I asked this question in another thread, and it may have been answered, but my query has been buried in the flurry and I can't find it, so I'll ask again and beg forgiveness of the Paizo staff.
Are the core gods (Pelor, Wee Jas, etc.) OGL?
And, whatever the answer to question one, will the Pathfinder setting be developing its own set of deities and religions unique to that setting?
A third question: what about demon lords, archdevils, and celestial paragons, along with the outer planes? Are these OGL and will Pathfinder be adopting the standard "great wheel" setup for the outer planes, or developing its own?
Are the core gods (Pelor, Wee Jas, etc.) OGL?
Mr. Jacobs answered this in another thread, the core deities are part of the Greyhawk pantheon and thus owned by the greedy Wizards.
And, whatever the answer to question one, will the Pathfinder setting be developing its own set of deities and religions unique to that setting?
I think so as two new deities are mentioned in the previews.
A third question: what about demon lords, archdevils, and celestial paragons, along with the outer planes? Are these OGL and will Pathfinder be adopting the standard "great wheel" setup for the outer planes, or developing its own?
Yes, what about these?
|
...
A third question: what about demon lords, archdevils, and celestial paragons, along with the outer planes? Are these OGL and will Pathfinder be adopting the standard "great wheel" setup for the outer planes, or developing its own?
Asmodeus is specifically mentioned as being "real-world mythology". I suspect some outsiders are open material (Dagon) and others are not (Malcanthet).
Creative Director
|
We can't use the core deities; they're Greyhawk, and belong to WotC.
We'll be inventing a new pantheon of deities. Some of them will be recognizable (such as Asmodeous).
I am a HUGE fan of demon lords, archdevils, arch angels, and the like. They will definately have a place in our campaign world.
The Great Wheel cosmology is also Wizards of the Coat intellectual property, so we can't touch that. But rest assured, our setting's outer planes will be pretty similar, especially in drawing upon mythological regions like Hades and the like.
That is nice to know that you all will not be veering off the Deity path too much.
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 32
|
The Great Wheel cosmology is also Wizards of the Coat intellectual property, so we can't touch that. But rest assured, our setting's outer planes will be pretty similar, especially in drawing upon mythological regions like Hades and the like.
Well, you could always check out The World Project for inspiriation, hehe. It WAS put together largely by Paizo loyalists, after all.
We could start a list and pray the authors will participate!
Desna, Goddess of Dreams and Travel
?, Goddess of Monsters
...
I still don' understand why my avatar's name doesn't tell I'm a Charter Subscriber. :(
You gotta sign up for Month-to-Month...
Well actually I did, but my Dragon subscription got transfered "first" my M2M starts with magzine #3.
Could you possibly use the Norse,Greek,Egyptian Deities? Kind of bring back the old Legends and Lore Gods?
|
|
Could you possibly use the Norse,Greek,Egyptian Deities? Kind of bring back the old Legends and Lore Gods?
I'd rather actually -not- see this. I don't have a problem with these pantheons, but they tend to be aimed at a very specific cultural basis to be effective. I'd much rather see new and interesting and varied gods who share theme elements with these gods. And lots and lots of their monsters. Mmm, monsters.
Desna, Goddess of Dreams and Travel
Lamashtu, Goddess of Monsters and Madness
Fixed it for ya. :)
Good start! Sound pretty cool in my ears.
They rejected all my names for gods. I tell ya, Larry an *ideal* name. Grumble....
How about Curly and Moe also??
-- david
Papa-DRB
Jeff, the god of biscuits! :)
By the Hammer of Thor!
Along with blot.. well, think those sacrifice rules from bovd will take me far enough,... horses, dogs and slaves..
It's been used in other games, but still a real world concept....
Pazuzu god of insects. One of my favorites.
Jeff, the god of biscuits! :)
Steve, the god of hairdos
Who is the god of Paladins? (blunt but I want to know)
More suggestions:
Arturian, God of Light (LG, Paladins, Healing....)
Voriel, Goddess of Life (N or NG, Druid, Rangers, Animals, farmers....)
Alstras, God of Storms (CN, Barbarians, weather, omens....)
Prathas, Goddess of Tides (LN, Oceans, merchants, clocks & calendars....)
Moresil, God of Darkness (NE, Shadows, fear, undead, entropy...)
Kobold Press
|
The Great Wheel cosmology is also Wizards of the Coat intellectual property, so we can't touch that. But rest assured, our setting's outer planes will be pretty similar, especially in drawing upon mythological regions like Hades and the like.
And it's worth mentioning that while the outer planes are WotC property, other useful planes are OGL, like all six elemental planes, plus the astral, ethereal, and Plane of Shadow.
Oh, and I wrote some ancient gods for the setting already. One of them still has active followers, and all still have some impact on the setting.
A relatively simple and elegant setup for the outer planes would be welcome. Maybe instead of alignment-based planes, we could have pantheon-based planes (along the lines of Norse mythology) that serve as homes for groupings of gods. Gods grouped by a common element, like a shared body of worshippers or a culture that reveres all of the group. Or maybe just four planes for the four major alignment orientations. Or merely a Vault of the Heavens and a Land Below, or something like that. No need to have 17 alignment-based planes, or even 9.
Yeah, but I still kind of like the idea of demons and devil not getting along and them having their own "territory" in whatever Hell springs up. Eberron's cosmology isn't based on alignment, and in my opinion, its one of the things that keeps me from being excited about DMing it. "Oh, THESE devils come from this plane, along with demons and fire elementals, but THESE devils live in this plane with . . . "
|
|
Yeah, but I still kind of like the idea of demons and devil not getting along and them having their own "territory" in whatever Hell springs up. Eberron's cosmology isn't based on alignment, and in my opinion, its one of the things that keeps me from being excited about DMing it. "Oh, THESE devils come from this plane, along with demons and fire elementals, but THESE devils live in this plane with . . . "
Given that James Jacobs has implied the Asmodeus is going to be one of the divine powers moving about in the world, I -really- wouldn't stress this one overmuch at all.
The Tyrant of all Tyrants isn't about to let some upstart demiplane splinter off any of -his- power and control.
|
Creative Director
|
They way that D&D is set up has a lot of hidden requirements for how the planes work. For example, it's implied in the SRD that demons, devils, and the other outsider types all come from the same plane; they have traits that they all share with others of their same kind. When you start to reorganize where the outsiders come from, the value of shared traits between outsider types like devls and demons vanishes, That, and the fact that for most of the game's history, they used the Great Wheel. That's a lot of tradition to throw out the window, a lot of hard work and creativity to dismiss.
Whatever we come up with for the outer planes for our campaign world, it'll be different from the Great Wheel (it Has to be, since the Great Wheel is not our intellectual property), but it'll be something similar enough that the feel of the game we've all known for so long won't be turned on its ear.
Don't expect much about the outer planes soon, thoguh; we wanna make sure our Material Plane is working and good to go first! :)
|
Creative Director
|
Given that James Jacobs has implied the Asmodeus is going to be one of the divine powers moving about in the world, I -really- wouldn't stress this one overmuch at all.
The Tyrant of all Tyrants isn't about to let some upstart demiplane splinter off any of -his- power and control.
The Asmodeus of our campaign world will be different than the Asmodeus you see in the Book of Vile Darkness or Fiendish Codex II. They'll both draw from the same myths for background, but they'll certainly be different stat-wise.
Our Asmodeus is one of our core evil deities, for starters.
With Eberron I always assumed that demons and devils originated on one of the planes and then spread out to the other planes through the intervening millenia. This allows them to share similar traits, but exist on different planes.
As for Pathfinder's deities, I hope that Paizo doesn't just use old earth gods like Thor. I would rather see completely new gods that help to give the Pathfinder world its own unique flavor.
The nine hells can't be copyrighted; or if so belong to Dante.
Actually, the "Nine Circles of Hell" was definately Dante, but the whole idea that there is a heirarchy among devils and ranks below the Adversary was very much Milton's Paradise Lost. D&D has pulled a lot of great ideas and combined them with a lot of other really great ideas . . .
Will a differenciaton be made between the Deities and the churches that represent them?
Gods tend to be culturally porus, so the idea of variations of Dogma, of Heresies and of Schisms as well as regions overlapping of faiths makes for a more colorful and rich setting.
Dark Ages Europe alone has an abundance of churches religious wars and crusades. Gods in a setting shouldn't be window dressing, they should be a central core of a characters life, offering meaning and a philosophical compass for the follower.
I wonder if would could get more information on the blog comment that there is less distinction between Gods and demons in the new campaign setting?
Do you mean that there is less of a distinction between dieties and outsider lords (Cestial paragons, archdevils, demonprinces, archnomentals, etc.), or something more specific to demons?
Also, was Aureus's suggestion actually taken, or was it a coinicidence that 'Desna' was also used in today's blog? Because if we subscribers can make our mark that way, I'm going to have to post a lot more stuff like that.
|
I just hope they don't go overboard with he amount of gods. We really don't need 30+ gods and another 15 for each different demi-human race.
I concur. Really, in dealing with a setting with multiple cultures with different religions--I find the best way to approach it is to create a single set of deities. Each culture would not necessarily worship (or acknowledge the existence of) all of said deities. More likely, they would worship a certain subset, and may even only acknowledge limited aspects of the deities that they do share with outer culture, and even have their own names and mythos for their versions of the same gods.
Oh and please do not make the war god's favored weapon be the longsword for once.
Personally, I think it should vary by culture. :)
|
Creative Director
|
I wonder if would could get more information on the blog comment that there is less distinction between Gods and demons in the new campaign setting?
Do you mean that there is less of a distinction between dieties and outsider lords (Cestial paragons, archdevils, demonprinces, archnomentals, etc.), or something more specific to demons?
Also, was Aureus's suggestion actually taken, or was it a coinicidence that 'Desna' was also used in today's blog? Because if we subscribers can make our mark that way, I'm going to have to post a lot more stuff like that.
We'll be spilling more info about our deities over the next few months. We can't spill all the info at once; that's no fun! :)
As for Desna, she's actually a deity from my own home-brew campaign (which is going on 25 years old!); a fair amount of the deities in the Pathfinder world are actually from my campaign setting. Others are from myth (such as Lamashtu and Asmodeus) or from the minds of other folk here at Paizo. We aren't taking suggestions for our core deities, since that work's already been done in house.
|
|
The Great Wheel cosmology is also Wizards of the Coat intellectual property, so we can't touch that. But rest assured, our setting's outer planes will be pretty similar, especially in drawing upon mythological regions like Hades and the like.
I thought the 'Great Wheel' was, well, 4500 years old...Tibet, anyone?
From the government,
"Names, titles, and short phrases or expressions are not subject to copyright protection. Even if a name, title, or short phrase is novel or distinctive or if it lends itself to a play on words, it cannot be protected by copyright. The Copyright Office cannot register claims to exclusive rights in brief combinations of words such as:
* Names of products or services
* Names of businesses, organizations, or groups (including the name of a group of performers)
* Names of pseudonyms of individuals (including pen name or stage name)
* Titles of works
* Catchwords, catchphrases, mottoes, slogans, or short advertising expressions
* Mere listings of ingredients, as in recipes, labels, or formulas. When a recipe or formula is accompanied by explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable."
My wife's the lawyer, so I should ask her if I actually really understand what the government is saying, but it sounds to me like anyone could call their RPG mythos the 'Great Wheel'...
I think we are splitting hairs a bit here . . . the term Great Wheel may not be a problem, except that if you have a Great Wheel that has a lawful evil plane with nine layers, a chaotic evil plane with infinate (or six hundrend sixty six) layers, a heaven with seven layers, a plane in the middle with a spire with a city on top . . . in other words, the details of the D&D Great Wheel define the Great Wheel.
Anyone can use a character named Thor, but once you start portraying him as blond and wearing blue and yellow costumes with a red cape and a winged helmet, and you have him run around with the Warriors Three and fighting Kurse . . . then Marvel's lawyers can come knocking on your door.
Lamashtu? Where dose that name come from?
I like Asmoudus as a main diety of evil, just like you imgine when you here that name.
|
|
I think we are splitting hairs a bit here . . . the term Great Wheel may not be a problem, except that if you have a Great Wheel that has a lawful evil plane with nine layers, a chaotic evil plane with infinate (or six hundrend sixty six) layers, a heaven with seven layers, a plane in the middle with a spire with a city on top . . . in other words, the details of the D&D Great Wheel define the Great Wheel.
Anyone can use a character named Thor, but once you start portraying him as blond and wearing blue and yellow costumes with a red cape and a winged helmet, and you have him run around with the Warriors Three and fighting Kurse . . . then Marvel's lawyers can come knocking on your door.
"When a recipe or formula is accompanied by explanation or directions, the text directions may be copyrightable, but the recipe or formula itself remains uncopyrightable."
What if we looked at the D&D Great Wheel like "the text directions," and the components of the D&D Great Wheel like "the recipe or formula itself"?
Lamashtu? Where does that name come from?
*shakes fist*
Dammit, I know there's a name similar to that in mythology somewhere, but all my books is packed up!
That's why the gods gave us Wikipedia.
Behold: Lamashtu, Mesopotamian demon-goddess who menaced women during childbirth and killed or stole young children.
IRL Lamashtu was a Mesopotamian demon godess that stole children and menaced pregnant women. She bears some resemblance to Lilith.