This is one third memes, one third serious and one third crippling fatigue, so take from it what you will.
With the changes to the races of the setting (and again, hats off to WotC for finally getting onto this) and the push to remove the casual racism that came with the sacred cows from older editions, I started thinking "How could we jump forwards in the setting without losing Faerun?" and it occurred to me we've already kind of had this with Ao and the time when he stripped the Gods of their powers and cast them down onto Faerun.
What if Faerun went through an event like that again, but Ao was done giving the 'old' Gods second chances. Too many events where the world nearly got destroyed, too many times the Gods deviated from Ao's agenda for their for personal reasons, too many failures to uphold their duties. So he decides to kick them out, rendering them quasi-immortals trapped on Faerun, Gods, Angels and Fiends alike, and sets up 'new' Gods. All Neutral in some form or function, all of them part of the same Pantheon, all of them with a very, very clear mandate that they are the new Gods and the Old Gods are not to step out of line and try to take back their roles or bad things will happen.
The event of casting down the Old Gods is also very cataclysmic. Empires shatter as Gods fall from the heavens like meteors, blasting the lands with their landings, and for several hundred years, all of society is brought low, only for it to slowly be brought back up by the New Gods and those few Old Gods who have taken their fall with some humility and seek to protect mortals and uphold the new Order, seeing it as perhaps a better one than the old, conflict-riddled mess they had to deal with.
The new nations that rise up are built not on racial lines, but political and religious ones. Nations could be in conflict over the correct way to worship these New Gods, who, being Neutral in at least one of their Alignment Axises, will accept worshippers who are, for example, Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral, Neutral and Lawful Good. A Paladin fighting a Blackguard and they both have the same patron, and that patron is perfectly happy to allow this to happen because it is part of their Portfolio (War), so long as both combatants do not employ underhanded or dishonorable tactics.
Nations populated by Humans, Hobgoblins and Dragonborn who are all equal citizens in the eyes of the law, the old nations and belief-systems having long been discarded by the need for mutual survive and then buried almost entirely by the machinations and efforts of both heroes and the New Gods. Where one's nationality matters more than one's race and conflict arises more often along religious disputes, border skirmishes and political tensions than racial prejudices.
And the Old Gods are still out there, lurking, sulking, scheming over their 'unfair' removal from power, no longer able to grant spells to Clerics en-mass like they used to do, but now each Cleric is a careful, and risky, investment of their lingering shreds of divinity, and instead Old Gods must trust in their servants who are now Divine Soul Sorcerers and Warlocks with specific Pacts to enforce their will, creating City-States where these former Gods rule over distorted remnants of their former dominions, or seek to undermine and overthrow the faithful religious sects of their 'usurpers' and restore the world to the way 'it was meant to be'.
A less serious topic: I love tropes and memes, so need some advice for a campaign I'm cooking up.
What if ... most of the races are the result of Human Adventurers being Human Adventurers, and inevitably trying to boink their way to victory.
Human+Goblin=Hobgoblin, Human+Kobold=Dragonborn, Human+Dwarf=Halfling, etc etc, and part of the reason things are so messed up is that Humans were the intended chosen-one race destined to win the prophetic battle, but because they've sowed their seeds so far and wide, now anyone could possible be the Chosen One(s) and thus it is an all-out brawl between every race, religious faction and nation to fulfill the necessary requirements to place their Champions as the 'True' Chosen One and subvert the Prophecy for their own peoples, but nobody actually knows what the reward for completing the Prophecy actually is.
I kind of like the concept that destiny got vigorously derailed because an ancient Bard couldn't keep it in their pants.
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This is one third memes, one third serious and one third crippling fatigue, so take from it what you will.
With the changes to the races of the setting (and again, hats off to WotC for finally getting onto this) and the push to remove the casual racism that came with the sacred cows from older editions, I started thinking "How could we jump forwards in the setting without losing Faerun?" and it occurred to me we've already kind of had this with Ao and the time when he stripped the Gods of their powers and cast them down onto Faerun.
What if Faerun went through an event like that again, but Ao was done giving the 'old' Gods second chances. Too many events where the world nearly got destroyed, too many times the Gods deviated from Ao's agenda for their for personal reasons, too many failures to uphold their duties. So he decides to kick them out, rendering them quasi-immortals trapped on Faerun, Gods, Angels and Fiends alike, and sets up 'new' Gods. All Neutral in some form or function, all of them part of the same Pantheon, all of them with a very, very clear mandate that they are the new Gods and the Old Gods are not to step out of line and try to take back their roles or bad things will happen.
The event of casting down the Old Gods is also very cataclysmic. Empires shatter as Gods fall from the heavens like meteors, blasting the lands with their landings, and for several hundred years, all of society is brought low, only for it to slowly be brought back up by the New Gods and those few Old Gods who have taken their fall with some humility and seek to protect mortals and uphold the new Order, seeing it as perhaps a better one than the old, conflict-riddled mess they had to deal with.
The new nations that rise up are built not on racial lines, but political and religious ones. Nations could be in conflict over the correct way to worship these New Gods, who, being Neutral in at least one of their Alignment Axises, will accept worshippers who are, for example, Lawful Evil, Lawful Neutral, Neutral and Lawful Good. A Paladin fighting a Blackguard and they both have the same patron, and that patron is perfectly happy to allow this to happen because it is part of their Portfolio (War), so long as both combatants do not employ underhanded or dishonorable tactics.
Nations populated by Humans, Hobgoblins and Dragonborn who are all equal citizens in the eyes of the law, the old nations and belief-systems having long been discarded by the need for mutual survive and then buried almost entirely by the machinations and efforts of both heroes and the New Gods. Where one's nationality matters more than one's race and conflict arises more often along religious disputes, border skirmishes and political tensions than racial prejudices.
And the Old Gods are still out there, lurking, sulking, scheming over their 'unfair' removal from power, no longer able to grant spells to Clerics en-mass like they used to do, but now each Cleric is a careful, and risky, investment of their lingering shreds of divinity, and instead Old Gods must trust in their servants who are now Divine Soul Sorcerers and Warlocks with specific Pacts to enforce their will, creating City-States where these former Gods rule over distorted remnants of their former dominions, or seek to undermine and overthrow the faithful religious sects of their 'usurpers' and restore the world to the way 'it was meant to be'.
A less serious topic: I love tropes and memes, so need some advice for a campaign I'm cooking up.
What if ... most of the races are the result of Human Adventurers being Human Adventurers, and inevitably trying to boink their way to victory.
Human+Goblin=Hobgoblin, Human+Kobold=Dragonborn, Human+Dwarf=Halfling, etc etc, and part of the reason things are so messed up is that Humans were the intended chosen-one race destined to win the prophetic battle, but because they've sowed their seeds so far and wide, now anyone could possible be the Chosen One(s) and thus it is an all-out brawl between every race, religious faction and nation to fulfill the necessary requirements to place their Champions as the 'True' Chosen One and subvert the Prophecy for their own peoples, but nobody actually knows what the reward for completing the Prophecy actually is.
I kind of like the concept that destiny got vigorously derailed because an ancient Bard couldn't keep it in their pants.