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? [/URL]
Your point -
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.
and
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.[/URL]
My point was:
1. You state the gods don't have the characteristics of a deity. Which I questioned directly. What
are the characteristics of a deity? Is even this small group in consensus with that definition?
2. You stated that a god in D&D cannot possibly have the characteristics of a deity, since they have to be portrayed by a mortal (DM); and
3. That you don't run a fictional universe where the fictional people take their fictional gods seriously because the gods are self-proclaimed(?*), in part because you can't understand how those fictional people could take them seriously.
*I don't think that all of the gods in all of the campaign worlds are self-proclaimed, particularly if part of their power derives from their worshippers, then they can't be entirely self-proclaimed or they would lose their power very quickly.
So I'm questioning where the line is. A DM pretending to be a dragon, mind flayer or flumph seems as far-fetched as portraying a god. Particularly when most of the time, all that is relevant in a campaign is the acknowledgement of the gods themselves, and really all that needs to be defined for them to be gods in the campaign is the ability to grant divine abilities. The DM doesn't actually have to
act as the god. The game defines what the benefits are of worshipping a god, at least to a cleric, and whether the gods exist or not is really irrelevant. So just as you can say that they are wrong and don't exist, it would be just as easy to say they are right and they do exist and leave it at that.
Even if you accept that the gods
do exist, in your campaign, the fact that you, as the DM, know that the gods are petty and grasping for power doesn't mean your fictional people do. That the people take them seriously as a matter of faith. That's how you
could understand how people take them seriously.
I don't find it difficult to consider that the published information about the gods themselves are just tall tales, and the reality is different, yet the gods still exist and provide all of the powers attributed to them in the game. On the other hand, I also don't consider the possibility that the gods in this world are much closer to the ancient gods of Egypt, Rome, and Greece, where the gods are literally just more powerful creatures that happen to have abilities and control over the people's eternal lives.
None of that means that you can't choose that the gods don't exist. And I don't think you really need to justify that decision. But when you choose to justify them, then I might question those justifications. Not to pick on you, or tell you you're wrong. But to understand better. I'm just pointing out that your justifications don't make sense (at least to me).
The justifications given were:
1. The world can't have gods, because the DM isn't a god. By that measure, he's not a dragon either. Or a flumph. So why have dragons but not gods?
2. You don't have gods, because you don't think the people should/could take self-proclaimed gods seriously. I've questioned that, and given examples as to how the people could (and probably should) take them seriously.
I guess I'm just saying, that's not good logic to not have gods. You know what is? I'm the DM and the author of my world, and in my world there are no gods. And it's an interesting premise to start with, particularly if you continue to have religion in your world.
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Overall I do have a question for everybody without divine beings, how do things like resurrection work? Do you have behind the scenes explanations as to how certain divination spells work, or how resurrection spells work, etc., or do you not care? What about "holy" spells or abilities?
Also, just to tie it back at least to the subject (if not the question) of the thread - in the Forgotten Realms, Ed Greenwood specifically designed the gods to
not be all powerful. His reasoning was:
1. If this is a world where gods
actually exist; and
2. Gods are all-powerful
then how and why would you have more than one god.
Therefore, the gods must not be all-powerful. They must have some limitations on their powers, some weaknesses that could be exploited. Then he went about finding a way to make those work.
His example was Mystra, the goddess of magic. If true magic is capable of pretty much anything, and she controls access to magic, how could any other god possibly stand up to her. She would have the power to take their magic away, to prevent those gods from granting any sort of magic to their followers, there could be no other god.
So in the Realms, they are specifically
not omniscient or infallible. They are just beings that are more powerful than mortals or other planar beings. In D&D they are also defined in part by a faith relationship that grants power to the god, and also allows the god to grant a portion of their power to the people. Another defining feature seems to be the creation of a plane of existence (or at least a major part of one) that reflects their specific being. And that this is an extension of them, and disappears if/when they are killed.
Note that not all of these characteristics were designed by Ed Greenwood in regards to the Realms deities.
So demons possess some of these characteristics. Warlock patrons share some of them too. But the gods, at least in the Realms, have these other characteristics, while not explicitly stated in any one place, that seem be be fairly consistent among them.
By not being omniscient or infallible, they also share many of the faults of personality that mortals do. You might be pure lawful good. Not just in ethos or belief, but actually made of the material "lawful good." But you live in a universe (the planes) where there are creatures, including other gods, that lie, cheat, steal and murder. But mistrust is not part of your nature, is it? If you're just pure, blissful lawful good, how is it conceivable that there are others that are not? Perhaps you're not 100% unblemished? Perhaps you were, and they tarnished you? Does this make you not worthy of worship anymore? That you are somehow no longer perfect? Is not the ability to promise (and deliver) an eternity of glorious freedom from all that is wrong and evil in the universe enough? Wouldn't that be a sacrifice on their part? That they give up some of their blissful eternity of perfection to fight what is wrong and evil, so you can live eternity without any wrong or evil?