Dragonlance Dragonlance cataclysm and a bit about Paladine

[Reynard]

yes free will that is good or neutral or evil...

Good, neutral and evil don't mean anything in D&D. The original definitions presented are middle school, read a philosophy book once kludges, and ever since they have gotten fuzziness and less coherent. Forget it. Alignment is dumb and adds nothing to the game.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

Good, neutral and evil don't mean anything in D&D. The original definitions presented are middle school, read a philosophy book once kludges, and ever since they have gotten fuzziness and less coherent. Forget it. Alignment is dumb and adds nothing to the game.

I am A OKAY with WotC dropping alignment and calling them the gods of P and the gods of T after there big draconic gods. That would also end this issue, they would just be 3 groups of gods (although as much as I dislike alignment the idea of balance between good and evil DOES draw me to the setting it is only the execution I find troubling)

 

[Umbran]

There was no personal attack.

Mod Note:
Your hiding behind implication and winking does not cut the mustard. This is the second warning I've had to give today to people about not suggesting their fellow posters are evil. It is time to let that tactic die.

And, time for you to leave the discussion.

 

[Dire Bare]

The deities of Krynn are "alien intelligences"? No. They've never been written that way. Deities in the real world have never been "written" that way either. The gods of the Real World are supernatural in nature, but very, very human in outlook and behavior. As are the gods of D&D.

Have similar events to the Cataclysm been described in various real world mythologies? Yes. So? I'm not judging the Dragonlance setting by ancient standards of morality, I'm judging the setting by modern standards, as it was written by modern authors for a modern audience. Are there still folks who believe mythic disasters were just punishments for wicked people? Sure! Heck, there are folks who claim modern disasters are punishments for the wicked. Don't care. I read aspirational fantasy to get away from the ugliness of the real world.

The "Good" deities of Krynn dropping a mountain on an entire city, causing a planet-wide cataclysm . . . not the actions of someone "good", deity or mortal. Ugh. I love Dragonlance, but this is one of the things retconned right out the door in "my" version of the setting.

 

[RuinousPowers]

The worst thing about DL is dumb views on alignment. As i've said before, the god of Good, who lives on a plane of Good, surrounded by Good celestials, escorted by his Good dragons, and is the eternal afterlife of his Good followers wants us to believe that having too much Good around is a bad thing. It's a direct attempt to tie Moorcock's Law/Balance/Chaos onto Good/Neutral/Evil and it just doesn't work, especially since D&D already has Law/Neutral/Chaos. Sorry, intolerance is not a trait of Good.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

The worst thing about DL is dumb views on alignment. As i've said before, the god of Good, who lives on a plane of Good, surrounded by Good celestials, escorted by his Good dragons, and is the eternal afterlife of his Good followers wants us to believe that having too much Good around is a bad thing. It's a direct attempt to tie Moorcock's Law/Balance/Chaos onto Good/Neutral/Evil and it just doesn't work, especially since D&D already has Law/Neutral/Chaos. Sorry, intolerance is not a trait of Good.

again, if you can make the balance work and the cataclysm work AND have the good gods act mostly to always good... Dragon lance would be (IMO) so much better.

 

[Dire Bare]

again, if you can make the balance work and the cataclysm work AND have the good gods act mostly to always good... Dragon lance would be (IMO) so much better.

In the home campaign I've been working on . . . on-and-off for years, not yet played . . . The gods switch from Good-Neutral-Evil to Law-Neutral-Chaos. The Cataclysm happened pretty much as written, but was not the work of "good" deities.

During the War of the Lance, Paladine has shifted towards being truly "good", and is regretful over the Cataclysm and is working to heal the wounds caused to the world and its peoples. He's still primarily lawful, and still a bit pissed at the Kingpriest . . . . Paladine pre-Cataclysm is "Old Testament" and Paladine post-Cataclysm is more "New Testament".

Other Gods of Law have leaned towards Good longer . . . Mishakal has always been nice! She objected to the collective decision to smite Istar, and is the catalyst to bring the gods back to Krynn to help its peoples, by "breaking" the divine law and gifting the Blue Crystal Staff to Goldmoon.

The peoples of Krynn, like early the early D&D game itself, often conflate "law" with "good", and so often view the "Gods of Law" as good deities, even though that isn't really true (in my campaign, that is). They also tend to conflate "chaos" with "evil" . . . but not all of the "Gods of Chaos" are actually evil . . . . Tiamat certainly is! Oops, Takhisis.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Is not OK to punisher sinners?

You know what? No, it's not okay. If someone is doing something that doesn't actually hurt anyone, but is just against some rule for 'reasons' no one feels the need to justify then they shouldn't be punished. There I said it.

Besides, death is a release not a punishment!

This is why players go straight to 'releasing' gods at level 20.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I live in the wester world (although the east coast of the US) and I don't know many (even preachers) that take the bible as 100% word for word. Where I am sure there ARE people that want to hold up the religious books with no eye for evolution of morality, I don't think it is common, and I know of no large companies that would want to risk being associated with such.

Again, I don't want to talk about real world stuff... I don't want to talk about real world religion. I want to talk about the game of make believe about elves and dragons.

It is impossible to talk about Dragonlance in the way you and others want to without bringing this stuff in.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

I've never read a detailed on the ground examination of what life in Istar looked like (it may have been written, but I've only looked at the overviews of some gaming sources), but I make some assumptions that are probably at least subtle changes from original intent, and it makes it work out all right.

1. The Kingpriest and his thought control regime was evil, hiding behind a facade of good. What once actually was a good society had become corrupted to evil.

2. From a cosmological standpoint, the society's crimes were at least twofold: pushing evil out of balance into extreme prominence, and compromising freedom of moral choice--both big cosmological crimes in Krynn.

3. It wasn't just the Kingpriest; most of his people had been corrupted at this point (many opportunities to change having been offered is a good inclusion).

4. This situation was spreading and was powerful enough that it was (in the foresight of the gods) going to take over the world.

I kind of see that as all one thing, even though I parsed it out as four points. So the Cataclysm was invoked to preserve a cosmic balance that prevented worldwide loss of freedom of choice and domination of evil. The way the world would have looked for people living in it in a few years without the Cataclysm would have been worse than with it. And the final sub-point:

5. The Neutral gods (champions of balance and freedom of moral choice) were at least as much involved as the Good ones. The Good ones went along because they saw that the overall suffering would be worse without it, and because they recognized the value of the Neutral gods cosmological place.

That makes it work well enough for me. I'm not sure how much change that requires to the official take. I'd just say that the old official position was lies spread by the gods of Evil.