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Tablesalt
2013-10-03, 11:25 PM
So this has been bothering me for a while.

Take the gods from a lot of the D&D campaign settings, like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or Planescape, and they're based on alignment. Why aren't they fighting each other nonstop, to make sure that their chosen alignment (mostly good/evil, but I guess maybe also law/chaos) comes out on top?

I've heard a few answers to this, but none of them seemed to make much sense. One is that the gods don't fight, because that would provoke the other gods into fighting, and so on. That seems a little stale to me, and makes me wonder why the Chaotic gods don't get a war started. Another explanation is that there's some kind of Overgod making everyone play nice. This feels like a bit of a cop-out. The third explanation that I could think of was that the gods are fighting, but it isn't obvious, because it doesn't spill out onto the material plane. To that, I would respond that it seems like the fighting would get onto the material, somehow, but no settings that I know of have many armies of angels marching through their cities.

Do any of you have a better solution, or a better way to phrase one that I've posted here? Your feedback would be much appreciated.

Thinker
2013-10-03, 11:40 PM
This isn't really a standard fantasy setting idea, so much as based on mythology.

The gods don't fight each other simply because they are not opposed to one another. The gods do not exist to wage war; they exist to operate the mechanics that make the universe work. They might disagree with one another about ideology, but their disputes are normally settled by their leader, who is valued for his leadership, wisdom, knowledge, and fairness, rather than his power. The gods hold court in their palace that is beyond the reach of mere mortals, though not every god necessarily lives at the palace.

Occasionally, the wisdom of their leader is not enough and then a huge war erupts in the heavens and on Earth - world-shattering events. Think Trojan War, Ragnorak, Armageddon, or World War 2. The gods don't suffer the consequences of their actions; that is the burden that mortals bear.

The god of chaos is not really affected by the god of law in his normal duties. They generally don't interfere with one another. What gets the gods into trouble with one another is when their projects or favorite people are interfered with. This can cause arguments between the god of archers and the god of hunting just as easily as between the god of war and the god of peace.

LibraryOgre
2013-10-03, 11:40 PM
Have you ever read Dragonlance: Legends?

In the series (which I don't mind spoiling, since it's been out longer than a good chunk of you have been alive), Raistlin, the most powerful wizard ever, takes over. Not just the world. He systematically hunts down and kills the other gods, because he's that bad-ass.

In the meantime, the world is destroyed. It is reduced to a grey slurry of ash raining out of a grey sky.

While a lot of D&D doesn't deal with collateral damage (think about that fireball or lightning bolt in a forest!), the collateral damage of a conflict between gods destroys the world.

Gods don't fight because it kills worshipers... not only on purpose, but accidentally.

Rhynn
2013-10-03, 11:44 PM
In the Forgotten Realms, there's a specific compact (I think it even has a name I can't remember right now) that forbids the gods from acting directly (with some exceptions) in the world; they fight through their clergies. I can't speak for Greyhawk because I don't know it. In Planescape the gods are pretty much non-entities; they're too tied up in the affairs of the Prime Material, and the real powers of the Planes are the planes themselves, more or less.

I forget what the rules are in Dragonlance, but it's a similar situation.

In Glorantha, the gods had to create Time to bind the world back together and prevent it from being destroyed, and this required them to make the Great Compromise, which prevents any gods from acting within the bounds of Time / in the mortal world; this rule has been broken on 2-3 momentous occasions, but those were all initiated from the mortal world, and on one occasion resulted in the total destruction of not just the breakers, but the annihilation of all their knowledge of how to violate the Compromise, and on the other resulted in the violator(s) being joined into the Great Compromise. (These incidents, like the battle at Castle Blue, are the only thing that really even suggests that the gods have an existence separate from that created by the shared mythspace of their worshippers.)

In Artesia's Known World, the gods have grown progressively more distant, and although they still play active roles, they have neither the desire nor, quite possibly, the ability to interfere independently and directly in the affairs of men.

And, of course, in a lot of settings, gods may have little or no existence beyond the belief of their worshippers.

So the usual answer is "the basic metaphysical rules keep the deities from acting directly in the world."

Basically, either there's a reason you don't know or it's sloppy writing. Given that D&D fiction, for instance, is some of the absolute worst fantasy fiction ever written (other than The Inheritance Cycle), the second is not a bad bet.

Mando Knight
2013-10-03, 11:46 PM
When they're actively fighting, you get things like Cyric assassinating Mystra when Abeir draws near and the Weave exploding as a result. Or other nasty things that makes Ao stop everything and give everyone involved an over-divine spanking.

Settings are written when godwars are in "cold" phases because when they're not the setting is very much in flux. When godwars get hot, the setting becomes wrapped up in the godwar by the very nature of it, which isn't conducive to attracting groups who want to play more than just some fantasy apocalypse.

Rhynn
2013-10-03, 11:48 PM
When they're actively fighting, you get things like Cyric assassinating Mystra when Abeir draws near and the Weave exploding as a result. Or other nasty things that makes Ao stop everything and give everyone involved an over-divine spanking.

Actually, didn't Ao throw the gods out and into mortal avatars because someone stole some tablets with the rules of the universe on them, or something? Then they proceeded to fight and kill each other directly, and then afterwards Ao basically went "now does that look like it was a good idea?" Also, Helm killed Mystra... unless you're talking about the 4E transition and Midnight's Mystra? I know nothing about that.

tasw
2013-10-04, 12:04 AM
So this has been bothering me for a while.

Take the gods from a lot of the D&D campaign settings, like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or Planescape, and they're based on alignment. Why aren't they fighting each other nonstop, to make sure that their chosen alignment (mostly good/evil, but I guess maybe also law/chaos) comes out on top?

I've heard a few answers to this, but none of them seemed to make much sense. One is that the gods don't fight, because that would provoke the other gods into fighting, and so on. That seems a little stale to me, and makes me wonder why the Chaotic gods don't get a war started. Another explanation is that there's some kind of Overgod making everyone play nice. This feels like a bit of a cop-out. The third explanation that I could think of was that the gods are fighting, but it isn't obvious, because it doesn't spill out onto the material plane. To that, I would respond that it seems like the fighting would get onto the material, somehow, but no settings that I know of have many armies of angels marching through their cities.

Do any of you have a better solution, or a better way to phrase one that I've posted here? Your feedback would be much appreciated.

The gods gain power from their worshipers.

War between the gods spills out to the mortal realms, mortals die in droves, no more worshipers, ALL the gods die.

Like mutual assured destruction. From the cold wars. you fight, I fight, we all die.

Satisfying? NO. Both sides want to win. But neither has figured out how to do it without getting wiped out in return yet.

Rhynn
2013-10-04, 12:08 AM
The gods gain power from their worshipers.

That's not really true in many / most settings. IIRC, Ao established this as the rule in Toril after the Time of Troubles.

tasw
2013-10-04, 12:09 AM
That's not really true in many / most settings. IIRC, Ao established this as the rule in Toril after the Time of Troubles.

your the DM. Fix that mistake. its not WoTC's setting. the minute you set a game in it, its YOUR setting.

Mando Knight
2013-10-04, 12:15 AM
Actually, didn't Ao throw the gods out and into mortal avatars because someone stole some tablets with the rules of the universe on them, or something? Then they proceeded to fight and kill each other directly, and then afterwards Ao basically went "now does that look like it was a good idea?" Also, Helm killed Mystra... unless you're talking about the 4E transition and Midnight's Mystra? I know nothing about that.
I'm talking about the 4e transition, where Midnight-Mystra was killed by Cyric and brought about the Spellplague. And then a bunch of other gods went and got themselves killed. And a couple hundred years later Ao decides he's had enough with that and starts the Sundering to bring in 5th edition.

The Time of Troubles, which helped set up the gods to be where they were just before the 4e transition, is another good example of what happens when gods start fighting for real.

Alleran
2013-10-04, 12:39 AM
When gods throw down for real in a no-holds-barred cage match, you don't usually have a campaign setting in the aftermath.

Unless you like post-apocalypse games, of course.

tasw
2013-10-04, 12:44 AM
I'm talking about the 4e transition,

WoTC's best attempt to transmogrify dog **** onto paper. Other then the core 3 books for 4e i guess.

Ignore every word written in every 4e book. About everything.

You'll be better off.

Your players wont care. They didnt read the 4e crap and unless you played them through it they wont even notice any changes.

Kol Korran
2013-10-04, 12:56 AM
Hmmmm... Not sure if that works, But think of the major super powers in our world for example, at least the nuclear ones... They've been quite opposed to each other for some time. But if they fight, they have a good chance of:
a) killing themselves
b) destroying the world
c) depleting their resources- war is expensive. And if we go back to FR like gods, even their powers aren't unlimited. And then they are vulnerable to others...
d) Anyone who'll pose THAT much of a threat to the world will most likely cause a great number of countries to ally against them. (See some of the conflicts of the previous century, and this one as well)

(Please don't take it into real world events, against forum rules, this was a very vague and simplistic example, let's keep it that way)

So in a way what stops them is a real good fear, or survival instinct. Even the chaotic ones didn't get where they are by acting impulsively, rashly. So most gods act in more subtle ways, through trying to influence the beliefs of the mortals, and their spheres. Some gods (Cyric for example) might be more prone to a more.... direct approach, but those are the exceptions, and their actions have grave world shaking/ shattering consequences. But those gods are depicted as the somewhat mad/ not quite right in the head type of gods, and not the rule.

Or so I think at least.

TheCountAlucard
2013-10-04, 02:27 AM
Once again, it seems, Exalted stands out from the rest. A rift exists between the Terrestrial and Celestial Bureaucracies. Not only have the Elemental Courts of Water and Air been actively at war with each other, but the corruption running rampant in heaven itself means that the gods of the Celestial Bureaucracy have a good shot at murdering one another. Hell, some have already done it.

And 3e's hype suggests there shall be open war in heaven.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-04, 02:44 AM
Alucard, they said standard fantasy setting.

Exalted is so far from standard that I don't think its really applicable. that and the gods are more kami's and other minor spirits in that setting, so no divine nuclear war.

really Exalted is so fond of drawing upon older definitions of words, that it has very little validity when people are discussing more modern usages. I may not be able to apply DnD things to Exalted, but that works the other way too: don't apply Exalted things to DnD. they are two completely different paradigms.

this is clearly a DnD paradigm here, so lets keep it on topic, yes?

but really, the reason has already been stated: divine nuclear war. they fight, everything goes boom cause they are just that powerful. mutually assured destruction.

Milo v3
2013-10-04, 02:59 AM
The Lords of Creation forum game offers an answer to this. It's risky.
It takes your energy and effort to actually wage all out war against a being with the same power, when you can save your strength and slowly make changes and win over time subtly by getting mortals to do stuff for you.

If you try and directly attack, they can just undo your efforts just as easily as you did the damage. But it takes much more effort and finesse to undo a network of actions.

And this is commoning from a person who went around trying to get into fights with gods in both of the games he played in. Direct attacks are pointless aside from fun and drama.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-04, 03:07 AM
The reason they don't fight is because their authors often make them arbitrarily powerful, meaning the moment gods step on stage, the story becomes just a series of Deus ex Machina and no-one else matters.

In settings where gods are not all-powerful, all-knowing or anything near, they can fight all the time and it's not a huge issue.

Actana
2013-10-04, 04:33 AM
The way I see it, the gods do fight, but not in similar ways to how mortals think. Gods are immortal, eternal, they have time on their side. What use is a petty victory over bashing someone's head in when the effects of that bashing are nullified over the next couple of centuries (if even that)? And, as many people before have said, it's extremely risky for the planes the fighting goes on in. Deities have considerable power, and must throttle that power when fighting. And if two of them decide to lay the smack down the one who goes full power first will probably win - and destroy the arena with it.

But the gods do still fight, just in more subtle ways. They have the mortal agents, who carry out their will, and hordes of angels, fiends and other outsiders at their disposal. But the gods are more concerned with the long-term benefits of fighting, things like upholding their domains and portfolio, and if possible gain a slight advantage over the opposite gods to exploit later. In the end, what would a god fight for? The alignments supposedly existed before the gods so they're more forces of nature than divine powers and thus not worth fighting for, and the mortals do a pretty bang-up job fighting for them on the material plane - interfering there would create a neverending arms race between opposing gods, and that wouldn't be good for anyone. Just a bit of guidance here and there with no physical manifestation unless it's something the god has been planning for.

Being a god isn't an easy thing. You have to weigh the pros and cons of every action you make, and everything you do has long-lasting consequences. Rash actions like fighting just can't end well for anyone, not even for the god itself. Even the chaotic gods realize this - they're chaotic, not stupid.

TheCountAlucard
2013-10-04, 05:13 AM
Alucard, they said standard fantasy setting.Thing is, no fantasy setting is truly "standard." Unless your definition of such is "not Exalted," pretty much any parameters you'd care to use would preclude at least one other setting; Ravenloft is hardly "standard." Or Eberron. Or even Forgotten Realms, which has in fact already received mention here.


Exalted is so far from standard that I don't think its really applicable.Then we'd better settle on a good definition of "standard." As it is, "People use it straight out of the box, precisely the way it comes" doesn't seem to fit your exacting parameters.


this is clearly a DnD paradigm here, so lets keep it on topic, yes?Is it?

The Rose Dragon
2013-10-04, 05:32 AM
Is it?

It's in the wrong forum to be so, so it probably isn't.

Regardless, answer: there is no such thing as standard fantasy setting. Middle Earth, for example, didn't even have multiple gods to fight among each other, being a largely monotheistic setting, and it is probably the ur-example of a "fantasy setting" (as opposed to mythology). Also, alignment is a very irrelevant (and system-specific) concern, and neither evil nor good necessarily play nice among themselves that they care about the supremacy of their side. They probably care about their personal power, but that isn't necessarily served by killing other gods.

NichG
2013-10-04, 06:12 AM
I'll offer three answers:

1. Gods are often all part of the same family. While its not necessarily the case that family wouldn't fight and kill one another, it can be a reason why more violent gods might stay their hand (even chaotic evil beings can have certain people they care about in some sense). This requires a little artful balancing - the CE gods have to care about their brothers/sisters as individuals, whereas the LN gods might just abide by general rules like 'you don't fight family', and so on. Alternately, the CE gods don't care, but the others refuse to take the steps necessary to permanently wipe them from existence because they do. So you get a kind of cold war where the rest of the family is trying to keep them in line.

2. The gods are all hypocrites. Gods abide by a different standard of morality than mortals. Its important for mortals to be LG (or CE or CN or whatever the deity prefers) because thats how they get sieved to see who gets the honor of being in the god's presence for eternity. Its like picking out a pet or breeding the ideal farm animal. But just because you want a cow that is frost resistant and use the rest for meat doesn't mean you go over to the neighboring farm and kill the farmer there because he isn't frost resistant.

The gods don't have to be entirely hypocritical for this to work - it may be that from their point of view, the evil gods are objectively bad, but the harm they do is impermanent because the souls of good-aligned people who are killed persist on and go to the good deific realms. So from a divine point of view, the evil gods are mean people, but not doing enough harm to justify starting a war over (whereas war could spread to poaching souls from divine realms, dumping tons of souls out into the unprotected dark, etc).

3. The Anthropic Principle. Okay, this isn't a reason, but its an observation. Universes in which the gods fight frequently soon don't have gods, since direct fighting is going to be removing deities from the pool. So if you're in a universe with gods, its one in which the gods have found some reason not to fight. This is basically a consequence of deific timescales being much much longer than mortal timescales (usually). If gods exist over times that are 1000x longer than a mortal lifespan, they have to fight ~1000x less often to have the same effective loss rate from conflicts over the span of their existence.

Rhynn
2013-10-04, 06:55 AM
The reason they don't fight is because their authors often make them arbitrarily powerful, meaning the moment gods step on stage, the story becomes just a series of Deus ex Machina and no-one else matters.

In settings where gods are not all-powerful, all-knowing or anything near, they can fight all the time and it's not a huge issue.

Yeah, this is pretty much the reason for the basic metaphysical rules preventing gods from fighting directly. Unless the whole setting is built around participating in divine wars (e.g. Exalted), it just doesn't make a good setting.


Regardless, answer: there is no such thing as standard fantasy setting. Middle Earth, for example, didn't even have multiple gods to fight among each other, being a largely monotheistic setting, and it is probably the ur-example of a "fantasy setting" (as opposed to mythology).

This depends on what we count as "gods" in Middle-Earth. Iluvatar was the creator-level deity, but the Valar (and even the Maiar) definitely had god-like powers on the level of Norse or Greek gods; and the Valar did fight in the First Age, the Lords and Queens of Valar against Melkor/Morgoth. Of course, the Valar did not step in personally until things were dire enough - they were held back by a basic sort of noninterference in mortal affairs principle, but broke it (IIRC on their own judgment) two or three times to finally curbstomp Melkor.

Daer
2013-10-04, 07:03 AM
Mutual assured destruction? Or at least with directly working other gods one would be in deep troubles with others i would assume.

and indeed if gods were to war directly against each other it would make sure their toys were broken. Then again, couldn't they just create new people and life?

Doorhandle
2013-10-04, 07:18 AM
So this has been bothering me for a while.

Take the gods from a lot of the D&D campaign settings, like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or Planescape, and they're based on alignment. Why aren't they fighting each other nonstop, to make sure that their chosen alignment (mostly good/evil, but I guess maybe also law/chaos) comes out on top?

I've heard a few answers to this, but none of them seemed to make much sense. One is that the gods don't fight, because that would provoke the other gods into fighting, and so on. That seems a little stale to me, and makes me wonder why the Chaotic gods don't get a war started. Another explanation is that there's some kind of Overgod making everyone play nice. This feels like a bit of a cop-out. The third explanation that I could think of was that the gods are fighting, but it isn't obvious, because it doesn't spill out onto the material plane. To that, I would respond that it seems like the fighting would get onto the material, somehow, but no settings that I know of have many armies of angels marching through their cities.

Do any of you have a better solution, or a better way to phrase one that I've posted here? Your feedback would be much appreciated.

The usual reason given is that:
1. The gods can't work again each-other directly instead using their worshippers or
2. Collateral damaging including the greater universe, as discussed before.

Exalted uses mostly 2, with a heaping help of the fact that most gods are either bound/limited in their ability to affect the greater world (primordials/neverborn) or lack motivation to wage war against others of their kind (everyone else that's not exalted.)

Form a setting perspective it's so you can write your OWN godwar instead of relying upon the publisher.

Also, there is the idea could be fighting ceaselessly on planes beyond the vision or reach of mortals.

For example, Australia was a part of the war effort in WW2, but excluding one or two incidents, did not fight the war on it's own shores. instead, it sent it's armies elsewhere to aid it's allies. Perhaps the entire material plane is like that, compared to the God-war?

GungHo
2013-10-04, 10:47 AM
Because when gods start warring, things like this start happening.

http://images.bimedia.net/images/100422_volcano_lightning.jpg

That's awfully hard on the planet and people they rule over. While they may have arguments on how things work and use mortals as chess pieces in a great game, they serve the general interest of not destroying the only thing they have.

Segev
2013-10-04, 11:31 AM
Think of gods as being powerful rulers. Wars happen between nations with autocratic leadership more often than with more distributed or answerable leadership, because autocrats can minimize the risk to themselves and maximize the rewards of spoils taken from beaten foes.

Gods, in this paradigm, do war with one another. However, like many rulers, even those who go out "in person" tend to take a bit of a back seat. They might, at best, command the army from the proverbial tent (that is, send a Chosen One prophet-type to lead the battle and whisper in his ear while granting him a measure of their power). They do not personally manifest and go pounding other gods' armies - literal or not - and holdings into the ground because, frankly, that puts them at risk. Even if Midsize Townton lacks anybody who can stand up to their divine might, gods who manifest have to take on...stats. And as we all know, anything statted can be killed by a sufficiently dedicated adventuring party.

The god-manifest will attract adventurers like a drowning cow does piranha. Not only are they going to want to stop this massive threat to the ways of life of their cultures, but their own gods will whisper in their ears and empower them as Chosen Ones to face this threat. After all, manifesting directly, themselves, would mean that one of the gods would die if it came to a fight.

War gods, gods of strength, they might be more tempted than others to descend in person to the earthly plane, but in truth, meddling in affairs that directly is uninteresting to them for the same reason it would be tempting to their brethren: they can trounce anything that isn't an adventuring party or another god. And really, getting your challenge out of facing adventuring parties is more easily done by assuming a disguise and challenging them directly, never letting on they wrestled with Smighty, god of Wrestling and Silly Costumes (but I repeat myself).

Why don't they war across the planes? Well, they do. But really, they prefer to leave that to the Fiends and their Blood War. The good and neutral gods don't see much cause to war with each other over the Law/Chaos divide (even though the Lawful and Chaotic neutral ones probably hate each other), if only because the Blood War already handles some of that for the neutrals, and the goods would probably talk the neutrals out of it if they tried to bring it more northward on the alignment grid.

But gods still do war. It just tends to be in their lands, the Outer Planes, more than in the material. THe material plane is where they play chess with each other, manipulating mortals and cults to maneuver power and influence (and destroy that of their foes) which can TRANSLATE upwards to the divine battles. Wars across heaven may rage, but it is the information stealing and the rituals of the world which give the tactical and strategic advantages in that war.



Alternatively, some settings may simply have seals in place. Whether deliberate "gods cannot enter in their full might" magics which require rituals to breech, or actual "exiled from the planes of man, now their cults must let them back in" locks, or just a "the world would crack under the might of divinity" keeping them from entering without specially-constructed rituals to contain or channel their power and keep it from breaking the world, gods don't fight where we can see it in mortal-planes games because they can't get here. Not without some sort of massive ritual (which, of course, the PCs can quest to stop)!

Lord Raziere
2013-10-04, 12:06 PM
Thing is, no fantasy setting is truly "standard." Unless your definition of such is "not Exalted," pretty much any parameters you'd care to use would preclude at least one other setting; Ravenloft is hardly "standard." Or Eberron. Or even Forgotten Realms, which has in fact already received mention here.

Then we'd better settle on a good definition of "standard." As it is, "People use it straight out of the box, precisely the way it comes" doesn't seem to fit your exacting parameters.

Is it?

1. so what, the common patterns found in most settings and books don't really matter now? a single difference and suddenly they are not standard at all, rather than just being a variation upon the standard? any denying that we don't have a standard fantasy setting that most people subvert and deviate from is just being stubborn. ideas don't form from the void y'know.

2. the standard is y'know… medieval? humanistic elves and dwarves, evil orcs and goblins? cryptic prophecy that says this peasant here is the chosen one? who turns out to be royalty? he gets a cool sword at some point? obeys advice of mysterious wizard? has a romance with an elf? all that jazz?

and you think LOTR was an exception? think again: Aragorn. gets the sword, gets the throne, gets the elf girl, obeys the advice of Gandalf, has a bickering elf/dwarf duo right beside him.

3. It is. check the OP. it even says alignment where Exalted is y'know completely amoral. so yes, unless Exalted suddenly cares about the objective moral alignment of people, I don't think it applies to this discussion.

BWR
2013-10-04, 12:56 PM
In Planescape the gods are pretty much non-entities; they're too tied up in the affairs of the Prime Material, and the real powers of the Planes are the planes themselves, more or less.


A very Clueless and inaccurate evaluation of it . Some gods are at least as interested in the Outer Planes as they are on the Prime. After all, they make their home on the Outer Planes and like to keep their homes clean. Also, since enough belief can cause physical changes on the Outer Planes, more worshippers in critical areas there can result not only in more power but actual lessening of rivals and enemies territory.
Sure, there are gods that are entirely devoted to one or two Prime worlds (Dragonlance, Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk), but there are those who don't restrict themselves to that degree (most any real world pantheon that exists in PS, monstrous gods, etc.).
Mostly, gods don't get in direct confrontations for many of the reasons mentioned already - too dangerous personally, it weakens your followers and resources, little things like planets get broken if you try too much, leaves you open to not only immediate enemies but also other gods jealous of your portfolio (Ishtar and Isis would pounce on any chance to weaken the other, despite being practically identical in aspect). Also, to personally make war on another god means to show up in their domain, which is likely to be hostile to you in every way, ignoring the problem of a hostile god.

Birthright.
The history of BR has the gods making war against one of their number, and it was not a pretty sight. In the end, all gods blew up, taking a surprisingly small part of the world with it (just one big mountain and surrounding area), infusing many survivors with divine power to become the new gods and other semi-divine beings. After that, the new gods decided that fighting in person like that was a Bad Thing.

Mystara explictily has a compact between Immortals preventing direct action on the Prime. Sending avatars and certain unasked-for miracles doesn't count as direct action. When it comes to all-out war on other planes, it's frowned upon by Immortals in general and you can be pretty sure that if someone tries something too overt the others will gang up on him to calm things down. This is why even a complete bastard like Thanatos, who nobody likes and everybody thinks is a menace, is allowed to survive - he plays by the rules (and does a damn good job of it).
Unlike Planescape, the Prime actually is admittedly a prime plane in the Mystaran cosmology, since it's the major source of new Immortals and worshippers. The outer planes seem to have a much lower population density than the Prime, or most of the natives there don't like to pay respect to Immortals.

Big Fau
2013-10-04, 01:23 PM
The Mutually Assured Destruction doesn't make much sense for deities that are actively trying to destroy reality though.

Joe the Rat
2013-10-04, 01:36 PM
Hmm... How about some examples?

Greek Mythology: The gods are one big happy dysfunctional political patricidal family. As in they're all related. Yeah, you have family squabbles, but they don't go to war over them. Most of the serious fighting happened in the distant past, when they kicked the old rulers out. When they do get a serious knock-down drag-out, and start picking sides, it involves human wars. The Gods are somewhere between Chess Masters and Football Hooligans. They make a game of it. The fact that the Big Three can pretty much curb stomp the rest of the pantheon does tend to quell unrest.

Egyptian and Mesopotamian Mythologies: A dominant theme here is order v. chaos, or the fight against oblivion. The Gods are on the "not oblivion" side, with a couple of stand outs on the other side. You may also have some "token evil teammates" - who are nasty, but they're standing against something worse.

Norse: The gods are all on the same team, and generally get along (though Loki can be a bit of a tool at times). You even have different groups that more-or-less are now allied. They're constantly fighting Monsters (Giants, mostly). When the big dust up between Gods and Monsters comes, the world will get squished. And one of the gods will betray the others.

The gods aren't fighting (even those on opposing sides "as assigned alignments by D&D") because they are generally on the same team. You'll find that a lot on pantheonic systems. It's gods vs. chaos, or gods vs. monsters, or gods vs. older, less friendly gods (who are safely disposed of, thank you very much). When gods "fight," it's because their followers are fighting - god v. god being a challenge for authority, power, or status, or from running into the numbskulls from another belief system - wars among the Forgotten Realms gods makes sense, as you have a fresh pile of deities for each new region added in - conflict isn't between opposing concepts and portfolios, but between different claimants of the same roles, often from different pantheons.

>cough<
So... what you really need is an outside adversary to keep things "civil". Rovagug and Frost Giants and Demons and Morgoth and Apep and so on.

But what if you want to keep it all in the family? People have mentioned the Cold War angle (or the mortals as pawns). They act indirectly, though their worshippers and mediators (D&D: Clerics), influencing the world as such.

Parallel works is another idea - that the gods do fight, but their fighting is elsewhere.The effects are non-existant (as nothing ever changes), indirect (gains or loss in influence, changes in fortune to favor one group over another), or is already accounted for in the status quo (Where does the sun go at night, what's it doing, and if you don't make your sacrifices, it might not have the power to rise again).

In your game world, if the deities are at war, it should be something that is either backdrop to your setting (stuff is happening, this is why magic is weird, but here's the adventure), motive for adventure as footsoldiers (Go stomp that temple of baby dragon slaying to reduce its power; pretty much any 'go fight evil' plot) or something the players can influence directly (go rescue the Goddess of Commerce from Darth Hefner. Again.)

Lord Raziere
2013-10-04, 01:41 PM
The Mutually Assured Destruction doesn't make much sense for deities that are actively trying to destroy reality though.

All the other deities don't want to destroy the world, so they probably team against him to prevent it. can't stand up against the combined might of all the gods.

Big Fau
2013-10-04, 01:48 PM
All the other deities don't want to destroy the world, so they probably team against him to prevent it. can't stand up against the combined might of all the gods.

IIRC, even in 3.5 and older editions Tharzidun managed to do just that for a long while.

And Orcus did it before he stopped being Tenebrous.

BWR
2013-10-04, 01:57 PM
IIRC, even in 3.5 and older editions Tharzidun managed to do just that for a long while.

And Orcus did it before he stopped being Tenebrous.

And Tharizdun failed and was locked up.
Tenebrous never took on multiple powers at once. He was careful and sneaky, making sure to not make a big enough splash that full powers would consider him an immediate threat and gang up on him. Also, he didn't want to destroy everything, he just wanted to regain his power, then kill everything and make it undead under his control.

Segev
2013-10-04, 02:04 PM
It could be that the ones who are out to destroy all of reality DID make actual god-wars happen with those who didn't want it to happen. And so the latter, winning that war, took action to seal up the omnicidal deities so they can't make war anymore, and have to work through proxies, and seek cultists to bust open the seal, etc., etc....

jedipotter
2013-10-04, 03:38 PM
Take the gods from a lot of the D&D campaign settings, like Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, or Planescape, and they're based on alignment. Why aren't they fighting each other nonstop, to make sure that their chosen alignment (mostly good/evil, but I guess maybe also law/chaos) comes out on top?

They fight all the time, no stop. What makes you think otherwise? Sure they don't have one on one duels much, but there is much more at stake.

You can't just win by killing a god of another alignment....unless you could kill all of them at once. Otherwise, new gods will simply rise to take the place of fallen ones(as happens in mythology, game products, and even real life).

The way to win, is more to prove your side/idea/philosophy is the right one. And make everyone join you. This is why mortals are so important. The more worshipers a god has. the more powerful they are....and theoretically if they could get 'everyone to worship them, they would be all powerful.

You also have the MAD problem. Each god is like country with nukes. If a couple gods started attacking and killing, the universe would be a wasteland in no time. So most gods agree to be less then nukes.

Also, remember the metaplot, that all gods need 'outsiders'. A god really does not want everyone to be a follower. If that were to happen, who would they fight and blame for things? What would a god do if they did rule everything with no conflict at all?

TeChameleon
2013-10-05, 03:48 AM
It seems like even the crazier gods are at least a little bit cautious, since they tend to still have desires beyond 'world go boom'- if Orcus devotes too many resources to killing off Pelor or whatever, then Vecna will shank him in the back of the head, just as an example.

Plus there's the fiends and devils and whatever pulling Blood War duty- if the gods start kicking one another's faces in, I kind of suspect the Blood War would go on hold for a bit while each side of it went on a deicidal spree and finished off by jumping up and down on the smouldering remains of the deities they hated most for a while.

And there's the primordials as well- I'm not totally certain, but I think there might be enough left of them to pull back together if the gods screwed the pooch and went after one another. This is unlikely to be a good thing for anyone involved.

It's not just that they'd lose worshippers (although that's definitely a factor), but also the fact that if the gods started openly brawling, their various other enemies would happily tear off their heads and do unspeakable things down their neck stumps.

Berenger
2013-10-05, 06:37 AM
To determine the outcome of a fight between gods, gods would need stats.

And if gods had stats, they'd be mowed down by player characters. :smallamused:

The Rose Dragon
2013-10-05, 06:43 AM
And if gods had stats, they'd be mowed down by player characters. :smallamused:

I fail to see the problem.

Berenger
2013-10-05, 06:50 AM
Well... the problem is... the problem... the... :smallyuk:

"Go after Clericzillas weak spot!" "His Holy Symbol?" "NO! Tempus!" Yes, thats awesome. :smallbiggrin:

The Rose Dragon
2013-10-05, 07:47 AM
Well... the problem is... the problem... the... :smallyuk:

"Go after Clericzillas weak spot!" "His Holy Symbol?" "NO! Tempus!" Yes, thats awesome. :smallbiggrin:

Far too D&D-specific a problem to worry about in the general Roleplaying Games forum. Most systems don't have gods so directly involved with the players, if they are involved with the players at all.

Rhynn
2013-10-05, 08:07 AM
Funnily enough, attacking someone's god is a legitimate tactic in Glorantha (RuneQuest / HeroQuest), although it's usually out of reach of PCs and more of a plot element. In the HQ Sartar Rising modules, the Lunar Empire kills Orlanth, the god of storm, by stopping all worship of him and finally toppling the last center of resistance; and the God Learners were particularly fond of attacking their enemies' gods in the mythic realm to deprive them of their magic.

Not exactly a weak spot, though.

In RuneQuest / HeroQuest, PCs absolutely can (in theory) reach a level of power where they can take on gods, and this fits the setting - it's very much inspired by ancient myths, with heroes rising to the level of Gilgamesh and Herakles. It's a feature of the setting that mortals can reach the power of demigods. In Artesia: AKW, we're given the stats of a minor demigod (and a dragon, which is a demigod-level monster), and they are in theory reachable by PCs, but at the stage you reach those abilities, you would be a demigod yourself - which, again, is a feature of the setting, where mortals can ascend into Heaven as demigods.

NichG
2013-10-05, 08:44 AM
To determine the outcome of a fight between gods, gods would need stats.

And if gods had stats, they'd be mowed down by player characters. :smallamused:

Well, not strictly true. You could have system separation, where the gods use a different system entirely than the mortals for their stats/combat. With something like that, no matter how good a mortal gets at fighting mortal foes, they would not be able to mechanically interact with the god using those abilities. And at the same time there can be things left in the system that do allow interactions, which basically turns those things into the MacGuffins if you really need to commit some deicide.

Simple example 'a god is slain if and only if they are no longer worshiped by even a single person anywhere'. Concrete, gives a way for gods to fight eachother (usually horrible wars of extermination on the mortal plane), and a mortal could attempt it, but it wouldn't be simply a matter of walking up to the god's avatar and punching it really hard.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-05, 11:14 AM
To determine the outcome of a fight between gods, gods would need stats.

Yes, but those stats don't need to be anything else than "God X beats God Y".


And if gods had stats, they'd be mowed down by player characters. :smallamused:

This is utter bull****, even in D&D. In systems other than D&D, the stats of a god can include "can not be harmed by player characters. Ever."

A Tad Insane
2013-10-05, 11:18 AM
They're gods. They could be fighting on different planes, but it's a stalemate. Only when they battle on ALL the planes does anything happen, but the risked permanent damage to themselves, the world and their followers.

jedipotter
2013-10-05, 11:26 AM
This is utter bull****, even in D&D. In systems other than D&D, the stats of a god can include "can not be harmed by player characters. Ever."

For example in the old D&D boxed set had the rule: All Immortals(gods) are immune to Mortal(Non-Immortal/God) magic.

Frozen_Feet
2013-10-05, 12:04 PM
Precisely.

In D&D 3.5, on the other hand, the list of immunities of gods as well as their status as epic-level characters means that 99% of character builds possible in the system just fail against them. You pretty much have to be a god in your own right if you want to compete with them. At least, you'll have to be epic or cheat (by Pun-Pun), both of which are things a pre-existing god could stop before they happen.

Most methods of combating gods are GM fiat, pure and simple. Usually Deus ex Machina in the form of a setting-specific artefact.

Lord Raziere
2013-10-05, 02:15 PM
Yea, assuming Pazuzu even exists in the setting. and even if he did, there is a strong possibility that the other gods, even the other evil ones, his allies, would be all like "you don't grant wishes to kobolds with two P's in their names, and we don't get nasty with you, get our drift?" cause I imagine any god that much of a jerk to actually grant such a wish would be preeeeeeeetty low on the gods popularity list, and pretty high on the gods black list. you just don't let that kind of thing happen.

and even then, there is the Lady of Pain. even if you ARE a god, you die. because Lady of Pain.

Tablesalt
2013-10-05, 03:15 PM
Just a quick reply; thanks for all of these responses! I really appreciate it, and there's lots of stuff here that I'm eager to use in my own games.

Looking back, I see that this is supposed to be a setting-independent forum. Sorry if I was wrong in putting this topic here.

Arcane_Secrets
2013-10-05, 11:48 PM
All the other deities don't want to destroy the world, so they probably team against him to prevent it. can't stand up against the combined might of all the gods.

Or they try and get imprisoned (like what happened to Tharizdun)-or they reach agreements that keep the power's followers from getting too much of a foothold on a world.

That doesn't mean that destroy the world type powers/deities are totally ineffective (far from it as I see it). It's just that their efforts tend to start out small, and depend on a sort of 'loophole' or failing elsewhere at least initially and the spiral out of control.