'Embedded Agnosticism' in a Campaign World

[DMScott]

Alternatively, one could have each culture with contradictory cosmologies that are all true. This is (or at least was) a premise behind the Glorantha setting.

Still is. Glorantha is still going, there's a new rules set called "HeroQuest":

http://www.glorantha.com/

It's a pretty interesting system.

As for the main topic, I'm currently running a side campaign using Arcana Unearthed that I think of as my "Fantasy Earth" game - the cosmology is unknown to the players, and given that AU has no divine magic and restricted access to extraplanar spells most of it is unknowable in an objective sense, people rely on faith. There are multiple religions, each of which may or may not be true, and outsiders aren't much help in sorting out the truth - they are each associated with a religion and push the "party line". People raised from the dead have trouble adequately describing their experiences, if any, and tend to frame those experiences in terms of their faith.

The Summon Monster spells in AU are replaced with "Conjure Energy Creature", which creates a creature formed from magical energy for the duration of the spell. You could easily port those to D&D.

Other aspects of my game taken from real world history:

- no alignments, so no absolute morality.

- no "enemy" races - by which I mean, I don't have any intelligent humanoid more-or-less-civilized races whose role is to provide villains (such as orcs/goblins/hobgoblins/etc. in standard D&D). Enemies are determined by socio-political concerns in a given area.

- fairly political religious organizations. Generally the higher you rise within a religious hierarchy, the more you deal with temporal concerns and relationships.

I've also got the same sort of undead/living conflict as you're looking at setting up. The lack of alignments helps me muddy the waters a bit - some rulers in pragmatic civilized cultures may see undead as useful tools in their conflicts. This goes with my general trend of presenting a lot of shades of gray, and seeing what colours the players paint in response. It's a lot of fun to run.

 

[Pyske]

Hope this isn't too old to respond to.

If you want to preserve agnosticism, it seems to me that divinations are the main problem. If you have Gods who take an active role in determining the doctrine of the church and resolving theological disputes, you don't have room for much doubt. This is equally true for Gods who make decisions based on moral stances on factors such as whether they grant spells or allow the dead to the raised.

In one campaign I designed, the gods were not permitted to directly interact with humanity in any way (after a heavenly war, this was a condition of the truce). Thus, the only guidance of the churches were the records of the bygone age when the Gods took an active role (and thus created scripture, etc.) Cleric gained spells by domain and such, and only if their faith held, but as long as they believed their faith correct, their magic continued to work. Thus, the church had real schisms, and occasionally had to hunt down rogue clerics and quash heresies.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Hope this isn't too old to respond to.

If you want to preserve agnosticism, it seems to me that divinations are the main problem. If you have Gods who take an active role in determining the doctrine of the church and resolving theological disputes, you don't have room for much doubt. This is equally true for Gods who make decisions based on moral stances on factors such as whether they grant spells or allow the dead to the raised.

well, I'm still reading it...

I'm not sure I see the problem. Even assuming clerics would use divination spells to settle moral questions as opposed to factual ones, there's no reason to believe that they wouldn't end up getting their own judgement back either subconsiously or on purpose (because who is really gonna tell the high priest that he didn't have the vision he says he had?) A cleric who truely believes that he is channelling his god's power is not even going to try to raise someone who his faith says is unworthy, and if he is pushed into it would probably fail. The situation you mentioned where clerics had no direct contact with their gods but got spells based on faith would work just as well if the gods had never existed... As for gods taking an active role... As Carl Sagan said, "We know that people do hallucinate."

Kahuna burger

 

[Pyske]

The situation you mentioned where clerics had no direct contact with their gods but got spells based on faith would work just as well if the gods had never existed...

Well, yes. That would be the point, no? We wanted an agnostic world... one where it is not possible to know for sure that god exists. Am I misunderstanding, or something?

The problem is that religion fundamentally exists to answer those moral questions. You propose that the priest might get back their own preferred answer, but that's essentially the same as what I was suggesting... God does not settle moral disputes. On the other hand, if God does answer, and there's ever a question of whether the high preist is right, then the solution is simple: we ask God and he tells us.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Well, yes. That would be the point, no? We wanted an agnostic world... one where it is not possible to know for sure that god exists. Am I misunderstanding, or something?

The problem is that religion fundamentally exists to answer those moral questions. You propose that the priest might get back their own preferred answer, but that's essentially the same as what I was suggesting... God does not settle moral disputes. On the other hand, if God does answer, and there's ever a question of whether the high preist is right, then the solution is simple: we ask God and he tells us.

. . . . . . . -- Eric

I think we're talking in circles.... Even if there is a god, there is still the chance that folks doing divinations for moral questions will get back their own answers... after all, they may not be as dedicated as they think they are. More to the point, they will get it back percieving it as the response of their god.

Without becoming too real world religious, it seem to be the general idea of believers in a personal god that a) god exists. b) god talks to me. c) your god does not exist, and d) when you think he is talking to you and telling you different things than my god tells me, you are actually only talking to yourself.

Contridictory divinations between people who CANNOT (without metagame interference) know the dedication or power level of each other doesn't tell us anything about the actual opinion, much less existance of the god in question...

Or to sum up, your simple solution is not a solution to the key question IMO, to the characters, and only a solution to the player if you let it be.


Kahuna burger

 

[Nifft]

IMC, different Gods don't guarentee non-contradictory oracular insights.

The Abyssal, Hellish and Far Realms Powers that Wizards contact are NOT Gods, and their answers aren't guarenteed to agree with Divine divinations.

Furthermore, the Elemental Lords who answer the queries of the Druidic sects are always obtuse and often orthogonal to the answers of the other divination sources.

-- N

 

[Reprisal]

Psyke, Kahuna Burger, thanks for keeping with the thread and delving deeper into the issue. I lost track of a lot of things after my own personal "hell week plus" of getting assignments done and all that jazz...

I'm still reading the thread, it's just that I'm not exactly sure what to say... it would seem to me that a basic change in the ruleset would preclude the need for these sorts of problems. Making it entirely impossible to answer the question "Do Gods exist?" from a rules standpoint would seem to answer a lot of questions that seem to crop up when we start to believe that it can be done (and done well) by leaving the ruleset untouched.

At this point, I'm still not sure what route to take... either choice will mean some work for the DM, and either way, it doesn't address the question of Clerics as testaments to the existence of the Divine. When Clerics start using their powers in the proclamation of their God's existence, it acts as a powerful catalyst to foster a sense of belief.

In the campaign I was thinking about running, the mere existence of Clerics gives the "Faith" an undeniable advantage in the struggle for hearts and minds. As a result, I did want to include some rules-related adjustments to make sure that "Faith" does not completely prevail. I want there to be In-Character belief in Gods, but I also want there to be a comparable degree of disbelief in Gods... The more and more I think about this, the more and more I start thinking that this is a campaign that can only exist in a Post-Enlightenment setting... While Clerics exist to strengthen the Faithful, the other side needs something to create doubt -- they need an anti-Cleric, or at least some powerful Neitzche-like writings to call things into question.

I dunno, maybe I approach things differently from Kahuna Burger and Psyke (et al) because I think that there cannot be an effective change to the setting and premise without a corresponding supportive change in the ruleset.

For me, the setting and the rules are inextricably linked because the latter serves to put the former into context, not the other way around...

- Rep.