Nihilism and Atheism

[Sarog]

A similar example would be The Others/wights/dragons in A Song of Ice and Fire - as the reader, we know they exist, but the majority of that world's population believes they don't anymore even if they once did.

 

That's not really an apt example. The ASOIAF universe is one where magic and supernatural forces forces disappeared from the world a long time ago, and are only beginning their resurgence during the time of the novels. In that context, it makes sense to equate belief in the supernatural with superstition and to have certain skepticism. P:E is a world where not only are supernatural forces "not rare" - thereby meaning that scientific dismissal of superstition is not valid - but the gods are active and might even interfere in mortal business. In that context - wherein the understanding of what a "god" is is based entirely on the presence of very real, active, obvious forces in the world, it doesn't make sense for denial of the existence/divinity of those beings to be an established school of belief in the world.

[Amentep]

Am I the only one who wants to kill a god in game?

 

I'm for the character being allowed to pick a fight with a god.

 

I'm also for - if its the direction they want to go - the gods being treated like the Lady of Pain in Planescape - you can challenge her but its End-of-Game & reload to do so.

[Tagaziel]

Atheism can be interesting as a method of fighting the gods. If they are using your world as a field of battle, why not choose to erode their power by robbing them of support, devotion and (assuming that it's relevant) a part of their power?

[Sensuki]

I just want a Bizarre Reverend

[HungryHungryOuroboros]

The thing is would atheism even make sense in a world where the gods actively affect the world and possibly physically manifest themselves?

Sure you can.

 

The whole "God" thing could be some trick by an egomaniac who has a tad too much power going on, for one.

 

Or someone could deny Gods in the same sense that we have people that deny the moon landing, or that the world is round.

 

Or you could have both.

 

Or some third thing.

[Cultist]

Am I the only one who wants to kill a god in game?

 

I'm for the character being allowed to pick a fight with a god.

 

I'm also for - if its the direction they want to go - the gods being treated like the Lady of Pain in Planescape - you can challenge her but its End-of-Game & reload to do so.

I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation)

[Merin]

Am I the only one who wants to kill a god in game?

 

No, you are not. Line them up for me.

[Amentep]

Am I the only one who wants to kill a god in game?

 

I'm for the character being allowed to pick a fight with a god.

 

I'm also for - if its the direction they want to go - the gods being treated like the Lady of Pain in Planescape - you can challenge her but its End-of-Game & reload to do so.

I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation)

 

Oddly enough, I didn't suggest Obsidian had the rights to the Lady of Pain, or that Obsidian should change her.

 

What I did suggest is that I wouldn't mind Obsidian allowing the player to challenge the gods in PE - and it be an insta-lose for the PC/player. Just like LoP in PST.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Amentep

[Christliar]

If you could just go and kill whichever gods you fancied, would they actually be gods in the first place? I think there should be a defined explaination of what a god is in PE before we can speculate tbh.

[Merin]

Am I the only one who wants to kill a god in game?

 

I'm for the character being allowed to pick a fight with a god.

 

I'm also for - if its the direction they want to go - the gods being treated like the Lady of Pain in Planescape - you can challenge her but its End-of-Game & reload to do so.

I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation)

 

Oddly enough, I didn't suggest Obsidian had the rights to the Lady of Pain, or that Obsidian should change her.

 

What I did suggest is that I wouldn't mind Obsidian allowing the player to challenge the gods in PE - and it be an insta-lose for the PC/player. Just like LoP in PST.

 

I think, maybe, what was being suggested was that since the Lady of Pain is property of TSR / WotC (weird 1999 release means I'm not sure exactly who was giving the marching orders as the game was being developed, probably WotC) that Black Isle was told they couldn't allow players to kill LoP.

 

As in it wasn't necessarily a choice on Black Isle's part, but an instruction.

 

Doesn't nullify your point, Amentep. But I don't think your take away from what Cultist said was quite right, either.

[Karkarov]

I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation)

The fact that you could challenge her at all is a change of the Planescape lore. The reason I never played Torment to this day is that I was very into Planescape as a campaign world and used it as my preferred setting when I was DM'ing. They changed a metric ton of crap with the setting in general. In the real setting the Lady of Pain was never, ever, supposed to be seen other than from extreme distance if at all. She also most certainly never engaged in "combat" and in fact even seeing her from anything other than extreme distance was considered the be the equivalent of walking under a ladder, having a black cat cross your path, and breaking about 500 mirrors in roughly 30 seconds or less. As in, people who saw her up close always ended up dead. Sooner rather than later normally.

 

Either way I don't want to go into it. I could talk all day about the things that game took liberty with from the actual setting.

 

The thing is would atheism even make sense in a world where the gods actively affect the world and possibly physically manifest themselves?

Sure you can.

 

The whole "God" thing could be some trick by an egomaniac who has a tad too much power going on, for one.

 

Or someone could deny Gods in the same sense that we have people that deny the moon landing, or that the world is round.

 

Or you could have both.

 

Or some third thing.

 

Yeah and people who deny the moon landing and say the world isn't round are also idiots and or downright insane. I don't think anyone wants to have a main character who is basically a moron. Maybe if they want to put in a joke NPC it could work.

[jezz555]

It seems to make less sense in a world were god's explicitly exist and have a role in the game world. This a fantasy setting keep in mind.

[Amentep]

I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation)

 

Oddly enough, I didn't suggest Obsidian had the rights to the Lady of Pain, or that Obsidian should change her.

 

What I did suggest is that I wouldn't mind Obsidian allowing the player to challenge the gods in PE - and it be an insta-lose for the PC/player. Just like LoP in PST.

 

I think, maybe, what was being suggested was that since the Lady of Pain is property of TSR / WotC (weird 1999 release means I'm not sure exactly who was giving the marching orders as the game was being developed, probably WotC) that Black Isle was told they couldn't allow players to kill LoP.

 

As in it wasn't necessarily a choice on Black Isle's part, but an instruction.

 

Doesn't nullify your point, Amentep. But I don't think your take away from what Cultist said was quite right, either.

 

But...its part of the Planescape game that the LoP can't be killed. She has no stats. The game setting manual explicitly talks about this when explaining why she has no stats and how to handle her. So...why would BIS *want* to change that or think it was an option? I suppose he could have not known the LoP was unkillible and think that WotC asked for her not to be killed so as not to effect the setting...?

 

And really my point is, if the PE gods are gods, I'm all for making them unkillable - but still allowing the player to try and fight them. And die. Horribly.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Amentep

[Brannart]

I could talk all day about the things that game took liberty with from the actual setting.

 

If you never even played the game I fail to see how you could credibly do so.

 

And you never engaged the LoP in combat. You simply broke the rules of Sigil so you were mazed/smited, which it seemed to me were pulled from the rules.

[Brannart]

And really my point is, if the PE gods are gods, I'm all for making them unkillable - but still allowing the player to try and fight them. And die. Horribly.

 

Unless Gods are somehow central to the plot, like your adversary is a God, I think this sort of thing is more suited to a MMORPG. I don't think this is even going to be a game like Skyrim, this is going to be a game in the IE tradition, not one where you can just go anywhere and challenge anything to a fight.

[Amentep]

And really my point is, if the PE gods are gods, I'm all for making them unkillable - but still allowing the player to try and fight them. And die. Horribly.

 

Unless Gods are somehow central to the plot, like your adversary is a God, I think this sort of thing is more suited to a MMORPG. I don't think this is even going to be a game like Skyrim, this is going to be a game in the IE tradition, not one where you can just go anywhere and challenge anything to a fight.

 

I am okay with the gods not being even personified in the game; not really sure that was a position I was presenting. I was responding specifically to if you cam across a god (or, as in PST, if you do something to cross a power).

[Merin]

I think, maybe, what was being suggested was that since the Lady of Pain is property of TSR / WotC (weird 1999 release means I'm not sure exactly who was giving the marching orders as the game was being developed, probably WotC) that Black Isle was told they couldn't allow players to kill LoP.

 

As in it wasn't necessarily a choice on Black Isle's part, but an instruction.

 

Doesn't nullify your point, Amentep. But I don't think your take away from what Cultist said was quite right, either.

But...its part of the Planescape game that the LoP can't be killed. She has no stats. The game setting manual explicitly talks about this when explaining why she has no stats and how to handle her. So...why would BIS *want* to change that or think it was an option? I suppose he could have not known the LoP was unkillible and think that WotC asked for her not to be killed so as not to effect the setting...?

 

In the TSR D&D Forgotten Realms novels before the Black Isle D&D games, several gods are killed in the Times of Trouble (Avatar Trilogy back in the day.) Some by gods, some by men. Gods can die in D&D. Others can rise up to be gods.

 

In MotB you are on Myrkul's remains and you can forever end him - you don't think that WotC gave them permission to do that?

 

If their story plans called for the possibility, why WOULDN'T Black Isle have wanted to let you be able to kill the Lady of Pain? Thing was, whether they wanted to or not, it wasn't their property and it wasn't their call.

 

That's the point.

[Amentep]

In the TSR D&D Forgotten Realms novels before the Black Isle D&D games, several gods are killed in the Times of Trouble (Avatar Trilogy back in the day.) Some by gods, some by men. Gods can die in D&D. Others can rise up to be gods.

 

In MotB you are on Myrkul's remains and you can forever end him - you don't think that WotC gave them permission to do that?

 

If their story plans called for the possibility, why WOULDN'T Black Isle have wanted to let you be able to kill the Lady of Pain? Thing was, whether they wanted to or not, it wasn't their property and it wasn't their call.

 

That's the point.

 

Actually it isn't the point, because I wasn't talking about the Lady of Pain or the Planescape setting.

 

What I specifically talked about was "if its the direction they want to go - the gods [of PE] being treated like the Lady of Pain in Planescape - you can challenge her but its End-of-Game & reload to do so." It was a comparison to how that character was treated but contextualizing it within the gods of PE framework. In short I was suggesting making the gods of PE (if the Obsidian devs so choose) beings who the PC could never kill but that the foolhardy could try to (and die). Which is exactly like LoP in both PST and the Planescape Campaign setting.

 

What you're arguing is that Cultist was responding to my argument about how to treat the gods in PE (as "unkillable") arguing that the LoP was "unkillable" solely because BIS would have needed permission from WotC to kill her since Black Isle didn't own the setting and presumably that Obsidian could kill its gods because they owned them.

 

This is irrelevant to what I was arguing since I never made my argument under the idea that Obsidian could do what they wanted with the Planescape setting or even that the couldn't do what they wanted with Project Eternity.

 

Note that I do agree that BIS would have needed WotC permission to make the Lady of Pain "kill-able". Also note that I'd think WotC would rethink their license granting if the first thing somebody did when starting work on a Planescape based game was suggest violating one of the major elements of the setting.

 

Certainly WotC could change that setting aspect if they so chose (some thought they might with Die Vecna, Die! but that didn't pan out) since they own the characters and setting. Just like Obsidian owns Project Eternity. So if Obsidian wants to make the gods unkill-able...they can. And they can also let the PC and party challenge the unkill-able gods and get killed. Just like getting the Lady of Pain's attention was a death sentence in PST. Which was my point all along and I'm vaguely confused as to why we're here.

[Merin]

This is irrelevant to what I was arguing since I never made my argument under the idea that Obsidian could do what they wanted with the Planescape setting or even that the couldn't do what they wanted with Project Eternity.

 

Irrelevant to your point, but his point wasn't yours. He said -

I bit different here, Obsidian have no rights to change Lady of Pain, as it's WoC prerogative to change lore. Now, it's Obsidian's universe and they are free to do anything they want with their own creation)

 

in reference to you saying you had no problem if they "made the choice to do it like it was done for PS:T, about allowing confrontation with LoP but it being a losing choice."

 

He was pointing out that BIS didn't have a choice to allow LoP to be defeated. But then agreed that since PE is Obsidian's intellectual property that now they could actually choose what they wanted to do.

 

You were focused on the results of PS:T and confronting the LoP.

 

He was talking about BIS and/or OES being able to have that choice.

 

While he quoted you, he was bridging from you, not responding directly to you.

 

And his point, whether irrelevant or not to your specific point you were trying to make, not only logically followed your post, but was relevant to the thread topic and pointed out, accurately, that BIS didn't have the choice you were saying you liked.

 

I understand you meant "if they choose to do it in PE how it was done in PS:T" and you weren't actually trying to get into whether they COULD have chosen otherwise, but that decision was the same as you not being able to kill Elminster in other FR games - Ed Greenwood had specifically forbidden it from being done.

 

Both relevant points to the topic, tangentially connected by the PS:T references.

Edited October 23, 2012 by Merin

[Amentep]

I understand you meant "if they choose to do it in PE how it was done in PS:T" and you weren't actually trying to get into whether they COULD have chosen otherwise, but that decision was the same as you not being able to kill Elminster in other FR games - Ed Greenwood had specifically forbidden it from being done.

 

Both relevant points to the topic, tangentially connected by the PS:T references.

 

Actually whether BIS could/would/should kill Lady of Pain or Elminster is irrelevant because it (a) wasn't suggested in the thread and (b) has nothing to do with the idea of making the gods of PE unkill-able since there is nothing preventing Obsidian from doing what they want with their own setting.

 

But rather than derail the thread further, I'll just bow out.

[Karkarov]

In the TSR D&D Forgotten Realms novels before the Black Isle D&D games, several gods are killed in the Times of Trouble (Avatar Trilogy back in the day.) Some by gods, some by men. Gods can die in D&D. Others can rise up to be gods.

Nowhere near the same thing. In the "Time of Troubles" the Gods were forced into their Avatar forms. Avatars are just really freakin powerful mortal bodies, they do not have their full power in those forms. Also as a special rule in that time period when the gods died in their Avatar forms they were not allowed to return to their true realms, they were forced into true mortal death. That is why so many of them died, they were forced into mortal shells. This was done by the High God Ao also, not some silly mortal plot.

 

Fighting the Lady of Pain in Sigil would have been the equivalent of going to the top of Yggdrasil the World Tree and calling out Odin. You were fighting a Greater God (aka one of the most powerful beings in the D&D universe) and you were doing it in their own territory/plane of existence. By D&D rules that makes the Lady of Pain when inside Sigil literally omnipotent in so far as the cities boundaries. She could know all, see all, and do all and kill you with absolutely no effort. Not even a finger twitch would have been needed.

 

Not quite the same thing as killing an Avatar stuck on their own in the middle of nowhere with no one to back them up or any resources to call on. Avatars died all the time in the D&D worlds in fact, it is just normally the God would just lose a small part of their power and that would be that. The Time of Troubles was a VERY special circumstance, hence it's name.

[Frenetic Pony]

Nihilism is a must! If only so I can roleplay those guys from The Big Lebowski. At some point you need to find a sloppy, lazy assed random NPC sitting in a robe in a random house and be able to yell at him "We believe in nothing Lebowski!"

[Rocketbean]

I think this would be a very interesting option to have, especially in a world where the Gods are known to exist.

[XenoReaper]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcV9ceH4UvE

 

Allow me to be the priest at 1:20 to break things up (and no, I don't have anything up my sleeve, certainly not tiny guns).

 

Gentlemen/ladies, please. Let's not get caught up in the heat of the semantic argument when the purpose of this thread has been left by the wayside in favor of something that is almost (but not completely) irrelevant to the subject at hand.

 

Now, I bring you this. During the KS campaign, someone asked Feargus directly if PE would include possible challenging or even killing of gods. His response was "we plan on keeping it at a lower level, at least for the first game."

 

So if challenging of the gods is even possible, it would be an instant reload situation or a doomed-from-the-start combat. That much has more or less been confirmed already.

 

EDIT: It may or may not be a combat situation, but what we know for sure is you can't take on the gods directly and win... at least for the first game.

Edited October 24, 2012 by XenoReaper

[XenoReaper]

As for representing a non-believer, I'm satisfied so long as you aren't forced to follow a specific diety or what have you. What's interesting is that, because spellcasting comes from your soul directly, they could choose to allow a "non-exclusive" Priest option... you could respect all gods equally, or choose to remove yourself from the conflict entirely (whether or not it does you any good... we'll see).