Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5605180" data-attributes="member: 2067">Have you ever read Small Gods?I guess my idea of what a god should be isn't quite so...monolithic?IMO, gods can absolutely be this (kind of FR-y version) and it's a lot of fun.Gods can also just be ideas (see: Eberron), powerful outsiders (see: Planescape), nefarious shadow-entities scheming for your destruction (see: Ravenloft), dead (see: Dark Sun), Only One (see: Musilm-Judeo-Christian Influence), not really gods (see: Kobolds worshiping a dragon) or in various combinations of the above. I like different flavors of gods, depending on the setting I'm into. While a global cult of Demeter requiring sacrifices or famine is interesting, it's also limiting. In such a world, you can't have, say, competing pantheons. If Demeter is the Goddess of Harvest, you can't also have, say, Xipe Totec, because the idea behind the "natural world" in one pantheon is completely different than in the other, and they can't BOTH be right. Or, at least, when given the option between flaying captives and wearing their rotting skin, or just killin' a goat, the choice would be fairly obvious. Your ability to have adventures about rival deities is much more circumscribed. If someone wanted to kill Lolth, it would clearly be a bad idea, since it would upset some natural order, whereas in a more diverse setting, Lolth can be stabbed to death no problem, and the only things that go away are Bad Things. It also makes it hard to play a character with a more pseudo-scientific or atheistic leanings. Any character inspired by an archetype dated after about 1400 might crash up against the idea that, no, crops don't grow because of air, water, and light...they grow because Demeter Says So. So I pick and choose deific influences based on what I want kind of stories I'm planning on telling with the setting. Generally, I take an agnostic position that implies that the role of the gods is not going to be especially important in the game. A character can believe the Moon is Sehanine, and can believe that the Moon is a hunk of rock, and can believe that the Moon is green cheese, and all of those are compatible, because the game isn't vitally concerned with the fictional reality of what the moon is...it's more concerned with worldly matters. This excludes certain plotlines -- any choice would -- but it at least allows for the maximum diversity of characters. Plants can grow in one part of the world because Demeter Says So, and in another part of the world because you run around with the flayed skin of an enemy on you for a few months, and in another part of the world because of air, soil, water, and light.For instance, the characters in my current home game are traveling to the North Pole to talk to a Crystal Dragon who can see the future in the stars. Not exactly a god, but worshiped as one, with her own monestaries and servants and everything. On the way, they met a group of dohwar who don't believe in fate, destiny, or mystic nonsense. The paladin's reaction was to react "as if you met someone in real life who denied gravity." That -- hilarious -- interaction could never occur in a world where there was one definite truth that everyone was aware of.</blockquote>

Verification