Rant: Why must thing always be obvious in D&D?

[Numion]

"A band of centaur approaches cautiously, weapons at the ready."
"Hey don't worry guys, the Monster Manual says they are chaotic good and love elves and I'm an elf. What do you mean they're charging? Charging at what? What did I do - OW MY HIT POINTS!"

"A halfling child wanders towards you in the forest, appearing lost."
"Well, we'll approach the child and ask what's the matter"
"There's a big SQUISH sound when your whole party is flattened under the childs heel when he walks over you, not even noticing you."
"Whoah?"
"Halflings are mountainsized in my campaign! Teaches you to make assumptions about MY game, NYAH-NYAH-NYAH!"

 

[Bayushi Seikuro]

Well, to clear up some things from the post:

Shar is the Mistress of the Night, the Lady of Loss. Her portfolio includes caverns, dark, dungeons, forgetfulness, loss, night, secrets, and the Underdark. Her followers include assassins, shadowdancers, etc... but they also include those who have lost someone or something they loved. Her worshippers include people who believe it's better to cease to exist than to live with the pain.

I agree. Any priest or follower of a religion should be able to find out if there is a group of likeminded individuals in a city. It's nothing stranger than the old fashioned way bums in the US would 'mark' towns at the outskirts, so fellow hobos would know 'this town is cruel to bums' or 'there are always free handouts'.

I don't see someone following an evil goddess in FR having a problem. Forgotten Realms is different in that the gods do not penalize you for making 'bribes' to other gods; that is NOT worship. A good example are the sailors who make donations to Umberlee, so that she doesn't sink their ships.

Rambling, but ... in short: Shar is not an overtly destructive goddess; she's into entropy and everything in the world devolving; her followers include those who have nothing left to live for, those who drown their sorrows or try to chase away the memories with drugs, and hedonism. And, major gods should have some sort of center of worship - be it secret or not - in larger communities, probaby openly in major cities.

Besides, churches in game do a lot to help move the plot along. "Sure, we can heal you, but... we need this favor from you in exchange..."

 

[Doug McCrae]

Isn't it reasonable to assume a priest of that religion would know how to find one their own temples?

Li just says he's a follower of Shar, not necessarily a priest.

It's not unreasonable that a follower couldn't find the religion, if it's an evil underground faith. I might decide to become a Keebler elf*. Don't mean I could find that silly tree in the commercials.


*If the Mods are reading this, hypothetical or not, it'll get removed as political content.

 

[Mallus]

The player made a bad choice in selection, probalby for the domain spells (i.e. POWER).

Can you explain this to me? How is the choice 'bad'?

The player chose a character. The DM agreed. It's now incumbent on the DM to help the player to play that character. Which includes challenging their character, not challenging them to play their character. If I agree to let someone play an assassin, I'd be ass if I spent the rest of campaign 'teaching' them why that was a terrible choice. A DM's job is to both challenge the players and reinforce their character concepts.

A DM should disallow characters they have a problem with from the start.

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

It doesn't seem like the player is being unreasonable to me. If the temples are so secret that even Shar's followers aren't allowed to know about them, how can the religion exist at all? If I had a PC that was the member of an organization, I'd probably expect that organization to be relevant to the campaign.

I agree.

Now, I doubt there's a big huge columned temple on Main street. But there *are* probably groups of worshippers all over. Since a deity's power in FR is tied directly to the strength of its followers, Shar has to have at least some.

Likely, there're small underground temples and "social clubs" and whatnot that serve the same purpose as the Temple of Tyr over on Main Street. Heck, depending on where you are, there may even be open temples, as it's not necessarily a crime for them to worship Shar. There has been mention of people praying to evil deities to avoid having them get mad at them.

Given that FR is a setting with high deity intervention, it's probably appropriate for the PC to have a dream that he should talk with so and so about hooking up with the local Shar-ites.

Brad

 

[Rvdvelden]

I agree with Li on this one. The fact that Shar is a major power does NOT automatically mean she has a lot of temples/shrines, only that she has a lot of followers. Almost all of the temples/shrines for Shar are most likely to be VERY well hidden, considering her background. If only people started reading backgrounds before powers of deities.... (and yes, I'm guilty of the same sin when I started playing D&D. Played a cleric of Tempus because of his domains instead of his background, so I know what I'm talking about).

 

[Mallus]

Li just says he's a follower of Shar, not necessarily a priest.

I don't think that matters. The DM agreed to the character concept, so the DM should help the player realize it. Challenge them as the character they want to play, not to make the character they want.

I might decide to become a Keebler elf...

Again, it doesn't matter. We're not talking about the real world, we're talking about a game. If a GM agrees to let me play an Keebler elf, then I have every reason to expect that I can find the local Keebler elf tree once we begin play (great example, BTW)

 

[Glyfair]

I agree with Li on this one. The fact that Shar is a major power does NOT automatically mean she has a lot of temples/shrines, only that she has a lot of followers. Almost all of the temples/shrines for Shar are most likely to be VERY well hidden, considering her background.

They must be pretty empty on holy days since Shar's worshipers can't even find them. Someplace like Waterdeep* must have all sorts of wanderers on the High Holy Day as the worshipers search around, trying to unearth a temple or shrine.

* In other words, a place with a lot of traffic where worshipers are likely to often leave and arrive on a regular basis.

 

[Peni Griffin]

Although there are stupid players (and stupid DMs; it's not as if these categories are mutually exclusive), most DM/player miscommunications are six of one, half dozen of the other. What is obvious to one person is obscure to another, and frankly, what would be obvious to one person on one day is obscure on another. Realistically, in these cases it's the DM's responsibility to make the extra effort to see how things look to the player and talk him through the steps necessary to see how they look to the DM. Why? Same reason it's the big sister's job to look after the little sister. It's just the way things are, and you can accept it, or you can picket the universe for being unfair - it makes no practical difference to how the universe is set up.

The DM has the power and knows his vision of the setting, but not how that vision got filtered through to the players. The player has (in this case) access to setting books but not to the inside of the DM's head. When they fail to read each other's minds, they can get mad at each other all they want, but if the DM doesn't step up to the plate, grasp the player's point of view, and make his own position as clear as possible, there isn't going to be any game because the player's going to walk.

 

[smootrk]

I tend to agree that if a character is designed as a follower of a particular deity/ethos/affiliation, then that character should be able to locate relevant contacts. This does not mean that there is one of these contacts in every hamlet or on every corner of a given city, but there should be some contacts somewhere within reasonable means of access... otherwise the organization/affiliation/religion/etc would not exist. This is logical. To think that secret organizations exist that their own followers cannot locate is the illogical paradigm.