The Dark Sun thing always weirded me out. 😅 "Look! Look what a world without gods looks like!", and I'm like, "Well, it's more like _this is what a world with a climate that destroys most plant life_ looks like." 🤷🏾♀️ I keep toying with the idea of making a campaign setting out of a novel I'm writing. There's magic, but no gods...yet, just because there are no gods, that doesn't mean that humanoid groups haven't simply made up ones to believe in! One "devoted god-fearing" culture has a very permissive, helpful, compassionate, justice-loving, and passionate way of life. The other, has a very rigid, depressing, tyrannical, abusive, hierarchial way of life. So what makes the difference? Clearly not gods, whether existence of, or belief in. Nor is a 'willingness to fight' factor in either, since both groups have their warriors. The difference is that the first one has a love of the land as a being in itself (which it also weaves into its belief system)...meaning that, the first culture has a very vibrant, healthy, sustainable ecosystem to subsist from. As well as a deep devotion to care for, share with, and support each other, and to collaborate with other cultures, as people. The other? Sees the land as 'dead resources' that the powerful 'should own'...and treats it that way (this view is also tied into their belief system). And, in treating the land that way, they partially CREATE the awful scarcity and environmental devastation that leads to the hierarchies that become abusive, non-permissive, insular, overly competitive, and, ultimately, carelessly murderous towards all those that they (unjustly) designate as "subhumanoid", and therefore "unworthy" of literal life.
Don't apologize for that voice, Fel. Yeah, the timbre is a little different; but it's still a nice, smooth caramel. Oh, uh, and, uh... um... thevideoisgoodtoo!
In a couple campaigns I’m in the gods aren’t fully gods because there’s a giant creature eating anything that gets too powerful but there’s several patrons reaching godhood
There is this one spell though, commune, and there are a few others like it, their contents are defined by: ask god/patreon questions. If your power comes from a force, a concept, without personality or thought, how do these spells function?
If you go to 7:00 in the video I provided some examples of how that concept was handled in Dark Sun in 2e/4e. Commune is specifically addressed in that slide. The wording of commune uses "divine proxy" in addition to deity. But things like "Divination," "Contact other Plane," or "Divine Intervention" could be flavored as to where your connection to a force, concept, etc would grant you special insight into a question/situation. I don't believe the divine proxy would require a personality for the spell to function; that is, to simply bestow information which those spells are designed to do.
its weird cause i just got finished running a session in a world where (almost) the gods are dead, and those that aren't are weakened, and got recommended this the clerics draw their power from the remnants of the gods, either from the preserved corpses or this miasma which was the result of the dead bodies of extraplanar beings (like gods) rotting and mixing together because they are unable to return to their plane.
Ever since Wotc started making MTG setting into dnd setting books (Ravnica, a setting that has just 1 deity being one of them.) I would say that Wotc is moving away from set in stone rules and more towards flavoring. On one hand, that makes the classes way more customizable and cool! On the other hand, it also means that some preexisting races and class lore is getting thrown In the trash in exchange for more setting agnostic (and bland) descriptions. I think it's a net positive because dnd 5e in particular is like one of the first TTRPG that people play so it's okay if the lore isn't that complex or deep for the purpose of going into a dungeon or city and going on an adventure.
Aside from Dark Sun there are several WotC published settings where the gods are either gone or so distant they no longer interact with mortals. Eberron has a pantheon of gods, but no living mortal remembers any of those gods manifesting an avatar or speaking through a celestial emissary. Ravnica had gods, but they all died millennia ago or were turned into eldritch abominations. The closest thing to a god still being worshipped is one really big tree in the capital district of the world city. Ravenloft is cut off from all gods. Only the Dark Powers hold sway. Dragonlance is a world where literally all the gods got together and decided to end things with a dragon apocalypse because the lawful stupid clerics were too powerful and needed to be taken down a peg. TSR era godless settings are pretty bleak. WotC era godless settings are actually better places to live than any TSR era setting regardless of divine presence.
Primordial forces are not divine in a theological sense. They are fundamental to the material world but themselves "created" and contingent on the metaphysical. Clerics of nature or elemental forces are materialist / pagan literally by definition and are not to be trusted because of it. Likewise believing in justice requires a justice giver. There is no difference in having devotion in the embodiment of the concept directly or the moral expression downstream. If there was a difference it would mean that justice wasnt contingent on divinity and thus it would also be cut off from divine energies logically
Gotta disagree… gods are vital to have clerics. The revisionist take of domains over Gods is to allow the atheist or agnostic to play and not upset their world view.
I really like the idea that the dark sun world presents, a godless, barely survivable wasteland that I want my games to somewhat emulate. In a sense, the gods are all but gone, a relic of the past. Small circles of beings who worship them exist within their realms, but the greater population knows virtually nothing. It's as if there is something missing from their lives and they do not know what it could be.
I was going to dislike the video and pass, but I realized I found a small channel. I couldn't find the answer or the hook to the answer in the first two minutes I listened. While I have opinions on the topic of the video, I have no desire (and perhaps the ability) to make a video about it. Also I'm just an internet guy. What do I know right?
The Dark Sun thing always weirded me out. 😅
"Look! Look what a world without gods looks like!", and I'm like, "Well, it's more like _this is what a world with a climate that destroys most plant life_ looks like." 🤷🏾♀️
I keep toying with the idea of making a campaign setting out of a novel I'm writing. There's magic, but no gods...yet, just because there are no gods, that doesn't mean that humanoid groups haven't simply made up ones to believe in!
One "devoted god-fearing" culture has a very permissive, helpful, compassionate, justice-loving, and passionate way of life.
The other, has a very rigid, depressing, tyrannical, abusive, hierarchial way of life.
So what makes the difference? Clearly not gods, whether existence of, or belief in. Nor is a 'willingness to fight' factor in either, since both groups have their warriors.
The difference is that the first one has a love of the land as a being in itself (which it also weaves into its belief system)...meaning that, the first culture has a very vibrant, healthy, sustainable ecosystem to subsist from. As well as a deep devotion to care for, share with, and support each other, and to collaborate with other cultures, as people.
The other? Sees the land as 'dead resources' that the powerful 'should own'...and treats it that way (this view is also tied into their belief system). And, in treating the land that way, they partially CREATE the awful scarcity and environmental devastation that leads to the hierarchies that become abusive, non-permissive, insular, overly competitive, and, ultimately, carelessly murderous towards all those that they (unjustly) designate as "subhumanoid", and therefore "unworthy" of literal life.
epic thumbnail
Epic channel
Your videos are so thoughtful and cool!
Thanks! I feel the same way about yours! One eyed content creator solidarity!
@@Feltheleb True cyclops camaraderie on display today 😌
Don't apologize for that voice, Fel. Yeah, the timbre is a little different; but it's still a nice, smooth caramel.
Oh, uh, and, uh... um... thevideoisgoodtoo!
In MY games, all domains come from the one TRUE God.
That's right... ME. 😈
Then there's Fel, the God of overscrupulousnes
I would have preferred you just call me "Stinky"
In a couple campaigns I’m in the gods aren’t fully gods because there’s a giant creature eating anything that gets too powerful but there’s several patrons reaching godhood
There is this one spell though, commune, and there are a few others like it, their contents are defined by:
ask god/patreon questions.
If your power comes from a force, a concept, without personality or thought, how do these spells function?
If you go to 7:00 in the video I provided some examples of how that concept was handled in Dark Sun in 2e/4e. Commune is specifically addressed in that slide. The wording of commune uses "divine proxy" in addition to deity. But things like "Divination," "Contact other Plane," or "Divine Intervention" could be flavored as to where your connection to a force, concept, etc would grant you special insight into a question/situation. I don't believe the divine proxy would require a personality for the spell to function; that is, to simply bestow information which those spells are designed to do.
its weird cause i just got finished running a session in a world where (almost) the gods are dead, and those that aren't are weakened, and got recommended this
the clerics draw their power from the remnants of the gods, either from the preserved corpses or this miasma which was the result of the dead bodies of extraplanar beings (like gods) rotting and mixing together because they are unable to return to their plane.
Ever since Wotc started making MTG setting into dnd setting books (Ravnica, a setting that has just 1 deity being one of them.) I would say that Wotc is moving away from set in stone rules and more towards flavoring. On one hand, that makes the classes way more customizable and cool! On the other hand, it also means that some preexisting races and class lore is getting thrown In the trash in exchange for more setting agnostic (and bland) descriptions.
I think it's a net positive because dnd 5e in particular is like one of the first TTRPG that people play so it's okay if the lore isn't that complex or deep for the purpose of going into a dungeon or city and going on an adventure.
Aside from Dark Sun there are several WotC published settings where the gods are either gone or so distant they no longer interact with mortals.
Eberron has a pantheon of gods, but no living mortal remembers any of those gods manifesting an avatar or speaking through a celestial emissary.
Ravnica had gods, but they all died millennia ago or were turned into eldritch abominations. The closest thing to a god still being worshipped is one really big tree in the capital district of the world city.
Ravenloft is cut off from all gods. Only the Dark Powers hold sway.
Dragonlance is a world where literally all the gods got together and decided to end things with a dragon apocalypse because the lawful stupid clerics were too powerful and needed to be taken down a peg.
TSR era godless settings are pretty bleak. WotC era godless settings are actually better places to live than any TSR era setting regardless of divine presence.
good video
Primordial forces are not divine in a theological sense. They are fundamental to the material world but themselves "created" and contingent on the metaphysical. Clerics of nature or elemental forces are materialist / pagan literally by definition and are not to be trusted because of it. Likewise believing in justice requires a justice giver. There is no difference in having devotion in the embodiment of the concept directly or the moral expression downstream. If there was a difference it would mean that justice wasnt contingent on divinity and thus it would also be cut off from divine energies logically
I see no One True God in D&D only "gods".
Gotta disagree… gods are vital to have clerics. The revisionist take of domains over Gods is to allow the atheist or agnostic to play and not upset their world view.
I really like the idea that the dark sun world presents, a godless, barely survivable wasteland that I want my games to somewhat emulate. In a sense, the gods are all but gone, a relic of the past. Small circles of beings who worship them exist within their realms, but the greater population knows virtually nothing. It's as if there is something missing from their lives and they do not know what it could be.
I was going to dislike the video and pass, but I realized I found a small channel. I couldn't find the answer or the hook to the answer in the first two minutes I listened. While I have opinions on the topic of the video, I have no desire (and perhaps the ability) to make a video about it. Also I'm just an internet guy. What do I know right?