D&D General Baldur's Gate 3 Hates Religion (Spoilers)

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think the Fugue Plain itself is an issue - it's not unreasonable that the dead go somewhere to be sorted out, as long as (as seen in the later Avatar Series novels) the gods pick them up in a timely manner. It's the Faithless and the False which are the big problems.

They're not problems. That's just how the that world's cosmology works. You want a different system? Make a different world, or advance the timeline.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I always get a chuckle out of Agamemnon's prayer to the gods as he's offering them a sacrifice in The Iliad. He starts out with Zeus, mentions a few other gods, and when he gets to the end says something like, "And to any other god we didn't mention, apologies, but this is for you too." I played in a campaign and the DM got a chuckle when he looked at my character sheet where I listed "As needed" under deity. It wasn't a joke, my character prayed to the appropriate god at the appropriate time. Is it time to harvest? I'm praying to the god of harvest. Is a bad storm coming? I'm praying to whatever god is most appropriate.

Religion has never played a big part in any D&D campaign I've ever run. The cleric and paladin might do things in the name of religion, but other than that it's pretty much a non-issue in most of my games. Religion ought to be something that motivates people like it has in real life. But D&D is oddly secular in many ways.

Only in gameplay. In lore, and in stuff like the novels, religion is very much a motivating force.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yes. That's the point. Absent gods are the best gods.

And you're welcome to hold that subjective, personal view on the subject.

 

[Micah Sweet]

When you play an RPG, do you want to look at the gods and pantheon from a modern perspective or do you want to get into the heads of characters who living in a very different place from your modern lives?

Apparently we are being coerced into "wanting" the first one nowadays. History as pretty backdrop to 21st century sensibilities. Very unfortunate IMO.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The Wall was pretty blatently written in to be destroyed in the first place, it just never was. It shouldn't have lasted past Mask of the Betrayer, honestly. Rejoice in its destruction. Rejoice in an evil being removed from the Planes

I don't rejoice in retcons without in-universe explanation.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Apparently we are being coerced into "wanting" the first one nowadays. History as pretty backdrop to 21st century sensibilities. Very unfortunate IMO.

I feel like you're out of line here Micah, because no TSR or WotC D&D setting has attempted to do anything except "history as a pretty backdrop", with the posssssssssssssible of Taladas (or to a lesser extent Planescape - no accident both were Zeb Cook, I suspect), in either the 20th or 21st century. Oh and Eberron - Eberron did seriously think it through - that's our one real exception. But that doesn't have a medieval mindset, it has a sort of "turn of the century" (no, the other turn of the century < weeps in old >) one.

The whole "modern perspective" thing could 100% be argued about 1970s Greyhawk, or 1980s Forgotten Realms. Elements of Greyhawk were profoundly coloured by 20th century American takes on Christianity (which obviously can't be discussed in detail here, I'm aware), and there was absolutely no serious, Warhammer-esque attempt to get into the mindsets of a different people. You just got a kind of joke-y/meme-y collection of "kewl godz". With the FR you got, and I hope it's okay to say this, kind of "Gods Ed Greenwood wouldn't kick out of a swinging sex party". Again the FR didn't, in the 1980s, or 1990s, make a serious attempt to "get into a different mindset", it was just piles of assumptions, some contradictory assumptions, all on top of each other. As noted, a lot of what 1990s TSR writers assumed about the FR kind of hard-contradicted what Greenwood seemed to be assuming, and neither was truly thought-through or considered.

Now I mention Warhammer for a reason, because that's helps show how no official D&D setting - except Eberron - has ever "tried to get into a different mindset". To get into a different mindset you need to actually put the work in, actually think stuff through, have consistent cosmologies. Throw out stuff that doesn't fit before it even reaches the published page. And TSR and WotC just haven't really done that. Could they? Absolutely. There's no lack of talent. Eberron did it, Taladas sort of did, but those both did it because they were the singular visions of specific authors with strong philosophical ideas and strong conceptualization, and frankly, open minds, not people who were a bit flip about it, nor who had narrow visions of what religion "could be" (as I would assert the people who wrote a lot of 2E's FR religion books did).

 

[Micah Sweet]

I feel like you're out of line here Micah, because no TSR or WotC D&D setting has attempted to do anything except "history as a pretty backdrop", with the posssssssssssssible of Taladas (or to a lesser extent Planescape - no accident both were Zeb Cook, I suspect), in either the 20th or 21st century. Oh and Eberron - Eberron did seriously think it through - that's our one real exception. But that doesn't have a medieval mindset, it has a sort of "turn of the century" (no, the other turn of the century < weeps in old >) one.

The whole "modern perspective" thing could 100% be argued about 1970s Greyhawk, or 1980s Forgotten Realms. Elements of Greyhawk were profoundly coloured by 20th century American takes on Christianity (which obviously can't be discussed in detail here, I'm aware), and there was absolutely no serious, Warhammer-esque attempt to get into the mindsets of a different people. You just got a kind of joke-y/meme-y collection of "kewl godz". With the FR you got, and I hope it's okay to say this, kind of "Gods Ed Greenwood wouldn't kick out of a swinging sex party". Again the FR didn't, in the 1980s, or 1990s, make a serious attempt to "get into a different mindset", it was just piles of assumptions, some contradictory assumptions, all on top of each other. As noted, a lot of what 1990s TSR writers assumed about the FR kind of hard-contradicted what Greenwood seemed to be assuming, and neither was truly thought-through or considered.

Now I mention Warhammer for a reason, because that's helps show how no official D&D setting - except Eberron - has ever "tried to get into a different mindset". To get into a different mindset you need to actually put the work in, actually think stuff through, have consistent cosmologies. Throw out stuff that doesn't fit before it even reaches the published page. And TSR and WotC just haven't really done that. Could they? Absolutely. There's no lack of talent. Eberron did it, Taladas sort of did, but those both did it because they were the singular visions of specific authors with strong philosophical ideas and strong conceptualization, and frankly, open minds, not people who were a bit flip about it, nor who had narrow visions of what religion "could be" (as I would assert the people who wrote a lot of 2E's FR religion books did).

I feel Dragonlance in general has its own perspective and strong philosophical ideas and conceptualization (I've been re-reading the Annotated Chronicles and Legends and they talk about that quite a bit), and Ravenloft has (or rather had officially) quite a lot of them. Dark Sun certainly didn't look at itself from a modern perspective. I never got into Greyhawk so I can't say, but FR I'll grant you.

 

[MGibster]

he whole "modern perspective" thing could 100% be argued about 1970s Greyhawk, or 1980s Forgotten Realms. Elements of Greyhawk were profoundly coloured by 20th century American takes on Christianity (which obviously can't be discussed in detail here, I'm aware), and there was absolutely no serious, Warhammer-esque attempt to get into the mindsets of a different people. You just got a kind of joke-y/meme-y collection of "kewl godz".

I've argued in the past that a "modern" perspective is one of the things that helps make D&D so popular. When you jump into a D&D game, you really don't have to work very hard to see the world through an alien lens. What's defined as good, things like freedom of religion, due process under the law, freedom of association, property rights, etc., etc. in real life are generally good in D&D. i.e. Modern western liberalism. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach.

It's a little more difficult to wrap your head around a setting like Legend of the Five Rings where there's no freedom of religion or property rights as we understand it today. i.e. It's not as accessible.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I've argued in the past that a "modern" perspective is one of the things that helps make D&D so popular. When you jump into a D&D game, you really don't have to work very hard to see the world through an alien lens. What's defined as good, things like freedom of religion, due process under the law, freedom of association, property rights, etc., etc. in real life are generally good in D&D. i.e. Modern western liberalism. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach.

It's a little more difficult to wrap your head around a setting like Legend of the Five Rings where there's no freedom of religion or property rights as we understand it today. i.e. It's not as accessible.

But it makes so much more sense in context. That is very much worth it to me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Dark Sun certainly didn't look at itself from a modern perspective.

Doesn't it?

Its takes on slavery, for example, are incredibly American-specific and extremely 1990s-esque (I've talked about this a lot when discussing how they could fix this if they wanted to do Dark Sun again - but they don't want to). The mindsets of the "normal people" in the setting also seem to have fairly modern values and ideas (which is fine - it's Planetary Romance or long-time Post-Apocalypse, not historical) - it's the Sorcerer Kings and their minions who don't. The baddies. They largely sidestep religion by "the gods are dead and everyone knows it".

I feel Dragonlance in general has its own perspective and strong philosophical ideas and conceptualization (I've been re-reading the Annotated Chronicles and Legends and they talk about that quite a bit)

I've read a ton of Dragonlance and it's one of the most profoundly 20th-century settings ever written. It could only have been written in the 1980s (or maybe the late 1970s). The mindsets of the characters, the things they care about, the ways they operate, their attitude to religion and the gods (which is clearly much inspired by the more hippy-adjacent parts of 20th century Mormonism, let's be clear, they ain't "golden discs" by accident). Right down to stuff like how they think those godawful Kender (= kinder, as in children) are "cool" and "righteous" and to be tolerated, not horrible little twerps - because that aligned with a lot of 1970s and 1980s ideas about "free range" parenting, and how it was okay for kids to behave (this has been discussed in extreme detail elsewhere). The "plains barbarians" are a deeply romanticized, late-20th-century, cheesy cultural appropriation of Native American culture (to the point of making blue-eyed blondes also Native Americans). Let's not even start on the "sea barbarians", who are basically "Lando Calrissian as a race".

Does it have its own perspective? Yes. Is that a 20th-century perspective? Also yes. There's no serious attempt to be "in a different mindset" (particularly not with religion) outside of maybe the Solamnic Knights, who I feel are where it comes closest to genuinely offering a perspective that is a bit different.

Taladas is a very different matter, but given like three people ever played it I won't bore us with it right now.

Ravenloft has (or rather had officially) quite a lot of them

Ravenloft doesn't have consistent or thought-through ideas about mindsets. It just has cheap Hammer Horror-style stereotypes for how peasants behave in various places. Which does make it superficially slightly closer to things like Warhammer or HeroQuest which make serious attempts in that direction (indeed HeroQuest is probably the most committed I can think of in the 20th century, maybe even in the 21st, to doing "different mindsets" - this is obvious even in the videogames based on it - King of the Dragon Pass, and both Six Ages games), but it's entirely superficial, at least in 2nd edition. Also weirdly racist. But let's not dig into that! Maybe 3E Ravenloft changed that, but 5E passes over everything with such blinding haste that it's hard to tell.