Rust Monster

Little 4E, whole life a head of you…

News about the gods has come down from the heavens of Design and Development - or would that be up from the Nine Hells? It looks like the gods are getting a serious work over. Well maybe not serious but check this out:

The family of gods for 4th Edition is a mix of old and new. You’ll see familiar faces like Corellon, Moradin, and Pelor, and some new faces as well, like Zehir, Torog, and Bane.

Whoa! That’s right, Bane. Was he booted from the Realms or has he expanded his dominion? It’s the later (or is that former, I always mix those up). In their quest to change everything about the game and make us buy new books even the gods didn’t go unscathed. Here is more:

We ended up creating a new pantheon. At first, we used some of the gods from 3rd Edition as placeholder names — we thought we’d come up with new names for [Pelor] the sun god and [Moradin] the god of the forge. Ultimately we decided that using some familiar faces was preferable to giving our players a whole new set of names to learn. Besides, if a god looks like an elf and took out the orc-god’s eye like a certain well-known elf god, why not call him Corellon?

Ok, I can groove on that. Truth be told - we already did that at Rust Monster too! I literally laughed out loud when I read this because in our little home brew world that was created a couple years ago Bane ended up becoming one of the chief protagonists among the gods. It seemed silly at first to use him because he felt so Forgotten Realms but we went with it and he soon became part of our world too.

But the news about Corellon is a little hard for me to swallow. I’ve mentioned previously that elves are my favorite race so I take this a little personally:

The elf god is a good example of a god who kept his well-earned place in the D&D pantheon. But “the elf god” shouldn’t be taken to literally. Sure, he’s often depicted as an elf or an eladrin, and many eladrin in particular revere him. But he’s equally popular among human wizards, and even dwarves who practice the finer arts are prone to offering him prayers. One of our goals with the new pantheon was to loosen the tight associations between gods and races that has in the past led to the creation of whole pantheons full of elf, dwarf, orc, and goblin deities. Corellon is still associated with elfy things like arcane magic and the Feywild, and he still hates Lolth and the drow. But his appeal is a little broader now.

Screw that! Corellon with be the elf god to me for a long time. This one is gonna take some getting used to for me but I’m sure with time I’ll learn to accept him as more than just the lord of lords among the elven pantheon.

So I wonder what’s going to happen to the rest of the elf gods, and dwarf gods, and all of the others too? Oh well, I’m sure when 4E arrives, we can expect to find them laughing…

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