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Are "evil gods" necessary? [THREAD NECRO]
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<blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 8017374" data-attributes="member: 7006"><p>[WARNING - I NECRO'D MY OLD THREAD]</p><p></p><p>With all of this talk happening about the various peoples of D&D and whether they are inherently evil and is it due to their gods they worship and so on... it made me take a look at the gods themselves. And I realized that having a pantheon that includes "evil" gods seems to intrude and trod upon unnecessarily the path of devils, demons and other outer planar archenemies.</p><p></p><p>We have entities such as Asmodeus, Orcus and all their archdevil and archdemon fraternity/sororities... whose domains and what they find important and control seem to often get superceded by gods that control or influence the same thing. And because of the fact the game is built around the Cleric as one of the four primary classes... gods always tend to have a much more prominent place in any campaign. The archfey, archdevils, and archdemons get a bit of play now due toe warlock pacts... but even still... the god pantheon of any setting seems to usurp and stand above those entities.</p><p></p><p>It makes me wonder if perhaps having gods with morality attached to them ends up just superceding the domains of devils and demons and are not really a good add to the game? If we have a Demon Lord of the Undead... do we need a god in the setting's pantheon that rules over the same thing? If we have a demon of fury like Yeenoghu, does having a god of fury as well like Gruumsh gain us anything?</p><p></p><p>I know some people will say that more enemies allows for more stories... but at the same time I do wonder if we've been giving the archdevils and archdemons short shrift because invariably we use cultists of evil gods more than we do demon and devil worshippers. And as a result it has given us things like the "all orcs are evil because they worship an evil god as their patron deity" kind of thing. Maybe the solution is to keep gods above and beyond the kin of mortal thinking and not attribute them the morality that we humanoids have by actually assigning them alignments? They have their domains, but there's no moral decision as to whether what they control is good or evil? Just a thought.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="DEFCON 1, post: 8017374, member: 7006"] [WARNING - I NECRO'D MY OLD THREAD] With all of this talk happening about the various peoples of D&D and whether they are inherently evil and is it due to their gods they worship and so on... it made me take a look at the gods themselves. And I realized that having a pantheon that includes "evil" gods seems to intrude and trod upon unnecessarily the path of devils, demons and other outer planar archenemies. We have entities such as Asmodeus, Orcus and all their archdevil and archdemon fraternity/sororities... whose domains and what they find important and control seem to often get superceded by gods that control or influence the same thing. And because of the fact the game is built around the Cleric as one of the four primary classes... gods always tend to have a much more prominent place in any campaign. The archfey, archdevils, and archdemons get a bit of play now due toe warlock pacts... but even still... the god pantheon of any setting seems to usurp and stand above those entities. It makes me wonder if perhaps having gods with morality attached to them ends up just superceding the domains of devils and demons and are not really a good add to the game? If we have a Demon Lord of the Undead... do we need a god in the setting's pantheon that rules over the same thing? If we have a demon of fury like Yeenoghu, does having a god of fury as well like Gruumsh gain us anything? I know some people will say that more enemies allows for more stories... but at the same time I do wonder if we've been giving the archdevils and archdemons short shrift because invariably we use cultists of evil gods more than we do demon and devil worshippers. And as a result it has given us things like the "all orcs are evil because they worship an evil god as their patron deity" kind of thing. Maybe the solution is to keep gods above and beyond the kin of mortal thinking and not attribute them the morality that we humanoids have by actually assigning them alignments? They have their domains, but there's no moral decision as to whether what they control is good or evil? Just a thought. [/QUOTE]
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Are "evil gods" necessary? [THREAD NECRO]
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