D&D 5E Why FR Is "Hated"

[Dorian_Grey]

well, nothing in D&D can be a God, unless your DM is himself a God.

Well I try not to gloat about it to much, but I do take pride in my work...

 

[Ilbranteloth]

This. This is why, as a real life religious person, I prefer to run un-theistic universes. There may be things which claim to be gods, kings, or Pharaohs, but there is no expectation that any player or PC must take such claims at face value, and in fact I go out of my way to make many of the claims contradict each other. E.g. incompatible creation myths.

It's an open question from the PCs' perspective whether clerics are receiving miracles from their gods or are just another kind of wizard. Wizards tend toward the latter belief--most wizard are too jaded to believe in the religions they encounter unless there are strong cultural factors to make them believe, as with drow--and as DM I know that the wizards actually have the right of it: clerics spells are really just spells.

It's important to me that I run a universe where you don't have to take the self-proclaimed gods seriously, because I can't understand how anyone COULD take them seriously. I won't force anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using EN World mobile app

This. This is why, as a real life religious person, I prefer to run un-theistic universes. There may be things which claim to be gods, kings, or Pharaohs, but there is no expectation that any player or PC must take such claims at face value, and in fact I go out of my way to make many of the claims contradict each other. E.g. incompatible creation myths.

It's an open question from the PCs' perspective whether clerics are receiving miracles from their gods or are just another kind of wizard. Wizards tend toward the latter belief--most wizard are too jaded to believe in the religions they encounter unless there are strong cultural factors to make them believe, as with drow--and as DM I know that the wizards actually have the right of it: clerics spells are really just spells.

That's not un-theistic. And making religions incompatible with each other doesn't indicate whether your world is monotheistic, polytheistic, or many other varieties.

You're choosing to run a campaign where there are no gods. Fair enough. But that really has nothing to do with monotheism, polytheism, etc.

There seems to be a bit of confusion here, and this seems as good as any place to jump back in. If you have religion in your world (and with clerics you do), they fit somewhere along a continuum. Note that this does not define your world, it defines each religion:

Is there one god or many? (mono- vs polytheism)
If you believe in, and worship one god, do you acknowledge the presence or possibility of other gods? (Most monotheistic religions don't acknowledge even the possibility of other gods).

If you have a world with only two monotheistic religions, and each religion doesn't acknowledge the existence of another god, then the "world" (really the religions) isn't polytheistic. You just have two competing religions.

It's important to me that I run a universe where you don't have to take the self-proclaimed gods seriously, because I can't understand how anyone COULD take them seriously. I won't force anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself.

Sent from my Moto G (4) using EN World mobile app

So you would be a thief, a murderer, and a grave-robber but not religious?

See, the way the D&D multiverse is set up, with actual beings that qualify to be a "god" is that it's not a question of character, but a question of power. Whether you believe in them, respect them, or choose to revere them, they still have the power to control (through complex agreements amongst themselves), what happens to you after you die.

But in the game world, the majority of people never see their god. They live by faith. They know the myths and legends, some say they've spoken to the gods directly, or even met them in person. Are such tales true? Perhaps the stories of the petty nature of the gods is really just the churches misunderstanding the reality? To the common person I'm not sure their experience of religion would be all that different than the many different varieties here on earth.

You say that you can't understand how anyone could take them seriously, and then you take away all of the reasons why they would take them seriously. You take away the divine granting of powers and magic, and without the gods, the power they have over eternal life.

Having said that, there's nothing to say that religion wouldn't grow as it has in pretty much every culture that's ever lived. Some form of religion and belief in a greater being.

The Greek and Roman gods were petty, fought amongst themselves, did things that were not in the best interest of their subjects, and yet they were worshipped for thousands of years. The gods of the D&D worlds are basically modeled after these types of myths and legends. It's not hard to go back and do some research to see how and why those cultures worshipped such unworthy beings.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Ok, I suppose that explains why I really don't understand your point. I'm more of the mind that if you have multiple faiths in a setting, then it's polytheistic. Whether those faiths are "right" or not doesn't really matter. So, yup, the real world is polytheistic.

Yeah, see this is really where things get a bit wonky. A religion is monotheistic or polytheistic, not a world.

On the other hand, we're talking about a world where we can define whether any of the gods are real, and if so, which ones.

So if you have a world of nothing but monotheistic religions, that don't acknowledge that other gods exist, but in reality all of those gods exist - is it polytheistic?

 

[guachi]

And that's the problem with D&D "gods." They don't have the characteristics of a deity. In fact, they cannot have those characteristics because they exist only as emulations in the mind of a finite, and fallible DM. At best a D&D god can be omnipotent; it cannot be omniscient or infallible, because the DM isn't infallible.

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

 

[Ilbranteloth]

And that's the problem with D&D "gods." They don't have the characteristics of a deity. In fact, they cannot have those characteristics because they exist only as emulations in the mind of a finite, and fallible DM. At best a D&D god can be omnipotent; it cannot be omniscient or infallible, because the DM isn't infallible.

This is why, for example, prophecies can work in fantasy novels but do not work well in TTRPGs: it isn't possible to cleverly predict the course of an entire campaign and then build that history into a prophecy which is revealed to the players at the beginning of the campaign. Even a simple prophecy like "You will live to return home safely" can't work in D&D unless you brute-force it with power instead of knowledge, e.g. by shielding the PC from harm when he's about to fail his last death save, or by bringing him back to life after he dies.

If one of the characteristics of a God is the ability to always keep your promises because you both have all power and know the end from the beginning, well, nothing in D&D can be a God, unless your DM is himself a God.

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.

It seems most folks have no problem believing that druids can receive their magic from the trees and the earth, but they can't deal with a god that acts like Loki?

Prophesies aren't easy to pull off in RPGs, but they aren't impossible. Even your example can be addressed in a number of different ways, although I would probably word it more vaguely.

I can't really understand how a mind flayer thinks, nor a 850 year old elf, yet I'm perfectly capable of adding them to the game. Within the game, the place of a god isn't typically going to be more than a defining feature of a character. There won't be any promises the god needs to keep, and for that matter why is that one of the characteristics?

If the definition of a god is a complete control over their entire creation, except perhaps those creatures he granted free will, then a DM comes pretty close to meeting that definition.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

Yeah, but you don't have to use the D&D multiverse, much like you don't have to use the Forgotten Realms, or Dragonlance, or Eberrron, etc.

Exactly. Just like you don't have to use barbarians, or dragonborn, or githyanki, or flumphs, or anything else in the books. But those are all part of the lore of D&D at this point, like it or not. Just like the multiverse. That's part of where they've planted their flag and said "this is part of what makes D&D D&D."

It doesn't mean you have to use it to play D&D, but it is part of the framework that they design the game and the books around. The multiverse is their way of explaining how all of these disparate parts coalesce under the umbrella of one game. And the gods that live in that multiverse define, in part, some of the differences between those settings.


The bottom line is that you can choose to use or not use whatever parts of the game you want. But we don't get to choose what parts of the game that they put into the books.

 

[guachi]

So if you have a world of nothing but monotheistic religions, that don't acknowledge that other gods exist, but in reality all of those gods exist - is it polytheistic?

I'll say "no". At least regarding the fictional people in the fictional world.

Also, Mystara doesn't require clerics to worship a single deity. The first Gazetteer, Grand Duchy of Karameikos, lists two main religions for the human population. Both have pantheons and there is no indication in the text that clerics are anything other than clerics of The Church of Karameikos/Traladara.

Heck, there is even overlap in the deities of both religions - intentionally so.

There are some religions that have such a wide array of deities that you'd probably get clerics of a small subset (or even one) of those gods. But it's not strictly necessary.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

As far as i unterstand Yaarel it's all that matters. He's fine with a polytheistic setting, as long as the setting doesn't confirm that they are right.

Likewise a setting that only has monotheistic mortals but states the existence of a second deity unknown to all beings in the setting would bother him.

No, he's explicitly said that any indication that there is a possibility of a polytheistic religion is a nonstarter.

 

[Ilbranteloth]

So going off on a tangent - I picked up the 5e Adventures in Middle Earth and there is basically no religion at all. It's very much along the lines of what [MENTION=58172]Yaarel[/MENTION] was asking for. There are setting specific classes, and everything is tied together pretty well. There are no magic using classes at all, but there are some magical abilities within the classes.

It is not a complete system, you need the basic rules for combat, etc. And there are notes that indicate if you want more magic, you can use classes form the core rules. I don't anticipate WotC going in this direction (several of the classes are essentially the core classes with a few modifications), but there are some interesting mechanics and such. But it replaces quite a bit of the PHB - classes and backgrounds entirely, equipment is pared down (more of a Dark Ages feel using only equipment mentioned in Tolkien's works), and the overall system presents a rather dark setting.

The Loremaster's Guide is completely different from the DMG, and includes many of the same subjects, but in greater depth for the DM's portion of the rules. The mechanics incorporate a number of rules that remind me of indie "story now" games, although it's still very much in the standard D&D realm for rules. But the whole looks like it would really help set a certain feel for a campaign.

I probably won't run it, there are a lot of mechanics that aren't my cup of tea, but I'll be stealing a lot of ideas.

And again, there's no religion. At least not that I've found yet.

 

[pemerton]

clerics worship one god exclusively.

Not originally. Eg the AD&D PHB says (p 20) that "The cleric is dedicated to a deity, or deities", and also refers to a cleric constructing "a castle, a monastery, an abbey or the like [which] must be dedicated to the cleric's deity (or deities)."

I think DDG is the first AD&D book to imply that clerics worship only one god exclusively.