After reading GVDammerung's post on the natural philosophical tracts in his Greyhawk, and CruelSummerLord's response, I got to thinking about how other people implement philosophical ideas in their campaigns.
Mine:
The only anti-philosophical state in my Greyhawk is the Theocracy of the Pale. I suppose I connect strictures of thought more with monotheism than I do generally religious thought. I would think the (obviously true) polytheist nature of the Greyhawk world would present less restrictions on thought and non-conformity. I haven't worked in a "patron god" for scholars and natural philosophers, but I guess there need not be one.
In the current campaign I'm running, the PCs (all from the Theocracy, save one) are about to arrive at the City of Greyhawk, which I have set up as the birthplace of Oerth's Enlightenment. Grey College is still the elite liberal-arts university on the planet (say, Yale), but the University of the Flanaess has leapt ahead in the area of novel philosophical ideas (say, MIT or CalTech). There is still little respect given to faculty and students of the University by Grey College loyalists, but the University is now wonderfully well-funded by endowments from its' recent graduates, many of whom made fortunes re-establishing "international" trade (with novel economic theories developed at the U, of course) in the wake of the Wars.
In a somewhat-related note (to more than one post), one of the University's professors in my campaign is working on a large bridge across the Selintan right at the City, primarily as a plot hook (The Rhennee hate it, plots, kidnappings, the destruction of pre-modern ways of life, &c.), but a good example of how I've incorporated natural philosophy into my campaign. (Aside: I've also done away with Zagyg's Bridge -- my players don't know about it anyway, and it tightens up the story.)
I also think that an active natural philosophical community works well with the "fading magic" arc present in the World of Greyhawk. The "magic" of the coming centuries will have been developed in the workshops of the University, rather than the laboratories of the College of Wizardry.
Does anyone else address natural philosophy in their campaigns? I'm really curious to see what other people have done.
I haven't worked in a "patron god" for scholars and natural philosophers, but I guess there need not be one.
Rao has reason in his portfolio - though whether that's reason as in rationality in the Enlightenment sense (as opposed to being reasonable in ones behaviour) might be a subject of debate. It's possible that there's a sect within the church that pursues rationality in the Enlightenment sense, and would therefore be your ideal natural philosophers.
There's also Delleb, god of reason, intellect and study, who'd be popular with scholars in the realms of old Aerdy - Nyrond, Ahlissa, the Solnor Compact etc
Lendor also has Study in his portfolio, thougnmore from the point of view of patience and perservence, I'd imagine. He might be more popular in realsm with strong Suel traits - Keoland, the Urnsts, Shar etc. Perhaps also Dalt as the Opener of Closed Ways?
Among the Flan Vathris was the demi-god of innovation and the like, before he recieved his wound.
Among the Noniz, Dugmaren Brightmantle has Scholarship, Discover and Invention as his portfolio
In general though, one thing with natural philosophy in a world where magic and the gods is real, is that it has to take magic into account. So as such, extreme views of thought like that of the Sceptics of Nellix (who deny the existance of the gods) are irrational - since they are blind to the reality of the world.
In terms of the scientific method - wizards and natural philosophers on Oerth would use roughly the same empirical methods - hypothesis, experiment, falsification/verification, revised hypothesis. The only difference would be the field of study.
In pure theory, wizards would study magic, where as natural philosophers would study the mundane (as in non-magical). In application, wizards would still use magic to achieve their ends, where as natural philosophers would use technology. Even then there's likely to be a lot of blurring between the two. As magic is a fundamental force, you could be a wizard and a natural philospher. Ditto priests, since the gods actually exist.
There might be more fringe schools of natural philosophers who'd espouse independence from divine or arcane magic for reasons of principle - but it's hard to see how these fellows wouldn't be regarded as eccentric by more pragmatic practioners. why build a waterwheel to drive a mill, if you can bind a water elemental?
But here we bump up against the magic level issue. It's broadly agreed that in canon Greyhawk, magical technology is relatively rare. This may have something to do with the levels of magic in the world or the numbers of mages (esp the number of mages interested in the technological applications of magic) etc. The reason isn't important, but the effect is that whereas magic may be the province of the elite and the wealthy, perhaps technology is the poor man's magic. Why use a waterwheel instead of an elemental? Because we can't afford to get a mage from the big city to bind a water spirit for us. As such, it might be looked down on by many ivory tower mages.
GaryG wrote:
"I also think that an active natural philosophical community works well with the "fading magic" arc present in the World of Greyhawk. The "magic" of the coming centuries will have been developed in the workshops of the University, rather than the laboratories of the College of Wizardry."
Though in campaign milages may vary, in canon GH, has magic started to fade noticably yet?
I imagine when people start to notice it, it'll cause general panic among the mages of the Oerth (priests too if divine magic starts to fade). In terms of upheaval - I don't think you could get a bigger one. Imagine if electricity suddenly stopped working in the universe (aside from the fact that it'd kill every living thing). It'd be like the fading suns effect in the game of the same name, if you've ever played it.
But you're right, that's when the humble waterwheel builder and the artisan with his pullys will finally earn the resepect they deserve.
Last edited by Woesinger on Wed May 25, 2005 4:30 am; edited 1 time in total
Whew! Lots more than I knew, and lots of opportunities for me to use in my campaign. Thanks.
IMC, the "Greyhawk Englightenment" isn't so much about religious skepticism as it is about believing that you can figure out how the world works. Forming a rational program to discover knowledge about Oerth. That's the part of the real Enlightenment that interests me most, anyway. An Enlightenment based around ideas of religious skepticism wouldn't work in a high-fantasy setting, anyway, since the Gods exist/take a more active role in people's lives (depending on your conception of the divine in real life).
I agree that natural philosophy and magic don't have to be in conflict. IMC, the natural philosophers don't deny the existence of the Gods (it would be fairly difficult to do that in a high-fantasy setting, I think), but they acknowledge that there are other solutions to certain problems, like, say, emptying mines of water.
It also probably helps that my campaign is fairly low-magic. The natural philosophers in the City, however, are not in any way opposed to getting a little magical help with their "experiments".
As far as the "fading magic" bit is concerned, I was thinking on the order of hundreds of years, with some magic maybe never fading out completely. I always point to the fact that all artifacts are old (yeah, there's a correlation/causation issue there, but it suits me fine), and that there's no more Lum the Mads, Leuk-Os, or Al'Akbars running around. The idea doesn't really impact my players in any way, really, as the time frame for my campaign (going to finish it at the next "double-new-moon" -- eclipses, ancient cults, &c.) is much too short. The characters' great-great-great grandchildren might notice something, though.
Unrelated to Greyhawk, I think that if any world had an Enlightenment featuring an effort to rationally understand the world around them, "magic" would cease to exist as a category. What's electricity in our world, other than "magic"? We just happen to understand the forces behind it. Likewise with arcane magic in the D&D world, which apparently is based on rules (you study it, same material components, &c.). Once you conceive of the world as "things following rules", and you seek to understand those rules, then nothing's "supernatural" anymore. The observer just "doesn't understand it [yet]", or "lacks the faculty to understand it fully". See quantum mechanics.
The gods in GH are many and religion, with few exceptions, is polytheistic. Religious intolerance based upon “the wrong faith” will occur less frequently in its worst forms as “the right faith” is usually so broadly defined in polytheistic terms.
At the same time, the gods in GH are demonstrably “real” in that they and/or their powers may be seen to be manifest. “Faith” will be much more pronounced as there is demonstrably something to “believe in” that can help or hinder.
As the many gods are known to be “real” and are worshiped as such with greater faith on that account, reactions toward those who question the gods, who do not accept matters on, or in terms of, “faith” will likely be intolerant. How ignorant, to say nothing of disrespectful (even blasphemous), must one be to question what is so very clearly “real?”
Of course, the degree of this “reality” is the very problem. The gods appear upon consideration or investigation to be very much akin to mortals but with a greater power. Mortals become gods. Gods die. They can be understood in these terms - terms which are not purely “divine.”
This different appreciation of the gods, coupled with consideration of the natural world that seeks to understand that world without first resort to this “divinity,” will engender an intolerant reaction - for being ignorant, disrespectful, or blasphemous - from the pious.
Rationalists, who admitting the existence of gods, deny their inherent divinity and seek to understand the universe on purely rational terms that excludes faith as an easy or inevitable answer, will not be well received. This will be particularly true among the peasant and urban poor classes, who are likely to be entirely uneducated. Those within hierarchies who seek to advance themselves or their causes can well play the “faith card,” inciting the mob by supposed affronts to their religious dignity.
Actual history is replete with examples of religious intolerance among any number of faiths and any number of sorts of faith. Charges of heresy or their like are quickly brought and just as quickly prosecuted. Witch trials, inquisitions, denunciations, book banning, burnings, crusades, purges, schisms etc. One might begin with the Pharaoh Akenaton and might end with stem cell research. Religious intolerance is a constant in human history, sometimes flaring into violence, sometimes simmering just below a boil. The common denominator is a perceived “disrespect” for the faith, whatever it may be - be it in promoting one deity or liturgical interpretation over another, a scientific or rational inquiry or a simple philosophic difference.
IMO, a GH campaign that sees no such intolerance between religion and rationalism has chosen an artificially rosey scenario - a “happyland” free of a too real historic vice. Of course, as GH is a fantasy setting, nothing is to say that this can’t be so. It would be just another fantastic element of the setting.
Allowing for an intolerance of the rational by the religious, however, would help explain why technological advances are so halting in GH.
I support your ideas that belief in the Gods will be stronger because of their clearly manifest power. A philosopher in the Dutch Republic can afford to be a skeptic, but a villager in Nyrond who watches the priest of Pelor call down from the heavens healthy food and water will have something else to say. But I don't think that "faith", defined as "belief in the power/existence of the Gods" is necessarily the same as "faith" defined as "belief that the only power/truth/knowledge can come from the Gods".
While lots of different types of religions have been mindful of free thinkers, I think that comes down to the power relationships of the different groups. Be they the Egyptian priests or the Catholic Church, they were entrenched regimes fighting off a challenge to their authority. In the world of Greyhawk, you have arcane magic. Wizards and Sorcerors wield "supernatural" power comparable to priests, and while we see an appropriate level of condemnation in the Theocracy, I don't know if it's quite as severe in a larger area. It would depend on how ordinary people conceive of arcane magic, and magic in general, and how common each is in the world. While uneducated, people in the past were still no less intelligent than people today.
Your point about the reality of the Gods is interesting. It, again, boils down to ordinary people's conceptions of "divinity". Necessarily on Earth the concept of "divinity" is shrouded in mystery, because actual supernatural exhibitions of godly power were/are, at best, few and far between. Could a conception of a more limited divinity--after all, a god is waging war against people to the North, and hasn't won--allow for more freethinking, or at least change people's ideas of "faith"?
I don't necessarily think that the intolerance is related to "faith", per se, I think it's related to groups, be they broken down by religion/race/nation/&c. However you define them, they can be mobilized for political gain and/or violence. In a world with a fundamentally different relationship between religion and the common experience of people (spells work, for example, and different gods provide different spells), I think that a fundamentally different approach to any number of things is quite possible.
Moreover, as far as a fantasy "happyland" is concerned, I don't think that it's too unrealistic to assume that in a world with well-defined good and evil gods, that things could really be "better". When it comes down to it, clerics of the good gods heal the sick and clerics of the evil gods don't. As an ordinary person, you're going to be more attracted to the former, and since they're defined in terms of "good" values, you'll see more "good". I'm all for interpretations of real-life history in terms of an unclear, undefined subjective morality, but in D&D, the ability of good clerics to heal (at least, more effectively) is an objective difference between the two ideologies that would affect societies.
Which gets me thinking. Normal magic, as defined in the D&D books and GH sources, can't do some of the things that "technology" can. Replacing animal/manual labor, for example, is only done through the enlistment of other animals/men in a magic regime (interpreting monsters of the "Construct" type, rare anyway, as "animals"), while "technology" could accomplish it much more simply through steam engines. Medicine, however, is almost completely superseded by healing magic from clerics. Maybe it wouldn't develop much at all, since clerics can do it far better than a 16th Century doctor could (or a 21st Century doctor, for most things).
Thanks for posting, GV. I suppose I responded with questions more than actual points, but I'm still thinking about this stuff. A little philosophy is fun sometimes.
Just a small point, but in a world where the gods are real, then faith and belief in the strictist sense wouldn't apply. Just as you don't need to believe in the chair you're sitting on, in GH you don't need to believe in the gods, since. like the chair, they plainly exist.
That said - given the existance of magic - might one of the tenets of the Sceptics of Nellix be that divine magic is no different to arcane magic and that therefore, men don't need the gods to explain the powers of priests (the inability of mages to cast healing spells notwithstanding - though that could be explained away by comparing them to specialist mages who can't cast certian types of magic also)? From this point of view, the gods are at best imaginary or at worst powerful being such as fiends who are masquerading as gods to bend the masses to their will.
For the Sceptics of Nellix (and, as Samwise pointed out, the Athar), that sounds like a good idea. Especially the part about the healing magic.
I guess one important consideration, then, is how ordinary people in the Greyhawk world conceive of Iuz. We all "know" that he's a Demipower, technically in the same league as the other gods, if not the same division, but what do the people of the Flanaess think? If they understand that he is a god, they must also understand that he didn't win. His forces were stopped and later turned back by Belvor, for example. His powers are clearly limited. If they think of him as a demon or as just another world leader, then obviously it wouldn't affect their ideas as much. I don't know of any sources dealing with ordinary people's conceptions of The Old One, but if anyone does, I'm sure they're here at Canonfire!.
The tennets of Delleb urge for interaction and cooperation among scholars and adventurers to the ends of researching the world. When others (scholars or adventurers) cannot help answers may be found in the books.
You cannot post new topics in this forum You cannot reply to topics in this forum You cannot edit your posts in this forum You cannot delete your posts in this forum You cannot vote in polls in this forum
Canonfire! is a production of the Thursday Group in assocation with GREYtalk and Canonfire! Enterprises
