D&D Question about Good Gods

[WiserOdin032402]

Okay not really just D&D but Pathfinder too. The alignment thread got me thinking why does it always seem like the Lawful Good gods or just Good gods in general are hypocritical douchecanoes?

As an example, Corellon Larethian attempts to 'humble' his first herald Leraje after he and Leraje save Lolth (Before she turned evil) and Lolth compliments Leraje that 'that not even Corellon could fire an arrow as fast or as accurately as his herald.' On the spot Corellon challenges Leraje to an archery duel and declares he's going to shoot Leraje in the heart to prove he's a better archer than Leraje. And I quote 'Corellon expected his servant to realize the error of her pride and yield the contest' and then Leraje shoots first so her arrow not only knocks his arrow off course but also deflects her arrow into her own heart because reasons. Then Corellon throws a temper tantrum and annihilates her soul.

In Pathfinder, Iomadae, the Goddess of Honor and Paladins literally abducts the PCs, who are her crusaders and acting champions, to play 20 questions about herself and will annihilate them with sonic damage if they get questions wrong, if they question her, if they insult her, or they challenge her to a duel because fuck you.

There's the Gods of Light from Dragonlance (Thank you for the reviews, Libertad, otherwise I wouldn't have that example) who backed the Kingpriest of Istar and allowed him to try to wipe out neutral-aligned faiths, try to wipe out arcane magic, and commit genocide.

I don't have more examples on-hand (more would be appreciated) but what the actual fuck. None of this shit is what anyone who falls into D&D's (Or Pathfinder's) weird vague category of 'Good' would do. What the fuck are these writers smoking when they're writing this shit? I understand that as it stands most alignment systems as written aren't very good but this shit is obviously fucking evil. I have to know why this keeps fucking happening.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Clearly Leraje is Neutral and not Good, meaning killing her doesn't shift you on the morality scale at all. She should have considered that before accepting the challenge. As for Iomadae, clearly anyone who is also Good would know the answer to her questions, and what point is there in dueling a Good god? That would be Evil. Or Neutral at best. As for the Gods of Light - again, it's not evil to murder things that are neutral. Genocide away.
This totally makes sense and no one can argue with me about it.

[Emerald]

I think the main reasons is that there's a big flavor tussle in published material between the writers who actually understand polytheism and write D&D gods and religions from that perspective, and those who don't grok it at all and just write them like a collection of idealized pseudo-Christian monotheisms existing side by side.

You can see this in things like Baator sometimes being described as a place where LE souls end up that's just as ideal to their philosophy as Celestia is ideal to LG souls and Limbo is to CN souls and Asmodeus being described as one of three co-equal primordial beings of Law (polytheism), and sometimes being described as a place where evil souls are punished for their sins and Asmodeus being described as a fallen angel (Christianity), or the Forgotten Realms' prevalence of pantheons and emphasis on sects and syncretism and multi-identity gods and so forth (polytheism) vs. Dragonlance's singular pantheon with no questions of the gods' identity or dogma on mortals' part (Christianity), and so on.

So you have a bunch of writers who don't really know how to write reasonable polytheistic gods and fall back on what they know. And what they know is Yahweh, who is, when you take off the Christianity-tinted glasses, a self-centered tantrum-throwing super-powered psychopathic asshole. His first commandment is "worship me above all the other gods;" he kills millions of people in the Bible, or orders them to be killed as a "test," for arbitrary reasons, up to and including "the entire world except one family is pissing me off" in the Flood; he sends ten plagues to Egypt to convince the pharaoh to release the Israelites and then, when pharoah is ready to do it before the tenth plague but Yahweh isn't done with his fun yet, "hardens pharaoh's heart" so he doesn't let them go too soon; he lays down arbitrary laws and threatens to punish people forever if they break any of them; he entraps Adam and Even into exiling themselves from Eden despite supposedly knowing exactly what they were going to do; and on and on and on.

And Christianity hammers into your skull that this being is the omnibenevolent Ultimate Good in the universe and if you do anything to cross him you deserve it, you fallible sinful mortal, for going against his perfect and totally reasonable infallible divine laws.

Of course punishing someone eternally for their pride is a Good thing to do; Pride is one of Christianity's seven deadly sins.

Of course abducting your followers to chat with them is a Good thing to do; mortals should be lucky to get a personal audience with God, that's the domain of saints and stuff.

Of course punishing those who insult or question you is a Good thing to do; thou shalt follow all of Yahweh's commandments or you're going to Hell.

Of course committing religicide is a Good thing to do; other religions are wrong and evil and tempting you to Satan.

Of course smiting millions of people with a fucking meteor is a Good thing to do; a worldwide flood was totally Good, and a meteor is faster and more painless, so where's the problem?

[Trill]

The first sounds like what happened to Arachne in Greek Myth, who was better than Athena at weaving, so Athena turned her into a spider monster. Cause if you are better than a god you better not show it.

Also I guess because the authors think "They are Good, so their actions are good." while it should be "They are Good because their actions are good."
And also dick waving.

[Libertad]

Clearly Leraje is Neutral and not Good, meaning killing her doesn't shift you on the morality scale at all. She should have considered that before accepting the challenge. As for Iomadae, clearly anyone who is also Good would know the answer to her questions, and what point is there in dueling a Good god? That would be Evil. Or Neutral at best. As for the Gods of Light - again, it's not evil to murder things that are neutral. Genocide away.
This totally makes sense and no one can argue with me about it.

In the Dragonlance books, it's revealed that Istar also tried to wipe out centaurs, who are mostly good-aligned. And although most here would disagree, kender are mostly good-aligned as well.

And depending on whether or not you count subcultures and/or social classes as capable of being victims of genocide, the White Robe wizards were sanctioned by the other Gods of Good (their patron Solinari the exception) for state-sanctioned violence.

[WiserOdin032402]

In the Dragonlance books, it's revealed that Istar also tried to wipe out centaurs, who are mostly good-aligned. And although most here would disagree, kender are mostly good-aligned as well.

And depending on whether or not you count subcultures and/or social classes as capable of being victims of genocide, the White Robe wizards were sanctioned by the other Gods of Good (their patron Solinari the exception) for state-sanctioned violence.

What the fuck. Why the fuck would anyone write that shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. Paladins have to worry super hard about not just butchering every murderer they come across but the gods of good give that bullshit a pass? Do none of these writes have a functioning brain or is this just morality wanking that can be solved by reverting to merely 'Law vs Chaos' and just axing good and evil?

Explanation of the christian subtext clashing with polytheism

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh that makes sense. Thank you for explaining that to me, it's certainly making a lot of things click in my head.[/i]

[deaddmwalking]

I think Emerald is mostly right, but I think it's important to keep in mind that the mythology that most of the writers are familiar with (Norse, Greek/Roman) involves gods being dicks because they weren't supposed to be good or evil.

If you import Zeus into your game, you have to give him an alignment. If you think that because he is the ruler of a pantheon he is lawful and because mostly 'good' races worship him he is good you write 'Lawful Good' on the description but he remains the character he always was - cheating on his wife, dicking with mortals, etc.

Writers also struggle with 'real gods' and 'the problem of evil'. Dick-waving aside, the good gods don't jump in to solve problems. Since there would be no adventures for PCs if gods did everything, good gods can't be directly jumping in... A best case scenario is that the gods COULD have done something to help but CHOSE to do nothing. If you still want to call them good, you have to find your escape clause. It could be 'well, THIS LIFE doesn't matter and all the people killed in the cataclysm went to heaven and that's TOTALLY GOOD', but you definitely have to abandon any type of consistent morality in this world.

[erik]

If the good gods (or good monsters) are total douches then players can feel better when fighting em even as good characters. Why have good monsters in the MM if you aren’t killing em after all?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

In the Dragonlance books, it's revealed that Istar also tried to wipe out centaurs, who are mostly good-aligned. And although most here would disagree, kender are mostly good-aligned as well.

Mostly good-aligned. Clearly Istar is completely good-aligned, making it totally cool to wipe out things less good than them. It's like the morality meter in games like KOTOR - if you have +100 Good Points, then anyone with +99 Good Points or less is automatically evil compared to you.

[Libertad]

There's the Gods of Light from Dragonlance (Thank you for the reviews, Libertad, otherwise I wouldn't have that example) who backed the Kingpriest of Istar and allowed him to try to wipe out neutral-aligned faiths, try to wipe out arcane magic, and commit genocide.

Been meaning to respond to this but my last post was at work so didn't have enough time but thank you for stroking my ego.

Honestly I don't know how much of it are Weis and Hickman self-stealth-retconning vs other writers doing the heavy lifting, but there's some deconstructions in the setting here and there. The Crown of Power being worn by Emperor Ariakas of the Dragonarmies also having been worn by the Kingpriest is a pretty big indication that he was Lawful Evil and not Lawful Good. Given that said crown gradually shifts one's alignment to Lawful Evil.

Also several books, notably the Doom Brigade series, examines the draconians post-War trying to form their own society now yet struggling to break free of a life of violence due to being raised in a military society. There's quite a few Dragonlance novels which for lack of a better term humanized the classically evil races.

Or how the Taladas sourcebook had Mishakal violate the oath of pulling away from the world and started training priests in secret much like Takhisis, albeit on one continent. In part due to her dominion of compassion and healing encouraging her to aid the people suffering in the Age of Despair.

When running Dragonlance for 13th Age I used the above aspects and others to give a more nuanced take on the gods and the Cataclysm, along with the Dragon Empire drawing upon legitimate grievances of Ansalon's people to gain power rather than being generic 'evil for evil's sake' baddies.

Writers also struggle with 'real gods' and 'the problem of evil'. Dick-waving aside, the good gods don't jump in to solve problems. Since there would be no adventures for PCs if gods did everything, good gods can't be directly jumping in... A best case scenario is that the gods COULD have done something to help but CHOSE to do nothing. If you still want to call them good, you have to find your escape clause. It could be 'well, THIS LIFE doesn't matter and all the people killed in the cataclysm went to heaven and that's TOTALLY GOOD', but you definitely have to abandon any type of consistent morality in this world.

I posted this elsewhere, but this is the reason why I'm fond of Actraiser. The point was that you were an angel/god helping civilization thrive by going around and fighting the big monsters mere mortals could not hope to defeat on their own while engaging in Sims-style domain development. While it may not be a friendly setting for "mortal PCs" it answers the common "what have the gods done for us" dilemma in D&D settings where they're active.

You can very much do a similar thing with Godbound.

The first sounds like what happened to Arachne in Greek Myth, who was better than Athena at weaving, so Athena turned her into a spider monster. Cause if you are better than a god you better not show it.

Also I guess because the authors think "They are Good, so their actions are good." while it should be "They are Good because their actions are good."
And also dick waving.

The Abrahamic deity in the Old Testament, the Greco-Roman pantheon, and the Dragonlance pantheon are all rather similar in that the gods are like abusive parents or real-world dictators. They can be sinful and petty but forbid said actions in their subjects; they claim to be loving even as they hurt and kill. Their followers gaslight themselves and change their own behaviors and ways of thinking to stay their wrath and to justify their continued worship of fear.

While Dragonlance's cosmology is different from Greek myths or the Bible in that significant portions of the population realize that the gods are terrible people (for a time, anyway) the gods looking at mortals praying for an end to their suffering being "spoiled children" and wait for them to come crawling back begging for forgiveness* makes the abusive parent subtext actual text.

But I realize this post is getting Dragonlance-heavy in chat and don't want to go on too long unless posters are fine with that.

*see Chapter 2 of my War of the Lance review!

[angelfromanotherpin]

Also I guess because the authors think "They are Good, so their actions are good." while it should be "They are Good because their actions are good."

This, a lot. One aspect that I haven't seen mentioned much is the 'alignment as team membership' thing that crops up a lot in D&D stuff. Good people are distinguished by wearing the Team Good uniform (polished metals, primary colors) and stabbing members of Team Evil; Evil people wear the Team Evil uniform (dull metals, secondary colors) and stab members of Team Good; and that's seriously all. There's no actual philosophy involved, the teams just have different approved aesthetics and kill lists.

My contribution to the list of examples is Moradin, the Lawful Good god who does not merely approve of genocide, but actually mandates it.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Oh, so it's Evil when I want to genocide Gnomes, but when a priest of Garl Glittergold shows up to my den to genocide me, he's doing Good! I see how the fuck it is.
Fucking PC race privilege.

[nockermensch]

Explanation of the christian subtext clashing with polytheism

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh that makes sense. Thank you for explaining that to me, it's certainly making a lot of things click in my head.[/i]

To wit: These things sound offensive to you because humanity came with better morality systems during the last centuries.

I kind of doubt a run-of-the-mill ancient hebrew, greek or egyptian person would find any fault on the examples of divine assholery you cited. As Emerald and others pointed, some of them are literally lifted from actual mythos and not one of them is out of line with the kind of fucked up things gods did and got away with on their own religious traditions.

And of course, to this very day, you have actual people who read the actual Old Testament books and think that the deity depicted there is all-good. As I said on the alignment thread, people are very good at mind-caulking.



As for how this would actually work on a setting where "Good" or "Chaos" are things you can touch or cast rays of, well...

If gods are People (and D&D gods are people), then they get to have good and bad sides just as everybody else. It helps to think on them as cosmic-level super heroes and villains that just happen to have side-gigs as psychopomps. Because the actual deal of D&D gods is not being the source of morality (for this you have actual, impersonal forces of Good, Evil, etc). The gods' actual deal is to grant a better afterlife real state to their believers. Extra-fucked cosmologies like Forgotten Realms apart, you may realize that by just being an upstanding dude in life, your soul gets to migrate to a good plane in the afterlife, where it might end being captured by hags, destroyed by rampaging fiends or evil adventurers during a raid, or whatever. But most gods come with their own walled compounds where they can alter the reality to better suit them and, by being Quite Strong, they tend to discourage most of these depredations in their turf.

Also, since the mechanism by which a god gets a porfolio (and starts to granting domains) is never explained, you could have scenarios where the god granting the domain of Good is just the asshole that stabbed the former filler of that post.

As for the question "Why one should worship people like this?", the answer is "of course one shouldn't". But for the question "Why would anyone worship people like this?", the answer is, "Just look around you."

[Emerald]

I think Emerald is mostly right, but I think it's important to keep in mind that the mythology that most of the writers are familiar with (Norse, Greek/Roman) involves gods being dicks because they weren't supposed to be good or evil.

If you import Zeus into your game, you have to give him an alignment. If you think that because he is the ruler of a pantheon he is lawful and because mostly 'good' races worship him he is good you write 'Lawful Good' on the description but he remains the character he always was - cheating on his wife, dicking with mortals, etc.

This is definitely true, though of course it's possible to import the gods in a selective way to fit the alignment chosen if you put even a little effort into it. If you're using the Greek pantheon in your home game, you can make Zeus CN by playing up the "led the fight against the tyranny of the Titans" and "is a fairly arbitrary ruler" aspects of the myths, NG by giving him the Disney Hercules treatment and making him a jolly king and caring father, NE by emphasizing his dickishness to mortals and disregard for Hera's feelings with his dalliances, and so on.

But of course the D&D writers don't always do that. For instance, the 3e Deities & Demigods writeup for Hades has this to say:

Dogma
Unlike some deities whose portfolio includes death, Hades is not particularly malicious or hateful toward the mortals whose souls come to his realm. Death, he teaches, is the lot of all mortals, the thing that sets them apart from deities, and it must be accepted even if it brings grief.

Clergy and Temples
Hades’s clerics tend to share their patron’s dour, gloomy demeanor. Dressed in black, they officiate at funerals and annual rites in honor of departed ancestors. In contrast to most Olympian festivals, these are solemn affairs. Temples to Hades are usually built underground, in caves, or at least sunken so their floors are below ground level. They tend to be dark and windowless, creating an atmosphere of gloom reminiscent of the underworld’s darkness.

Sounds pretty chill and even-handed, if a bit depressing, right? And yet he's given an alignment of NE, because obviously death gods are creepy and mean and therefore evil (even though the Dogma section specifically says he's not like other death gods!).

If gods are People (and D&D gods are people), then they get to have good and bad sides just as everybody else. It helps to think on them as cosmic-level super heroes and villains that just happen to have side-gigs as psychopomps. Because the actual deal of D&D gods is not being the source of morality (for this you have actual, impersonal forces of Good, Evil, etc). The gods' actual deal is to grant a better afterlife real state to their believers. Extra-fucked cosmologies like Forgotten Realms apart, you may realize that by just being an upstanding dude in life, your soul gets to migrate to a good plane in the afterlife, where it might end being captured by hags, destroyed by rampaging fiends or evil adventurers during a raid, or whatever. But most gods come with their own walled compounds where they can alter the reality to better suit them and, by being Quite Strong, they tend to discourage most of these depredations in their turf.

[...]

As for the question "Why one should worship people like this?", the answer is "of course one shouldn't". But for the question "Why would anyone worship people like this?", the answer is, "Just look around you."

Well, you obviously shouldn't worship them in the Judeo-Christian "constantly suck up to the god and tell them how awesome they are on pain of eternal torment" sense, but worshiping those gods in a more Norse or Greek transactional kind of way would certainly be reasonable.

Clerics of Thor didn't go around proclaiming how sexy Chris Hemsworth Thor was and converting people to the faith of the One True Thunder God and angsting about how Thor felt about you working on Thursday and all that, and didn't ponder whether he was "worthy" of worship by monotheist standards (at least as far as we know from the remaining possibly-Christianity-tainted writings of Norse religious practices, anyway). Rather, they viewed mortal relationships with the gods similarly to a feudal relationship between noble and commoner, a prayer to Thor would go more along the lines of "Okay, Thor, we want a bit of pleasant rain for the crops this season--not too windy, not too dry--and you want a nice juicy goat and some of this delicious mead, so I'm gonna burn some of the goat and spill some of the mead and you're gonna give us some rain, got it?" and if they didn't get the rain they didn't start wondering if they were sinners unworthy of rain, they'd hold Thor to account for not living up to his end of the bargain.

In that context, devoting yourself to a god in order to barter for a non-shitty afterlife makes sense even if the god is an asshole, in much the same way that one might put up with working for a shitty boss in the hopes of an eventual transfer or promotion.


On that note, a lot of DMs and players are stuck in the totally-not-Christianity mindset when it comes to D&D religion, just like the fluff writers, and so pooh-pooh the Cleric class for not having to spend time ministering to the community, leading prayers, and so forth to get their powers. Then they think it would be cool to have a class built around making deals with godlike beings for powers without all the religious trappings, hence the continued popularity of the Warlock in 4e and 5e after its original reason for being (having invocations instead of spells) was no longer relevant.

But really, the Cleric as a class who says "I want cool magic powers, you want someone to do your dirty work on the Prime, you give me powers and I'll make you look good, deal?" fits the ancient polytheistic model just fine, and in that flavor context the only difference between a Cleric of Heironeous and a Warlock with an Archon Patron is in the spell lists they can access.

[hyzmarca]

Writers also struggle with 'real gods' and 'the problem of evil'. Dick-waving aside, the good gods don't jump in to solve problems. Since there would be no adventures for PCs if gods did everything, good gods can't be directly jumping in... A best case scenario is that the gods COULD have done something to help but CHOSE to do nothing. If you still want to call them good, you have to find your escape clause. It could be 'well, THIS LIFE doesn't matter and all the people killed in the cataclysm went to heaven and that's TOTALLY GOOD', but you definitely have to abandon any type of consistent morality in this world.

BECMI actually did this right. At a certain point, the PCs just become gods and have god adventures, which are suitably above normal high level adventures. So gods are off doing god stuff, which is actually important, and can't be bothered hunting down the intelligent gophers that are stealing wooden shoes in podunk village.

[Dogbert]

You forgot to mention Lathander's attempt to Borg all of creation.

The thing with Goodly Good Gods of Goodosity is that, in my personal experience, their biggest fans and authors (consumer-wise) are bible thumpers who are as prone to power trips as they are of being bumbling dummasses who don't realize the fictional atrocities they do with their fictional good.

[Prak]

I mean, the closest I've been able to make Alignment make sense in my games is that good means placing others' needs and well-being before yourself, and evil means placing your own before others' (or placing others' well-being and needs before your own because it generally promotes your own, like, you know, being a teamplayer in an adventuring party).

Which kinda puts good aligned gods in a weird position, because, generally speaking, a god doesn't give a shit about anything but their own desires. At least, in so far as most gods that Western writers are given to know about, anyway.

[Grek]

Dwarf Fortress has a pretty decent take on Alignment. It's the standard D&D ones, except Lawful is 'Benign' and Chaotic is 'Savage'.

Benign means a calm region without large predators. Like, there might be gnomes (who will steal your booze and run away) and there might be unicorns (who should absolutely not be fucked with), but nothing that'll just walk into your house and eat you. It's the sort of place people retire to.

Savage means that it's a howling wilderness where the animals have either grown an order of magnitude larger than normal or who have become beastmen with basic tools, language and are basically playable adventurers. The trees are also bigger with some being as thick around as a kiddy pool

Good means that the area is full of pixies and unicorns and feathered trees and fluffy wamblers. If it's Benign Good, it'll be full of idyllic beauty and pixies. If it's Savage Good, it'll be the sort of Good that involves having a wild party with satyrs and waking up drunk on sunshine.

Evil means that the sky rains blood and the blood rain may or may not give you ebola. Dead stuff spontaneously comes back as zombies and ghosts. Benign Evil is merely creepy, Savage Evil has stuff actively trying to kill you every other step.

Entirely apart from this, there are Spheres with associated Gods and Powers and Angels. Gods are above Good, Evil and Savagery; if you fuck with one they'll turn you into a were-ardvark or just strike you dead. If you are hardcore enough, you can break into a hidden vault below the world, beat up the Angels of and steal the mystic secrets they guard.

[TheGreatEvilKing]

The Biblical version of alignment falls apart as soon as you add actual Evil gods who are on par with the Good gods and helped create the universe and shit. The Christian God is literally perfect (per doctrine) and is the final arbiter of morality, and Satan and company are just a bunch of pretenders.

If Lolth is an actual god who deserves worship rather than an arrogant powerless pretender, things get a lot different, and you might actually want to have some priests of Lolth around who know the correct sacrificial rites to offer her delicious cheeseburgers so she doesn't curse your town with spiders. These ladies would probably be pretty well respected in town, as generally people do not like to be eaten by giant spiders.

The ultimate problem with D&D and similar modern fantasy settings is that they're desperately trying to merge modern progressive ideas with a time period where your bloodline determined your social worth and was set by literal God. Of course none of this shit makes sense, you're mashing together two completely different and incompatible worldviews. It will never make sense. Accept it or don't play psuedomedieval fantasy.

[Iduno]

I posted this elsewhere, but this is the reason why I'm fond of Actraiser. The point was that you were an angel/god helping civilization thrive by going around and fighting the big monsters mere mortals could not hope to defeat on their own while engaging in Sims-style domain development. While it may not be a friendly setting for "mortal PCs" it answers the common "what have the gods done for us" dilemma in D&D settings where they're active.

And also sometimes earthquaking down their entire civilizations to get more power. That's pretty fitting with this thread.

[Dean]

The easiest hack to make good gods "work" for the most part is to say that they are losing. You can make up whatever reason you want but if there are forces of evil and forces of good the good has to be losing if the game is about fighting all the evil in the land. If good is winning or has won the question must be asked as to why everyone is a bunch of fuedal peasants occasionally being eaten by Hydra's. If actual good magical hyperintelligent beings are in charge then everything should be amazing. So you simply say that they are not in charge and are doing their best to keep things just OK and then the PC's are the ones that can make things better with their own effort.

If everyone is a feudal peasant under Bahamut then Bahamut is an asshole. If Everyone is a feudal peasant and Bahamut wants to deliver a better life but has to defeat Tiamat first to have a chance to do so then Bahamut is a cool guy who you should spend your time trying to help.

[Wiseman]

I think the main reasons is that there's a big flavor tussle in published material between the writers who actually understand polytheism and write D&D gods and religions from that perspective, and those who don't grok it at all and just write them like a collection of idealized pseudo-Christian monotheisms existing side by side.

Honestly I don't know how much of it are Weis and Hickman self-stealth-retconning vs other writers doing the heavy lifting, but there's some deconstructions in the setting here and there. The Crown of Power being worn by Emperor Ariakas of the Dragonarmies also having been worn by the Kingpriest is a pretty big indication that he was Lawful Evil and not Lawful Good. Given that said crown gradually shifts one's alignment to Lawful Evil.

Honestly, it's mostly Hickman, to my understanding. The whole thing with the High God is a perfect example. The original idea in Summer Flame was that he was father of the gods and an embodiment of the primordial chaos from which all things came, in the pagan sense. It didn't sit well with Tracy though, who tried to do a huge retcon* in the War of Souls trilogy that made Chaos into a more Lucifer like figure who rebelled against the real High God, in accordance with his own spiritual beliefs. Thankfully he was talked out of this and the whole thing was retconned again to the High God representing cosmic order and Chaos representing the obvious.

The next trilogy, the Dark Disciple trilogy (of which Hickman had little to no involvement with, to my understanding) has the gods acting in much more a polytheistic manner.

*Amusingly, the retcon is done via a document that's written in-character and supposedly exists in universe and was written by Paladine. Make of that what you will.

[Emerald]

The easiest hack to make good gods "work" for the most part is to say that they are losing. You can make up whatever reason you want but if there are forces of evil and forces of good the good has to be losing if the game is about fighting all the evil in the land. If good is winning or has won the question must be asked as to why everyone is a bunch of fuedal peasants occasionally being eaten by Hydra's. If actual good magical hyperintelligent beings are in charge then everything should be amazing. So you simply say that they are not in charge and are doing their best to keep things just OK and then the PC's are the ones that can make things better with their own effort.

That's basically the official line in Planescape, and probably also Greyhawk where the Great Wheel originated but I don't know that setting as well. Good is slightly stronger than Evil on an individual level (solars/throne archons/tulani eladrin are more powerful than pit fiends/balors/paeliryons/molydei/ultraloths, Good gods average higher in divine rank than Evil gods and there are more Good greater deities than Evil ones, and so on), but Evil is so numerous that every attempt by Good gods and powerful outsiders to attack Evil gods and powerful outsiders directly has failed, and if Good ever made a concerted effort to un-screw the Material Plane they fear that Evil would put aside their infighting to counterattack and make things worse off.

Even without that lore, though, the basic "villains are proactive and amoral, heroes are reactive and caring" trope covers things fairly well. Even given perfectly evenly matched forces of Good and Evil initially, Evil is probably going to come out on top because Evil is willing to murder Good heroes in childhood, cause lots of collateral damage to civilians, and so on...and Good has to avert every single destroy/conquer the world plot that Evil starts, but Evil only has to win once. So positing that Good is doing the best it can to save everyone everywhere, and some feudal shittiness everywhere is the price to pay to not have hellmouths and necromantic singularities popping up every other week, is probably a sufficient excuse for most groups.

[TheGreatEvilKing]

You could also posit that when good and evil armies fight the gods are duking out on their respective plane somewhere as well. It is easy to explain why Heironious is not personally smiting people with lightning bolts, he is fighting Hextor while the Good Shinytown Kingdom armies are locked in combat with the Necromantic Legions.

[DrPraetor]

You could also posit that when good and evil armies fight the gods are duking out on their respective plane somewhere as well. It is easy to explain why Heironious is not personally smiting people with lightning bolts, he is fighting Hextor while the Good Shinytown Kingdom armies are locked in combat with the Necromantic Legions.

That would work, sure.

Yahweh is a warrior for his people, a storm-god typical of ancient Near Eastern myths, marching out from a region to the south or south-east of Israel with the heavenly host of stars and planets that make up his army.

But it's a minor point, really.

The setting (Oerth, Faerun, Krynn) doesn't make sense - but then, historical religions don't make sense either, generally speaking.

Likewise, the setting doesn't have a consistent authorial voice - but then, historical religions didn't either. The different narratives featuring Zeus were clearly written by different people who had different ideas about what he represented, cared about, and could do. People were less concerned with cognitive dissonance for Zeus than for Yahweh, but if you took it as a given that Jupiter was the "best and the greatest" and also that he turned into a swan to fuck some random chick because he was syncretized with Zeus, then you'd maybe come up with mental gymnastics about why turning into a swan to get with some hot rando is the best and greatest thing to do. You're not going to have centuries of theologians inventing predicate logic to paper over that kind of stuff in your RPG.

For what it's worth, as with the "Domain Rules" of several of Frank's sister threads, it's good to look outside Europe if you want celestial divinities (you may not, I think RPG settings are better without them, in most cases.) Traditional Chinese religion is probably better to crib from. You have a celestial bureaucracy and the heavenly powers don't disrupt the established order of things because the rules say they can't.