Forgotten Realms Gods are Dicks

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:26 pm

It's totally possible to deny the existence of the gods even with plenty of evidence for them right in front of you. David Brin does a really great job with this idea in Thor Meets Captain America (nothing to do with comic books). "Loki's dwarf rolled its eyes and moaned pitifully as the sub leveled off at periscope depth."

FrankTrollman wrote:the fact that evidence based assumptions are not faith by definition

Yeah, they really fucked up there. Also by equating faith with belief ("firmly denied any faith or only gave lip service... without truly believing"). You might qualify whatever statements you derive from evidence with "these are just assumptions which I act on, not articles of faith", but by acting on them, you are arguably evincing belief in them. Apostasy would be possible in FR, but to reach a state of atheism you would have to act as though the extremely obvious effects of the gods on the everyday world had some other, "Copernican" cause.

While in the real world "gods" are just one of the many transcendental guarantors that people believe in, in D&D they have stat blocks and are therefore not transcendental. I think this means it doesn't matter at all what they do, since someone with a better stat block can change it, like in TarkisFlux's campaign. Not really any big philosophical issues at stake, just questions like why the hell would you worship someone you'll be big enough to kill in a couple months if you keep raiding dungeons.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 9:48 pm

Ganbare Gincun wrote:
Lago PARANOIA wrote:The thing I don't understand is why that's even in the game.

No other pantheist setting is that insane. Not even Dragonlance is that evil and impossible and THAT pantheon is completelt bologna-fucked.

So why did they include that element? Some backhanded swipe at atheists?
They did it because 1) they wanted to be "different" and 2) yeah, probably to take a backhanded swipe at atheists. Because you know atheists are all horrific monsters that only live for the pleasure of gnawing the sweet, tender flesh from the bones of infants, right?

nah, infants haven't built up enough flavour, they're no good. ya got get the 20-somethings...

but anyway, yeah, soul wall? and fuck... that was actually, to some degree, carried over to Grey Hawk, Wee Jas incorporates souls into her tower walls, I think.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sun Mar 29, 2009 10:15 pm

eeuuugh wrote:While in the real world "gods" are just one of the many transcendental guarantors that people believe in, in D&D they have stat blocks and are therefore not transcendental. I think this means it doesn't matter at all what they do, since someone with a better stat block can change it, like in TarkisFlux's campaign. Not really any big philosophical issues at stake, just questions like why the hell would you worship someone you'll be big enough to kill in a couple months if you keep raiding dungeons.

Political parties model of DnD religion. Arnold Schwarzenegger could totally take John McCain in a fight, but they're both on the same 'side' and McCain is higher up than Arnold.

eeuuugh · Post by **eeuuugh** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 12:41 am

Schwarzenegger probably believes in McCain, but I doubt he worships him. Stupid Schwarzenegger, going to the wall of souls when he dies! All he had to do was kneel.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 1:21 am

The funny thing is that this whole convoluted system is a fairly recent development - this model of the afterlife in the Forgotten Realms only came to be once Kelemvor came to power as the God Of The Dead a few years after the Time Of Troubles. Prior to that, there was no conjunction at all between the power of the gods and the number of souls pledged to them after death, so all of the souls of the dead just ended up getting dumped in Cyric/Myrkul/Jergal's realm - a realm of eternal gloom and ennui. Fun stuff!

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Mon Mar 30, 2009 2:57 am

The gods allow, support, and perpetuate this system, and Ur-Priests are evil because they think the system is bull shit and try to do something about it.

Gotcha. From now on I'm playing elan or undead Ur-Priests in FR and nothing else.

Vnonymous · Post by **Vnonymous** » Sun May 10, 2009 5:22 pm

Actually, the problem gets even worse when you take a look at Mask of the Betrayer, an official (and somewhat badly designed) CRPG expansion for NWN 2. The entire plot is really a backhanded swipe at the concept of the wall.

Do you know why the wall exists? The entire reason that Kelemvor didn't knock it down after he took over from the previous, EVIL god of the dead?

The wall of the faithless is there because if mortals realised that they didn't have to worship the gods, the gods would go insane and then murder every single mortal in the world, for fear that they would lose their power.

I'm not making that up, that's the official reason Kelemvor didn't knock down the wall. In fact, the previous god of the dead actually had a problem with this when his most trusted disciple didn't like the wall of the faithless and hence betrayed his god. Someone who was raised by the church for their entire life and was literally the highest representation of that god in the realms, and not even he could stand the wall.

Anyone know what happened to that thing amongst the changes in 4e?

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sun May 10, 2009 7:32 pm

I don't really get that problem. As far as I run it, once you die you get to pick what afterlife you want by picking a patron god - if you haven't had one already. Only those who really do not believe in gods go to the wall. Everyone else finds a god that takes him or her in, since all gods want souls, since they make them more powerful.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun May 10, 2009 8:54 pm

And what if you believe in Gods, in that you know they exist, but you think they are all fucking huge dicks and you hate all of them?

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Sun May 10, 2009 9:41 pm

I'd have to be a really, really angry person to hate all hundreds of them. Probably psychotic.

Personally, if I'd be living in the FR I'd simply pick the god of love and/or pleasure and go to an afterlife in paradise.

RandomCasualty2 · Post by **RandomCasualty2** » Sun May 10, 2009 9:59 pm

Kaelik wrote:And what if you believe in Gods, in that you know they exist, but you think they are all fucking huge dicks and you hate all of them?

Then you're pretty much hosed. I don't think there are any atheists in FR, just agnostics.

Psychic Robot · Post by **Psychic Robot** » Mon May 11, 2009 2:26 am

And what if you believe in Gods, in that you know they exist, but you think they are all fucking huge dicks and you hate all of them?

Then you become an Ur-Priest and achieve immortality.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:06 am

Not usre how you could be an atheist - 'gods' per the FR spec patently exist, so it would be like not believing in tables, or trees - to borrow the discworld analogy.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:38 am

You could not think they're gods. They are multiple, and have limits to their powers and sometimes mortals become gods. And certainly there are many mortals who kill gods or become godlike.

-Crissa

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon May 11, 2009 3:49 am

Yeah, but that is dicking around with whether it is called a table or maybe a sideboard. Everyone agrees that Hextor over there is equivelent to anyone that stabbed a 'god' and took over, so in FR that is the definition of god - they have no other definition.

I suspect to someone from FR the idea of a monotheistic religion is just not something you'd consider.

The right english word is probably superhuman, transhuman or posthuman.

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Mon May 11, 2009 10:22 am

No comparisons with what might be loosely called the "real world" are safe. A Universe where "gods" actually walk around actually stabbing each other in the actual face may well have different definitions of "belief" and "faith".

Personally, I run every world Greco-Roman stylee with respect to deity worship. Most people pick one god they like the best and consider themselves allied with that faith, but they throw some copper into the collecting tin of whatever deity presides most strongly over the aspect of their lives that's giving them the most trouble right now. Farmer Joe gets on his knees to the God of the Harvest every morning but will make an offering to the Goddess of Lurve without a qualm when he's looking for a wife. A year or two on when his baby gets sick he'll cajole the God of Healing into making the l'il one better and sacrifice a calf to the God of Death in the hope that he'll accept it in place of his child.

That's just how everyone deals with the reality of multiple deities in my campaign; nobody gets hung up on assuming that *their* god is the right one for all occasions. If that were the case, why would the gods even have portfolios? It doesn't make sense.

You've pretty much just got to ignore the FR setup (and Krynn for that matter) if you want to keep your marbles intact.

Parthenon · Post by **Parthenon** » Mon May 11, 2009 12:08 pm

I personally really like the Steven Erikson/Ian C Esslemont way of doing it. I hadn't heard of anything like it before but reading wikipedia it seems to be based on AD&D then GURPS campaigns.

There is a pantheon of gods called Ascendants. Most are in various houses of elements such as Dark, Light, Life, Shadow etc. Some elements change over eons. Other gods are unaligned to any house.

These Ascendants vary over time since they used to be mortals and at some time can fall from Ascendancy. So, they could become Ascendants by birth, by building a legend in their acts, by killing a previous Ascendant, by finding a space not currently filled, or even by chance.

Ascendants aren't always that much more than human. One, for example, the Master of the Deck, is an ordinary human who got bitten by a hell hound and somehow survived. For quite a while he keeps almost human capabilities, but eventually does become able to do a whole lot more.

On the other hand, other Ascendants can be whole companies of soldiers, or Dragons, or undead warriors, or in a couple of examples armies.

Some Ascendants are unaware of their Ascendancy, others roam the world acting as normal, others hide in other realms controlling the world through strings, others appear on the world just to change things about.

The relationship of these Ascendants is shown in the Deck of Dragons which is like a Tarot deck and can be used to predict the future/present.

So, you can have

warring gods with wars that actually matter,
being able to meet, ally with or fight gods,
some gods who can grant you power,
the whole group can become Ascendants and take up one spot in the Deck of Dragons.
different gods for each campaign or even different continents

This means that you can have lots of different stories including various gods since for most people they will only know of about half the gods and they will never meet any. You can also add gods every now and then since they can simply be gods that noones ever heard of.

Two things that will piss people off:

becoming an Ascendant is so random that it will be up to the DM and it can be difficult to decide just when some become Ascendants
if you do things that are good in a story or become well known you are more likely to become an Ascendant. Sort of like Typhoid Mary becoming Goddess of Disease, or Sun Tzu becoming Adviser of High House War.

Amra · Post by **Amra** » Mon May 11, 2009 12:14 pm

Parthenon wrote:[*]if you do things that are good in a story or become well known you are more likely to become an Ascendant. Sort of like Typhoid Mary becoming Goddess of Disease, or Sun Tzu becoming Adviser of High House War.[/list]

Finally, a use for Bards! Doesn't matter how kick-ass you think your 17th-level Wizard is: he's pipped to the post of becoming an Ascendant by a 9th-level Bard with a genius for self-promotion and sponging publicity off the antics of other heroes

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Mon May 11, 2009 12:18 pm

Amra wrote:No comparisons with what might be loosely called the "real world" are safe. A Universe where "gods" actually walk around actually stabbing each other in the actual face may well have different definitions of "belief" and "faith".

Personally, I run every world Greco-Roman stylee with respect to deity worship. Most people pick one god they like the best and consider themselves allied with that faith, but they throw some copper into the collecting tin of whatever deity presides most strongly over the aspect of their lives that's giving them the most trouble right now. Farmer Joe gets on his knees to the God of the Harvest every morning but will make an offering to the Goddess of Lurve without a qualm when he's looking for a wife. A year or two on when his baby gets sick he'll cajole the God of Healing into making the l'il one better and sacrifice a calf to the God of Death in the hope that he'll accept it in place of his child.

That's just how everyone deals with the reality of multiple deities in my campaign; nobody gets hung up on assuming that *their* god is the right one for all occasions. If that were the case, why would the gods even have portfolios? It doesn't make sense.

You've pretty much just got to ignore the FR setup (and Krynn for that matter) if you want to keep your marbles intact.

I run it like that, though I don't see why FR gods can't be run that way. I consider the official setting as just a toolbox for my homebrew version of the realms.