Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General New players and the problem with Shar

I mean right?

What's interesting to me, is that Gygax, Arneson, Greenwood etc, those guys were all pretty well read, and I'm sure they could have come up with a different way to represent religion and divine influence in their game system/world had they wanted to. Perhaps one that mirrored more the real-world or the historical reality more accurately, but they didn't. They chose a rather particular way to do it, and one that was clever too, because it simultaneously has appeal for both players who are believers and non-believers alike, but probably for completely different reasons. I'll let you guess which camp I fall into hehe, but the point is that it works for all comers (whether as a send up, or a confirmation of their real world views, or someone else's). It has that charm either way, by being built-in and taken as a given here, in D&D FR.

Not sure if you ever watched the show Rome on HBO, but I'm reminded of that scene where Titus Pullo kills a bunch of dudes in single combat to save Octavian and recover the legionary eagle... You know, where after going berserk and dispatching the enemy, he hold his blood stained gladius to his heart and recites the gift to Mars, like so...


You get the quick read, like 'damn, ok I see what's going on here.' Mars is just metaphor for bloodlust and warfare. Or similarly in that same show when Servilia is trying to curse Atia, and she cover's her face in ash calling down Hecate and the Furies for revenge, again its like "wow, damn, got it! metaphor! Human emotion." So it sets up a really nice presentation there, where the viewer understands what's going on. It's all in the family, everyone still 'worships' Jupiter and Magna Mater, and we understand what it is. We can see how the Capitoline Trinity morphs into a Catholic Trinity in the later Empire, how various gods become various saints or whatever, while still retaining their same basic function, and it's all pretty consistent. All familiar. But then compare that to what the Romans did with Baal.

I only bring it up because Baal features in the FR pantheon and in the BG games pretty prominently. From a Roman point of view, pre-Empire, Baal isn't part of the family. Baal has to be destroyed and supplanted by Juno, cause Carthage needs to get put in it's place.

Baal is just a Phoenician Patronymic. That's why we have a Hannibal and an Ithiba'al (Jezebel/Isabella), and all the various baals, that feature among the Carthaginian and Canaanite names we still remember (usually cause they were destroyed by famous Romans). Baal is exactly like Jupiter in the Carthaginian Pantheon. A sky god, master of the thunderbolt, an all-father etc, but they're in competition. Nationalistic tribal competition. Pre-Imperial competition basically, because (in this case) Carthage hasn't been conquered yet. Hence all the stigma and derision directed at Baal. Later he even gets to become a demon and a prince of Hell, when Rome becomes Christian, but "Rome" nevertheless still remains pretty Roman lol, and so have we have that whole interplay and build up over time, with the knock-on after effects.

Now they easily could have set the up the divinities and religions in the Forgotten Realms more like that if they wanted to. They could have set it up like these were nationalistic deities vying in competition, each with factions where they are the supreme deity in their corner like proto monism, and where the whole thing is just a proxy for human competition and predation and internecine warfare. But that's not what they did.

Instead they set it up like an actual reality of the game Universe. It's not as if we're gullible Romans or Roman children who didn't actually understand the metaphorical or etiological implications, and instead were just taking it all at face value and unquestioning. Its more like, "oh wow, guess it's the real deal" cause I just saw a giant colossus descend from the clouds speak to me in plain language and then transform from a person into a bird or whatever right before my eyes. Basically a Ray Harryhausen special effects movie presentation, as if the metaphorical was the real. That's how D&D kicked it off, and that's how it should work here.

Everyone should pick a god at the outset, and the player should be introduced to what sort of fantasy is being set up here. Leave the questioning and such to the lesser deities, but not for the biggies. They need to be established right away, as real movers and shakers in-universe, not as proxies for how this stuff all works in the real-world where the player is coming from lol. This is high fantasy. The new player needs a crash course, (and not just from some dusty tome of lore!) so they can get really get into it and see what's going on for all it's worth.

I agree completely about the check rolls and such, but I think it needs something more narrative and forceful in the initial set up so it actually carries, and doesn't just feel like a watered down version of FR cultural anthropology or whatever heheh. Instead, if we're rolling around with a Cleric of Shar, and dealing with the fallout of a big Shar vs conflict, then we should be probably be meeting Shar pretty early on so we have some set up there. Just so we know who Shar is.

BG1 didn't exactly do a stellar job of this either, granted. I mean "Shar" was basically just a bark for Viconia. But it nevertheless went there with all the "Lord of Murder" and "Child of Bhaal" stuff. That stuff hit hard before we even left Candelekeep and was reinforced constantly through dreams at each chapter break along the way. This game needs to do more of that stuff. It needs to give us Shar, more as a character as opposed to an abstract belief system. A real Shar!


Sorry I typed a bunch and then forgot to close with my main point, which was about the Absolute. The Absolute is presented to us as a foil for actual divinity. A kind of false deity, who is weirdly more real for us (in gameplay terms) than any of the actual deities from the FR lore. From a game narrative point of view, every character is by default like a priest of the Absolute whether they wanted to be or not. The Absolute, not Shar or Selune, or Lathandar, or Clangeddin, is the one demonstrating true power and influence over us. We also know it's tadpole, and probably not a divinity, so this all compounds to give a weird sense that Faerun is bereft of the gods, and religion has been torn down and replaced by mind flayer trickery. Is that what they want? I guess maybe, but it's a bit of an odd fit for the Forgotten Realms.