>Bob Cauthron wrote:
>
>> IMC, the elder gods are not the gods that predate the current ones.
>> They are the primordial, incomprehensible beings who existed for who
knows
>> how long. They are beyond gods, and worshippers are not necessary for
them
>> to maintain power in any way. After eons passed, then came the "first"
set
>> of BR deities. By this time the true elder gods had more or less moved
on,
>> for whatever reasons. So there was no conflict there.
>
>I did something very similar to that in my non-BR, FRish campaign. The
Elder
>gods (called the Elderon) were beings that embodied concepts like matter,
>energy, good, evil, entropy, chaos and law. It was their interaction that
>created the universe in the mythology of that world, and led to the
creation of
>beings like greater gods, titans, etc. not to mention the worlds, planes
and
>such.
>
>My question, however, is how does your view of these elder gods interact in
a BR
>campaign? In BR, the gods are much more proximate than in another campaign
>world, but even in the "high magic" setting of the campaign for which I
used the
>Elderon, they remained remote, conceptual beings who never interacted at
all
>with the PCs. Does these beings have any influence at all in your BR
campaign?
>
>Gary


I agree with what you, and most others are saying. In the BR campaign
set, the gods have always been active in the affairs of the mortals. In
different ways and varying degrees.
The campaign that I have going has been modified with regards to that
setup. I do not like "god-active" worlds, especially those that encourage
pcs' to become participants of that. Therefore, I created an archaic
beings - elder gods - younger gods system in which the gods are
participating in world affairs, but with the memory of what happened in the
past. While there are troubled periods with this, the current gods try to
make this work.
This is out-of-br world here, but I use the hero-god method that was
vaguely described in the long-ago issues of the Dragon magazine. I think
this is near-perfect for the BR world, with alterations and modifications.
This is how the current gods described in BR are placed IMC. Note that gods
are gods in my eyes, and that to mortals, definitive differences are almost
impossible to discern. Which explains why there is so much information about
deities, religions, and cults, from all sorts of viewpoints.
Most of the archaic beings have moved on from Cerilia. Some have a
distant, remote interest. There are three that have an active interest,
mainly due to their followers. All three beings have mortals who worship
them and "act in their name." Two have organized religions that are
generally accepted by the populace, and one has to remain hidden due to its
disreputable nature. The one thing they all have in common is developing
presences in the Shadow World, which the younger gods prefer to be left
alone. So there is the potential for serious conflict there.