That's where "Setting Saintly Standards" steps in. Bennie proposes that saints are special servants of the gods who've achieved immortality and some measure of divine power. He makes them on par with Greyhawk's "quasi-deities" like Murlynd or Keoghtom, but explicitly tied to a specific deity, whom they serve and whose cause they promote. The article lays out their spell-like abilities and offers four examples of saints from his own campaign to give the referee some idea of how to create saints of his own. He likewise suggests that some saints -- "patron saints" -- may have shrines dedicated to them and, over time, achieve sufficient power to become demigods in their own right. Exactly what this means for relations between the saint, his followers, and the deity he ostensibly serves is never discussed.
I'm on record as intensely disliking the reduction of gods and semi-divine beings to game stats. It's not for nothing that I dislike both Gods, Demigods & Heroes and Deities & Demigods. One of D&D's worst failings is its reductionism, its voracious appetite to turn everything into either a monster to be killed or a piece of magical technology to be wielded. Saints, as Bennie imagines them, are just big monsters -- or little gods -- to be confronted rather than anything more sublime. Maybe I'd be less bothered by this if he'd have adopted another term for what he's presenting; I don't think the idea of fighting gods is necessarily out of bounds. For certain styles of fantasy, it's even highly appropriate. But saint has a very specific meaning and Gygax's mention of them is almost certainly tied up in the implicit Christianity of early gaming.
Late 1983, though, was a long distance away from 1974, though, and the culture of the hobby had changed. What to Gygax had seemed obvious was now in need of explication and not just explication but expansion. That's why Bennie broadens the use of the term "saint" to include the servants of any god, not just Lawful Good ones. Thus we have St. Kargoth, a fallen paladin, among the four examples he provides us. To say that the idea of an "anti-saint" or "dark saint" is bizarre to me is an understatement. Mind you, I find the idea of non-Lawful Good paladins similarly bizarre, so clearly I'm out of step with a lot of gamers, no that this is any surprise.
"Evil saints" do crop up quite a bit in horror fiction.
ReplyDeleteReally? Can you think of any examples of this? I'm very curious now.
DeleteA couple examples that come immediately to mind are the video game Blasphemous (many of the bosses are evil Catholic-inspired saints) and the novel “the saint of bright doors” (which is more Buddhist inspired)
DeleteJim Hodges---
ReplyDeleteI guess I don't understand how TSR could have presented a god or anything else within the game in any way except quantified, unless it was setting something out there to be encountered but not engaged. I also see how this quantification did remove the sense of awe and mystery by making something bounded and knowable. Personally I remember being too intoxicated by the game itself to feel either critical of it or to ever doubt it's perfection. To young me it was an article of faith that Gygax Was Always Right.
Instead of focusing on the Gods and their stats (which Gary didn't want you to use to fight them but which convinced an entire generation DDG was a high level monster manual) you focus on the Earthly cult that worships the God. The organization a Cleric or Druid would actually belong to. This is how they did it for RuneQuest.
DeleteThe nine page Clerical Quick Reference Chart in the back of DDG was potentially the most game useful part of the book. It gave information about what a cleric of a god would wear and what colors, sacred animals and how and where sacrifices would be made. Instead of being tucked away in the back of the DDG, it should have been expanded to be the book!
DeleteMany years on, I now see the flaw in quantifying gods. But way back then, that was the “language” of roleplaying games. As a 12-year-old, hit dice, hit points, spells, etc., helped me understand the power of a god. And, I was not far enough along to grasp, let alone implement, the drama that erupts in all religions: factions, heresy, schisms, etc.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. It's easy to look back with decades of experience to see the flaw in how D&DG was executed. But back then? Nope. Didn't have a clue. All I thought was either "Wow. Such-and-such god is tough." or "Yeah, I can take on (fill in the blank)!"
DeleteBut frankly, it doesn't matter. We all had fun and that was the point. Besides, when you break out of your home group and meet other gamers and you say "Yeah, my 22nd level paladin killed Hades!", they tend to give you that look like you're either a liar or a Monty Haul gamer.
I would disagree that it was just "the language of role playing games". It was perhaps the language of D&D?
DeleteI can't remember _any_ of the systems that I did play back in those days putting up stat blocks for combat with deities.
Reducing everything to data or tools is the Essence of the Nerd.
ReplyDeleteIt's why modern nerds of the new generation love backfilled "origin story" garbage writing in franchises like Marvel and Star Wars. They want to consume ALL DETAIL and ALL DATA (or people who accumulate huge swaths of RPG's and never play them). It's the Faustian deal with the Devil to think you can reduce an object to nothing but Bundle of Traits (some David Hume type garbage) that can be exhausted if you "catch em all." Atomism. Reductionism. Their ontology needs a Bottom Object that is the "most real layer" of reality. Numbers, Atoms, DNA as a puppet master, etc.
Also, every concept shouldn't be averse to having a malign and benign inversion of itself. The anti-christ itself in monotheism is a perfect example this inversion for theological drama.
You might argue Darth Vader is an Anti-Paladin.
Jim Hodges---
DeleteHa, reminds me, someone we used to role play with had a lawful evil fighter called Darth Michelle.
It’s outside James’ normal period of interest, but D&D 3e came out a year after The Phantom Menace put us on the path to seeing Vader’s fall depicted, and included rules for becoming a blackguard (anti-paladin), “brilliant energy” weapons (not repeated in any edition since), and a weird emphasis on double-ended weapons like Darth Maul’s. I don’t think that was a coincidence.
DeleteOne might note that while there may be “anti-paladins” and “evil saints,” i have never heard of Noble Demons or Anti Devils. There really are moral judgements in the terms! Trying to get away from that there were the Demons etc in The Worm Ouroborous (some say this terminology was distracting) or “demon” (shartlekoi?) as a general term of other-planar origin in EPT.
ReplyDeleteI remember liking that article and the possibilities it presentsed.
ReplyDeleteTerms like Saints aside I thought it was a nice way to present a more potent adversary (or ally) for characters. It seems especially apropos to a high fantasy style campaign and could be a way to conceptualize like say a Nazgul or a Forsaken from WoT (or even a Gandalf type character). AD&D was pretty rigid as presented in Dragon in those days so you needed a path to non-standard characters.