D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[pemerton]

I would imagine one of the primary criteria for one to be considered a deity, would be that one be supernatural (in the common sense of the word). Pharaohs were not supernatural despite being 'worshipped'.

In the common sense of the word clerics and wizards are supernatural, and hence - if worshipped - would be gods!

Sauron and Morgoth are clearly supernatural beings, and can empower their followers (at least, that seems to be implied) but they are not gods.

It seems to require a lot of technicalities to disqualify Gods as "Aliens" or "Patrons"

Pemerton why is it you define clerics, wizards, warlocks and paladins according to D&D terminology, but when it comes to deities you seem to adopt a rather different view altogether?

Well, I don't think I'm adopting a different view. At least, not different from anything ever found in D&D. Nor do I think I'm trading in "technicalities".

Classic D&D includes supernatural beings who are (i) worshipped, and (ii) can confer supernatural powers upon their cultists, but who (iii) are not gods: the demon lords/princes and arch-devils.

4e contains beings that also satisfy (i) to (iii): demon lords/princes and primordials. (Another way in which 4e harks back to the classic game.)

The theology of classic D&D is rather implicit, but in 4e it's spelled out, and the reason that primordials are not gods is explained: gods created mortals, and fixed the world as a place fit for mortals to inhabit. Primordials supplied the matter, but gods the form - in that sense it's a rather Platonistic cosmology. A recurring theme in HPL - intellectually driven at least in part by his understanding of relativity, but presumably driven by emotional concerns also - is that form is, in fact, an illusion - hence the obsession with chaos, with "unnatural" and "hyberbolic" angles that defy conception and description, etc.

There is a tendency in D&D post-DDG, only strengthening, I would say, in the 2nd ed and Planesape era, and continuing in 3E and 5e (with 4e an interruption in the tradition), to downplay these cosmological/theological aspects of godhood (and its potential contrast with other modes of supernatural power) and to focus on questions of cataloguing (see eg the original DDGs demi-, lesser and greater gods, with attendant special abilities; 2nd ed's introduction of "intermediate" gods; and 3E DDG's use of divine ranks to systematise the special abiliites).

I think the classic/4e tradition is inherently more interesting, truer to the (diverse) literary roots of the fantasy genre, and also is more fruitful for trying to make sense of the views that [MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION], [MENTION=6787650]Hemlock[/MENTION] and some others are expressing - which is how this particular branch of the thread began.

How does Dionysus anchor and integrate the greater cosmos into the lives and purposes of mortals?

He's a god of wine, intoxication, fertility, passion. He establishes an understanding and orientation towards wine's capacity to intoxicate, the relationship between intoxication and the shedding of inhibition, the resultant lucidity of the drunk, etc.

in Conan is Crom a God? Conan prays to him but he certainly does not mollycoddle his followers much so I guess he does not really count.

the question should be whether Crom existiert. Set and Mitra both exist as a fact of the setting

In The Hour of the Dragon Conan enters a temple of Set. There are cultists and snakes. There's nothing to suggest that Set - a divine being - exists as a fact of the setting.

Conan himself observes that Crom does not intervene in the affairs of mortals. Nothing suggests that Crom is an existent divine being.

And stepping back a bit to more general points: there is a radical difference between the fantasy of REH and HPL, and the fantasy of JRRT. The former two are modernist; JRRT is anti-modernist. You don't capture this just by noting the differences between the catalogues of their settings and cosmologies. (There are differences between REH and HPL also - but they are differences of a type of humanistic optimism in REH vs pessimism in HPL.)

One way to capture it it this: Conan is a model of human striving, and the success it can lead to; LotR is a critique of human striving and a hymn to humility. Straight away, this reveals something about the role that divinity might play in each setting.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Being omniscient or infallible or omnipotent is not a characteristic required of deities.

Fine. Then every wizard in my games is a god. And so is Tony Stark, and so is Bill Gates, and so is the President of the United States.

I'm not interested in semantic arguments here. It's not the words you use that matter, it's the meaning behind them. Nothing in D&D can be something I would define as a God. Perhaps you have a different definition, in which case D&D can have things that you would consider gods and I would not. Hence this thread.

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[cbwjm]

I tend to look to Earth's history to help me define gods. In Greek, Egyptian, and Norse myth the gods clearly aren't omnipotent, omniscient, or infallible.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

But what are the characteristics of a god? If you look at human history, the defining features of a deity is all over the place. D&D is based in a pseudo-medieval society, why should we expect that their concept of divinity should be as enlightened as ours?

If you decided that in your campaign that everybody believed the world to be flat, there wouldn't be any concern with that. You could, in fact, declare the world is flat if you wanted to, but you wouldn't have to do that to explain away why the people believed that.

If you decided that people in the campaign believed their world to be the center of the universe, whether it is or isn't, doesn't mean that you can't work with that concept within your world.

I don't understand your point. I didn't say my world has no one in it who worships the various god-kings, pharaohs, dragons, or fabrications made out of superstition. I just said those people are wrong, and the wizards are right. (In some cases they are merely wrong about their purported god's nature; in others they are wrong about it's very existence. Baal is just a superstition, for example, not an entity. But his worshippers typically don't think so, because they see the priests' signs and miracles. Wizards are less impressed by those signs and wonders.)

This seems to me exactly analogous to your example of the world being one shape, but NPCs believing it to be another shape. What are you objecting to? Or are you confusing my stance with Yaarel's?

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[pemerton]

Hence this thread.

Right. At least for my part, I'm not posting primarily to persuade anybody.

I mean, there are some points of fact that I think are interesting and sometimes neglected, like the changing presentation of clerics, gods etc over the editions of the game. But mostly what I'm posting for is to try to explain why I think these facts are interesting - not just to draw others' attention to the facts.

Others will disagree, or attribute some different significance to them. That's normal, and is why we (or at least I) post - not to persuade, but to understand what others think is going on. That's worthwhile in itself, plus helps me better understand my own understanding.

 

[pemerton]

In Greek, Egyptian, and Norse myth the gods clearly aren't omnipotent, omniscient, or infallible.

But they're not just tough supernatural beings, either. Their existence and their activities matter in a very deep way.

 

[cbwjm]

But they're not just tough supernatural beings, either. Their existence and their activities matter in a very deep way.

I honestly don't know what your comment means. I was just following on from the poster before me to say how I define gods in D&D by looking at Earth's many myths and legends.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Right. At least for my part, I'm not posting primarily to persuade anybody.

I mean, there are some points of fact that I think are interesting and sometimes neglected, like the changing presentation of clerics, gods etc over the editions of the game. But mostly what I'm posting for is to try to explain why I think these facts are interesting - not just to draw others' attention to the facts.

Others will disagree, or attribute some different significance to them. That's normal, and is why we (or at least I) post - not to persuade, but to understand what others think is going on. That's worthwhile in itself, plus helps me better understand my own understanding.

FWIW I'm enjoying your comments on REH and HPL, especially your conjectures(?) as to what exactly HPL had in mind w/rt madness and cosmic horror. Next time I read one of his stories I'll try to bear in mind that "spacetime fabric" and "anthropic principle" might be the kind of concepts that drives his characters gibbering insane. It's better anyway than just trying to imagine an abstract horror that can't be conveyed in words--may improve the reading experience.

I'd actually been ignoring this thread until recently I saw people were talking about Conan.

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[guachi]

I'm not interested in semantic arguments here. It's not the words you use that matter, it's the meaning behind them. Nothing in D&D can be something I would define as a God. Perhaps you have a different definition, in which case D&D can have things that you would consider gods and I would not. Hence this thread.

If you are going to use your own non-standard definitions you can define away any term you wish and mean anything you want by it. It's difficult to have a meaningful discussion with people who invent their own private definitions.

Gods, by every commonly used definition I can find, don't need to be omnipotent, omniscient, or infallible (though they often are in Earth monotheistic religions).

This definition, which fits my understanding of word, is typical: a spirit or being believed to control some part of the universe or life and often worshipped for doing so, or something that represents this spirit or being

Another: a being or object believed to have more than natural attributes and powers and to require human worship; specifically : one controlling a particular aspect or part of reality

And a third: one of several deities, especially a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.

One includes worship
Two include control with the third being preside instead.
All include rulership/control/presiding over some aspect of reality/the world/the universe.

 

[pemerton]

FWIW I'm enjoying your comments on REH and HPL

Thanks!

EDIT:

conjectures(?)

The only criticism I've read on REH that I can think of is the Patrice Louinet essays at the back of the relatively recently critical editions of Conan and Kull. I don't recall having read any criticism of HPL, other than the random internet/Wikipedia stuff one comes across while surfing the web on D&D/fantasy-related topics.

It just seems to me fairly obvious how they fit within broader ideas/themes unfolding in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. In the case of HPL, I would include especially evolutionary biology unsettling conceptions of the place of humans in "creation", and relativity unsettling conceptions of the connection between even very basic human knowledge - eg perceptions of space and time - and the truth about the cosmos. In the case of REH, there is the celebration of a type of human self-assertion (and a related anti-fatalism, but also a type of irony or scepticism about ultimate value) which is a fairly common response to (what Weber called) the "disenchantment" of the world resulting from scientific understanding. (I see it as rather Nietzschean, although I assume REH hadn't read Nietzsche; but in at least one history of philosophy I know - Passmore's "One Hundred Years of Philosophy" - Nietzsche figures in the same chapter as that on Pierce, James, and Dewey, due to similarities in their scepticism about absolutes and their emphasis on human activity as the locus of perception, truth and value; and whether or not REH directly read any of those, the period when REH was writing was also a time of peak direct influence of their ideas on American intellectual culture.)