NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6781411" data-attributes="member: 2067">Why wouldn't you implore your local Elminster for aid when something comes stomping around? Or believe that your local Elminster allowed it to happen as punishment? This is true of religion, but it doesn't speak to what gods are. I mean, Confucianism plays a central role in how certain Chinese societies organized their life and related to their community, but it doesn't need gods. Various stripes of Buddhism and animism do likewise. Not to mention stripes of "Nationalism as Religion" or "Politics as Religion" that are out there. Gods and religion are two separate (though related) concepts. Sodom, Gommorah, Constitinople, and Istanbul are all events in monotheistic world views, though, so no one thought anyone was a god. Even there, though, you have certain lines of divinity being drawn - Moses lead the Jews out of Egypt / God lead the Jews out of Egypt; Gabriel, acting on God's behalf, revealed the Quran to Mohammad, Mohammad revealed it to the umma, so lets not depict Mohammad's face; the way Jesus became equivalent to God in the doctrine of the Trinity. Suffice it to say that in the Real World, the difference between "metaphysical being" and "important person" can be blurry. I mean, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Frum" target="_blank">John Frum</a>, anybody?A wizard sets up shop in your neighborhood and if you pledge your loyalty to him he does magic for you is largely different from a god setting up shop in your neighborhood and if you worship him he will aid you semantically, not functionally.The gods of FR are not transcendent beings on whom the multiverse depends. If they were, we wouldn't have interloper gods from other worlds or gods being reduced to mortals for a time or gods dying and being reborn or whatnot. This is entirely appropriate for a polytheistic society - makes sense. My gods, your gods, everybody's gods, dozens and dozens of gods. What doesn't then make sense is instilling a punishment for not worshiping them. Not when all they are, is powerful beings. When the local wizard kills you and animates your dead corpse to rub his feet because you didn't pay him enough homage, that's a villain. When the gods torment your soul for eternity because you didn't pay them enough homage, that's...somehow compatible with a Good alignment and concepts like Justice and Mercy?...I think maybe the first few levels of that "Escape from Toril" campaign are going to be a group of wizards demanding tribute on pain of punishment that the party is set up against. The wizards argue that they're being entirely fair - they kill ogres, they keep dragons away, and they ask just to be praised and loved for it, honored for what they do, and anyone who does is given a magical blessing (maybe a potion or something), and those who don't are obliterated or re-animated as servants. Some of the evil wizards even torture these beings - mostly for fun. The wizards don't agree on anything and are of varying alignments. Maybe there's even one Very Powerful Wizard that controls all them. The party can't go up against all the wizards alone, but they can maybe get the Good and Neutral wizards to agree to take down the Evil ones....the only problem being making the Good and Neutral wizards care about the suffering that their system is causing."But we're responsible for the functioning of this society!" they'll cry. "Ogres might kill everyone if we're not here! All you need to do is plead for forgiveness for not honoring us, and we'll generally accept you! Destruction is only for those who truly defy us!"</blockquote>

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