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Nargrakhan
2014-11-24, 02:24 PM
Is it only me who gets annoyed when a RPG fantasy setting goes through all the trouble of making a not-Egypt on their not-Earth, then gets 100% lazy and directly cut-and-paste the real Egyptian gods and goddesses without making the slightest effort to at least make them not-Egyptian deities?

Sometimes they do the same for their not-Asia... although it seems Egypt and Mesoamerica mythologies are more common for this offense. I mean, they go through all this trouble to NOT directly cut-and-paste Eurocentric deities for their not-Europe continent.

Sure... most fantasy settings are just fanciful and creative retellings of real Earth (this time with spells and magical races) -- but sometimes that's part of the fun. Seeing where they deviate or modify things to be... well... fanciful and creative.

And yes... I can clearly tell parts of Lovecraft is public domain, because lots of settings just cut and paste those horrors into their mythology ranks with zero modification.

LibraryOgre
2014-11-25, 12:01 PM
Sometimes they do the same for their not-Asia... although it seems Egypt and Mesoamerica mythologies are more common for this offense. I mean, they go through all this trouble to NOT directly cut-and-paste Eurocentric deities for their not-Europe continent.


I disagree that they don't European deities in game worlds... consider FR, where Tyr, Oghma, Mielliki, and Loviatar (the latter two being Finnish, the first two being Norse and Celtic, respectively) are major deities who are part of the world, and initially were simply ports straight from Deities and Demigods. Or, heck, consider DC and Marvel, where Thor, Loki, Odin, Hercules, and several other deities are directly involved in the storytelling (Wonder Woman spent some time as an agent of a Hawaiian deity, in fact).

But, yes, it's lazy. It happens frequently, from bare reskins to outright emplacement.

Ravens_cry
2014-11-25, 12:21 PM
It doesn't have to be lazy, if you are making a world that is basically the World of Norse/Egyptian/Japananese myth as stated in the myths, it makes sense for the respective gods to be in those settings.
On the other hand, if you are doing an otherwise unrelated fantasy world, and you plunk Thor into your 'verse for no reason other than you need a god, yeah, it's pretty lazy.
I do recommend the study of gods and mythology though to glean for ideas and themes to both acknowledge and possibly subvert.

Nargrakhan
2014-11-25, 01:17 PM
I was mulling this over for awhile. Maybe it's because settings have too many gods. They make a not-Europe continent, and it has it's gods. Then they make a not-Egypt place, and it has a new list of gods. Do the same for the Elves and the Dwarves and the Orcs and not-Asia... and so forth and so on. All of them their own individual god of war. So if you have 20 races/regions... you've got 20 gods doing the same thing.

So maybe they should just have one god with many faces. Not a purely monotheistic thing... but a single god for each purview across the entire globe. For example a God of Alcohol. Maybe the elves think it's a female and the dwarves think it's a male. Not-Europe humans use the same god as the dwarves, because they were taught the arts by them before the elves introduced wine. So the elven version of this goddess is elegant and refined. She's all about taste and fine celebration. Meanwhile the dwarven version is a drunken warrior who's all about wild parties and causing a ruckus. Same deity though: even for not-Asia or the lizardmen or whatever.

Why does the deity seem schizo? Maybe because they act in strange and mysterious ways. Or perhaps because this is the god of alcohol, and in a perpetual drunken stupor he/she keeps changing forms for whatever suits the mindset. Maybe part of the reason why elves and dwarves don't get along is because they consider the other to be blasphemous with various deities.

Of course not all deities could or would be like this. The God of Unbending Laws might be exactly the same across the entire planet -- perhaps even in name and attire -- because he's the god of unbending laws.

Generally the idea is to have as few gods as possible, to avoid needing to constantly reinventing the wheel, just because this place is Japan and that place is Germany.

Cazero
2014-11-25, 02:49 PM
I doubt laziness is the only reason to import a pantheon as is.
Another reason could be that it helps people to immediatly understand what each god attributions and responsibilities are without lenghty introduction (see the Order of the Stick, with Thor as god of dwarves, Loki his sworn enemy, Hel goddess of death, etc).

LibraryOgre
2014-11-25, 04:27 PM
So maybe they should just have one god with many faces. Not a purely monotheistic thing... but a single god for each purview across the entire globe. For example a God of Alcohol. Maybe the elves think it's a female and the dwarves think it's a male. Not-Europe humans use the same god as the dwarves, because they were taught the arts by them before the elves introduced wine. So the elven version of this goddess is elegant and refined. She's all about taste and fine celebration. Meanwhile the dwarven version is a drunken warrior who's all about wild parties and causing a ruckus. Same deity though: even for not-Asia or the lizardmen or whatever.


Hackmaster does this in the default setting of Tellene; the gods have different names in different places, but the Cathedral of Light (and all the other faiths) is always pretty much the same.

Sartharina
2014-11-27, 10:02 AM
Is it only me who gets annoyed when a RPG fantasy setting goes through all the trouble of making a not-Egypt on their not-Earth, then gets 100% lazy and directly cut-and-paste the real Egyptian gods and goddesses without making the slightest effort to at least make them not-Egyptian deities?it's fun to play in worlds with our mythology, but different geography and political situations.

Or you can go the Star Trek Who Mourns for Adonis? route, and have the setting's deities be those that left earth after they got ignored, and went to be worshiped elsewhere.

It's also amusing to see new spins on old deities (Such as Bast in Discworld - from a powerful feline warrior-goddess of protection to Goddess of Cat-Things.) However... I'm much less impressed by the Forgotten Realms. Poor Bast - from powerful feline warrior goddess of protection, to... Sharess. Dammit.

SoC175
2014-11-27, 04:52 PM
I disagree that they don't European deities in game worlds... consider FR, where Tyr, Oghma, Mielliki, and Loviatar (the latter two being Finnish, the first two being Norse and Celtic, respectively) are major deities who are part of the world, and initially were simply ports straight from Deities and Demigods.They are actually considered to be the very same entities who were once also worshipped on Earth (which in turn is considered one of the many worlds of the D&D multiverse). The supplement On Hallowed Grounds explains why they chose to become part of the faerunian pantheon

Aedilred
2014-11-28, 02:31 AM
I do find it interesting that the default setting in most fantasy universes is polytheism. There might be the odd monotheist religion lumped in, but that's usually more like a kind of militant henotheism - and the polytheism is often more of a kind of laid back henotheism too. It seems to be one of those elements which is accepted as part of the standard fantasy "package" but often sits slightly oddly in the default ersatz medieval world for reasons that are probably obvious but are difficult to go into without breaking forum rules. As Nargrakan says, this can lead to a kind of deity overload, especially if you're incautious about the shape of the overall theology, and after a while it's easier to start cutting and pasting from real life because it's not worth taxing the brain to come up with $GenericAnimistGod#254.

As Mark Hall says, too, you see the same with European deities, although perhaps slightly more effort goes into reskinning or otherwise disguising them than with non-European ones, which probably just reflects a kind of assumed Eurocentric bias of knowledge and recognition on the part of the audience/readership.

BWR
2014-11-28, 07:19 AM
I do find it interesting that the default setting in most fantasy universes is polytheism. There might be the odd monotheist religion lumped in, but that's usually more like a kind of militant henotheism - and the polytheism is often more of a kind of laid back henotheism too. It seems to be one of those elements which is accepted as part of the standard fantasy "package" but often sits slightly oddly in the default ersatz medieval world for reasons that are probably obvious but are difficult to go into without breaking forum rules. As Nargrakan says, this can lead to a kind of deity overload, especially if you're incautious about the shape of the overall theology, and after a while it's easier to start cutting and pasting from real life because it's not worth taxing the brain to come up with $GenericAnimistGod#254.

Considering polytheism of some sort was far more common than monotheism IRL, you could argue that it's hardly surprising that it's more common than monotheism in fantasy settings. As you say, without breaking forum rules it's hard to get into details about the whys and wherefors.

LibraryOgre
2014-11-28, 12:47 PM
They are actually considered to be the very same entities who were once also worshipped on Earth (which in turn is considered one of the many worlds of the D&D multiverse). The supplement On Hallowed Grounds explains why they chose to become part of the faerunian pantheon

Yes, but I was more referring to later additions to their Realmslore to explain some aspects of them (for example, Tyr in the Realms lost his hand to Khezef the Chaos Hound, not Fenrir, and eventually became blind, a trait which is not carried over to non-Realms manifestations).

Ettina
2014-11-29, 10:29 AM
What really annoys me is when they call them by the original god's name, but make them completely different. Like always making the death god into a villain no matter what they're actually supposed to be like. (Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon is actually a really great guy that pretty much everyone likes. Set, god of nasty dangerous animals, is the real villainous god of the Egyptian pantheon.) Plus always needing to have a villain god, when plenty of real pantheons didn't have one.

Sartharina
2014-11-29, 11:00 AM
What really annoys me is when they call them by the original god's name, but make them completely different. Like always making the death god into a villain no matter what they're actually supposed to be like. (Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon is actually a really great guy that pretty much everyone likes. Set, god of nasty dangerous animals, is the real villainous god of the Egyptian pantheon.) Plus always needing to have a villain god, when plenty of real pantheons didn't have one.... and turning the cat-headed warrior goddess of protection into some sort of wandering sex goddess of hedonism and sensuality that gets turned into a... just... what the ****, Forgotten Realms writers? This looks like the kind of trash I would write.

Nargrakhan
2014-11-29, 01:25 PM
Plus always needing to have a villain god, when plenty of real pantheons didn't have one.

I blame the alignment system and people using it simplistically to have an easy to define black and white morality. Those pantheons without a villain god, tended to have a royal ton of grey morality in them, and perhaps it's more complex than many developers/writers are willing to go for the target market.

Simple evil is easier to deliver than complicated evil.

Arbane
2014-11-29, 02:09 PM
Plus, real-world mythology tends to be waaaayyyyyy stranger than anything a single writer's going to think up.

Grim Portent
2014-11-29, 02:21 PM
Plus, real-world mythology tends to be waaaayyyyyy stranger than anything a single writer's going to think up.

You mean things like the norse gods originating from a chunk of salty ice licked by a cow?

Or when Aphrodite was born from the sea after Zeus chucked his father's wedding tackle into it?

Or the Aztec myth that monkeys, fish and birds were formed from humans during three separate apocalypses?

Old religions are great for making really interesting creation myths. :smallbiggrin:

Jay R
2014-11-29, 04:04 PM
The earth gods carry a great deal of useful baggage, that would otherwise have to be re-invented for every god of every people in the D&D world. Here's how I handle it.

There are two gods called together The Uncreated. Separately, they are The Lord and The Lady, and nothing is known about them.

Their first children were the sun, the earth, the oceans, and the winds. These four are either the creators of our world, or the stuff of which it was created - it's not clear which. They are, of course, the essence of the four earthly elements, the embodiment of the elemental planes, and the structure of the world. There is a fifth one, representing the quintessence, but since that cannot exist on our changeable and imperfect world, he/she has no influence here.

They have an abundance of names. The Sun God, for instance, is known as Apollo, Aten, Ra, Tonatiuh, Surya, Helios and many others. Similarly, every earth goddess is known to be the true earth, born of The Lord and The Lady - even those with known other parents, or those with no parents, like Gaea. Attempts to question the logic of this are met with the sacred chant, "Hakuna heigh-ho fragilistic bibbidy chim-cheree," which has been variously translated as, "It is not wise to question these mysteries, which are beyond the knowledge of our world," or "Die, you heathen scum, die!" In practice, there is no significant difference between the two translations.

The children/creations of these four are the only gods who will answer prayers or interact with the world directly. They include all the pantheons that have ever existed.
Except Lovecraft.

The Lord and The Lady have been identified as the embodiments of Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos, or Male and Female, or Light and Darkness, or any other opposing concepts.

Wars have been fought between those who believe they represent Good and Evil, and those who insist on Law and Chaos.

Wars have been fought between those who believe The Lord and The Lady hate each other with a hatred surpassing any passion on earth, and those who believe that they love each other with a love more true than any mortal could ever know.

Wars have been fought between those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Good and The Lady is Evil, and those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Evil and The Lady is Good.

All of the above will be available knowledge to the players. Here is what they will not know.

No arcane or divine magic will successfully find out any fact about The Lord and The Lady. I have three answers, all completely true, and mutually incompatible.

1. The Lord is Fate, and The Lady is Luck. Neither can exist without the other, and each action in the world, from a sneeze to the fall of an empire, is a victory of one of them over the other.
2. They are Yin and Yang, and the heart of each beats in the breast of the other. They represent complementary, not opposing, forces. Each is in fact all of the universe except the other, but neither one represents any specific principle (not even male and female), and whichever one represents goodness in one situation might be the evil in another. Together, they represent wholeness and balance
3. They are the Creators - the mother and father of the world, which they birthed and/or created for some great purpose which is not yet fulfilled.

No mortal can comprehend the true nature of any god. Therefore the image, history, and culture of any god are the simple stories people tell themselves about the gods, to comfort themselves into believing they know something.

Do you believe that your god is a Norse, hammer-throwing warlike thunder god with a red beard? Then that's what you see in your visualizations, and those are the aspects that your god shows to you.

So do you create the gods by your belief, or does the god who most closely resembles your belief respond to your prayers in the form you expect, or are they merely your own hallucinations that always occur as a side effect when invoking divine magic? One wise sage, Chicxulub the Philosophical, actually asked this question. He is said to have discovered the true answer after sixty years of study, prayer, and meditation, on March 23, in the year 643.

Incidentally, the largest impact crater ever discovered is the Chicxulub crater, which appeared on March 23, in the year 643. (Many have entered this crater to explore it. None have returned.)

Oh yes, and the fifth child of The Lord and The Lady, representing the Fifth Element? It turns out that he's not the stuff of the heavens, but of the hells. His children and descendants are all the demons, devils, and daemons. His creations are the evil spirits of the underworld. No, he's not out to conquer the world or destroy it or anything of that sort. He just likes to see war, strife, and pain.

AkuArkaine
2014-12-01, 09:57 PM
Or the Aztec myth that monkeys, fish and birds were formed from humans during three separate apocalypses? :smallbiggrin:

I used this for my homebrew setting with monkeys becoming halflings, fish becoming merfolk, and birds becoming faeries though.

EccentricCircle
2014-12-04, 12:12 PM
The main thing to remember when recycling Earth Gods is that like glass bottles they have to be separated. Most God bins will have individual holes for Egyptian, Greeco Roman and Norse Gods, but not all recycling centers have specific systems for recycling the less well known pantheons. In those cases it's best to go with the most similar pantheon you do have a bin for. So put Slavic gods in the white coloured Norse bin and near eastern gods in the one with Zeus and Apollo. The recycling centre can sort it out using magnets I believe.

Also remember not to recycle Hindu gods, as they reincarnate on their own.

Nargrakhan
2014-12-04, 12:21 PM
Also remember not to recycle Hindu gods, as they reincarnate on their own.

Keep all deities away from Great Old Ones. They are tasty and the Old Ones are always hungry.

Talakeal
2014-12-05, 01:10 AM
The earth gods carry a great deal of useful baggage, that would otherwise have to be re-invented for every god of every people in the D&D world. Here's how I handle it.

There are two gods called together The Uncreated. Separately, they are The Lord and The Lady, and nothing is known about them.

Their first children were the sun, the earth, the oceans, and the winds. These four are either the creators of our world, or the stuff of which it was created - it's not clear which. They are, of course, the essence of the four earthly elements, the embodiment of the elemental planes, and the structure of the world. There is a fifth one, representing the quintessence, but since that cannot exist on our changeable and imperfect world, he/she has no influence here.

They have an abundance of names. The Sun God, for instance, is known as Apollo, Aten, Ra, Tonatiuh, Surya, Helios and many others. Similarly, every earth goddess is known to be the true earth, born of The Lord and The Lady - even those with known other parents, or those with no parents, like Gaea. Attempts to question the logic of this are met with the sacred chant, "Hakuna heigh-ho fragilistic bibbidy chim-cheree," which has been variously translated as, "It is not wise to question these mysteries, which are beyond the knowledge of our world," or "Die, you heathen scum, die!" In practice, there is no significant difference between the two translations.

The children/creations of these four are the only gods who will answer prayers or interact with the world directly. They include all the pantheons that have ever existed.
Except Lovecraft.

The Lord and The Lady have been identified as the embodiments of Good and Evil, or Law and Chaos, or Male and Female, or Light and Darkness, or any other opposing concepts.

Wars have been fought between those who believe they represent Good and Evil, and those who insist on Law and Chaos.

Wars have been fought between those who believe The Lord and The Lady hate each other with a hatred surpassing any passion on earth, and those who believe that they love each other with a love more true than any mortal could ever know.

Wars have been fought between those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Good and The Lady is Evil, and those who know beyond all doubt that The Lord is Evil and The Lady is Good.

All of the above will be available knowledge to the players. Here is what they will not know.

No arcane or divine magic will successfully find out any fact about The Lord and The Lady. I have three answers, all completely true, and mutually incompatible.

1. The Lord is Fate, and The Lady is Luck. Neither can exist without the other, and each action in the world, from a sneeze to the fall of an empire, is a victory of one of them over the other.
2. They are Yin and Yang, and the heart of each beats in the breast of the other. They represent complementary, not opposing, forces. Each is in fact all of the universe except the other, but neither one represents any specific principle (not even male and female), and whichever one represents goodness in one situation might be the evil in another. Together, they represent wholeness and balance
3. They are the Creators - the mother and father of the world, which they birthed and/or created for some great purpose which is not yet fulfilled.

No mortal can comprehend the true nature of any god. Therefore the image, history, and culture of any god are the simple stories people tell themselves about the gods, to comfort themselves into believing they know something.

Do you believe that your god is a Norse, hammer-throwing warlike thunder god with a red beard? Then that's what you see in your visualizations, and those are the aspects that your god shows to you.

So do you create the gods by your belief, or does the god who most closely resembles your belief respond to your prayers in the form you expect, or are they merely your own hallucinations that always occur as a side effect when invoking divine magic? One wise sage, Chicxulub the Philosophical, actually asked this question. He is said to have discovered the true answer after sixty years of study, prayer, and meditation, on March 23, in the year 643.

Incidentally, the largest impact crater ever discovered is the Chicxulub crater, which appeared on March 23, in the year 643. (Many have entered this crater to explore it. None have returned.)

Oh yes, and the fifth child of The Lord and The Lady, representing the Fifth Element? It turns out that he's not the stuff of the heavens, but of the hells. His children and descendants are all the demons, devils, and daemons. His creations are the evil spirits of the underworld. No, he's not out to conquer the world or destroy it or anything of that sort. He just likes to see war, strife, and pain.

Awesome setting. Couple of questions though; why do you specifically call out lovecraftian deitiesas nonexistent? Do other modern fiction pantheons exist in your setting escept them for some reason, or do they exist in your setting but have a different nature than the other gods?

Also, why do you have a god representing the lower planes but not the planes of good, chaos, or law? That seems a bit asymmetrical, although I bet there is a good reason for it.

Jay R
2014-12-05, 10:51 AM
Awesome setting. Couple of questions though; why do you specifically call out lovecraftian deitiesas nonexistent?

Because they are grossly overused, having been in three of the last five campaigns I've played in. They've become boring.


Do other modern fiction pantheons exist in your setting escept them for some reason, or do they exist in your setting but have a different nature than the other gods?

Others exist if some player wants to use them (or if I want them for an NPC). The party has been facing the minions of Arawn, the Death Lord from The Chronicles of Prydain, by Lloyd Alexander. The entire point of this background was that anybody can play the character they want. This requires multiple conflicting pantheons, so I wrote an explanation for multiple conflicting pantheons. But that explanation really boils down to, "There is no explanation."

The underlying idea is related to the idea from Terry Pratchett's Small Gods that deities get their powers from the worshipers. It would be more accurate to say that they get their interest in a particular time and place from their worshipers, and are perceived in the form the worshipers expect.

Is it real? Do they choose to portray themselves that way, or is does the limitation of the worshiper's mind give them that form? I refuse to answer that, even for myself, except to point out that the real answer even to that question is probably beyond human understanding.

They are far greater than we are, and we cannot understand their entire purposes. But all sentient races and the worlds they occupy are only a tiny, relatively obscure part of what they care about.


Also, why do you have a god representing the lower planes but not the planes of good, chaos, or law? That seems a bit asymmetrical, although I bet there is a good reason for it.

It would be closer (but still over-simplistic) to say I have four for Good, and one for Evil, and five for Law and none for Chaos. But the five elements are more the creators of the gods than the gods themselves. Or maybe they are the stuff of which gods are made. Or the stuff of which everything is made. All these answers are true, and any of them, even all of them combined, are far too simplistic to be a real explanation.

D&D alignment is inconsistent with any known moral or ethical system, and the system of D&D planes makes a setting far less like a real fantasy world. A plane of Chaos, or anything organized as chaos, is a contradiction in terms. (A chaotic plane can certainly exist, but that's a very different thing.)

I don't accept the dualist nonsense that Good and Evil are equal. If true, it would follow that Good isn't really good, and our preference for it is merely partisanship, not morality. I like the Cowboys because I live in Dallas, not because they are Good and the Eagles are Evil. Good and Evil imply something greater, a Principle of some kind, such that Good is in tune with it and Evil is not. In which case that Principle is the true Goodness, and Evil is less than it is.

The Lord and the Lady comprise all worlds and everything in them. They represent Law and Chaos, or Good and Evil, or Fate and Luck, or Male and Female, or Life and Death, or Active and Passive, or Predators and Prey, or Milk and Cookies, or any set of two contrasts you wish to name.

Don't assume the presence of that one element means that Hades, Set, Satan, Darkseid, Arawn and others don't exist. I have an infinite number of Gods who represent Good, and an infinite number who represent Evil. The whole point is that there cannot be a single human-limited philosophy that explains and codifies it all. To bring in another modern fictional philosophy, you need to believe in six impossible things before breakfast.

Law and Chaos aren't realms; they are measures of how much a plane is managed or organized.

I have a realm of malefic creations to provide demons for when I need them. I started with the idea that the gods are born of the four elements. Classically, the fifth element is the unchangeable perfect stuff of the heavens. Having started my world with the first four elements, I included the fifth one in reverse form, just to be contrary.

But the Quintessence doesn't create all evil things. He is the father of evil gods. r the stuff of which they are made. Or ...

Greek monsters come from the Titans. Norse ones from the Frost Giant gods.

If you succeed in understanding this perfectly, then either you are mistaken, or I have failed to make it incomprehensible to human minds.

123456789blaaa
2014-12-06, 12:10 AM
<snip>
I don't accept the dualist nonsense that Good and Evil are equal. If true, it would follow that Good isn't really good, and our preference for it is merely partisanship, not morality. I like the Cowboys because I live in Dallas, not because they are Good and the Eagles are Evil. Good and Evil imply something greater, a Principle of some kind, such that Good is in tune with it and Evil is not. In which case that Principle is the true Goodness, and Evil is less than it is.
<snip>

Talking specifically about Planescape (and the watered down version of the cosmology in 3.5) for a moment here, you nailed it (feel free to ignore if you aren't interested of course). Good is a Cosmic Force associated and tied to certain concepts that coincides with what some humans consider morally good (altruisim for example). Same is true with Evil except vice versa. What a human or aboleths or whatever considers morally "good" does not have to coincide with the Cosmic Force of Good. The whole point is people debating which way is "true" and "right". An orc that worships Gruumsh is probably aligned with the Cosmic Force of Evil. He reveres and believes in the specific philosophy underneath that Cosmic Force personified by Gruumsh. This orc would regard following his urges of bloodlust to kill as morally "good" and befriending an elf as morally "evil". The elf thinks the opposite. The elves and the orcs have been struggling to eliminate each other for a long while and neither seems to ultimately have the clear advantage, each believes their way is ultimately more "true". Which one is right (or whether something else entirely is) is unclear.

Of course, you seem to dislike this type of cosmology. But I feel that while it isn't to your tastes, the concept itself isn't inherently a bad one. Planescape is my favorite dnd setting.

I love your cosmology BTW but I wouldn't use it in DnD.

Jay R
2014-12-06, 10:29 AM
Of course, you seem to dislike this type of cosmology. But I feel that while it isn't to your tastes, the concept itself isn't inherently a bad one. Planescape is my favorite dnd setting.

I don't dislike it at all. I just don't associate mere partisanship with Good and Evil. If it merely "coincides with what some humans consider morally good", rather than being transcendentally good, regardless of what humans think, then it isn't goodness, but merely a preference, like splitting the world between those who have pancakes for breakfast and those who have them for dinner.

Murder isn't Evil merely because humans don't prefer it; it is inherently Evil even if all humans approve. Even in societies in which slavery "coincides with what some humans consider morally good", slavery remains Evil.[citation needed]

I might use the idea of equal and opposite principles in a D&D campaign. I could imagine a society of elves who support slavery of orcs, and orcs who defend slavery of elves. But I wouldn't define one side as Good and the other as Evil. Each race would call their side Good, of course. I would quite probably follow the convention of the Drazi in Babylon 5, and call the two sides Green and Purple.


I love your cosmology BTW but I wouldn't use it in DnD.

Thank you, and it bothers me not a whit that you wouldn't use it.

Solaris
2014-12-06, 12:26 PM
Is it only me who gets annoyed when a RPG fantasy setting goes through all the trouble of making a not-Egypt on their not-Earth, then gets 100% lazy and directly cut-and-paste the real Egyptian gods and goddesses without making the slightest effort to at least make them not-Egyptian deities?

You tend to stop bothering making up deities for your campaign settings when your players can't be bothered to find out what they are. It's so much simpler to graft in a pantheon that was already developed by a culture very similar to the one you're making for your setting, and without the wasted effort at developing deities who're going to be entirely ignored by the players.

I don't see a point to writing up material for a campaign setting that only the DM is going to pay any attention to, and this is without going into the issues of familiarity and traction.

123456789blaaa
2014-12-06, 09:49 PM
I don't dislike it at all. I just don't associate mere partisanship with Good and Evil. If it merely "coincides with what some humans consider morally good", rather than being transcendentally good, regardless of what humans think, then it isn't goodness, but merely a preference, like splitting the world between those who have pancakes for breakfast and those who have them for dinner.

Murder isn't Evil merely because humans don't prefer it; it is inherently Evil even if all humans approve. Even in societies in which slavery "coincides with what some humans consider morally good", slavery remains Evil.[citation needed]

I might use the idea of equal and opposite principles in a D&D campaign. I could imagine a society of elves who support slavery of orcs, and orcs who defend slavery of elves. But I wouldn't define one side as Good and the other as Evil. Each race would call their side Good, of course. I would quite probably follow the convention of the Drazi in Babylon 5, and call the two sides Green and Purple.

Yes, the word choice for the Comic Forces caused a lot of confusion and people imposing their own moral views on the alignments. Not sure what to call them...I personally wouldn't go for the "Green and Purple" thing in dnd. Good and Evil in dnd are easy to grasp and basically thematically coherent. They aren't alien to humans and the point is that people can connect with them and thus, want to support them because of belief. Calling them something so arbitrary implies a certain remoteness and alieness that doesn't gel with the descriptions of the existing planes and the effects the alignments have on the Prime.

I gather that you prefer homebrew cosmologies over expanding on/adapting the settings of others?


Thank you, and it bothers me not a whit that you wouldn't use it.

I never said I wouldn't use it, I said I wouldn't use it for dnd :smallwink:

Sith_Happens
2014-12-07, 01:27 AM
However... I'm much less impressed by the Forgotten Realms. Poor Bast - from powerful feline warrior goddess of protection, to... Sharess. Dammit.

Which edition of Forgotten Realms? Because 3e Deities & Demigods still has all the protection and vengeance stuff, including a line about her fighting Apep literally every morning.


Considering polytheism of some sort was far more common than monotheism IRL, you could argue that it's hardly surprising that it's more common than monotheism in fantasy settings. As you say, without breaking forum rules it's hard to get into details about the whys and wherefors.

It's quite easy, actually: As a fiction writer, monotheism is kind of boring. Sure you can still have all those fun religious politics conflicts (schisms and all), but it's just not the same as honest-to-goodness divine warring.


What really annoys me is when they call them by the original god's name, but make them completely different. Like always making the death god into a villain no matter what they're actually supposed to be like. (Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon is actually a really great guy that pretty much everyone likes. Set, god of nasty dangerous animals, is the real villainous god of the Egyptian pantheon.)

Checking 3e Deities & Demigods again, Osiris in that is not only Lawful Good, but he's implicitly cool with undead despite being such.

hamishspence
2014-12-07, 04:42 AM
Which edition of Forgotten Realms? Because 3e Deities & Demigods still has all the protection and vengeance stuff, including a line about her fighting Apep literally every morning.

Sharess though (as opposed to "ordinary" Bast) is in Faiths & Pantheons, not Deities & Demigods.


Murder isn't Evil merely because humans don't prefer it; it is inherently Evil even if all humans approve. Even in societies in which slavery "coincides with what some humans consider morally good", slavery remains Evil.[citation needed].
That would be BoED.

Arbane
2014-12-07, 04:53 AM
But I wouldn't define one side as Good and the other as Evil. Each race would call their side Good, of course. I would quite probably follow the convention of the Drazi in Babylon 5, and call the two sides Green and Purple.


Law and Chaos?

Jay R
2014-12-07, 12:43 PM
I never said I wouldn't use it, I said I wouldn't use it for dnd :smallwink:

I stand corrected. I hope it makes for a suitably bizarre game of Paranoia or TOON.

Eldan
2014-12-07, 01:49 PM
What really annoys me is when they call them by the original god's name, but make them completely different. Like always making the death god into a villain no matter what they're actually supposed to be like. (Osiris in the Egyptian pantheon is actually a really great guy that pretty much everyone likes. Set, god of nasty dangerous animals, is the real villainous god of the Egyptian pantheon.) Plus always needing to have a villain god, when plenty of real pantheons didn't have one.

Hey now. Seth also had plenty of positive aspects. He was also responsible for defending the sun at night, so that it wouldn't be eaten by demons.

Spiryt
2014-12-07, 02:15 PM
On the other hand, if you are doing an otherwise unrelated fantasy world, and you plunk Thor into your 'verse for no reason other than you need a god, yeah, it's pretty lazy.
.

Depends on the "Thor" though, really.

General, primal thunder impregnating the Earth, symbol of virility, leader of warriors, God of Strength, etc. will be just alright for pretty much any 'barbarian', tribal, patriarchal, farming folk.

The same Thor, but with all this more complicated and rich trivia coming from large Pantheon and very detailed mythology like in final flowering of those myths in Iceland - may be indeed off.

So it's all depends on actual setting lore.

The problem here are that building such detailed word tends to get tricky fast.

And all those 'Gods' that are popularly rehashed in fiction are products of mentality that's hard to imagine for us. Just different people in different environment.

Jay R
2014-12-07, 08:28 PM
On the other hand, if you are doing an otherwise unrelated fantasy world, and you plunk Thor into your 'verse for no reason other than you need a god, yeah, it's pretty lazy.

Somebody once did a pretty good job of inserting Thor into their created world, for no reason other than to make their Journey Into Mystery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_into_Mystery) more popular and successful.

Lazy it may have been, but I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it in the intervening decades.

LibraryOgre
2014-12-07, 09:44 PM
Somebody once did a pretty good job of inserting Thor into their created world, for no reason other than to make their Journey Into Mystery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journey_into_Mystery) more popular and successful.

Lazy it may have been, but I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of it in the intervening decades.

Especially since there was an earlier version of blond Thor the superhero to copy from. :smallbiggrin: