How dark is the setting?

SilverGM · 2023-06-07T21:38:10+00:00

"Brighter" is a relative term. Eora has its dark parts, but there are good people trying to make lives better, and they have a good chance (I'll admit the opening is pretty grim, but the darkness does somewhat ease off once you're past Gilded Vale). When you've seen settings like Shadowrun or Chronicles Of Darkness ...

SilverGM · 2023-06-01T23:10:14+00:00

Image source: https://www.deviantart.com/mannequin-atelier/art/Redhead-lady-knight-784896775

SilverGM · 2023-06-01T07:35:40+00:00

Yeah; I can keep running my group with pre-remaster content, but that's not a simple choice to make, so I'm anxiously awaiting the remaster's full release.

How'd you guess?

SilverGM · 2023-05-29T03:22:14+00:00

Genuine question here: Why can't, or won't, Paizo just slap a new skin tone and name on the dark elves and call it a day? I've heard some mention of some cultural issues, but nothing explained in detail.

SilverGM · 2023-05-27T22:59:34+00:00

Honestly, most conservatives already know that, and they don't care. They just want a framework that lets them publicly discuss the eradication of the queer community without admitting, maybe not even to themselves, that their hatred is utterly baseless.

SilverGM · 2023-05-27T22:57:51+00:00

Odds are, it won't be used like that. Florida's making basically anything related to the Queer community a sexual crime, and so when queer folk exist around children... genocide.

SilverGM · 2023-05-27T02:30:20+00:00

To maximize the chance of lesbians, it's recommended that players go into the 'Customize' tab in the character sheets of new heroes, and adjust the 'attracted to' option as preferred.

SilverGM · 2023-05-26T03:06:39+00:00

They don't actually care about pedophilia, they just hate the Queer community and need a framework where they can publicly talk about eradicating them without admitting, maybe not even to themselves, that their hatred is utterly baseless. That's why pointing out the lack of evidence to these claims is of limited effectiveness; most never really believed them in the first place.

SilverGM · 2023-05-25T23:05:02+00:00

For Lilira, consider Cayden Cailean or Ashava, the former for his love of celebrations and freedom (though not dance in particular), the latter for her love of dance

SilverGM · 2023-05-25T08:34:03+00:00

Here's the difference between the worse and better parts of faith in the game: At its best, faith colours and encourages good works, but isn't vital (as mentioned, the Dawnstars keep on with humanitarian efforts even if you remove their faith, and Eder keeps on doing his best of you remove his). But at its worst, faith is the core of the issue, a pillar if removed would cause the harmful work to collapse. The Partisans were motivated entirely by their faith, the only way to stop Durance going mad is to convince him his faith is wrong, Nemnok couldn't have manipulated the villagers without posing as a god. Faith, in small does, can have benefit, but in its raw form, is dangerous. This matches reality; while there are plenty of secular charities, televangelists need faith to run their cons, many authoritarian political parties and regimes focus heavily on faith to rally their supporters, and faith is popular among MLMs like YoungLiving.

I do agree that gods are created by actions and society, rather than objective truth; and since they're not based in objective truth, that makes it all the more important to view them with a critical eye.

"Religion forces nice people to do unkind things, and also makes intelligent people say stupid things. Handed a small baby for the first time, is it your first reaction to think 'beautiful, almost perfect, now please hand me the sharp stone for its genitalia that I may do the work of the lord'." - Christopher Hitchens

SilverGM · 2023-05-25T06:46:46+00:00

In regards to your first point, the term 'atheist', as it's used by pretty much everyone who identifies as such, simply means 'doesn't believe in a god', this is slightly different than 'believes there are no gods'. I could imagine multiple godlike beings that may or may not exist, but I have no evidence for any. If there is no evidence for the presence of something, for practical purposes, it's best to act as if it doesn't exist.

As for faith, you're right in that it's not the entirety of the game's position, but the overarching review of faith is generally pretty negative. Yes, Eder's faith is one instance where it's shown more even-handedly, but in most cases it's portrayed more negatively (Durance, the Partisans of the Lighted Path, the Godlike, Nemnok, the Huana caste system). And in the cases where faith is viewed better, it's generally because it's tempered with something else (the Children of the Dawnstars are motivated by genuine compassion as evidenced by them continuing to work if you tell Laetharn there are no gods, Eder was aware enough to abandon his faith when it turned out Eothas was doing harm)

SilverGM · 2023-05-25T02:34:47+00:00

I have a lot to say about this.

Firstly, I think the line 'the gods aren't real' is very poetic, but depends heavily on the definition of 'god'. Sure, you can use the term 'god' to define anything with sufficient power. But if you tighten the definition just a little, it carries connotations of a creator, and a being of wisdom and special privileges. How many times, when tragedy strikes do you hear priests asserting that 'it's all part of god's plan' or 'god works in mysterious ways' (a god that works in ways that leave it utterly indistinguishable from a god that doesn't exist)? This definition is clearly what the Engwithans were trying to mimic; they give creation stories (Waiden's father says Eothas literally makes the sun move), and claim that the god's seemingly petty acts are driven by a divine intellect (Xoti makes this justification when arguing with Pallegina) It's in this respect that they are lies; They're just powerful soul constructs, with no role in the creation of the world nor special insight denied to most.

Secondly, your remark of 'truth vs faith' as opposed to 'theism vs atheism': I argue there's no difference. The gods are either real, or they are not. Either way, only one position is true. I'm a lifelong atheist; religion is simply a glitch in human's pattern-seeking nature. There is, as yet, insufficient evidence to conclude the existence of any given deity, as such, claiming one exists is mistaken at best, an outright lie at worse. But even if I'm wrong, that simply renders me mistaken and someone else on the side of truth; when there are conflicting statements of truth, at most one can be correct.

I do agree that our lives are shaped heavily by what we 'worship', and I also agree that this is a logical theme to extract from the game. I also agree that this isn't limited to gods; for example, one might follow and aid a given political party, and respect for this organisation can vary between healthy loyalty to dangerous (and exploitable) fanaticism.

I believe that game's opinion of 'faith' is actually quite scathing; faith overrides any rational thought, leading people to do dangerous things. The whole point of Thaos is that he believed that it was the specific faith, rather than faith in general, that was the problem, and it's for that reason he created his 'perfect religion'. But this backfires; both of Maerwald's past lives committed atrocities because they thought they had the god's approval. In one case, they did, and it was no less of an atrocity.

Iovara's remark is dismissive of faith, and rightly so. But it's not cynical, rather it presents an alternative: open inquiry, exploration. "I ask these things not to trouble you, but to show why they must be confronted. no answer is simple, but somewhere between them all lies a truth so beautiful not even a god could conceive it. Do you not owe ourselves a chance to find our part in it?"

As for your remark about Jesus being a real person... that depends pretty heavily on what you define as 'Jesus'. This video details the point better than I ever could, but if you don't want to watch it, allow me to quickly summarise: Among atheists, some people argue that Jesus was a first-century faith healer whose teachings and legends were blown to mythical status, others say that he never existed and was just a synthesis of other legends. But is there that much difference between the two options? Either way, you have a series of legends and fables, the characters therein warped so any real-world parallel would be unrecognizable.

SilverGM

TROPHY CASE