No Clerics? No Problem?

What do the above two games have in common?

No divine magical power sources or cleric classes. They keep to a holy-less trinity of fighter-rogue-mage where the only source of otherworldly power is the mage. No clerics, no gods, no paladins, no praying for power, and no second column of magical power exists in these worlds - it is just the mage.

The duality of mage vs. cleric seems like a staple in fantasy, right? Well, Tolkien's well-known world of Middle Earth just had wizards as the "magic users" as well, and the beings that could be considered "gods" weren't your typical D&D high-fantasy style gods who gave everyone who prayed to them cure light wounds. The holy-less trinity defines these stories as well, as magic was practiced by mages.

And speaking of no-clerics, then there is Game of Thrones as well...

D&D has always had this injection of spiritualism, even in the original 1974 edition of the game had fighter, mage, and cleric as the trinity classes (thieves/rogues being added later in the first Greyhawk supplement). MMOs are rife with divine power sources, like World of Warcraft and other games. There is always this "occult versus the divine" conflict going on in the more D&D style of fantasy, feeling like Westernized religious values being placed on top of Tolkien-style fantasy to create a conflict of power sources.

And D&D's history with divine beings has been notoriously messy, at least in our experience. The old Deities and Demigods book made gods monsters out of the Monster Manual. They were superheroes and super-characters in D&D 3.5, and finally MMO horrendously under-powered end-game raid bosses in D&D 4. Thankfully Pathfinder and D&D 5 (and games like Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord) leave the monster stat blocks for gods at home and makes the gods stat-less beings, making them something like "Q" in the old Star Trek: The Next Generation lore - there to affect outcomes and make snarky remarks, but as monsters or characters on the tabletop? No way, and no thank you.

Seriously, the injection of "gods as monsters" thing has messed up so many of our campaigns that it leaves a bad taste in our mouths when we play these versions of the game. Whenever the "gods got involved" in our past games the players rolled their eyes, wondered when it was going to end, and wished for the times of searching a dresser drawer full of silver pieces and a giant spider guarding the horde. When a game goes "big divine" it becomes "all about the gods" and the focus shifts away from the heroes and onto a divine soap opera worthy of Greek tragedy. For us, at least, and we prefer the heroes to be the focus of the game, and leave the divine super-characters to the background.

If the Forgotten Realms had that supposed problem of high-level NPCs "messing up" adventures, in our experience and our games it was "super-character gods." Give us a high-level NPC any day, because at least those can be ignored, walked away from, or made enemies of and smacked upside the head every once and a while to keep them in line. Making Elminster a recurring enemy to insult and mess with is fun, while having various gods show up again to stop the party in the real world is not.

But removing the cleric and divine power source entirely? It feels like heresy in high fantasy RPGs nowadays, but there is a simplicity and elegance in the world structure once you remove the "power for worship" access to magic. Power is not gained through faith, but in the three historical forces of humankind: might, deception, or knowledge. Removing faith from that mix creates a darker world, where access to magic is controlled by the mage, and there is no "faith versus knowledge" conflict.

"Faith versus knowledge" can also be summarized as "religion versus science" and you can see why this conflict feels natural to us, but in high fantasy this conflict is typically hand-waved off because we need the magic user to be able to adventure with the cleric and the band of merry men. In many high fantasy game worlds and MMOs you will see the "holy church of X" sitting right beside the "mage college of Y" and no problems whatsoever between them. Does it bother the church that those faithless mages have power equal to their followers? Does the mage college feel threatened by the mass of worshipers who only need to pray for power and not need knowledge?

You take that conflict out and the world feels a little strange, but then again we can't have the cleric and the mage fighting in the dungeon because it would slow up play and start real-world fights when the mage doesn't get a heal, right? Ah, dungeon crawling and the sacrifices we make for party-based play.

Take out clerics and divine power sources, and the problem is removed. Hand-wave the divine-arcane conflict off and it is gone as well, but something feels interesting when mages are the only ones who hold the keys to power. It does feel more Tolkien, and magic feels more arcane and special.

What is the lesson here? I guess it is "know your game" and understand the basic assumptions a game makes changes the world. Don't always be so beholden to the typical tropes of high-fantasy and MMO gaming, and games where divine magic is removed create interesting world models of power and how people acquire the same. What you play is your preference, but be open to games which may take you out of your comfort zone and experience "the power of magic" in a new light.

Preview: Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide

This is an interesting product. Green Ronin is teaming up with Wizards to produce the Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide. This is a book that brings the "adventure area" of Faerun to players with an up-to-date guide, sort of like a soft reset on the Sword Coast area to bring it up to date with the videogame releases of Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends.

The spellplague, second sundering, time of trials, crisis of the gods, and all the other game rule inflicted disasters are covered, and that has always been a sore point with me and Faerun, all of the world-changing disasters have been inflicted on this world for game-related reasons. It feels very direct and the "we're changing things" disaster 5.0 always feels like it is around the next corner.

Contrast this with Lord of the Rings, or even Pathfinder's Golarion. Those worlds feel stable, and we don't really need huge changes done to them repeatedly to account for another rules change. The settings are what they are, and even in the case of Golarion, I doubt Paizo would feel it necessary to 'change the world' with a disaster if a new version of Pathfinder came out. Even in the Lord of the Rings videogames, if a game's interpretation of the world is slightly different, it is no big deal and not something worthy of a global change to the lore.

Will I be getting this book? It is hard to say because I really don't know what the value is to me. I am a fan of the lore and world, and it would be good to keep up with things, but I haven't played those two videogames yet so my interest is a little dampened.

I don't really want the D&D 5 classes or rules, and "purple dragon knight" sounds a bit silly to me and I have no idea what that is supposed to be. A swashbuckler class, okay, but really, that is a rogue to me. Pathfinder is guilty of this too, taking a thesaurus to the list of classes and coming up with new classes just based on a slightly different version of the base class. What this does is weaken the base class, and complicate character design. And you know any "thesaurus class" will come with extra added power creep to sell the book - it is inevitable with RPG designers to do this. What that does is it destroys the value of the original book's content, and weakens the game overall.

A fighter with a bow is a fighter. Not an archer, non-magic ranger, bow-ist, crossbowman, target shooter, bow-slinger, marksman, field archer, bowman, arrow-slinger, sniper, bow master, fletcher, close-quarters bowman, or any other word meaning the same thing. Rangers? Maybe, but they have to be more than "a slightly weak fighter who can use some low-level magic user spells." Some games do ranger right, and others don't put the effort in.

As for the other content? I will need to wait and see. I have enough background data to run a campaign in this area, but I don't feel the need to go out and gather more background data without a current campaign running. Part of me hopes with is more like a Dragon Age style hintbook thing that gives you great background data on the world and factions.

Of all things, I want a strong world with strong characters and factions. That gets me interested, and that is driving my interest in games and worlds like Dragon Age and others. The book has to answer the question, why not just get videogame hintbooks for Neverwinter and Sword Coast Legends and play with those? If they do the "let's water down important NPCs so the players feel important" thing I am less interested. I like strong characters, and I am not afraid of them.

So I am tossed up about this one, and I will wait for the non-5-star reviews to come in so I can make my decision. I am not buying expansion splatbooks for D&D 5 because I am sticking to the original three. If I am going to buy books to collect, they will be Pathfinder because I am bought in already and following along. With D&D 5, I don't have the interest or shelf-space to start collecting again. This book feels like a D&D 5 splatbook that you buy for new rules and the background and world data feel like add-ons. I would be surprised if they made this highly useful with NPCs, places, maps, plots, and other high-value content.

But this is a different company, Green Ronin, and I like their stuff, so I may be wrong and in for a pleasant surprise. We shall see, and this comes out in early November.