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Only seeing worshippers of Norse and Greek gods/goddesses in most fantasy (especially DnD) stuff
I dream of the day when clerics of Serket are just as common as paladins of Thor or Athena-worshipping wizards.
All of my friends' DnD campaigns have only involved these two pantheons, with one campaign's antagonist being Hades. I only remember one campaign involving one other religion, and that was Generic Thinly-Veiled Christianity.
I know that they're probably too lazy to come up with anything else, but this still upsets me.
Comments
Don't most DnD settings have their own pantheons, inspired by a variety of mythologies?
...Why would people in a totally different universe worship those pantheons in the first place?
I tried convincing them to use Lolth once, but they wouldn't have it.
^ Someone clearly hasn't heard of suspension of disbelief.
Suspension of disbelief only takes you so far, man.
Using that logic, why would humans even exist in a totally different universe anyways?
To provide a necessary reference point for consumers of the media.
It's still easy to assume that humans in that setting came up with Zeus/Odin and pals all by themselves.
It seems improbable, but improbable in a universe filled with impossible is easy to shrug off.
Audiences will more readily accept the impossible than the improbable.
It's pretty fuckin' silly though.
Magic and dragons are also pretty fuckin' silly. They're also still integral parts of the game.
They are part of the premise of the game. When you look at the game, you think, "Okay, magic and dragons are a part of this."
That is okay because they are purely fictional; we have an implicit agreement with the author of the work, accepting their reality within the context of the story.
Real-world concepts and deities existing in a fictional world without the context that brought them into being (for a given value of 'brought into being') in our world, though? Well, there was nothing in my agreement with the author about that; suspension of disbelief has been broken.
Why isn't it OK to assume that the context that created said myths was still present in the setting?
Because there's no fucking Vikings. There's no mythology, there's no Valhalla, there's no Rangnarok. There is just Odin and Thor and a bunch of other gods, stuck in there because it's cool regardless of how little sense it makes.
Consider it this way: Have many people have you seen talk about how implausible that Clark Kent can hide his identity merely through putting on a pair of glasses? Those same people are fine with Clark being able to fly and punch hard enough to break rocks, but they can't accept that Clark can hide his identity merely by putting on a pair of glasses, because that's not part of the implicit agreement with the author there.
It's easy to assume that there is at least a Viking-equivalent (like dwarves or something) that takes the same role.
Well, no. Dwarves would worship Moradin, the God of Dwarves and one of Dungeon and Dragon's core Greater Deities.
Point.
But DnD isn't restricted to one setting. In any given setting, there can always be a Viking-equivalent race.
Note that my friends were operating on a homebrew setting.
Those are homebrew settings, though; not part of the default Greyhawk setting, or any other official settings. However, the Norse gods are part of the official setting, meaning that Wizards of the Coast added them in without adding in any context for them, as opposed to simply allowing people to homebrew in Norse gods for their Viking-equivalent race.
Which leads to Saigyouji's earlier question; why would people in an alternate world worship these deities in the first place? It breaks my suspension of disbelief because, even within the bounds of the alternate world the game takes place in, there is no context for these gods, and thus no reason for them to exist.
Alternatively we can just assume that the fantasy deities in question are expies with the same name as their source characters.
In that case, why?
So you're saying that (for example) there's this god named Odin who has a lightning spear, two ravens named Hugin and Munin, and only one eye because of a deal with a giant. Said Odin also has a son named Thor and an adoptive brother named Loki, who is a mischief-loving giant. And that this Odin is completely different from the Odin we know.
Fair enough.
Okay, fine, Captain Ersatzes.
Even more boring is when fantasy uses modern religious ideas and concepts and reactions in medieval or otherwise pre-industrial equivalent settings.
Although the worst offenders must be those who just give names of gods and their purviews in perfectly-matched, neat little tables without any color or fleshing out.
Mix! Match! Stir it all up and give me something random! Give me controversies and disputes! Show me fundamentalism, show me heresies, show me deviant faiths and alternative ideas! Those are much more interesting.
It's not necessarily lazy, if you want a partly pre-generated setting so you can focus creative energies on something else.
I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing when people copy other works in their own. As someone who may or may not be a historical figure said, good artists borrow, great artists steal.
Don't take it all in one place. It lacks finesse.
I wanna see stats for Serket goddammit
I mean what's cooler than a scorpion-goddess
Two scorpion-goddesses.
The difference there is that in stealing something, you're making it your own.
Eelektross - this is a problem... how? If you want to play a cleric of Serket, just slap together some domains and ask if that is okay and you should be golden. Who gives a crap if other people are boring unless you have to play with them?
This thing is endemic of most fantasy stuff as a whole, not just campaigns. It appears in lots of fantasy media I consume, which is really boring. It gets really tiring when you find it everywhere.
So you start a thread about two of the most overexposed pagan pantheons in context of the most boring set of fantasy settings.