Dragonlance [Dragonlance/Faerun] Anyone here met any Cataclysm/Wall of the Faithless defenders?

[doctorbadwolf]

But how is it unjust? Anymore than the king saying pay this tax or go to jail?

That is also unjust, tbh, but it's more like the king saying tithe to the church/pay this special extra tax or be tied to a post until you starve to death.

And since the Wall existed before the gods needed worship to have power (a silly thing to do to the setting in the first place), it's even more like the king saying "walk by my castle once a month and shout about how much you love me or be tied to a stake until you starve to death."

 

[Chaosmancer]

Snip

Honestly, how is "worship the deities or be punished" different from "pay your taxes / obey your king or go to prision". It's a law imposed by those who have the power to do so. A king is even less superior to a peasant than a deity is.

Sure, a deity of chaos and freedom might have reason to oppose the wall (as she has reasons to oppose any law), but a deity who is "just LG" might not even see it as wrong. It's just one more law that you either obey or suffer the consequences.

Snipped because not FR Lore

What if the King said "Pay your Taxes or I burn your entire village to the ground and salt the land." Would that be a good law?

No, of course not, that is a horrifically unfair punishment for failing to pay your taxes.

Now, what is the action that is being punished? Having thoughts or beliefs that don't match the norm. That is it. You don't have to harm anyone, you don't have to even disrespect the gods. You just have to not worship them.

So, what about the King who jails the peasant for thinking that he isn't a very good king? Not for fomenting rebellion, not for disobeying the laws, just for thinking in his own private thoughts "Man, King X sure doesn't do a good job."

That is the very act the Wall punishes. Free Thought. That is the difference between your laws. One is an action that you fail to take. The other is a thought you fail to have.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

And they oppose the wall on the mortail coil by making their worshippers go out and convert mortals, so that they can claim them.

Honestly, how is "worship the deities or be punished" different from "pay your taxes / obey your king or go to prision". It's a law imposed by those who have the power to do so. A king is even less superior to a peasant than a deity is.

Sure, a deity of chaos and freedom might have reason to oppose the wall (as she has reasons to oppose any law), but a deity who is "just LG" might not even see it as wrong. It's just one more law that you either obey or suffer the consequences.

Why should the afterlife be free of laws? D&D's afterlife isn't even an eternal reward/punishment. Even without a deity calling dips on a soul, a soul ends up on the plane that most strongly aligns with her, gets her memories stripped away immediately and over a few centuries gets everything else about her not yet fully aligning with the plane also stripped away and then finally merges with the plane and ceases to exist.

Its not really comparable. Taxes, even in a feudal society, were part of a reciprocal relationship. You pay taxes, the lord protects you. If either broke the deal they would be in trouble.

There's no reciprocity in this case. Where's the wall for gods who don't do well by their faithful?

 

[Mirtek]

Are all taxes unjust then? Ideally the king uses them to pay for roads, security, etc. And in FR the deities definately do govern their portfolios. Certain aspects of reality go south whenever there's a turmoil or even interregnum (e.g. during the short time of death transfering from Cyric to Kelemvor no mortal could die, leaving some poor sods in very unpleasant conditions)

Somehow Faerun seems to be so messed up that it needs constant supervising. There are also scenes with the deities in novels where they are clearly busy making sure that their portfolio is working as expected

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Are all taxes unjust then? Ideally the king uses them to pay for roads, security, etc. And in FR the deities definately do govern their portfolios. Certain aspects of reality go south whenever there's a turmoil or even interregnum (e.g. during the short time of death transfering from Cyric to Kelemvor no mortal could die, leaving some poor sods in very unpleasant conditions)

Somehow Faerun seems to be so messed up that it needs constant supervising. There are also scenes with the deities in novels where they are clearly busy making sure that their portfolio is working as expected

What on earth...?

No. Not all races are unjust, and no one even vaguely implied they were.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Are all taxes unjust then? Ideally the king uses them to pay for roads, security, etc. And in FR the deities definately do govern their portfolios. Certain aspects of reality go south whenever there's a turmoil or even interregnum (e.g. during the short time of death transfering from Cyric to Kelemvor no mortal could die, leaving some poor sods in very unpleasant conditions)

Somehow Faerun seems to be so messed up that it needs constant supervising. There are also scenes with the deities in novels where they are clearly busy making sure that their portfolio is working as expected

That literally has nothing to do with anything we said.

Taxes are not unjust. Punishing someone for thinking you are not allocating those taxes effectively is.

The God's keep the world running? Wonderful. That's great. That's their job. But, just because it is my job to do something does not mean I am immune to criticism from someone saying I'm not doing it well.

And, remember, the Wall went into existence about 1,360 years before mortal worship was required to keep the gods functioning. So a punishment for not worshipping the Gods was put in place long before the gods needed worship, and long, long, long after they had been established in the roles.

So, even if you want to continue this analogy about taxes, it is more accurate to say that the nobles were forced by the king to limit their budgets to their taxes.... but before that they were punishing people for complaining about their spending habits, when they weren't even collecting taxes in the first place.

 

[Azzy]

This allusion to taxes has caused me to think of the followin scenario:

King: "Sheriff, where are the taxes you were supposed to collect?"
Serriff: "I'm sorry, your magesty, the peasantry have become libertarians and are now chanting 'taxes are theft'."

 

[Argyle King]

I don't have any emotional connection to the wall. I feel no need to defend it. I had no idea it even existed until after other people started to mention it. (I typically do not play in Forgotten Realms.)

However, I also do not fully understand being offended by it. (Which isn't to say that people aren't offended; I'm simply struggling to understand why.) As I understand it, divine beings are very real and tangible in Forgotten Realms. So, it makes some amount of in-setting logic that they would also be able to enforce some sort of tangible method for enforcing religion*.

*I didn't use the word "faith" because I do not believe it can apply in this circumstance. The people in the world have confirmed knowledge of divine beings influencing the setting.

All that being said, the little bit of knowledge I have picked up over the past few days (from FR threads) lean me toward believing that most of the gods in FR are kinda dbags -even those who are "good."

I guess can understand removing the concept so as to reduce the amount of setting elements which may be viewed as controversial (in any conceivable way) in contemporary society. I cannot say that I fully understand the why of somebody being offended in this instance, but, if it's viewed as offensive by the game's audience, I believe the game is overall better without it.

Still, I find myself curious to see how far the effort to sanitize D&D goes; mentally reconciling the idea of killing other sentient beings for loot (and advancement) with real-life society's morals is going to be interesting to watch.

 

[Argyle King]

This allusion to taxes has caused me to think of the followin scenario:

King: "Sheriff, where are the taxes you were supposed to collect?"
Serriff: "I'm sorry, your magesty, the peasantry have become libertarians and are now chanting 'taxes are theft'."

Arguably, that's the plot of Robin Hood.

 

[Raduin711]

I don't have any emotional connection to the wall. I feel no need to defend it. I had no idea it even existed until after other people started to mention it. (I typically do not play in Forgotten Realms.)

However, I also do not fully understand being offended by it. (Which isn't to say that people aren't offended; I'm simply struggling to understand why.) As I understand it, divine beings are very real and tangible in Forgotten Realms. So, it makes some amount of in-setting logic that they would also be able to enforce some sort of tangible method for enforcing religion*.

In defense of the faithless, just because something is really powerful and says it's a god, doesn't mean it's a god.

What if gods are just another class of being, just... really powerful? After all, Ao showed up out of nowhere during the ToT, and nobody had heard of him before, which opens up lots of questions like, "what if there's a god over Ao?" maybe there's a "real god" out there somewhere (and how would we know when we found them?) What if it's just turtles all the way up?

And anyway, why does being really powerful mean that we have to worship these beings? We don't demand that the ants beneath our feet worship us, so why do these gods expect us to worship them? Out of fear of this wall? What if these souls were meant to go elsewhere, but these so-called gods have us trapped in their net, and the wall is simply their extortion racket? What if the afterworlds are a farce? Can we trust our perceptions of them?

And down the philosophical rabbit hole we go. Unfortunately, despite the impressive power the gods wield in FR, and the presence of magic both divine and arcane, and even the text directly stating that they are gods, for the (imaginary) inhabitants of that world they are really still at square 1.

Also, the resemblance of the FR faithless to real-world agnostics and atheists is too strong to ignore. The fact that the setting goes out of their way to give them a special, shortened time-limit on resurrection and proposes a rather bleak and punishing afterlife for them comes off as having a hostile attitude. This may put off some players.