Does a Setting need gods?

[Dice4Hire]

I see no reason why a world needs gods. It is typical, but not required. In 4E the divine power source can be easily dropped, or the characters can aim more for celestial concepts like honor, and the like, and get their power form there.

Or there are churches in the world with no real gods at the top who can teach people to use divine magic.

I see no reason to say that divine magic and belief = psionics. They are quite different and I do not think it is hard to separate them.

 

[DracoSuave]

[MENTION=71571]DracoSuave[/MENTION]: That's true in Eberron, where many of the "religions" aren't entirely based on gods, but are based on Primal basis ie pantheism, nature spirits and ancestral worship. Except that the Silver Flame people, I always get the feel that they're this crazy paramilitary organization with a strong dose of cult flare. I'm not entirely sure if the 6 in Eberron is corporal, or any of the other actual gods presented.

Oh the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six? Naw. The thing with them is that they're kinda non-involved. Sure you can derive divine magic from the church, but you don't even have to believe in the god or share their aim.

Unlike in Toril, the gods don't come visit, and aren't communicating with anyone. There's no actual evidence to their existence. Most Khorvairans worship the Host, but they don't actually know they exist in the same sense that a Toril resident knows Tyr exists because he damn near destroyed their city last wednesday.

There's no 'one true belief' with them either. Some believe they are anthropomorphic sapient beings, others believe they are metaphors for fundamental truths of life, and others believe they don't exist at all but the church makes a handy power base for controlling the ignorant masses.

The setting makes no claim any of these are true.

 

[WalterKovacs]

Generally speaking, especially with the 4e system, gods and divine characters have a seperation. The power comes from the gods/astral plane, but the gods don't really, for example, punish a paladin by taking away his powers. It's up to the various orders of faith to police themselves. So, at least as far as clerics and the like are, the gods mostly don't interfere in mortal matters, they basically let their churches decide who to induct into their order. Now, sending extraplanar creatures in, like angels, is a more direct intervention. And if you get to the point of epic tier adventures, you may actually have charcters getting caught up in the astral sea, and be involved in gods demons and devils vying for power, etc.

It's just as easy to refluff things like the Thor movie did ... the gods are extraplanar beings, in the same way that primordials are, and that fey creatures are, and that abberations are, etc. Basically, the astral plane is just another plane with powerful creatures there, and just like arcane power, or elemental power, or shadow power, or primal power... divine power is something that flows from that plane of exitence. The godhood is thus mostly the result of mythology. The first people to interact with beings from the astral sea were so awed by them, they worshiped them as gods.

It could be very easy to use the basic concepts and have gods that intervene, gods that don't intervene, or gods that don't exist as they are believed to (either there is nothing, it's just a power source tapped by the church who either don't know, or actively hide, that the gods are dead, absent or never existed ... or it could be that say ... demons, devils, primordials, creatures from the far realm, etc are pulling a scam, trading power for devotion). The church would likely present the same front regardless, but it would be easy to have a 'black box' approach to the divine power source (i.e. prayers go in, spell comes out, no one knows what happens in between). The epic tier adventures would be interesting, but then Dark Sun is able to handle Epic tier adventures without having to travel to the astral sea.

 

[Riastlin]

As stated, its not mandatory. More to the point, as [MENTION=63763]WalterKovacs[/MENTION] points out, you don't even need to kick divine classes to the curb if you remove gods. Rather, divine magic becomes a type of magic like psionics or arcane magic. Its teachable and/or inherent in a person. So you can still have your clerics and paladins, etc. Instead of preaching the teachings of a god though, they preach a way of life. Similar, but not quite the same.

 

[Mengu]

In my game I have something called Faith Magic. It's for NPC's, but would conceptually work for divine PC's also. Those with Faith Magic get their power from a collective belief, sort of a shared pool of energy. The Wilden and Elves in the White Forest worship the Ancient Guardian Tree (which is not a god). Their collective faith grants them their powers. This is also how I explain demon worshipers, cultists, and the like.

So you basically go with the concept that civilizations created gods, instead of gods creating civilizations. And their faith is how they gain their powers.

Or if you want to remove even the concept of gods, but want to keep divine magic, you can change it to an adherence to philosophies. This might have similarities to psionic magic (for instance suddenly Monks start to fit this sort of divine magic more so than psionics), but it's not so much mind over matter, more a purity of heart (soul?) where the powers generate from. You could also use worship of the elements, seasons, etc as focus for divine magic, but that's too close to primal.

Concepts like divinity and soul are obviously associated with gods, so you'll just have to redefine the terms if you want to use them in a semi-logical way. Maybe it's a belief system based on the ancestors or history, those who believe in the way of The Lawmaker, those who rely on the teachings of The Conquerer, etc.

So, yes you can have a world without gods and still keep divine magic around.

 

[catastrophic]

Touching on what somebody mentioned above, gods are often things players get enthusiastic about- and you don't have to be religious to respond like this.

A cleric who has a deity they worship is actually a really good hook for getting a new roleplayer to think about character behavior, agenda, and personality.

Giving them a set of commandments or asking them to come up with some can really help some new players grasp hold of the potential of creating a mindset and personality different from their own. The whole deity>beliefs>worshipper thing is a really easy thing to hang your hat on.

It's also a great way to introduce players to a bit of world building- with the gm's input, they define their deity, and their church and it's politics and agenda and such.

Of course, this doesn't rule out wehat you're saying. Putting less focus as a gm on creating deities could work even better if you then give players the option of defining them.

Of course, you can ask them more broadly about their pc's beliefs, philosophies, afiliations, ect, but the whole Cleric of the Hearth God (or whoever) thing can really give some players a hand up.

 

[Holy Bovine]

Gods have a pretty strong genre-connection with RPG games, but there's no reason they need to be there.

4e would play just fine if you removed every class tied to the divine power source.

I don't think you would have to eliminate divine classes in a world without gods. Paladins already do not receive their powers from a god so why couldn't this be used for other classes like clerics? I would think it could easily be replaced with a "holy" pursuit of an ideology.

 

[bganon]

I think in the settings that have "active" gods their most important use is as an easy way to drive epic storylines, more than anything else. You can indeed remove gods as active forces, but note that the settings that do have alternatives for epic-level conflicts (such as sorcerer-kings, daelkyr, etc.)

There are plenty of ways to explain divine classes, religious belief, and the like without active gods, but it gets kind of hard to drive epic-level adventures unless you provide some alternative.

 

[pemerton]

if you get to the point of epic tier adventures, you may actually have charcters getting caught up in the astral sea, and be involved in gods demons and devils vying for power, etc.

<snip>

The epic tier adventures would be interesting, but then Dark Sun is able to handle Epic tier adventures without having to travel to the astral sea.

I think in the settings that have "active" gods their most important use is as an easy way to drive epic storylines, more than anything else. You can indeed remove gods as active forces, but note that the settings that do have alternatives for epic-level conflicts (such as sorcerer-kings, daelkyr, etc.)

There are plenty of ways to explain divine classes, religious belief, and the like without active gods, but it gets kind of hard to drive epic-level adventures unless you provide some alternative.

I agree that the most important function of gods, in D&D play, is to drive epic play - and this begins well before epic tier, because gods and divine agendas provide a link that can run from heroic tier all the way through to epic, without the campaign needing to change gears or theme part-way through.

Without gods, something else will probably be needed both to provide that integrating link across tiers, and to provide themes and opposition for epic tier.

 

[d2OKC]

A setting with no gods would actually make for some interesting RP.

Whether or not there are gods will not prevent people from creating them, or changing their views of them, or abandoning them completely. The difference in beliefs from the first century A.D. to now are startling, even though there is a large portion of the world that still believes in either a deity or many of them.

Perhaps, in your world, the ancients created myths about the gods similar to Roman/Greek gods. These were mostly stories to entertain children, but over the centuries they got turned into scripture or dogma or whatever. Now, the people of the setting (or at least some of them) totally believe in the existence of this pantheon while others do not. There could be new gods, like how the Christian/Islamic/Jewish God/Allah came around afterwards, that are gaining more followers. There could be parody gods (Flying Spaghetti Monster), whose followers exist solely to mock those that believe in the old gods. There is still plenty of room for deities (and characters that follow them) in a setting, even if they do not really exist.

In fact, perhaps one clue for this is that resurrection magic doesn't work. There would be no afterlife, I presume? So, for the whole campaign(s) they've worked under this assumption, and when they get to the end of the arch, they find out the reason why - there are no gods. Could be an interesting way to complete a campaign, if done properly.

Of course, like people have said, it wouldn't work with every group, but it could work very well with others. Good luck trying to work it out though!