Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Sutemi 11-05-07, 07:05 AM	I just got my hands on Deities&Demigods and I couldn't more disappointed! They only put on the "popular" pantheons like Egyptians, Olympians and viking gods, but whatever happened to Chinese and Indian and many other pantheons familiar to me from Legends and Lore! What kind of bull schaesse is this?!?!?!?!?!? Sorry that I'm ****** off but... I simpy am and I think for a good reason :-((((((
Witch 11-05-07, 07:52 AM	Do you think they can put in a detailed description on the thousands of Gods the world has? Why no African pantheons? Why no Australian pantheons? South-American? North-American? Why not Mazdeic? Why not Gnostic? It's a book with a limited number of pages, so they went for the ones most likely to be popular in western society, which happen to be those three.
Sutemi 11-05-07, 08:30 AM	Okay, so next question is of course where is the second book? Uuuh I really miss Legends & Lore! It would just take so much converting the get the whole book in to 3.5!
sciborg3 11-05-07, 10:53 AM	if you click the sticky at the top of this board, then click on the board faq, you can press Crtl-F and look for the gods you want....of course the faq itself was archived so you have to cut and paste the links. Edit: try these from that Faq: Babylonian Dieites: A thread on these ancient gods can be found here. (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=411617) Egyptian Gods: Egyptian Pantheon location on Great Wheel (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=411559) Set (http://boards.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=456497) Chinese Gods: The Monkey King (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=69950), Sun Wu Kong ,byJin're Tao Vedic (Hindu) gods: http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=228561 Brahmaloka (Brahma's realm) (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=357122) by rip rakshasas vs Vedic gods (http://boards.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=321311) Shinto Gods: Shinto Lands (http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=403100) Shinto Gods (http://boards.wizards.com/showthread.php?t=443716) (possibly some Native American stuff too!)
Sarella Starshine 11-05-07, 01:59 PM	The real question is: if WotC statted up the other pantheons such as the chinese, the japanese, the babylonian gods, would you have agreed with thier interpetations? I know of several people on these boards who are upset with how the the ones that did get stated up got stated up. Since 4e is right around the corner (figuratively. atm its a pretty big corner), I doubt there will be another 3e book dedicated to nothing but gods and goddesses (the Deites and Demigods one is a 3.0 and not 3.5 if I remember). I am not to sure that they will do one for 4e.
Wight_Chocolate 11-05-07, 02:17 PM	The real question is: if WotC statted up the other pantheons such as the chinese, the japanese, the babylonian gods, would you have agreed with thier interpetations? I know of several people on these boards who are upset with how the the ones that did get stated up got stated up. And this would be triply so if WotC had dared to sidle into Japanese mythology. The subsequent storm of otaku outrage would have been nigh-insurmountable. They chose the "popular" pantheons because, given that they have a lot of content to choose from but only a limited amount of space to put it in, they have to choose whatever will make them the most money. If I were to bring up, say Prithvi in casual conversation, most people would likely give me a funny look and say "Who?" On the other hand, if I were to mention Thor or Zeus, the response would be more like "HELL YEAH THUNDERBOLTS HAMMERS AND MANLINESS ROCK ON." This is, perhaps, a somewhat exaggerated example, but it should demonstrate the point well enough.
DwarfPcfan 11-05-07, 02:51 PM	Exactly Wight_Chocolate, Wizo is a business first and a gaming outlet second. If you want to sell a book you have to speak to the largest market you can think of. Since people have a greater familiarity with the Norse, Egyptian and Olympian pantheons, it's only natural that they would place these in the books. I agree that legends and lore or Planescape's supplement "On hallowed Ground" were great, but... they were just that supplements to another product. Meaning that by then planescape core material was sufficiently fleshed out to allow them to take the time to adress such topics as the more obscure sumerian, babylonian, finnish and vedic pantheons. Personally I'd love an honest effort in 4th Ed at a better interpretation on earth mythology (yeah like that will ever happen:weep: ) even christianity, judaism and islam. Seems to me like our own history has so much good mythological material to draw on, why aren't they using it to make the game better? White wolf does it, it works! (just look at WoD, Scion, etc). There not Wizo's only serious competitor by fluke after all, they make quality products why is wizards of the coast holding itself back for the sake of avoiding touchy subjects? It's not like there isn't profit to be made in a more in-depth look at earth's mythology, jeez...
setekh 11-05-07, 03:37 PM	The real question is: if WotC statted up the other pantheons such as the chinese, the japanese, the babylonian gods, would you have agreed with thier interpetations? I know of several people on these boards who are upset with how the the ones that did get stated up got stated up. *Sulks that Set got the "Evil 2D monster" end of the stick that he had in later Mythos. What happened to the flawed Anti hero who -while being undeniably mad- was still respectful of his betters (Well. Re.) and was the only being who could stand against Apophis. :weep:
Malcadon 11-05-07, 04:53 PM	I just got my hands on Deities&Demigods and I couldn't more disappointed! They only put on the "popular" pantheons like Egyptians, Olympians and viking gods, but whatever happened to Chinese and Indian and many other pantheons familiar to me from Legends and Lore! What kind of bull schaesse is this?!?!?!?!?!? Sorry that I'm ****** off but... I simpy am and I think for a good reason :-(((((( :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma ME TOO!!! That book sucked! :headexplo They only had room for those Gods cuz they ran out of room with all the useless states. The states are all useless cuz their to many things to keep track of and customizing is a pain in the ass. The fluff and art was also lame. :yuck: The original Deities & Demigods book lacked a lot of details, but at least they over a dozen pantheons! They even had the Cthulhu & Melniboné mythos! We dont need a state-heavy book! We need a detailed sorcebook with lots of Gods & Pantheons, with more info for worshiping them then playing them! :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma :hoppingma
Shemeska the Marauder 11-05-07, 06:22 PM	*Sulks that Set got the "Evil 2D monster" end of the stick that he had in later Mythos. What happened to the flawed Anti hero who -while being undeniably mad- was still respectful of his betters (Well. Re.) and was the only being who could stand against Apophis. :weep: I'm still trying to figure out where they even pulled Set as an ally of Apep from... The book's handling of the various pantheons has little to do in many cases with their prior representation within D&D, and almost as little to do with their representation in RL mythology. The entire book was a missed opportunity.
Taeldrin Laesrash 11-05-07, 06:47 PM	ME TOO!!! That book sucked! :headexplo They only had room for those Gods cuz they ran out of room with all the useless states. The states are all useless cuz their to many things to keep track of and customizing is a pain in the ass. The fluff and art was also lame. :yuck: The original Deities & Demigods book lacked a lot of details, but at least they over a dozen pantheons! They even had the Cthulhu & Melniboné mythos! The stat blocks were a lot shorter those days. Given the new reduced format for monsters in 4e, a Deities and Demigods-like book might have a lot of room for pantheons, assuming WotC has the sense to use them. And the stats aren't worthless; there are numerous games which interact with gods in an intellegent manner, and many more that don't but still use the mechanics. IMO, I think a book full of obscure pantheons, like the Pleroma or Mazdeic or Slavic or Oceanic gods, would sell better than WotC thinks. If they sold it as a companion to Deities and Demigods, you could have a great focus on the deities and the cosmologies. Given the obscurity, they could be slipped into campaigns more easily, I think.
Talisman 11-05-07, 07:04 PM	I'm still trying to figure out where they even pulled Set as an ally of Apep from... Isn't it obvious? Set = evil, Apep = evil, therefore Set + Apep = good buddies. After all, evil people always unite against to good people (who also always unite against the evil people...:rolleyes:) That's how it works in the real world, too :P
Witch 11-05-07, 07:04 PM	I'd like to see a Mandaeic pantheon written up, really. It seems like it could make an interesting game.
ArcTan 11-05-07, 07:35 PM	I'm still trying to figure out where they even pulled Set as an ally of Apep from... It didn't say Set was an ally of Apep, did it? I thought it explicitly said Apep was for apocalyptic, nihilistic destructive evil, and Set was for selfish, anti-social "bad guy" evil. Which are, after all, two different concepts in real life and only "allied" in the sense that they both want to take down the existing "good guy" authority, represented by Re-Horakhty. Set being explicitly a bad guy is a later interpretation of Set most popular in the late New Kingdom days. That doesn't make it inauthentic as mythology, though. Set as a Satan-analogue was an idea around for generations and generations and generations before D&D was conceived of. EDIT: The only reference to this idea I can find is a single throwaway reference to Apep being an "enemy of the gods (though sometimes an ally of Set)". Since the wider context here is that Apep's priests are secretive bastards who are trying to end the world and Set's priests are shortsighted jerks who want to take over the world, it seems kind of obvious to me that they mean the one-sided, manipulative kind of "alliance". Yes, this somewhat contradicts Set's earlier mythological role as the bodyguard of the Sun who slew Apep every night, but that contradicts the later mythological, Osiris-myth-centric "Set as Satan" trope anyway. You have to pick and choose -- try to incorporate everything and you'll have a mythos riddled with blatant contradictions.
ArcTan 11-05-07, 07:42 PM	The obvious reason D&DG 3e has so many fewer gods than D&DG Classic is that D&DG 3e goes into very great detail about each and every god it uses, including a pretty-much-useless Impressive Stat Block. While I don't like this very much, I'm not a big fan of D&DG Classic's strategy of having a huge ginormous phone book of gods, each of which gets one paragraph of description (if he's lucky) and one very badly drawn illustration (if *very* lucky). It was in no way conducive to actually having a well-thought-out and interesting pantheon of gods in a campaign. It was also a great way to miseducate and confuse a bunch of fantasy geeks and lead to their doing annoying things later on (see said geeks' use of the "Chinese pantheon" that in no way resembles the real Chinese pantheon when they made Nethack).
ArcTan 11-05-07, 07:44 PM	BTW, the most serious "WTF?" moment I can remember from D&DG was turning Thor's wife Sif into a superheroic warrior-goddess, when she wasn't even *close* to being that in the original myths. A blow for PC revisionism, I suppose. Shame -- there was a much better opportunity that they missed to make a badass warrior-goddess out of Hathor.
sciborg3 11-05-07, 10:58 PM	And the stats aren't worthless; there are numerous games which interact with gods in an intellegent manner, and many more that don't but still use the mechanics. Statting isn't worthless, but DDG's stats were pretty much filler. The intelligent thing to do was to give some options and ideas on how to stat gods filling certain archetypes (Sky Father (Sun or Storm god), Earth Mother, Trickster, etc) and then allow for more pantheons. For me, I'd rather see more information on Fey and Undead gods, or other gods of core monsters, rather than RL gods. I'm more likely to use those.
Sutemi 11-07-07, 03:35 AM	We need a conversion of the Legends&Lore and we need it bad IMO
setekh 11-07-07, 08:38 AM	Set being explicitly a bad guy is a later interpretation of Set most popular in the late New Kingdom days. That doesn't make it inauthentic as mythology, though. Set as a Satan-analogue was an idea around for generations and generations and generations before D&D was conceived of. Which I specifically mentioned in my post - that they chose the boring "Grargh" Setekh rather than the flawed Setekh of earlier myth. Personally I like the stat blocks -even if I don't always agree with what's there (the D&D pantheon's weakest deity -rank wise- is Tiamat as a rank 10 intermediate... :rant: ) and while I don't honestly see many Parties ever opposing a well-statted deity ( I know let's kill the Supreme overlord of the deities! Oh dear. He has Divine Splendour.) I like simply knowing what they are capable of.
ArcTan 11-07-07, 03:41 PM	Well, the "Grargh" Set is the one you have to go with if you want the Set who's most frequently used in later mythology and modern fantasy -- i.e. the bad guy in various "Mummy"-type movies, and, especially, the bad god from the Conan pulps, which are much more direct antecedents of the D&D mythos than any real mythology.
Count Arioch the 28th 11-10-07, 01:54 PM	BTW, the most serious "WTF?" moment I can remember from D&DG was turning Thor's wife Sif into a superheroic warrior-goddess, when she wasn't even *close* to being that in the original myths. I remember reading some norse mythology a while back. In one of the books I had, it described Sif into a nagging shrew, and the reason why Thor spent so much time away from home killing trolls, because he wanted to get away from her constant nagging.