Dungeons and Dragons, "The Five"

Gods of Dungeons and Dragons

            I really liked writing up my unique take on Orcs a while back, that their society has a different take on religion that I think makes them more interesting than the simple brutal monsters they are often portrayed as.

            I also never really went anywhere with my discussion of Religion as an aspect of settings that I wrote about months before that.

            To that end I figured I would write up some of my stranger and off the beaten path religious aspects of my own campaign world and see what people think.

The Five

            The five are a Pantheon of gods that work in concert with one another, they each seen as aspects of a larger concept, the Cycle of Life.  None of them are in conflict and followers of the religion do not acknowledge the existence of other gods/faiths.  The Five are worshiped as a pantheon by most, but there are Exemplars (Acolytes) that specialize in one of the Five and seek to embody that aspect (Exemplars are not always Clerics).

"Is Mother Nature ever a MILF?"
"I guess if you are, like, Zeus or something."

Holy Symbol:

Pentagon (Faith as a Whole)

            Mother Nature: Circle

            Father Time: Hour Glass

            Ladies of Fate: Triangle

            Thousand Faced Hero: Sword

            Grim Reaper: Scyth

Cleric Domains:

When worshiped as a Pantheon, the Life domain is preferred, as it encapsulates the entirety of the religions aspects.  Much like the symbols Exemplars specialize in particular domains.

            Mother Nature: Nature

            Father Time: Knowledge

            Ladies of Fate: Trickery

            Thousand Faced Hero: War

            Grim Reaper: Death

"I have no idea what I set this alarm for.  Why did I make it such a catchy song?  Was that a clue?"

World View & Mythos:

There are five wise and powerful beings that like the facets of a gem, are each a part of the larger whole of Life itself.  These beings help and guide the mortal races, each of these five in turn having domain over an aspect of the mortal realm.

            The first is the life-giving power of Mother Nature, she is the keeper of life, the earth upon which all else rests.

            The second is Father Time, animating the universe, shifting between possibilities, and possessing the great knowledge of the future and wisdom of the ages.  Like the air he is all about us unseen, and like smoke and steam cloud our vision, uncertainty clouds our view of the future and our understanding of the past.

            Third is the Ladies of Fate, or the Three as One, those who weave into their designs a place and calling for all people, they are the water of the tide, to which all inevitably surrender.

            Fourth is the Thousand Faced Hero.  Not one being but all beings who face challenges and thru strength or guile persevere, he is the fire that tempers our souls.

            Last is the Grim Reaper, the final end to all things.  Bringing closure and rest to those who have passed thru the world, the Reaper is the void and aether from which nothing returns.

Beliefs:

The universe is made of many different energies and forces that work in concert.  All of these things play their parts and have place.  Life springs forth, moves thru the ages, facing conflict as it goes, fulfills its destiny, and then passes on.

            While each of these parts deserves its own ruminations and there are innumerable virtues that can be embodied by any one person, it does not change the fact that all of these five parts are necessary for the world to exist.

I have written about this cartoon.  Have I reached a point where I have enough blog entries that I can regularly reference my deeper thoughts on various inspirations?  Maybe?

Practices:

            This faith is most commonly known for its monasteries.  Spotting the map, they serve as way points for pilgrims and travelers form all over the country.  Harvest festivals, historical remembrances, star gazing, tournaments, and funerary services are provided by the faithful, and their monasteries often have large tombs or graveyards.

            As the faith, by their own thinking, has aspects in every facet of life they provide numerous services that tie into community life.

Superstitions and Taboos:

            Being rather disparate, the monasteries have no unifying set of superstitions or taboos.  They are big believers in hospitality, and that everything happens for a reason, so they do not put much stock in luck, but instead in the value of people doing positive things for one another, like feeding the hungry, giving compliments and encouragement, or just giving clear instructions.

I think a better illustration of this concept exists.
I just couldn't find one.

Social Organization:

            There is no single unifying church hierarchy.  While each cloister varies and has its own local flavor, they tend to be broken into two major camps, the contemplative, those that ponder the meaning of life often writing long philosophical treatise, and the communal, those that emphasize working with communities and providing a variety of services in exchange for donations and help around the monastery.

Cults & Heretics:

            While most other religions have a diametric opposite, by simply flipping the dogma from kindness to hate, freedom to tyranny, or life to Death, the Five do not suffer from this.  While they are not the state religion of any kingdom they are also not aggressive with their missionary work, so they are not seen as a threat.  No one persecutes followers of the Five, and they have no equivalent to “Satan worshipers”.

            The closest thing to heresy is that some orders believe that other gods exist and incorporate them into worship in a variety of ways, celebrating their holidays, incorporating the imagery into their burial grounds and structures, or citing their religious texts in their writings.

I liked this image of Death so much from my blog on "Celestial Warlock Patrons" that I am using it again.

Inspiration

            There are three pop culture inspirations for this religion.

The first is the Color Wheel from Magic the Gathering.  I tried to make each of the Five line up to a color, Green (Nature), Blue (Time), White (Fate), Red (Heroism), and Black (Death).  It is perhaps not a perfect line up, and some bleed between the elements because White, Black, and Green tend to not have elements tied to them.  I first started coming up with this idea for a religion when I wrote about Magic the Gathering’s color wheel being a better Alignment system.

Speaking of elements here is the other thing that inspired the Five, “Captain Planet and the Planeteers”.  I think it might be an odd choice for me to replace Heart with Death… I think I need to write something about the Planeteers in the future.  They are easy to mock, but as an adult I have seen new value it what the show was about, and have referenced it before.

Where is my dark and cynical reboot of this?
Where Hoggish Greedly is president and the fucking world is coming to an end?

Lastly, I was inspired by Piers Anthony’s “Incarnations of Immortality” series.  Each of the Five is taken right from that series, except he had War instead of the Hero with 1,000 faces.  While I do feel that conflict makes sense as a key aspect of the Five (his was really 7, as God and Satan are also in there), War just seems to inherently negative a concept.  To me, war is not an inevitable aspect of life, it is an unfortunate event that most people avoid direct contact with.  Heroism, which can be embodied in a number of ways felt like a more universal idea.  (I have mentioned this series before.)

What Do You Think

            Would this religion fit in your game world?  Do you think that the aspects are too generic and require sprucing up?  Would you like to see more detail about each of the Five?

            Feel free to put a link to your own fantasy faiths in the comments for contrast.  I am curious about how other people stretch things in their worlds away from the more common, “chose one from the list” style of pantheons in other games.

            And have fun.

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Dungeons and Dragons, "How I Got Started"

Standard Introduction

            I have been writing about Dungeons and Dragons semi-regularly this year and in the course of writing those I found a 30-day blog challenge.  As I have done those a couple times before it seemed remiss not to jump on this one.

            If you want here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Disney Movies, here is a link to my 30-day challenge on Video Games, and here is a comically out of date 30-day challenge on Movies (it is old and the writing is rubbish).

Day 1- How I got Started

            I got started in Dungeons and Dragons via what I would consider a typical arc.  I was a fan of horror (here is a blog on my affection for Goosebumps books) and fantasy (here is me talking about Xanth) as a kid and early teen.  My budding interest in genre conventions coupled with my knack for math drew the attention of a few of my teachers who introduced me to Magic the Gathering (I have tried to integrate some ideas from Magic into DnD).

I am gonna briefly talk about a different fantasy game first.
F-ing Swerve!

            Magic is a collectible card game in which you are a wizard who is battling another wizard with spells and monsters.  Understanding the odds of drawing a particular card, managing risk, and managing resources were all aspects of the game and I attribute to it my almost intuitive understanding of statistics beyond my usual knack for math.

            Anyway, I was introduced to Dungeons and Dragons by a fellow teenager when I was 15.  I was at Books-A-Million one Sunday looking at comics and saw some guys playing Magic, they invited me to play and I said, “Sorry I don’t typically roll with my deck.”  That was meant to sound silly.

            I began hanging out with those guys on the weekends at the bookstore to play Magic and invited a few more people out to play.  After a month, one of them decided to introduce us all to DnD and it went from there.  It is funny to me in hindsight how little I really understood about the game, and since this was pre-internet, or at least all the really useful parts of the internet like Wikipedia, Youtube, and other places that would serve as nerd reference sites in the age to come I couldn’t really learn except for reading and doing.

            These days there are online demos, message boards, and any number of cliques that will help you learn, and a bunch that will treat you like shit and turn you off the whole internet.  But back then I just had to read the 3^rd edition book I bought, while the guy who introduced me to it was trying to have us play 2^nd edition and all the wires getting crossed.

For all the reading I did in this thing it was mostly the fluff and story aspects.
Even after playing 3e and 3.5e for 10+ years there are still numerous spells and rules that I do not get.

            There was also the terrible and contrived writing I would suffer from.  Basic missions and I didn’t really know how tough monsters were or how to set up interesting challenges.  On the other side when I was playing the story was frequently so epic I had no idea what I was supposed to even do, an alcoholic half-orc blackguard did not have much to offer when the mission was, “stop a wizard from controlling an army of dragons from taking over the world and rewriting reality”.

            It is a testament to how fun and freeing the game can be creatively that I stuck with it thru the difficult early part to move on all the way to now.  A present in which I write about the game habitually and make effort to find venues for play beyond just going along with those that are offered.

            A great deal of my creativity has been shaped Dungeons and Dragons.  A lot of my abilities in mathematics has been given endless practice by all the casual uses of math.  My ability to quickly play the part for interviews, group discussions, presentations and other professional venues for talking to people about who I am and what I can do, that was learned from playing Dungeons and Dragons all the time.  In real life, I don’t have a character sheet, but when someone asks me who I am and what I can do I am better at presenting that information in a consistent and tight fashion than I would have been had I not been making characters and playing them for fun all these years.

            I often recommend Dungeons and Dragons as fun, but frequently market it to other people based on the academic aspects of the game because I think those have had a real positive impact on me and could have similar effects on others.

 

Seriously, I don't think the value of this game as a teaching tool can be overstated.

Coming Tomorrow

            I am going to talk about my favorite edition of the game.

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter (click that link to follow me), Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.

Dungeons and Dragons: "Alignment" part 4

            I have played Dungeons and Dragons for more than 15 years.  Lately, I have not had access to any other players and so I have just been kicking around ideas that normally would be in a game and instead I am just going to post them on my blog.  This is going to be a reoccurring thing as I just keep hammering out things and not all of them can be turned into elements in my “random fantasy novel ideas” folder.

What Have I Got: Magic the Gathering

            Two weeks ago, (I was going to write this for last week but I instead went to Disney World) I wrote about one of my favorite game franchises, “Fallout”.  Though that seems to be somewhat inaccurate, as the more I think about it I only loved “New Vegas” and “Fallout 4” was kind of a letdown, but I digress.  “New Vegas” and “Fallout 3” had two different ways of establishing what Dungeons and Dragons’ players would call “Alignment” within their games.

            “New Vegas” had the complicated but fun and creative Alliances system, in which you are judged based on your loyalty and past actions in regards to different groups in the context of a larger conflict.  “Fallout 3” had the incredibly lazy “Karma” system which either made you wasteland Jesus or Mephistopheles but rarely if ever presented a third or fourth option to consider.

            Then there is the system I wanted to talk about this week, Magic the Gathering.  For those who are unaware, Magic is a collectible card game created by math guy Richard Garfield roughly 20 years ago.  He was the first person to patent the idea of a collectible card game and as such has made money off of every Pokemon, Magic, or Yu-Gi-Oh card sold since then.  Richard is quite wealthy.

            Magic is one of those golden games, quick enough to learn, but of such depth and size that mastery of it is effectively a full-time job for many players.  They have their own invitation only tournaments including a world championship.

            Production of Magic the Gathering has created more fantasy art than anything else ever.  There are thousands of images of pirates, genies, samurai, power armor, kaiju, monkeys, swords, goblins, vampires, and landscapes that can be used to inspire any writer who just wants a picture to look at when asking themselves, “What is the story behind this?”

            Magic the Gathering is deep, rich, and gorgeous.

            I should also warn you that a drug habit would be cheaper.

 

For instance, this is the rarest and most expensive card in existence.
Copies have sold for more than $20,000.

            Magic is owned by Wizards of the Coast, the same company that owns Dungeons and Dragons and the company has been dipping their toe into crossovers between the two games for a couple years now, but they have not fully taken the plunge of integrating the mythology of the two.

            I think the Dungeons and Dragon’s Alignment system and Magic’s Color system are the best starting point for better tying the two properties together in such a way to promote each.  For no other reason than the Color system works so well.

 

It is also prettier to look at compared to the Alignment-Axis Chart.
I feel that aesthetic appeal should count for something.

Multi-faceted Magical Morality: “No two-ways about it… There’s five”

            In all worlds there exists a magical energy called mana.  Mana comes in five colors: White, the color of order, light, and giving; Blue, the color of water, introspection, and curiosity; Black, the color of greed, ambition, and decay; Red, the color of chaos, passion, and fire; and Green, the color of instinct, wood, and beasts.

            All beings possess all five colors to some amount, and some objects and places have only generic colorless mana, but ultimately one or two colors will be more pronounced in any particular individual, and mana of each color is associated with certain types of places.

            White mana is most associated with humanity and the plains of the world, more often angels and knights see this color as their core guiding philosophy.  Blue is associated with islands, with sphinxes, genies, and merfolk.  Black is associated to swamps, and undead and demons being creatures that embody the color.  Red is associated with Mountains (and volcanoes), with goblins, dragons, and barbarians tied to it.  Green is in the forest, with hydras, animals, and elves.

            But even these associations can be blended.  Many monsters, characters, and spells in Magic have multiple colors, some require multiple colors, others have an either/or color symbol meaning that rather than having a particular color be dominate, these creatures and spells are more fluid and have traits spread across the philosophies but are not constrained by them.

            A lot of thought has been put into this system, both for the purposes of game balance, but also for the sake of making a cohesive philosophy toward the game’s look and feel.

My Preferred Method: “Not just 5… there can be 15 combinations before things get too silly”

            The reason I like this so much mostly stems from playing the card game for 10 years and occasionally picking up some cards for nostalgia’s sake.  Beyond that though, it is a mechanic that is both more codified for spells and more flexible for behavior of characters.

            For instance, a player chooses two primary colors to serve as his alignment, or just one color twice if he really wants to commit.  A Red-Red barbarian has a lot of… Passion, but would be doubly hit by a Circle of Protection (Red).  Conversely a character that is Black-White would have to deal with the internal conflict that creates, seeking order and unity, but to a very tight group that he still can’t bring himself to entirely trust.

            With each two-color combination (or double pairing) you have 15 possible combinations, 15 possible alignments than can help to illuminate how your character views the world, their methodology, and even their goals to some degree.

            This could also have real impact on how magical weapons work.  No more Anarchic-Unholy battle axes, but having a Black sword that does additional damage to White and Green characters (or exceptional damage to someone who is both White and Green) is one example as the conflict between the different colors leads to a deluge of different items and spells to target things.

            There is something I forgot to mention!  The Color Wheel and its conflicts.

There are many useful charts.
Though this one is sideways.

The Color Wheel: “Not everyone gets along, sometimes even with themselves”

            The colors are arranged in a standard order forming a ring.  White->Blue->Black->Red->Green->White.  Each color has two allies, those two colors that it is next to one the wheel, each color shares certain values with those allied colors.  And each color has two enemies, those that it does not touch on the wheel and with which they have key conflicting ideologies.

            White and Black are the most traditional natural rivalry, as the greed and self-destructive aspects of Black’s darkness clash with the altruism and life giving nature of White’s light.  But, they also have things in common.

One of the things they have in common is great art by the talented Greg Staples.

            White and Black each have ties to the afterlife, ties to divinity/diabolism, and they both have a lot of clerics and human characters.  They are opposites, but there is a lot of overlap between them over which they play tug of war.  As I mentioned before, the conflicting nature of the two would make for an interesting character, a person who doesn’t really trust anyone, but also recognizes the need for allies.  The Mafia would fit this classic mold, as each little clique of people within the larger organization is constantly jockeying for more power and influence, but that in turn makes them a target by other members, gaining and losing allies as they go.

            Each combination has been explored in depth by Wizards of the Coast for short stories and novels for the Magic the Gathering settings (Magic has a multiverse just like Dungeons and Dragons and each universe has permutations on how the Colors have evolved based on unique starting points).

            Ravnica is perhaps the world that best explains how brilliant the use of Magic’s colors as Alignment could work.  A world ruled by 10 guilds, each guild representing a pairing of colors does the most to illustrate the rich opportunities presented by Magic as a guide.  Each guild looks distinct, has a distinct philosophy, has distinct goals, members, and resources… But they all make sense in the same world together.

And you can bet your ass there are even more gorgeous colorful charts to look at.

            Green and Red make up a barbarian horde led by a Cyclopes.  White and Green make up a powerful order of Druids with a council of Dryads leading them.  Black and Red are a demon worshiping hedonism cult with the arch demon Rakdos being “in charge”.  All 10 of the guilds have their own goons and spells that illustrate how they operate and can serve to illustrate to players how they could play their characters.  A Paladin of Red-White is very different from a Paladin of Blue-White or Green-White.

Alignment and Gaming: “Why does this all even mater?”

            Alignment starts arguments that can split up gaming groups.  That is why.  In real life words like Good and Evil are judgments about people’s values and methods.  I have gotten into explosive arguments about whether a Neutral Good Cleric of Pelor would prostitute themselves for money.  And when you are gaming with someone who thinks prostitution is “Good” and you think that “Prostitution would not be proper conduct for a cleric of Pelor, do something else” ... ARGUMENTS AHOY!

            In the Color system, there are no longer any tortured arguments about “It’s not Evil to raise the dead if I am using them to defend the innocent” because it isn’t about good and evil, he would be Black-White because his methodology and goals would point toward that combination, and it fits logically enough that you are not splitting any hairs.  Since it is broader and draws both on ends and means in a soft way people can make a call and get on with it.

            And the prostitution thing?  That is the color of, “before we start this game let’s all agree to a lighter tone and try not to drag in subject matter like the sex industry,” and those conversations are all White-Blue.  But profiting off of humiliating sex seems more Red-Black.  Whatever is comfortable with your group, but I still don’t think a cleric of Pelor would sell themselves sexually.  Maybe I am just a prude?

And for some reason, "I am the GG" never seems to end an argument.
BUT THAT IS JUST MY EXPERIENCE!

            This is not perfect, but I do think that it fits comfortably in both the “Game Mechanic” category and the “Moral Guidance” category.  Players want to have a sense of the world they are playing in, and a quick way to tell who they will have immediate disagreements with and over what. 

            Getting bogged down in the inherent Good and Evil or Law and Chaos of things isn’t fun.  Having someone playing Lawful-Killjoy or Chaotic-Disruptive isn’t fun either.  You need guidelines.  *Shrug*

Next Time: Something other than Alignment

            I started this series of Dungeons and Dragons blogs with a discussion of the language of Common and where such a concept would fit into a world of Dungeons and Dragons.  So, next time (probably next Sunday) I will return to the idea of language in fiction writing and one of my own personal bugbears on that topic.  Maybe it will be somewhat entertaining or thought provoking.

            I hope you enjoyed this series of discussions on the topic of Alignment and perhaps each of these systems have helped you understand different perspectives on the topic in Dungeons and Dragons, other games like World of Darkness, and fiction in general.  Let me know if you like the idea of integrating the Color Wheel into DnD and if you see some holes in the idea that you have suggestions for patching.  Sadly, I have not had any time to play for months and this blog is kind of my outlet for now.

The Beg for Attention

            If you venomously disagree with me, please tell me why in the comments.  Feel free to leave links to your own blog on the topic or articles that you have found helpful.  Or write your own counterpoint to all this (or parts of it) and come back and post a link.  If you have any interesting moral conflicts from pop culture or your own gaming group, post those too.

            Alignment is the most debated thing in Dungeons and Dragons and Color philosophy is a big deal in Magic the Gathering (though less so than Alignment).  This is because, as I wrote in part 1, we all have personal values.  We all have things we will not do under any circumstance (even if we don’t know it yet because we have never been tested) so if you disagree with me about the question of prostitution just keep in mind that sex can be a touchy subject and that for most people this is a game about killing monsters for gold, not selling your anal virginity.

            Have Fun!

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            If you like or hate this please take the time to comment, +1, share on Twitter, Tumblr, or Facebook, and otherwise distribute my opinion to the world.  I would appreciate it.