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Anyone check out Radiance RPG yet?


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Are you going to be at Gencon?


If so are you planning on running any radiance events? I'd love to try it out.


Alas, no. Missing it for a second year in a row. I'll be in Winston-Salem conducting a 3-day neuroscience and personality workshop! Who doesn't love North Carolina in August ;-).

That said, I'd really love to get back to PaizoCon (July 5-7) and have left those days open. That would be for the Pact Magic books. Though I'd be happy to run a private Radiance game in the off hours for anyone else who's there (I would use the world of Golarion, at least!)
 



A lot of material done for the Expansion Kit and Butcher of Braggarton adventure module, but waiting on some artwork, need to do editing, and with 3 months of almost nonstop travel ahead of me, I'd say we're looking at late July. I'm not putting dates on these, for those reasons, and because yeah, sometimes a new idea comes along that's a must include! :-)
 

Glad to hear it's coming along. I only asked because I've been thinking about the nature of gods in RPG lately and I think a Pantheist theme (to allow pCs to worship more than one god) might be a cool idea for Radiance.
 

A pantheist theme makes a lot of sense, and originally the Believer theme allowed that. However, there was a challenge of offering access to multiple gods at once--it quickly lead to odd and broken combinations of abilities. Pantheism requires a creative solution that I haven't thought of yet.

My understanding is that in many pantheistic religions, people interact with the god that is relevant to a particular activity in order to placate that god and avoid punishment. So a character might pray and/or sacrifice to Beyos before a sea voyage, similarly to Asmodius when dealing with a powerful noble or Esmariah when in need of healing. That is the opposite of Radiance RPG, when the character petitions his 1 favorite god for a boon and suffers nothing otherwise.

Perhaps a balanced approach is that the pantheistic believer must petition for the boon in advance by offering prayer or sacrifice (time+wealth), rather than waiting until the moment of need to pick, but he has access to multiple gods (some, most, all?) Moreover, he need to making small offering to the gods even when not in need, in order to remain in good standing with them, otherwise, the prayer/sacrifice needs to be much larger. ... Just an idea...
 

I'd love to see the version of the Believer theme that allowed it.

Honestly I'm just questioning the worship one god approach that most fantasy gods take when Pantheism seems much more appropriate for a world with so many gods.
 

I'd love to see the version of the Believer theme that allowed it.

Honestly I'm just questioning the worship one god approach that most fantasy gods take when Pantheism seems much more appropriate for a world with so many gods.

Pantheism is the worship of all gods. But consider, the Middle East for eons was rife with multiple gods, and groups of people often favored one god, or a small set of gods, over all others. The notion of all/most gods is more a Greco-Roman view that is typical of the Decadent/Imperial cultures (RPG, Chap 13). Or consider, among Norse people, you could ask, "Who is your favorite god?", which doesn't deny the others.

Presently, characters are free to *honor* various deities, particularly those that are of similar alignment to their own deity, who is a *favorite* and the one who grands boons. Mechanically, this approach is balanced, though yes, it draws a line between honored and favorite. It also sets up a particular relationship where a character is a messenger, representative or avenger of a particular deity, for whatever reason. And it fits with a non-medieaval notion, in early industrial societies, of specialization. Just as townies are specialists, so too are deities and their followers. Even in a Decadent/Imperial culture, we might think of one's "patron deity" (to use the old AD&D term) as one's... divine patron. This doesn't exclude other gods. It merely frames a relationship with one particular god as special. Anyone, now I'm perhaps sounding like I'm asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin!

All this said, I entirely agree with you that there needs to be space for pantheism/polytheism because many campaigns will have a Greek/Roman worldview, or whatnot, where PCs petition whatever god appropriately fits the context. I'll make it so!
 

It's great to see an author so willing to listen to fans.

I'm still trying to convince my local group to give Radiance a try, we're firmly entrenched in Pathfinder. I'm sure we'll get around to it sometime though.


One quick question:
For attacks do you only uuse your prime stat when using a class ability or with a basic attack too?

IE when a Wizard swings a sword does he use Str or Int? If it's Int what's the rationale?
 

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