Escaped gaming meme

[mithriltabby]

Still no word from the developer who needs to provide the fix...

One of the things that is, in my opinion, severely broken about AD&D is the alignment system. (The old UCSB Gaming Club maxim of “Law and Chaos are the same thing and the only difference between Good and Evil is how you treat peasants” comes to mind.) The notion of a matrix of Law vs. Chaos matched up against Good vs. Evil is very limiting: different people have different ideas about what Good and Evil consist of, and the notion that there would be an absolute way of detecting these tends to screw up many interesting moral dilemmas for characters. The algorithm “detect evil ⇒ smite evil” can become a reflex, which can be fun to break as a GM, but it shouldn’t do that in the first place.

Another classic fantasy trope is Light vs. Darkness, which has its own interesting problems. That one leads naturally to the notion of grey areas between the pure extremes, and less obviously to the notion of bringing in color.

So I decided to come up with a rather different sort of system that could provide more forms of conflict: a pyramid with four sides. The side of Light opposes the side of Darkness, and on the other axis the side of Color opposes the side of Shade. Light and Darkness are your usual fantasy tropes, while Shade is about safety— which is going to be at a premium in any world where mighty heroes and ravening monsters are at large!— and Color is about diversity. I then crafted a Pyramid Pantheon to illustrate this, with each side having a deity for their aspect of a given realm. (e.g.: the Light god of Art governs Truth, the Darkness god of Art governs Deception, the Color god of Art governs Fiction, and the Shade god of Art governs Diplomacy.) There are numerous possible ways that different sides can work together or start fighting. It’s managed to capture the imaginations of many of the players.

At one point in Seas of Chaos, Anhir, a player character priest of Elinar, the Enlightenment aspect of the light-god of Healing, was pregnant with an archangel of Deception that was an old enemy from a previous incarnation (as a means of giving the archangel a chance to experience a human incarnation and possibly choose something other than Deception as a force to serve). Four paladins, each of the different War gods of the pantheon showed up to defend her (which also soaked up some extra XP for themselves). The Darkness paladin, one Kuang Wo Xun, serving the god of Self-Aggrandizement, in particular was very helpful and perfectly happy to offer the insights of an experienced minion of evil; the PCs wound up giving him a few rather nifty evil-only magic items.

After the child was born, Kuang Wo Xun went off and tracked down a really nifty artifact associated with his deity (said artifact being one that the PCs left in a place strongly associated with Light in hopes that they could make it difficult for minions of Darkness to get their hands on it) and intrigued and assassinated his way up to being the emperor of my Oriental fantasy area... whereupon he has proceeded to rule benevolently (as far as all the peasants and tradesmen were concerned), cleaning up the bureaucracy (throwing out the incompetents and requiring that government workers deliver equal results for equal bribes), promoting equality (declaring that all who swore fealty to the Emperor were equal, even if they were demons or monsters or Chaos-warped outcast mutants), quelling the incipient civil war that was the result of the player characters’ last trip through the area, and creating jobs (many in the military as he staffs up for defense... and perhaps conquest). The PCs are very worried about all this, since Darkness is experiencing a newfound popularity... but the guy does seem to have a winning ticket with his notion that providing a good life for the people will cement his power base.

The big flaw in my current version of the Pyramid Pantheon is that it’s too abstract and sterile and generally sketchy; I really need to spend some time digging through books of myth and legend and finding ways of fleshing out the various deities and the myths behind them and their associated principles and behaviors, inventing the various rituals and garb and weapons associated with each priesthood, and the sorts of quests that each goes on.

Comments

[weregamer.livejournal.com]

Some of the deities are much easier to work with than others. Each of the War gods, for example, has a very strong visceral appeal.

The Light god of war is Garon, representing holy war in the more literal sense. Not (in general) in the fanatic, "detect evil -> smite evil" or "convert or die" way, but in the sense that the you stop evildoers by stopping them. This not only has real-world visceral appeal (three strikes laws, capital punishment, Wars on Terror, Zero Tolerance for Three-Legged Racing, whatever), but captures one of the emotional needs that many gamers satisfy by escaping into gaming. In the real world, there are gray areas and other issues that make the simplicity of being able to slay the dragon very satisfying.

The Color god of War, Kessel, represents Mastery in the compete-with-self, excellence-seeking flavor. This resonates well with players, who recognize the trope in ourselves and others. It also has extra appeal in relation to both real and fictional martial arts.

The Shade god of War, Jas, represents Self-Defense. Again, a very common real-world stance on violence but also subtler forms of conflict. Very American in particular - individualism as a virtue. From a gaming viewpoint, tends to get rather mixed in with the Jihad view, as you shade from pure defense to premptive strikes. Not surprisingly, few adventurers go for this one, but that actually adds to the value in the pantheon. Adventurers like noisy, violent, curious, and/or greedy stances and gods that patronize them, but the average peasant just wants to get the work done, have his physical needs addressed, and not fear.

Even the Dark god of war, Agijur, is very visceral. Self-aggrandizement is a major theme of modern society. Selfishness is more or less by definiton "evil", but as the story of the new Emperor of Sheflek demonstrates only a little enlightenment can make a big difference. And even the purely selfish are portrayed as heroic in our culture: The Donald, Bill Gates, etc.

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From a gaming perspective, I think the Pyramid concept brings two very nice things to the table (as it were). First, having a clear take on Darkness has extremely important and beneficial effects on making the story more dramatic and less melodramatic. Cackling EEE-VIL villains make fine sword fodder, but the villain who has real motivations, or a reason for the darkness of soul that drives them to seek World Domination, is so much richer. Secondly and even more importantly, the Pyramid doesn't have a "Good" or "Evil" in it. Remember, it's a mark of real insanity for one to actually consider oneself evil. The pyramid reminds us that people can be evil for apparently "good" motives, or practice goodness for basically dark motives.

And I think it's no accident that despite the equal presence of a more traditional, ancient-European style pantheon, it's the Pyramid that has caught up most of the players. It's philosophically stimulating, and just plain different from the cliches of the genre, as well as (at least in the best cases) more visceral.

Now, if only we could get as much visceral flavor for some of the other domains. All of the other sets work from a systematic and philosophical standpoint, but some gods on most of them lack that "oomph" - and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's just that physical conflict is such a focus in fantasy gaming that it's easiest to relate there?

[mithriltabby]

Organization has a certain amount of oomph as well: the dynamic between Kharsh, Darkness god of Slavery, and Tran, Color god of Freedom, is pretty strong in the game. Lapri, Shade god of Trade, and Tish, Light god of Justice, haven’t shown up as much, but a campaign that stuck in a more strongly Pyramid-oriented culture could flesh them out better. I think you’re right about the visceral flavor, though; the conflicts inherent to the various principles really need to be brought out for center stage. Perhaps that will give me a theme for when you folks visit Thousand Rivers...