James "Calling Jack Chick" Wyatt

[shadzar]

Gods and Pantheons
By James Wyatt

. http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx ... d/20140219 .

I was a religion major in college and have a seminary degree, so for a long time I wished that D&D had a more realistic depiction of religious life.

(see 1980s)

I seriously think James had never heard of D&D until after WotC bought T$R. "real religion" is something D&D does NOT want nor need.

[silva]

"real religion" is something D&D does NOT want nor need.

Why do you say that, Shad ? Care to elaborate ?

[Grek]

Excellent quote mining there, 10/10. But let's see the context:

I was a religion major in college and have a seminary degree, so for a long time I wished that D&D had a more realistic depiction of religious life. Polytheistic religions are complicated things, and in the real world they're not about choosing one deity to follow from among a fixed group. And when I started working at Wizards of the Coast, I finally had a chance to do something about it. The 3rd Edition Deities and Demigods includes some sections that at least begin to address the variety of religious experience and expression.

As it turns out, Wyatt's theology degree is totally relevant to the matter at hand, because it lets him say with authority what we've all been thinking: treating D&D religion like monotheism is really really dumb and treating it like implicitly Christian monotheism is even more dumb. Putting a section in the DMG's religion chapter written by an actual religion major about how polytheism and monotheism are different things and what that means for your game seems like a really good idea.

[shadzar]

But he is still wrong. Troy worshiped mainly Apollo, Athena (or was it Zues?) was the one placed in the Parthenon. Not all gods were worshiped at the same time, though all were revered.

Egypt on the other hands worshiped all the gods all the time, but then the Pharaoh was a living god, so he was worshiped first and told everyone else when to worship the rest.

Even today we follow the Greek/Roman method, where the world has many gods throughout, but most only worship one, if any.

So D&D has had it right all along wherein the Pagan gods have sects of worshipers on the whole. Gary screwed up by tying too closely to Christianity, yes. But that is why real world current religions should not be duplicated. Remember 2nd edition renamed demons and devils to prevent this bible-thumpers from going all Westboro Baptist stupid?

D&D should be what the PLAYERS want it to be for their world. it is NOT for James to say or to teach theology through the game. It should be where the game referes to other sources for people to learn about religions IF they want or need more information, not James forcing his chosen religion down people's throats, nor his beliefs. Be they in actual religious that are right or wrong, or what he thinks of types of religious views.

If they are divorcing alignment from so much that you don't have to fight over what evil or good is, then why turn the opposite view and try to define something that goes into that fight again? This article is his personal crusade and that is it.

The game just needs to say that gods exist, as many or as few as you want in the world for your group to play with them. Here are some examples: ~~~~~~. Choose how you want to use any or no gods at all.

[silva]

While I generally agree with your point, I dont see any problem in the author trying to give a more detailed support on how ancient religions were supposed to function. Specially when its a totally optional thing that the group can adopt or discard as they see fit.

[Grek]

I really really don't get what shadzar is talking about. Wyatt is a Methodist Minister. Him telling people that that polytheistic religions are a thing they might want to include in their game is pretty much the opposite of him forcing his chosen religion down people's throats.

[TiaC]

Shadzar's hatred for DnD Next is completely irrational at this point. He reminds me of those guys who seek acceptance into a group by echoing other people's positions without understanding them at all. Whenever a new article goes up, he bitches about some imagined flaw.

[shadzar]

While I generally agree with your point, I dont see any problem in the author trying to give a more detailed support on how ancient religions were supposed to function. Specially when its a totally optional thing that the group can adopt or discard as they see fit.

one problem is that is doesn't belong in the DMG, as D&D isnt a game about gods and religion, these were added later as an afterthought, and all things that get added later, should come in supplements, not the core.

sure people will complain about having to buy another book, but when they have to pay less for the DMG because it isnt cluttered with shit they don't need, then that extra purchase isnt so bad.

assume someone wanting to paly Dragonlance or Realms as the setting is written out. do they need this waste of space in the DMG? Does someone wanting to play in a generic D&D world with no gods defined need this wasted space in the DMG?

like i just said in the other thread, the Gygaxian levels of shit shoved into the books to compensate for what belongs in a splat book on the subject is what is most stupid. not everyone wants Wyatts views or ideas, and those who do should be able to choose to buy them, but those who don't need to be free of them. this goes for all his religious wankery from gods and pantheons, to cosmology. none of it belongs in the core books. this isnt WoD where they is ONE religious concept and belief system, but D&D is about making your own world with or without such things.

this is why Deities and Demigods, Legends and Lore, Faith and Avatars, etc exist as separate books, because there really isnt enough room in a DMG for all that needs to be said about it as it CAN and WILL fill a whole damn book!

[deaddmwalking]

What, specifically, did they say would be included in the DMG that you object to?

It sounds like if their default assumption is that 'every campaign has different deities and they work in different ways', the bit about deities included in the core will be necessarily small.

How small?

In 3.0 PHB it was barely 2 pages. Each deity got less than a paragraph.

[Lago PARANOIA]

To be absolutely fair to shadzar, after the Book of Exalted Christian Furries debacle James Wyatt should not be allowed to write in anything involving religion. Ever. So without unfucking shadzar's quote mine nor reading the original link, I'm going to say that I 100% agree with him.

[shadzar]

In 3.0 PHB it was barely 2 pages. Each deity got less than a paragraph.

1E PHB/DMG page count for deities: 0 (monsters with stats like Orcus are mosnters.)

2E PHB/DMG page count for deities: 0

they do not belong AT ALL in the core. there should be NO CORE SETTING. thus D&D can become anything to anyone from use only with bronze age weaponry all the way up to firearms with flint/wheel-locks.

keep the fucking setting related shit OUT of the core. this is D&D, now WoD/etc. it doesnt need a core setting or other shit, it needs to be mutable and unconnected to specific worlds.

i know i have explained to you before how Greyhawk was so generic that it didn't even exist in AD&D except in spell names, Mystara was an afterthought to BD&D, etc. Why WotC thinks if can do better in the 13 years of (4) dead editions it has put out than the 24 years of (3) edition TSR put out, is beyond me.

the REAL problem is that James Wyatt is a fucking moron and his level of hackitude is on par with Uwe Boll for competency in writing ANYTHING decent. so he basically should just not be let near anything that takes creativity to do, because he isnt. James is a penguin just regurgitating shit other people have done and doesnt even know if the ideas are good or not. he has no place in RPGs, let alone making decisions on what OTHER PEOPLE will like.

James is to D&D what Stuart Baird is to Star Trek movies.

When asked to direct a Star Trek movie I have never seen Star Trek before, but was sure I would be able to make one everyone would love.

Star Trek: Nemesis, last Star Trek after @40 years before rebooting the franchise to be something other than what Roddenbury had created. Now Star Trek is just 90210 in SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE, but without Luke Perry.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

All 3e has that 2e doesn't have is a small collection of deities and I believe one obliqie reference to the Free City of Greyhawk, plus one race that existed in previous editions but wasn't in the core, one class that existed in other editions but hasn't been in the core since 1e, and one wholly new class. Most of the Greyhawk gods are absent. All of the continents, nations and other marks of geography are absent. Greyhawk is so sparsely mentioned as to be nonexistant, and no other cities are listed.

Setting information that is carried over from previous editions is:
[*] All of the races, despite the fact a GM should be able to declare what races do and don't exist in the setting
[*] All of the classes, despite that classes are largely social tropes and the GM should be able to declare the prominent approaches to adventuring in his campagin.
[*] Almost all of the spells, give-or-take, despite the fact that the world around it should define how spells are distributed, possibly to the point of determining what level spells are
[**] All of the spells created by iconic wizards in previous editions, despite the fact that Bigby, Modenkainen, and the others more than likely didn't exist in your world.
[*] Almost all of the monsters, give-or-take, creating expectations in players for how things like Werewolves and Trolls and Zombies behave regardless of how the GM thinks they should behave.
[**] Iconic, more-or-less unique-to-D&D monsters like the Illithid, which the GM may not want to use in the first place.

Add all of this stuff together and you have a bland, barely-defined setting where the GM is still doing most of the heavy lifting in defining the game world, but it still does so by taking decisions out of the hands of the GM.

But it does so for a reason, and here's the important part: Take away all that stuff above and you've been left with just about nothing. Certainly not enough to write a game system with and have it make any goddamned sense whatsoever. Every game has a default setting, EVERY GAME[/i] because you need an example world to show how the rules interact with any fucking things whatsoever.

And yes, every DM/GM/Storyteller/Referee/Whatever has the right to scratchbuild their own setting, but that is not some sort of fucking revolutionary notion like you seem to assume it is. Fuck, every World of Darkness line has a page somewhere that suggests how you can turn the game on it's ear by putting it in another point in time, or even an alternate world where things don't work the way they do in the mainstream game!

Gaming is a tinkerer's hobby. Creating a light set of basic, easily overwritable set of assumptions will not automatically obligate anyone to go along with them if they don't want to.

Then again, what can you expect when someone is so brickheadedly ingrained in their own ways that they see arguing from a place of ignorance as something that makes them MORE right and not a laughable idiot? Don't want to sully ourselves with information that might shake our beliefs, after all.

[shadzar]

Add all of this stuff together and you have a bland, barely-defined setting where the GM is still doing most of the heavy lifting in defining the game world, but it still does so by taking decisions out of the hands of the GM.

D&D is a system, not a setting.

There's your problem!

no decision is taken out of the hands of the DM by the books. read them some time. It is taken out of the hands of the DM by the narcissistic players that think each one of them is a special snowflake that must have his perfect game.

Are you really trying to tell me you cannot take ANY edition of BD&D and make it work for any idea you have with what little is presented in the 2 red books?

Are you trying to declare that NOBODY can do it?

The problem is not that D&D is a bland setting, jsut that incluiding these defined setting elements that WotC loves to add, is NOT what D&D is about. That is what the settings are explicitly for. The settings themselves show how the core can be rearranged, morphed, twisted, mutated, to make the kind of game YOU want.

D&D is NOT: Athas, Krynn, Toril, Oerth.

Athas, Krynn, Toril, Oerth is NOT: D&D; they just use it as common ground.

This is why Dragonlance was able to become that stupid Saga edition for the 5th Age, which gave things to (I think) Star Wars Saga system, which came back as D&D 4th edition.

The problem is the cosmology, one person view of religion, etc taking up space in the books that should tell the basics of the game. how to attack, what the dice are for, etc.

Put your hands on the red books and read them. Holmes blue or Mentzer Red; I havent seen a Moldvay in ages to be able to talk to you about it.

Again, people must realize D&D was not the only game TSR was going to make. Boot Hill a sixguns and sorcery game came before AD&D and even included conversion to and from them and their different systems.

This is why Wyatt, and all the others trying to DEFINE D&D are having problems, because it was NEVER meant to be defined like WoD, Shadowrun, etc. D&D is the toolbox, not the blueprint It only allows you to have common ground to use whatever theme you want from Tolkein to Norse, to Ninjas, to space robots.. whatever you can imagine to add to it.

when you start adding ANY religion or setting elements to the "core" you remove 80% of the function of D&D.

[Desdan_Mervolam]

Oh for fucks sake, if you're going to reply to posts you obviously didn't read, at least fucking be entertainingly stupid about it.

D&D has a default setting, and has since the very fucking beginning. This is because system shapes the world, and the world gives rules context. There are games like D&D and GURPS that have as little setting as absolutely possible because they WANT you to determine as much as possible, but there's still something there.

D&D by default is set in a world where there are Humans, Elves, Dwarves, Halflings, Humans and Gnomes are running around. A setting where the standard methodologies for adventuring are detailed in the Fighter, Rogue/Theif, Magic-User and Cleric classes. A setting where certain magical effects are harder to create than others because the people who wrote it wanted you to put emphasis on actions in a certain way with them. The fact that D&D respects your wishes if you choose to change things around doesn't mean those defaults aren't in place or the fact that if you don't like the way things are in place you have change things away from the default.

Setting is more than a god-damned map.

[shadzar]

Oh for fucks sake, if you're going to reply to posts you obviously didn't read, at least fucking be entertainingly stupid about it.

D&D has a default setting, and has since the very fucking beginning.

there is no point in reading the remainder of a post, when it starts out wrong like this one.

have you ever heard of the middle ages? medieval times? do you know the vast span that encompasses, and how connected D&D is to Tolkein?

do you realize that Middle Earth is just psuedo-Earth? it is this way because Tolkein wanted an easy entry for the common man to his story. D&D borrows ALL of that, and even Greyhawk is another Earth jsut renamed Oerth rather than D&D Earth.

all the other settings outside of Greyhawk developed to EXPLORE what things can be done. the purpose of D&D is to ALLOW those things, not hinder them by having a core setting.

its just "what if earth was like this". this is not a setting, it is just taking MErlin, Gandalf, Conan, and throwing them into a pot and having a system that allows you to use them all at the same time as ideas to play a game with.

the reason Greyhawk exists is because TSR got in trouble for using Tolkein shit. the reason Blackmoor exists is because if Gary could do it, so could Dave. The reason Toril exists is because Greenwod sold his game to TSR to use as a world within D&D.

read this until you understand it.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.

D&D is a system not a setting.