Say what you will about Dragon Ages crappy plot, but as fantasy settings go,but they did religion right

Say what you will about Dragon Ages crappy plot, but as fantasy settings go,but they did religion right.

Nothing triggers me more than medieval-esqe fantasy setting in which Wizards,warlocks and blood mages are running around with no religious consequences, while at the same time polytheism exists.

At the same time divine magic should not exist, it is a retarded left-over cliche from DnD. There should be just "miracle magic", reserved for holy people and prophets. And not your run of the mill average cleric.

Almost all fantasy settings are guilty of this kitchen sink pagan polytheistic trope.

Wait, is OP from an alternative dimension where the "hurr durr, the generic Catholic Church stand in hates magic users because that's a cheap source of drama" cliche isn't a dead horse that has been beaten over and over again by so many fantasy settings? Man, I'd love to live there.

But that forced drama exists in general in fantasy, you can say Dragon Age does it, but so does Asoiaf and Forgotten Realms to a large extent.

That's exactly my point, Sherlock. This is old hat, done over and over again, so why is OP acting like it's something brilliant that he's never seen before?

What is wrong with polytheistic pantheon?
Polytheistic religions existed for far much longer then monotheistic ones and they were first.

So if in the setting there was no groundbreaking and unlikely event like rise of Christianity or Arabic conquest then polytheism probably would be the norm because monotheistic religion would never raise to high power.

OP here.

The issue is that when you think of the medieval times you think plagues, catholic church, questing knights and miserable peasants.

In no way does it fit to have pagan polytheism in such a setting, while at the same time a harmonious co-existence with magic and warlocks, that is isn't the medieval aesthetic, its a renaissance fair.

In contrast I love Glorantha, because it does justice to the ancient era. Gods are not only alive, but play an active role in the heroes adventures.

Oh man, it's so creative that there's elves in this fantasy setting. I've never seen that before. And they're all arrogant jerks! Truly, this is an unique setting.

You know the Elves still have their Pagan Polytheistic Gods, right?

It triggers my autism, because it is done with no awareness of what the spirit of the middle ages was. Which was a wholehearted submission to one divine abstract God and his principles, and in this way how the society was structured with peasantas, preists and noble warriors.

I remember reading somewhere that DnD should be played like the stories of Beowulf, Siegfried, and the Odysea. But only very rarely does fantasy capture that aesthetic and feel of the ancient times.

For example Conan, Glorantha, and Tekumel do it right. But fantasy fiction in general get it's wrong

This is some good bait, keep it up.

The elves accepted in human society all worship Andraste.

That's why Dalish elves exists, they run in order not to get wrecked by an exalted march.

>Wizards,warlocks and blood mages are running around with no religious consequences
Why should magic be privileged in a fantasy setting? If magic really existed, it would be part of ordinary empirical reality, and would fall under the domain of natural philosophy. So then why would magic have greater religious consequences than anything other philosophical endeavor? It seems to me like this conversation only gets off the ground if you take the real world for granted in considering what a fantasy world might look like.

How can religion compete with magic users in terms of followers if religion can't offer those sweet powers while magic study can?

Because magic something you have to be born with and has constant possibility of demon raep.

Nothing about Dragon Age was good.

No, it's people like you who believe in things like "The Dark Ages" and blame the Church for everything wrong in your life that make you enjoy such a cocked idea.

>In contrast I love Glorantha,

Glorantha is a pretty shit setting, desu. It's horribly dull, like sitting in for a history lecture except that it's some guy's history fanfiction.

>All settings must be like 40k
Don't you 40kids have something better to do, like bitch about Fall of Cadia or something.

Not sure if bait or ignorant of the subject.

Demons are a thing in Dragon Age. They like to possess mages because DA magic works by sticking your dick into the Fade where they live.

It has similarities to Warhammer to the point of being copy paste.

Because magic=power.

Hard, fireball-like power.

>At the same time divine magic should not exist, it is a retarded left-over cliche from DnD. There should be just "miracle magic", reserved for holy people and prophets. And not your run of the mill average cleric

You don't have to run it that way. Paladins are typically seen as the special people of some religion/God, the champions. But really the Cleric works for that . The Paladin is more independent.

Make the Cleric as rare as the Paladin. Most priests are not of the Cleric class, have no spells. An actual spell casting Cleric (PC) is a rare thing and one of special favor of the God, something that may actually be seen as a threat to the established Priesthood of that god/religion.

It's not a constant possibility of demon raep.

It's only a constant possibility of demon raep for the weak-willed and the just generally weak mages.

It's important to note that in dialog with the senior mages, and through the actions of your own mage warden, it becomes pretty clear that mages above a certain "power level" can only be possessed through their own hubris. Like that dickmuncher who wanted to be the big boss wizard instead of the big boss wizard.

That dickmuncher had full (demonic) control of the wizard tower, and he probably was torturing the big boss wizard for days, trying to make the big boss wizard "fall", but he didn't. Because the big boss wizard was too smart and too powerful to just walk into possession. Only sheer exhaustion could lower the threshold. And that takes time, lots of time. Enough time for the warden to come and save the day.

The mage warden (with proper stats and skills) can IIRC always tell demons (in disguise) to fuck off, and you can even trick a demon in one quest. I promised a demon that I would let it possess a noblemans son in return for the knowledge of blood magic. So the demon granted me insight into blood magic. Then I defeated the demon, breaking my word but who the fuck cares? It's a demon.

Demons in the DA universe are remarkably human in some aspects, and if you pay attention and get some skills in talking/persuasion, you can abuse that.

It's only superficially like 40k.

As explained here.
Demons in the DA universe are a lot less powerful, all-knowing and corrupting than in 40k.

fpbp

A cheap source of drama is preferable to treating religions as nothing more than fan clubs for particular ultra-powerful sky men that all have the same explanation for how and why the world and humans exist.

>did religion right
>evil not!Catholicism

C'mon man, that got old decades ago.

Wow, it's like you mangle an idea, and then complain about it like you actually think it's as bad as you imagine it to be.

I can foresee this discussion is going to be great and totally not retarded, yesirree.

Same way it competes in a world where it can't offer you a car or professed foods: it's an ideology, not a power source. No reason for the devout not to learn.

You'd have religious magic users.

Willing to bet they're setting up a not!Catholicism vs. not!Protestantism religious war up in the next game.

Aren't most of the DAI endings about people getting all pissed off about the choices the not!pope makes?

That actually makes sense.
>Tfw you'll never be a pikeman stabbing the shit out of filthy papists

Ah yes. Wynne. She was a really good character for the "i'm lawful good and old and i am going to tell you what you're doing wrong, young kiddo" archetype.

I will say that I specifically maxed out persuasion because I knew that running a MAXIMUM POWER mage/arcane warrior/blood mage/battle mage character would result in some tough conversations with Wynne, Lilliana and Alistair, so I never got any annoyances from them.

And the dialogues that you get when you pursue "bad" power with "good" companions are easily among the better dialogues in the game.

Characters can be pretty good.

>mage/arcane warrior/blood mage/battle mage character
That is an obscenely powerful build. Even on nightmare difficulty you can fucking solo most threats except for the toughest bosses.

>your magic points count as strength points
>your health counts as mana points
>no longer need wisdom because your mana pool is enhanced by your health
>can put all points into magic
>because magic counts as strength, you can wear the heaviest warrior armour
>warrior armour boosts strength and constitution
>constitution boosts health
>more health means more "mana" in your manapool
>you can literally cast away almost all of your health because the fucking insane armour you'll be wearing can just about tank any damage
>high level warrior armour almost always comes with health regeneration enchantments
>they also come with stamina regeneration enchantments
>mages don't have stamina so the regeneration counts as mana regeneration
>I HAVE BECOME GOD AMONG ANTS

It's a fucking insane feedback loop.

I get what up is saying. It's not not a problem with polytheism in a setting, it's more that you can't have a medieval setting with a bunch of religions coexisting happily. Religious intolerance is the standard, where even small differences in dogma can spark bloody religious wars.

Polytheism is all right if it's all under a single church, like the church of the seven in GoT. But ancient Greek style each city state picking it's own god and temples doesn't really work if you want the medieval flavor.

I'd expect the church in DA hates mages because it was mages who used magic bullshit to get to heaven and say hi to God but soon as they stepped in everything turned evil and God became Satan. More or less.

Wynne was nice so long as you didn't play as a mage who was happy to be free.

If you were a mage who was happy to be out of the prison library and had no intention of going back she was insufferable.

Both of my playthroughs I ended up killing her because she didn't want Morrigan going in the mage tower. I didn't know she was a possible party member.

> ASOIAF
Oh, like that time when there was this huge crusade against the warlock of Qarth and shadowbinders of Asshai... Wait, no, that didn't actually happen. Magic users are not hated in ASOIAF, and they certainly aren't opressed by not-catholic church.

Should have invested in ~persuasion~!

I thought I had, was a pretty suave motherfucker. For whatever reason though she just didn't give a fuck. Don't really remember why, been a while.

In a setting where gods ARE Big Sky Men, religions as fanclubs of these gods are more believable than "ebul catholic church and dindu mages" DA crap.

Stepping away from DA for a moment, if people looked at my DnD game, they would probably say it is pretty medieval. there is plate and there is maille, swords and crossbows, nobles and priests and such. But I purposefully made society not medieval. Feudalism is pretty much only practices out in the wild east. the farmers of the western kingdoms and the southern kingdoms are yeomen skilled in arms. Noble families are spread out, such that one family might have branches in half a dozen kingdoms. And the kingdoms themselves are very centralized, with royal standing armies in addition to the yeomen militias and the private armies of the houses. They are also based on constitutions somewhat Magna carta inspired.

As a result of this interconnectedness, the western kingdoms seldom war with each other. it does happen sometimes, such as when a witch from Vermain murdered the uncle of the king of Nevarsis, but this is the first war between western kings in decades.

And there are gods aplenty, mostly congregated around the family and friends of the royal god Corwentus. And each god has their own priests and temples and knightly orders. And none have a problem with magic. Why?

Because it isn't fucking Medieval Europe. It is a fantasy world, and while I try to keep a comparatively high level of basis in how people have really acted in the past and what they have accomplished, I do not take sole inspiration from one era. there are Ramanesque bath houses side by side with Renaissance banks, and nobody gives a damn.

What a fedora tipping fantasy

Makes no difference.

I can't remember the exact conversation but it went something like this

>Do you miss the Circle?
>No
>I'm sure that when all this is over and you've had chance to think about things you will realize it was your home
>It was my prison
>Even so you will come to miss it and in time walk through it's doors returning to family and friends
>I'm free. I'm never going back.
>You say that now but as you grow older you will feel differently
>I will be dead before I go back to that prison.

And then after another trigger event we go through a similar conversation.

Then she has a go at me for fucking Morrigan because keep eye on job and she's the wrong sort of Mage. Wrong sort presumably meaning "doesn't have Stockholm Syndrome".

Then I make a snarky comment when she tells me about how happy she was when she first came to the Circle.

Then she tells Alistair about how she did have a son who would be about his age but the Templars took him from her when he was a few months old.

And then we have to go through a quest about her first pupil. An elf who ran away to join the Dalish because she was an insufferable cunt and the Templars chased after and refused to tell her if they had cut him down because her sadness amused them.

My conclusion was that Wynne was over the ~60(?) years institutionalized to the point where she couldn't comprehend the idea of escaping the shit hole she lived in and needed to construct rose tinted brain filters to cope.

I have no adequate picture so have a Requiem page.

>Beowulf
>Siegfried
>ancient times

Looking it up I slightly goofed.

> The Chantry holds that in -395 Ancient seven Magisters Sidereal, each a High Priest to one of the Old Gods, physically entered the Golden City. They did so at the behest of their gods to open "the unreachable gate" in exchange for "power and glory beyond all reckoning". Reputedly the spell required two-thirds of the lyrium in the Tevinter Imperium as well as the blood of several hundred slaves. But instead of the dragons the mages found the Maker himself upon the throne of heaven. The City turned black and the magisters were cast out as the first darkspawn, inadvertently causing the First Blight.

In fairness, she might genuinely have believed it to be her best option in life. Mages in Dragon Age have a lot in common with 40k psykers, with unstable powers that tap into a different realm of existence (the Fade is basically a slightly less shit version of the Warp), a high risk of possession, and a metric ton of religious stigma. Psykers get a raw deal in the Imperium too, but the vast majority still stay loyal (or get eaten by Emps).

I'm pretty tired of templars / mage conflict by now. Really hope that the next title will take the possible decision of disbanding Templars into account. And since we got us a crazy apostate as the next antagonist and some Tevinter action, things just might get interesting. But not really. It's just what I tell myself at night.

I'm hoping the main conflict will be Qunari vs Tvinter and you have to try and decide what side to choose or go it independent.

But then I also hope there is the option of playing a Tranquil because staring down kings, and emperors and demons and angry blood mages with the same deadpan would be pretty fun.

It would also give you the option of informing mad warlords and shit that you are going to kill them, scatter their armies, bring low their nations, visit ruination on their impenetrable fortress and build something less dysfunctional in it's place in a perfectly dispassionate and flat voice.

Would be interesting, now that we now that Tranquillity can be reversed. But never happening, muh dialogue wheel, muh three emotional states.

Dialogue wheel of little autism friendly pictures can stay. Just have it be replaced by something representing less emotional like
>Stubborn
>Compromise
>Capitulation

You can even have the romance option although it would be surrendering to the advances of another character or NPC for reason of their needs rather than having any of your own needs or indeed being capable of having your own needs in this regard.

You would get nerf to damage output because of lack of any aggression but also immunity to anything that fucks with your perceptions magically as well as a mild bonus against demons and other Fade shit. Also certain class specialization would be out of bounds like Reaver and Berzerker and any sneaky shit class that involves semi-supernatural abilities.

Also increase squad morale in spooky places because you are the rock of certainty that's too brain damaged to feel fear.

For the Obligatory Fade Level there would be significant damage to fade creatures and whatever brought you there more willing to let you leave so long as you promise to fuck off and never come back.

Possible better relations with the Qunari as you are most definitely safe and dangerously reasonable. Treated like shit by the 'Vints for obvious reasons.

>Nothing triggers me more than medieval-esqe fantasy setting in which Wizards,warlocks and blood mages are running around with no religious consequences, while at the same time polytheism exists.
How does magic contradict with polytheism? Monotheism maybe, as in the three major monotheistic religion God has a monopoly on the whole "breaking the natural order" thing, but polytheism?

I understand this kind of thinking in a monotheistic setting where magic comes only in two flavors: miracles and heresy.

I don't think he meant that polytheism existing should clash with warlocks and wizards running around freely, but rather that the two concepts clash with the idea of a medieval pseudo-european fantasy setting.

The not-Catholic church hates magic, they're just kind of limp wrested and ineffectual everywhere for the majority of the series.

>but rather that the two concepts clash with the idea of a medieval pseudo-european fantasy setting.
No idea where that idea would come from, considering fantasy settings are far more likely to be polytheistic than monotheistic. Unless OP wants to argue that most fantasy isn't "really" fantasy, just like how communism has never really been tried.

>the chantry holds

That's just the official story

in DA3 they reveal that the mages found God's throne empty when they walked in. IMO the lore is really interesting, pity they didn't expand on this

Nobody even believes magic is real in asoiaf

Didn't they say that in DA1? I recall the question of which version was true being a point back then

But there are ultra-powerful sky men, and they have told mortals why the world exists

Shhh, you're offending his "invisible omnipotent sky-daddy's littlest boy" sensibilities.

I played it a bunch of times and don't remember that. I do remember some people saying the mages were tricked into going there as opposed to mages being evil and ambitious

At least the first DA was very 40k like regarding its magicans. They were powerful as fuck, but constantly besieged by demons who were out for weak points.
In the mage intro a demon will even tell you that this will never stop even tho you bested one today.

>in DA3 they reveal that the mages found God's throne empty when they walked in
That's pretty interesting.

>Didn't they say that in DA1?
I don't recall. Mostly what I do recall is "dudes went to heaven and that ruined shit for the rest of us".

>in DA3 they reveal that the mages found God's throne empty when they walked in
>In DA3
Nigga they already hinted this in Awakening and you hear this from the mouth of the BBEG in DA2.

In Awakening you meet the Architect who pretty much lies through his teeth the whole time and only if you side with the Mother in the main conflict of the game you find out that he has been playing you and that he is actually one of the original Magisters who entered the Black city (just like Corypheus). He was also a High Priest of one of the High Dragons (again just like Corypheus).
Anyway, it was the Dragons who actually persuaded the Magisters to enter the Fade and enter the Golden City, only when they arrived it turned out to be a Black City and that there was no god. So the Tevinter have been basically played by the Dragons they worshipped only with no explanation so far was to why.
It also heavily implied that the Dragons were the ons who showed the Tevinter Humans how to use magic after the Elves zero-summed.
>That's pretty interesting.
Its not. If you still haven't figured out that literally every event in DA can be explained with MAGES ARE DICKS it doesnt surprise me that someone as dense as you thinks anything about DA Lore is good. Like, the whole setting literally boils down to MAGES ARE DICKS.

>The world is the Warp ruled by Elven Godking Wizards who constantly fight each other and are general dicks
>Dicks on such a scale that it makes Tevinter look like Sandbox-Bullies
>One of the Elven Godking Wizard decides that shit sucks
>Tricks the others into giving up their magic in this artifact thing
>Decides to split the Warp into the Fade and the Real World which removes most of the Magic from the Real World.
>Elven cities get fucked up because everything was magic
>Elves get fucked up and become mortal because everything was magic

The End.

> Its not. If you still haven't figured out that literally every event in DA can be explained with MAGES ARE DICKS it doesnt surprise me that someone as dense as you thinks anything about DA Lore is good.
I only played Origins. Never got around to playing Awakening and everything after looked like shit. Sorry.

Fucking kek.

Bet this is the big secret behind folks like Corypheus and the elves who became the Daliah pantheon.

DA setting was generic sjw-fedora-trash.

For most of human history, that's what religions were.

But SJWs hate hardline atheists.

just did it for the bants

More like "everyone is dicks".

The only big character that isn't an asshole and has never been an asshole is Alistair, our dumb-as-bricks spaghetti spilling meatshield.

If there's one thing I do like about DA's treatment of religion it's that at no point is it ever actually proven any of it is real. It's never quite disproven, either - there's always this shade of doubt. But whenever there's a miracle, there's some logical explanation that could be applied. When someone has a divine vision, well - it never has any knowledge they couldn't have gotten themselves and it's always possible they were just tripping balls. Whenever someone claims to have met the Maker or something, it turns out to just be a normal spirit or a mage or what have you. Templars use lyrium. Seekers use lyrium. Andraste was probably a slightly schizophrenic, yet undeniably charismatic mage.

Nobody gets clear, unquestionable powers from faith alone. Priests don't get magic unless they have magic like everyone else.

This leaves faith TO A QUESTION OF ACTUAL FAITH, and I think it makes for a so much more compelling storytelling choice. Especially in the first game, before the church went full evil and for every bigoted cleric and sanctioned charlatan you got someone like Leliana showing you how sometimes, deep faith itself, even without and cool powers behind it, can do real good. Or the Tranquil in the Circle Tower who makes some really compelling arguments about the benevolence of Tranquility. He's truly content with his lot. He takes real joy in his work, he feels better than before - who are you to tell him that's he's being oppressed?

Things went downhill the second game. The one thing they did right from there was in Trespasser, that reveals elven mythology is mostly misremembered accounts of a past far less utopic than the Dalish would like to imagine.

Holy shit. Literally Wargamehammer of 40,000 Thrones.

Jokes aside, it does sound kinda fun.

The second game would have been so much better if EA hadn't forced the wizard boss battle in.

DA2 was supposed to just be about Hawke's family living their life, while the head Templar was slowly going insane from an evil artifact that Hawke gave her unknowingly.

EA thought that was "too little content" (oh the irony) and wanted a second boss battle in, which meant they had to turn the head wizard into a bad guy in the end game, and it just comp,etely ruined the ending of the game.

>Glorantha is a pretty shit setting, desu. It's horribly dull, like sitting in for a history lecture except that it's some guy's history fanfiction.
Opinions. I love glorantha because some parts are very fluffed out making for great starting-areas or areas to return to while leaving large swathes of the world untouched so the dm can run wild in it. Glorantha is most usefull if you have the players just run around doing shit instead of listening to huge loredumps.

DA2 screwed up with mages in general, not just that one boss. Meredith was meant to be crazy but she really wasn't wrong, pretty much all of them were ready to slit their wrists and/or gargle demon cock at the slightest provocation. I don't think that bit of lore about Kirkwall being the site of some giant ritual justifies it because they never actually did anything with that plotline, even in the DLC.

Speaking of the DLC, fuck that one with Felicia Day.
>"oh yeah this paper is actually a giant list of qunari spies"
>"but we can't release it because they have families, think of the children!"
>pick the "fuck no gimme that" option
>"oh you're such a kidder bye bye now"
>you just fucking let her go

>Meredith was meant to be crazy but she really wasn't wrong, pretty much all of them were ready to slit their wrists and/or gargle demon cock at the slightest provocation.

Uh, Meredith WAS meant to be crazy and be wrong.

That was the whole point of the original story. She was completely wrong, because she was sitting on some fucking evil red lyrium idol the entire time.

That being said, that idea never really came through, because thanks to EA, Bioware had to devote storytime away from Meredith's descend into madness and needed to devote more time in "oooooh im an evil mage teehee".

The entire point of mages AND templars just being sidelined together as Meredith went insane was replaced by a dumb mass-marketable casual-friendly "pick blue pill or pick red pill" binary choice.

I know she was meant to be crazy and wrong. But the way they wrote it did a bad job of showing the latter because there were like... four mages in Kirkwall that weren't 100% deserving of a purging.

>waaaaaahhhhhh!!!!! TAKE MY BAIT TAKE MY BAIT TAKE MY BATE!

Whatever, man.

>playing any dragon age game since awakening

>the ultra-powerful sky men believe in more ultra-powerful sky men that created them
>the more ultra-powerful sky men believe that they, too, were created by similar beings
>infinite succession of ultra-powerful sky men creating ultra-powerful sky men

It's ultra-powerful sky men all the way up.

That's EA's fault.

They wanted an easy binary choice that appealed to Templarfags and Magefags.

EA for some reason thinks a good RPG is about meaningless colour-coded binary choices, instead of the murkier choices what made DAO in my opinion so great.

First one was good even if generic, second has some good characters, third has... Pretty graphics I guess?

Wargs are largely hated and feared.

>ancient powerful mages use blood magic to break into the literal city of god
>find the throne of god is empty
>are cursed into twisted demons for their hubris
>become the source of corruption in the world and turn even lesser gods into grotesque mockeries
>prompt several Blights
>careless mages continue to use magic without safety precautions and turn themselves into monsters
>powerful mages make stronger, more dangerous monsters

>cheap source of drama

ISHYGDDT

> Implying Awakening was good

>divine magic should not exist
>There should be just "miracle magic", reserved for holy people and prophets

So you renamed something. Good for you.

I second this, but with some added doubt about whether Bioware as a studio has perhaps also simply turned to shit now, after so many years under the yoke.

But... he's just as much a sarcastic asshole as the rest of the group.

Sarcastic? Yes. Asshole? No.

OP either troll Catholics or troll Pagans, don't try having it both ways. If you are lukewarm I will spit you out.

Shale's not a dick. Except to birds. And Varric's alright.

I don't doubt that EA rushed the game and meddled in places, but you think some EA suit popped in every time they were working on a mage quest and said "no, too grey, more blood magic!"?

Nah, Bioware just isn't what it used to be. The writers made a lot of bad calls and have their heads too far up their asses to notice. Just look at how they handled people calling out the Leliana retcon.
>n-no you're all wrong the players only THOUGHT they decapitated her don't question our universe!

>he feels better than before
>he feels

> tfw too intelligent to support mages

But when Michael Kirkbride does it, it's supposed to be a philosophical statement.

>He believed Cory in the House
>He believed the ramblings of a deluded monster

Shit dude you only got like 5 WIS

Well, the TES universe is just weird. They have integrated game mechanics, bugs and retcons as in-universe events.

You cannot compare the two.

Feelings=\=emotions. Not my problem the English language is limited and doesn't have a proper word for "experience emotion" that's different from "experience feelings".

Well profane magic is meant to be more like a science, with its theories and limitations while divine magic is lol don't need to explain shit it just works. The first one is repeatable and predictable, the second one is one-off miracles because goddidit.