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I've never had this but technically an atheist can exist in a DND world because to be an atheist is to have a lack of belief. You can acknowledge they exist but not trust them to do anything, like how you know police exist but depending on where/who you are you might not trust them to help you. Also, to those who think you can't not trust a paladin or cleric of good I have two words. Oath breakers
Hi Mike, new viewer here - I've just binge watched a couple of your vids and this one especially interests me. I get that you did this 2 months ago, but there's a stretch version of atheism that's playable in Pillars of Eternity: when making your character choice, if you choose the background Philosopher, you can establish that your character doesn't believe in anything - they're aware gods exist, are fluent in the lore and know the gods' tenants, but at the same time doesn't believe in the gods' divinity (there is an actual moment later in the game where an important NPC tells your character that the gods are frauds, and as a Philosopher your character has the choice to declare, "I knew it!") While granted, Pillars is not DnD while being kind of like DnD, but I like to think that with good communication between the DM and the group, this version of atheism could be playable at the table.
Do you have any thoughts on the creation of say, a monotheistic character in the same vein as this? “The gods we see are but grasping magical entities, nothing compared to the one True God” there is only one God worthy of worship, a cousin of the “the gods are not worthy of worship” school of thought.
The anti-theist mindset would be a great way to go, pointing out all of the things that the "good" gods allow to happen that seems evil, but in a polytheistic world, it's easier to blame the evil on other divine entities. It would still lead to some interesting role play conversations between the players and deepen the emersion in the game if done respectfully.
@@ericpeirce5598 - Right, in philosophy, the "problem of evil" (why does God allow suffering to exist in the world?) is a problem for monotheistic religions with an omnipotent benevolent deity. (Various proponents of real-world religions have various explanations which make some sense, like free will being the most important gift to humanity.) But as you say, it's not a problem at all when there are (nearly) equally powerful evil deities, and/or the good deity(es) aren't supposedly omnipotent and omniscient. Most D&D pantheons are like this, unlike real-world Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam). This anti-theist idea is an interesting way to flip that: you *expect* that the gods should eradicate evil and suffering from the world, and since they clearly haven't, they either aren't real gods (just powerful beings that aren't qualitatively different from other powerful extra-planar beings) or aren't worthy of your respect. I think an interesting take is to acknowledge that gods are divine, and have some qualitative differences from other powerful creatures (like archfey, demon, devils, and powerful celestials). But that you don't want to *worship* them, and think it's weird to have religions. If you want their help, you can talk to them like you would to a powerful NPC. Or you could think they suck and that asking for their help isn't worth the time and effort. Or as @an8strengthkobold360 commented, a character could believe all the "gods" are just powerful beings (e.g. an Aboleth) that use mind-control tricks to fool large groups into experiencing things that seem "divine", perhaps because they were in such a cult. They would be wrong, but it's not easy to *prove* that, especially if they aren't powerful enough to cast their own divination / truth-checking spells or other means of trusting or verifying actual facts, not just whether people believe what they're saying (like aura of truth does).
The conspiracy theory thing could even make sense. Imagine a character who was part of an Abolth's cult and only learned that after the beast was slain. They probably had psionically induced religious experiences and saw people granted magical powers by their "god". After getting out they don't trust religion and may assume the gods are doing something similar. The gods are not all powerful creators but powerful manipulators using people for their own ends.
I once had a player who literally met the gods on their in-world version of Mount Olympus and he straight up said, to their faces “No, I don’t believe you when you say you’re gods. You’re powerful, yes, but I see you more as archfey than deities”. And then he stole one of the God’s weapons to give it to his boyfriend, after just calling the gods powerful archfey to their faces
I don't get what this means though, like what did that character think being a god is? What's the difference between a god and an archfey...also, in your setting, was he correct?
Think about it, archfey are powerful otherworldly beings, many having power over certain aspects of the world as well as mortals. It would be exceedingly difficult to kill one, but NOT impossible. Some characters can have the mindset that if they could die, they can't be gods. Plus the fact the character successfully stole a weapon is proof they aren't omniscient, therefore are they really worthy of worship?
@@revenantravings "...therefore are they really worthy of worship?" I mean, for centuries people thought so. The gods of most pantheons on earth were never omniscient, could and were stolen from, and died (usually to other gods, but not always). People worshipped them because not doing so was bad for your health (or at least disrespecting them rarely went well for mortals) and doing so, honouring them, was usually a better idea. It's pretty late stage religion that believed divinity meant all knowing omniscient beings who mastered all. (It was part of the selling point for Christianity "OUR God is all powerful, yours does lightning and stuff...cute.") But for a long time, power alone *was* what made them worthy of reverence and worship. What else matters?
That's... kind of the point? The character clearly didn't believe that a god that can be tricked or killed is deserving of the title of godhood. That doesn't mean they're inherently correct, there ARE minor gods in the dnd pantheon that could struggle against an archfey, the topic is just explaining how a character can be an atheist or agnostic in a setting where they meet god face to face. In Discworld a golem questioned gods, got struck by lightning and simply addressed the heavens saying 'That is not a very good argument.' Gods can hold their title despite making asses out of themselves, that doesn't mean the players have to respect them, especially if they can prove that godhood as nothing special by overcoming them in some way. The fact Olympian gods have been beaten pretty regularly in mythos is good reason for an agnostic character to call them trumped up archfey and focus on taking them down a peg.
@@revenantravings But the question is: What makes a god? Like what *do* those agnostics deem worthy, is the litmus omnipotence and infallibility? Because those rare qualities in gods. My point is that a god is a figure of worship. And why *isn't* an archfey (or equivalent god) worthy of worship when they are recognizably powerful and divine. What's the standard, and why would this character think these beings below it? Because for thousands of years, being able to throw lightning from the heavens was good enough. Good argument or no. (I'm not saying it's a bad character archetype, more wondering what standard that character was comparing the gods to, that they were failing to meet.) Like if Zeus *isn't* a god, who the heck is?
There's a 3rd way to play an atheist in these kinds of games that I think works the best, and it boils down to: "Just because the gods are real does not mean they are worthy of our respect, our worship, our devotion. should you be forced to worship a tyrant for the pleasure of being allowed to be oppressed at their feet?" This method acknowledges that yes the gods are real, but you believe that them being real doesn't automatically grant them the privilege to be venerated.
In Dresden Files there are Knights of the Cross - three knights who are wielding literal holy swords of Christ with the help of literal angels to fight literal demons. One of them is an atheist - he fully acknowledges that he has special powers granted by a supernatural force. But he says that force could be a god, or it could be some strange supernatural being, or an alien, or he - the Knight - might just be mad and imagining the whole thing. He respects that force, follows the creed of the Knights and fully accepts his role. But he does not believe.
I feel like this is the real philosophical core that the type 2 "explanations" given in the video are usually being used to express. What is it that makes it morally right for me to follow this being? It being omnipotent, or omniscient, or my creator, even if these things are true, don't give a satisfying explanation of that point. To believe in a god to me takes some special extra quality of superiority to people, which I guess is the divinity that sets apart a god from a powerful wizard or whatever. But it's also, to my mind, not something a being can have in itself. To be worthy of worship is something that can only be bestowed by others, so they're only really gods if you believe they are, whatever qualities they may possess. This form of atheist sees no gods worthy of worship-so they see no gods at all. At the same time, you can recognise that for some people faith in a gods rightness is central to how they understand the world, and so for that person, this entity is divine
4th way, which I played (as a Cleric of Umberlee, no less!) for 13 levels: "The gods are real, they're terrifying, and we need to avoid their notice at all costs." The culture my cleric came from practiced a kind of "spiritual stealth", deliberately avoiding any behavior or ritual that had spiritual significance; if they needed to perform an action that could be construed as honoring a god, they also performed a counter-action in order to render themselves worship-neutral. Their priests were essentially spiritual camouflage experts, organizing worship in such a way as to honor every god equally, with the smallest metaphysical signature possible. When it came to really dangerous or fickle deities (like Umberlee), they trained special priests that were sent out into the world as decoys, to draw the god's attention away from home.
I feel like there is a secret third option "Yeah, the gods are real but I owe them nothing" For example my current character is a Dwarf Wizard who is a merchant. While he does respect the god of contracts he does not worship any god, he does not pray, and he respects the party members that do. You dont have to be 'anti' anything
Kingston Brown from The Unsleeping City is a cleric who derives his power from the hearts and spirits of the people of NYC itself, and doesn't interact with any gods during the campaign. The closest thing to a god in that campaign is the monarch of dreams.
19:40 Not doing this to be douchey. But it is interesting. It isn’t the distance from the sun that causes seasons. It is the tilt of the earth. Which ever area of the world is experiencing summer is actually angled to catch more sun rays per day. That is why the southern hemisphere experiences summer in December.
I know right! Here's a guy saying he's so into science yet makes such an elementary mistake! This is the kind of thing little kids believe before they are taught better.
19:38 Seasons are the result of axial tilt, not distance from the Sun. If it were the latter, the northern & southern hemispheres would experience summer & winter at the same time.
Spoilers for critical role c1 Insert the clip of Telesin saying “it’s hard to look at a fist coming out of the sky to punch a dragon and say ‘there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.’”
C1 spoilers: I find it odd that both Percy and Keyleth say at the end of C1 that they went through all their adventures “faithless” while getting the powers, artifacts, and direct help from said pantheon. In fact, it is a little more odd considering Whitestone’s confection to the big sun man and all the temples Percy erected to respect the gods. I would’ve loved to hear more about this aspect of Percy from Talesin and crew.
@@dionysues7449 Ah yes the glaring elephant in the room of Pelors close ties to Whitestone. Why didnt he do anything to stop the Briarwoods? The meta reason is just that Percy was not a follower, if he was a vengence paladin of the sun god, then the story would be that the sun god worked through him to defeat the forces of evil. But the narrative is of overcoming a vengence demon so of course Percy cant be upstaged by a legion of literal angels or a regiment of warriors sent by Vasselheim. So below the meta reason we of course have the excuse of the divine gate but that only goes so far, the city is founded in worship to Pelor so you would think it was a major location for his forces on the material plane to maintain. But apparently one dead priest is all it takes to erase the religion from the whole city? He must have been some sort of threat for the Briarwoods to take him out? I can only come up with my own explanation that the very nature of the Whispered Ones influence obscured that anything was going wrong, even from the burning eye of the sun god. Or maybe a completely coincidental fault that Pelor, not an omniscient being, cant see through mundane clouds. And Delilah usually kept the city obscured for Sylas' sake.
@@dionysues7449I remember at some point likely during talks machina Tal said Percy treats religion the same way someone raised catholic would, you know the stories and some of the rituals but you don’t necessarily believe god exist/is watching over you/cares about you. I don’t think we fully got an explanation at the end of the campaign if this was still accurate but I’d assume it would’ve changed a bit.
As an atheist even I have trouble seeing a player believing the gods don't exist, but this is mostly from playing and running most of my games in the Forgotten Realms. The idea of a character not believing they were divine would be interesting when it comes to role playing opportunities. I could even see a Cleric being role played as if they were a Warlock with a pact with a powerful being and in contrast, having a Warlock believe their patron is a divine being. Getting creative with how your character views things that is different than the other characters can create more role playing dynamics between the party members and with NPC's as well. This can even be a relevant mindset with things outside of religion in the game.
People always ask how someone can believe the gods don't exist in a world where divine magic exists, but I'd ask how divine magic can be used as evidence for the gods when *arcane* magic exists. OK, you're a priest and you can cast spells. How do I know you're not just a sorcerer with an imaginary friend? ...OK, you've proved your friend really exists and bestows you with magic. How do I know they're not a powerful Fey who's made a contract with you? The question becomes less "do the gods that people worship actually exist?" and more "does the category of 'god' exist, or are the beings people worship no different to the rest of us except in terms of power level?"
"I guess if you're Catholic, you believe one specific guy can't make mistakes" Catholic DM here, guilty as charged! That being said, I have people of all different religious or nonreligious backgrounds at my table, and it's always interesting to see them playing characters with varying attitudes toward the gods in-game. It's also interesting to play in the more popular D&D settings that have a fundamentally different view of the divine from the one we're often most familiar with in the west. On the real-life Christian view, God is seen as the one originator of all things, the unmoved mover, the being from which being itself comes, outside of time, space, and matter, and the being whose own character gives us morality. Whereas in the most popular D&D pantheons, the gods function much more like exceptionally powerful entities that shaped pre-existing matter and energy, and who rule over different concepts or ideas. A D&D god of justice is usually a very just being, whereas the Christian God *is* justice itself. This is all kind of complex and leads to a lot of really interesting philosophy for players to get into if they want.
Greetings fellow Catholic, You ever consider if u could make an argument for a monotheistic god(an Eru Illuvitar type) in the more popular D&D settings? Surely if Good and Evil exist there must be some kind of standard that makes Bhaal an Evil god and Selune Chaotic Good?
Great Video Mike! Always love seeing you discussing these overlooked or often discarded ideas for character concepts in tabletop! This video brings to mind a character I'm currently in the seat of playing actually! She is a Cleric of Hel (largely based on the Norse god but re-interpreted in my friend and I's homebrew world) who has already passed on in their first life. Because she was dishonored/disgraced in her death she was sent to Hel as a servant instead of being honored with a position as a warrior-spirit to return and protect the world from prophesied Ragnarok in one of the various canonical methods according to the culture. She spent an unknown length of time serving Hel as a recorder who wrote and cataloged the life stories of those who were chosen as the honored dead (cuz Hel ain't got no time for that but knows it's important for the soul). Hel's goal with this process is normally supposed to teach the dishonored what it is they failed to learn in life (whether that be honor, empathy, or whatever other failing their soul was perceived as failing to uphold) so that their soul can be "whole" when it moves on from the world. The catch with my character is that - as many a protagonist has - she does not think she has done anything wrong and resents Hel for "mis-assigning" her. Viewing Hel as the "Evil" goddess that many of the living in the our fantasy world perceive her to be and holding the belief that Hel simply is being a resentful, uncaring, immortal being. So she sat through this seemingly endless servitude (since she wasn't going to learn her lesson) until one day Hel offered her a choice: A second chance (me realizing I basically made an Isekai character... lol) at life. Though Hel didn't make this so obvious. Hel knew that my character, Kiah, did not want another life. She simply wanted to move on. So Hel offered instead for "one final tasking". The backstory for why my character is on the the journey of our campaign? Hel asked my character to "Record" the tale of a hero in real time. To do the same job she had been doing in the afterlife but instead do it with living, breathing people who Hel believes will help her realize her own faults before she can move on. The offered exchange is of course that when the tale ends my characters soul will be allowed to move on and finally "Die". So basically i'm playing a Cleric of an often-assumed-evil Goddess of Death who openly dislikes gods and does the general opposite of clerics in that she airs skepticism about godly worship despite having open access to powers from a god (were early in the story but it's very fun because right now the party assumes that she just doesn't like other gods but don't realize that she actually hates her own god more than any other). All of that is being disguised behind the outward behavior of a Bard recording the tales of the party as "destined heroes".
I'm a former Christian, current atheist. I almost always play characters with real belief and devotion to a god. When I played Curse of Strahd, I played a life domain cleric who I modelled after a southern televangelist (minus the greed). In my current campaign, I'm playing a cleric/fighter who used to be a chaplain in the military - while he worships only one god, he facilitates the worship and rituals of any god.
If playing with nonbeliever in real life players, my big reveal would include the "gods" being a feedback between magic and the believers with no actual Gods involved --- so if you can teach a new generation that they can activate a certain group of "God" powers (picked from what other believer groups can do to make sure feedback allows these powers), you can fabricate a "God". Cue the party playing benevolent in Go'a'ould style against the big bad!!!
I am currently playing a 3.5 game where the Gods of the world are the 12 moons of the world. I am playing a Cleric who doesn't believe the dogmatic aspects of it, and feels powers granted by the Gods are scientifically explainable. Simply astral bodies having odd affects on the world, and being harnessed through items that people are not smart enough to understand. So he has built a device around an ancient Holy Symbol he found, and believes he is using science to make magic. I did this mostly because I couldn't get into the specific gods set in front of me, and I thought it would be fun to play a non-believing cleric.
Aethism in pathfinder and D&D essentially boils down to I understand the gods exists but fuck them. They can stay in their corner and i'll stay in mine
the Hercules The Legendary Journeys perspective: the gods exist and are powerful, but they suck and people who do worship them do so out of fear and powerlessness
I absolutely am happy you used that from Hazbin Hotel. I was waiting on it with the spoiler warning at the start and just absolutely loving it thanks to how perfect that song is on this topic.
This type of character would have a blast in my campaign because all of the gods from every pantheon in the world were real at one point but the BBEG has throughout the span of several thousands of years has killed them all off and takes their places. In his lair there would be a weapon and/or piece of equipment from each of the gods that can be attuned to by the characters
For anyone wanting some inspiration for a culture who is pretty anti-theist to plop into their own games, the Pathfinder setting has a nation called Rahadoum. They got caught in a three-way religious conflict, kicked all the clerics out of their nation, an instituted a state-backed philosophy called the Laws of Mortality. There's a lot of fun tensions in that country's setting. (One of my fave protagonists from the Pathfinder Tales novels is also from there.)
Yeah, the default assumption when it comes to worldbuilding regarding the gods seems to be a roughly critical role or forgotten realms level of active participation in the world, and visible evidence. But this isn't the only way to build a fantasy world. You mentioned Game of Thrones early on, but also for example, the major institutional religions in The Witcher play basically the same role in that world as religions do in our world. Large bases of strong faith, but there are no priests shown to touch a wound with a handful of golden light and heal it in seconds. And if such a thing were to happen, Geralt will probably have figured out what sort of supernatural creature this person is by the end of the story. And then you have entities like the Lady of the Lake, the Crones, Higher Vampires, the Wild Hunt, and numerous other entities from the books and games that are ancient, powerful, nearly (or even fully) beyond mortal comprehension, that could be, and sometimes are, worshiped as gods by their own little cults. But even then, most of them are creatures that a sufficiently prepared witcher can kill. And with all this, the Witcher world is full of skeptics, namely Geralt himself. And this is a fantasy world that you can theoretically play tabletop campaigns in. So if you're building your world, it might be helpful to look at worlds like the Witcher, and others with similarly light divine presences, when deciding on how you want to handle the existence of the gods in your world.
I think the whole difference of definition. Our world vs in game. Because we might tie to Gods to divinity/inherent but in game world people won’t give that same level of sanctity to them. It’s like how some call the Kami from Shintoism Gods as a translation, but they aren’t close to in the west see the Sanctity/divinity that a title of “god” gives. That’s how I see it at least.
My character in Whfrpg, the mercenary Icabood tries to stay away from the gods. He has seen what has happened to people who prayed before the battles. He has never prayed before a battle and he is still alive.
Terry Pratchett’s magic system is pretty fascinating, and could be a great way to handle skeptics. I always loved his sentiment that learning how the magic works doesn’t change the fact that it’s magical.
My druid started out not caring about gods as they are unconnected to what they do. But now in the depths of Avernus they think the hells are the other side of the coin that is the gods. They think that all gods are bastard. If they could punch the gods in charge of making this place in the face, they would. AGAB.
i dont have any interesting thoughts about the topic of this video, but i do want to say that the way you handled so many opposing views with respect and grace was very impressive, thank you.
If you take the mechanics of 5e as a reflection of the world, the “gods are objectively real because clerics exist” thing doubly doesn’t make sense. Like, who knows whether Selune actually exists - Greg can do the same stuff just because he really loves, like, the concept of light!
In Eberron the question of divinity is intentionally left vague. The gods, if they exist, do not interact with anyone or anything. Where divine magic comes from is left to DM interpretation. Personally i have divine magic be another aspect of the Weave, accessable through "faith". I believe, therefore i am.
lol I think I meant to say certain parts of the earth are closer and further from the sun? I dunno, I usually film these videos at 10 or 11 at night once the baby is finally asleep, so sometimes I’m on autopilot 😂
@@SupergeekMike I think most people have that misconception because if feels way more intuitive than the axial tilt of the earth causes the sun's radiation to hit the planet unevenly so no big deal.
Man, despite knowing better (and it being obvious), my brain refused to not see all the Egypt shots in the clips from The Mummy as the alien planet in the original Stargate. Now THAT is a crossover we need...
In answer to your aside, yes. As an atheist, it can be a bit exhausting when the default in film & TV is for the atheist to come around to believe in the divine...to "learn their lesson." I think it was part of why Everything, Everywhere, All At Once felt so cathartic and joyful. It may be one of the only times I've ever seen my own feelings toward life, the universe, and everything depicted in a film. Nothing matters. That isn't something to be sad about. It's something to celebrate. You get to invest things with meaning. There's that Marvel comics panel that goes around, featuring Beta Ray Bill that sums things up for me. "I am alone. I look to the heavens and think them empty. And if not empty, I find the idea of worshiping whatever dwells there obscene." His companion asks; "But why do you continue?" "It does not change what is right. If there is nothing but what we make in this world, brothers...Let us make good." That said, characters like Scully drive me nuts, too. They feel like an atheist character written by a religious person who can't understand the atheist's way of thinking. She literally sees and understands aliens at the end of the first episode of the show, but then continues to not believe in them for the next like 8 or however many seasons. That's not being a skeptic, that's being a zealot. As far as in my Fantasy gaming, I've been thinking lately how only clerics seem to pick gods, and then only one. But one would think that most people have their god or gods that they believe in and pray to. So I've been thinking about allowing anyone to pray to the gods, but only clerics have the "skills" to do it well. This is in DCC, so it would mean that a non-cleric would be rolling at a severe disadvantage (maybe a D14 instead of a D20) & thus more likely to offend their god. They also might not have the ritual knowledge to placate an offended god, and so have to visit a temple or make some major offering in order to cleanse the displeasure. I haven't really worked it out. I'm just spitballing right now.
@@jareddembrun783 Yes. Exactly. We all make this determination every day, based on life experience and understanding of the world around us. Some of us believe we have been commanded to act a certain way via divine messages or what have you, but even those commands have been interpreted and reinterpreted by generations, and when they come to us as individuals, we take into account our lived lives to choose how we apply those "divine" rules. I grew up with religion, but it was through my mother and through my school teachers (as well as Jim Henson, the original Star Trek, and a lot of PBS TV) that I learned empathy and logic. I feel a personal responsibility to do good in the world. What is that good? Well, I have to make that determination for myself. I had to when I was devoutly religious, and I do now as a fairly extreme atheist. For example, they might be told that someone who behaves in a certain way should be stoned to death in a public square, but they choose not to act upon that. I determined that stoning people to death was not a good thing. I came to that decision while still a devoutly practicing religious person and in spite of a clearly stated and theoretically divine dictate to do violence. I picked and chose the rules that I thought were good and I ignored the rules and dictates that I thought were cruel. Each of us makes these choices every day. In my case, I try to help people in need. I foster dogs when I can. I try to shop local when I'm able, use less resources when I have the opportunity, and strive to create less waste. I put shopping carts in the cart corral. I have no children, but I try to do things that will make the world better for future generations. I don't expect a reward for it either in life or in a supernatural after life. I do it, because the idea of humanity and the world being in a better place makes me happy and working toward that makes me feel good.
I had a player who mistrusted the divine. So much that when they reached 15th lvl and he died, he was not resurrectable without his friends going on a quest. All because he mistrusted the divine so much that he refused a resurectiuon spell because it was the power from the gods.
I always loved the Tywin Lannister method of atheism/antitheism. "I believe in the gods, but I think they're assholes so I don't pray to them." Ironic, coming from one of the biggest assholes in Westeros.
oh man, a thing you said reminded me that back when I was a kid I used to come up with new character classes - one being smth I called a invoker, a character who through sheer power of belief got divine powers, even if what they believed in was something akin to an imaginary friend, like thinking their ancestor's spirit dwelled in their sword etc. This was during 3.5 dnd so I took what basically was a sorcerer and crossed it with the cleric list. I just remember my father, who was (and still is) a bit of a grognard, not really getting it and saying "that doesn't really make sense" lmao.
Spoilers for Critical Role Campaign 2 I think it would be perfectly valid to have a character who does not believe in the gods but believes that clerics may have sincere faith but that their powers actually come from non-divine sources, like Jester and her experience with the Traveler. Perhaps they think that all clerics are like this, just sorcerers or warlocks who have powers that manifest differently and do not understand where their powers are really coming from. Maybe this belief system would be called into question in the course of an adventure and maybe it wouldn't.
I like having very mysterious gods in my setting because I think faith/doubt and religious schisms are too interesting to give up. Can't have a religious schism if one half loses their clerical powers at some point in the disagreement, you know? So this is how clerics work by definition in my homebrew setting. Basically, sufficient faith + certain innate magical/psionic abilities make you able to be a cleric -- you don't get your power from any deity directly, but from your belief.
That's basically Vlaakith in FR lore. She's a lich who is treated like a deity. [Not to mention other gods who were once just people like the Dead Three and Cyric (iirc)]
In our world, the world was created as a battleground for the gods to duke it out. Aasimar were made by the god of the sun and charity as soldiers, so 3000 years later (once things calmed down a whole lot) my aasimar monk was resentful of the gods for being made as a tool of war. He knows they exist and that they are powerful, but they suck as people.
I want to make a character that theorizes that divine magic is just a form of crude, mass ritual casting that draws a little bit of magical energy from each member of the faith & concentrates it on the clerics/paladins.
I think if I was going to play a character like this, I'd interpret it as my character knowing the gods exist, but they don't believe in them in a lack of trust kind of sense.
I play in a campaign where we could pick our Plane of Origin. I chose New Capenna from MTG (I'm a big fan of the Roaring '20s). Capenna has angels, but not really any gods that we've ever been told about in official lore, so my character only recently even learned what Gods were. Once she'd interacted with them a bit she'd decided that they're unworthy of worship because they always have mortals fight their battles for them, and would rather let the world burn than actually do any heavy lifting. I could also see a suitably traumatic moment breaking a person's belief that a god should be worshipped. "Why should I do anything in your name if you couldn't do that one thing for me?"
@17:20 THANK YOU! I've had this argument so many times! The fact that there are clerics who don't pray to gods and can do everything a cleric that does pray to a god can do eliminates essentially all "proof" of the gods. And even if godless clerics are rare, paladins canonically get their power from their oath, not to mention the other divine casters you mentioned, and even some *arcane casters* can do what clerics do (celestial warlocks, bards, etc). This really isn't any different than a religious person and atheist disagreeing on something in real life being a miracle.
Rather than an atheist or non-believer, someone who believes in god(s) but hates them is an anti-theist. Pantheon from League of Legends is probably my favorite rendition of this concept in fiction.
I think misotheist is more accurate, since that’s hating a god but believing at least one exists, whereas anti-theism typically refers to being *against* the belief in god
The most interesting iteration of this I have seen in a DnD campaign was an “atheist” fighter having RP chats with the party cleric about where morality comes from, the necessity of gods for humanity, and what someone can do with or without the gods hand in their cookie jar. The two characters became the closest out of the party, and I think it was in no small part to how they both had excellent back and forths that were genuine. “I don’t need my morality to come from some higher being.” “How do you know what your morality would be shaped as if you live in a world where that godly morality has shaped social norms?” Really interesting discussions from both. Highly recommend if two people communicate their goals in these discussions. No silly gotcha or w/e.
One thing that i have thought of, but am not sure has been done, is that someone was asked "Will you put your faith in me?" by a fey, only to have that person's belief in the gods taken from them when they said yes.
A character I'm currently playing is a non-believer and it's been a lot of fun. If the name *Destiny* means anything to you stop reading here. It's not that she doesn't believe in the gods' existence outright, because there's clearly a ton of evidence that they exist. Rather, she's been so propagandized by the nation of Thay and her power-hungry, manipulative father that she believes the gods are a bunch of egotistical, selfish and deceptive beings who just want followers and worship and don't actually care about those followers or how they get them. Clerics are an extension of that; either addled fools or actively part of this manipulative mission (the interactions with the party's cleric and any others we've met have been fun). She gets frustrated when people attribute events to a god (ex a cleric thanking Mystra for being rescued by the party when it was the party that did it), and generally believes most good things happen because of people, so the great divine powers of the gods would be better in the hands of mortals (and specifically her father whose magical research is bent towards this goal) since that way they could actually help people directly instead of petitioning some distant, fickle being who may or may not be listening and may or may not even care. There's also a personal angle to believe this beyond propaganda, because her upbringing was extremely rough and she had to play protector to a lot of people, so if the gods weren't there to help literal children in a terrible situation to the point she had to step up, where were they and when would they ever care? This is all complicated by the fact she's an aasimar paladin and actively taps into her own divine connection for her paladin spells and abilities-but it's totally fine because her dad said he's the reason she has those gifts thanks to his arcane experiments and he'd *never* lie, so it's just an extension of that worldview.
This video is exactly 4 years too late for my first DND campaign, but I think I handled it pretty well. One of my first players was playing a barbarian who acknowledged the gods existence he just refused to give them any power. Nowadays, I feel like if anyone played this type of character, I would just give them blanket advantage on any spill cast by a cleric or at least a decent bonus against the saves. It was so fun to see this character react to all the God nonsense of my first campaign and befriending so many clerics even if he didn’t really take much of what they were saying about their deities seriously.
5:38 the ranger in the curse of strahd game I'm playing in is basically this, a cryptid hunter who tries to follow clues on strange occurunces to disprove them, and does not believe magic is real, finding some strange perceived reality or other internal justification to accomodat for any abnormalities (with a few moments of collapse or panic when he can't easily find some internalised explanation) you'd think it'd be disruptive in a gothic horror campaign where monsters and evil magic lurks all over the place, especially in the opening dungeon, but his player, she's been really good about making it feel relevant but not taking away from teh tone, it definitely helps my cleric is the only full caster in the party (the ranger's spells are just reflavoured as techniques and skills he learned, a lot of ranger spells like hunter's mark don't really feel inherently magical to me anyway, they feel the closest to jrpg skills that cost mp the same as actual spells do, and the entire table is full of jrpg fans so it was a shared reflavouring everyone accepted).
In the Elder Scrolls universe, there is (or was) a race called the Dwemer/deep Elves/Dwarves, who were aware of the Gods but didn't view them as objects of worship and mocked all those who did. They analysed magic and the divine as a form of physics and were able to create machines who endured millenia without degrading. Eventually, they attempted to raise themselves into the same level as the gods and the result was their complete disappearance. As in, in the middle of a war, every single Dwemer suddenly vanished into thin air. There is another character who actually achieved divinity and spent millenia of his live trying to recreate the Dwemer's works only to fail to keep their constructs alive without their divine power.
I play in two D&D campaigns at the moment and one of my characters is a cleric who overly fangirls for her god. (That short description doesn't do her justice at all) The other character is a fighter who literally said to another character: "IF they ever existed they have left, were killed or stopped caring a long time ago." The cleric and my character often talk about the topic and I can't wait for the moment the cleric manages to present some actual proof to my character. As of now my char believes cleric is actually drawing the power from within himself and not from a god. Both of them are in the top 5 of characters I ever played.
Great video! Getting lots of ideas for future characters. I'm currently playing an Arcane Trickster/Bladesinger that's heavily inspired by Indiana Jones. He has no legitimate wizardry degree, but is an expert in esoteric magics at an arcane university, and that alternative perspective on the way magic functions has him believing that the Gods are an aspect of the Weave that's fueled by mortal thoughts and manifesting in the material plane as a type of Thought-Form. Belief in the gods gives them their power, and he interprets that as the Gods being an extension of mortal thoughts having a direct influence on the world, a sort of collective unconscious made material. He sees the Divine magics of Clerics and Paladins as proof of that, viewing them as paragons of mortal willpower to the point of their desires have a Material effect in the same way that wizards reflect mortal ingenuity to reach out and manipulate the Weave itself.
Without having seen it, atheist just really means you don't worship, so you could fully be a Gnostic atheist, like you know the gods are real, but not worthy of worship. Also theros has the supernatural gift of i really don't like the gods so now i have anti Magic field
You could say in a D&D world, magic could be seen as part of nature - some creatures just have it, just like some animals have flight or a prehensile tail. Clerics and paladins could be using innate powers of their own, using a devine archetypes as a catalist - kind of like in Stephen King's "It", where a cross and silver bullets work against the monster because the kids believe what they've learned from movies, not because they have actual powers or the monster is weak to those things specifically.
The Name of the Rose has an excellent example for your last section about zealotry: one of the heroes of the story is a skeptical monk, and the main antagonist is a zealot who sees wickedness everywhere and steamrolls over any evidence that might contradict him.
I've been creating a character for a future campaign who doesn't believe in magic - he thinks the gods and powerful wizards and such exist, he just thinks they're all scam artists. And that's largely because he, himself, also does fake "magic" to trick other people. This video has definitely given me some food for thought. Thank you!
I just watched your trilogy about creating 5 randomly generated characters and their backstories and it inspired me to write again after a few years of no motivation to do so. Thank you so much!!!
This seems to be one of your videos with the fewest likes, and I can't help but wonder if the religion theme has anything to do with it. However, I absolutely think this was one of your best videos ever and it very clearly (and respectfully) explains aspects of faith, magic and atheism that might impact your world as a GM or your character as a player. Thanks for this great video, Mike!
I play in a game where the relationship with the gods is the entire theme of the campaign really. It’s something each character has a different journey for and view on. For the first one, they have multiple blessings by some of the gods and are dealing with the pressure of that notice and also trying to understand the why them part of it all. They are devout in a more traditional sense but the question of “why me? what is so special with me?” is one of their journey questions. And the living up to that expectation too of course. The second one is on a similar topic though they are only claimed by one god (and is party cleric so that too). They found out that they are actually the heir of one of the gods who is not only their ancestor but is dying. They are learning to deal with the pressure of having to one day live up to a destiny they can’t evade and figure out what that role will mean for them and what direction they will take when they inherit their domain. The third one’s relationship is one where they are trying to decide if they want to trust a certain god. They found one they believe aligns with their own internal doctrine but are wary about committing to that god because of what is happening or happened with the other two I’ll mention just after this. His journey is figuring out more about this god and defining the meaning of that relationship and how he wants to engage with the gods, and this particular one especially. Now the fourth is an interesting one. They reject the gods but not because of any large thing. It’s actually because a god reached out to help them out before…an evil one. And this evil one tormented them in a lot of ways. Eventually they decided the power being offered by this god wasn’t worthwhile and they didn’t want to be beholden to any god anymore and cast out the aspect of the evil god possessing them. They now are learning to define what that path is and what it means. They acknowledge the gods but don’t want to be beholden to them and figure out what they can do themself and evaluate the gods only after they get the measure of that. The fifth is sorta sad. They started fairly devout and even had a close relationship of mentor and mentee between each other because, in their day, the gods walked side by side with mortals on the same plane. This all changed when a war broke out and it pitted everyone against everyone (the calamity for those who are cluing into references). They then rejected the gods because they blame them for literally destroying everything in their life, their family, their culture, their homeland, and even their time as they got cast far into the future. Basically everything was taken from them. They blame and reject the gods for this and seek to unravel the bonds between gods and mortals so that mortals can live by their own means. And then the last is my own character. My character I play isn’t necessarily devout. And their relationship with the gods is not quite mentor/mentee, nor is it close friends, or even parental. My character acknowledges the gods are fallible but sees them as a necessity of the ecosystem of the wider web of reality. The gods need mortals as much as mortals can make use of gods in return (doesn’t necessarily believe that mortals all require gods but one can choose to include them). My character is also grateful for a particular god as they are thankful for that god for showing them a new direction they could take that wasn’t the one they were on. This is important to them exactly because they really were very close to snapping as it was. The “inciting incident” is exactly the type of relief they needed and has led them already down a path where they can look themselves in the mirror and genuinely like themself better. Have they faced a lot of hardship? Yes. Have they questioned why the gods don’t help them. No. My character believes in people making their own choices and path in life and that the gods can sometimes provide guidance or inspiration for these paths. Mortals aren’t beholden to the gods even if gods have great power. Mortals make their own fate, especially as a collective force. In fact, my character doesn’t believe in fate of prophecies even. I mean, they understand seers exist and one of the party members is one even. But they believe these people are seeing paths and most likely outcomes, seeing things that can not be altered due to ongoing forces beyond a normal scope of comprehension. Basically, butterfly wings. People change fate and each other’s fates. The gods can lend a push here and there, but they aren’t in control of fate as a whole. So yeah, big ecosystem. One that has a grand scope and is wildly complex. And the gods in all this? Just another aspect of it, but just as necessary as any other cog in that delicate balance. And yeah, inspiration to change and being grateful for it by being respectful and being open to listening to that god (technically is that gods “chosen” but the relationship is exactly as I said, despite the title).
I’m currently planning an artificer who does believe gods exist but to him they’re not gods in the way people would imagine gods. They’re just extremely powerful beings that, because of their power were able to make people believe they were gods. And this mind set doesn’t even make clerics or paladins impossible. The source of their powers is just their dedication to their code, beliefs or faith.
I actually am playing a wizard who lost his wife to a noble's sacrificial ritual. He is now a single father who works as a War Wizard in Cormyr. He sent off his daughter to study wizardry at Candlekeep. Plot happens, and he and his daughter become chosen of Mystra. More plot happens and there is a terrible hole in the weave that is allowing things from the far realm into the material plane. My wizard is told by Mystra to sacrifice myself. While I have no trust in the Gods I sacrifice my character to close the plane. Not for some deity's decree but to protect the material plane from incursion and more importantly my daughter from having to sacrifice herself.
One time I played a character who interpreted the stories of the gods as metaphorical. Like how nature exists on a scale, physically and chronically, behond our comprehension so we tend to just personify it. Kind of like Zeus throwing lightning. Which was interesting because we had a cleric in our party who constantly talked about his goddess. Unfortunately that campaign fizzled out before getting too far.
Keyleth confront with the gods was one of my favorite things in the podcast that was sort of left behinde when it was adapted to Legend. Not that's a problem, I just like what they players did in the podcast with that
I’ve always thought it would be fun to play a Hercule Satan type character. Someone who claims that the gods are just tricksters fooling people, and he tries to prove that he can do it too by being an artificer or something like that.
Two published ttrpg settings that might be worth discussing in this context: 1. DCC Lankhmar, set in Fritz Lieber's world of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Clerics have no power. Magic is real, but skepticism about dieties--thier motivations, divine nature, even their very existence--IS a thing. 2. Mystara. An early setting for BX DnD. No gods, just Immortals, and characters have an in game path to Immortality. Again: DnD, where the setting explocitly says there are NO gods
you do not need to worship the gods boy, or have respect for them. But you better still fear them, offer the proper tribute, and finally, for the love of all you care about...keep beneath their notice
I really want someone to make an internet show of a D&D hospital sitcom a la Scrubs where clerics to different gods an are basically different medical specialties. Their ability to heal different maladies and break different curses depends on the beliefs of the cleric and the person seeking healing.
For yet another excellent example of "paladins behaving badly" read the second arc of the Order of the Stick comic. The first paladin the group encounter is an awful zealot, but then they end up in the home city of the paladin order and you get a whole bunch of interesting and varied examples of *people* who are also paladins. I gotta say, this video is kinda making me want to play an atheist cleric. Because you can totally do that in 5E
I once played in a campaign where everyone worshiped one or some of the gods, at least nominally if nothing else. I had decided that (to no surprise) that my character had a lot of trauma, so upon learning this I decided that my character had essentially come to the conclusion that while the gods existed, they certainly didn’t care about him, so he wouldn’t care about them. It was a fascinating mind set to get into as a practicing Christian. What made this especially cool for me is that his beliefs actually came up towards the end of the campaign. Turns out the gods of the setting were powerful entities commissioned to be world builders by a council of even more powerful beings running essentially a series world building experiments. The only caveat of the process of creation was that they were forbidden from interfering too much. My characters testimony of essentially never interacting with the gods actually ended up saving the world from being wiped by the mega gods and being deemed as a failed trial. Probably one of my favorite characters.
I found the example about not believing in dragons in Tyranny of Dragons funny, because one of my party members is doing that right now! Sort of. He’s from an isolated dwarven community and so, despite having interactions with dragons both in his backstory and in the last 12 levels of adventuring together, is convinced that dragons are actually just a very large species of cat. He calls every dragon we fight “kitty”, I love it.
Being a rl atheist arguably makes it easier to role-play in a fantasy setting where multiple gods exist, as you aren't bringing ingrained and pre-conceived ideas based on abrahamic monotheism. Reading up on Sumerian gods & religion is a great place to begin if you want to try and understand how people thought of the gods in a polytheistic society. They didn't worship gods because they 'deserved' it or were examples of divine perfection. They worshipped the gods to stop them from wiping out their towns with floods & diseases. Fear was the motivator.
Most of my characters have weird relationships to the gods but to be fair in my DM's main home-brew setting all of the old gods were wiped out in the first campaign and in the current campaign the new pantheon is less than 500 years old. My fave is my druid/fighter, who ended up married to the new god of fire. Because she knew the current gods before they ascended she still sees them as deeply flawed and limited beings because her husband was really the only one she thought much of before they ascended.
I suppose another aspect of atheism in D&D is how powerful do you want your gods to be? Because it’s one thing to have gods of ultimate power, immortal beings of infinite strength and wisdom who could destroy you with a thought, and it’s another to say that your pantheon is just a group of particularly powerful former mortal beings who discovered a secret way to access divinity and immortality. And not believing in the divine right to being worthy of worship of the latter is very different than of the former.
If I ever play a cleric again, it will have to be a humanist, or an equivalent term which includes all conscious mortal beings. Morality requires mortality; if something isn’t subject to mortal limitations and concerns, it’s not a moral agent. To truly understand the significance of moral thought and action, one has to be part of the struggle to survive and thrive. Yes, in a fantasy setting where there’s sufficient evidence to show the existence of a deity, one may acknowledge its existence but recognize that there is no duty to worship it.
I played a semi-sentient construct recently, basically a character defined by the existence of artificers and engineers within the DND setting. It was designed to be a personal companion of an elderly inventor. Things went wrong, debt collectors arrive, and the construct ends up being sold to a gladiatorial organization and forced into bloodsport. One day, during a routine fight, right before the killing blow, the machine turns itself off. Somewhere along the line of being forced into murder there was a spark of *something* that turned what was essentially a very well configured chatbot into a conscious, living person. All this to say, I played that robot like an atheist, but from the angle of "what happened to me is not explainable, but i know so little about this world that i have to rule out the other possibilities before accepting the fact I was given life by a higher power". His/their arc WAS defined by eventually settling into a belief in a higher power, but the way he went about it was methodical and anti-theistic in spirit, often lashing out emotionally at the gods for not just giving him a straightforward answer. In retrospect, it looks like the path of a believer, but while walking it, it looks like the exact opposite.
My friend who never played before called my one day to ask about character creation (he wanted to play a Leonin Garfield parody) and the topic of if he could be an atheist was brought up. I explained that both gods and magic are intrinsically apart of dnd but that the frequency in which you’d encounter them are up to whoever’s DM’ing. We instead compared that atheism in dnd would be the equivalent to being Misotheistic or Agnostic, knowing that the gods exist but do not deserve worship or following. To be an atheist in a dnd like setting would be the equivalent of being a flat earther (conspiracy theorist). After the call he sent me his character sheet and a text his backstory and explaining how he’s exited to play a character that refuses to believe gods and magic. I dont think he ended up playing but for his first time creating a dnd character it was a really interesting discussion
I also have a wizard who thinks is unjust and even cruel that only those who devote themselves to a higher being are capable of great healing and resurrection. Because of this he has devoted himself to study and exploration in order find a means of doing the same through arcane magics, leading him to a path of necromancy. He knows that gods exist through his own life experiences but think they are egotistical and selfish for withholding such incredible aid only for those who worship them
I played a character once who didn’t believe in magic! He was a Druid who explained away his spells by giving some sort of nonsensical scientific explanation. It was a lot of fun
A fun character concept could be a sorceror or warlock masqueradimg as a cleric either to avoid scrutiny in an antinarcame world or simply to fleece the mooks.
I'm playing a celestial warlock masquerading as a cleric in my current campaign! She gets her power through her contract with her wife, who was chosen to be the "bride" of one of the gods in that world. She pretends to be a cleric of that god to hide the relationship and get special treatment in the towns they visit.
Currently I’ve been playing a Paladin who is a devout believer of a lunar goddess. I’ve been thinking that the next character I play might either be atheistic or might at the very least acknowledge that the gods are real, but that they feel that they the gods treat mortals as more their playthings than anything.
to me I have played characters who grew up within a faith and saw faith in the god fail, but that increased faith in the common man an myself, for we can only help and believe in ourseflf
Lol at the Hazbin Hotel clip 😂 I think it's an interesting example of what you're talking about too. The whole premise of the show is that the system of Heaven/Hell is broken and therefore the entity that created it must be fallable. I'm sure a D&D campaign set in that world would be fun
@@gastonzumbo9860 I agree the world building isn't the most solid but imagine rallying the forces of Hell to fight back angelic invasions and gaining favour with different overlords (some of which will try to make a deal for your soul)
I heard you say that seasons are based on distances from the sun throughout the year, and while it was in passing, I offer this fact-check as an astronomy teacher 😅 Seasons find their origins in the tilt of the earth’s axis relative to its orbital plane. This creates discrepancies between the “heat-densities” throughout the years are the causes of the seasons. Direct light -> high relative heat density -> summer; light incoming at more extreme angles -> low relative heat density -> winter.
currently my dwarf doesn't believe in demons or devils cause he worked in a mining city for the first half of his life where education was not present and he truly has just never seen them. the cleric and warlock in the party obviously think it's funny but at least my character believes in the gods as far as realizing there are obvious examples of them doing things in the world
My artificer believes magic is is another type of energy to be scientifically examined and put to use. He does no believe in gods. The party met an aspect of "The Traveler" My character walked away from it saying, "No we did not meet a god. We met a ERY powerful individual, who is EXTREMELY adapt at harnessing magical energy, and who CLAIMS to be a god. That doesn't make him a god"
Do any characters in your games distrust/not believe in the gods?
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All who read will receive Jesus energy wash. Did it work
All sheep will receive Jesus energy wash EVen the condemned fallen angels aliens NASA what ever you want to call them are allowed
I've never had this but technically an atheist can exist in a DND world because to be an atheist is to have a lack of belief. You can acknowledge they exist but not trust them to do anything, like how you know police exist but depending on where/who you are you might not trust them to help you.
Also, to those who think you can't not trust a paladin or cleric of good I have two words. Oath breakers
Hi Mike, new viewer here - I've just binge watched a couple of your vids and this one especially interests me. I get that you did this 2 months ago, but there's a stretch version of atheism that's playable in Pillars of Eternity: when making your character choice, if you choose the background Philosopher, you can establish that your character doesn't believe in anything - they're aware gods exist, are fluent in the lore and know the gods' tenants, but at the same time doesn't believe in the gods' divinity (there is an actual moment later in the game where an important NPC tells your character that the gods are frauds, and as a Philosopher your character has the choice to declare, "I knew it!") While granted, Pillars is not DnD while being kind of like DnD, but I like to think that with good communication between the DM and the group, this version of atheism could be playable at the table.
Do you have any thoughts on the creation of say, a monotheistic character in the same vein as this? “The gods we see are but grasping magical entities, nothing compared to the one True God” there is only one God worthy of worship, a cousin of the “the gods are not worthy of worship” school of thought.
Honestly, I think playing an anti-theist makes more sense for what you're going for. "I know the gods are real, and they can suck it"
Well, in the video we cover not just that idea, but also the idea that you might not believe in the gods at all, since I’ve seen both at the table.
@@SupergeekMikeTrue, just love the idea of a character flipping off the sky every so often
The anti-theist mindset would be a great way to go, pointing out all of the things that the "good" gods allow to happen that seems evil, but in a polytheistic world, it's easier to blame the evil on other divine entities. It would still lead to some interesting role play conversations between the players and deepen the emersion in the game if done respectfully.
I could see this. They exist but they don't do anything exactly helpful. To quote Angel (the Buffy spinoff) "the powers who just sit on their ass".
@@ericpeirce5598 - Right, in philosophy, the "problem of evil" (why does God allow suffering to exist in the world?) is a problem for monotheistic religions with an omnipotent benevolent deity. (Various proponents of real-world religions have various explanations which make some sense, like free will being the most important gift to humanity.)
But as you say, it's not a problem at all when there are (nearly) equally powerful evil deities, and/or the good deity(es) aren't supposedly omnipotent and omniscient. Most D&D pantheons are like this, unlike real-world Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam).
This anti-theist idea is an interesting way to flip that: you *expect* that the gods should eradicate evil and suffering from the world, and since they clearly haven't, they either aren't real gods (just powerful beings that aren't qualitatively different from other powerful extra-planar beings) or aren't worthy of your respect.
I think an interesting take is to acknowledge that gods are divine, and have some qualitative differences from other powerful creatures (like archfey, demon, devils, and powerful celestials). But that you don't want to *worship* them, and think it's weird to have religions. If you want their help, you can talk to them like you would to a powerful NPC. Or you could think they suck and that asking for their help isn't worth the time and effort.
Or as @an8strengthkobold360 commented, a character could believe all the "gods" are just powerful beings (e.g. an Aboleth) that use mind-control tricks to fool large groups into experiencing things that seem "divine", perhaps because they were in such a cult. They would be wrong, but it's not easy to *prove* that, especially if they aren't powerful enough to cast their own divination / truth-checking spells or other means of trusting or verifying actual facts, not just whether people believe what they're saying (like aura of truth does).
The conspiracy theory thing could even make sense.
Imagine a character who was part of an Abolth's cult and only learned that after the beast was slain.
They probably had psionically induced religious experiences and saw people granted magical powers by their "god".
After getting out they don't trust religion and may assume the gods are doing something similar.
The gods are not all powerful creators but powerful manipulators using people for their own ends.
I once had a player who literally met the gods on their in-world version of Mount Olympus and he straight up said, to their faces “No, I don’t believe you when you say you’re gods. You’re powerful, yes, but I see you more as archfey than deities”. And then he stole one of the God’s weapons to give it to his boyfriend, after just calling the gods powerful archfey to their faces
I don't get what this means though, like what did that character think being a god is? What's the difference between a god and an archfey...also, in your setting, was he correct?
Think about it, archfey are powerful otherworldly beings, many having power over certain aspects of the world as well as mortals. It would be exceedingly difficult to kill one, but NOT impossible. Some characters can have the mindset that if they could die, they can't be gods. Plus the fact the character successfully stole a weapon is proof they aren't omniscient, therefore are they really worthy of worship?
@@revenantravings "...therefore are they really worthy of worship?"
I mean, for centuries people thought so. The gods of most pantheons on earth were never omniscient, could and were stolen from, and died (usually to other gods, but not always). People worshipped them because not doing so was bad for your health (or at least disrespecting them rarely went well for mortals) and doing so, honouring them, was usually a better idea.
It's pretty late stage religion that believed divinity meant all knowing omniscient beings who mastered all. (It was part of the selling point for Christianity "OUR God is all powerful, yours does lightning and stuff...cute.") But for a long time, power alone *was* what made them worthy of reverence and worship. What else matters?
That's... kind of the point? The character clearly didn't believe that a god that can be tricked or killed is deserving of the title of godhood. That doesn't mean they're inherently correct, there ARE minor gods in the dnd pantheon that could struggle against an archfey, the topic is just explaining how a character can be an atheist or agnostic in a setting where they meet god face to face.
In Discworld a golem questioned gods, got struck by lightning and simply addressed the heavens saying 'That is not a very good argument.' Gods can hold their title despite making asses out of themselves, that doesn't mean the players have to respect them, especially if they can prove that godhood as nothing special by overcoming them in some way. The fact Olympian gods have been beaten pretty regularly in mythos is good reason for an agnostic character to call them trumped up archfey and focus on taking them down a peg.
@@revenantravings But the question is: What makes a god? Like what *do* those agnostics deem worthy, is the litmus omnipotence and infallibility?
Because those rare qualities in gods. My point is that a god is a figure of worship. And why *isn't* an archfey (or equivalent god) worthy of worship when they are recognizably powerful and divine. What's the standard, and why would this character think these beings below it?
Because for thousands of years, being able to throw lightning from the heavens was good enough. Good argument or no. (I'm not saying it's a bad character archetype, more wondering what standard that character was comparing the gods to, that they were failing to meet.) Like if Zeus *isn't* a god, who the heck is?
There's a 3rd way to play an atheist in these kinds of games that I think works the best, and it boils down to:
"Just because the gods are real does not mean they are worthy of our respect, our worship, our devotion. should you be forced to worship a tyrant for the pleasure of being allowed to be oppressed at their feet?"
This method acknowledges that yes the gods are real, but you believe that them being real doesn't automatically grant them the privilege to be venerated.
This is what Percy and Keyleth do in C1.
In Dresden Files there are Knights of the Cross - three knights who are wielding literal holy swords of Christ with the help of literal angels to fight literal demons. One of them is an atheist - he fully acknowledges that he has special powers granted by a supernatural force. But he says that force could be a god, or it could be some strange supernatural being, or an alien, or he - the Knight - might just be mad and imagining the whole thing. He respects that force, follows the creed of the Knights and fully accepts his role. But he does not believe.
I feel like this is the real philosophical core that the type 2 "explanations" given in the video are usually being used to express. What is it that makes it morally right for me to follow this being? It being omnipotent, or omniscient, or my creator, even if these things are true, don't give a satisfying explanation of that point. To believe in a god to me takes some special extra quality of superiority to people, which I guess is the divinity that sets apart a god from a powerful wizard or whatever. But it's also, to my mind, not something a being can have in itself. To be worthy of worship is something that can only be bestowed by others, so they're only really gods if you believe they are, whatever qualities they may possess. This form of atheist sees no gods worthy of worship-so they see no gods at all. At the same time, you can recognise that for some people faith in a gods rightness is central to how they understand the world, and so for that person, this entity is divine
4th way, which I played (as a Cleric of Umberlee, no less!) for 13 levels: "The gods are real, they're terrifying, and we need to avoid their notice at all costs." The culture my cleric came from practiced a kind of "spiritual stealth", deliberately avoiding any behavior or ritual that had spiritual significance; if they needed to perform an action that could be construed as honoring a god, they also performed a counter-action in order to render themselves worship-neutral. Their priests were essentially spiritual camouflage experts, organizing worship in such a way as to honor every god equally, with the smallest metaphysical signature possible. When it came to really dangerous or fickle deities (like Umberlee), they trained special priests that were sent out into the world as decoys, to draw the god's attention away from home.
That doesn't work because then they wouldn't be atheists, misotheists would be the correct term, a type of theist.
I feel like there is a secret third option
"Yeah, the gods are real but I owe them nothing"
For example my current character is a Dwarf Wizard who is a merchant. While he does respect the god of contracts he does not worship any god, he does not pray, and he respects the party members that do.
You dont have to be 'anti' anything
Absolutely agree, I also like the argument of "yeah gods are real but their just normal people with to much power. They can be wrong just like us"
Kingston Brown from The Unsleeping City is a cleric who derives his power from the hearts and spirits of the people of NYC itself, and doesn't interact with any gods during the campaign. The closest thing to a god in that campaign is the monarch of dreams.
19:40
Not doing this to be douchey. But it is interesting.
It isn’t the distance from the sun that causes seasons. It is the tilt of the earth. Which ever area of the world is experiencing summer is actually angled to catch more sun rays per day.
That is why the southern hemisphere experiences summer in December.
In the Northern Hemisphere we actually experience Winter when we are closest to the sun!
I know right! Here's a guy saying he's so into science yet makes such an elementary mistake! This is the kind of thing little kids believe before they are taught better.
19:38 Seasons are the result of axial tilt, not distance from the Sun. If it were the latter, the northern & southern hemispheres would experience summer & winter at the same time.
Thank you. As a meteorologist, I may have been a little triggered when Mike said that.
Spoilers for critical role c1
Insert the clip of Telesin saying “it’s hard to look at a fist coming out of the sky to punch a dragon and say ‘there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for this.’”
I don't remember this quote. Time to search the transcript site!
C1 spoilers:
I find it odd that both Percy and Keyleth say at the end of C1 that they went through all their adventures “faithless” while getting the powers, artifacts, and direct help from said pantheon.
In fact, it is a little more odd considering Whitestone’s confection to the big sun man and all the temples Percy erected to respect the gods.
I would’ve loved to hear more about this aspect of Percy from Talesin and crew.
@@dionysues7449 Ah yes the glaring elephant in the room of Pelors close ties to Whitestone. Why didnt he do anything to stop the Briarwoods? The meta reason is just that Percy was not a follower, if he was a vengence paladin of the sun god, then the story would be that the sun god worked through him to defeat the forces of evil. But the narrative is of overcoming a vengence demon so of course Percy cant be upstaged by a legion of literal angels or a regiment of warriors sent by Vasselheim.
So below the meta reason we of course have the excuse of the divine gate but that only goes so far, the city is founded in worship to Pelor so you would think it was a major location for his forces on the material plane to maintain.
But apparently one dead priest is all it takes to erase the religion from the whole city? He must have been some sort of threat for the Briarwoods to take him out?
I can only come up with my own explanation that the very nature of the Whispered Ones influence obscured that anything was going wrong, even from the burning eye of the sun god.
Or maybe a completely coincidental fault that Pelor, not an omniscient being, cant see through mundane clouds. And Delilah usually kept the city obscured for Sylas' sake.
While in the same battle, the rogue did more damage in one round than the "fist of a god", so.... just a powerful spell?
@@dionysues7449I remember at some point likely during talks machina Tal said Percy treats religion the same way someone raised catholic would, you know the stories and some of the rituals but you don’t necessarily believe god exist/is watching over you/cares about you. I don’t think we fully got an explanation at the end of the campaign if this was still accurate but I’d assume it would’ve changed a bit.
As an atheist even I have trouble seeing a player believing the gods don't exist, but this is mostly from playing and running most of my games in the Forgotten Realms. The idea of a character not believing they were divine would be interesting when it comes to role playing opportunities. I could even see a Cleric being role played as if they were a Warlock with a pact with a powerful being and in contrast, having a Warlock believe their patron is a divine being. Getting creative with how your character views things that is different than the other characters can create more role playing dynamics between the party members and with NPC's as well. This can even be a relevant mindset with things outside of religion in the game.
People always ask how someone can believe the gods don't exist in a world where divine magic exists, but I'd ask how divine magic can be used as evidence for the gods when *arcane* magic exists.
OK, you're a priest and you can cast spells. How do I know you're not just a sorcerer with an imaginary friend?
...OK, you've proved your friend really exists and bestows you with magic. How do I know they're not a powerful Fey who's made a contract with you?
The question becomes less "do the gods that people worship actually exist?" and more "does the category of 'god' exist, or are the beings people worship no different to the rest of us except in terms of power level?"
the divinity series you've been putting out lately has been BANGER AFTER BANGER!
Thank you!
"I guess if you're Catholic, you believe one specific guy can't make mistakes" Catholic DM here, guilty as charged!
That being said, I have people of all different religious or nonreligious backgrounds at my table, and it's always interesting to see them playing characters with varying attitudes toward the gods in-game. It's also interesting to play in the more popular D&D settings that have a fundamentally different view of the divine from the one we're often most familiar with in the west. On the real-life Christian view, God is seen as the one originator of all things, the unmoved mover, the being from which being itself comes, outside of time, space, and matter, and the being whose own character gives us morality. Whereas in the most popular D&D pantheons, the gods function much more like exceptionally powerful entities that shaped pre-existing matter and energy, and who rule over different concepts or ideas. A D&D god of justice is usually a very just being, whereas the Christian God *is* justice itself. This is all kind of complex and leads to a lot of really interesting philosophy for players to get into if they want.
Greetings fellow Catholic, You ever consider if u could make an argument for a monotheistic god(an Eru Illuvitar type) in the more popular D&D settings? Surely if Good and Evil exist there must be some kind of standard that makes Bhaal an Evil god and Selune Chaotic Good?
Great Video Mike! Always love seeing you discussing these overlooked or often discarded ideas for character concepts in tabletop! This video brings to mind a character I'm currently in the seat of playing actually!
She is a Cleric of Hel (largely based on the Norse god but re-interpreted in my friend and I's homebrew world) who has already passed on in their first life. Because she was dishonored/disgraced in her death she was sent to Hel as a servant instead of being honored with a position as a warrior-spirit to return and protect the world from prophesied Ragnarok in one of the various canonical methods according to the culture. She spent an unknown length of time serving Hel as a recorder who wrote and cataloged the life stories of those who were chosen as the honored dead (cuz Hel ain't got no time for that but knows it's important for the soul). Hel's goal with this process is normally supposed to teach the dishonored what it is they failed to learn in life (whether that be honor, empathy, or whatever other failing their soul was perceived as failing to uphold) so that their soul can be "whole" when it moves on from the world.
The catch with my character is that - as many a protagonist has - she does not think she has done anything wrong and resents Hel for "mis-assigning" her. Viewing Hel as the "Evil" goddess that many of the living in the our fantasy world perceive her to be and holding the belief that Hel simply is being a resentful, uncaring, immortal being. So she sat through this seemingly endless servitude (since she wasn't going to learn her lesson) until one day Hel offered her a choice: A second chance (me realizing I basically made an Isekai character... lol) at life. Though Hel didn't make this so obvious. Hel knew that my character, Kiah, did not want another life. She simply wanted to move on. So Hel offered instead for "one final tasking".
The backstory for why my character is on the the journey of our campaign? Hel asked my character to "Record" the tale of a hero in real time. To do the same job she had been doing in the afterlife but instead do it with living, breathing people who Hel believes will help her realize her own faults before she can move on. The offered exchange is of course that when the tale ends my characters soul will be allowed to move on and finally "Die".
So basically i'm playing a Cleric of an often-assumed-evil Goddess of Death who openly dislikes gods and does the general opposite of clerics in that she airs skepticism about godly worship despite having open access to powers from a god (were early in the story but it's very fun because right now the party assumes that she just doesn't like other gods but don't realize that she actually hates her own god more than any other). All of that is being disguised behind the outward behavior of a Bard recording the tales of the party as "destined heroes".
I'm a former Christian, current atheist. I almost always play characters with real belief and devotion to a god. When I played Curse of Strahd, I played a life domain cleric who I modelled after a southern televangelist (minus the greed). In my current campaign, I'm playing a cleric/fighter who used to be a chaplain in the military - while he worships only one god, he facilitates the worship and rituals of any god.
If playing with nonbeliever in real life players, my big reveal would include the "gods" being a feedback between magic and the believers with no actual Gods involved --- so if you can teach a new generation that they can activate a certain group of "God" powers (picked from what other believer groups can do to make sure feedback allows these powers), you can fabricate a "God". Cue the party playing benevolent in Go'a'ould style against the big bad!!!
I am currently playing a 3.5 game where the Gods of the world are the 12 moons of the world. I am playing a Cleric who doesn't believe the dogmatic aspects of it, and feels powers granted by the Gods are scientifically explainable. Simply astral bodies having odd affects on the world, and being harnessed through items that people are not smart enough to understand. So he has built a device around an ancient Holy Symbol he found, and believes he is using science to make magic. I did this mostly because I couldn't get into the specific gods set in front of me, and I thought it would be fun to play a non-believing cleric.
I know your not the DM but I still have to ask. Are the gods *literally* the moons? Or are the moons just physical manifestations of the gods?
Aethism in pathfinder and D&D essentially boils down to I understand the gods exists but fuck them. They can stay in their corner and i'll stay in mine
the Hercules The Legendary Journeys perspective: the gods exist and are powerful, but they suck and people who do worship them do so out of fear and powerlessness
I absolutely am happy you used that from Hazbin Hotel. I was waiting on it with the spoiler warning at the start and just absolutely loving it thanks to how perfect that song is on this topic.
Now I want to play an atheist cleric.
This type of character would have a blast in my campaign because all of the gods from every pantheon in the world were real at one point but the BBEG has throughout the span of several thousands of years has killed them all off and takes their places. In his lair there would be a weapon and/or piece of equipment from each of the gods that can be attuned to by the characters
For anyone wanting some inspiration for a culture who is pretty anti-theist to plop into their own games, the Pathfinder setting has a nation called Rahadoum.
They got caught in a three-way religious conflict, kicked all the clerics out of their nation, an instituted a state-backed philosophy called the Laws of Mortality. There's a lot of fun tensions in that country's setting. (One of my fave protagonists from the Pathfinder Tales novels is also from there.)
Yeah, the default assumption when it comes to worldbuilding regarding the gods seems to be a roughly critical role or forgotten realms level of active participation in the world, and visible evidence. But this isn't the only way to build a fantasy world. You mentioned Game of Thrones early on, but also for example, the major institutional religions in The Witcher play basically the same role in that world as religions do in our world. Large bases of strong faith, but there are no priests shown to touch a wound with a handful of golden light and heal it in seconds. And if such a thing were to happen, Geralt will probably have figured out what sort of supernatural creature this person is by the end of the story. And then you have entities like the Lady of the Lake, the Crones, Higher Vampires, the Wild Hunt, and numerous other entities from the books and games that are ancient, powerful, nearly (or even fully) beyond mortal comprehension, that could be, and sometimes are, worshiped as gods by their own little cults. But even then, most of them are creatures that a sufficiently prepared witcher can kill. And with all this, the Witcher world is full of skeptics, namely Geralt himself.
And this is a fantasy world that you can theoretically play tabletop campaigns in. So if you're building your world, it might be helpful to look at worlds like the Witcher, and others with similarly light divine presences, when deciding on how you want to handle the existence of the gods in your world.
I love Riddick's quote: "I absolutely believe in god...and I absolutely hate the f**ker"
I think the whole difference of definition. Our world vs in game. Because we might tie to Gods to divinity/inherent but in game world people won’t give that same level of sanctity to them.
It’s like how some call the Kami from Shintoism Gods as a translation, but they aren’t close to in the west see the Sanctity/divinity that a title of “god” gives.
That’s how I see it at least.
My character in Whfrpg, the mercenary Icabood tries to stay away from the gods. He has seen what has happened to people who prayed before the battles. He has never prayed before a battle and he is still alive.
Terry Pratchett’s magic system is pretty fascinating, and could be a great way to handle skeptics.
I always loved his sentiment that learning how the magic works doesn’t change the fact that it’s magical.
My druid started out not caring about gods as they are unconnected to what they do. But now in the depths of Avernus they think the hells are the other side of the coin that is the gods. They think that all gods are bastard.
If they could punch the gods in charge of making this place in the face, they would.
AGAB.
i dont have any interesting thoughts about the topic of this video, but i do want to say that the way you handled so many opposing views with respect and grace was very impressive, thank you.
If you take the mechanics of 5e as a reflection of the world, the “gods are objectively real because clerics exist” thing doubly doesn’t make sense.
Like, who knows whether Selune actually exists - Greg can do the same stuff just because he really loves, like, the concept of light!
In Eberron the question of divinity is intentionally left vague. The gods, if they exist, do not interact with anyone or anything. Where divine magic comes from is left to DM interpretation. Personally i have divine magic be another aspect of the Weave, accessable through "faith". I believe, therefore i am.
An interesting variant would a player charater that don't whorship the gods because his personal objective is to become one himself.
I would say for folks interested idea look into the faction of the Athar in Planescape, they are in fact an entire faction of atheists.
19:40 "The earth moves closer and further from the sun" is not why seasons happen :D
lol I think I meant to say certain parts of the earth are closer and further from the sun? I dunno, I usually film these videos at 10 or 11 at night once the baby is finally asleep, so sometimes I’m on autopilot 😂
@@SupergeekMike I think most people have that misconception because if feels way more intuitive than the axial tilt of the earth causes the sun's radiation to hit the planet unevenly so no big deal.
@@SupergeekMike That has nothing to do with it either. It's axial tilt angle, not distance to anything.
Man, despite knowing better (and it being obvious), my brain refused to not see all the Egypt shots in the clips from The Mummy as the alien planet in the original Stargate. Now THAT is a crossover we need...
In answer to your aside, yes. As an atheist, it can be a bit exhausting when the default in film & TV is for the atheist to come around to believe in the divine...to "learn their lesson." I think it was part of why Everything, Everywhere, All At Once felt so cathartic and joyful. It may be one of the only times I've ever seen my own feelings toward life, the universe, and everything depicted in a film. Nothing matters. That isn't something to be sad about. It's something to celebrate. You get to invest things with meaning.
There's that Marvel comics panel that goes around, featuring Beta Ray Bill that sums things up for me. "I am alone. I look to the heavens and think them empty. And if not empty, I find the idea of worshiping whatever dwells there obscene." His companion asks; "But why do you continue?" "It does not change what is right. If there is nothing but what we make in this world, brothers...Let us make good."
That said, characters like Scully drive me nuts, too. They feel like an atheist character written by a religious person who can't understand the atheist's way of thinking. She literally sees and understands aliens at the end of the first episode of the show, but then continues to not believe in them for the next like 8 or however many seasons. That's not being a skeptic, that's being a zealot.
As far as in my Fantasy gaming, I've been thinking lately how only clerics seem to pick gods, and then only one. But one would think that most people have their god or gods that they believe in and pray to. So I've been thinking about allowing anyone to pray to the gods, but only clerics have the "skills" to do it well. This is in DCC, so it would mean that a non-cleric would be rolling at a severe disadvantage (maybe a D14 instead of a D20) & thus more likely to offend their god. They also might not have the ritual knowledge to placate an offended god, and so have to visit a temple or make some major offering in order to cleanse the displeasure. I haven't really worked it out. I'm just spitballing right now.
But on the Beta Ray Bill quote, how does he know what's good? Is it just whatever he thinks good is?
@@jareddembrun783 Yes. Exactly.
We all make this determination every day, based on life experience and understanding of the world around us. Some of us believe we have been commanded to act a certain way via divine messages or what have you, but even those commands have been interpreted and reinterpreted by generations, and when they come to us as individuals, we take into account our lived lives to choose how we apply those "divine" rules.
I grew up with religion, but it was through my mother and through my school teachers (as well as Jim Henson, the original Star Trek, and a lot of PBS TV) that I learned empathy and logic. I feel a personal responsibility to do good in the world. What is that good? Well, I have to make that determination for myself. I had to when I was devoutly religious, and I do now as a fairly extreme atheist. For example, they might be told that someone who behaves in a certain way should be stoned to death in a public square, but they choose not to act upon that. I determined that stoning people to death was not a good thing. I came to that decision while still a devoutly practicing religious person and in spite of a clearly stated and theoretically divine dictate to do violence. I picked and chose the rules that I thought were good and I ignored the rules and dictates that I thought were cruel. Each of us makes these choices every day.
In my case, I try to help people in need. I foster dogs when I can. I try to shop local when I'm able, use less resources when I have the opportunity, and strive to create less waste. I put shopping carts in the cart corral. I have no children, but I try to do things that will make the world better for future generations. I don't expect a reward for it either in life or in a supernatural after life. I do it, because the idea of humanity and the world being in a better place makes me happy and working toward that makes me feel good.
I had a player who mistrusted the divine.
So much that when they reached 15th lvl and he died, he was not resurrectable without his friends going on a quest.
All because he mistrusted the divine so much that he refused a resurectiuon spell because it was the power from the gods.
I always loved the Tywin Lannister method of atheism/antitheism. "I believe in the gods, but I think they're assholes so I don't pray to them."
Ironic, coming from one of the biggest assholes in Westeros.
oh man, a thing you said reminded me that back when I was a kid I used to come up with new character classes - one being smth I called a invoker, a character who through sheer power of belief got divine powers, even if what they believed in was something akin to an imaginary friend, like thinking their ancestor's spirit dwelled in their sword etc.
This was during 3.5 dnd so I took what basically was a sorcerer and crossed it with the cleric list. I just remember my father, who was (and still is) a bit of a grognard, not really getting it and saying "that doesn't really make sense" lmao.
Hey Mike Could you make a video about large dnd parties? I mean, real large parties like 8-10 people
Omg a clip from Gamers: Dorkness Rising? Never saw that coming and love seeing it
Spoilers for Critical Role Campaign 2
I think it would be perfectly valid to have a character who does not believe in the gods but believes that clerics may have sincere faith but that their powers actually come from non-divine sources, like Jester and her experience with the Traveler. Perhaps they think that all clerics are like this, just sorcerers or warlocks who have powers that manifest differently and do not understand where their powers are really coming from. Maybe this belief system would be called into question in the course of an adventure and maybe it wouldn't.
This is extremely cool because is kinda like how faith works in dark souls
I like having very mysterious gods in my setting because I think faith/doubt and religious schisms are too interesting to give up. Can't have a religious schism if one half loses their clerical powers at some point in the disagreement, you know? So this is how clerics work by definition in my homebrew setting. Basically, sufficient faith + certain innate magical/psionic abilities make you able to be a cleric -- you don't get your power from any deity directly, but from your belief.
That's basically Vlaakith in FR lore. She's a lich who is treated like a deity. [Not to mention other gods who were once just people like the Dead Three and Cyric (iirc)]
In our world, the world was created as a battleground for the gods to duke it out. Aasimar were made by the god of the sun and charity as soldiers, so 3000 years later (once things calmed down a whole lot) my aasimar monk was resentful of the gods for being made as a tool of war. He knows they exist and that they are powerful, but they suck as people.
I want to make a character that theorizes that divine magic is just a form of crude, mass ritual casting that draws a little bit of magical energy from each member of the faith & concentrates it on the clerics/paladins.
I think if I was going to play a character like this, I'd interpret it as my character knowing the gods exist, but they don't believe in them in a lack of trust kind of sense.
I play in a campaign where we could pick our Plane of Origin. I chose New Capenna from MTG (I'm a big fan of the Roaring '20s). Capenna has angels, but not really any gods that we've ever been told about in official lore, so my character only recently even learned what Gods were.
Once she'd interacted with them a bit she'd decided that they're unworthy of worship because they always have mortals fight their battles for them, and would rather let the world burn than actually do any heavy lifting. I could also see a suitably traumatic moment breaking a person's belief that a god should be worshipped. "Why should I do anything in your name if you couldn't do that one thing for me?"
@17:20 THANK YOU! I've had this argument so many times! The fact that there are clerics who don't pray to gods and can do everything a cleric that does pray to a god can do eliminates essentially all "proof" of the gods. And even if godless clerics are rare, paladins canonically get their power from their oath, not to mention the other divine casters you mentioned, and even some *arcane casters* can do what clerics do (celestial warlocks, bards, etc).
This really isn't any different than a religious person and atheist disagreeing on something in real life being a miracle.
Thank you for that Keyleth analysis, I didn't know I needed it and you made me bust out laughing while trying to fold a fitted sheet 😂❤
Rather than an atheist or non-believer, someone who believes in god(s) but hates them is an anti-theist. Pantheon from League of Legends is probably my favorite rendition of this concept in fiction.
Made all the more interesting by the way he functionally was a god until he wasn’t
I think misotheist is more accurate, since that’s hating a god but believing at least one exists, whereas anti-theism typically refers to being *against* the belief in god
The most interesting iteration of this I have seen in a DnD campaign was an “atheist” fighter having RP chats with the party cleric about where morality comes from, the necessity of gods for humanity, and what someone can do with or without the gods hand in their cookie jar.
The two characters became the closest out of the party, and I think it was in no small part to how they both had excellent back and forths that were genuine.
“I don’t need my morality to come from some higher being.”
“How do you know what your morality would be shaped as if you live in a world where that godly morality has shaped social norms?”
Really interesting discussions from both. Highly recommend if two people communicate their goals in these discussions. No silly gotcha or w/e.
One thing that i have thought of, but am not sure has been done, is that someone was asked "Will you put your faith in me?" by a fey, only to have that person's belief in the gods taken from them when they said yes.
A character I'm currently playing is a non-believer and it's been a lot of fun. If the name *Destiny* means anything to you stop reading here.
It's not that she doesn't believe in the gods' existence outright, because there's clearly a ton of evidence that they exist. Rather, she's been so propagandized by the nation of Thay and her power-hungry, manipulative father that she believes the gods are a bunch of egotistical, selfish and deceptive beings who just want followers and worship and don't actually care about those followers or how they get them. Clerics are an extension of that; either addled fools or actively part of this manipulative mission (the interactions with the party's cleric and any others we've met have been fun). She gets frustrated when people attribute events to a god (ex a cleric thanking Mystra for being rescued by the party when it was the party that did it), and generally believes most good things happen because of people, so the great divine powers of the gods would be better in the hands of mortals (and specifically her father whose magical research is bent towards this goal) since that way they could actually help people directly instead of petitioning some distant, fickle being who may or may not be listening and may or may not even care. There's also a personal angle to believe this beyond propaganda, because her upbringing was extremely rough and she had to play protector to a lot of people, so if the gods weren't there to help literal children in a terrible situation to the point she had to step up, where were they and when would they ever care?
This is all complicated by the fact she's an aasimar paladin and actively taps into her own divine connection for her paladin spells and abilities-but it's totally fine because her dad said he's the reason she has those gifts thanks to his arcane experiments and he'd *never* lie, so it's just an extension of that worldview.
This video is exactly 4 years too late for my first DND campaign, but I think I handled it pretty well.
One of my first players was playing a barbarian who acknowledged the gods existence he just refused to give them any power.
Nowadays, I feel like if anyone played this type of character, I would just give them blanket advantage on any spill cast by a cleric or at least a decent bonus against the saves.
It was so fun to see this character react to all the God nonsense of my first campaign and befriending so many clerics even if he didn’t really take much of what they were saying about their deities seriously.
5:38 the ranger in the curse of strahd game I'm playing in is basically this, a cryptid hunter who tries to follow clues on strange occurunces to disprove them, and does not believe magic is real, finding some strange perceived reality or other internal justification to accomodat for any abnormalities (with a few moments of collapse or panic when he can't easily find some internalised explanation) you'd think it'd be disruptive in a gothic horror campaign where monsters and evil magic lurks all over the place, especially in the opening dungeon, but his player, she's been really good about making it feel relevant but not taking away from teh tone, it definitely helps my cleric is the only full caster in the party (the ranger's spells are just reflavoured as techniques and skills he learned, a lot of ranger spells like hunter's mark don't really feel inherently magical to me anyway, they feel the closest to jrpg skills that cost mp the same as actual spells do, and the entire table is full of jrpg fans so it was a shared reflavouring everyone accepted).
In the Elder Scrolls universe, there is (or was) a race called the Dwemer/deep Elves/Dwarves, who were aware of the Gods but didn't view them as objects of worship and mocked all those who did. They analysed magic and the divine as a form of physics and were able to create machines who endured millenia without degrading. Eventually, they attempted to raise themselves into the same level as the gods and the result was their complete disappearance. As in, in the middle of a war, every single Dwemer suddenly vanished into thin air.
There is another character who actually achieved divinity and spent millenia of his live trying to recreate the Dwemer's works only to fail to keep their constructs alive without their divine power.
I play in two D&D campaigns at the moment and one of my characters is a cleric who overly fangirls for her god. (That short description doesn't do her justice at all)
The other character is a fighter who literally said to another character: "IF they ever existed they have left, were killed or stopped caring a long time ago." The cleric and my character often talk about the topic and I can't wait for the moment the cleric manages to present some actual proof to my character. As of now my char believes cleric is actually drawing the power from within himself and not from a god.
Both of them are in the top 5 of characters I ever played.
Great video! Getting lots of ideas for future characters.
I'm currently playing an Arcane Trickster/Bladesinger that's heavily inspired by Indiana Jones. He has no legitimate wizardry degree, but is an expert in esoteric magics at an arcane university, and that alternative perspective on the way magic functions has him believing that the Gods are an aspect of the Weave that's fueled by mortal thoughts and manifesting in the material plane as a type of Thought-Form. Belief in the gods gives them their power, and he interprets that as the Gods being an extension of mortal thoughts having a direct influence on the world, a sort of collective unconscious made material. He sees the Divine magics of Clerics and Paladins as proof of that, viewing them as paragons of mortal willpower to the point of their desires have a Material effect in the same way that wizards reflect mortal ingenuity to reach out and manipulate the Weave itself.
Without having seen it, atheist just really means you don't worship, so you could fully be a Gnostic atheist, like you know the gods are real, but not worthy of worship.
Also theros has the supernatural gift of i really don't like the gods so now i have anti Magic field
You could say in a D&D world, magic could be seen as part of nature - some creatures just have it, just like some animals have flight or a prehensile tail. Clerics and paladins could be using innate powers of their own, using a devine archetypes as a catalist - kind of like in Stephen King's "It", where a cross and silver bullets work against the monster because the kids believe what they've learned from movies, not because they have actual powers or the monster is weak to those things specifically.
The Name of the Rose has an excellent example for your last section about zealotry: one of the heroes of the story is a skeptical monk, and the main antagonist is a zealot who sees wickedness everywhere and steamrolls over any evidence that might contradict him.
I've been creating a character for a future campaign who doesn't believe in magic - he thinks the gods and powerful wizards and such exist, he just thinks they're all scam artists. And that's largely because he, himself, also does fake "magic" to trick other people. This video has definitely given me some food for thought. Thank you!
I just watched your trilogy about creating 5 randomly generated characters and their backstories and it inspired me to write again after a few years of no motivation to do so. Thank you so much!!!
That’s awesome, I’m so glad!
This seems to be one of your videos with the fewest likes, and I can't help but wonder if the religion theme has anything to do with it. However, I absolutely think this was one of your best videos ever and it very clearly (and respectfully) explains aspects of faith, magic and atheism that might impact your world as a GM or your character as a player. Thanks for this great video, Mike!
The ad transition was top tier
I play in a game where the relationship with the gods is the entire theme of the campaign really. It’s something each character has a different journey for and view on.
For the first one, they have multiple blessings by some of the gods and are dealing with the pressure of that notice and also trying to understand the why them part of it all. They are devout in a more traditional sense but the question of “why me? what is so special with me?” is one of their journey questions. And the living up to that expectation too of course.
The second one is on a similar topic though they are only claimed by one god (and is party cleric so that too). They found out that they are actually the heir of one of the gods who is not only their ancestor but is dying. They are learning to deal with the pressure of having to one day live up to a destiny they can’t evade and figure out what that role will mean for them and what direction they will take when they inherit their domain.
The third one’s relationship is one where they are trying to decide if they want to trust a certain god. They found one they believe aligns with their own internal doctrine but are wary about committing to that god because of what is happening or happened with the other two I’ll mention just after this. His journey is figuring out more about this god and defining the meaning of that relationship and how he wants to engage with the gods, and this particular one especially.
Now the fourth is an interesting one. They reject the gods but not because of any large thing. It’s actually because a god reached out to help them out before…an evil one. And this evil one tormented them in a lot of ways. Eventually they decided the power being offered by this god wasn’t worthwhile and they didn’t want to be beholden to any god anymore and cast out the aspect of the evil god possessing them. They now are learning to define what that path is and what it means. They acknowledge the gods but don’t want to be beholden to them and figure out what they can do themself and evaluate the gods only after they get the measure of that.
The fifth is sorta sad. They started fairly devout and even had a close relationship of mentor and mentee between each other because, in their day, the gods walked side by side with mortals on the same plane. This all changed when a war broke out and it pitted everyone against everyone (the calamity for those who are cluing into references). They then rejected the gods because they blame them for literally destroying everything in their life, their family, their culture, their homeland, and even their time as they got cast far into the future. Basically everything was taken from them. They blame and reject the gods for this and seek to unravel the bonds between gods and mortals so that mortals can live by their own means.
And then the last is my own character. My character I play isn’t necessarily devout. And their relationship with the gods is not quite mentor/mentee, nor is it close friends, or even parental. My character acknowledges the gods are fallible but sees them as a necessity of the ecosystem of the wider web of reality. The gods need mortals as much as mortals can make use of gods in return (doesn’t necessarily believe that mortals all require gods but one can choose to include them). My character is also grateful for a particular god as they are thankful for that god for showing them a new direction they could take that wasn’t the one they were on. This is important to them exactly because they really were very close to snapping as it was. The “inciting incident” is exactly the type of relief they needed and has led them already down a path where they can look themselves in the mirror and genuinely like themself better. Have they faced a lot of hardship? Yes. Have they questioned why the gods don’t help them. No. My character believes in people making their own choices and path in life and that the gods can sometimes provide guidance or inspiration for these paths. Mortals aren’t beholden to the gods even if gods have great power. Mortals make their own fate, especially as a collective force. In fact, my character doesn’t believe in fate of prophecies even. I mean, they understand seers exist and one of the party members is one even. But they believe these people are seeing paths and most likely outcomes, seeing things that can not be altered due to ongoing forces beyond a normal scope of comprehension. Basically, butterfly wings. People change fate and each other’s fates. The gods can lend a push here and there, but they aren’t in control of fate as a whole. So yeah, big ecosystem. One that has a grand scope and is wildly complex. And the gods in all this? Just another aspect of it, but just as necessary as any other cog in that delicate balance. And yeah, inspiration to change and being grateful for it by being respectful and being open to listening to that god (technically is that gods “chosen” but the relationship is exactly as I said, despite the title).
I’m currently planning an artificer who does believe gods exist but to him they’re not gods in the way people would imagine gods. They’re just extremely powerful beings that, because of their power were able to make people believe they were gods. And this mind set doesn’t even make clerics or paladins impossible. The source of their powers is just their dedication to their code, beliefs or faith.
I once played an artificer, who believed that magic is just a science yet uncovered
I actually am playing a wizard who lost his wife to a noble's sacrificial ritual. He is now a single father who works as a War Wizard in Cormyr. He sent off his daughter to study wizardry at Candlekeep. Plot happens, and he and his daughter become chosen of Mystra. More plot happens and there is a terrible hole in the weave that is allowing things from the far realm into the material plane. My wizard is told by Mystra to sacrifice myself. While I have no trust in the Gods I sacrifice my character to close the plane. Not for some deity's decree but to protect the material plane from incursion and more importantly my daughter from having to sacrifice herself.
One time I played a character who interpreted the stories of the gods as metaphorical. Like how nature exists on a scale, physically and chronically, behond our comprehension so we tend to just personify it. Kind of like Zeus throwing lightning. Which was interesting because we had a cleric in our party who constantly talked about his goddess. Unfortunately that campaign fizzled out before getting too far.
Keyleth confront with the gods was one of my favorite things in the podcast that was sort of left behinde when it was adapted to Legend. Not that's a problem, I just like what they players did in the podcast with that
And now I want Dom to meet Riddick and have a talk about their world views
Thanks Mike (not sarcasm)
I’ve always thought it would be fun to play a Hercule Satan type character. Someone who claims that the gods are just tricksters fooling people, and he tries to prove that he can do it too by being an artificer or something like that.
Two published ttrpg settings that might be worth discussing in this context:
1. DCC Lankhmar, set in Fritz Lieber's world of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. Clerics have no power. Magic is real, but skepticism about dieties--thier motivations, divine nature, even their very existence--IS a thing.
2. Mystara. An early setting for BX DnD. No gods, just Immortals, and characters have an in game path to Immortality. Again: DnD, where the setting explocitly says there are NO gods
you do not need to worship the gods boy, or have respect for them. But you better still fear them, offer the proper tribute, and finally, for the love of all you care about...keep beneath their notice
I always wanted to play a Greek themed world where the players discover most of the gods are opposite alignment of their worshippers
I really want someone to make an internet show of a D&D hospital sitcom a la Scrubs where clerics to different gods an are basically different medical specialties. Their ability to heal different maladies and break different curses depends on the beliefs of the cleric and the person seeking healing.
@0:40 there is a whole faction in plain scape dedicated to not believing in the gods
For yet another excellent example of "paladins behaving badly" read the second arc of the Order of the Stick comic. The first paladin the group encounter is an awful zealot, but then they end up in the home city of the paladin order and you get a whole bunch of interesting and varied examples of *people* who are also paladins.
I gotta say, this video is kinda making me want to play an atheist cleric. Because you can totally do that in 5E
I did not expect to see a Joan of Arcadia clip, and I respect you even more now. Great old show.
That joke from the pilot episode has lived in my head for decades now, and I’m so glad I finally have the excuse to share it with other people lol
I once played in a campaign where everyone worshiped one or some of the gods, at least nominally if nothing else. I had decided that (to no surprise) that my character had a lot of trauma, so upon learning this I decided that my character had essentially come to the conclusion that while the gods existed, they certainly didn’t care about him, so he wouldn’t care about them. It was a fascinating mind set to get into as a practicing Christian.
What made this especially cool for me is that his beliefs actually came up towards the end of the campaign. Turns out the gods of the setting were powerful entities commissioned to be world builders by a council of even more powerful beings running essentially a series world building experiments. The only caveat of the process of creation was that they were forbidden from interfering too much. My characters testimony of essentially never interacting with the gods actually ended up saving the world from being wiped by the mega gods and being deemed as a failed trial. Probably one of my favorite characters.
I found the example about not believing in dragons in Tyranny of Dragons funny, because one of my party members is doing that right now! Sort of. He’s from an isolated dwarven community and so, despite having interactions with dragons both in his backstory and in the last 12 levels of adventuring together, is convinced that dragons are actually just a very large species of cat. He calls every dragon we fight “kitty”, I love it.
Being a rl atheist arguably makes it easier to role-play in a fantasy setting where multiple gods exist, as you aren't bringing ingrained and pre-conceived ideas based on abrahamic monotheism.
Reading up on Sumerian gods & religion is a great place to begin if you want to try and understand how people thought of the gods in a polytheistic society. They didn't worship gods because they 'deserved' it or were examples of divine perfection. They worshipped the gods to stop them from wiping out their towns with floods & diseases. Fear was the motivator.
Most of my characters have weird relationships to the gods but to be fair in my DM's main home-brew setting all of the old gods were wiped out in the first campaign and in the current campaign the new pantheon is less than 500 years old. My fave is my druid/fighter, who ended up married to the new god of fire. Because she knew the current gods before they ascended she still sees them as deeply flawed and limited beings because her husband was really the only one she thought much of before they ascended.
I suppose another aspect of atheism in D&D is how powerful do you want your gods to be? Because it’s one thing to have gods of ultimate power, immortal beings of infinite strength and wisdom who could destroy you with a thought, and it’s another to say that your pantheon is just a group of particularly powerful former mortal beings who discovered a secret way to access divinity and immortality. And not believing in the divine right to being worthy of worship of the latter is very different than of the former.
If I ever play a cleric again, it will have to be a humanist, or an equivalent term which includes all conscious mortal beings. Morality requires mortality; if something isn’t subject to mortal limitations and concerns, it’s not a moral agent. To truly understand the significance of moral thought and action, one has to be part of the struggle to survive and thrive.
Yes, in a fantasy setting where there’s sufficient evidence to show the existence of a deity, one may acknowledge its existence but recognize that there is no duty to worship it.
Eyyyyy also raised Lutheran (ELCA) so it was cool to see acknowledged that he didn't want to stop being Catholic.
I played a semi-sentient construct recently, basically a character defined by the existence of artificers and engineers within the DND setting.
It was designed to be a personal companion of an elderly inventor. Things went wrong, debt collectors arrive, and the construct ends up being sold to a gladiatorial organization and forced into bloodsport.
One day, during a routine fight, right before the killing blow, the machine turns itself off. Somewhere along the line of being forced into murder there was a spark of *something* that turned what was essentially a very well configured chatbot into a conscious, living person.
All this to say, I played that robot like an atheist, but from the angle of "what happened to me is not explainable, but i know so little about this world that i have to rule out the other possibilities before accepting the fact I was given life by a higher power". His/their arc WAS defined by eventually settling into a belief in a higher power, but the way he went about it was methodical and anti-theistic in spirit, often lashing out emotionally at the gods for not just giving him a straightforward answer.
In retrospect, it looks like the path of a believer, but while walking it, it looks like the exact opposite.
My friend who never played before called my one day to ask about character creation (he wanted to play a Leonin Garfield parody) and the topic of if he could be an atheist was brought up.
I explained that both gods and magic are intrinsically apart of dnd but that the frequency in which you’d encounter them are up to whoever’s DM’ing. We instead compared that atheism in dnd would be the equivalent to being Misotheistic or Agnostic, knowing that the gods exist but do not deserve worship or following. To be an atheist in a dnd like setting would be the equivalent of being a flat earther (conspiracy theorist).
After the call he sent me his character sheet and a text his backstory and explaining how he’s exited to play a character that refuses to believe gods and magic.
I dont think he ended up playing but for his first time creating a dnd character it was a really interesting discussion
I also have a wizard who thinks is unjust and even cruel that only those who devote themselves to a higher being are capable of great healing and resurrection. Because of this he has devoted himself to study and exploration in order find a means of doing the same through arcane magics, leading him to a path of necromancy.
He knows that gods exist through his own life experiences but think they are egotistical and selfish for withholding such incredible aid only for those who worship them
I played a character once who didn’t believe in magic! He was a Druid who explained away his spells by giving some sort of nonsensical scientific explanation. It was a lot of fun
the hazbin clip rly hit, that was so good
A fun character concept could be a sorceror or warlock masqueradimg as a cleric either to avoid scrutiny in an antinarcame world or simply to fleece the mooks.
I'm playing a celestial warlock masquerading as a cleric in my current campaign! She gets her power through her contract with her wife, who was chosen to be the "bride" of one of the gods in that world. She pretends to be a cleric of that god to hide the relationship and get special treatment in the towns they visit.
Currently I’ve been playing a Paladin who is a devout believer of a lunar goddess.
I’ve been thinking that the next character I play might either be atheistic or might at the very least acknowledge that the gods are real, but that they feel that they the gods treat mortals as more their playthings than anything.
to me I have played characters who grew up within a faith and saw faith in the god fail, but that increased faith in the common man an myself, for we can only help and believe in ourseflf
Lol at the Hazbin Hotel clip 😂 I think it's an interesting example of what you're talking about too. The whole premise of the show is that the system of Heaven/Hell is broken and therefore the entity that created it must be fallable. I'm sure a D&D campaign set in that world would be fun
Definitely!
nah HH has terrible world building to set a campaign in if you think critically about it for like twenty minutes lol
@@gastonzumbo9860 I agree the world building isn't the most solid but imagine rallying the forces of Hell to fight back angelic invasions and gaining favour with different overlords (some of which will try to make a deal for your soul)
I heard you say that seasons are based on distances from the sun throughout the year, and while it was in passing, I offer this fact-check as an astronomy teacher 😅
Seasons find their origins in the tilt of the earth’s axis relative to its orbital plane. This creates discrepancies between the “heat-densities” throughout the years are the causes of the seasons. Direct light -> high relative heat density -> summer; light incoming at more extreme angles -> low relative heat density -> winter.
currently my dwarf doesn't believe in demons or devils cause he worked in a mining city for the first half of his life where education was not present and he truly has just never seen them. the cleric and warlock in the party obviously think it's funny but at least my character believes in the gods as far as realizing there are obvious examples of them doing things in the world
I'm 11 seconds into the video and I have left you a like. Anybody who references Gamers 2 has earned it.
My artificer believes magic is is another type of energy to be scientifically examined and put to use.
He does no believe in gods.
The party met an aspect of "The Traveler"
My character walked away from it saying, "No we did not meet a god. We met a ERY powerful individual, who is EXTREMELY adapt at harnessing magical energy, and who CLAIMS to be a god. That doesn't make him a god"
Patches from the darksouls games is known for thinking the gods are jokes