D&D 5E [Forgotten Realms] The Wall of the Faithless

[MonsterEnvy]

Except it isn't, and your lack of pity changes nothing. Perhaps my characters would pity you when your soul gets shuffled around in the juvenile politics of the Realms' "gods".

My players' characters would rather shatter the rules of the universe than follow them like sheep. I encourage that. It leads to better characters and better games. If we are only allowed to color inside the lines, then what's the point of art?

Bruce Hornsby said it best

I am not wrong. The fundamental rule of the universe including the real universe is you have to adapt to survive . Not worshiping a god in the realms is refusing to adapt. You and your characters are clearly on the chaotic bent. But even the chaotic beings know adapting is life, or they won't last very long.

Your characters would be seen as just stubborn fools. Who spit on the hands that helped create the world and would choose oblivion over a reward. Coloring outside the lines is fine. But if you go off the page itself nothing good can come of it.

While I doubt any of my players would care enough to go after the wall or the gods when there are other more present problems in the games. If they did I would allow it. They would not win as that is not going to happen but they can try.

Also the gods of Greyhawk are just as foolish as the realms. The only difference is Greyhawk's gods have more limits on what they can do by the divine rules, and they are not kept alive by the worship of their followers.

 

[sunshadow21]

Refusing to bow and scrape before a bunch of power leeching petty cretins is not stupidity. Punishing players who wish to play their characters as challengers of the gods is a crappy way to run a campaign. Either you pick a god, or no outer planes for you. I know my players who are in Greyhawk: an eminently better world would be annoyed by the Realms' idiosyncracies (which is one of the reasons we don't play there).
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Making players uncomfortable is bad gaming. Making players feel like there is something wrong with them for feeling uncomfortable about a topic is bad gaming.

First, I don't play in the Realms myself because of the many idiosyncracies of that world, but the Wall is not really a big idiosyncracy to me; it's a development that ends up working with the new state of affairs after all the turmoil of the Time of Troubles. There are a lot of details about it's potential implementation that could make me wince, but as it's been setup by WotC since Kelemvor took over, it's one of the easier bumps to get around for those groups that don't wish to deal with it. It's really easy to find a minor deity that would be more than willing to accept the power of your soul without dictating any particular terms of service; targetting the bigger gods would be foolish, but there's always going to be some minor deity in the shadow of whatever big god may seem natural for the character. Those characters that truly want to challenge the gods can probably become a minor deity in their own right, alleviating any concern about having to align with any of the other power leeching petty cretins on their way out of the world. In the end, it works for the Realms because it addresses storylines and opportunities present in the Realms that are not present in other worlds; it provides some unique challenges, but the world also provides a far easier path to godhood than Greyhawk or any of the other published worlds. Greyhawk, while my personal preference, lacks a lot of things that many people who enjoy the Realms look for in a game, so in the end, neither is really better; they are just written for different types of adventures and different types of people.

As for the second part, you're right and you're wrong at the same time. Making players uncomfortable is difficult terrain, but not automatically bad gaming, but the whole point of the story is to make the characters uncomfortable at times and force them to overcome those difficult situations. If I was somehow roped into running the Realms (a massive feat in and of itself; I usually prefer homebrew, and my own personal world alleviates a lot of the concerns about the gods in this thread, as well as most of the major gripes about the Realms in general, before they even come up) and one of the players truly hated the Wall and the gods and wanted to either minimize or fight them, I would find a way to let them do so; their character would still feel discomfort, and probably a fair bit, because it's not the norm for that world, and if we aren't going to follow the norms for the world, there's no point in using the world, but I would do everything I could to make the player comfortable with the story that eventually evolves out of that theme. If the player was so uncomfortable with it that they couldn't separate their personal reactions from their character's reactions, that aspect of the world simply wouldn't come up or, more likely, we would be playing in a different world or the entire group would be coming together to figure out what changes to the Realms would be needed to be made to keep everyone happy, because chances are some in the group would be drawn to the world precisely because of the elements that made that one player uncomfortable, at which point we would no longer be playing the Realms but rather a heavily Realms inspired homebrew. Simply removing the Wall to me is pointless; the Wall comes part and parcel with how the gods are generally treated in the Realms, and to remove the Wall to me means basically rewriting the entire Time of Troubles and everything that led to it and came from it, at which point it really isn't the Realms.

 

[MG.0]

Actually that's only for those under the jurisdiction of the faerunian pantheon. The Celestial Bureaucracy uses a different system to process their dead IIRC and the dead from Zakhara also go through a different system (might even be the standard planar system).

I am not entirely certain what the nulhorandi pantheon does, likely something similiar to what they did in old Egypt.

Nice observation. So much for "universal truth".

Depending on the circumstances, the cleric could certainly find himself denied the renewal of his spells if I were the DM.

While clerics should play with awareness of their religion's tenets, I would not go so far as this.

In practicality, you are preventing a player from helping another player...which would likely frustrate either one or both and decrease enjoyment of the game overall. I wouldn't mind playing the deity's possible disapproval for dramatic effect, but only if it wasn't applied punitively. As much as I like trying to create a living believeable world, I don't like it when trying to force an in-game reality leads to out-of-game chagrin.

 

[sunshadow21]

Also the gods of Greyhawk are just as foolish as the realms. The only difference is Greyhawk's gods have more limits on what they can do by the divine rules, and they are not kept alive by the worship of their followers.

The bolded part is the key phrase to understanding the whole issue as it relates to the Realms. It creates additional headaches for characters that choose to oppose or ignore the gods, but it also creates unique opportunites to resolve those headaches. Going into a campaign in the Realms seeing the headaches and not the opportunities is going to leave players frustrated; resolving Realms specific issues by referencing solutions utilized in other worlds simply isn't going to work.

 

[Mirtek]

The bolded part is the key phrase to understanding the whole issue as it relates to the Realms.

Actually that part applies all over the multiverse. PS mentions lack of worship as a means through which deities ended in the dead book far way from Toril and long before the Time of Troubles. It's not unique to the realms at all and applies to the Greyhawk pantheons just like any other pantheon.

So what exactly did Ao change for the faerunian deities? Maybe he made them extra-dependent or maybe he originally had them independent of worshippers, sustained straight from his overdeity power, and after the ToT set them on the same regulations like the rest of the the multiverse

 

[MG.0]

As for the second part, you're right and you're wrong at the same time. Making players uncomfortable is difficult terrain, but not automatically bad gaming, but the whole point of the story is to make the characters uncomfortable at times and force them to overcome those difficult situations.

Of course characters are expected to be uncomfortable - that is the nature of adventuring. I maintain that making players uncomfortable is bad gaming. I'm not referring to "your character might get killed" kind of uncomfortable, but rather "play your character as accepting the nature of religion or he is doomed" kind of uncomfortable.

Even the Wall isn't an insurmountable problem with the Realms, but not leaving an out for players that do have real issues with it and/or religion is bad, heavy handed, unnecessary, and ultimately un-heroic, and un-fun. Especially when there are plenty of loopholes already lying around, like finding yourself not being subject to the semi-psychotic Faerunian pantheon either by geography (Kara-Tur, etc), or Crystal Sphere (Spelljammer, etc), plane of existence, or simply being protected from or overlooked by the gods for whatever random reason. Forcing a player to accept something they personally don't like for the sheer malicious joy of "that's how it is" is just bad DM'ing.

 

[sunshadow21]

Actually that part applies all over the multiverse. PS mentions lack of worship as a means through which deities ended in the dead book far way from Toril and long before the Time of Troubles. It's not unique to the realms at all and applies to the Greyhawk pantheons just like any other pantheon.

So what exactly did Ao change for the faerunian deities? Maybe he made them extra-dependent or maybe he originally had them independent of worshippers, sustained straight from his overdeity power, and after the ToT set them on the same regulations like the rest of the the multiverse

It's a lot easier to ignore in the other worlds, though. In the Realms, it comes across as the only means of power where in the other worlds, it's a lot more subtle and it's application a lot less clear. The Realms is really the only one to go that deep into the details of the gods. PS does to some degree on the concepts, but not so much on the implementation across all of the gods. Most of the factions could easily be treated as specific to Sigil or as wide spread as the DM wants them to be. Greyhawk, and especially Eberron, tend to leave most of those details open for the DM to fill in.

 

[MG.0]

I am not wrong. The fundamental rule of the universe including the real universe is you have to adapt to survive .

You can adapt...or you can change your environment. The way the Realms' afterlife works is hardly universal.

 

[sunshadow21]

Of course characters are expected to be uncomfortable - that is the nature of adventuring. I maintain that making players uncomfortable is bad gaming. I'm not referring to "your character might get killed" kind of uncomfortable, but rather "play your character as accepting the nature of religion or he is doomed" kind of uncomfortable.

That kind of discomfort really only comes up on the forums. In actual games, rarely so. As you pointed out, there are plenty of loopholes for those that wish to use them. I would never stop at "that's how it is;" that makes for a boring story. To me, it's more of "this is the starting point and this is what your characters are going to have to deal with; have fun." If playing in the Realms, than the dominant belief in the Faerunian gods and how they do things is going to be very high on the list of things to deal with. If their character chooses the harder road of resisting that, than it's on the character and the player to deal with; if the character chooses the conventional path, then there will be other challenges awaiting them as a result of their decision. Depending on how the campaign goes, the harder road may prove to actually be the easier road or it might be rendered near impossible. Since I usually prefer to leave a lot of that part up to the players, I don't force the level of discomfort on players that you seem to be implying; if they do it to themselves, my level of sympathy is going to be very low. For a PC to be forced to accept a god against their will or end up in the Wall it would take some pretty extraordinarily stupid decisions on the part of the player; they might be faced with that prospect at certain points, but I as a DM will always leave escape routes for those players that really want them. They may not be easy or entirely pleasant, but they will be there.

 

[MG.0]

That kind of discomfort really only comes up on the forums. In actual games, rarely so. As you pointed out, there are plenty of loopholes for those that wish to use them. I would never stop at "that's how it is;" that makes for a boring story. To me, it's more of "this is the starting point and this is what your characters are going to have to deal with; have fun." If playing in the Realms, than the dominant belief in the Faerunian gods and how they do things is going to be very high on the list of things to deal with. If their character chooses the harder road of resisting that, than it's on the character and the player to deal with; if the character chooses the conventional path, then there will be other challenges awaiting them as a result of their decision. Depending on how the campaign goes, the harder road may prove to actually be the easier road or it might be rendered near impossible. Since I usually prefer to leave a lot of that part up to the players, I don't force the level of discomfort on players that you seem to be implying; if they do it to themselves, my level of sympathy is going to be very low. For a PC to be forced to accept a god against their will or end up in the Wall it would take some pretty extraordinarily stupid decisions on the part of the player; they might be faced with that prospect at certain points, but I as a DM will always leave escape routes for those players that really want them. They may not be easy or entirely pleasant, but they will be there.

It sounds like we probably play similarly. I just don't get the attitude expressed by certain posters that there is no circumventing the fate of non-believer characters. It's freaking D&D: Everything is malleable. Nothing is absolute. The slavish devotion to the dogma of "canon" on the forums is almost as bad as that of the in-game Realms' gods.

I kind of like the idea of a crossover, where the Gods of Greyhawk get wind of what's going on over in the Realms and pay a visit to the Realms to kick a little butt. AO turns out to be an agent of the Far Realm, subtly enslaving the entire Realms in an effort to bring about the destruction of the multiverse and the return of the Ancient Ones

Edit: For those who may not have spotted it, the clue was there all along: AO: Ancient Ones.