D&D 5E Orcs and Drow in YOUR game (poll */comments +)

[Lyxen]

Are you even familiar with the word "premise"?

Merriam-Webster: "a statement or idea that is accepted as being true and that is used as the basis of an argument", for example "There are in general gods and goddesses in D&D editions, settings and modules", which is absolutely proven despite you finding a few sentences out of the hundreds of thousand in D&D publications that show that yes, there are minor exceptions.

View attachment 151342
Nary an Immortal in sight.

Well, maybe you should read more of Basic/BECMI than just a single page (which again proves that what you think are EXCEPTIONS), because the rest of BECMI clearly explains that the faith is placed in gods/goddesses and that there are churches with their hierarchy.

Molday Basic:

Expert Set:

Companion Set:

And there are so many mentions of gods in modules B/X that I won't bore you with them, but for example:
1978 - B1 (In Search of the Unknown) - The dungeons has a worship area with a horned, evil-looking, idol (surrounded by runes and glyphs and with a sacrificial pit in front of it) as a "token gesture to the gods".

1979 - B2 (Keep on the Borderlands) - The keep has a chapel, although no details of the worship there are given; and the Caves of Chaos contain an evil temple that appears to be run by demon worshippers.

 

[Scars Unseen]

So what do these clerics have to do with orcs and drow in your games? This derail has now gone for several pages, could you perhaps stop?

Hey, fair play: usually it's the orcs and drow that find their way into every other topic. (but seriously guys, this tangent stopped being productive by the time it had enough form to be called a tangent).

 

[Azzy]

Merriam-Webster: "a statement or idea that is accepted as being true and that is used as the basis of an argument", for example "There are in general gods and goddesses in D&D editions, settings and modules", which is absolutely proven despite you finding a few sentences out of the hundreds of thousand in D&D publications that show that yes, there are minor exceptions.

Jeebus, you're just tripping over yourself to be wrong, aren't you? The so-called "premise" that I was rebutting was meddling gods being "the basic premise of D&D" not this abberant strawman that you have foisted upon me. Maybe you should go argue with someone else if you can't keep up with what I'm asserting (even though I've reasserted and even quoted myself several times now).

Well, maybe you should read more of Basic/BECMI than just a single page (which again proves that what you think are EXCEPTIONS), because the rest of BECMI clearly explains that the faith is placed in gods/goddesses and that there are churches with their hierarchy.

I'm sorry, if the introduction to the cleric class in BECMI is not enough to show that clerics of that edition gain their magic from faith alone. (Never mind that gods were purposefully expunged from BECMI and later.)

 

[Helldritch]

So what do these clerics have to do with orcs and drow in your games? This derail has now gone for several pages, could you perhaps stop?

Simple. Let me repeat myself.
In a world where the gods can and will act on the prime to enforce their will. They will make sure that the race they created (or are the chief deity) will stay "in line" with the edict of that god/pantheon. So in a world where Gruumsh is a reality, these orcs will have a hard time being anything but evil. The same goes with Lolth.

In a world where these gods are absent (or simply do not exist, or are not considered "patrons" of a race) then orcs and drows will have a wider range of alignments.

My stance was that in a world where the gods exists, they will mettle in the affairs of mortals. And that the gods are pretty much assumed on every world since the beginning of D&D. This means, that unless you homebrew or have a very specific setting, the gods will act through their clerics and other agents to make sure that said race will stay in line. For some reasons, Azzy decided that cleric could follow a philosophy (and not a god) from the start making the above a non sense. And the thread further derailed into when clerics could follow a philosophy from the core. In the white box they pray their gods. In Moldvay's basic they do not, but they are back at it in the expert set... Maybe the fact that it was 1983 and the red box was seen as a D&D for "kids" prompted such a change I do not know. But in the 1ed up to 5ed you had to have a god in the core books. Philosophy based clerics were in splat books or specific settings only.

 

[Lanefan]

I'm sorry, if the introduction to the cleric class in BECMI is not enough to show that clerics of that edition gain their magic from faith alone. (Never mind that gods were purposefully expunged from BECMI and later.)

OK, I'm confused now - @Lyxen has posted quotes from the BEC parts of BECMI that clearly show deities as being where Clerics get their power (even Orc and Drow Clerics!), so where-when were the deities "purposefully expunged"? (and, while we're at it, why?)

Are you two looking at different printings of BECMI, perhaps?

 

[Lyxen]

Jeebus, you're just tripping over yourself to be wrong, aren't you? The so-called "premise" that I was rebutting was meddling gods being "the basic premise of D&D" not this abberant strawman that you have foisted upon me. Maybe you should go argue with someone else if you can't keep up with what I'm asserting (even though I've reasserted and even quoted myself several times now).

It's too bad that I've proven that everything you are asserting is actually based on ignoring the majority of the game.

I'm sorry, if the introduction to the cleric class in BECMI is not enough to show that clerics of that edition gain their magic from faith alone. (Never mind that gods were purposefully expunged from BECMI and later.)

And I'm sorry if the actual, later, publications of all the rest of the BECMI line contradict your view, whether the boxes or the actual modules. In any case, as demonstrated, in 2e and 3e, not having gods were basically punctuation marks and nothing more in the editions histories. And this is absent from 4e and 5e. So overall, the basic premise of D&D through its history is that gods are present and are meddling with mortals, if only through their clerics. Yes, there are exceptions now and then, minor, and exceptional.

 

[Azzy]

OK, I'm confused now - @Lyxen has posted quotes from the BEC parts of BECMI that clearly show deities as being where Clerics get their power (even Orc and Drow Clerics!), so where-when were the deities "purposefully expunged"? (and, while we're at it, why?)

Are you two looking at different printings of BECMI, perhaps?

No, he's posting from the earlier B/X edition. His quote from the Companion set (which is part of the BECMI) makes no mention of gods.

 

[Lyxen]

OK, I'm confused now - @Lyxen has posted quotes from the BEC parts of BECMI that clearly show deities as being where Clerics get their power (even Orc and Drow Clerics!), so where-when were the deities "purposefully expunged"? (and, while we're at it, why?)

Are you two looking at different printings of BECMI, perhaps?

The first basic had gods and goddesses, but Mentzer had something against them and removed them from his Basic. After that, other contributors brought them back in in various publications, including in particular the Expert Set which is part of B/X. This is because Mentzer was more or less the only one with that particular aversion to gods, and although a major contributor, his beliefs were not shared. And it's true that, at the time of the Cyclopaedia publication it was retconned in line with Mentzer's views, which did not erase all the previous publications, in particular the modules who almost all have mention of gods (or immortals for the later modules).

No, he's posting from the earlier B/X edition. His quote from the Companion set (which is part of the BECMI) makes no mention of gods.

Both the earlier Basic, but also the Expert set of BECMI, which is explicit.

 

[Azzy]

It's too bad that I've proven that everything you are asserting is actually based on ignoring the majority of the game.

No, not even a nice try.

And I'm sorry if the actual, later, publications of all the rest of the BECMI line contradict your view, whether the boxes or the actual modules.

So, please actually quote the rest of the BECMI line where there are mentions of gods, not Immortals or clerics getting their powers from gods. I'll wait.

In any case, as demonstrated, in 2e and 3e, not having gods were basically punctuation marks and nothing more in the editions histories. And this is absent from 4e and 5e. So overall, the basic premise of D&D through its history is that gods are present and are meddling with mortals, if only through their clerics. Yes, there are exceptions now and then, minor, and exceptional.

Yawn. Those "exceptions" entirely undermine your "meddling gods" narrative.

 

[Lanefan]

No, he's posting from the earlier B/X edition. His quote from the Companion set (which is part of the BECMI) makes no mention of gods.

Ah. Go ahead and call me a heretic if you must, but to me B/X and BECMI are pretty much the same.