Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6343710" data-attributes="member: 4937">It seemed like we went through several weeks there where every week was a new concept from an unnamed problematic player.  I'm not sure that there is a difference, since he seems to be largely about mechanics over concept.  If he's actually moving into stealing spotlight through RP concept as opposed to mechanical perfection, that is potentially an improvement.  At least there is potentially game play in that.Yes, actually, and not just one.  Variants show up through out much of west Africa and the New World slave diaspora.  Ok, so he's a cleric of Babalu Aye, that's fine.Wait... what?  How can you transform a minor deity with a minor focus (punishing the transgressions against taboos via diseases) into a supreme deity.   I mean, I can see you actually doing that with Olorun who has a lot of the characteristics associated with universal deities (triunity, no gender, creator, sky god, supremacy over other gods, etc.).   I would think you'd reach a pretty quick philosophical conundrum here, starting with something like, "You say Babalu Aye is the supreme god, but by your own story he did not create the world."   And if the response to that is somehow to coopt Olorun's stories and apply them to Babalu Aye, then there is a very easy response, "If that is so, then those that worship Olorun are actually worshiping Babalu Aye by a different name.  So, why should it not be the case that when one worships Zeus, that they are not worshiping Babalu Aye by a different name?"   (And at the metagame level, if you are going to choose a deity then change all the myths about him, why didn't you choose a different deity in the first place?)That's actually IMO a very Greek/Roman response.  The Greeks were convinced that the 12 Olympians were universal gods, and that all the peoples of the world worshiped the Olympians (or their relatives) by different names.  So every time they encountered a different people, they'd try to figure out which names went where.  They were so successful in this regard with the Romans that they basically converted them entirely to the Olympian rites.  With in a few centuries, those Temples that didn't convert were so marginalized, people still went through the motions but no one could actually remember even what the god in question was about - including their own priests.  The only people the Greeks could never figure out what to do with was the Jews...I can definitely see a philosophical argument over whether this 'Babalu Aye' was actually Apollo, or perhaps Asclepius.  And I think your PC's approach that this is just some mixed up barbarian is also quite appropriate to setting.It's not entirely unheard of in the ancient world for a supreme deity to get the monotheistic treatment - consider Akhenaten's career as priest-king.   I just find the choice of deity bizarre.  One thing I'm terribly conscious of with deities is whether its believable that anyone would actually worship and serve said deity.  I can believe that you might propitiate a god of small pox.  I can't believe anyone would see a god of small pox as the Alpha and Omega.As a player at the table, whether GM or player, I think I'd be going for the theological jugular here.Meh.  I'm almost ok with that.  I can deal with conflict.  What I can't deal with is conflict where the player has rigged the game so that he always wins and never has to worry about consequences.And that I don't get.  If it really is a polytheistic society based on the Greco-Roman world, if a priest wants you to give some respect to his deity, then well, you pretty much go along with that.  Almost no one from the Greco-Roman world believes in the exclusivity of worship.  They see no conflict in worshiping dozens of deities.  They aren't themselves monotheists.   The only real problem is if the party cleric starts demanding all the PC's STOP praying to their own deities if they want healing.  If he's going to get all weird and exclusive like those wierdos the Jews or something, that would represent a philosophical problem.   But for everyone else, they probably don't have commandments like, "Thou shall have no other gods before me."   The RPGism of everyone having a single patron deity that they worship exclusively despite a polytheistic setting is just that - an RPGism.   And if your character really does have a vow like, "I can't worship any other gods but my patron.", well, then go with the RP.  Sucks to be you that you don't get healed by anyone but a cleric of your patron.  Maybe you ought to reconsider your unwarranted monotheism?  Do you really expect clerics to hand out healing and blessings without seeing acts of piety and respect toward their deity?  It might actually be a good thing to have a cleric in the party that seriously demanded piety toward their deity, at least as a show, before agreeing to bless the other PCs instead of acting in the much more typical non-priestly manner.</blockquote>

Verification