I have a peeve with D&D, specifically the default D&D cosmology. It manages to be simultaneously too bland and too detailed.
It’s so uninspired that you’d rather do something different as a DM, but it’s also so codified that the only real way for you to do something different is to have the courage to toss the entire thing away and tell your players that your world doesn’t work by the default cosmology.
So, on one hand, the DMG is keen on the idea that it’s your world and the only limit is your imagination, but on the other hand, recently Wizards has been heavily peddling the idea that there’s only one D&D multiverse (so it can sell D&D/MtG crossovers), and it puts heavy pressure on homebrew settings to be part of the same bland, mechanical, design-by-committee crap, as well as give players and DMs the knowledge that Drizzt and Elminster and their ilk are out there somewhere in your cosmos and can theoretically reach your hometown with a frigging 7th-level spell.
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I get this.
I did however take the work load and discarded the entire thing, sort of.
I left room in there to make it a “in ye olden days people believed this!” so if a player doesn’t grasp the entire homebrew setting I can set them up with “a forgotten god” or similar to ease them into it.
Where is the majority of horde RP happening and will I have to buy shadowlands to do it (please god I hope not) I’m tired of seeing the Quality of Argent Dawn in Orgrimmar tbh.
It happens in guilds as far as I am aware.
and few if any RP in the shadowland zones… so no I don’t think you will.
Guilds, no? At least that’s what I heard last time someone asked the same question.
DNDs default cosmology is weird in that it’s ostensibly polytheistic but if you pick at it theologically its basically just Calvinism and there’s none of the weird cool stuff and layers of traditions from different sources you get with actual polytheism.
This is why you either make your own setting or you just roll with how goofy it is and play spelljammer.
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Case in point, the complete difference in tone between these two images:
https://i.imgur.com/cyuT04I.png
https://i.imgur.com/xO0QpeX.png
“It’s your world! Feel free to create a setting where the standard assumptions of D&D just aren’t true. Oh, except for this entire checklist of things that your D&D campaign requires. You absolutely have to have those.”
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I mean if you take the books as rules rather than guidelines
in my case, my world see no difference between celestials, fiends and devils, they are all outsiders.
being fair - you can fairly effectively answer “dunno” to most of the cosmology questions if you like and only actually care about them if one of your players really wants an answer
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Some stuff is more christian than others, then there are old gods of our world rebranded or just literally relocated to fantasy land all stuffed into a niche. Other gods get the kitchen sink treatment to fill a role and others get a stupidly broad yet stupidly narrow portfolio.
In forgotten realms, at least, it’s all ultimately goverened by Alpha and Omega who only gives a damn if one of the lesser gods does something they shouldn’t. It’s also a setting incredibly opposed to and punishing of atheism and misotheism. Partly because faith is god fuel.
Akachi did nothing wrong.
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to be an actual god denier in DnD base setting is a pretty strong feat of character, what with all the proof shoved in your face all the time.
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I love Peon RPers. They’re always the best.
There is this one guy who used to walk around in Orgrimmar in old world Stormwind armor pretending to be a hero. I don’t remembre his name but he was wonderful.
My blood elf gal likes to talk to peons like one might view a puppy. It’s fun.
I don’t know why but there’s just something inherently hilarious about dumb Orcs.
I feel like it would be less denying them so much as consciously refusing to give them your piety, and thus your strength, wanting to sit on your own merit (but isn’t there a god of that too lmao D&D’s cosmology is so restrictive)
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Ah, I see you are a person of culture as well.
(Also, I agree. Kaelyn did nothing wrong, either.)
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My favourite RPG religion schtick is the God Learners from Glorantha. Why of course in setting where gods and magic are evidently real someone would create a unified theory of mythology and start using it to try and rules lawyer their way into ruling the world.
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You make a point
and I realize I have made a few characters with that mind set
most noticeably a goblin whos action started a minor war between Tiamat and Maglubiyet
which didn’t impact the story overall, it was just fun that it was happening off screen.
Clumsily put, but yeah. Outright lack of belief is peculiar but simply refusing to kneel to any altar and detach from it all is actively punished which is messed up.
I just don’t think the difference is that big
Yeah you got a bunch of abilities at once but most of them explain themselves quite well and it’s not that hard to figure out how they fit together (+ the expansion jobs are almost all easier to play than the jobs that start at 1)
In any case, they did make the Reaper and Sage npcs tell you how to play the job during the first duty so I imagine that’s the model going forward
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