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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7157356" data-attributes="member: 6778044">I can definitely see some business reasons to back up the decisions. But that simply means that they need to continue to use them from time to time to maintain the branding. It doesn't preclude them from writing a paragraph promoting monotheism.But let me address your first statement from a different direction.First, you are assuming that there was an intent to support monotheistic campaigns (I think the evidence is exceedingly thin in AD&D and earlier), and then you take that further to indicate that WotC intentionally removed that possibility, for whatever reason.Why was it conscious and intentional? Did the support exist in 4e? 3e?I don't have a 3e PHB handy, but the 3.5 steers you directly into a specific pantheon. It goes on to say this:"Some clerics devote themselves not to a god but to a cause or a source of divine power. These characters wield magic the way clerics devoted to individual gods do, but they are not associated with any religious institution or any particular practice of worship.  A cleric devoted to good and law, for example, may be on friendly terms with the clerics of lawful and good deities and may  extol  the virtues of a good and lawful life, but he is not a functionary in a church hierarchy."So it allows for a cleric that doesn't worship any god, but it continues to describe how they relate to the rest of the polytheistic world. I don't remember it being there. I don't think there was anything to remove. Your examples for 1e amount to portions of a few sentences that I read differently. Nor do those eliminate all of the other text that points to polytheism in the PHB/DMG. More importantly, all of the published AD&D material on the subject of gods and religion, Deities & Demigods and the various campaign settings along with many articles in Dragon also supported a polytheistic approach exclusively. It is extremely clear what TSR believed to be the default approach to AD&D religion simply by looking at what they released.There wasn't anything for them to remove, intentionally or otherwise. When 3e was developed, they decided they needed a default campaign world, and went with Greyhawk. I think it was a logical choice, and it's certainly the setting that most closely fit the AD&D rules. In 4e they decided (explicitly so and they released material explaining the design process), that D&D needed it's own lore. They took it upon themselves to alter established lore that they felt came from other sources, to create new lore. And the game was tied to a polytheistic approach to religion. 5e took a different (and in my opinion, much better approach). It looked at the legacy of D&D as a whole. When it came time to look at clerics (and the gods), the legacy is polytheism. Starting in OD&D with historically-based religions, then moving to setting specific options. The concept of specialty priests which started with druids, expanded to cover the range of options with a polytheistic world that started in 2e. So 5e brings in all of those concepts, but relegates the gods themselves (for their settings and some historical ones), to an appendix. So then you're left with specialty clerics. You don't seem to have ever had an issue with druids, and the others are simply many aspects of a religion. A monotheistic god can still support the different domains, with each being a facet of the whole. Not all that unlike the concept of saints, although obviously quite different in a game world. As was mentioned earlier - I can't stand dragonborn. But it's very clear that since 4e they are a central part of WotC marketing and design strategy. They are integrated into the game through the art, and the text. They've been wise (in my opinion) to minimize their continued presence in SCAG, but they are still there. It's just left up to the DM to determine by how much.Like it or not, they are there. But it certainly doesn't make me even consider, for even a split second, that I won't purchase or use the book. Because outside of the handful of sentences or paragraphs, they aren't there.</blockquote>

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