beccaelizabeth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
beccaelizabeth) wrote2018-12-08 08:18 am
beccaelizabeth) wrote2018-12-08 08:18 am
Entry tags:
Comparative RPG gods
I been reading more campaign settings and rulebooks and wikis (which frequently conflict and which I can't clearly separate edition eras for) and I am developing Opinions on fantasy RPG gods.
Not terribly well informed Opinions yet, might have misunderstood things, certainly need to read the available sources better, and my sources are a tiny proportion of what's out there.
And yet, Opinions.
I know RPG deities are set up for maximum conflict and plenty of adventure
but
they really do make me angry.
Reading Pathfinder my solution was Become A God, Do Things Correctly.
That's a perfectly possible Pathfinder solution.
But I bought a (possibly 3e) Campaign Setting for Forgotten Realms on Wednesday, and so far I have skim read the deities (because this is how one approaches a world when one plays so many clerics)
and now I'm just Really Annoyed.
Because my first thought was 'Right, so, now I know which are Enemies', which is also a reasonable approach to fantasy RPG gods. Just, you hate that god? Go beat that god! Kick godly arse, take their spheres, become god of that thing.
I never particularly aspired to be a deity of death before, but, death in Forgotten Realms is really harsh. Like, in Pathfinder's main setting it seems like if you die with no particular god, you just get judged, maybe go a place, maybe go back around again. Maybe get fed to an apocalypse god in the form of a moon, because RPGs, you know? But only maybe, and aside from that it's not a big deal. You can worship abstract forces and be a cleric of Good if you want to. You can worship yourself if you really feel the need. You can dedicate yourself to enlightenment or ascension in a way that does not involve gods. You have options.
In Forgotten Realms you either pick one of the (admittedly generous in number) existing gods to worship and be claimed by
or
in a maximum of 10 days after your death
you get glued into a wall for all eternity.
That's it. That's your options. Eternal service to an existing deity, or, wall.
It actually works out better for you to choose actual literal hell, because with enough magic your friends can get you out of hell.
Yes, there are incentives to worship evil, in comparison to atheism.
Pathfinder atheism is just saying that yeah, there are clearly actual literal gods, but you don't have to go around worshipping them. Just because they're the biggest doesn't make them All That.
Forgotten Realms attempts at that set of beliefs end only one way.
So, I figure, this is clearly unjust, definitely not good, and I can't be having with it. Defeat god!
But I read a bit more and that's been done.
Repeatedly.
The new gods of death tried to do things Different.
And the other gods teamed up to basically put them on trial for Doing It Wrong.
... defeat all the gods, before you can change a thing?
... I'm tempted to say Challenge Accepted, but let's face it, I'd get dead and end up in a great big wall.
The thing is, these gods who decide where souls go for all eternity, a whole lot of them used to be humans, even more from other races, and that's just what I've read so far. And they're the sort of gods that honestly are weakened by not being worshipped. They're not embodied grand forces that shape the universe, they're just the most powerful of their particular sort of being in a very local way, and they draw that power from everyone who drops them a prayer or an offering.
They're democracy, in deities.
You vote for them, and then they get to choose how to be the boss of you. Even the evil ones.
Which, you know, is a problem! Where's the checks and balances? It's all entrenched interests, a whole bunch of power and some really quirky ways of using it.
So it might say it's about gods, and it does involve the fundamental forces of the universe and how they are expressed, but it's really very Politics when you get into it.
So then if you want to Become A God, Make Changes, you can't just, like, strut up to the Starstone or perfect yourself so far beyond level 20 people think you're The One, you have to, like, reform the world first. Somehow start a revolution against probably omniscient beings which involves organizing their worshipers. Figure out a way to change the role and the person in it.
Without bringing the whole world down by disturbing the balance of forces too far.
Now that sounds like interesting.
... but I'm still really grrr about that wall.
So this is exactly the sort of call to action anger that you want from setting design, so that works out.
And the wall of being perfectly ineffectual forever is a pretty good metaphor once you think of worship as voting, because that's the people who just refuse to vote.
Still, seems to be harder to organise a new god than a new political party.
Probably you'd need to start out worshiping one of the existing gods who has a really relaxed attitude to the standard RPG revolving door where death usually would be, to give you time to work, and who doesn't mind the possibility of a new colleague.
But then the god of death also has a role in punishing those who worship but betray...
... not simples.
In an interesting story generating way. How to power when already there are powerful? Always a good trick.
I mean RPGs assume you get a sort of steady increase in challenge as you become stronger yourself, because otherwise the story ends. Logically more common would be getting stomped on when you are too small to object. Hence the relative lack of adventurers.
Also being a deity doesn't mean absolute control over your Thing, or you wouldn't get god fights. It does mean being able to empower a whole bunch of clerics. Probably a number proportionate on worshippers, on account of the worship being power. Clerics draw it in, gods dole it out. Why not skip the middle man? Well then you're playing with Arcane power, not Divine. But I don't see how to power Arcane magic by big crowds here, though it's relatively easy in GURPS.
It's making me think the scale on stories can get REALLY BIG. I mean SF invents stuff, but Fantasy can just rewrite the entire laws of physics. ... actually SF does that a lot too, but you know, deliberately.
I like RPGs because I like power, and don't get to feel powerful much. This I know about myself.
I get frustrated with them because too often 'power' is just 'hitting things until they stay down', even in settings where there's enough magic that stuff does not really have to in general stay down.
But the power disparities get magnified too. I mean, think how a regular peasant would feel next to even a fairly lowly adventurer, someone with some magic unlocked. They've spent more gold on their equipment than it would take to buy a village worth of goats, and feed the village for a year. They confidently expect to get much more gold later. And they can just casually rewrite reality, one spell at a time.
But they're still outweighed by actual factual gets involved a lot deities.
That's a busy sort of world with some incentives for keeping your head down and hoping for a good afterlife, you know?
I shall go read more about assorted afterlives.
Not terribly well informed Opinions yet, might have misunderstood things, certainly need to read the available sources better, and my sources are a tiny proportion of what's out there.
And yet, Opinions.
I know RPG deities are set up for maximum conflict and plenty of adventure
but
they really do make me angry.
Reading Pathfinder my solution was Become A God, Do Things Correctly.
That's a perfectly possible Pathfinder solution.
But I bought a (possibly 3e) Campaign Setting for Forgotten Realms on Wednesday, and so far I have skim read the deities (because this is how one approaches a world when one plays so many clerics)
and now I'm just Really Annoyed.
Because my first thought was 'Right, so, now I know which are Enemies', which is also a reasonable approach to fantasy RPG gods. Just, you hate that god? Go beat that god! Kick godly arse, take their spheres, become god of that thing.
I never particularly aspired to be a deity of death before, but, death in Forgotten Realms is really harsh. Like, in Pathfinder's main setting it seems like if you die with no particular god, you just get judged, maybe go a place, maybe go back around again. Maybe get fed to an apocalypse god in the form of a moon, because RPGs, you know? But only maybe, and aside from that it's not a big deal. You can worship abstract forces and be a cleric of Good if you want to. You can worship yourself if you really feel the need. You can dedicate yourself to enlightenment or ascension in a way that does not involve gods. You have options.
In Forgotten Realms you either pick one of the (admittedly generous in number) existing gods to worship and be claimed by
or
in a maximum of 10 days after your death
you get glued into a wall for all eternity.
That's it. That's your options. Eternal service to an existing deity, or, wall.
It actually works out better for you to choose actual literal hell, because with enough magic your friends can get you out of hell.
Yes, there are incentives to worship evil, in comparison to atheism.
Pathfinder atheism is just saying that yeah, there are clearly actual literal gods, but you don't have to go around worshipping them. Just because they're the biggest doesn't make them All That.
Forgotten Realms attempts at that set of beliefs end only one way.
So, I figure, this is clearly unjust, definitely not good, and I can't be having with it. Defeat god!
But I read a bit more and that's been done.
Repeatedly.
The new gods of death tried to do things Different.
And the other gods teamed up to basically put them on trial for Doing It Wrong.
... defeat all the gods, before you can change a thing?
... I'm tempted to say Challenge Accepted, but let's face it, I'd get dead and end up in a great big wall.
The thing is, these gods who decide where souls go for all eternity, a whole lot of them used to be humans, even more from other races, and that's just what I've read so far. And they're the sort of gods that honestly are weakened by not being worshipped. They're not embodied grand forces that shape the universe, they're just the most powerful of their particular sort of being in a very local way, and they draw that power from everyone who drops them a prayer or an offering.
They're democracy, in deities.
You vote for them, and then they get to choose how to be the boss of you. Even the evil ones.
Which, you know, is a problem! Where's the checks and balances? It's all entrenched interests, a whole bunch of power and some really quirky ways of using it.
So it might say it's about gods, and it does involve the fundamental forces of the universe and how they are expressed, but it's really very Politics when you get into it.
So then if you want to Become A God, Make Changes, you can't just, like, strut up to the Starstone or perfect yourself so far beyond level 20 people think you're The One, you have to, like, reform the world first. Somehow start a revolution against probably omniscient beings which involves organizing their worshipers. Figure out a way to change the role and the person in it.
Without bringing the whole world down by disturbing the balance of forces too far.
Now that sounds like interesting.
... but I'm still really grrr about that wall.
So this is exactly the sort of call to action anger that you want from setting design, so that works out.
And the wall of being perfectly ineffectual forever is a pretty good metaphor once you think of worship as voting, because that's the people who just refuse to vote.
Still, seems to be harder to organise a new god than a new political party.
Probably you'd need to start out worshiping one of the existing gods who has a really relaxed attitude to the standard RPG revolving door where death usually would be, to give you time to work, and who doesn't mind the possibility of a new colleague.
But then the god of death also has a role in punishing those who worship but betray...
... not simples.
In an interesting story generating way. How to power when already there are powerful? Always a good trick.
I mean RPGs assume you get a sort of steady increase in challenge as you become stronger yourself, because otherwise the story ends. Logically more common would be getting stomped on when you are too small to object. Hence the relative lack of adventurers.
Also being a deity doesn't mean absolute control over your Thing, or you wouldn't get god fights. It does mean being able to empower a whole bunch of clerics. Probably a number proportionate on worshippers, on account of the worship being power. Clerics draw it in, gods dole it out. Why not skip the middle man? Well then you're playing with Arcane power, not Divine. But I don't see how to power Arcane magic by big crowds here, though it's relatively easy in GURPS.
It's making me think the scale on stories can get REALLY BIG. I mean SF invents stuff, but Fantasy can just rewrite the entire laws of physics. ... actually SF does that a lot too, but you know, deliberately.
I like RPGs because I like power, and don't get to feel powerful much. This I know about myself.
I get frustrated with them because too often 'power' is just 'hitting things until they stay down', even in settings where there's enough magic that stuff does not really have to in general stay down.
But the power disparities get magnified too. I mean, think how a regular peasant would feel next to even a fairly lowly adventurer, someone with some magic unlocked. They've spent more gold on their equipment than it would take to buy a village worth of goats, and feed the village for a year. They confidently expect to get much more gold later. And they can just casually rewrite reality, one spell at a time.
But they're still outweighed by actual factual gets involved a lot deities.
That's a busy sort of world with some incentives for keeping your head down and hoping for a good afterlife, you know?
I shall go read more about assorted afterlives.
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gaming, theology, politics, meta
(tumblr'ng on dreamwidth, sorry)
~
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