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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9519724" data-attributes="member: 8461">That's certainly part of it, but for me there's always been another reason, which is the "top-down" style of building a campaign world.That's essentially where you build the major aspects of a campaign world first, and then start filling in the details. How does magic work? What planes of existence make up the cosmology? Who are the gods and what are they capable of?Answering these questions first, and having subsequent details be built off of those answers, lends itself to verisimilitude in the campaign world, encouraging players to invest in the game. This way, there's an answer as to why things are the way they are, and even if the PCs don't know what it is at first, they can go looking for it if they want without the DM having to scramble to come up with something that might not fit the campaign world.Issues of "Why didn't the gods appear personally to fight this world-ending threat?" or "Why don't the good gods just wipe out the arch-fiends if they're so much more powerful than them?" cease to become potential plot-holes or inconsistencies this way, instead becoming underlying mysteries of the campaign that the PCs can choose to investigate as they reach the higher levels.Likewise, while having stats for the gods abets this, it's important to remember that it doesn't necessitate it, simply because DMs who don't like their deities to be defined can simply ignore such a resource. "In my game, the gods are unknowable and un-statted; we're not using that sourcebook" completely solves any potential problem of munchkinism run amok, while DMs who don't like that approach have a product that they can make use of (instead of having to write custom rules themselves, which is a lot more work).</blockquote>

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