D&D 4E 4e Races and Classes: "Why we changed the gods"

[pawsplay]

I think the core philosophy is sound, and hence I will refrain from nitpicking their particular choices of deities.

 

[Voss]

The short list of Greyhawk gods (in the 3e PH) was pretty adventurer-slanted. But that didn't mean the rest of the Greyhawk pantheon got set on fire. This is a bit more than not listing the not-particularly relevant gods. (Wastri, anyone?) This specifically says 'cut out gods that aren't useful for D&D'. This bit is really talking about designing the pantheon and cosmology just for gaming, and cutting anything that goes beyond the adventuring party.

It makes for a shallow and insignificant setting.

Point of interest: FR is killing off a whole slew of lesser gods and demigods (not just shoving them in the background, but actually setting them on fire and burying the bodies in the cosmology change). Any bets on Chauntea, Eldath and those in that vein getting the axe?

And Matt's point, I think, was more 'You can overcomplicate things and have a big pantheon if you want to, but we certainly don't see the point'.

 

[KingCrab]

"Sure, it’s realistic in a sociological sense
to have a deity of doorways or of agriculture, but it’s
hard to figure out how a cleric who worships such a
deity honors his god by going on adventures."

When the players go into an agriculture based village to get healed, it's going to be hard explaining why every farmer worships a god of lightning or swords or tyrrany. They'll go to the local temple where the agricultural god is worshipped and feel liked they are immersed in an actual setting.

I guess the consolation is that the FR setting will come soon, and hopefully they won't be removing Chauntea the way they are removing Tyr.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

To address the original post more directly...

I would be surprised if you actually found someone of any age who plays in this setting (other than playtesters), simply because 4E has not been released yet. Could you clarify this, because right now, this sentence doesn't make any sense at all.

Every DM I know either homebrews or buys a well-fleshed out setting from this or that publisher. I don't know any DM, unless they are new to DMing, who will take the fluff presented and use it as is just tossed together with no rhyme or reason. 3.5's "Greyhwak" was a good example of this. That wasn't Greyhawk, it was an unfocused, wildly chaotic, undeveloped setting with the Greyhawk name uncomfortably tacked onto it to give it some legitimacy. No history, no peoples, no cultures, no versimilitude.....no setting or at best a crappy, very thinly imagined and disjointed setting.

That is the World of Dungeons and Dragons in 3.5 and I know of no DMs who bought Races of Stone, Races of Destiny, etc and felt compelled to use the racial histories provided therein just as many thought that races like Illuminans didn't belong in their setting just because it appeared in a new splatbook. No DM I am aware of felt a sense of obligation to toss every bit of splatbook backstory into their campaign for the sake of the game's implied setting.

A good setting makes one feel that they want to be true to it and its personality. I wouldn't put Elminster, Mystra and the Seven Sisters on Krynn because they wouldn't fit. I wouldn't replace Bane and Cyric with the gods Bilbo and Samwise because that would violate the integrity of the setting. Strong settings have their own integrity and internal logic.

The World of Dungeons and Dragons has nothing of the sort. The Greyhwk of 3/3.5e and I suspect the Core Setting of 4e will just be a jumbled mess of elements of various quality because WoTC must keep it that way. It wouldn't do if the core setting didn't allow for every single thing presented in every single book WoTC publishes for te game. That would be a very bad financial decision.

Calling the 4e implied setting an actual setting, except under the strictest definition of the term is IMO a stretch.

And regardless, if you mean "someone who will[i/] play using the PHB fluff as written when 4E is released", then your statement is not true.

New DMs maybe, old hands not likely. Old hand DMs can see when something is good and pilfer it and beat it into shape for their own setting but for the most part will be uneffected if old Bahamut is the new God of Justice because they already have one. The gods in the core books, just like all the fluff in the core books, exists to provide a simple stage for beginning DMs and players to easily dive into the game or for more experienced "beer and pretzels" gamers who want a quick no muss, no fuss game.

Hello, nice to meet you. I intend to play a 4E campaign using nothing but the "World of Dungeons and Dragons" described in the 4E PHB.

This implied setting will have nothing but a sketchy reality as presented over the years in various core books and splatbooks. In order to make the setting somewhat believable you will need to do a ton of work. To give the implied setting any real meat on those bones you will essentially have to homebrew it.

Nice to meet you by the way.

I also dislike your implication that a Homebrew setting which does use fluff like that is "not worth the name [setting]".

My implication is that a setting without nice solid fluff whether homebrew or published is nothing more than life support for dungeon crawls. The core fluff presented so far seems quite good to me, however, the implied setting for 4e (as it was in 3/3.5e despite the Greyhawk name) is nothing more than a scaffold upon which can potentially build a rich homebrew setting. However I would argue that the implied setting will require so much work to flesh out to any degree one might as well create something new whole cloth.



Wyrmshadows

 

[Voss]

Every DM I know either homebrews or buys a well-fleshed out setting from this or that publisher. I don't know any DM, unless they are new to DMing, who will take the fluff presented and use it as is just tossed together with no rhyme or reason.

Ooo. I did. Way back in the long long ago with the Red box. When I was 10.

Wait. Why do new DMs not count?

3.5's "Greyhwak" was a good example of this. That wasn't Greyhawk, it was an unfocused, wildly chaotic, undeveloped setting with the Greyhawk name uncomfortably tacked onto it to give it some legitimacy.

Sounds like the official Greyhawk box set that came out in the 80s to me.

 

[Wyrmshadows]

Ooo. I did. Way back in the long long ago with the Red box. When I was 10.

Wait. Why do new DMs not count?

No, new DMs certainly count. My point entirely is that, for the most part, the ONLY DMs who will actally play on the World of Dungeons and Dragons (and I call it this because the 4e implied setting will apparently remain nameless) are new DMs and this IMO is how it should be. With age and experience comes a greater appreciation for complexity and consistancy therefore we move onto richer more sophisticated settings or create our own.

When I was 10-12 I was playing Basic and Expert D&D and the setting was whatever the boxes said it was.....if there even was a setting.

Sounds like the official Greyhawk box set that came out in the 80s to me.

LOL there is more than a little truth in that.



Wyrmshadows

 

[am181d]

No, new DMs certainly count. My point entirely is that, for the most part, the ONLY DMs who will actally play on the World of Dungeons and Dragons (and I call it this because the 4e implied setting will apparently remain nameless) are new DMs and this IMO is how it should be. With age and experience comes a greater appreciation for complexity and consistancy therefore we move onto richer more sophisticated settings or create our own.

Given that the DMG is said to be including a starting town, I suspect you're speaking a wee too soon. Remember, when 4e comes out, we're all new DMs to one degree. I suspect that many veterans will take the opportunity to play some version of the "core world."

 

[Minicol]

Actually...

"Sure, it’s realistic in a sociological sense
to have a deity of doorways or of agriculture, but it’s
hard to figure out how a cleric who worships such a
deity honors his god by going on adventures."

When the players go into an agriculture based village to get healed, it's going to be hard explaining why every farmer worships a god of lightning or swords or tyrrany. They'll go to the local temple where the agricultural god is worshipped and feel liked they are immersed in an actual setting.

.

In most pagan societies, the agricultural gods were at least as important as the gods of war. No food = death. And much quicker than through war. People had few medecine, and were generally underfed. One bad harvest = famine, disease, epidemics ... wars. When things go bad at home, invade your neighbour.

The fact that WE have plenty of food now should not let any good designer forget about this most important motive for a lot of history wars. Especially in a "points of light" semi post-apocalyptical setting.

Starvation comes a lot before religion on why to start a war.

Anyways, it's 4e, so ...

 

[Irda Ranger]

Ah. At least here, I've got some hard evidence that there was at least one significant COMPLETE FAILURE OF IMAGINATION from the 4e team.

"Gods don't need to make sense for anything other than PC's" is over-simplistic and ends up with nonsensical results.

My cursory reading of a few R&C articles suggests that this failure (I agree that it is such) extends beyond the list of deities. I have concerns that other things (class & monster abilities, item prices, and monster distribution/relative power) will only make sense in an "4-10 round encounter" setting, and no sense at all in anything resembling "the big picture" of any setting/world.

Or, KM, gods presented in a Player's Handbook don't need to be relevant to anyone but PCs.

No need for the "Or" - your point is not inconsistent with KM's.

The list of deities in the PHB is reasonably limited to those likely worshiped by PC Clerics. An adventuring Cleric or Paladin of the God of Doorways would be an odd sight. But that doesn't mean the game should be designed by those with a mindset that everything need only make sense from the PC's point of view. I would like to think that if you picked up "The World of Dungeons & Dragons" and rotated it 90-degrees (perhaps to imagine what it looks like from a human peasant's point of view, or a dragon's point of view) that it would at least pass the smell test with respect to "making internally-consistent sense."

 

[dystmesis]

Isazabasob, the Vicious God of Harvest, wreacking havoc and reaping the souls of so many countless thousands like threshing wheat with his terrible, holy Scythe of the Heavens.

_That's_ an adventurer's god of harvest.

You guys bring up an interesting point. Pagan societies in the real world paid greater importance to a god of harvest and other benign, every day things. Well, guess what? Pagan societies in the real world didn't exist in a world filled with dragons, bugbears, goblins, fire elementals, and Vicious Gods of Harvest They existed in a place where there weren't really all of those horrible things, and whatever gods they wanted could be made up on the spot.

Seeing as how adventurers and other gods seem to be going around killing each other, how can a helpless god of doorways even hope to compete? Maybe by making a mad fortress of opening and closing doors, extending forever beyond the fringes of sanity, and filling it with creatures man was not meant to know about, bwahaha.