D&D 5E Wild Speculation: Athas, the World Without Dragons

[Ath-kethin]

On the one hand, I'm fine with this kind of approach, especially as it revises all the various settings' own creation myths to mythology instead of fact. I very much feel that gods in D&D work best when they are more unknowable, let alone unkillable.

Though it's also comically juvenile to have gods just be big, powerful monsters with people like little ants just begging them for power/mercy/salvation. Making all gods Lovecraftian is an approach I dig.

But on the other hand, it rubs me the wrong way to just invalidate the (heretofore "factual") creation stories of the various worlds. Designers and fans have been trying to undermine the Dragonlance setting for decades, and that always bugged me - this approach just seems like another push in that kind of direction. Though it also invalidates the cosmologies and setups of setting that deliberately existed outside the Great Wheel idea instead of trying to work within it, like Eberron and Dark Sun. This approach was a problem with Planescape-ing everything, and it's even moreso now.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We can't forget the drakes. Most of them aren't very intelligent, but they are perfect as "mounts" or "hosts" for some mind-controlling symbiont/parasite. Maybe there are sentient drakes, capables even to create a civilitation, but they would rather to live in secret domains in the chaotic elemental limbo where they can't be attacked by hunters or the sorcerer-kings minions. Maybe there are a secret cold war between both sides.

 

[Mind of tempest]

Yeah, similar idea where the existence of dragons in the world gives power to magic. But instead of their near-extinction making magic weaker, it made magic draw on the world itself for power instead, and thus defiling was born.

In this way, I suppose the ruination of the world could still be attributed to the actions of power-hungry mortals. Especially if those same mortals hunted dragons to extinction for the power of their hoard items (another concept introduced in Fizban’s).

I see more the lack of native dragons made defiling magic even possible but that this outcome was all people's falt.

 

[Minigiant]

Asmodeus is always the good guy. Told me hisself he did.

That's a setting I'd buy

Dawn War but the gods are alignment flipped.
Goodmsh and Angel Asmodeus vs the Burning Hate and the Corellon the Erlking

 

[Mind of tempest]

That's a setting I'd buy

Dawn War but the gods are alignment flipped.
Goodmsh and Angel Asmodeus vs the Burning Hate and the Corellon the Erlking

would really work in a dark almost comic horror sense.

On the one hand, I'm fine with this kind of approach, especially as it revises all the various settings' own creation myths to mythology instead of fact. I very much feel that gods in D&D work best when they are more unknowable, let alone unkillable. Though it's also comically juvenile to have gods just be big, powerful monsters with people like little ants just begging them for power/mercy/salvation. Making all gods Lovecraftian is an approach I dig.

But on the other hand, it rubs me the wrong way to just invalidate the (heretofore "factual") creation stories of the various worlds. Designers and fans have been trying to undermine the Dragonlance setting for decades, and that always bugged me - this approach just seems like another push in that kind of direction. Though it also invalidates the cosmologies and setups of setting that deliberately existed outside the Great Wheel idea instead of trying to work within it, like Eberron and Dark Sun. This approach was a problem with Planescape-ing everything, and it's even moreso now.

you have a point here both on gods and settings.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

That's a setting I'd buy

Dawn War but the gods are alignment flipped.
Goodmsh and Angel Asmodeus vs the Burning Hate and the Corellon the Erlking

I love this:
Pelor, The Burning Hatred
Ioun, The Forbidden Knowledge
Moradin, The Cog-Maker
Melora, The Unabashed Tide
Avandra, The Fated Misfortune
Kord, The War-Fiend
Corellon, The Mad Erlking
Erathis, Lady of Iron Laws

Vecna, The One-Who-Freed-Magic
Tarizdhun, The Promethean
Bane, Lord of Unbreakable Bonds
Zehir, The Healer's Promise
Grummsh, The Wildfire
Lolth, The Fate-Weaving Spider

 

[Minigiant]

I love this:
Pelor, The Burning Hatred
Ioun, The Forbidden Knowledge
Moradin, The Cog-Maker
Melora, The Unabashed Tide
Avandra, The Fated Misfortune
Kord, The War-Fiend
Corellon, The Mad Erlking
Erathis, Lady of Iron Laws

Vecna, The One-Who-Freed-Magic
Tarizdhun, The Promethean
Bane, Lord of Unbreakable Bonds
Zehir, The Healer's Promise
Grummsh, The Wildfire
Lolth, The Fate-Weaving Spider

I'd leave the LN, TN, and CN ones the same. Ioun, Kord, Melora, Erathis and RQ the same.

You could say that is fragment of the First World has a flawed lens and the gods see it and the people within wrong. Maybe a new god of trickery did it. Maybe Asmodeus.

Or maybe Tiamatand Bahamut get swap and this flips the view and domains of every other deity on the G-E axis.

 

[Mercurius]

Well, the real truth is that Athas is Earth in a few thousand years, and the Sorcerer Kings true names are Bezosorax, Zuckerbergios, and Muskovar.

 

[Charlaquin]

I love this:
Pelor, The Burning Hatred
Ioun, The Forbidden Knowledge
Moradin, The Cog-Maker
Melora, The Unabashed Tide
Avandra, The Fated Misfortune
Kord, The War-Fiend
Corellon, The Mad Erlking
Erathis, Lady of Iron Laws

Vecna, The One-Who-Freed-Magic
Tarizdhun, The Promethean
Bane, Lord of Unbreakable Bonds
Zehir, The Healer's Promise
Grummsh, The Wildfire
Lolth, The Fate-Weaving Spider

If nothing else, it makes sense for the followers of those gods to see it that way.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

If nothing else, it makes sense for the followers of those gods to see it that way.

Yeah, this is more or less already how I treat ''distant gods'' when I run the Dawn War; since you dont get to talk face to face with your god, it is your interpretation that matters. Meaning that there is cults, sects and branches of any kind for any god.