D&D 4E Angels in 4e: a possible future problem

[HeavenShallBurn]

The answer was to the the question What do many people think about angels?, and I won't argue that you're spot on.

My question was much simpler. What makes angels Good, and from what perspective does this interpretation originate? And that leads to a very different line of questioning. I was trying to point out that despite the difference in names the differences in common opinions may result from one particular point of view rather than the nature of the thing itself.

 

[pemerton]

Regardless of the standard religious view, the media types D&D is associated with (video games, comic books, novels, etc.) are the sort that are very likely to depict angels as antagonists or neutral parties. It's the overall reaction to being demonized by official society.

<snip>

The changes allow these stories to reflected in adventures.

Good post.

 

[ferratus]

I think that the whole thing about being concerned about how this plays to D&D's brand image. After all, if you are trying to let the hobby grow, it is going to be through kids 10-15 years of age, children who even in this day and age are watched by their parents.

So if you are a person who is relatively devout, you are probably going to regard a game which encourages a person to take on the role of a half-demon to be problematic. That's without the flavour text of killing angels, or that devils have killed a god, which would make for a rather uncomfortable conversation at an RCIA meeting or a men's prayer group (to use examples from my personal life) if someone asked about D&D.

Now I'm going to use all of these flavour text in my own home campaign because I'm an insider in this D&D cult(ure) and I know all the lingo and backstory. I think tieflings will work well for my friend who is a big metalhead, I agree that angels are wasted space in the MM if you can't fight them, and the flavour text of the devils is pretty cool. Mostly though, I know that D&D doesn't have a ulterior motive for these flavour changes, but rather it stems from designers being children of the 80's.

Still... it makes D&D a little more embarrassing for a lot of us religious types, and part of me would rather D&D didn't pursue these particular design choices. To perhaps depolarize it a bit, I'll bring up another couple personal experiences with video games. I was playing Destroy all Humans in front of my mother in law who is an atheist Unitarian, pretty much as anti-religious as you can get. However, she was extremely upset at the violence in the game, and asked me why I didn't think this would make me more prone to murder. Another experience was playing Wolfenstein 3D in the school's computer lab. The 60 year old British native that I had as a vice principal absolutely forbid the playing of this particular video game because of the prominent display of the swastika. He was also an irreverent atheist.

Everyone has their sore points, and if parents think that an activity would mock or undermine their faith, that means you might lose potential audiences that Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia would have otherwise brought you.

 

[JohnRTroy]

Mourn, look at the American Heritage Dictionary here. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/angel

If we go to a more complete one, like Oxford, I'm sure it will be there as well.

What makes angels Good, and from what perspective does this interpretation originate?

But that's adding deconstructionism to the whole process. If the majority of general population assumes angels are good, and that's what fiction and tradition teach, then using the term "angel" is just confusing, or changing things "just to be cool".

 

[WyzardWhately]

Posit the existence of the following:

There is some kind of Lawful Neutral god of absolute justice. One of his Angels, after millenia of handing out harsh punishments without reference to any mitigating factor, it develops a sense of empathy. It pleads its case in the high courts of the Astral Sea, and its pro-human stance of compassion and occasional mercy is rejected outright. It rebels, sparing a human (maybe a hungry kid who stole food in a marketplace), and flees under a death sentence to the Prime Material.

It begs the PCs for their aid, to hide and protect it from the Angels of Vengeance that are very soon going to be hunting for its head.

Now we have at least one good, kind angel in the setting, and a cool adventure.

 

[Incenjucar]

Everyone has their sore points, and if parents think that an activity would mock or undermine their faith, that means you might lose potential audiences that Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia would have otherwise brought you.

I think the notion is that people who would restrict content on that basis would probably restrict D&D -anyways-, whereas the same content makes D&D more competitive with other products that would, again, already be restricted.

D&D will never win over certain crowds, but it has some crowds who are already favorably inclined to the genre but need an extra nudge.

 

[WayneLigon]

Hey, we had undead angels in Liber Mortis...
Really, I think it's useless to worry about the religious attacks anymore. Let 'em come.

 

[Arkhandus]

I'd much rather they just handle Devas, Planetars, and Solars like that, not using the term Angels for such creatures.

If they're going to use the terms Demon and Devil to refer to evil outsiders, as they're traditionally used elsewhere, then they ought to continue using Angel to refer to good outsiders, as they're traditionally used elsewhere.

 

[Lurker37]

It has been suggested that a lack of responses on the 'angels are intrinsically good' side is somehow an indication that the point of view is not wide held, or is in some way invalid.

So now I try to respond to this line of argument while trying to make it clear it is not a personal attack, and trying not to discuss religion event while discussing an iconic concept from several modern-day religions, which some posters seem to think are open to attack.

Oh, joy. And people wonder why we don't post.

Let me take a deep breath, and try to order my thoughts.

First, a reminder: Many Christians play D&D. We are a part of the PnP game market, which is (let's be honest) not so large that WoTC can afford to put any part of it offside.

All the effort we've gone through in the last 30 years to try and un-demonise not just D&D but this entire hobby, and now WoTC pull this bone-headed move...

*sigh*

Anyway, to firstly answer the question of who defines an angel as being good:

When was the last time you heard the compliment "You're an angel" sincerely (sarcasm doesn't count) directed at someone for performing a morally or ethically ambiguous act, let alone a reprehensible one? I know I never have. It's only used, in my experience, to praise someone who has acted generously, perhaps even selflessly. Hardly divorced from the concept of good.

Western culture thinks of angels as good. Even secular fiction uses them as symbols of good. The whole impact of a story in which one falls (or has fallen) is meant to stem from the corruption (impending or past) of something that is pure and good.

So trying to present angels as being by default something other than good may also strike a discordant note with the general public.

So my response can be summed up as: Mainstream Western culture defines angels as being good. Yes, there are examples to the contrary but the entire aim of those examples is to provoke thought or emotion by going counter to that expectation.

Let's try inverting the perspective. Would you be as complacent if WoTC released a preview announcing that in, say, 4E Forgotten Realms devils and demons were going to be the good guys? Would that be OK because it was 'edgy'? No? Then why is it acceptable to mess with the morality of angels? And before anyone accuses me of hyperbole or extreme examples, I will point out that the religions that use these concepts have them very much in opposition to each other. Either change is equally jarring, and equally controversial to followers of those religions, and to a lesser extent to mainstream Western Culture as well.

Secondly, an argument was used that angels are present, but not good not good in other religions'. My response to that is to agree that other belief systems have similar concepts for their deities' messengers, but I guarantee that they did not use the specific word 'angel'. Some translator substituted in that word to draw on concepts familiar to westerners. Previous editions of D&D managed to address this very nicely by making up a fictional entity that was only partly inspired by the concept of an angel. If the word 'archon' or 'deva' had been used for the new generic celestial messengers in 4e, no-one would have batted an eye. Instead the 4E designers chose a word specific to a single set of beliefs, and which furthermore is strongly tied to the concept of good.

To put this further in perspective, if 4E had used a prominent component of some other widely-followed current-day real-world religion and tried to change his/her/its moral significance, who here thinks that there would not be an outcry once the followers of that religion became aware of it? I'm sure we can all think of more than one example in the past couple of years where it has been abundantly clear that followers of religions other than Christianity are also capable of taking offense at what they perceive as misuse of their icons. I doubt anyone would say that, in hindsight, the misuse itself was a smart move. If it's not acceptable to misuse icons of other religions, does it not follow that it is similarly not acceptable to misuse Judeo-Christian ones?

Finally, to those who excuse the deconstruction of angels by citing previous examples in fiction: If we return to the example in my prior paragraph, would quoting prior examples of said icon use in pop culture and recent fiction do anything to calm the situation? Based on what we've seen, it would be more likely to add fuel to the fire.

I do not believe that Christianity is less deserving of respect then those other religions.

I have no problem with there being unaligned (rather than good or evil) messengers of the deities in D&D, but to suddenly change their name from a long-used D&D-specific term to a concept from a specific religion, when such a name is not a good fit and has the potential to be inflammatory, strikes me as a poor decision.

I'm not sure if I've manged to present this without offending anyone. If I have, I apologise.

 

[The Little Raven]

When was the last time you heard the compliment "You're an angel" sincerely (sarcasm doesn't count) directed at someone for performing a morally or ethically ambiguous act, let alone a reprehensible one?

Two days ago.

My friend brought me a sack of some fine Cush, for which I called him "my angel, bringing me manna from heaven." Now, a lot of people would consider him providing me with that substance morally reprehensible, yet I sincerely called him an angel, because my idea of what is morally reprehensible is far different from other people.