Miscellaneous Chatter > RPG Discussion
DMing brainstorm, artifacts and stuff
dragharrow:
Hey H, I was a little drunk when I typed this up so it kind of goes off the rails a little.
--- Quote ---Not a problem, it's no sweat, easy to spin yarn from my armchair here. That has always been my 'trouble' with storytelling, I can spin, but I can never weave yarn, if you follow what I mean.
--- End quote ---
I follow. I tend to run into the same problem myself. It’s something I’m trying to work on.
--- Quote ---OK, that makes sense. God is a despot. Lucifer is not, so there is definitely room to play with the concept of 'rule-gone-awry.' I need to think more on grander implications. I think a central theme here is freedom and it's costs. At what cost does Lucifer's allowance of freedom come? At what cost does his love come?
--- End quote ---
Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of angle I want to take with this. But exploring grand themes is tough lol
Another thing I’m wrestling with is Lucifer’s love for God. When I was first fleshing this out I planned on having God be a fairly unambiguous tyrant, and on casting Lucifer as a kind of promethean freedom fighter. But I’ve always really liked the idea that Lucifer’s love for God is unrivaled and I keep arguing with myself about how I can work that in. It wasn’t something I planned for and it doesn’t easily fit in with the mythology as I’ve set it up. Why would Lucifer love this tyrant God so much? I guess God could have just programmed that into Lucifer nature but that isn’t very interesting. Ideally, Lucifer’s love for God is something pure, not pathological. I’m not sure it’s a concept I’ll end up trying to include but it’s on my mind. Introducing some moral ambiguity to God is probably a good idea anyway. Thoughts on what that should look like?
--- Quote ---Indeed, that is good. One thing that begs though, is if the Nonmen were God's chosen people, why did they choose to not back Christ upon realizing he would bring back God? Is it because they realized that God was a despot and so they wanted to keep the power they gained in his absence? It's deep, because when we, in the real world, say "so-and-so is God's chosen" what we really mean, "so-and-so has chosen God" but in your world, it literally means that God has chosen them.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, exactly. I like the idea of them rejecting God’s favor. I haven't decided exactly where I’m going with it yet though.
--- Quote ---Loosed from the shackles of God's indomitable will though, they chose freedom rather than a return, even a return that brokered 'elevated status.' That's kind of fascinating, how they gave up so much in the name of freedom. Raises interesting questions about the worth of freedom at such a high cost.
--- End quote ---
There’s also the question of what benefits that “elevated status” actually conferred. I can think of a few main things that the chosen people usually receive in myth. Possibly some divine assistance in the form of miracles. This is D&D so we can assume that this exists, probably in the form of paladins and priests with Saint-like abilities from God. Divine guidance is pretty ubiquitous, prophets and oracles. The big one though is entrance into heaven. Why did they give that up? And how does it work in this world? Now that God is overthrown, do you need to worship Lucifer to get into Heaven?
I hadn’t considered that God’s absence allows mages to manipulate the Word more freely. I’ll consider that. Regardless, I don’t think the forerunners rejected Christ because they were power hungry. I want to make it weirder than that if I can.
Maybe heroism is just in their nature. Different varieties of this are pretty standard for elves and elf-equivalents like the Nonmen. Elves are naturally good or wise or whatever. It’s almost an essential trope for elder fantasy species.
I especially like the way Bakker did this with the Nonmen. They aren’t fundamentally good obviously. As a society they’ve committed more than their fair share of atrocities, and the personalities of individual Nonmen seem to vary as much as human personalities do. But it seems like they are fundamentally “epic”. They’re sort of Nietzsche-ian. They have this ancient greek vibe, like they’re genetically predisposed to behave like characters from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Maybe they only come off that way because all we get as readers is historical accounts and folk stories but I doubt it.
So some variation of that is one possibility for why they rejected God. Something in their alien psychology put them at odds with him. The simplest form of this could be similar to the Nietzsche-ian heroism of Bakker’s Nonmen or the tragic sense of duty that the Tolkiens elves have. The Forerunners recognized that their God was a tyrant and so they stood against him.
The other possibility I see that relies on their culture alien psychology is something you mentioned. The Forerunner’s could value freedom more than God’s Grace, or despise servitude to such a degree that they couldn’t bear God’s dominion. It could be weirder than that too, like they despise peace so much that the idea of eternal tranquility in the bosom of God. Anyway, whatever explanation I go with, I want it to say interesting stuff about them. Whatever gives me the most meat to work with going forward I should probs pick. What exactly does it say about them if they venerate freedom so much they choose it over God.
--- Quote ---I admit, I am partial to the idea of God having a confederate Angel 'on his side.' My first thought goes to Michael, since it would have been him who had lead God's fight with Lucifer in those early days. Now, he slowly attempts to covertly work to bring back God, by the resurrection of Christ, but his work is slow because he cannot be seen to be openly defying Lucifer.
--- End quote ---
I’m definitely into this. My plan right now for the overarching narrative is to have the players stumble into an angel’s scheme to open a gate to hell. It’ll be up to them whether they get played by the angel or start trying to unravel the conspiracy.
--- Quote ---The player characters can be pawns of Michael, perhaps he appears to them, presents something as a Holy quest, but really unwittingly aiding in the Resurrection, to perhaps find the tomb of Christ (or something similar) or sundering it, or perhaps something else. No doubt, the Nonmen would not be pleased about this, so there is a potential conflict there.
--- End quote ---
Ideally I’d like to draw them into it more subtly. The game is still in a kind of gritty noir western-y place, so direct contact with an angel would be out of place. I’m gonna try to bring in the epic powerhouses slowly. I want the players to feel me slowly turning the heat up as the angels plans proceed and the world approaches catastrophe.
H:
I'm not drunk, but perhaps I should be? Haha, here goes...
--- Quote from: dragharrow on October 13, 2015, 02:52:32 pm ---
--- Quote ---OK, that makes sense. God is a despot. Lucifer is not, so there is definitely room to play with the concept of 'rule-gone-awry.' I need to think more on grander implications. I think a central theme here is freedom and it's costs. At what cost does Lucifer's allowance of freedom come? At what cost does his love come?
--- End quote ---
Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of angle I want to take with this. But exploring grand themes is tough lol
Another thing I’m wrestling with is Lucifer’s love for God. When I was first fleshing this out I planned on having God be a fairly unambiguous tyrant, and on casting Lucifer as a kind of promethean freedom fighter. But I’ve always really liked the idea that Lucifer’s love for God is unrivaled and I keep arguing with myself about how I can work that in. It wasn’t something I planned for and it doesn’t easily fit in with the mythology as I’ve set it up. Why would Lucifer love this tyrant God so much? I guess God could have just programmed that into Lucifer nature but that isn’t very interesting. Ideally, Lucifer’s love for God is something pure, not pathological. I’m not sure it’s a concept I’ll end up trying to include but it’s on my mind. Introducing some moral ambiguity to God is probably a good idea anyway. Thoughts on what that should look like?
--- End quote ---
Well, Lucifer's knowledge is finite. So his understanding of God is finite. Why would he love God, despite him being a despot? Well, there is the love, so strong, that it can do nothing but overwhelm. He loves God, not despite God being a contradiction, but because God is a contradiction. It is all too much. Love so strong it cannot exist. Love so strong it makes you want to subsume yourself. It's too pure, it's overwhelming, it threatens to devour. Lucifer's love for God is so strong he believes that all things are violence to God. Even Lucifer's own love is an affront, since he cannot even fathom God in his infinite manifest existence and yet the love blossoms of itself, on and on, a perfect positive feedback loop. The world is imperfect and impure, a blight on God's (at least in Lucifer's eyes, since, remember, his knowledge is finite) perfect and pure divine corpus.
Lucifer's removal of God is not an act of imprisonment in his eyes, but a sheltering of God from the base and imperfect world that seeks only violence to God's very nature. Lucifer would bear the failure of the world, the sins of the world, the base nature of the world, and the impure devotion of it's inhabitants to spare it from God. God apart from the world, not as a punishment, but clemency. A sacrifice on the part of Lucifer, to bear the sins of the world.
--- Quote from: dragharrow on October 13, 2015, 02:52:32 pm ---There’s also the question of what benefits that “elevated status” actually conferred. I can think of a few main things that the chosen people usually receive in myth. Possibly some divine assistance in the form of miracles. This is D&D so we can assume that this exists, probably in the form of paladins and priests with Saint-like abilities from God. Divine guidance is pretty ubiquitous, prophets and oracles. The big one though is entrance into heaven. Why did they give that up? And how does it work in this world? Now that God is overthrown, do you need to worship Lucifer to get into Heaven?
I hadn’t considered that God’s absence allows mages to manipulate the Word more freely. I’ll consider that. Regardless, I don’t think the forerunners rejected Christ because they were power hungry. I want to make it weirder than that if I can.
Maybe heroism is just in their nature. Different varieties of this are pretty standard for elves and elf-equivalents like the Nonmen. Elves are naturally good or wise or whatever. It’s almost an essential trope for elder fantasy species.
I especially like the way Bakker did this with the Nonmen. They aren’t fundamentally good obviously. As a society they’ve committed more than their fair share of atrocities, and the personalities of individual Nonmen seem to vary as much as human personalities do. But it seems like they are fundamentally “epic”. They’re sort of Nietzsche-ian. They have this ancient greek vibe, like they’re genetically predisposed to behave like characters from the Iliad and the Odyssey. Maybe they only come off that way because all we get as readers is historical accounts and folk stories but I doubt it.
So some variation of that is one possibility for why they rejected God. Something in their alien psychology put them at odds with him. The simplest form of this could be similar to the Nietzsche-ian heroism of Bakker’s Nonmen or the tragic sense of duty that the Tolkiens elves have. The Forerunners recognized that their God was a tyrant and so they stood against him.
The other possibility I see that relies on their culture alien psychology is something you mentioned. The Forerunner’s could value freedom more than God’s Grace, or despise servitude to such a degree that they couldn’t bear God’s dominion. It could be weirder than that too, like they despise peace so much that the idea of eternal tranquility in the bosom of God. Anyway, whatever explanation I go with, I want it to say interesting stuff about them. Whatever gives me the most meat to work with going forward I should probs pick. What exactly does it say about them if they venerate freedom so much they choose it over God.
--- End quote ---
I think that's a good way to explore it. Also there is the idea, “Nothing is harder to bear than a succession of fair days.” God's grace offers no end to the fair days. Also, maybe they are like Bakker's Nonmen, in that their long lives mean memories are hard to come by. Such fair days leave nothing, a smooth slate. It is only through the trauma of stress, pain, etc that they can really experience life. Maybe that's it then, that freedom offers the chance of life, rather than just the exalted state of being.
--- Quote from: dragharrow on October 13, 2015, 02:52:32 pm ---
--- Quote ---I admit, I am partial to the idea of God having a confederate Angel 'on his side.' My first thought goes to Michael, since it would have been him who had lead God's fight with Lucifer in those early days. Now, he slowly attempts to covertly work to bring back God, by the resurrection of Christ, but his work is slow because he cannot be seen to be openly defying Lucifer.
--- End quote ---
I’m definitely into this. My plan right now for the overarching narrative is to have the players stumble into an angel’s scheme to open a gate to hell. It’ll be up to them whether they get played by the angel or start trying to unravel the conspiracy.
--- Quote ---The player characters can be pawns of Michael, perhaps he appears to them, presents something as a Holy quest, but really unwittingly aiding in the Resurrection, to perhaps find the tomb of Christ (or something similar) or sundering it, or perhaps something else. No doubt, the Nonmen would not be pleased about this, so there is a potential conflict there.
--- End quote ---
Ideally I’d like to draw them into it more subtly. The game is still in a kind of gritty noir western-y place, so direct contact with an angel would be out of place. I’m gonna try to bring in the epic powerhouses slowly. I want the players to feel me slowly turning the heat up as the angels plans proceed and the world approaches catastrophe.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I don't see it working thematically or even sensically for Michael to arrive, blazing sword in hand, clad in robes, unveiling his plan. More like in the cackling of the local madman, or the drunken musing of the town lush. I kind of like the idea of Michael shepherding the downtrodden and disenfranchised of the so-called Kingdom of Lucifer. He fancies that these would not be God's lost children (even if that it probably false). The players can either buy in to these mechanations, as their so-called, "good deads" or be skeptical, as to what the real aim is here and who is behind it. The guise of a noble quest, they can take the offer of such a noble cause at face-value, or be suspect of what is really going on.
dragharrow:
--- Quote ---Well, Lucifer's knowledge is finite. So his understanding of God is finite. Why would he love God, despite him being a despot? Well, there is the love, so strong, that it can do nothing but overwhelm. He loves God, not despite God being a contradiction, but because God is a contradiction. It is all too much. Love so strong it cannot exist. Love so strong it makes you want to subsume yourself. It's too pure, it's overwhelming, it threatens to devour. Lucifer's love for God is so strong he believes that all things are violence to God. Even Lucifer's own love is an affront, since he cannot even fathom God in his infinite manifest existence and yet the love blossoms of itself, on and on, a perfect positive feedback loop. The world is imperfect and impure, a blight on God's (at least in Lucifer's eyes, since, remember, his knowledge is finite) perfect and pure divine corpus.
Lucifer's removal of God is not an act of imprisonment in his eyes, but a sheltering of God from the base and imperfect world that seeks only violence to God's very nature. Lucifer would bear the failure of the world, the sins of the world, the base nature of the world, and the impure devotion of it's inhabitants to spare it from God. God apart from the world, not as a punishment, but clemency. A sacrifice on the part of Lucifer, to bear the sins of the world.
--- End quote ---
Ok I like this but it doesn’t quite solve my problem. What you are saying lines up almost perfectly with my conception of Lucifer in actual Christianity. The overwhelming love, the failure of the world to live up to God, the inability to choose another path. While the scripture doesn’t really say any of it, that all fits closely with how I see Lucifer from a mythological perspective.
That all makes perfect sense to me in world where God is the good. In the lore I’ve been laying out he’s a tyrant. He isn’t the absolute, if anything, he’s the demiurge.
The love I want Lucifer to feel for God is exactly what you are describing, but what I was actually asking was how I can justify that level of blindness for Lucifer. Yes, his knowledge is finite (which is an awesome idea, thanks for that) but I don’t think it feels right for him to be that blind. If he so believes that God is the absolute good, and that he’s just protecting God, than I think he’s too delusional to make a very good supreme deity. It isn’t inconceivable. The soul is full of contradictions. I’m just not sure it feels right.
Maybe I’m wrong, and I’ll mull it over more but I think I’m leaning the other direction. Instead of Lucifer’s love being delusionally blind, it is savvy and enlightened. Sad and reflective. Like a child who has grown up and discovered that his father is slipping into dementia. Or maybe he just realizes that his father isn’t a the hero he thought he was, he’s actually a villain.
--- Quote ---Yeah, I don't see it working thematically or even sensically for Michael to arrive, blazing sword in hand, clad in robes, unveiling his plan. More like in the cackling of the local madman, or the drunken musing of the town lush. I kind of like the idea of Michael shepherding the downtrodden and disenfranchised of the so-called Kingdom of Lucifer. He fancies that these would not be God's lost children (even if that it probably false). The players can either buy in to these mechanations, as their so-called, "good deads" or be skeptical, as to what the real aim is here and who is behind it. The guise of a noble quest, they can take the offer of such a noble cause at face-value, or be suspect of what is really going on.
--- End quote ---
Yeah totally. Well said, I like that.
I was skeptical about using Michael for that role at first. I tend to see him as even more of a jock than Lucifer so I generally envision him as sincere and straightforward - not the scheming type - but I think you’ve won me over.
H:
--- Quote from: dragharrow on October 13, 2015, 07:25:29 pm ---Ok I like this but it doesn’t quite solve my problem. What you are saying lines up almost perfectly with my conception of Lucifer in actual Christianity. The overwhelming love, the failure of the world to live up to God, the inability to choose another path. While the scripture doesn’t really say any of it, that all fits closely with how I see Lucifer from a mythological perspective.
That all makes perfect sense to me in world where God is the good. In the lore I’ve been laying out he’s a tyrant. He isn’t the absolute, if anything, he’s the demiurge.
The love I want Lucifer to feel for God is exactly what you are describing, but what I was actually asking was how I can justify that level of blindness for Lucifer. Yes, his knowledge is finite (which is an awesome idea, thanks for that) but I don’t think it feels right for him to be that blind. If he so believes that God is the absolute good, and that he’s just protecting God, than I think he’s too delusional to make a very good supreme deity. It isn’t inconceivable. The soul is full of contradictions. I’m just not sure it feels right.
Maybe I’m wrong, and I’ll mull it over more but I think I’m leaning the other direction. Instead of Lucifer’s love being delusionally blind, it is savvy and enlightened. Sad and reflective. Like a child who has grown up and discovered that his father is slipping into dementia. Or maybe he just realizes that his father isn’t a the hero he thought he was, he’s actually a villain.
--- End quote ---
Hmm, yeah, I kind of digressed into a word salad there, but I think I understand how I missed the point.
So, Lucifer realizes that God isn't the beneficent father he thought He was. He realizes that this was only the logical progression of God, that there couldn't have been any other option for God, in light of the world as it came to be. He then imagines a world apart. A world that does no violence to God and God does no violence to the world. God is a tyrant, but he doesn't have to be, it's the world that has driven Him to it (that probably isn't true, but Lucifer thinks it is).
Lucifer would take the mantle of the damning world on himself, so great is his love for God. Lucifer want's God to be the good God he loves, so he sets out to make it so? Cognitive dissonance on a divine level, Lucifer seeks to rectify the age old question, "If God is good, why does he allow bad things to happen?" He wants God to actually be good so much that he takes away God's ability to be bad, mainly because he simply refuses to believe that God could simply just be bad.
Does that make sense?
--- Quote from: dragharrow on October 13, 2015, 07:25:29 pm ---Yeah totally. Well said, I like that.
I was skeptical about using Michael for that role at first. I tend to see him as even more of a jock than Lucifer so I generally envision him as sincere and straightforward - not the scheming type - but I think you’ve won me over.
--- End quote ---
Even better to throw them off the trail. Have them meat "Disciples of Michael" perhaps, some kind of militant order in his name, to throw the trail off even further. Keep in mind, Michael isn't just deceiving the PCs, he needs to be deceiving Lucifer too.
Bolivar:
http://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=A0LEVvogfB5WhgYAtxU3nIlQ;_ylu=X3oDMTByMG04Z2o2BHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMQRjb2xvA2JmMQR2dGlkAw--/RV=2/RE=1444867232/RO=10/RU=http%3a%2f%2fdungeonmastering.com%2finstantDM%2finstant_dm.pdf/RK=0/RS=kLcoSweIjHkJMNGSpk4KTZlMYCU-
^ highly recommend the PDF above for the best advice on DMing. The key is to improvise and be flexible. Let your players drive the sessions, let them set out on adventures that interest them and tie in some "hooks" that relate to their characters' back story if they have it. Keep some battle maps on hand you can slap down for any situation when you want to start an encounter, or even just blank grids you can quickly draw or color on. Be a "why not" DM - if your players ask if they can do something, let them. Make them roll for it and tell them you're rewarding them with a bonus on their next roll to reward their creativity.
Preparation can be a huge time sink that isn't fun for the DMs or their players. Definitely live in your world and daydream in it so your players have a fleshed out sandbox to roam in. But try to be as flexible as possible, as the ability to do anything is what makes tabletop RPGs special.
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