4th Edition and the God Format

Got the 4e books. I've got a session going tomorrow (er . . . later today) but I'm not sure how much I'm going to be able to say about it beyond "it is/is not fun." I'm still in the "ooh, shiny new book" phase.

I do like the format it uses for the gods, though. Name/alignment/domain and worshipers blurb/commandments. Especially for new role players, and with limited space, the commandments are a good way to get across how you should act if you worship a particular god. It helps that most of them include at least one that lets you know who you should beat up.

Alignment and Deities and Other Cosmological Nonsense

Unless there's significant rules cruft that makes it unfeasible, I'm might just house rule the 4e alignment system into something that's a little more recognizable to me. I might ressurect the 9-point system, but at the moment I'm leaning towards replacing "good" with "chaotic good," "evil," with "lawful evil," and leaving it at that.

I could leave in plain "good" and "evil," but the shades of distinction aren't absolutely necessary, and if I leave them out I can maintain the law/chaos axis as the one that's actually important, something I've wanted to implement for a while.

Cosmologically, that is. In such a system, mortals -- meaning the PCs -- think of evil/good as the important axis, and think lawful good and chaotic good have more in common with each other than lawful good and evil. But the gods might think differently, seeing themselves and the devils on one side of a great struggle with elementals and demons.

Such a set up would run the risk of putting too much setting emphasis on things the PCs aren't involved in and don't care about. On the other hand, it would let me have religious wars between two good churches. (Chaotic good gods are renegades from the standard divine set up? Or chaotic good mortals worship something else entirely?) Not sure whether that would be a good thing, but it could be interesting.

Something to play with. I need to see the 4e deity set up, and decide whether I want to use it, to really be sure what I'm going to do. I might not even use gods at all.

Unitarian Universalism

Anyone seen the ads the UUA is running in Time Magazine? They're pretty nifty. There's also a video that's worth checking out.

It's a cool religion. I met my first gaming group through the church youth group, and it's where I learned to play Dungeons & Dragons, so it's near to my heart in that way.

Praise Be To Kord

I want to start a new religion. One where you worship whatever you want, as long as it comes from a roleplaying game, video game, or similar source.

I'd call it "video game polytheism," except that'd rule out Vecna and Pelor and all that gang. And I'd call it "RPG polytheism," except that'd rule out Mar and whatnot.

It'd mostly be an excuse to go "By the nine!" in casual conversation. Not that I need one.

I spend too much time thinking up ways to make people think I'm weird.