But there's still the divinity aspect. A powerful magical/technologically advanced person like Thor is still just a dude. He has no control over you past death. In a place where the soul exists and lasts forever, beings capable of controlling and directing those souls on a higher plane of existence are far more powerful than than those that can't.
Well, there are spells that allow non-gods to affect a person's soul. Necromancers can bind a person's soul and keep them from going to any afterlife. Especially powerful necromancers can call souls back from the afterlife. Heck, living people can even go to the various heavens and hells that gods send souls to.
I had a friend who demanded to play an atheist in a fucking Planescape campaign some years back. The DM just laughed at her.
Credit where credit is due: That's a pretty fantastic role-playing challenge. Like playing a dedicated gravity-denier.
Actually playing an atheist isn't that irrational in that format. The atheist might just believe that the gods are just other beings who happen to have a great deal of power compared to a human. Ants are much smaller and weaker than a human but that doesn't mean humans are gods. They could maintain "gods" are like everyone else and get their power from a strictly mechanistic universe as opposed to metaphysical mumbo jumbo.
By definition, that is not what an atheist is. Believing the Gods aren't worthy of worship is valid, but that's not being an atheist. Being an atheist in Planescape/D&D in general is simply being objectively wrong, no two ways about it.
I mean that's fine, characters are allowed to have flaws, the important thing is to not become so enamored of the character that you forget that they are straight up wrong.
The best part about the Planescape universe is if you can make it a lasting movement and a big one, you can erase gods and the Wall and the whole system. Now they might/probably/totallywill fight back long before that happens, but you gave it the ol' college try.
Assuming the god/whatever doesn't just believe in it's own existence, is not believing enough? I mean, if Bob doesn't know about Joe, then will Joe cease to exist because Bob doesn't know (or believe) he exists? In order to start a movement to erase the gods from existence has to acknowledge they exist in order to do so. How can you plot against something you don't know exists without first knowing they exist?
We've always been at war with Eastasia
No, wrong! Never start a land war with Asia.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
The Athar faction in Planescape is the "atheist" group. The hold the view that the so called gods, while very much real, are simply powerful beings like other powerful beings who are not called gods or divine. For example, the rulers of the Lower Planes are not gods but some of them are more powerful than certain gods, especially on the layer they rule. The Athar say that gods are tricking mortals into giving away their souls to them after death, and that they're not worthy of being gods because they're not omnipotent/prescient. Priest spells aren't anything unique since there are other forms of magic/supernatural powers to achieve the same results (or nearly so). Also, gods can be killed, even by mortals, and they require mortal worship to exist (at least in AD&D, which was the only edition that received an official Planescape campaign setting). Their headquarters are at the base of the Spire where no magic works -- even gods can't use any of their powers there. Sigil sits at the top of the Spire.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
The Athar faction in Planescape is the "atheist" group. The hold the view that the so called gods, while very much real, are simply powerful beings like other powerful beings who are not called gods or divine. For example, the rulers of the Lower Planes are not gods but some of them are more powerful than certain gods, especially on the layer they rule. The Athar say that gods are tricking mortals into giving away their souls to them after death, and that they're not worthy of being gods because they're not omnipotent/prescient. Priest spells aren't anything unique since there are other forms of magic/supernatural powers to achieve the same results (or nearly so). Also, gods can be killed, even by mortals, and they require mortal worship to exist (at least in AD&D, which was the only edition that received an official Planescape campaign setting). Their headquarters are at the base of the Spire where no magic works -- even gods can't use any of their powers there. Sigil sits at the top of the Spire.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
Thank you very much for this. This is exactly what I was trying to get at.
Atheists are extra special deluxe wrong in Faerun. One word: Ao.
I used to run games in the FR when I was younger. The moment they threw in Ao (Alpha and Omega... hurr durr), I completely stopped caring about the Forgotten Realms. I would be perfectly happy if they just retconned that whole god-war thing out of their canon. I don't even mind their gods directly intervening with mortal affairs, because that's what gods do in fantasy settings. I felt that the whole thing was more comic book than fantasy.
I like the idea of the gods being affected by the beliefs of their worshipers so the more worshipers a god has, the more that god has to conform to the beliefs of that worshiper. For example, a god of war might personally believe that war should be taken seriously and used only as a last resort but if people started praying to the god to start wars or for conflicts to end in violence, then over time that god will change to be more savage and violent. So a god has to choose between limiting its contact with mortals so that it can keep its own free will or expanding its influence, gaining and power, but at the expense of succumbing to the collective will of its worshipers.
The Athar faction in Planescape is the "atheist" group. The hold the view that the so called gods, while very much real, are simply powerful beings like other powerful beings who are not called gods or divine. For example, the rulers of the Lower Planes are not gods but some of them are more powerful than certain gods, especially on the layer they rule. The Athar say that gods are tricking mortals into giving away their souls to them after death, and that they're not worthy of being gods because they're not omnipotent/prescient. Priest spells aren't anything unique since there are other forms of magic/supernatural powers to achieve the same results (or nearly so). Also, gods can be killed, even by mortals, and they require mortal worship to exist (at least in AD&D, which was the only edition that received an official Planescape campaign setting). Their headquarters are at the base of the Spire where no magic works -- even gods can't use any of their powers there. Sigil sits at the top of the Spire.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
Eh, this is still a view heavily informed by a 21st century point of view that doesn't make sense in the context of the setting we're actually discussing. God to most non-Abrahamic societies doesn't mean what we think it means. It has no connotations of infallibility, omnipotence, of even necessarily being a moral guidestone.
So sure you could try to arbitrarily redefine what the word God means in the context of a non-monotheistic pantheon of deities but I think your entire proposed motivation for doing so is rooted in your being brought up in a monotheistic society, so I don't think it jives for someone to actually care about this in setting.
The Athar faction in Planescape is the "atheist" group. The hold the view that the so called gods, while very much real, are simply powerful beings like other powerful beings who are not called gods or divine. For example, the rulers of the Lower Planes are not gods but some of them are more powerful than certain gods, especially on the layer they rule. The Athar say that gods are tricking mortals into giving away their souls to them after death, and that they're not worthy of being gods because they're not omnipotent/prescient. Priest spells aren't anything unique since there are other forms of magic/supernatural powers to achieve the same results (or nearly so). Also, gods can be killed, even by mortals, and they require mortal worship to exist (at least in AD&D, which was the only edition that received an official Planescape campaign setting). Their headquarters are at the base of the Spire where no magic works -- even gods can't use any of their powers there. Sigil sits at the top of the Spire.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
Eh, this is still a view heavily informed by a 21st century point of view that doesn't make sense in the context of the setting we're actually discussing. God to most non-Abrahamic societies doesn't mean what we think it means. It has no connotations of infallibility, omnipotence, of even necessarily being a moral guidestone.
So sure you could try to arbitrarily redefine what the word God means in the context of a non-monotheistic pantheon of deities but I think your entire proposed motivation for doing so is rooted in your being brought up in a monotheistic society, so I don't think it jives for someone to actually care about this in setting.
If anything the ideas of god being infallible, omnipotent, etc. come from Greek philosophers so I'm not sure that being raised in a pantheistic society rules out an exalted sense of what gods should be.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
The Athar faction in Planescape is the "atheist" group. The hold the view that the so called gods, while very much real, are simply powerful beings like other powerful beings who are not called gods or divine. For example, the rulers of the Lower Planes are not gods but some of them are more powerful than certain gods, especially on the layer they rule. The Athar say that gods are tricking mortals into giving away their souls to them after death, and that they're not worthy of being gods because they're not omnipotent/prescient. Priest spells aren't anything unique since there are other forms of magic/supernatural powers to achieve the same results (or nearly so). Also, gods can be killed, even by mortals, and they require mortal worship to exist (at least in AD&D, which was the only edition that received an official Planescape campaign setting). Their headquarters are at the base of the Spire where no magic works -- even gods can't use any of their powers there. Sigil sits at the top of the Spire.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
Eh, this is still a view heavily informed by a 21st century point of view that doesn't make sense in the context of the setting we're actually discussing. God to most non-Abrahamic societies doesn't mean what we think it means. It has no connotations of infallibility, omnipotence, of even necessarily being a moral guidestone.
So sure you could try to arbitrarily redefine what the word God means in the context of a non-monotheistic pantheon of deities but I think your entire proposed motivation for doing so is rooted in your being brought up in a monotheistic society, so I don't think it jives for someone to actually care about this in setting.
If anything the ideas of god being infallible, omnipotent, etc. come from Greek philosophers so I'm not sure that being raised in a pantheistic society rules out an exalted sense of what gods should be.
Right, but there is no incentive to redefine what God means when the definition society accepts and that you're brought up with is so wildly divergent from the Abrahamic conception. That is what I am referring to. The entire reason people are even interested in doing so is because they understand God to mean something else and feel inclined to go AHA! when they don't measure up. That metric does not exist to not measure up to.
To a pantheistic culture, it's a literal nonsense venture.
Edit: Oh, sorry, I misread what you posted here. Clearly more tired than I thought. Errr...the Greeks regarded Zeus as a cautionary tale of what not to do half the time. The Gods, while certainly of cosmological importance, are incredibly imperfect. So everything posted pretty much still applies. The Greek Gods were prone to doing dumb shit all the time, and you just kind of have to shrug and put up with it because they're the Gods. What exactly are you going to do, write them an angry letter?
Artemis may or may not kick your ass for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Edit edit: Actually in retrospect I have no idea why I'm even treating this in speculative terms when there's direct evidence. Last I checked in PoE world Eothas is believed dead because of the Saint he was allegedly inhabiting getting blown up. Yet people keep worshipping the Gods regardless, even in the face of evident (?) mortality. The PoE world is therefore proven to not be preoccupied with notions of infallibility or omnipotence.
The Athar faction in Planescape is the "atheist" group. The hold the view that the so called gods, while very much real, are simply powerful beings like other powerful beings who are not called gods or divine. For example, the rulers of the Lower Planes are not gods but some of them are more powerful than certain gods, especially on the layer they rule. The Athar say that gods are tricking mortals into giving away their souls to them after death, and that they're not worthy of being gods because they're not omnipotent/prescient. Priest spells aren't anything unique since there are other forms of magic/supernatural powers to achieve the same results (or nearly so). Also, gods can be killed, even by mortals, and they require mortal worship to exist (at least in AD&D, which was the only edition that received an official Planescape campaign setting). Their headquarters are at the base of the Spire where no magic works -- even gods can't use any of their powers there. Sigil sits at the top of the Spire.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
Eh, this is still a view heavily informed by a 21st century point of view that doesn't make sense in the context of the setting we're actually discussing. God to most non-Abrahamic societies doesn't mean what we think it means. It has no connotations of infallibility, omnipotence, of even necessarily being a moral guidestone.
So sure you could try to arbitrarily redefine what the word God means in the context of a non-monotheistic pantheon of deities but I think your entire proposed motivation for doing so is rooted in your being brought up in a monotheistic society, so I don't think it jives for someone to actually care about this in setting.
Well the Athar have been a part of the campaign setting since its inception in the 90s, so I don't think this type of view of divinity is out of place in Planescape. Also, the Athar could be described as agnostic atheists because they say that it's possible that there exists a higher being who/that is a true god. This hypothetical being or essence is called the Source, I think, and it would be the ultimate source of divine power from which even deities receive theirs.
I had a friend who demanded to play an atheist in a fucking Planescape campaign some years back. The DM just laughed at her.
I don't actually see a huge problem with that in the Planescape setting. There are so many divine conflicts in the multiverse, good against evil, chaos against law, necromancers against death gods, that I doubt someone going "fuck it, I'm just going to stay out of it" would raise that many eyebrows.
Terry Pratchett has some awesome bits about atheists in a clearly god-filled world in his books, by the by.
And then you look out your window, see the Lady of Pain float by, and go back to disbelievin', eh?
Well better than believing she's a god.
What I mean is: It seems silly to be an atheist in a world where something like the Lady of Pain is floating around. I think "fuck yes there is a god/are gods" is a pretty safe bet in a world like that.
Seriously. I mean, it's not like there is magic or anything in these worlds that could allow you to float around.
- Robert Lee is back with Obsidian. Lee worked on Alpha Protocol, New Vegas (+DLC's), Dungeon Siege III and a early version of South Park. In between he worked on ESO and as a teaching parent.
- As such Obsidian consists currently of 140-150 people continuing to have no actual layoffs since 2012. As mentioned above they also have recently started work on an AAA game with Avellone as Creative Lead.
Hey, everyone. Due to E3 crunch we are going to push off Josh's next class update for a couple of weeks. Instead, I will give an update about the general state of affairs for each department on the project now that we are getting ready to head into our Beta period. The next update will feature Josh's final class update along with info from the Eternity E3 presentation. Let's get into it.
Status
Area Design
All of the areas have been in the game for about a month now, and the area designers have been revisiting each area to make sure everything is in order. They're using specially crafted Alpha checklists to make sure that none of the major items are missed. For example, designers are checking that the area has a proper navigation mesh, ambient sound effects are placed, and scene transitions are working as intended.
Josh (Project Director) and Bobby (Area Design Lead) are heading up meetings to review all of the quests in the game. Each quest is played through by the team and analyzed. We ask basic questions like "Why is this quest fun?", "Does the player care about this quest?", and "What hooks the player into starting the quest?" If anything is lacking, the design team spruces the quest up to make it a memorable one.
Over the Beta period the designers will continue fixing bugs and polishing content.
Environment Art
Much like our area designers, our environment artists have been revisiting all of the areas of the game and performing their Alpha checklists to make sure all of the areas pass art Alpha. In addition to the checklists, they are performing polish work that had been identified previously by Bobby and Rob (Art Director) on areas.
Currently, the environment artists have done a pass on all of our critical path areas and they will be moving onto our side content once we enter Beta.
Take a look at one of the areas that has gone through Alpha polish without a paint-over pass:
Systems Design
Now that our systems are all in place, Josh has been focused on balance and polish bugs that have piled up over the course of the project. For me, this is one of the more exciting times in the project because the game really starts to take shape and become fun.
Game balance will continue throughout our Beta period, right up to our release.
UI
Kaz (Concept and UI Artist) has been finishing up the last remaining UI screens. He is now working on Scripted Interaction images, icons, area paint-overs, and portraits and will be doing so for the foreseeable future.
Animation
The animation team has been wrapping up the last B priority items and will moving into full-time polish until the end of the project. B priority animations are things like special creature attacks, class-specific spell casts, or animations for minor creatures (animal critters, for example).
Once the animation team has finished up creating the animations, they will be focused on animation polish.
Character Art
Our character artists have completed all of the creatures and creature variants we planned for the game (and even a few that we hadn't planned on). They have also created all of the base weapon and armor variants, and now character art is focused on finishing up all of the unique armors and weapons.
Once they complete the last bit of gear, they will move onto creating a few additional head and hair variants for each race. Like the rest of the team, they will also be polishing content for the remainder of the project.
Have a peek at one of our unique armors:
Narrative
The narrative team finished up the critical path a few weeks ago and now they have their focus on completing side content in our various regions. Eric (Lead Narrative Designer) has been tweaking and polishing the E3 demo areas, while Carrie (Narrative Designer) has been hard at work finishing up some of our companions. Narrative is also polishing up the areas that will be used in for our Backer Beta.
Over the next few months narrative will finish our companions, and we are going to start finalizing and locking down on the writing to prepare for localization and voice over.
Programming
At this point, the project is completely feature locked. The programmers are fully focused on fixing the mountain of bugs that have built up over the course of the project. There are still some items that need to be finished (installers, for example), but the majority of the work will be put towards fixing and polishing existing systems. This is where the build (that may have been unstable throughout development) really starts to come together.
VFX
The team is continuing to crank away at VFX. It is one of the areas of the game (along with narrative and audio) that are not at an Alpha level, which is intentional. The later on the project that you can bring the VFX team on, the lower the amount of rework that they will have to do on assets that may get changed.
We have added VFX on a little less than half of the spells and abilities, on all of our VFX creatures (creatures that are VFX driven instead of our normal creature pipeline), and on all of the critical path areas. We are scheduled to be finished with VFX in a couple of months.
Audio
Much like VFX, audio usually comes onto our projects a bit later than other departments. Many of our areas have had an ambience pass and are sounding really good. Same goes for our creatures - more and more of their SFX are being hooked up every day. We have also completed our initial pass on things like UI sounds, and very shortly, our audio team will create sounds for our spells and abilities.
Justin (Audio Director) has been working on finishing all of the music tracks for the game. In fact, he just finished composing our main theme.
Much like VFX, this audio team is scheduled to finish in a couple of months.
Overall
Overall, the project is coming together nicely. We have a ton of work that still needs to be done, but the team is starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. There are no major roadblocks ahead of us at this point and now it's a focus on getting as much polish done as we can before our final release candidate.
That's it for this update. Let us know what you think in our forums.
Kickin' It Forward - Witchmarsh
From time to time we like to spread the word about interesting Kickstarter Projects that catch our eye. This time around, it's a project called Witchmarsh - a story-driven action RPG set in 1920s Massachusetts with a supernatural flair. Here is a quick summary taken from their Kickstarter page:
"It's the Roaring Twenties! Join an unlikely team of detectives as they charge headlong into the darkest corners of rural America. Their mission: find and return twelve missing townsfolk who vanished under mysterious circumstances. A handsome reward is in store should they succeed, but with the supernatural lurking around every corner, will any of them live long enough to collect it?"
Take a look and if you like what you see, show them your support! There's only a short time left before their campaign ends.
every time i see area art (and in motion!) i get tingles.
I still can't believe my brother thought the first area shot they released, the one with the waterfall, looked like "Super Nintendo". It's not going to look triple A probably, but it looks mostly great so far.
every time i see area art (and in motion!) i get tingles.
I still can't believe my brother thought the first area shot they released, the one with the waterfall, looked like "Super Nintendo". It's not going to look triple A probably, but it looks mostly great so far.
It's okay that your brother is legally blind, it's nothing to be ashamed of.
But Torment had the funniest excuse update for that schedule. "Hi guys, we made our development more efficient. That's why we're a year behind schedule!"
Want to find me on a gaming service? I'm SwashbucklerXX everywhere.
The difference between gods in DnD and gods in "reality" (I use quotation marks cause, real gods) is that the intangible and omnipotent nature of gods makes them beyond comprehension in the "real world". The issue in DnD isn't that gods aren't real, but that they are not omnipotent. They can be defied, challenged and killed. But! That doesn't mean they don't exist and cannot directly emplace hardships and blessings upon an atheist in that setting.
Unless an atheist can gain the power to become a god, they will be eternally punished on the Wall (in DnD, I have no idea what happens as eternal punishment in PE).
The problem with the ant analogy is that while ants can challenge and kill humans, we have no agency over the soul of ants (assuming souls -and ant souls- actually exist in reality), while a DnD god can directly interact with such a thing.
An atheist in DnD can still be an athiest and not believe in gods, but that doesn't make them not real and cannot enact punishment and blessings upon mortals.
And a people that are magically linked to a god can literally lose their god.
Atheism in these setting is super weird to me because the gods do exist and grant powers and miracles. If you were to go onto reddit and look up one of the posts about "atheists what would you need for you to be convinced of a higher power" you'll find that most agree with the, "If I met a god or could be shown proof that doesn't require faith/belief I would have no problem conceding their/its existence." In these settings, there are constant instances of proof. Namely the fact that they do exist.
So, I think you could have a person who's never seen something and isn't convinced by the stories they've heard. Maybe the a PC hasn't but they might have to concede at some point, depending on the campaign. A community that is unfamiliar with certain deities or worships some god under a different name without knowing.
I just don't see how in a setting revolving around a pantheon you could have nonbelievers. It's a corner stone of the system. It's an actual fact or law.
You can create your own story and campaign. But trying to shoehorn in a Real-life way of thinking into a fictional universe just doesn't always work.
Yeah, Torment got a lot writing ready with the KS goals before they even had a game engine available.
I thought the game engine was the same as wasteland 2? (and I thought it was next year anyway, with most of their (small) dev team focused on finishing WL2)
Yeah, Torment got a lot writing ready with the KS goals before they even had a game engine available.
I thought the game engine was the same as wasteland 2? (and I thought it was next year anyway, with most of their (small) dev team focused on finishing WL2)
WL2 is available.
Torment's writing staff wasn't heavily involved in WL2, and they're not writing a new engine from scratch, so the production cycle should be a bit abbreviated.
I think Atheism as most of us understand it would only work in a setting like Eberron, where divine powers are something that people develop spontaneously because of their faith in *something.*
You can kinda get away with denying the existence of main pathenons of gods in Eberron (The Sovereign Host and the Dark Six), because you also have The Order of the Silver Flame (which is a phenomenon that actually exists and people can see), these elves who practice ancestry worship, these voodoo-esque elves who follow not-evil liches that rule their island nation, and both the Blood of Vol and Path of Light, which in the own ways scoff at the idea of worshiping gods, and yet they all have their clerics, paladins et al that are capable of preforming divine spells.
WL2 is only available in the sense that you can play the early access version. I know that personally after dicking around with it for an hour or two I'm ready to wait for the full thing and play it in all its glory.
Divinity and its metatopics like atheism are very context-sensitive. Or setting-specific. Of course the entities and cultural things surrounding them can be grouped according to some simple functions or most popular associations. But pokedexing across cultures is easily overdone, because pokedexing everything is very tempting, in general.
What it means to be a god is not always a common between separate religious teachings, nor between separate folklores. It's first and foremost local. Setting-specific.
Consider that class of descriptions a class of titles. Such as queen, chief, dictator, tenno, et c. Not a matching, coherent set within one hierarchy, but a wider mishmash of international titles. Royal propaganda aside, what makes a queen a queen is that a nation calls her that. It's a convention. "Dictator" is an interesting example, because there's a type of senate-approved appointment for elected officials by that title, which is not often what people think of when they hear it.
I know how much, and why, atheists are picky about the precise definition of "atheism". Some definitions have been wielded against them, sometimes in a hostile manner; often in an insulting manner. But because the "theos" can mean many things, "theism" can mean many things, and "atheism" can mean many things.
Certain desertliving half-giants may be considered atheists because they stopped providing manual labour for their bickering creators, and adopted a more nomadic lifestyle for a time.
But Torment had the funniest excuse update for that schedule. "Hi guys, we made our development more efficient. That's why we're a year behind schedule!"
They made their development more *financially* efficient (more work done per $ spent) by getting more done during the pre-production and extending the release a bit.
Posts
Well, there are spells that allow non-gods to affect a person's soul. Necromancers can bind a person's soul and keep them from going to any afterlife. Especially powerful necromancers can call souls back from the afterlife. Heck, living people can even go to the various heavens and hells that gods send souls to.
No, wrong! Never start a land war with Asia.
Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
So I wouldn't say that being an atheist in a Planescape game is all that far-fetched. "I don't believe that deities are actually what we should be calling gods, so I'm an atheist."
I used to run games in the FR when I was younger. The moment they threw in Ao (Alpha and Omega... hurr durr), I completely stopped caring about the Forgotten Realms. I would be perfectly happy if they just retconned that whole god-war thing out of their canon. I don't even mind their gods directly intervening with mortal affairs, because that's what gods do in fantasy settings. I felt that the whole thing was more comic book than fantasy.
Eh, this is still a view heavily informed by a 21st century point of view that doesn't make sense in the context of the setting we're actually discussing. God to most non-Abrahamic societies doesn't mean what we think it means. It has no connotations of infallibility, omnipotence, of even necessarily being a moral guidestone.
So sure you could try to arbitrarily redefine what the word God means in the context of a non-monotheistic pantheon of deities but I think your entire proposed motivation for doing so is rooted in your being brought up in a monotheistic society, so I don't think it jives for someone to actually care about this in setting.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
If anything the ideas of god being infallible, omnipotent, etc. come from Greek philosophers so I'm not sure that being raised in a pantheistic society rules out an exalted sense of what gods should be.
(Please do not gift. My game bank is already full.)
Right, but there is no incentive to redefine what God means when the definition society accepts and that you're brought up with is so wildly divergent from the Abrahamic conception. That is what I am referring to. The entire reason people are even interested in doing so is because they understand God to mean something else and feel inclined to go AHA! when they don't measure up. That metric does not exist to not measure up to.
To a pantheistic culture, it's a literal nonsense venture.
Edit: Oh, sorry, I misread what you posted here. Clearly more tired than I thought. Errr...the Greeks regarded Zeus as a cautionary tale of what not to do half the time. The Gods, while certainly of cosmological importance, are incredibly imperfect. So everything posted pretty much still applies. The Greek Gods were prone to doing dumb shit all the time, and you just kind of have to shrug and put up with it because they're the Gods. What exactly are you going to do, write them an angry letter?
Artemis may or may not kick your ass for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Edit edit: Actually in retrospect I have no idea why I'm even treating this in speculative terms when there's direct evidence. Last I checked in PoE world Eothas is believed dead because of the Saint he was allegedly inhabiting getting blown up. Yet people keep worshipping the Gods regardless, even in the face of evident (?) mortality. The PoE world is therefore proven to not be preoccupied with notions of infallibility or omnipotence.
White FC: 0819 3350 1787
Seriously. I mean, it's not like there is magic or anything in these worlds that could allow you to float around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=J9IGF4s8PQA
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
Just doing my part.
The Podcast mentions that MCA is creative lead on another project. This could either be the AAA project or 2nd Kickstarter.
My guess is AAA. Also might be an original IP.
- Robert Lee is back with Obsidian. Lee worked on Alpha Protocol, New Vegas (+DLC's), Dungeon Siege III and a early version of South Park. In between he worked on ESO and as a teaching parent.
- As such Obsidian consists currently of 140-150 people continuing to have no actual layoffs since 2012. As mentioned above they also have recently started work on an AAA game with Avellone as Creative Lead.
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But... bug fixing? I thought Obsidian predictable and tired joke?
Steam profile.
Getting started with BATTLETECH: Part 1 / Part 2
http://www.redbull.com/en/games/stories/1331658188490/pillars-of-eternity-interview
Emotionally.
I still can't believe my brother thought the first area shot they released, the one with the waterfall, looked like "Super Nintendo". It's not going to look triple A probably, but it looks mostly great so far.
I agree, I've been impressed with their water effects. In isometric games water is usually really dull but it seems really well done with this one.
It's okay that your brother is legally blind, it's nothing to be ashamed of.
Penny Arcade Rockstar Social Club / This is why I despise cyclists
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
And a people that are magically linked to a god can literally lose their god.
So, I think you could have a person who's never seen something and isn't convinced by the stories they've heard. Maybe the a PC hasn't but they might have to concede at some point, depending on the campaign. A community that is unfamiliar with certain deities or worships some god under a different name without knowing.
I just don't see how in a setting revolving around a pantheon you could have nonbelievers. It's a corner stone of the system. It's an actual fact or law.
You can create your own story and campaign. But trying to shoehorn in a Real-life way of thinking into a fictional universe just doesn't always work.
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I thought the game engine was the same as wasteland 2? (and I thought it was next year anyway, with most of their (small) dev team focused on finishing WL2)
Torment's writing staff wasn't heavily involved in WL2, and they're not writing a new engine from scratch, so the production cycle should be a bit abbreviated.
You can kinda get away with denying the existence of main pathenons of gods in Eberron (The Sovereign Host and the Dark Six), because you also have The Order of the Silver Flame (which is a phenomenon that actually exists and people can see), these elves who practice ancestry worship, these voodoo-esque elves who follow not-evil liches that rule their island nation, and both the Blood of Vol and Path of Light, which in the own ways scoff at the idea of worshiping gods, and yet they all have their clerics, paladins et al that are capable of preforming divine spells.
? Torment and Pillars do not influence each other. At all.
Also I'm out till monday. My internetz decided to be ass and I'm without the net as of yesterday evening.
Sorry, the way I phrased that was confusing.
I am not personally affected by Torment being delayed because I will have Wasteland 2 and Pillars to play while they work on Torment.
What it means to be a god is not always a common between separate religious teachings, nor between separate folklores. It's first and foremost local. Setting-specific.
Consider that class of descriptions a class of titles. Such as queen, chief, dictator, tenno, et c. Not a matching, coherent set within one hierarchy, but a wider mishmash of international titles. Royal propaganda aside, what makes a queen a queen is that a nation calls her that. It's a convention. "Dictator" is an interesting example, because there's a type of senate-approved appointment for elected officials by that title, which is not often what people think of when they hear it.
I know how much, and why, atheists are picky about the precise definition of "atheism". Some definitions have been wielded against them, sometimes in a hostile manner; often in an insulting manner. But because the "theos" can mean many things, "theism" can mean many things, and "atheism" can mean many things.
Certain desertliving half-giants may be considered atheists because they stopped providing manual labour for their bickering creators, and adopted a more nomadic lifestyle for a time.
3DS FC: 5086-1134-6451
Shiny Code: 3837
Torment is licensing the Pillars engine and tweaking it so it does influence them in that capacity.
They made their development more *financially* efficient (more work done per $ spent) by getting more done during the pre-production and extending the release a bit.