Quote from: Samsquantch on February 18, 2021, 02:09:38 PM
Since the late 80's my campaign has been set in a semi customised Forgotten Realms setting so I have tended to buy the products as them came out for every edition, in fact some of the only 4th ed stuff I bought was just for setting. I did the same for 5th since 4th edition nearly killed D&D for me and now, the more the lecturing and SJW aspects are coming out the more I am thinking of moving my setting out of FR and just going back to a proper homebrew like it was in the beginning. I will admit though, the fancy maps and products of FR and Greyhawk were a powerful lure for a still young gamer and lot less work (in some ways) than full homebrew. But you can't beat homebrew when it doesn't require reading a thick book to know what's going on since you made it up from the beginning...

I'm running 5e D&D in 1e-era Forgotten Realms, using the Grey Box & Bloodstone Lands. Works great and no problems with Political Correctness.

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2021, 02:39:08 PM

Quote from: Samsquantch on February 18, 2021, 02:09:38 PM
Since the late 80's my campaign has been set in a semi customised Forgotten Realms setting so I have tended to buy the products as them came out for every edition, in fact some of the only 4th ed stuff I bought was just for setting. I did the same for 5th since 4th edition nearly killed D&D for me and now, the more the lecturing and SJW aspects are coming out the more I am thinking of moving my setting out of FR and just going back to a proper homebrew like it was in the beginning. I will admit though, the fancy maps and products of FR and Greyhawk were a powerful lure for a still young gamer and lot less work (in some ways) than full homebrew. But you can't beat homebrew when it doesn't require reading a thick book to know what's going on since you made it up from the beginning...

I'm running 5e D&D in 1e-era Forgotten Realms, using the Grey Box & Bloodstone Lands. Works great and no problems with Political Correctness.

Bloodstone... A name I haven't heard in quite some time... Brings back good memories.

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2021, 02:39:08 PM
I'm running 5e D&D in 1e-era Forgotten Realms, using the Grey Box & Bloodstone Lands. Works great and no problems with Political Correctness.

Unlike what one sees on SJW forums most rpg tables usually do not have political correctness. Some rules in place such as no sexual assault etc.. Other than that most are their to play rpgs and not worry about that kind of BS/

Quote from: sureshot on February 18, 2021, 05:51:57 PMSome rules in place such as no sexual assault etc..

There's a rule against sexually assaulting your fellow players? Why did no-one tell me this before now?

Quote from: sureshot on February 18, 2021, 05:51:57 PM

Quote from: S'mon on February 18, 2021, 02:39:08 PM
I'm running 5e D&D in 1e-era Forgotten Realms, using the Grey Box & Bloodstone Lands. Works great and no problems with Political Correctness.

Unlike what one sees on SJW forums most rpg tables usually do not have political correctness. Some rules in place such as no sexual assault etc.. Other than that most are their to play rpgs and not worry about that kind of BS/

Well my current campaign is online, we've had Lockdowns here since March 2020. But even when I was GMing tabletop my players were not sexually assaulting each other.
My Faerun online game has a fair bit of T&A, but I've not had any complaints.

Quote from: Samsquantch on February 18, 2021, 02:09:38 PM
Since the late 80's my campaign has been set in a semi customised Forgotten Realms setting so I have tended to buy the products as them came out for every edition, in fact some of the only 4th ed stuff I bought was just for setting. I did the same for 5th since 4th edition nearly killed D&D for me and now, the more the lecturing and SJW aspects are coming out the more I am thinking of moving my setting out of FR and just going back to a proper homebrew like it was in the beginning. I will admit though, the fancy maps and products of FR and Greyhawk were a powerful lure for a still young gamer and lot less work (in some ways) than full homebrew. But you can't beat homebrew when it doesn't require reading a thick book to know what's going on since you made it up from the beginning...

The last time I ran DnD . a year ago I think for some friends, I used a homebrew world. There's plenty of free tools for maps, etc.
I used a series of 1 Page dungeon adventures to string some sort of storyline/campaign together.
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/03/22/need-an-adventure-one-page-dungeon/

It went down quite well and I ended it on a high note with a view to pick it up again with the same characters some time with a new storyline.

Quote from: danskmacabre on February 18, 2021, 06:45:05 PM

Quote from: Samsquantch on February 18, 2021, 02:09:38 PM
Since the late 80's my campaign has been set in a semi customised Forgotten Realms setting so I have tended to buy the products as them came out for every edition, in fact some of the only 4th ed stuff I bought was just for setting. I did the same for 5th since 4th edition nearly killed D&D for me and now, the more the lecturing and SJW aspects are coming out the more I am thinking of moving my setting out of FR and just going back to a proper homebrew like it was in the beginning. I will admit though, the fancy maps and products of FR and Greyhawk were a powerful lure for a still young gamer and lot less work (in some ways) than full homebrew. But you can't beat homebrew when it doesn't require reading a thick book to know what's going on since you made it up from the beginning...

The last time I ran DnD . a year ago I think for some friends, I used a homebrew world. There's plenty of free tools for maps, etc.
I used a series of 1 Page dungeon adventures to string some sort of storyline/campaign together.
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2016/03/22/need-an-adventure-one-page-dungeon/

It went down quite well and I ended it on a high note with a view to pick it up again with the same characters some time with a new storyline.

Ah, yes, 1 Page Dungeons are a great resource. I have been using them for a while now..

Quote from: "Chris24601"....The first thing to understand of my personal metaphysical preferences is that I am VERY Catholic to the point of not being comfortable even pretending to worship a made-up god in most D&D worlds.

Evil in my metaphysics is not the opposite of Good, it is the absence of Good. Hell is not someplace where one can rule, it is the Outer Darkness into which you choose to be cast rather than embrace the light; the black winter night beyond the safety of hearth and home. Only the demons trapped there and whispering to foolish mortals to be let in from the cold however briefly sell the lie that one could rule in the Abyss....

AD&D 1e, as written, is not at all disjoint from Christianity, it is jut a matter of adjusting the nomenclature. Religion was intentionally left vague, but the overall structure is implied by clerics and druids.

The devolvement of the cleric into pseudo paganism is likely due to hostility toward Christianity. But it is very clear that clerics, whether good or evil, are monotheists, representing either God or Satan, which are indistinguishable from the good and evil alignments for all intents and purposes because clerics are bound ultimately to those alignments regardless of what "deity" they serve. Druids are very clearly pagans similar to the cult from the Wicker Man (1973), which was a reconstruction of local pagan beliefs.

Some adjustments to nomenclature for clerics:

Good = God
Evil = Satan
Greater deity = archangel or archdemon
Lesser deity = angel or demon
Demigod = mortal creature that has become "god-like"

In other words, good and evil are very real supernatural forces in the game world and are therefore detectable by spells.

Within Christianity, God and Satan are not on equal terms, but Satan cannot be circumscribed by the game rules, and in any case the rules for alignment vis-à-vis good and evil are the extent to which either interact with the game milieu directly, therefore the issue is immaterial for game purposes. It is enough that the DM understands that good and evil deities are servants of God or Satan.

Druids, and all other pagans, call the creatures or objects that they serve "gods". Clerics should not because they should understand that they serve something higher.

The game alignments good and evil do not map precisely to the real world theological definitions of those words. The alignments of neutrality and evil both correspond to real world evil (i.e. "evil" = "not good"). One must keep that in mind when translating real world concepts into game terms. Druids, who represent game neutrality, are evil in the sense that they do not serve God (good), but instead are very much of the world -- they are materialists first and foremost and worship the dark spirits of the Earth. Game evil is characterized by the desire to commit the foulest act possible in any given situation (as described by Gygax), aka predatory psychopathy.

In the original PHB there is no true Neutral outer plane, nor should there be one. For me, this means that those of neutral alignment remain on the Prime Material Plane in one form or another after death. Druids themselves believe in and preach reincarnation. In my game, the souls of those who are irreligious and not safe-guarded by druids can sink to the lower planes and become larvae (MM, p. 59).

Objectively speaking, as to whether God is created by Man, or Man is created by God, that is unanswerable. Clerics and druids each have their own subjective view of reality.

Quote from: "Chris24601"....Basically, I don't want there to be clean and easy answers to these questions. One of the biggest disconnects between real people and those of many D&D settings is that real people don't have the answers there in concrete form.

Gods don't manifest in mortal form down the street and we can't cast plane shift, walk up to a god and ask them which interpretation of their religion is correct or be certain of our afterlife because that same plane shift can allow us to meet our ancestor's soul as they're chilling in one of the god's realms....

As pointed out by Gygax in the DMG, "the gods" are not omniscient and therefore can be wrong. Most "gods" are egotistical and arrogant and believe they are the rulers of men, not the dreams of men. And even if a "god" were to manifest, there is no way for mortals to know if it is a god or a demon masquerading as one. Detection spells can certainly be foiled by more powerful beings, and even a wish cannot countermand the will of a god-like being. The fog of war should ensure that the PCs have no more concrete knowledge of the mysteries of the universe than anyone in the real world, other than the fact that the supernatural is real.

As I understand it, in the Dying Earth series, few people could travel to the Overworlds physically, they could only visit it mentally, see its wonders and siren-like visions, and pretend that they were there. So no concrete reality.

QuoteAD&D 1e, as written, is not at all disjoint from Christianity, it is jut a matter of adjusting the nomenclature. Religion was intentionally left vague, but the overall structure is implied by clerics and druids.

Dude, there are like srsly like every fantasy aspect makes it problematic in terms of disjointment. Magic-users? What about them? What about their power? Non-human intelligent races? What about them? I mean freaking J.R.R.Tolkien have not made world that is theologically correct so expecting something like this from D&D would be absurd.

And also overall in D&D Law - Chaos axis was originally most important, more important than Good and Evil. Because it was based on dark sword and sorcery books.

QuoteThe devolvement of the cleric into pseudo paganism is likely due to hostility toward Christianity.

Doubt (x).
D&D was from the beginning based mostly on fantasy worlds with various divine and semi-divine powers, godlings, exarchs, and gods. It was rational adjustment of classes to metaphysical descriptions of setting. Greyhawk has multiple pantheons - and it's Gygax's job, not later nasty pagans.

QuoteAs pointed out by Gygax in the DMG, "the gods" are not omniscient and therefore can be wrong. Most "gods" are egotistical and arrogant and believe they are the rulers of men, not the dreams of men. And even if a "god" were to manifest, there is no way for mortals to know if it is a god or a demon masquerading as one. Detection spells can certainly be foiled by more powerful beings, and even a wish cannot countermand the will of a god-like being. The fog of war should ensure that the PCs have no more concrete knowledge of the mysteries of the universe than anyone in the real world, other than the fact that the supernatural is real.

As I understand it, in the Dying Earth series, few people could travel to the Overworlds physically, they could only visit it mentally, see its wonders and siren-like visions, and pretend that they were there. So no concrete reality

Indeed. It's hard to treat adventurer's stories about Outer Planes as revealed strict truth when Outer Planes are MADNESS full of everything, so each story is probably very different from each other.

My solution on squaring my setting's wizards with Catholic theology was to go the Clarke's Law route; wizardry is the application of sufficiently advanced technology that is indistinguishable from magic. It is described as "arcane" in the original sense of the term; obscure and hidden knowledge (in this case the knowledge of how to interact with the global system known as the Arcane Web to produce effects - spells are essentially programs written in the Arcanos language; which is described specifically as a 'programming language').

Thus, wizards are no more theologically unsound than physicists and programmers, with the title of wizard perhaps even being recursive from the way we today refer to highly capable experts in the sciences and programming to be "wizards" extended into a post-apocalyptic world where virtually all of that knowledge is lost, save for what the wizards and arcanists have been able to preserve.

* * * *

As to traveling to the Otherworlds, it's worth noting that in general fantasy, myths and legends, the purpose of those places was largely to be a place set aside from the mundane world of the audience where the fantastic could occur.

Narnia, Elfland/Faerie, the Underworld, etc. (even Middle Earth to an extent in that Tolkien separates it from our present age in some sort of forgotten prehistoric realm before the magic faded) exist as places for mortals to visit and experience the fantastic.

But that fantastic world is the default world of most fantasy RPG settings; you're already IN Elfland/Narnia... so what exactly is the setting purpose of what amounts to Elfland+? If you wish to have stories about interacting with the gods, why not just place a physical Mount Olympus or Asgard or Underworld into your setting to begin with?

That's pretty much the approach I use and why their are no Otherworlds reachable by the living. Instead the Mortal World is home to any fantastic beast or environment you'd find in any Otherworld... while the great mysteries beyond the veil can remain obscured.

Because uncertainty is good for versimultude. It's why I include things that don't quite fit all over the place; ex. the Eldritch are tied to the elements, either pure or in combination (ex. cold=air+water, plant=water+earth, metal=earth+fire, beast=air+earth+fire+water), but the combo of air+fire is missing from the options. Why are there none among the Eldritch? It wasn't an oversight on my part; I deliberately left a void to create a question, because things not quite fitting just feels much more true to life than a world where everything fits into place flawlessly.

Life dangles and the best authors are often those that know which things they can leave dangling a bit because they aren't important to the main story and thereby add to the versimultude of the story as a whole by making the world feel more real.

My best advice for people building a fantasy setting is to first ask "what questions about the setting don't need answers for the setting to work?" and don't answer anything that isn't needed.

At least that's the perspective I'm coming from.

QuoteBecause uncertainty is good for versimultude. It's why I include things that don't quite fit all over the place; ex. the Eldritch are tied to the elements, either pure or in combination (ex. cold=air+water, plant=water+earth, metal=earth+fire, beast=air+earth+fire+water), but the combo of air+fire is missing from the options. Why are there none among the Eldritch? It wasn't an oversight on my part; I deliberately left a void to create a question, because things not quite fitting just feels much more true to life than a world where everything fits into place flawlessly.

Simple answer - all surviving phoenixes seeing sheer fuckery of the setting settled on one remote island they turned into highly isolationistic, xenophobic maoist dictature :3

QuoteAs to traveling to the Otherworlds, it's worth noting that in general fantasy, myths and legends, the purpose of those places was largely to be a place set aside from the mundane world of the audience where the fantastic could occur.

Narnia, Elfland/Faerie, the Underworld, etc. (even Middle Earth to an extent in that Tolkien separates it from our present age in some sort of forgotten prehistoric realm before the magic faded) exist as places for mortals to visit and experience the fantastic.

But that fantastic world is the default world of most fantasy RPG settings; you're already IN Elfland/Narnia... so what exactly is the setting purpose of what amounts to Elfland+? If you wish to have stories about interacting with the gods, why not just place a physical Mount Olympus or Asgard or Underworld into your setting to begin with?

Well that depends what those Otherworlds are I think. I mean Narnia is parallel Prime - you can safely have adventures in Narnia with primal spirits and talking animals, not giving a shit to dimension-hopping shenanigans that brought Men to their side of multiverse. Olympus and Asgard in mythos - not in real religion probably but in mythology that survived seems to be not that mystical places and their inhabitants more Superhumans than DIVINE FORCE.
I mean your world is your mundane but it has a lot of fantastic shit within - so you know - sure you cannot meet Angels easily - oh wait their is whole Vedic Caste Society of those assholes called Elves nowadays. Good luck.

QuoteMy best advice for people building a fantasy setting is to first ask "what questions about the setting don't need answers for the setting to work?" and don't answer anything that isn't needed.

I generally agree but the answer for me is - does Creator of setting knows answers or are those just empty places for sake of mystery. I like secrets being hidden, but for istance Pathfinder frustrated me quite a lot, because I had strong feeling they have no coherent vision what really happened to Aroden.


Now TBH I never had much problem with wizards - sure nowadays it was sort of verified that most of esoteric/occult theories were false, but long time ago in ancient and medieval period many were sort of protoscientists in times when people believed world is not as Fallen as it is, and there is still almost physical link between symbolic realms, platonic ideas and so on and mundane.
So in a very very retro-science way, just make them right - and then their powers does not have to came from pacts with demons or whatever unsavory systems you have in your setting. (I mean it's not strictly using archeotech - more natural properties of the world - natural links between mundane and maybe not fully divine but higher realms in their hierarchies.

I know it can sound theologically unsound from perspective of modern Catholic, but hey morally dubious angels turned into pixies to atone for their sins is also not really top notch angelology...

Some people in Paizo know what happened to Aroden.

Which is probably why it seems disjointed

Well I hope so. For most time it seems like - we just invented mystery for sake of mystery.

Quote from: Wicked Woodpecker of West on February 20, 2021, 05:43:19 PM
Well I hope so. For most time it seems like - we just invented mystery for sake of mystery.

To be fair; I have MY answer to any mystery I deliberately create, but as I explained at a previous point, I prefer presenting GMs with a range of answers so they can pick and choose which they feel is best.

For example, the most mundane answer to where are the air+fire spirits is that air+heat=lightning and are mistaken for as a variety of air elemental (who by default only control wind) by those not up on esoteric Eldritch lore. A more elaborate answer might be that air+heat=radiance and the entire batch decided to take on the role of the Astral Gods for various reasons. A darker answer is that the Demon Emperor Lightbringer was leader of the spirits of radiance and out of loyalty they ALL fell with him becoming demons.

So there ARE answers I've considered, but I leave the definitive one to what the GM thinks will work best for their particular campaign.

QuoteTo be fair; I have MY answer to any mystery I deliberately create, but as I explained at a previous point, I prefer presenting GMs with a range of answers so they can pick and choose which they feel is best.

I get it. It's different thing if you made your setting and by purpose make mysterious things balanced in a way that allows any of basic answers be accepted by other GM as truth, and you put not your objective version up there alone but hidden among many options - I have no doubt answer it there.
With Aroden I'm not so sure. It's not like PAIZO give us 12 possible fates of Aroden for DM's to pick.