Which cosmology is more compelling to you?

[Brennin Magalus]

A) God of good defeats and imprisons the god of evil long ago. His demonic servants act in his stead but most do not care to see him released, because they want to supplant him. In this scenario, you would have good clerics, evil clerics, and demon worshippers all vying against each other.

B) Good of good slays god of evil at the dawn of creation. His evil essence is then radiated among his demonic servants and some of the angels fighting against them, thereby corrupting them and causing them to fall. In this scenario, you would have good clerics vying against the followers of fallen angels and demons, who are bent on eliminating rivals to accumulate as much of the divinity of the dead evil god as possible. Little do they know that by collecting all of the evil god's "divinity sparks” the victor will cease to exist; rather, the evil god will be reborn.

I have toyed with both ideas, but I have a slight preference for the first and that is the default in my game. I am interested in other posters opinions, though.

 

[Teflon Billy]

the first one

 

[Deadguy]

A lot would depend on what sort of feeeling you want from the campaign. Option A leaves the battle lines pretty clearly demarcated: there is Good and Evil who fight each other, though perhaps some of the Evil groups fight each other.

Option B on the other hand, has the potential to be far 'muddier'. By introducing the concept of corruption from the dawn of time, there's scope for some elements of the Good side to in fact be Evil, masquerading as Good. As a Good hero, enemies may come from within your own side, as well as dealing with the rising powers of Evil. And if the aim is to gather together the whole essence of Evil, then some slightly corrupted 'Good' powers (who perhaps have fought their corruption since the dawn of time) might need to be harvested too. That leaves some sort of moral dilemma as to whether this is a good thing (winnowing out corruption) or a bad one (destroying those who understand and fight evil).

As you can see I have a preference these days for Option B. I prefer things to be a little less clear-cut. That encourages the PCs to look a little deeper and ask questions about 'Why?' things happen, as well as 'What?'.

That said, Option A is close to the first full homebrew setting I ever ran, at University. I had the God of Good wrest control of the world from its Evil demonic creators thousands of years before (yes, I'd recently read about the Cathar Heresy!). Over the many centuries since, though, the Good God had stepped back from managing the world, leaving it to His mortal and divine servants. And as the interaction of mortal and divine tended to sully them in the 'evil world', things had slowly gone to hell in a handbasket. The divinely ordained theocratic government and church had become corrupted. And in the darkness beyond the world, one of the Demon Kings (Moloche, Lord of Chaos) had discovered a secret about how the laws of reality worked, and was preparing to use it to give him the power to take back the world and destroy it utterly! So yes, Option A has lots of potential too, I guess!

 

[paulewaug]

I vote the first option, after all what kind of a "good god" would it be if it just up and killed the "bad god"
Maybe the good one would do it after it had imprisoned the veil one and then the evil one escaped and the good had proven to itself there was No toher way. But if it really is a "good" god death would likely not be the first option.
IMO

Also it's cool to have a BBEG behind the scenes running the show, he can always be killed and his evil dispersed later.
Showing that even though the ultimate evil itself has been stopped, eveil itself still exists and must be guarded against.

 

[The Little Raven]

I vote the first option, after all what kind of a "good god" would it be if it just up and killed the "bad god"
Maybe the good one would do it after it had imprisoned the veil one and then the evil one escaped and the good had proven to itself there was No toher way. But if it really is a "good" god death would likely not be the first option.
IMO

Also it's cool to have a BBEG behind the scenes running the show, he can always be killed and his evil dispersed later.
Showing that even though the ultimate evil itself has been stopped, eveil itself still exists and must be guarded against.

Well, if a paladin is able to justify "up and killing" an evil person, surely a good god could do so to an evil god (and without the messy code of honor requirements ).

Plus... if he's the only other god, who's going to tell him otherwise?

 

[Brennin Magalus]

*bump*

 

[Kichwas]

The first one is basically the premise of the Wheel of Time series. It works well enough there.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I like B. Mainly, I like it because it provides for the possibility of Redemption. After all, is an Angel corrupted by the Dark God's essence really evil? Or has he just been morally poisoned? Wouldn't it be possible to somehow remove that essence, and thereby restore the angel to his/her former Glory? It's an appealing idea.

That said, I'd go with an option C. The Dark and Light Gods slew each other. This creates an even more interesting idea: the Demon touched by Grace. Would he help the forces trying to resurrect the God of Light, even knowing that should he be successful, it will cost him his own goodness?

 

[DragonLancer]

I prefer the first option. But I'd say go with what fits your idea for the setting.

 

[clark411]

I like the first one, because it presents a nemesis who may return..

However, I also really like the second one on condition that this dispersed evil has the explicit potential to spawn an unknown, equally powerful evil of sufficient mystery and presence to catch and hold my attention.