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

[Queer Venger]

None of yours would make my top 5.

religion is such an intimate thing

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I dunno, I think that a lot of this is structural to the Realms as a setting for the genre of heroes stopping a world ending event.
D&D has never had a particularly coherent theogony. It has always been a pastiche. It makes, writing in gods into a given story difficult and it is easier to keep them as peripheral as possible.

Yeah pretty much all REEs (Realms ending events) involve the gods being absolute divots or just totally unhelpful, because they kind of necessarily have to, because if the gods weren't being divots, they might have raised a finger to help, or indeed, just stopped things before they got bad. It's like, the bad gods are directly involved, but the good ones? Too busy doing their best impression of Hedonismbot from Futurama to do a damn thing.

And on a related tangent: Having half the companions be Faithless in a setting where eternal prosperity is -super- easy to achieve seems silly, too.

Nah.

The gods in the FR are monstrous blackmailing jerks. And that's the good guys. Being "Faithless" means you actually have a spine and moral compass, unlike anyone who is following the gods for the sake of the afterlife. Or the gods themselves, who are almost entirely moral-compass-free.

Anyway. Yeah. Only Selune is kind of a positive example of divinity in the setting through Aylin and Isobel. And even then it's only 'cause she's pampering her daughter and her daughter's wife.

Big sign: "WELCOME TO THE FORGOTTEN REALMS"

Seriously though this is how the FR has been operating for the last 40 years.

The god are horrible twerps who play favourites and and absolutely never help when they're actually needed, and in fact precipitate or even intentionally cause half the crises that mortals are supposed to be dealing with, and from like, 1993 to about 2023, so the vast majority of the time the FR existed, we also had the Wall of the Faithless* which is one of the most undeniably ultra-Evil (very much with a capital E) things ever devised in fantasy, and yet all the gods, including the Good and Neutral ones, were supposedly completely on-board with. The whole thing is because we've had a car crash between Ed Greenwood's ideas, which are basically him wanting Greek mythology-style gods who people were supposed to inexplicably like, rather than have contempt for**, later author ideas (and not much later either), who were unable to conceive of non-coercive/punishment-based religions having worshippers, so added in a specific punishment, and more recent retcons to try and make the gods more distant and vague because the former two approached seemed (and were!) deeply messed-up.

* = Has that even been confirmed as going away or have WotC just so profoundly gone silent about it that we assume it's gone?
** = The vibe I get from Greenwood's own writings is that people sort of see the gods as like, crazy/eccentric uncles and aunts who are "okay really", and I think that's because how he sees them, but it's implausible that the people of the FR would see them that way based on their actual activities, priesthoods, and so on.

 

[hgjertsen]

Yeah pretty much all REEs (Realms ending events) involve the gods being absolute divots or just totally unhelpful, because they kind of necessarily have to, because if the gods weren't being divots, they might have raised a finger to help, or indeed, just stopped things before they got bad. It's like, the bad gods are directly involved, but the good ones? Too busy doing their best impression of Hedonismbot from Futurama to do a damn thing.

Nah.

The gods in the FR are monstrous blackmailing jerks. And that's the good guys. Being "Faithless" means you actually have a spine and moral compass, unlike anyone who is following the gods for the sake of the afterlife. Or the gods themselves, who are almost entirely moral-compass-free.

Big sign: "WELCOME TO THE FORGOTTEN REALMS"

Seriously though this is how the FR has been operating for the last 40 years.

The god are horrible twerps who play favourites and and absolutely never help when they're actually needed, and in fact precipitate or even intentionally cause half the crises that mortals are supposed to be dealing with, and from like, 1993 to about 2023, so the vast majority of the time the FR existed, we also had the Wall of the Faithless* which is one of the most undeniably ultra-Evil (very much with a capital E) things ever devised in fantasy, and yet all the gods, including the Good and Neutral ones, were supposedly completely on-board with. The whole thing is because we've had a car crash between Ed Greenwood's ideas, which are basically him wanting Greek mythology-style gods who people were supposed to inexplicably like, rather than have contempt for**, later author ideas (and not much later either), who were unable to conceive of non-coercive/punishment-based religions having worshippers, so added in a specific punishment, and more recent retcons to try and make the gods more distant and vague because the former two approached seemed (and were!) deeply messed-up.

* = Has that even been confirmed as going away or have WotC just so profoundly gone silent about it that we assume it's gone?
** = The vibe I get from Greenwood's own writings is that people sort of see the gods as like, crazy/eccentric uncles and aunts who are "okay really", and I think that's because how he sees them, but it's implausible that the people of the FR would see them that way based on their actual activities, priesthoods, and so on.

I definitely get a Greek mythology vibe from the gods of the Forgotten Realms, but I think having any Gods in your setting which are just inarguably real is always going to be messy even if they aren't wacky loose pantheon deities who are little more than humans with an absurd level of power and the inability to die of natural causes.

If the Gods truly and inarguably exist in your setting, there's no real out for them or their worshipers unless you scale down their power level significantly. I don't think you can have your cake (nigh-omnipotent deities) and eat it too (have them be extortionists) unless you want basically anyone with a head on their shoulders to hate them.

 

[Shardstone]

The FR's afterlife makes absolutely no sense unless you take a Bleach-esque spin on it (the anime, not the liquid). This is becauase dying doesn't actually mean you're dead and, in most cases, a mortal soul transforms into a more powerful soul that gets everything it ever wanted under a god of its choice. In reality, most adventurers in the multiverse should be the dead, who are fully self-actualized in the direct presence of their god and have more power and knowledge then they ever did in their moral life. Wizards most of all should become these hyper-competent Indiana Jones-style adventurers since now they have an entire afterlife to learn every spell ever and get to 20th level (and beyond, since they're like an arcane angel or some naughty word now).

And if the above is possible, then what hope does a Prime Material Plane have? There are more people that have died then that have lived; there should be armies of 20th level Planescape Afterlife souls with anywhere from decades to literally billions of years worth of knowledge per soul. The afterlife would essentially conquer the Prime Material Plane. Yet, instead, everyone stays in freakin' Elysium or something singing and dancing and completely ignoring the extremely powerful position they've just been put in.

 

[Steampunkette]

I wonder what y'all'd think of the deities I've got lined up for the Sunset Riders setting...

Liberty, Justice, Prosperity, Unity, and Truth as manifest virtues who spend all their time protecting the world from horrors in the outer dark. Their religion teaches morality as the best way to live your life and after you perish you go to them in the afterlife. Once there, they use the power of your soul to help protect the world 'til you're almost spent... then reincarnate you back onto the planet to live and grow once more. During the time in the afterlife you're surrounded in leisure and comfort until it's time to go back. Lather, rinse, repeat. Being moral strengthens your soul so you've got more juice in the afterlife and it takes longer before you have to be reincarnated.

But then there's Glory. Former virtue turned vice. Her divine realm now the setting's Hell. Her devils make deals to secure souls for her to use to protect the world, and she uses them up -entirely- in order to protect the world. No reincarnation, you're just -gone- forever.

Two other religions exist in the setting in the form of an animism religion that seeks to create more souls by having mortals invest souls into animals, plants, and geographic features, and an ancestor/folk hero religion which makes some souls way stronger even if they're -already- in the afterlife.

Because all the setting's spiritual entities are in the same battle against the monsters in the outer dark. They just go about fighting it in different ways.

(Worth noting, only the highest people in the church of Virtue know the truth of reincarnation and don't tell anyone. The animists teach it as a part of their doctrine, and the folk-hero/ancestor worshippers don't know it's what happens)

 

[Shardstone]

Yeah pretty much all REEs (Realms ending events) involve the gods being absolute divots or just totally unhelpful, because they kind of necessarily have to, because if the gods weren't being divots, they might have raised a finger to help, or indeed, just stopped things before they got bad. It's like, the bad gods are directly involved, but the good ones? Too busy doing their best impression of Hedonismbot from Futurama to do a damn thing.

Nah.

The gods in the FR are monstrous blackmailing jerks. And that's the good guys. Being "Faithless" means you actually have a spine and moral compass, unlike anyone who is following the gods for the sake of the afterlife. Or the gods themselves, who are almost entirely moral-compass-free.

Big sign: "WELCOME TO THE FORGOTTEN REALMS"

Seriously though this is how the FR has been operating for the last 40 years.

The god are horrible twerps who play favourites and and absolutely never help when they're actually needed, and in fact precipitate or even intentionally cause half the crises that mortals are supposed to be dealing with, and from like, 1993 to about 2023, so the vast majority of the time the FR existed, we also had the Wall of the Faithless* which is one of the most undeniably ultra-Evil (very much with a capital E) things ever devised in fantasy, and yet all the gods, including the Good and Neutral ones, were supposedly completely on-board with. The whole thing is because we've had a car crash between Ed Greenwood's ideas, which are basically him wanting Greek mythology-style gods who people were supposed to inexplicably like, rather than have contempt for**, later author ideas (and not much later either), who were unable to conceive of non-coercive/punishment-based religions having worshippers, so added in a specific punishment, and more recent retcons to try and make the gods more distant and vague because the former two approached seemed (and were!) deeply messed-up.

* = Has that even been confirmed as going away or have WotC just so profoundly gone silent about it that we assume it's gone?
** = The vibe I get from Greenwood's own writings is that people sort of see the gods as like, crazy/eccentric uncles and aunts who are "okay really", and I think that's because how he sees them, but it's implausible that the people of the FR would see them that way based on their actual activities, priesthoods, and so on.

I would love to run a setting where the FR Gods are very Greek, in the sense that they are hedonistic and their desires have them trampling over Faerun. TBH that's also pretty Hindi in a lot of ways (and other religion the more I think about it). Then mix it up with Elden Ring's idea of outer gods, which are star personifications of forces like Destined Death, Scarlet Rot etc to give the Gods a level of unknowability and celestial eldritchness. I think this would be an unironically top-tier setting.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Thankfully BG3 doesn't have alignment, so we don't need to pretend that any of the gods of Forgotten Realms are good. Like noted, they are extortionists, and it is morally right and courageous choice to oppose them as long as the Wall of the Faithless stands.

 

[Shardstone]

I wonder what y'all'd think of the deities I've got lined up for the Sunset Riders setting...

Liberty, Justice, Prosperity, Unity, and Truth as manifest virtues who spend all their time protecting the world from horrors in the outer dark. Their religion teaches morality as the best way to live your life and after you perish you go to them in the afterlife. Once there, they use the power of your soul to help protect the world 'til you're almost spent... then reincarnate you back onto the planet to live and grow once more. During the time in the afterlife you're surrounded in leisure and comfort until it's time to go back. Lather, rinse, repeat. Being moral strengthens your soul so you've got more juice in the afterlife and it takes longer before you have to be reincarnated.

But then there's Glory. Former virtue turned vice. Her divine realm now the setting's Hell. Her devils make deals to secure souls for her to use to protect the world, and she uses them up -entirely- in order to protect the world. No reincarnation, you're just -gone- forever.

Two other religions exist in the setting in the form of an animism religion that seeks to create more souls by having mortals invest souls into animals, plants, and geographic features, and an ancestor/folk hero religion which makes some souls way stronger even if they're -already- in the afterlife.

Because all the setting's spiritual entities are in the same battle against the monsters in the outer dark. They just go about fighting it in different ways.

(Worth noting, only the highest people in the church of Virtue know the truth of reincarnation and don't tell anyone. The animists teach it as a part of their doctrine, and the folk-hero/ancestor worshippers don't know it's what happens)

This is very pre-Colombian Mesoamerican, specifically a Mexica adjacent belief. Essentially, when warriors were sacrificed, they became celestial hummingbirds that fought against the stars alongside the sun god Hummingbird Father.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I would love to run a setting where the FR Gods are very Greek, in the sense that they are hedonistic and their desires have them trampling over Faerun. TBH that's also pretty Hindi in a lot of ways (and other religion the more I think about it). Then mix it up with Elden Ring's idea of outer gods, which are star personifications of forces like Destined Death, Scarlet Rot etc to give the Gods a level of unknowability and celestial eldritchness. I think this would be an unironically top-tier setting.

I think handled well, by a thoughtful, modern author - or even someone like Zeb Cook, back in the day, who had the mind for that - that could be extremely awesome though you'd never get the PCs to be aligned with the gods or worshipping them unless they were handing out some serious goodies to their followers. They also work a little better in a grimdark world (like Souls/Ring) where any hope, no matter how ridiculous or disturbed the person offering it is, seems a bit more like something people would buy into.

I think we're still not really at the point where influence on TT RPGs from Dark Souls and particularly Elden Ring has fully kicked in, we're still in the early stages, but I am kind of looking forwards to when it's really foot to the floor Elden Rings vibes for a while which I think will eventually happen.

 

[Shardstone]

I think handled well, by a thoughtful, modern author - or even someone like Zeb Cook, back in the day, who had the mind for that - that could be extremely awesome though you'd never get the PCs to be aligned with the gods or worshipping them unless they were handing out some serious goodies to their followers. They also work a little better in a grimdark world (like Souls/Ring) where any hope, no matter how ridiculous or disturbed the person offering it is, seems a bit more like something people would buy into.

I think we're still not really at the point where influence on TT RPGs from Dark Souls and particularly Elden Ring has fully kicked in, we're still in the early stages, but I am kind of looking forwards to when it's really foot to the floor Elden Rings vibes for a while which I think will eventually happen.

I'm seeing the impact of Elden Ring in game design slowly, but not on a large scale. I think once the DLC drops + 2 years from now, Elden Ring's significance in all gaming spheres will be more apparent.

I think the FR gods should most def be giving out serious goodies to their highest followers, to entice others. I don't think we need to go full dark fantasy for this to work, but it is a significantly more "adult" world, even as it becomes more mythic, and just as Queen Marika in ER is all about politics, so too would the FR Gods become the centers of great political stories.

Lolth's propaganda must be insane. Only outmatched by the "LG" gods who succeeded in bribing the world into worship.