Drunkard's Walk Forums

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This actually makes more sense in a way than Eyrie Productions Undocumented Features universe. There it seems that (unless I'm missing something) the Norse Pantheon is the one that's made a real comeback, but no one else. The Norse haven't been actively worshipped in centuries, and now they're manifesting? What gives?

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I understand it as "the Norse pantheon is 'correct' insofar as it assigns the correct names to the deities, but those are merely facets of who/what they really are." We see this when Eris/Peorth is talking about who she is in Twilight... It seems like Bob is taking a similar, yet more vague tack here...

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This is fun for the story as long as we keep to the cardinal rule "don't examine this too closely", but it does make me wonder from time to time, what the heck is up with all the other pantheons, not to mention the Judeo-Chistian mythos? (That last would get into some potentially dangerous territory if not for the cardinal rule above.)

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Redneck addresses this. "G-d" is Odin. Other races worship other deities as their one god, based on what they value in their god... I think the Gamilons worship Tyr as "Kru the Destroyer" or something...

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I mean, I see Belldandy, as she's presented in AMG, as her own entity, not an avatar or filter. Your method of presenting things so far makes me wonder what, in your version of AMG, she really is. And who she is, as well. I mean, Belldandy really loves Keiichi with all her heart. Does that apply to her other aspects as well? And if not, and Keichi really understood what Belldandy was in these terms, what would it mean for their relationship?

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I suspect that this works in much the same way that Hexe manages to care for Doug and the other warriors...

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And then we get into some really wild territory in Evangelion. I'm beginning to think this subject deserves an entire seperate post

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One seperate post, coming up
I suspect that.... I really have no idea how this'll work in the NGE step... I really like what EPU did with the series in NXE... It made much more sense than what I saw of the original. I'm rather looking forward to what havoc LT will wreak in Central Dogma... maybe he can spray paint a Buddy Christ in the Cage...
[Edit: fix quote layers and typos]-Z
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programms, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

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I'm rather looking forward to what havoc LT will wreak in Central Dogma... maybe he can spray paint a Buddy Christ in the Cage...

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SHATTER!!!!

-Logan

(Yow, new post editor...)

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maybe he can spray paint a Buddy Christ in the Cage...

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Actually, I'm going to have him spraypaint a random Bible reference ("just to mess with Ikari's head") and the words "Hope yet remains". But save for the fact that it postdates Doug's departure from Warriors' World, there is virtue in a Buddy Christ...
As for the questions raised in the initial post, well, I need to crash right now (too many low-sleep nights), and I will try to answer them in the morning.
-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

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I understand it as "the Norse pantheon is 'correct' insofar as it assigns the correct names to the deities, but those are merely facets of who/what they really are." We see this when Eris/Peorth is talking about who she is in Twilight...

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As noted below, Gryphon's said that in the UF universe the Norse pantheon is It, and anything else is just the local culture "skinning" them, so to speak.

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It seems like Bob is taking a similar, et more vague tack here...

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A more metaphysical tack, to be sure. One of the things that has bugged me a little about UF is that the gods therein aren't ineffable enough. I like my divine beings to be just a bit on the "you can't really comprehend us without blowing your brain gaskets" side. But I like the personable, "human" deities of A!MG and other stories.
I needed to include the (admittedly vague) in-game cosmology of Warriors' World at the very least because it's part of Hexe's background, and that includes an in-game meeting with her divine parents; these worthies (and their setting) did not adhere to any one theme or "flavor" for more than a few seconds as the gestalt group impression of/reaction to them varied and changed. I'm also more than a little influenced by the celestial settings from Gregg "Metroanime" Sharp's "The Bet". (One day, Toltiir will make an appearance in a Step. I don't know where yet, but I'm sure of it. Maybe Doug will wander by the Well of Mimir and drop a pebble...) Also, for various purposes, I need to allow for supporting things like Ed Becerra's "Legion's Quest" and its built-in system(s).
Anyway, the basics of the DW cosmology, at least as far as divine beings are concerned, is thus: There are gods and there are demons. Each one is a vastly powerful, ineffable multidimensional creature capable of what, to humans, looks like either timesharing their attention in almost infinitesimally small slices, or incredibly complicated cases of Multiple Personality Disorder. For reasons of their own, they have an interest in the lives of mortals. (Maybe they're just playing their version of the Sims. Who knows?) In order to deal directly with mortals, they have to tone themselves down -- either by manifesting only a pinhead of themselves in a 4-D spacetime, or by crafting one or more "native bodies" of varying power and putting a portion of their consciousness in it/them. When two or more of them share an interest in a particular timeline, they often work out rules for "playing" there -- who's in charge, what the teams are and so on. In their native spacetime, there is already a polarization of sides -- Good/Evil, rights and dignity of lesser creatures (us) vs. screwing with the timelines for personal amusement, among other issues -- and this usually carries over into the roles they play within timelines. And there are a lot of them -- there are more faces for the gods than there are gods.
Well, that's a vest-pocket summary. It's not complete, it glosses over details, and it's subject to radical change depending on what story ideas grab me, but it gets the idea across. Hexe is unique among the gods in that she isn't just operating a human body with a fraction of her consciousness, she's poured all of herself into it -- into a fetus, in fact, and grew up pretty much as a mortal. She chose to do that in Warriors' World mainly because the natural laws there let her do so without spontaneously combusting herself and most of the planet she was on.

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I mean, Belldandy really loves Keiichi with all her heart. Does that apply to her other aspects as well? And if not, and Keichi really understood what Belldandy was in these terms, what would it mean for their relationship?

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That's a really good question. I've addressed it sorta in fragments I've written by suggesting that there's something special and different about Keiichi, but what it is, I don't know yet. I just know that in almost every universe where there's a Keiichi, an aspect of one of the Three loves him.

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I really have no idea how this'll work in the NGE step...

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You know, I really love the word "ineffable". I can wave it at anything I don't want to explain.
Ineffable!


-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

I just need to say thanks, Bob, for that truly disturbing image- "the mortal sphere as God/s version of the Sims". I'm really intensely bothered by that. Have you *seen* what some folks *do* to their Sims? Locking them in a windowless, doorless room and watch them go feral? Brrr...
The *truly* appalling part of the analogy is that it would explain *so* much...
Dave (Quaking like a Lovecraft protagonist, now...)

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I just need to say thanks, Bob, for that truly disturbing image- "the mortal sphere as God/s version of the Sims". I'm really intensely bothered by that. Have you *seen* what some folks *do* to their Sims? Locking them in a windowless, doorless room and watch them go feral? Brrr...
The *truly* appalling part of the analogy is that it would explain *so* much...

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Having read more than a few Greek myths, I can say that this idea is hardly new... it's just now that we can play Greek Gods to that extent with something
-Z, Post-reader at Medium
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If architects built buildings the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization.

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I just need to say thanks, Bob, for that truly disturbing image- "the mortal sphere as God/s version of the Sims". I'm really intensely bothered by that.

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As well you should be. That precise emotion is at the core of all Doug's opinions about gods (not to mention my own agnosticism).

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The *truly* appalling part of the analogy is that it would explain *so* much...

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That it would. It just might make you treat that Sim a little better the next time you play. You never know when your player might decide to destruct-test you...

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

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Having read more than a few Greek myths, I can say that this idea is hardly new... it's just now that we can play Greek Gods to that extent with something

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Now? For a while, actually, or have you never seen/played the original version of "Populous"?
And for more fun along these lines, folks might want to check out a book I recommended once before: God Game by Andrew Greeley. The computer technology in it is hopelessly dated by modern standards (it was written in the late 80s), but it's still a great read. Joe-Bob says, check it out.

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.

"Now? For a while, actually, or have you never seen/played the original version of "Populous"?"
I did, and yes i remember doing things like willfully drowning all but one city, summoning a vulcano in my own territory and the like. In the end I think it's the the modern equivalent of kicking an anthill to se the ants scurry about.

Yeah, it is that, isn't it? I seem to recall that there were a couple of cheats that let you do all kinds of horrible things to your people and still not run out of mana...
Of course, my biggest problem with Populous was getting the damned leader to go where I wanted him...

-- Bob
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Then the horns kicked in...
...and my shoes began to squeak.