Knights & Knaves Alehouse

Thing is Axe, players can play what they want. "killing stuff and looting them" is a straight-jacket leaving D&D as only one thing...one style of play. D&D has always been more than that: open for people to do with it as they wish...choosing to hill monsters and take their stuff IF THEY WANT...but also free to pursue other goals if they CHOOSE. In that respect is IS about the players and what THEY want.

The difference is choice of being limited to simple dungeon-crawls and killing stuff to get loot, and really adventuring how they choose.

The beauty of D&D is having that choice and the freedom to go where you want.

The sad part is that some people want to shoehorn D&D in to a very small, limited niche by people who believe "this is the one true faith" of D&D...when really, they represent a fraction of the D&Ders...not the whole.

Team: "D&D has always been more than that: open for people to do with it as they wish...choosing to hill monsters and take their stuff IF THEY WANT...but also free to pursue other goals if they CHOOSE. In that respect is IS about the players and what THEY want."

True enough. Its really all up to the players. If they choose to not actually go adventuring, but rather indulge in the social life of the city (for example) thats their perogative (assuming you can find a DM who'd want to run a game like this). However, thats not the tradition of the game (once again I refer you to the early TSR modules by Gygax and the presentation in the books describing adventuring, what characters do etc.). And that was Bones's point, not that he thinks everyone should play it "his way", but that their is one generic AD&D *style of play* (embodied in the works) that some people (like yourself) change to fit your particular taste. Your not alone, thats exactly the direction late 1E went with Dragon Lance, and then 2E which choked the life out of the game (the rest is history).

Back on topic...

Kellri wrote:Let me weigh in, maybe reroute a little...here's a sample template for a religion/deity merging RQ, D&D, and some JG Unknown Gods style

NAME (Alignment) Major/Minor God/Goddess/Demigod of SPHERE
STATBLOCK: An inline AD&D style statblock with ability scores.
DEMEANOR: 3 adjectives describing a range of typical moods
ETHICAL OUTLOOK: A phrase describing their primary goal
CULT SIZE: Small/Medium/Large Local/Regional/Widespread Cult
CLERGY: Types and Subtypes
LAYFOLLOWERS: Classes and/or Alignments
RITES & SERVICES: #, frequency and type
HOLIDAYS & FESTIVALS: #, frequency and type
HOLY/UNHOLY SYMBOL: prose desc. + graphical example
CLERICAL VESTMENTS: color, material, form

DESCRIPTION: Note particular features/physical description of the deity, artifacts & relics associated with them and any allied groups or monsters.

I think that this is just about adequate for describing a setting's religion, and Description need be no more than one short paragraph. If a DM is taken with a particular religion, then that can be fleshed out out to taste when appropriate.

Piper wrote:

BonesMcCoy wrote:If people like/want the RQ approach then they probably already play RQ.

In my case, at least, this is a false statement. I apologize if this sounds confrontational but I could not allow that assertion to stand unchallenged.

It is entirely possible to like one aspect of a different system without actually preferring that system.

It is not confrontational at all. You are expected and welcome to have your own opinion. Even if it is wrong.

team-preston wrote:Wow. While you can certainly play D&D anyway you like, D&D is many things to many people...blah...blah...blah...I for one don't buy it.

It's cool Team. I wasn't trying to insult you or your play style. I'm a bit of a 2E phobe so any time story takes precedence over action I get a bit defensive. I just meant that religion in D&D is only important to the degree that it supports good adventures. Which, to me, means action-oriented killing-bad-guys-to-save-the-world 'quests'.

Al, you old codger, how dare you disagree with me! I'm gonna come up there to Canada and pimp-slap your lily-white butt! Well, when the weather warms up. heheh. Anyway, I'm glad you brought up Faiths & Avatars since that's a perfect example of going overboard. There's some great stuff in there sure, a lot of the specialty priest classes, the new spells, the extra classes, a lot of great info on the gods, their followers and church (which is a much better word than cult IMO), but it just does TOO MUCH. If it was half the length then it would be twice as good.

Axe, thanks for the support buddy. I knew there was a reason why I still loved ya!

BonesMcCoy wrote:It is not confrontational at all. You are expected and welcome to have your own opinion. Even if it is wrong.

(chuckle) Thanks, Bones. Now hand me that Saurian Brandy, would ya?

I'm all out of Saurian Brandy. How about some Romulan Ale instead?

Romulan Ale will be fine.

Kellri wrote:Let me weigh in, maybe reroute a little...here's a sample template for a religion/deity merging RQ, D&D, and some JG Unknown Gods style

NAME (Alignment) Major/Minor God/Goddess/Demigod of SPHERE
STATBLOCK: An inline AD&D style statblock with ability scores.
DEMEANOR: 3 adjectives describing a range of typical moods
ETHICAL OUTLOOK: A phrase describing their primary goal
CULT SIZE: Small/Medium/Large Local/Regional/Widespread Cult
CLERGY: Types and Subtypes
LAYFOLLOWERS: Classes and/or Alignments
RITES & SERVICES: #, frequency and type
HOLIDAYS & FESTIVALS: #, frequency and type
HOLY/UNHOLY SYMBOL: prose desc. + graphical example
CLERICAL VESTMENTS: color, material, form

DESCRIPTION: Note particular features/physical description of the deity, artifacts & relics associated with them and any allied groups or monsters.

I would say change demeanor to 1+ sentences, don't limit yourself to just 3 words. Add physical description as its own entry. Or even combine Description/Demeanor. Ethical Outlook doesn't make sense as ethics and primary goal are not the same thing. The AD&D alignment should explain their overall ethical outlook. I say drop it. Change the word cult to church. Layfollowers should just be followers since otherwise they're clergy. Lose holidays and festivals since rites and services covers it well enough. Holy/unholy symbol is very important, as is clerical vestments, so move them closer to the top. Make them cool and interesting, naturally. Pay particular attention to color, including using weird colors that the user has to look up in a dictionary to even understand what the heck they are.

If you're going to go to the trouble of detailing 'rites & services' then you should try to make them all possible adventuring hooks. Naturally we don't need Carcosa-level details but saying 'clerics of Nerull sacrifice newborn infants on nights of the new moon' provides a decent adventuring hook (rescue the baby) and doesn't get graphical. Use words like foul rites, debauched rituals, defile and so on without showing the naughty bits.

But then what to do for good deities without making them boring? Maybe their rites involve rare items that the PCs could quest for? Rare herbs, a specially crafted item from a remote artisan, a holy relic that could be stolen by bad guys (that might be a good ritual for a bad deity - sacrifice of holy relics from a rival god).

The idea would be to make all the information actually useful to a DM in writing/running adventures and not just background color.