Thoughts on Kalamar

[Particle_Man]

Yep - 43 is the exact number. One of the main differences (which may have already been mentioned) is that there's no "god of the elves," "god of the dwarves," etc.

Certain gods may strongly influence a certain race (the Church of Endless Night is the state religion of the hobgoblins of Norga-Krangrel, for example), but that same god is still worshipped by many other peoples and races.

Is there any information about the dead gods, aside from the fact that they are, in fact, dead?

 

[Mark Plemmons]

And that's my only minor problem with the setting. It makes for awsome flavor and some great dynamics, but thats alot of dieties to keep track of. As others have pointed out, other settings may have similar numbers of dieties, but the Kalamar Dieties are basically all on equal ground. There are no minor pantheons for races, or for various aspects of battle, or any other idea. They're pretty much all equally common.

Not exactly true. Races can have their own pantheons (groups of deities they favor over others) - there just aren't any "racial gods". These preferences are detailed in the various racial books.

Also, the deities aren't all equally common unless you assume that all alignments are equally common. For example, I doubt the god of torture enjoys as much overall popularity as the god of the harvest.

So they're not equally common, they're just equally available - which means you end up with less overall deities than most other campaign settings.

 

[mhensley]

It's not made to read, it's made to reference. Best approach is to read the brief overviews and figure out where you want to start and just read that. As the players move to new areas, read about those.

If you want me to use something, it better be a decent read. If a setting's main book does not get me fired up to use it, off it goes to ebay. Now in it's defense, I have only owned the original boxed set. The new book may be different.

 

[Turjan]

Yep - 43 is the exact number.

And this is what is fundamentally wrong with Kalamar! As every half-way knowledgable gamer knows, the correct number would be 42!

 

[NewJeffCT]

Is there any information about the dead gods, aside from the fact that they are, in fact, dead?

I don't think there is information on the dead gods that I can recall... though, maybe somebody from Kenzerco can fill folks in on that.

But, I think something as important as that is left up to the DM - partially why they also do not give any sort of stats to Emperor Kabori, the most powerful person politically in the Kalamar setting. Back in 2E days, we had the old boxed set of Kalamar where the climax of the campaign was a showdown with the evil Emperor Kabori... who, it was revealed in that fateful last session, was really a Pit Fiend.

However, I have heard others from the kenzer boards have all sorts of ideas of what Kabori really is: just somebody with a lot of levels of Aristocrat; an evil wizard or sorceror type; a good man who is being manipulated by his right hand man (elf) Shifan; a megalomaniacal emperor who wants to impose a "Kalamaran Peace" on the world; etc, etc.

That is one of the things I like about Kalamar is that it leaves arguably the most important person (outside of the PCs, of course!) in the setting undetailed and up to the DM. There are a few other NPCs that are also not detailed (the evil high Theocrat of Pel Brolenon as another, I believe. Pel Brolenon is a theocracy whose economy is centered on the slave trade! Way back after the 2E campaign I mentioned above concluded, our DM had planned for us to continue into Pel Brolenon to take on the Theocrat, who he had sketched out as a powerful drow priestess, if I recall)

 

[Particle_Man]

I don't think there is information on the dead gods that I can recall... though, maybe somebody from Kenzerco can fill folks in on that.

I was trying to figure out something based on assumptions like there would be 6 gods of each of the 9 alignments, plus many of the gods seem to "pair off" nicely (Dreams vs. Nightmares, Liberator vs. Dominator, etc.) so if I could figure out which 11 living gods had no diametrically opposed alignment "partners" then that would tell me a little bit about them.

But I never got anywhere with it.

 

[Mark Plemmons]

I don't think there is information on the dead gods that I can recall... though, maybe somebody from Kenzerco can fill folks in on that.

Yep. They're dead, Jim.

We don't want to provide any info on the dead gods - it's up to the DM to mess with if he wants to do something with them. There are so many currently living peoples/kingdoms/etc to write about first. A treatise on the dead gods is so far off the back burner it's fallen behind the oven.

 

[Jdvn1]

By the way, Mark, in your sig, the links for
"Why D&D: Kingdoms of Kalamar? FIND OUT HERE."
don't work... especially for a thread like this, you might want to fix those.

 

[Mark Plemmons]

Weird - I fixed it already when our website changed over. Guess the webmaster's been tweaking a few links....

 

[Jaws]

I heard a rumor that HackMaster is going to be placed within the Kingdoms of Kalamar. Is this true? What's going to happen to Garweeze Wurld?


Peace and smiles

j.