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Is there an increase in "godless" campaign settings?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 8312675" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Here's the problem though - "in exchange for worship".</p><p></p><p>That's the issue, the one you're apparently glossing over and/or don't realize is important.</p><p></p><p>That's not how the gods themselves in a lot of settings, including most of the ones discussed, present what's going on. Nor is it clearly what the writers are thinking a lot of the time. The trouble is, you have multiple concepts of divinity colliding. And "personifies an aspect of the world" is some extremely vague stuff which actually does not accurately describe a lot of mythological gods.</p><p></p><p>In the FR, for example, worship doesn't work the way you describe. It's essentially at gunpoint. Gods offer you literally nothing. Not a damn thing. Nowt. There's no exchange. You have to pick at least one to worship, or else your soul will be shoved into the shredder when you die (where other souls can go to various heavens/hells and potentially be reborn or w/e). Depending on who is writing, failure to select at least one god to worship may have bad consequences in life (not, seemingly, from the god, but from "the system").</p><p></p><p>On top of that the FR gods don't really seem to "personify aspects of the world", as much as they seem to be powerful beings who have attempted to claim aspects of the world. But they still don't offer you anything. You just have to pick one and hope maybe they're decent to you, but it's a one-way relationship. You honor them, they do absolutely nothing for you. They don't even save your soul from the celestial shredder. That's done by the celestial bureaucracy (or Kelemvor, depending on who you ask - Greenwood seems to exclude Kelemvor from the process) <em>in exchange</em> for you picking a god.</p><p></p><p>The whole thing is a goddamn hideous mess that exists because people tried to fuse a Greco-Roman "bunch of gods who have personalities and are total wankers though I guess we have to claim some of them have Good alignments even though they clearly don't act Good" with Christian (not even Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic) concepts like you being damned for eternity if you failed to worship capital-g God, or in this case, at least one of these Greco-Roman jerkboys. And there's the full jerkboy action where if you fail to honour other gods, they're allowed to be as spiteful and vile to you as they like, should you be in their "sphere", even if they're supposedly "Good".</p><p></p><p>It's a goddamn mess. And "a goddamn mess" describes most of the D&D pantheons. I mean, what you're describing, a being that gives power in exchange for worship could equally be described as a demon, or a spirit. Adding in the rather dodgy "personifies an aspect of the world" is somewhat nonsensical. It's not actually connected in any way to the latter. Like, if a demon decides to "personify an aspect of the world", is he now a god? I don't think so mate. I mean, by your logic, one of the Fey who personifies "the summer" or whatever whilst granting powers to Warlocks is "a god".</p><p></p><p>On top of this, the FR gods aren't even "top of the tree". Ao is - i.e. Alpha Omega - i.e. by implication the Christian God (at least in initial concept). Though as more has come out about him, Ao has moved away from that towards sort of the concept of The Watcher from Marvel, except more interventionist and powerful. So that further muddies the water.</p><p></p><p>Dragonlance similarly has a bizarre hybrid of Greco-Roman and Christian beliefs (again, not Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian, really - Mormon, to be specific, hence the golden discs), where the writers are simultaneously trying to have a pantheon full of bad-natured gods (still some Good aligned despite being cruel) yet to hew to Christian concepts of the divine being inherently righteous. In DL it's even more confusing because the "sins" the people of DL were punished for by an asteroid strike and the gods abandoning them are hard to understand as actual "sins". It's just like one of those confusing Biblical-style punishments. And to have that at the heart of the setting is even more bizarre.</p><p></p><p>But this isn't other people being difficult - it's you taking an extremely simplistic view (which fuses two concepts which have no business being fused) which doesn't actually fit how pantheons work in most official D&D settings.</p><p></p><p>I can't even think of an official D&D setting that fits the simple, clean model of gods you describe.</p><p></p><p>The Forgotten Realms is a major exception to this and is basically the "default" D&D setting now. It has extreme detail on the actual faith/religions. Trouble is, the FR gods are such a bunch of utter jerks (even the supposedly "Good" ones) with few exceptions (for example maybe their Christ-analogue is okay, though he is confusingly called Ilmater, like a Finnish god, even though he's basically Issek of the Jug from Fritz Leiber, another Christ-analogue). So it's very hard to believe people would worship them in the ways described (i.e. willingly, positively, rather than fearfully). It's very hard to take the "Good" gods seriously because they're such utter scumbags, too. I mean, good grief, Clangeddin, god of <em>literally genociding</em> your enemies, is Lawful Good. I just don't know how to respond to that one. Virtually every G-aligned god in the FR has done more messed-up stuff than many of the lesser E-aligned ones, and they all let the celestial shredder continue to operate, which pretty clearly is Evil.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 8312675, member: 18"] Here's the problem though - "in exchange for worship". That's the issue, the one you're apparently glossing over and/or don't realize is important. That's not how the gods themselves in a lot of settings, including most of the ones discussed, present what's going on. Nor is it clearly what the writers are thinking a lot of the time. The trouble is, you have multiple concepts of divinity colliding. And "personifies an aspect of the world" is some extremely vague stuff which actually does not accurately describe a lot of mythological gods. In the FR, for example, worship doesn't work the way you describe. It's essentially at gunpoint. Gods offer you literally nothing. Not a damn thing. Nowt. There's no exchange. You have to pick at least one to worship, or else your soul will be shoved into the shredder when you die (where other souls can go to various heavens/hells and potentially be reborn or w/e). Depending on who is writing, failure to select at least one god to worship may have bad consequences in life (not, seemingly, from the god, but from "the system"). On top of that the FR gods don't really seem to "personify aspects of the world", as much as they seem to be powerful beings who have attempted to claim aspects of the world. But they still don't offer you anything. You just have to pick one and hope maybe they're decent to you, but it's a one-way relationship. You honor them, they do absolutely nothing for you. They don't even save your soul from the celestial shredder. That's done by the celestial bureaucracy (or Kelemvor, depending on who you ask - Greenwood seems to exclude Kelemvor from the process) [I]in exchange[/I] for you picking a god. The whole thing is a goddamn hideous mess that exists because people tried to fuse a Greco-Roman "bunch of gods who have personalities and are total wankers though I guess we have to claim some of them have Good alignments even though they clearly don't act Good" with Christian (not even Judeo-Christian or Abrahamic) concepts like you being damned for eternity if you failed to worship capital-g God, or in this case, at least one of these Greco-Roman jerkboys. And there's the full jerkboy action where if you fail to honour other gods, they're allowed to be as spiteful and vile to you as they like, should you be in their "sphere", even if they're supposedly "Good". It's a goddamn mess. And "a goddamn mess" describes most of the D&D pantheons. I mean, what you're describing, a being that gives power in exchange for worship could equally be described as a demon, or a spirit. Adding in the rather dodgy "personifies an aspect of the world" is somewhat nonsensical. It's not actually connected in any way to the latter. Like, if a demon decides to "personify an aspect of the world", is he now a god? I don't think so mate. I mean, by your logic, one of the Fey who personifies "the summer" or whatever whilst granting powers to Warlocks is "a god". On top of this, the FR gods aren't even "top of the tree". Ao is - i.e. Alpha Omega - i.e. by implication the Christian God (at least in initial concept). Though as more has come out about him, Ao has moved away from that towards sort of the concept of The Watcher from Marvel, except more interventionist and powerful. So that further muddies the water. Dragonlance similarly has a bizarre hybrid of Greco-Roman and Christian beliefs (again, not Abrahamic/Judeo-Christian, really - Mormon, to be specific, hence the golden discs), where the writers are simultaneously trying to have a pantheon full of bad-natured gods (still some Good aligned despite being cruel) yet to hew to Christian concepts of the divine being inherently righteous. In DL it's even more confusing because the "sins" the people of DL were punished for by an asteroid strike and the gods abandoning them are hard to understand as actual "sins". It's just like one of those confusing Biblical-style punishments. And to have that at the heart of the setting is even more bizarre. But this isn't other people being difficult - it's you taking an extremely simplistic view (which fuses two concepts which have no business being fused) which doesn't actually fit how pantheons work in most official D&D settings. I can't even think of an official D&D setting that fits the simple, clean model of gods you describe. The Forgotten Realms is a major exception to this and is basically the "default" D&D setting now. It has extreme detail on the actual faith/religions. Trouble is, the FR gods are such a bunch of utter jerks (even the supposedly "Good" ones) with few exceptions (for example maybe their Christ-analogue is okay, though he is confusingly called Ilmater, like a Finnish god, even though he's basically Issek of the Jug from Fritz Leiber, another Christ-analogue). So it's very hard to believe people would worship them in the ways described (i.e. willingly, positively, rather than fearfully). It's very hard to take the "Good" gods seriously because they're such utter scumbags, too. I mean, good grief, Clangeddin, god of [I]literally genociding[/I] your enemies, is Lawful Good. I just don't know how to respond to that one. Virtually every G-aligned god in the FR has done more messed-up stuff than many of the lesser E-aligned ones, and they all let the celestial shredder continue to operate, which pretty clearly is Evil. [/QUOTE]
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