I have a school project coming up, and I need to gather some data. Would you mind answering this poll really quick? I need to know how many people homebrew worlds and pantheons, and how many of those pantheons are based of or inspired by real-world pantheons. This is to attempt to prove that D&D is not in fact satanic.
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A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Homebrew (Mostly Outdated):Magic Items,Monsters,Spells,Subclasses ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
Pre-printed uses any gods the players want. I'm personally not going to research every world we're going to play in.
For my own stuff, I use my own gods, which don't follow the standard Indo-European model, but it does have its own versions of the main stories... such as the war of the gods; the flood; and the hero who returns from the underworld.
I anticipate he's looking to see whether D&D players who answer the poll here predominantly homebrew (i.e. create their own) pantheons and deities. If you're inventing your own gods, and they're not based on real-world deities, then you're probably not using D&D to trick your friends into worshipping Satan.
Now admittedly, inventing your own gods would fall under the 'sin' of idolatry according to typical religious rhetoric. I'm not sure if idolatry or Satanism is worse in the eyes of the sort of folk who caused the Satanic Panic way back when, but I can sure as shootin' bet that either one will get your D&D game evicted from your good God-fearin' parents' basement in a blazing hurry.
I'm curious how this proves dnd is not Satanic. (I know it isn't I'm just wondering how you will use this as proof.)
Same - surely if someone has deluded themselves into thinking that D&D is somehow satanic (whatever that even means), a straw poll on a forum isn't going to change their mind?
To the actual question from OP, I do a mix of all options depending on the campaign and how much free time I've got.
Fun bonus fact, I based the theology of one world broadly on Zoroastrianism - which is arguably where the idea of the devil as "guy who opposes god" came from. If early Christians thought about the devil/satan at all they probably viewed him as a much more metaphysical concept, and it's only really in the early modern period that people started to think in terms of the devil as being a literal entity that you could (hypothetically anyway) entreat with.
Now admittedly, inventing your own gods would fall under the 'sin' of idolatry according to typical religious rhetoric. I'm not sure if idolatry or Satanism is worse in the eyes of the sort of folk who caused the Satanic Panic way back when, but I can sure as shootin' bet that either one will get your D&D game evicted from your good God-fearin' parents' basement in a blazing hurry.
I now desparately want to hear an Iconoclast's take on D&D haha
I'm curious how this proves dnd is not Satanic. (I know it isn't I'm just wondering how you will use this as proof.)
My plan is to use this as just a small bit of evidence. Many people think that it's mostly pre-published stuff that's all satanic and evil. The thing is, I'm showing that a decent percentage of people like to base their pantheons on real-world religions. In that light, calling dnd satanic because it has a bunch of weird gods then becomes like (just for example) a Roman Catholic calling Hinduism devil worship.
Also thanks for answering the poll, this is going to help a lot! :)
D&D borrows from reallife demonology traditions, such as Mammon. In the New Testament, the word just means "money", literally. But centuries later, medieval Christians reinterpreted it to be a kind of spirit of money, thus a demon relating to greed. Asmodeus is the prince of demons according reallife Zoroastrianism. Jewish folklore mentions a related tradition about Ashmedai, albeit here it is a trickster who convinces men to delay having children, thus die without reproducing. In Christian demonology, it is a demon of lust. And so on, with reallife demonology.
Nevermind, one of the main classes to play is the Warlock whose "flavor" is to sell ones soul to a devil. You dont have to do this, the being can be a fairy (fey) or a genie (djinn), and the bargain can be something else. But the soul-selling is a prominent trope, and many players do roleplay the character with this devilish flavor.
Heh, and the list goes on, with parts of D&D whose purpose seems to be to intentionally alarm and antagonize reallife Christians.
That said, a distinction needs to be made between fiction and reallife traditions. For example, Dante wrote his Inferno, or Milton wrote his Paradise Lost, or a modern Christian author dramatizes the belief in a rapture. These authors might research reallife traditions about demons or antichrists, and create devilish villains for the sake of the story.
Just like a person who writes a murder mystery isnt actually a murderer, authors who explore the darker side of humanity arent actually demonic. It is a story.
A story is a safe-space of playfulness. It is place to explore, to confront fear, to think out solutions to problems. What happens in the safe zone, stays in the safe zone.
I definitely agree that it is just a story, but unfortunately a lot of other people don't. I feel like the way they see it is, "These people are pretending to be devil worshippers or sold their soul to the devil, what if that's ACTUALLY what they're doing, and this 'game' is just a cover story?"
But definitely, it can be seen as satanic, and it takes a lot of inspiration from the darker sides of existing religions, but yeah. It's just a game. And when you think about what D&D is at it's core, it's make-believe where you throw plastic shapes on a table. Not satanic in the slightest.
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A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
Unfortunately, since I'm new to being a DM, I use fr
One thing I would like to add to this conversation.
In several of the officially published adventures by wizards of the coast, there is parts of it that are against cults, devil worshippers and devils themselves! Descent into Avernus, Baldur's gate is a story about fighting devils (I think.) In hoard of the dragon queen, you oppose a cult of a dragon. In the sequel Rise of Tiamat, you fight the dragon cult more! In the sequels to Dragon of Icespire peak, you fight a different cult! I'm sure there's other examples of this too. Basically, in a lot of officially published d&d it pits you against demons and devils. Not working with them, against.
Also, is there a playable Devil race? If this is a game about devil worship, wouldn't there be playable devils? No. There is not a playable devil. There is a monster statblock for devils. No playable race. That means that the intent behind devils is to have them as enemies.
In truth I take a page out of the D&D mentality and create gods to fit domains. I start with the domain, move on to character traits and appearance, and leave the laborious task of naming them till the end. It's a lot like creating any other D&D character I just don't really worry about the stats at that point.
I have to admit most of my nature gods tend to be ripoffs of Pan if not Pan itself. It's difficult (for me anyway) to create completely original gods so I tend to use a real world pantheons as examples and then customize them from there. War gods where helms and usually carry Spears or swords. Got to death usually wear black cloaks and sometimes carry scythes or a lamp/torch. Gods of love/fertility are usually scantily clad, attractive, and amiable to most beings.
I love gods, both those from the real world and fictional, so I do a number of these. I enjoy the D&D gods, but I also enjoy creating. But I tend to prefer settings that are god-heavy, or at least have the gods as well-established. This doesn't mean they have to be central to every single thing, but I'm more likely to check out a setting if there are gods and an established afterlife (the main reasons I haven't really checked out settings like Eberron and Dark Sun).
Unfortunately, since I'm new to being a DM, I use fr
One thing I would like to add to this conversation.
In several of the officially published adventures by wizards of the coast, there is parts of it that are against cults, devil worshippers and devils themselves! Descent into Avernus, Baldur's gate is a story about fighting devils (I think.) In hoard of the dragon queen, you oppose a cult of a dragon. In the sequel Rise of Tiamat, you fight the dragon cult more! In the sequels to Dragon of Icespire peak, you fight a different cult! I'm sure there's othere examples of this too. Basically, in a lot of officially published d&d it pits you against demons and devils. Not working with them, against.
Also, is there a playable Devil race? If this is a game about devil worship, wouldn't there be playable devils? No. There is not a playable devil. There is a monster statblock for devils. No playable race. That means that the intent behind devils is to have them as enemies.
This is a very good point, and I fully agree with you there. Mind if I use this quote in the project as well?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
Garret_Cartwright: That's what I do a lot also. Really, that's kind of what I'm trying to prove here, is that the game can run any number of ways just in worldbuilding. Taking domains and assigning already-existing gods, then customizing, is a really great way to add some flavor to the world, but not feel like you've done no work and just taken something straight out of mythology.
Unfortunately, since I'm new to being a DM, I use fr
One thing I would like to add to this conversation.
In several of the officially published adventures by wizards of the coast, there is parts of it that are against cults, devil worshippers and devils themselves! Descent into Avernus, Baldur's gate is a story about fighting devils (I think.) In hoard of the dragon queen, you oppose a cult of a dragon. In the sequel Rise of Tiamat, you fight the dragon cult more! In the sequels to Dragon of Icespire peak, you fight a different cult! I'm sure there's other examples of this too. Basically, in a lot of officially published d&d it pits you against demons and devils. Not working with them, against.
Also, is there a playable Devil race? If this is a game about devil worship, wouldn't there be playable devils? No. There is not a playable devil. There is a monster statblock for devils. No playable race. That means that the intent behind devils is to have them as enemies.
This is a very good point, and I fully agree with you there. Mind if I use this quote in the project as well?
I definitely agree that it is just a story, but unfortunately a lot of other people don't. I feel like the way they see it is, "These people are pretending to be devil worshippers or sold their soul to the devil, what if that's ACTUALLY what they're doing, and this 'game' is just a cover story?"
There is a part of me* which finds it difficult to believe this. It is no different to saying "The people in that church are pretending to eat a guy's flesh and drink his blood. What if that's ACTUALLY what they're doing, and this 'mass' is just a cover story?"
* There is another part of me which looks around the world at current events, as well as throughout history, and says, "Yep, this is completely predictable" (with my head buried in my hands)
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I have a school project coming up, and I need to gather some data. Would you mind answering this poll really quick? I need to know how many people homebrew worlds and pantheons, and how many of those pantheons are based of or inspired by real-world pantheons. This is to attempt to prove that D&D is not in fact satanic.
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
I love worldbuilding, so I make homebrew worlds for almost all of my campaigns.
All stars fade. Some stars forever fall.
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Homebrew (Mostly Outdated): Magic Items, Monsters, Spells, Subclasses
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If there was no light, people wouldn't fear the dark.
I run both my own stuff and pre-printed.
Pre-printed uses any gods the players want. I'm personally not going to research every world we're going to play in.
For my own stuff, I use my own gods, which don't follow the standard Indo-European model, but it does have its own versions of the main stories... such as the war of the gods; the flood; and the hero who returns from the underworld.
I'm curious how this proves dnd is not Satanic. (I know it isn't I'm just wondering how you will use this as proof.)
I anticipate he's looking to see whether D&D players who answer the poll here predominantly homebrew (i.e. create their own) pantheons and deities. If you're inventing your own gods, and they're not based on real-world deities, then you're probably not using D&D to trick your friends into worshipping Satan.
Now admittedly, inventing your own gods would fall under the 'sin' of idolatry according to typical religious rhetoric. I'm not sure if idolatry or Satanism is worse in the eyes of the sort of folk who caused the Satanic Panic way back when, but I can sure as shootin' bet that either one will get your D&D game evicted from your good God-fearin' parents' basement in a blazing hurry.
Please do not contact or message me.
Same - surely if someone has deluded themselves into thinking that D&D is somehow satanic (whatever that even means), a straw poll on a forum isn't going to change their mind?
To the actual question from OP, I do a mix of all options depending on the campaign and how much free time I've got.
Fun bonus fact, I based the theology of one world broadly on Zoroastrianism - which is arguably where the idea of the devil as "guy who opposes god" came from. If early Christians thought about the devil/satan at all they probably viewed him as a much more metaphysical concept, and it's only really in the early modern period that people started to think in terms of the devil as being a literal entity that you could (hypothetically anyway) entreat with.
I now desparately want to hear an Iconoclast's take on D&D haha
My setting has no gods or pantheons. (Not objectively existing ones, anyway.) I was unsure how to answer the survey.
There are fey, elementals, and other animistic beings.
he / him
In my D&D world, humans are the satan.
Every human has two natures: altruistic impulses versus predatory impulses.
Altruistic behavior patterns are "angels". Dysfunctional behavior patterns are "fiends".
It is all human.
he / him
My plan is to use this as just a small bit of evidence. Many people think that it's mostly pre-published stuff that's all satanic and evil. The thing is, I'm showing that a decent percentage of people like to base their pantheons on real-world religions. In that light, calling dnd satanic because it has a bunch of weird gods then becomes like (just for example) a Roman Catholic calling Hinduism devil worship.
Also thanks for answering the poll, this is going to help a lot! :)
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
I dunno.
D&D is fairly satanic.
D&D borrows from reallife demonology traditions, such as Mammon. In the New Testament, the word just means "money", literally. But centuries later, medieval Christians reinterpreted it to be a kind of spirit of money, thus a demon relating to greed. Asmodeus is the prince of demons according reallife Zoroastrianism. Jewish folklore mentions a related tradition about Ashmedai, albeit here it is a trickster who convinces men to delay having children, thus die without reproducing. In Christian demonology, it is a demon of lust. And so on, with reallife demonology.
Nevermind, one of the main classes to play is the Warlock whose "flavor" is to sell ones soul to a devil. You dont have to do this, the being can be a fairy (fey) or a genie (djinn), and the bargain can be something else. But the soul-selling is a prominent trope, and many players do roleplay the character with this devilish flavor.
Heh, and the list goes on, with parts of D&D whose purpose seems to be to intentionally alarm and antagonize reallife Christians.
That said, a distinction needs to be made between fiction and reallife traditions. For example, Dante wrote his Inferno, or Milton wrote his Paradise Lost, or a modern Christian author dramatizes the belief in a rapture. These authors might research reallife traditions about demons or antichrists, and create devilish villains for the sake of the story.
Just like a person who writes a murder mystery isnt actually a murderer, authors who explore the darker side of humanity arent actually demonic. It is a story.
A story is a safe-space of playfulness. It is place to explore, to confront fear, to think out solutions to problems. What happens in the safe zone, stays in the safe zone.
he / him
I have a homebrew world based on the Roman Empire with Roman gods.
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
I definitely agree that it is just a story, but unfortunately a lot of other people don't. I feel like the way they see it is, "These people are pretending to be devil worshippers or sold their soul to the devil, what if that's ACTUALLY what they're doing, and this 'game' is just a cover story?"
But definitely, it can be seen as satanic, and it takes a lot of inspiration from the darker sides of existing religions, but yeah. It's just a game. And when you think about what D&D is at it's core, it's make-believe where you throw plastic shapes on a table. Not satanic in the slightest.
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
Unfortunately, since I'm new to being a DM, I use fr
One thing I would like to add to this conversation.
In several of the officially published adventures by wizards of the coast, there is parts of it that are against cults, devil worshippers and devils themselves! Descent into Avernus, Baldur's gate is a story about fighting devils (I think.) In hoard of the dragon queen, you oppose a cult of a dragon. In the sequel Rise of Tiamat, you fight the dragon cult more! In the sequels to Dragon of Icespire peak, you fight a different cult! I'm sure there's other examples of this too. Basically, in a lot of officially published d&d it pits you against demons and devils. Not working with them, against.
Also, is there a playable Devil race? If this is a game about devil worship, wouldn't there be playable devils? No. There is not a playable devil. There is a monster statblock for devils. No playable race. That means that the intent behind devils is to have them as enemies.
When players get creative.
In truth I take a page out of the D&D mentality and create gods to fit domains. I start with the domain, move on to character traits and appearance, and leave the laborious task of naming them till the end. It's a lot like creating any other D&D character I just don't really worry about the stats at that point.
I have to admit most of my nature gods tend to be ripoffs of Pan if not Pan itself. It's difficult (for me anyway) to create completely original gods so I tend to use a real world pantheons as examples and then customize them from there. War gods where helms and usually carry Spears or swords. Got to death usually wear black cloaks and sometimes carry scythes or a lamp/torch. Gods of love/fertility are usually scantily clad, attractive, and amiable to most beings.
I love gods, both those from the real world and fictional, so I do a number of these. I enjoy the D&D gods, but I also enjoy creating. But I tend to prefer settings that are god-heavy, or at least have the gods as well-established. This doesn't mean they have to be central to every single thing, but I'm more likely to check out a setting if there are gods and an established afterlife (the main reasons I haven't really checked out settings like Eberron and Dark Sun).
This is a very good point, and I fully agree with you there. Mind if I use this quote in the project as well?
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
Garret_Cartwright: That's what I do a lot also. Really, that's kind of what I'm trying to prove here, is that the game can run any number of ways just in worldbuilding. Taking domains and assigning already-existing gods, then customizing, is a really great way to add some flavor to the world, but not feel like you've done no work and just taken something straight out of mythology.
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
Of course! Hope you get a good grade!
When players get creative.
Thanks a lot!
A lich beholder could and would fight God. I desperately want to make it fight my players instead.
There is a part of me* which finds it difficult to believe this. It is no different to saying "The people in that church are pretending to eat a guy's flesh and drink his blood. What if that's ACTUALLY what they're doing, and this 'mass' is just a cover story?"
* There is another part of me which looks around the world at current events, as well as throughout history, and says, "Yep, this is completely predictable" (with my head buried in my hands)