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Gwar! wrote:I highly doubt Jesus was Lawful Good. Chaotic Good is a better fit imo.

We wont go into this here, but in D&D strict obedience is Lawful.

Solorg wrote: But if I say, "Zeus, the God of Olympus commands you to go on a quest, then everyone's all like, "Oh, @%$#, better do what he says or he's gonna blast us with lightning, and maybe even turn into a swan and, well, it would be BAD. I mean, you heard what happened to Leta!"

That was a magnificent allusion. We are all more culturally rich for being subtly reminded of Zeus's furry proclivities. Bravo, Sir!

Orlanth wrote:

Gwar! wrote:I highly doubt Jesus was Lawful Good. Chaotic Good is a better fit imo.

We wont go into this here, but in D&D strict obedience is Lawful.

And Jesus was soooo the epitome of Strict Obedience, with his not-flipping-off-the-money-changers-in-the-temple and his general defiant attitude to the Romans. </sarcasm>

Gwar! wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Gwar! wrote:I highly doubt Jesus was Lawful Good. Chaotic Good is a better fit imo.

We wont go into this here, but in D&D strict obedience is Lawful.

And Jesus was soooo the epitome of Strict Obedience, with his not-flipping-off-the-money-changers-in-the-temple and his general defiant attitude to the Romans. </sarcasm>

That's why his alignment audit had such severe consequences.

Solorg wrote:Now here's my take on all of it. If you are a DM, and let's say you are making your own made-up gods and goddesses, yes, you can do that (or use the canned gods in D&D), but the players are going to be all like, "so what?" I mean, it is a name and the god is a total unknown to them unless you take lots of gametime describing them, establishing them, and so on.

But with realworld gods/goddesses, for the DM it is INSTANT RESPECT. If I say Bogo the God of Dance commands you to go on a quest, everyone's all like, "Who the $%&! is Bogo?" But if I say, "Zeus, the God of Olympus commands you to go on a quest, then everyone's all like, "Oh, @%$#, better do what he says or he's gonna blast us with lightning, and maybe even turn into a swan and, well, it would be BAD. I mean, you heard what happened to Leta!"

You get the point here. REAL historical gods are the best.

I have a different perspective on this. First off, I am a Helenic Pagan, which means I actually do follow the Greek gods...I've always found pretending to worship real gods being a bit disrespectful to those gods. In my own campaigns, I've created and used my own pantheon (And included it as a handout to players in my campaign). Works well, as most gods follow certain archetypes across cultures.

Obediance to legitimate authority and just laws, Gwar. Or would you require a Paladin in an orc-run kingdom to respect and obey laws which favored, cruelty, murder, and slavery?

Mannahnin wrote:Obediance to legitimate authority and just laws, Gwar. Or would you require a Paladin in an orc-run kingdom to respect and obey laws which favored, cruelty, murder, and slavery?

Obedience without Question would be Lawful Neutral.

And thus my point about 'alignment' leading to many arguments is supported.

To be honest, one of my issues with D&D, at least when the attempt is made to move beyond simple dungeon crawls and similar, is that 'Detect Evil' is way too convenient and easy. I think for a more realistic setting if I didn't just exclude it I'd crib an optional idea from a White Wolf game (Werewolf, I think) and say that Detect Evil is more about sensing a sort of spiritual residue of evil, such that the victim of a nasty crime might detect as 'evil' until they've gotten over it, and a evil person who is avoiding actual evil acts might get away with it for a while.

Consider that in 2nd edition (3rd too, i think), Paladins can Detect Evil at will.

The idea is that with this they might get led to a situation they should be involved in, but aren't told who to smash without applying some intelligence.

Other 'issues' with D&D include the ease of resurrection, the wonky economy, and a host of edition-specific complaints.

Solorg wrote:Now here's my take on all of it. If you are a DM, and let's say you are making your own made-up gods and goddesses, yes, you can do that (or use the canned gods in D&D), but the players are going to be all like, "so what?" I mean, it is a name and the god is a total unknown to them unless you take lots of gametime describing them, establishing them, and so on.

But with realworld gods/goddesses, for the DM it is INSTANT RESPECT. <snip>You get the point here. REAL historical gods are the best.

I completely agree with this, although for different reasons. It is all about context of your gods. If you don't have context or history for your gaming group, then you can manufacture it with a 'known' property.

Although I don't get along with him anymore, I can say that one of my former friends created a persistent mythos better than anyone. 10 years later, I still have references to them in my games because they create known reactions in my players.

Just as Zeus or Odin trigger certain thoughts for people, for my friends Sherrivus, The Queen of Night, the Labyrinth, etc can be just as powerful. Mannahnin will back me up on that one.

The Deities & Demigods cameo in Freaks & Geeks is the best....

Balance wrote:To be honest, one of my issues with D&D, at least when the attempt is made to move beyond simple dungeon crawls and similar, is that 'Detect Evil' is way too convenient and easy.

This all depends on the DM and how well he handles his campaign. Detect Evil can be broken, but it can also be turned useless. First off - if the party depends on it too much it is *very* easy to put them in a bad situation with some simple alingment detection defensive/alteration magics.

Second off - there are shades of evil. A Lawful Evil moneylender can be law abiding and always work within the legal strictures of his profession and can just take a bit of personal glee in seeing poor people suffer. This doesn't mean the party cleric should smite him or that the party shouldn't be locked up if they act against him. In fact it can be quite fun to have the Lawful Good law enforcement being the ones trying to lock the party up for beating up the legally compliant moneylender.

The Chaotic Evil revolutionary who believes the ends justify the means can be a potentially potent and useful ally in taking down the Lawful Evil monarch who rules all with an iron hand.

One of the best villains I ever put my party against was a Lawful Neutral knight who was brutally oppressing a populace in order to defend them from various threats both real and imagined. He wasn't doing it because he was evil, but what he was doing was certainly trampling on liberties. The party itself actually became a bit divided about how to deal with him - and at that point we're in a great RP situation with some great combats that will come out of it and I could of handed them a wand of detect alignment with infinite charges and it wouldn't have helped the situation.

Chaotic evil does not mean they always need to be drenched in blood and screaming while trying to plant a dagger in your face.
Lawful good doesn't always mean they give a toot about the people suffering in the next town over.

If Detect Evil breaks something it's the fault of the user not the product.

Holy smokes. I loved that book. I chucked most of my D&D stuff a decade ago but hung on to Deities & Demigods. It was the second D&D book I ever owned (the Monster Manual was first). I didn't even play the game yet, I just went through the book over and over. It blew my little mind. Even thirty years later, I bet a shocking amount of what I know about mythology today came from that book. Right or wrong...

As Kyoto's review shows, it also helps when listening to heavy metal albums.

I once granted my party a wand that could make an infinite amount cold, bitter tea.

Irony then struck when it saved their lives when the Cleric became Poisoned and Comatose (Completely by random chance) when they were in the middle of the desert, 3 weeks from the nearest town/oasis and all their provisions having been destroyed by the raiders who caught the Cleric with a Poison Arrow.

Great lulz ensued.

skyth wrote:

Solorg wrote:Now here's my take on all of it. If you are a DM, and let's say you are making your own made-up gods and goddesses, yes, you can do that (or use the canned gods in D&D), but the players are going to be all like, "so what?" I mean, it is a name and the god is a total unknown to them unless you take lots of gametime describing them, establishing them, and so on.

But with realworld gods/goddesses, for the DM it is INSTANT RESPECT. If I say Bogo the God of Dance commands you to go on a quest, everyone's all like, "Who the $%&! is Bogo?" But if I say, "Zeus, the God of Olympus commands you to go on a quest, then everyone's all like, "Oh, @%$#, better do what he says or he's gonna blast us with lightning, and maybe even turn into a swan and, well, it would be BAD. I mean, you heard what happened to Leta!"

You get the point here. REAL historical gods are the best.

I have a different perspective on this. First off, I am a Helenic Pagan, which means I actually do follow the Greek gods...I've always found pretending to worship real gods being a bit disrespectful to those gods. In my own campaigns, I've created and used my own pantheon (And included it as a handout to players in my campaign). Works well, as most gods follow certain archetypes across cultures.

One of my players is Pagan (though he favours the Norse mythology). All I can say about respect is that, to me, it does depend on how the god / goddess is handled in-game. Well, I'll give you an example. Let's say I am producing a novel or movie which is fictional, but which includes the Christian God or maybe instead a Pagan god in connection with the plot. The story itself need not be disrespectful at all. If anything, done correctly, it can be homage.

Most importantly, though, it isn't cool to allow players to badmouth or show disrespect toward another player's religion - whether it is while roleplaying or otherwise. I mean, that's just common politeness.

Gwar! wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:Obediance to legitimate authority and just laws, Gwar. Or would you require a Paladin in an orc-run kingdom to respect and obey laws which favored, cruelty, murder, and slavery?

Obedience without Question would be Lawful Neutral.

It might be, if you didn't understand and/or agree with the reasoning for the instructions. But if you did, and there were a good reason...

pretre wrote:

Solorg wrote:Now here's my take on all of it. If you are a DM, and let's say you are making your own made-up gods and goddesses, yes, you can do that (or use the canned gods in D&D), but the players are going to be all like, "so what?" I mean, it is a name and the god is a total unknown to them unless you take lots of gametime describing them, establishing them, and so on.

But with realworld gods/goddesses, for the DM it is INSTANT RESPECT. <snip>You get the point here. REAL historical gods are the best.

I completely agree with this, although for different reasons. It is all about context of your gods. If you don't have context or history for your gaming group, then you can manufacture it with a 'known' property.

Although I don't get along with him anymore, I can say that one of my former friends created a persistent mythos better than anyone. 10 years later, I still have references to them in my games because they create known reactions in my players.

Just as Zeus or Odin trigger certain thoughts for people, for my friends Sherrivus, The Queen of Night, the Labyrinth, etc can be just as powerful. Mannahnin will back me up on that one.

Yes indeed. Bad mojo, all three.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hubcap wrote:Holy smokes. I loved that book. I chucked most of my D&D stuff a decade ago but hung on to Deities & Demigods. It was the second D&D book I ever owned (the Monster Manual was first). I didn't even play the game yet, I just went through the book over and over. It blew my little mind. Even thirty years later, I bet a shocking amount of what I know about mythology today came from that book. Right or wrong...

As Kyoto's review shows, it also helps when listening to heavy metal albums.

Hubcap! Great gods of Dakka (or at least patron saints)!

Gwar! wrote:

Orlanth wrote:

Gwar! wrote:I highly doubt Jesus was Lawful Good. Chaotic Good is a better fit imo.

We wont go into this here, but in D&D strict obedience is Lawful.

And Jesus was soooo the epitome of Strict Obedience, with his not-flipping-off-the-money-changers-in-the-temple and his general defiant attitude to the Romans. </sarcasm>

I didnt want to get into theology here, and am not offended by Kid Kyotos post but I do suggest you get educated before you start talking about hot topics.

Well you are half right in that he did 'flip off' the moneychangers in the temple (but missed the motive), but you are wrong about Jesus' attitude towards the Romans (and still missed the motive). Anyone educated on the topic, even an atheist with no sympathy to the church would not let you get away with that one, Jesus plainly had no beef with the Romans, quite contrary in fact! This would be obvious with any theological knowledge on Christianity whatsoever, even if you used an atheist text as your source.


In what he did do he was both Lawful and good.

I dont think anyone can claim Jesus had a non good alignment allowing for what he stood for and did. The lawful requires a bit of thought as He did disobey the laws such as sabbaths etc, but while holding to the greater law in detail. I think this is why he might be considered Neutral Good, but does ignoring the petty laws in favour of a greater good entail a chaotic tendency. I argue that the motives were still very Lawful and if not would not oershadow other Laweful rtendencies enough to force an alignment change

Well obviously Jeebus Rice was not meant to be a commentary on Jesus or Christianity, it's a parody of AD&D, my spoof of how they looked at deities (some fictional, some mythical, some still worshiped) and distilled some truly odd and entertaining stats out of them.

Now that I think about it Jeebus should be able to use his powers against demons and undead, oh well.

And now I'm thinking of Bloodquest, the Quest for Blood next which, dumb name aside was actually fairly decent.

Hubcap! Great gods of Dakka (or at least patron saints)!

Alignment: Chaotic Lazy

Now that I think about it Jeebus should be able to use his powers against demons and undead, oh well.

He can also use his Side Hug attack to foil demons of lust.

Well, it confirms what I've always suspected - that D&D is definitely a Gateway Game to Christianity, especially when you add NPCs like Jeebus. Clerics with their "Holy Symbols" (crosses thinly disguised) and Christian-Like miracles (Create Food and Water, Part Water, etc) really hammer down this point.

But you know, it is up to the DM in the end how far he wants to go with this sort of thing, and in all cases, definitely it is best to keep respect for religion in mind when running a game and to remember that YOU ARE NOT YOUR CHARACTER!

Well, that's all. Peace,

Solorg

Solorg wrote:Well, it confirms what I've always suspected - that D&D is definitely a Gateway Game to Christianity, especially when you add NPCs like Jeebus. Clerics with their "Holy Symbols" (crosses thinly disguised) and Christian-Like miracles (Create Food and Water, Part Water, etc) really hammer down this point.

No kidding at all! Actually, in the original D&D little brown booklets, and in the first "Basic D&D" set, the Holmes-edited one, the equipment list included wooden and silver crosses, rather than generic "holy symbols". The original cleric was envisioned as a cross between a templar knight and a van-helsing style vampire hunter from the 60s and 70s movies. Dave Arneson created them for his game because he had a player with a vampire character (Sir Fang) who was getting out of hand.

True story.

The things you know!

Still, that is a rather funny story - I love hearing about where a lot of these things came from...

Mannahnin wrote:

Solorg wrote:Well, it confirms what I've always suspected - that D&D is definitely a Gateway Game to Christianity, especially when you add NPCs like Jeebus. Clerics with their "Holy Symbols" (crosses thinly disguised) and Christian-Like miracles (Create Food and Water, Part Water, etc) really hammer down this point.

No kidding at all! Actually, in the original D&D little brown booklets, and in the first "Basic D&D" set, the Holmes-edited one, the equipment list included wooden and silver crosses, rather than generic "holy symbols". The original cleric was envisioned as a cross between a templar knight and a van-helsing style vampire hunter from the 60s and 70s movies. Dave Arneson created them for his game because he had a player with a vampire character (Sir Fang) who was getting out of hand.

True story.

The cleric spells are very heavily based on accounts of miracles in the Judeo-Christian faith. Part water, lower water, water walking, create food and drink, flame strike, raise dead, cure blindness, sticks to snakes etc. I dont recall Jesus, Moses or Elijah summoning a blade barrier though. Priestly powers of other pantheons, scriptures or mythologies hardly get a look in.

Orlanth wrote:Priestly powers of other pantheons, scriptures or mythologies hardly get a look in.

Augury, Speak with Dead, Protection from Evil, Exorcise, Wind Walk... I dunno - I see solid evidence for Norse, Chinese, Mesopotamian, Japanese, and Egyptian pantheons and once you work in Druid spells Native American myths as well. What do you think they're missing to represent other religions?

Orlanth wrote:

Mannahnin wrote:

Solorg wrote:Well, it confirms what I've always suspected - that D&D is definitely a Gateway Game to Christianity, especially when you add NPCs like Jeebus. Clerics with their "Holy Symbols" (crosses thinly disguised) and Christian-Like miracles (Create Food and Water, Part Water, etc) really hammer down this point.

No kidding at all! Actually, in the original D&D little brown booklets, and in the first "Basic D&D" set, the Holmes-edited one, the equipment list included wooden and silver crosses, rather than generic "holy symbols". The original cleric was envisioned as a cross between a templar knight and a van-helsing style vampire hunter from the 60s and 70s movies. Dave Arneson created them for his game because he had a player with a vampire character (Sir Fang) who was getting out of hand.

True story.

The cleric spells are very heavily based on accounts of miracles in the Judeo-Christian faith. Part water, lower water, water walking, create food and drink, flame strike, raise dead, cure blindness, sticks to snakes etc. I dont recall Jesus, Moses or Elijah summoning a blade barrier though.

Leaving aside the question of other pantheons, I was agreeing entirely that they drew on accounts of Biblical miracles for a lot of the clerical spells. As for Blade Barrier, I've generally heard that sourced to the sword mentioned in Genesis 3:24, the description of which is (so I understand) translated variously as "moving to and fro" "flashing" "fiery" "whirling around" or "turning itself around" to guard the way. Blade barrier also describes the blades as "circling" "whirling" and "flashing".

I bought the original book when it first came out...yeah I am that old. The book was pulled from sale as they did not have the rights and publishing stopped. They then printed the book without the fritz leiber, michael moorcock and HP Lovecraft copyright materials. Within 3 weeks of my local bookstore getting the original in the new version without those three was on the shelf and my best friend was pissed he did not have the same info as me! I still have my original copy and it is still in excellent condition. It's what happens when the publisher has a good idea but forgets the legal ramifications of getting permission to use the material.

I know I shouldn't but thanks for the necro! Wouldn't have got to read this great retro review otherwise.

Well it was highlighted on the Dakka homepage. You cant blame people for necroing threads if Dakka itself brings them back ti light.

Besides the amount of times I have made a comment on a picture of a miniature only to find that it was painted a decade ago and nobody had commented in that time. But again, images get reviewed on the homepage too.

great thread though, Kid Kyoto really comes through on these types of threads, always a pleasure.

A pleasure to read through but...

Holy threadcromancy!

It's cool, the thread was just sleeping. That is not dead which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.

 Orlanth wrote:
Well it was highlighted on the Dakka homepage. You cant blame people for necroing threads if Dakka itself brings them back ti light.

Besides the amount of times I have made a comment on a picture of a miniature only to find that it was painted a decade ago and nobody had commented in that time. But again, images get reviewed on the homepage too.

great thread though, Kid Kyoto really comes through on these types of threads, always a pleasure.

Thanks! This was one of my favorites to do.

Besides, how can you necro a thread about immortals