I will acknowledge your claims as opinions and feelings until you provide a citation or a quote that backs up your opinion with factual reference, Leucrotta, and I mean you no disrespect or ill-will when I say so. I've backed up the claims I've made with direct evidence of the sources I'm drawing those statements from; we have a conflict of opinion, so I'm asking you to do the same. If you have such quotations or citations, they may give me something to think on that I had not considered, and I'm open to changing my view point - but I do so based on evidence, and you have not provided me with any yet - only opinion and feeling.
Ed Greenwood is not 'some developer on twitter'.
Yes, he is. A very senior one, but twitter posts from individual creators, no matter how integral to the hobby those individuals may be, are not official canon - or at least their words on twitter do not win out over source book quotes when they come into conflict. If the 5e source book says that paladins can draw directly on divine energy without a divine intermediary, and it's just true that the vast majority do work through a deity, and Ed Greenwood tweeted that, no, all paladins must always work through a deity at all times - then the canonical situation is that deities are optional, and Ed Greenwood simply mistweeted - and until his opinion makes it into a codified source book, his tweet is just that, a tweet, and bears no actual weight. His opinion as the setting's creator can definitely be taken into consideration but, on its own, it's not official and it's not canon.
I cited the Time of Troubles and the Silence of Lolth as specific events in FR history in which the source of divine power and the consequences for the death or incapacity of deities is clearly laid out.
You nebulously mentioned two novels (or rather, novel series), and the events central to them;
that is not a reference or a citation. It's not proof of your stance, or evidence of it - it's you
asking the viewer to
accept that you have evidence, and that the evidence you
claim to have does indeed support your statement,
without actually
showing the audience any of that supposed evidence. As I said before: Give. Me. A. Quote. Show me a source - don't just say it exists: show it to me. Find me a passage from one of the novels you want to reference, that supports what you say, and show it to me - I can't think of one in any of those books that does so, so you're going to have to help me out and show me where it is.
If you can, then I'll absolutely take it into consideration of my own opinion, but even then - the lore hierarchy puts the novels below the official source books, so where they conflict I still have to favour the source books over the novels. If an independent author writes about the realms and makes all their tieflings red-skinned and horny, but the source book says that tieflings come in many different shades - then the official reality is that tieflings come in many different shades, and the novel's statement that they're all red is considered non-canon. Of course, if the novel is talking about a time period that isn't considered in any source book, and the source book is talking about a time far removed from the novel's timeline, then there is no conflict, and both are considered canonically true. This is just how it works.
If you don't want to acknowledge that as specific examples, well-established in FR history, then we don't really have anything to talk about.
Quote me a passage - show me a source, and I'll acknowledge it. Don't just nebulously wave at something and claim it proves your point without showing that it does. This is very basic communication: you're making a claim - Back. It. Up.
When our opinions came into conflict here, I backed up what I had to say with cited references from the official source books: I respect your opinion and feelings on this matter, but if you want me to accept them as anything more than that, then you need to show me evidence.
You yourself still can't find a specific passage that explicitly spells out that deities in FR are completely optional or else you would have cited it yourself,
Apart form those
Several direct quotes from the actual 5e books that specifically and unequivocally spell out and back up what I'm saying? Those quotes, which I have, indeed, already quoted and referenced?
but expect me to throw away decades of lore established through the novels, video games, sourcebooks, and writings of the man who made the setting
No, I acknowledge that all those things were true at the time in the setting when they were relevant - which is not now. Now things are different, in universe and out, and have been different for the past fifteen years. Those things were accurate - THEN. They are not the case any more, and have not been for
a long time. No-one is saying they weren't the case, and no-one is saying that they should be thrown out or forgotten, but they are not correct in the here and now, and the present day of our current setting. This is not a retcon, as I explained previously - it's just that the rules of the realms have changed as various realms-shaking events have taken place, and the rules right now are different.
