Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity
Wikipedia defines a ‘Deus Ex Machina‘ as a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. It can be roughly translated, they say, as “God made it happen,” with no further explanation.
They also state that the Latin phrase comes to English usage from Horace’s Ars Poetica, where he instructs poets that they must never resort to a god from the machine to solve their plots. He refers to the conventions of Greek tragedy, where a crane (mekhane) was used to lower actors playing gods onto the stage or raise them through a trap door – both ways of having them appear miraculously on stage.
I just happened to be reading that page this weekend and my first reaction, as a Gamer & a long-time GM, was “there’s something wrong with this picture”. The disapproval of the literary device only makes sense if one assumes that the Gods are fictional.- that’s why Gods are continually showing up in the Greek plays, they were as real to the Greeks as Mountains, Fire, Lightning, and Rain, capricious natural forces that showed up whenever something interesting was going on. There is an implicit assumption of fictionality in the disapproval; if Divine Beings are ‘real’ within the context of the narrative, then it becomes unrealistic for them not to appear.
Immediately, there is a conflict between what we are taught by experience – through television and novels and accepted literary conventions – constitutes ‘good writing’ and the demands of verisimilitude. My second reaction therefore was, ‘examining that conflict would make a great article for Campaign Mastery’ – and so it is that you come to be reading these words!
Reconciling the Conflict
The conflict exists because on the one hand we have the principles of good storytelling demanding that we eschew Divine Intervention as a narrative tool, and on the other the insistence that if the Gods are real (which they supposedly are within the fictional context of the game), the internal logic demands that they appear. The conflict is inherently present in the game worlds that we present to the players, in the adventures that we craft to occur within those worlds, and in the expectations of the players. Ultimately, they come down to the burden of suspending disbelief, and the requirement that we have to have it both ways in order to satisfy that burden.
After spending a few minutes thinking on the subject, I have been able to identify three ‘acceptable’ ways of resolving that conflict to everyone’s satisfaction. There may be more, but these are the only three that I’ve found thus far. They are:
- The Gods On Call
- Out Of The Frying Pan
- Just Another Character With An Agenda
The Gods On Call
If the Gods can only get involved when invoked by mortals – or can only intervene indirectly – then the conflict disappears because Divine Involvement is no longer a Deus Ex Machina. Instead, the gods become akin to the power pack on a science-fiction weapon or toolkit, extending the capabilities of the wielder. Their natures & personalities become a cloak of religious interpretation of physical phenomena and their existences mere metaphors for the limitations of the weapon/toolkit and its power supply.
The result is science fiction in fantasy clothing, as expressed in Larry Niven’s “Flight Of The Horse” collection, his “Dream Park” series, “The Flying Sorcerers”, or the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “Devil’s Due”. It’s an extremely low-fantasy approach that finds favor with some GMs, especially those wont to explain “Magic” as some form of Psionics. This approach has never appealed to me, though I enjoyed all of the named sources, but I have a noted preference for high fantasy – others can and do prefer this approach.
Out Of The Frying Pan
It’s perfectly acceptable to employ a Deus Ex Machina in the classical sense of the term if it only gets the PCs “Out of the frying pan and into the fire”. This approach was used to good effect in Stargate, in which the Asgard are initially used to get the characters out of trouble – only for the piper to call for his payment with the introduction of the Replicators, a menace even greater than the ones SG-1 are already trying to cope with.
Although I rarely employ this approach in it’s pure form, it’s not entirely absent from my campaigns, especially the forerunners of the Zenith-3 campaigns.
Just Another Character With An Agenda
The final solution to the problem is to humanize the Divine Powers. If they become “just another character with an agenda” and their intervention makes sense in terms of that agenda, the implausibility of their involvement goes away.
This is my favorite of the solutions because of the depths of characterization it provides – a Divine Power can assist this week (in furtherance of their agenda) and interfere next week (in furtherance of that agenda). Interaction on a human, ie roleplaying, level becomes possible. What’s more, this approach lends itself to limiting divine power, as I advocated in A Monkey Wrench In The Deus Ex Machina in various ways, preventing them from being a universal Panacea to all the PCs problems.
A General Principle
All of these solutions require some work on the part of the GM. Some of this work is high-concept and some of it is mundane nitty-gritty, but it all has to be done.
One characteristic each of the solutions share is the insistent demand for consistency. Another is than none of them are fully encapsulated by the most common RPG systems, and each will therefore require careful examination of game mechanics, races, encounters, etc to ensure compliance with the chosen view of the game universe. I’m thinking specifically of D&D and Pathfinder here, though the comments are just as applicable to most other game systems – they are certainly true of the Hero System, GURPS, Rolemaster, TORG and 7th Sea, for example. Traveller, Space Opera, Paranoia, and the Star Trek RPG are all ‘hard’ SF series in which deus ex machina should all be technological in nature, if they exist at all, and hence the problem doesn’t arise. Interestingly, Call Of Cthulhu and The Lord Of The Rings RPG are amongst the most pure games in this respect – both have a specific solution in place and stick to it exclusively, requiring the GM to follow their line. Toon, of course, breaks all the rules and doesn’t care – and that more or less exhausts the list of game systems I’ve played enough times to comment on in this respect!
Most games simply assume that the Gods are, or are not – and then go straight into personalities (or perceived personalities) and other attributes of specific pantheons or divine beings. There is often little consistency between the concepts that frame one part of the game mechanics and another; and for a relatively superficial action-adventure series of dungeon-bashings, that’s probably good enough. For anything with more depth, though, there is the potential for scope and creativity here that can and should be exploited.
Conceptual Development
For longer than I have been writing for Campaign Mastery, I have been advising people to look at the big questions behind their RPG campaigns, the core assumptions that underlie everything that transpires within the game. I did so once again, here, in A Quality Of Spirit way back in December ’08. There are at least 7 such “Big Questions” that bear directly on these issues:
- What are the Gods?
- What is their origin?
- What are their limits?
- Where do they get their power?
- How do they translate this power into effects and manifestations?
- What is the role of Worship?
- What are their limitations?
These are all about putting salt on the tail of Divine Power as applied to Deus Ex Machina, about determining what the Gods can do, how, why, and how they can interact with the game world – and with the PCs who live in it – in a consistent manner.
Nuts And Bolts
Once you have the high-concept answers, you need to determine what impact the answers have, if any, on the game mechanics. The Cleric and Druid classes, or their equivalents, are obviously right in the line of fire, but so are the Paladin, and potentially the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Ranger class – or their equivalents. And if the nature of magic is affected, that can affect all Magic Items – which in turn affects Rogues and Fighters and Barbarians. There will be additional high-concept questions to consider along the way as well, such as “Where do new Clerical spells come from?”
Another Perspective
It should always be remembered that the purpose of all this work is to answer the question of what the GM can justify doing within the game. These are deliberate limitations on his palette of in-game events, with a restriction that has as much to do with creating ‘good adventures’ as it does anything else. Any other benefits that may derive, such as uniqueness of campaign, are incidental rewards. It can help, however to look at the questions from a couple of different directions:
- From the perspective of what the PCs and other character classes can do, in-game; and
- The tone and content of the planned or existing campaign.
Both of these can be considered consequences or derivations of the answers to the fundamental conceptual questions posed, but there is no reason not to put the cart before the horse; choosing the set of consequences desired and then reasoning backwards to the concepts and assumptions that generate those consequences. Being able to find your way from desired outcomes to causes is always a useful skill to have for a GM, in any event.
Character-inspired answers
To illustrate the utility of this approach, and the scale of the impact that these questions can have on a campaign, here are four possible answers to the question, “Where do Clerical spells come from?”, or – more correctly – “What are Clerical Spells and how are they created?”
- Clerical Spells are respectful requests of the Gods formulated by mortals. As such, formulaic prayers are given less weight than original compositions, and the Gods – to prevent themselves being run ragged – are literary snobs. Clerical Training is as much about poetic and lyrical improv as it is theology. Perhaps the gods only listen to their appointed followers and those within the bounds of a church or shrine consecrated to them. This gives the Gods far greater capacity for independent activity, implying that they are more (and do more) than what characters might read about in the equivalent of Sunday School.
- Clerical Spells are means of compelling activity on the part of the Gods, formulated by mortals to bind the Gods to their will as part of a compact. This implies that mortals have something the Gods need – worship being the most obvious. Perhaps the Gods derive some form of spiritual sustenance from acts of worship. It is likely that the Gods would either ignore requests from those who can’t deliver the power of worship (non-clerics) or do the opposite just to be perverse – it depends on how willingly they entered into the compact. Either way, clerical spells tend to be formulaic phrases strung together in a logic as binding as that of a computer program, and the Gods are dependant on mortals.
- Clerical Spells are means of compelling activity on the part of the Gods, formulated by the spiritual enemies of the Gods (Devils/Demons/Whatever). These enemies came up with this means of controlling and confining their enemies without realizing that it made them subject to the same limitations. As a result, they are perpetually angry and destructive. The whole “Good vs Evil” theology erected by mortals to explain the relationships between these opposing forces completely misinterprets the relationship. The previous answer was all about voluntary submission and a spirit of cooperation and collaboration; this is a much more sinister and adversarial solution in which both Gods and their Enemies are, to some extent, enslaved by the Mortals who worship them. Of course, both sides continually try to alter the rules of the ‘game’ – the Gods by imposing theological doctrine on mortals and Devils by twisting language like a lawyer. New Clerical Spells can be devised at any time but are as complex as designing a new clock, with its myriad of moving parts all functioning in harmony – or the clock doesn’t work.
- Clerical Spells have been bestowed apon mortals by the Gods. They are ways of telling mortals, “this is what we’ll do and if it’s not on the list…” Of course, there are several ways of ending that sentence. Clerics might be able to request new spells from the Gods to perform specific tasks, or the limits might be absolute, or it might even vary from Deity to Deity. There’s something about the notion of the God Of Luck saying, “I’ll give you your spell if you can roll better on three dice than I can” that I find quite appealing. Clerical Spells are more like command words or passwords – and perhaps only key words or phrases within the spell actually matter and the rest is subterfuge designed to protect the authority of the church.
Each of these puts a fundamentally different spin on the relationship between the Gods and Mortals, and hence a different spin on the manifestations of those relations within the game. They all explicitly confine Deus Ex Machinas into categories of those that are acceptable within the games narrative structure and those that are not.
Tone-inspired answers
An equally-valid approach ois to decide the type and style of the plots that the GM wants to run and choose answers to the questions that support and enlarge apon those foundations – then deal with the consequences to character classes etc that result. A campaign might be a dramatic end-of-an-epoch series of stories of imminent Armageddon” – or it might be “the gods have gone away leaving just their miracle-fulfillment machines” – or “the Gods are Demons with a better grasp of PR who have succeeded in enslaving the mortal races” – or… well, you get the idea. Each of these campaigns deals with a theological context either as a central point or one of a series of distinguishing themes in quite a different way, and hence will have different answers to the list of “Big Questions” – which in turn will have knock-on effects within the game mechanics.
Perhaps there was a zombie apocalypse 20-odd years ago that has just been beaten back – and the survivors now want to know how it happened in the first place, who’s responsible, and why. As soon as you (or the game mechanics) state that “Clerical Magic works” – or simply that undead shun consecrated ground – you’re into the territory of “why?” Having answers permits the PCs to discover those answers, making them ever more-connected with the plotline and the world around them – and permits informed judgment calls on the part of the GM when they do something not covered by the game mechanics. (“Can you dehydrate holy water? What happens if you sprinkle it in a circle around your campsite? Is there such a thing as un-holy water? What happens if you inject Holy Water into the venous system of a Vampire, for example using a dart gun?”) I’ve never known a game system to answer any of these in its game mechanics (one probably has, and I’m sure my enlightened readership will quickly tell me about it if so!)
But they are all good, practical questions that I have been asked by players in the course of a game at some point. If you don’t know why Holy Water affects undead in the first place, you’re going to be scrambling for an answer.
I was going to follow this with a discussion of the theological foundations – the answers to those “Big Questions” – from some of my campaigns, but rather than dilute this article with material of only tangental relevance, I think I’ll leave those discussions as the foundations for other articles down the track. Besides, why blow my was in one article whemn I can get 4 or 5 out of it?
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October 29th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
Interesting.
I think you’re dead right that you have to be very careful how you handled in-game Gods if you’re going to avoid them becoming literal Deus-Ex-Machinas (Deii Ex Machinae?) but I’m not sure you aren’t getting a bit tied up in etymology here.
There’s certainly an overlap between “Gods” and “Deus ex Machina” but I don’t think it’s the case that we only think that a Deus ex Machina is a bad technique because we don’t believe in Gods. For a start a lot of us *do* – Horace almost certainly would have. And if we only thought that a Deus ex Machina was bad because we don’t believe in Gods, the term would never have developed its broader implication of “a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly solved with the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object”. We know, after all, that events, characters, abilities and objects exist in the real world but we still get annoyed when they show up unannounced in works of fiction and resolve seemingly insoluble problems.
The problem with the Deus ex Machina isn’t the existence of Gods or God-like beings, but a lack of consistency. If a God has the power and the inclination to solve a problem instantly and trivially, they should have done it already – instead of waiting Until Everything Seems Lost.
To put it another way, the Deus ex Machina is a lazy plot device precisely because randomly sorting out seemingly insoluble problems for mortals is not something any reasonably consistently portrayed god would actually *do*.
Dan H recently posted..City of Chains: Basic Outlines
October 29th, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Yes, exactly. That’s why it is so important to establish boundaries within the campaign concerning what a God can and can’t do, and what they will or will not do.
But the only way the criticism of a deus ex machina can be valid is if the narrative explicitly assumes that deities aren’t real. As soon as they become as real as the protagonist, the literary criticism makes no sense. Ignoring the impact of Gods who can and do answer prayers is akin to ignoring the force of gravity. After all, if they were ‘real’, you would expect them to intervene. The narrative burden then shifts to answering the question of why they did not do so. That is definitely a lot easier if you’ve been consistent in your characterization of the deity in question.
Mike recently posted..Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity
October 29th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
If the criticism of a deus ex machina hinged on the assumption that deities aren’t real, it would not be possible to apply the term to phenomena which are physically possible in the real world, but it is.
If the entire story is – for example – about the protagonist losing his job and having to deal with the harsh realities of unemployment in a post-credit-crunch economy, and the story ended with a random billionaire showing up and giving the guy ten million quid, that would be a deus ex machina, even though millionaires do in fact exist in the real world.
If the story is about an everyman hero who is part of a group of office workers who get taken hostage by terrorists, and in the last ten minutes of the movie, just when it looks like the hero is about to get his brains blown out, he suddenly starts acting like he’s some kind of highly trained commando then that’s a deus ex machina even though some people in the world really are highly trained commandos.
To put it another way, divine intervention can be dismissed as a deus ex machina if – in the context of the setting – random problems getting solved by divine intervention doesn’t happen often enough for it to be a plausible solution to a plotline. I’m sure Horace believed that the Gods existed, he just didn’t think that “and then the gods solve everything” was a plausible solution to an emotionally engaging conflict. Presumably because while he believed that the Gods were real entities that did things, he didn’t believe that they could be relied upon to solve the personal problems of random mortals.
Dan H recently posted..City of Chains: Basic Outlines
October 29th, 2012 at 5:59 pm
@Dan H: You wrote:
I’m afraid I have to sideways sort-of disagree with that statement. The original criticism hinged on the assumption that deities aren’t real and was a very specific complaint. The usage has since been broadened and generalized to include phenomena which are physically possible in the real world, such as your random millionaire.
Criticism of the literary device beyond that initial complaint are valid as far as they go (I still think an out-of-the-frying-pan exception exists), but I was specifically addressing the original complaint in my article.
As for Horace thinking ‘the Gods exist but’ they could not
That brings up exactly the points I was making – Gods are either omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, able to be anywhere and solve anything – or they are limited. Exactly the sort of restrictions are assumed by your analysis as those I have recommended in the article. So I think, in the final analysis, that we are actually in agreement!
October 29th, 2012 at 1:25 pm
I feel as though one of the most important things that isn’t thought about much is the fact that some gods necessarily exist in a very different world than mortals. Sandman (by Neil Gaiman) is an interesting take on this–the central character is an Endless, the literal manifestation and lord of Dream.
Such a character will see reality very differently than we mortals do, simply because he is not constrained by many of our limitations. Take, for instance, the understanding you have of world events as an adult, contrast it with the understanding you had as a child, and then multiply that difference out. That’s how some types of gods view the cosmos.
Or, of course, you could have Roman/Greek gods who are basically superpowered humans with superpowered egos. ;-)
Andy recently posted..How to Win an RPG: the GM’s Side
October 29th, 2012 at 6:01 pm
@Andy: I wouldn’t say necessarily, because I think there are other solutions to that problem, but that’s another of those big questions that need to be answered!
October 30th, 2012 at 9:16 am
@Mike: The main reason I say that has to do with the nature of said deities. When you’re talking about some manner of “transcendant” deity (such as a more primal god–I’m leaving the Greek/Roman powered-up humans out of this, as they’re easy enough to analyze), that being necessarily perceives reality in a different fashion, and has a totally different perspective than us. Even if they try to think like us, they won’t 100% be able to.
Case in point–Doctor Manhattan from Watchmen, who no longer perceives time in a chronological fashion. And he’s a mild example.
Andy recently posted..How to Win an RPG: the GM’s Side
October 30th, 2012 at 12:48 pm
@Andy: There is a difference between a different state or level of consciousness and living in a different world. Your arguement is circular reasoning and can be summed up, “The Gods percieve the world differently because they have a different nature, being transcendant, and that difference in perception changes the way they think and that in turn makes them different by nature.”
You seem to be assuming that deities are either transcendant or powered-up humans; I would submit that there are more possibilities than that. Transcendance is a quality associated with Christian beliefs, almost every other theology throughout human existance has fallen somewhere in between mortals and full transcendance.
I can also picture a transcendant deity who does not posess in full measure the three “Omni’s” (Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence). And without those three, especially Omnipresence and Omniscience, your arguement fails, in whole or in part. It all comes back to the questions of what are the deities in your game (as opposed tp “who” they are) and how do their powers work? Is immortality enough to define one as a deity? Is Immortality a necessary quality for a God? If so, how do you regard the Norse Gods?
Yes, there are some beings who would have a transcendant thought process that makes them utterly alien to our comprehension of thought, and thereby by definition they must view the world very differently. But that’s not necessarily the case for all possible Gods in a game. There are other answers.
Furthermore, the thought processes in question can’t be too alien – because the person simulating their behavior and decision-making process is all too human.
October 30th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
@Mike
As you say, I think we’re mostly agreeing here, I’m just still confused as to why you think the original criticism of the Deus ex Machina (which you quote yourself as suggesting that poets should never “resort to a god from the machine” to resolve their plots) was based on the idea that the Gods were fictional, given that it was almost certainly voiced by somebody who believed that the Gods literally existed.
Horace’s admonition against the Deus ex Machina was not “don’t use divine intervention to resolve your plots, because Gods don’t exist”, rather it was: “Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus” – which according to good old wiki translates as “That a god not intervene, unless a knot show up that be worthy of such an untangler”. Horace’s problem with the Deus ex Machina wasn’t that he didn’t believe in Gods, it was that he didn’t believe that Gods went around solving problems for mortals.
Thinking about it, where we disagree is when you say:
“After all, if [the Gods] were ‘real’, you would expect them to intervene. The narrative burden then shifts to answering the question of why they did not do so.”
I simply don’t think this is correct.
You seem to be arguing that if Gods exist, the default assumption must be that they can and will solve all problems, but historically this has not been the way Gods are assumed to behave, either in real mythology or in fiction.
The default assumption, even in a setting in which Gods are real, must surely be relatively non-interventionist deities. Otherwise your world would look completely unrecognizable, as benevolent, omnipotent, interventionist deities would have solved every problem any human being had ever had since the dawn of time.
There is no narrative burden to explain *why* Gods don’t intervene in the day-to-day affairs of mortals, any more than there exists a narrative burden to explain why gravity pulls down instead of up.
Dan H recently posted..City of Chains: Basic Outlines
October 30th, 2012 at 9:59 pm
@Dan – The quote you give and the translation thereof is more complete than the one quoted by Wikipedia. If the translation they offered, and which I paraphrase in the second paragraph of the article had read what you have just quoted this would have been a very different article! The quote which inspired the article had no mention of a qualifying condition – “unless a knot show up that be worthy of such an untangler”, and it was that absense that led to the article as written. What it seeks to do, after all, is to provide just such a qualifying condition in a form appropriate to an RPG.
I am certainly not arguing that the Gods should solve all the problems – that’s the PCs job, they are the centre of attention within the Campaign! I am saying that they have the capability of doing so, and that the GM needs to have good reasons why they don’t.
I disagree as to the default assumption. My default assumption would be that apparantly benevolent deities would solve every problem if they could but there are good reasons why they are unable to do so.
Assumptions your proposed default condition makes for all deities include benevolence (explicitly), omnipotence (explicitly), omnipresence (implied), omniscience (implied), and lack of opposition (implied). Those all describe a Christian deity but say nothing about Norse, Egyptian, Greco-Roman, Finnish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, or (for that matter) Venusian mythos deities.
I can and do challenge all of these as default assumptions. They are just one extreme of a range of possibilities. Certainly D&D, Pathfinder, Superhero Comics & Games, etc make no such default assumptions – rather, they view the gods as limited, as flawed, as posessing agendas beyond a simplistic ‘good vs evil’, and with equal or superior opposing forces either in power or in numbers or (potentially) by some other measure.
If an essentially christian theological structure is part of the structure of the game world created by the GM, then certainly non-interventionism is one possible explanation for why the Gods don’t solve every problem, leaving the PCs with nothing to do. It’s not the only one, though.
My default assumption would be that there is an overall power balance between pro-mortal and anti-mortal theological factions, each striving for whatever miniscule advantages they can achieve – thereby letting the PCs, although insignificant in relative power level, make a lasting difference to their world.
Ultimately, your proposal is a satisfactory one for a low-fantasy game – but it doesn’t work in a high-fantasy setting, or even a mid-level fantasy setting such as the ones employed by most RPGs.
Mike recently posted..Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity
October 31st, 2012 at 6:32 am
I think we’re still talking a little bit at cross purposes here.
I absolutely agree that the default assumptions I’m talking about apply only to a Judeo-Christian deity, but those are the only set of assumptions I can understand which support your assertion that “if [the Gods] were ‘real’, you would expect them to intervene. The narrative burden then shifts to answering the question of why they did not do so”.
If we are *not* assuming that Gods, by definition, are benevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, then we are do not need to explain why the gods do not solve all of the problems the PCs face. If, as you say, you reject the assumption that Gods are necessarily omnipotent, necessarily omnipresent, or for that matter necessarily benevolent, then the entire problem simply ceases to exist. The GM no more needs to explain why the Gods do not intervene to solve a particular problem than they need to explain why – say – the King, or a random higher-level adventuring party, does not solve that problem.
If I’m running a Greco-Roman inspired D&D campaign, and my PCs are hired to clear out a nest of kobolds living in a hillside, I don’t have to come up with any special reason that Ares hasn’t already shown up and killed the kobolds himself,. There is no reason to assume that killing off a random tribe of kobolds is the sort of thing that Ares would even bother doing in the first place.
*Unless* you are assuming omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent Gods, you absolutely do *not* have to posit any specific reasons for the Gods not solving problems for people. You only have to explain why the Gods *don’t* directly intervene in mortal affairs if you have already established that they *do*, which is surely needless repetition of labour.
I think you’re also misconstruing my use of “non-interventionist”. I’m not suggesting that I think Gods are assumed, by default, to follow some kind of Star Trek Prime Directive, where they arbitrarily preclude themselves from intervening personally in the affairs of mortals. Rather, I simply mean that the Gods *in practice* do not intervene *directly and personally* in the affairs of mortals *on a regular basis*. Your proposed default assumption is – I think – just non-interventionism with a specific explanation: the Gods don’t interfere directly in the lives of mortals because the opposing faction of Gods stops them.
You could imagine a fantasy setting in which the Gods are *not* non-interventionist, in which they genuinely do appear, in person, in front of ordinary mortals on a regular basis, and solve their problems. This would create an *extremely* divergent setting, in which most of the institutions mortals have created to help themselves would not exist (why bother farming if the Goddess of the Harvest can and will just give you food).
This isn’t to say that working out how Gods work in your setting isn’t an interesting and useful exercise, but I don’t think your stated purpose – explaining why the Gods do not simply show up to provide Deus ex Machina solutions to the PCs’ problems – requires it. All you need for that is to *not* assume omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent deities.
Dan H recently posted..City of Chains: Character Creation
October 31st, 2012 at 8:14 pm
@Dan H: You’re right, and your most recent reply certainly clarifies a few things. We seem to be approaching the question from different points in the campaign definition track. You use the Greco-Roman example and then suggest that the nature of the Greco-Roman gods is such that they define themselves by that nature as not interfering casually in the lives of mortals.
Setting aside differing interpretations of the likelyhood of meddling for its own sake on the part of Greco-Roman deities (the Greeks and Romans certainly thought they spent their time doing nothing but interfere and intervene, mostly for their own amusement), I would consider being “Greco-Roman Deities” as the answer to the questions I pose. You assume that this decision has already been made.
When you first crack open the rulebooks to create a campaign, the only things that you know about the deities are that they provide magic to Clerics. And a lot of GMs – aside from furnishing them with names, descriptions, and mythic portfolios – go no further than that.
From my point of view, I can’t understand deities not getting involved in major events that threaten their lives or the lives of the bulk of their followers. That automatically means that the PCs, who by virtue of what they are are going to be at the centre of big events within the campaign, are more likely than most to get divine attention – one way or another. But maybe I’m a closet interventionist at heart :-)
If you havn’t answered the sort of questions that I pose, how do you answer player questions like “What is my god’s theological doctrine? What am I required to do and what am I not permitted to do? How do I worship, where, and how often? What is the afterlife? Is there an afterlife? What are undead? Do I have any enemies just because of my choice of Deity? Do I have any allies for the same reason? There are spells that force a deity to answer specific questions in specific ways – what have the priests of my religion been able to learn by asking the Gods about themselves? Hw do you make Holy Water? If I do [X] to Holy Water, is is still usable? Can I make it more easily transportable by dehydrating it into a powder? Can I make it more effective by concentrating it, like Acid? Can I create new clerical spells? Where did the existing Clerical spells come from? Does anything happen to me if I build a shrine to a deity I don’t like and then destroy or desecrate it? Can I become a God? Do I get experience for converting Heathens to the worship of my deity?” …and on and on – all of which I have been asked in games that I have run.
It’s your final paragraph, though, that is most telling. Not assuming that the Gods are omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent does not mean assuming that they are none of those things – it means deciding based on other factors within your campaign whether or not they are any of these things, and if not, how close to it they come.
And if they are all of those things but still don’t intervene to solve problems, you definitely need to explain that!
Mike recently posted..Deus Ex Machinas And The Plot Implications Of Divinity
November 5th, 2012 at 9:29 am
@Mike
I think we’re pretty much in agreement about most things, except that from a personal perspective I tend to think of the everyday questions (chief amongst them being “what do followers of my God *actually believe*?”) to be more important than the higher level questions like “what are the Gods, actuallly” or “where does divine power come from.”
To borrow some terminology from the Philosophy of Science, I basically consider myself a bit of an instrumentalist here, in that I think the question of what the Gods *are* is much less important than the question of how the Gods *behave*. Essentially I’m happy to accept a relatively circular argument here – if the Gods in your setting don’t intervene to stop their worshipers being slaughtered, then I’m prefectly happy to just accept that intervening to stop the slaughter of their worshipers is *just not what Gods do*. What I think is far more important in that case is explaining how the *worshipers* of that god deal with the fact that their god lets them be slaughtered.
I’d also add that a lot of your questions seem to be game mechanical ones – some explicitly so (like “do I get experience for converting heathens to the worship of my deity”). I wouldn’t want to answer the question of where Clerical spells “come from” because I tend to view them as an abstraction designed to represent a wide variety of supernatural powers wielded by priestly characters.
For what it’s worth, my current AD&D campaign has involved a player character becoming a God, and so I’ve had to work through a fair number of these questions, but I’ve always done it in a more or less ad-hoc way, and there’s a certain extent to which I don’t think hard, defined answers are the way forward.
Dan H recently posted..City of Chains: Character Creation
November 5th, 2012 at 10:34 am
@Dan H: Certainly, avoiding the question in the way you describe is a valid alternative, especially if you are willing to dig into the harder questions when the answers become necessary. I would argue that being able to do so at your leasure is better than doing it under deadline pressure because the answers are needed “right now”, though.
Yes, many of the questions are game mechanics – but they are questions about which the established rules do not give answers, so that puts the ball back into the DM’s court.