[DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

I am wondering what people think about the idea of having "good" gods feud with each other. This means that there would be open hostility between people serving different gods. For instance, Hera and Zeus could be the feuding gods. In some ways this could set up some interesting adventure scenarios. Say a groups of PCs serving Zeus could be summoned to retrieve an artifact secured in a dungeon by an evil lich and then a rival group serving Hera could try to stop them or take the artifact for themselves. Both groups would feel they are in the right and most of society would respect both groups but they would actively try to defeat each other. What do you think? Is this too complex for DF? Thanks.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

If a worshiper of X can't adventure with worshipers of Y then it's too complex for DF. If it's just background fluff for quests, then it's not.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

Depends on your DF group. Some people go for broke when they want to have Good Vs Evil at all, some can handle a little moral ambiguity with their door-kicking and loot-taking. IMHO a two-sided conflict between opposed Good DF Clerics and paladins sounds violencetastic, with no Resistance to each other's powers, no undead to take the punishment for you, and lots of nice guy spells like Armor, Resist Pain, and Major Healing to keep the fight going through through some brutal injuries.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

I never felt a terrible need to have a divine conflict at all, since there are lots of lower-level conflicts to set things up, and neither for my guys to be "good" as long as their gods deliver them asskicking powers.

Having conflict within the party at more than squabbling level feels less than optimal in dungeon fantasy, however.

Taken in the most simplistic vein, RuneQuest/Glorantha had a scheme I've seen elsewhere and which seems to work: there are various ranges of gods who might be at each others throats and have various conflicts, and then there are, basically, anti-gods which can cause the other gods to pause and pummel them, because they (Chaos, in RQ) want to break down everything and destroy everything.

In that Greek setting you keep talking about, for instance, Ares and Athena might have fundamentally different perceptions of war and be at odds, but the Titans and their spawn from before the dawn of time is a common enemy, and against them they will fight. Apollo is ****** at Hermes poking his pompous ass, Hades gets mad when Apollo's son started reviving the dead, Zeus and Hera have this long soap opera going on, but nothing matters when the Old Powers of Night and Death crop up.

Another way of handling Divine Conflict is to avoid setting direct goals for divine-assisted heroes, and beyond that for the gods, as in "Kill all worshippers of X!" or "Convert the populace to my worship THERE!" Instead, have them espouse methods or ways of thinking. So a priest of Athena and a priest of Aries would have different Vows, Codes of Honor and generic mental disadvantages, which might cause PCs to squabble, discuss, debate, quarrel and fight a duel or two, not be required to kill each other or never associate with each other. This can, in turn, lead to NPCs having major conflicts which can drive scenarios without requiring gods to appear in scenes and demand that their follower-PCs switch sides.

One advantage of a bickering pantheon as opposed to good vs evil is that you can get very different opponents depending on who you are fighting this week, instead of the same base evil. And as said, you can have a suitable anti-god force (the Elder Things in DF seems eminently suitable) to toss in when you need a common enemy.

Erik

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

I don't think player characters being banned was the OPs topic. Even in those olde games of the advancing delvings and the Drachens where Paladins and Assassins were explicitly forbidden, you had parties with both. No such rules in the DF RAW.

I think he;s asking the more general question of whether Godly Factionalisms and PC politicking you'd expect to see in rock paper scissors type undeath LARPS are compatible with DF type games.

My answer to that is 'probably', depends on the players in the game group.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

Yes, there's no problem with the gods feuding, particularly when they have no significant external threat to unite them. Besides, they're holy, not good.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

I'd think there's room for a OneGod who is good but won't accept any pagan gods regardless of alignment/whatever you call it.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

If "the gods" are a verifiable truth (in the sense that worshipers get measurable powers that no one else gets), I'd think most religions would either accept other gods at face value, or consider them evil. Maybe not obviously evil (evil's sneaky like that).

You could go so far as to have the clerics of two "good" gods detect one another with Detect Evil spells.

Philosophical exploration of moral relativism isn't what most people play DF for, though.

Edit (actually answering the question):

In a traditional DF setting, I would avoid having two "good" gods in full conflict. They might be at odds with one another, though. A good analogy would be heads of different government agencies clashing over jurisdiction.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

Accepting other gods at face value doesn't mean liking their face.
But that would be anachronistic. Polytheists don't think that way. Which does not mean they don't have unholy opponents like the frost giants, rakshasas and demons.

Re: [DF] Feuding "Good" gods ok for DF?
 

Thanks for the help. I like the idea of having feuding gods or at least gods that are not completely helpful to one another because it add some complication to the setting. Plus it helpss to explain why evil is able to exist in abundance. Evil fights endlessly among itself so if good was to be firmly united then it would easily defeat evil IMO. But with feuding it gives demon lords and liches the time they need to build their dungeons and raise their armies until the forces of good unite to combat them.