to me, gives me an aid to determine how someone might react to an off-hand situation. The problem often is that when people or designers view EVERY SINGLE action through that single lens to determine alignment instead of looking at the overall whole. Read the stories if you want more nuance and there will be more interaction between deities and mortals, but for the majority of cases for clerics, paladins & the like just having the deities alignment is sufficient to guide play.

Alignment isn't the best tool for doing characterization in shorthand, and so many games get along without it. But it's a D&D tool, and I would be very unhappy if it was ditched.

I have mixed feelings on alignment. On one hand its woven right into the comologies, on the other hand it causes all kinds of problems, especially with Gods.

Like God's get assigned to the Planes that fit their alignments, except sometimes they don't. One of the beings two beings who arguably rule Aborea, the Chaotic Good plane, is Zeus, who is True Neutral (the other being Corelllon Latherion who is CG). You have an evil Gods of Beholder and Mindflayers in the Outlands. Jotunheim in its original Planescape version and the second layer of Ysgard are completely ruled by evil Gods and creatures.

Like that rules of the Outer Planes seem contradicted heavily at times.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

To expand on these wider issues with the Planescape setting/Planes, what does WotC do about the fact that 2 of Limbo's 4 planes are named after Hindu Gods while a third is named after a Japanese diety, and that these Deities are pretty much all the favour these layers get.

 

[Scribe]

To expand on these wider issues with the Planescape setting/Planes, what does WotC do about the fact that 2 of Limbo's 4 planes are named after Hindu Gods while a third is named after a Chinese Goddess, and that these Deities are pretty much all the favour these layers get.

In an ideal world, a lot of this gets scrubbed and updated by the Planescape release.

I'm not holding my breath, but its what I wish would happen. I dont like 'real world' Gods being used in a fictional work, as the double standards are grating.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

In an ideal world, a lot of this gets scrubbed and updated by the Planescape release.

I'm not holding my breath, but its what I wish would happen. I dont like 'real world' Gods being used in a fictional work, as the double standards are grating.

What double standards are you referring to?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Just a guess, but I think they moved Tir Na Og to Aboria as a buffer between Olympus and Arvandor.

 

[Scribe]

What double standards are you referring to?

I dont believe that 5e WotC would have Jesus running around the Planes.