Quote from: Old One Eye;794022You are peddling an incredibly narrow campaign milieu.

Imagine a milieu where the souls of the dead do not go anywhere.  They flit around the natural world alongside the living.

Imagine a milieu where there are no souls and magic is only believed in by the delusional or ignorant; that's what I play for the most time. It's no more narrow, sci-fi is way more expansive than fantasy, there are rules for building spacecraft and generating star systems, etc..

Personally, imagining where people's souls are trapped here sounds terrible, I'd rather not. Then this plane of existence becomes hell, or purgatory at least.

What I find interesting is the people seem to be object to the ideas of evil overall; imo that's the moral relativism I mention in my first post. I general don't play with alignment, and when I do, it's more of a guide as to personal motivation. Evil exists; I have seen it in the real world, there is no misunderstanding there. If this is the hill I have set my flag upon, so be it. It may sound absolutist, but at least you know where I stand.

Quote from: Old One Eye;794022You are peddling an incredibly narrow campaign milieu.

Imagine a milieu where the souls of the dead do not go anywhere.  They flit around the natural world alongside the living.

Of course, nobody wants to be an incorporeal phantasm that cannot interact with anything; years of that will drive any soul mad. Commons practice among everyone with the means is to purchase an insurance product from the necromancer guild such that when you die, a necromancer stitches your soul back into your corpse.  Middle class folk can only afford the zombie policy; wealthier folk may be a mummy or vampire.  The poor, well, they sign on to the policy that brings them back as an indentured undead bound to the necromancer.  Even for the poor indentured undead, getting your soul stitched back in is considered a universal good in the milieu, so you can keep on keeping on.

YEAH.  That's exactly what I was saying.

My game needs necromancers to allow the souls to move on.  SOme Necromancers are evil, and use these souls.  Some are Neutral, and some are good who help the souls leave.

Quote from: LordVreeg;794028YEAH.  That's exactly what I was saying.

My game needs necromancers to allow the souls to move on.  SOme Necromancers are evil, and use these souls.  Some are Neutral, and some are good who help the souls leave.

   This carries an interesting implication for religion, since maintaining the order of the universe (such as the barrier between life and death) and caring for the well-being of souls is traditionally a religious or quasi-religious role. Are the necromancers in your game religious functionaries, or rivals to the priesthood? Or have they largely supplanted the priests?

Quote from: dragoner;794020Bullshit. Fuck off you moron. Go play you hippy elf game like a wuss. Don't expect the rest of us to join you. I'm not falling all over myself to make excuses.

Um.
Dragoner, 'Don't expect the rest of us to join you', implies that you are speaking from a position that enjoys the majority of support.  
Most of the posts seem to be of the anti-Dragoner absolutism variety.

People accusing you of trolling, whether correct or not, well-describes the opinion of your posts.

Quote from: Will;794024Ah, so definitely a troll. Ok, no reason why the rest of us can't have a fun thread.

Old One Eye:
I had a setting idea I wanted to try out where the dead go to the 'land of the dead'... which, like in some ancient beliefs, was a literal place. Or perhaps multiple places.

I wasn't sure whether I wanted to make a big kingdom of the dead that undead priests came from to collect the dead and bring them back, or perhaps multiple necropoli guarded over by the undead to keep the bothersome living out of, or maybe a combination.

On another tack, I found the depiction of High Cromlech interesting, the land of the dead from China Mieville's 'The Scar.' Where undead dwell, and where vampires turn out to be the scrub underclass that the other undead consider filth.

Go ahead and block me then, or feel free to fuck off and never post to me or read my posts again. I haven't to you since your stupid lead bullshit.

Quote from: LordVreeg;794030Um.
Dragoner, 'Don't expect the rest of us to join you', implies that you are speaking from a position that enjoys the majority of support.  
Most of the posts seem to be of the anti-Dragoner absolutism variety.

People accusing you of trolling, whether correct or not, well-describes the opinion of your posts.

Feel free in never posting to me or reading my posts, then.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;794029This carries an interesting implication for religion, since maintaining the order of the universe (such as the barrier between life and death) and caring for the well-being of souls is traditionally a religious or quasi-religious role. Are the necromancers in your game religious functionaries, or rivals to the priesthood? Or have they largely supplanted the priests?

http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/22871895/Migration%20of%20the%20Spirit

Sort of in the category of a subset, in that there are different types of magic that fuel magic.  Necromancy is tied to almost all of the religions, but not all Necromancers are tied to religion.  It is a type of magic, a very important one.  

Also, it needs to be understood that caster in the setting normally learn to pull power from many different sources as they develop, though they have to specialize to some degree, as more powerful magics pull heavily from the main source of that type of magic.

"He points to the walls, "Aeromancy ... Pyromancy ... Hydromancy ... Geomancy ... these will be some of your early studies."  As he says each word, a picture or symbol on the side walls flares, rumbles, whistles or gurgles.  "This will be followed by some study of the conduit to the Wells of Life ... and Death ... then the Font of Entropy on the Eighth House ... and the Font of Logic on the First."  He draws a breath as symbols farther down the walls sizzle and flare, and notices a murmur through the flat-roofed chamber.  He pauses his obviously well-rehearsed and probably well-used speech, raking the room with a suddenly sharp gaze.  "Study begins now, boys and girls.  You are no longer waiting for classes to start, so listen well."
 
He clears his throat.  "Now then... your last areas of study will be in Animism ... Mentalism ... Necromancy ... and Artifice."  His voice regains the pedantic flow it had possessed earlier, as he warms back into the subject.  "And," he chuckles, "One never knows.  Perhaps a new conduit may be discovered!"

From the introduction to the Collegium Arcana game, where the players take the role of first year students in a huge and ancient school of magic...

Why on earth are people getting so heated?

I purposely left the bloody wording loose so that people could talk about what they fucking liked - i didn't expect an argument about what the topic should be about and who is 'right' or 'wrong'. Take that shit and associated word-games back to RPGnet where it belongs.This site is about gaming.

Quote from: dragoner;794027What I find interesting is the people seem to be object to the ideas of evil overall; imo that's the moral relativism I mention in my first post. I general don't play with alignment, and when I do, it's more of a guide as to personal motivation. Evil exists; I have seen it in the real world, there is no misunderstanding there. If this is the hill I have set my flag upon, so be it. It may sound absolutist, but at least you know where I stand.

Interestingly enough, in the generic 5e milieu, it is your position which would require moral relativism.  Good and evil are objective in 5e DnD.  Animate Dead is objectively neither good nor evil.  You must apply moral relativism in generic 5e DnD to get to the position where animating the dead is considered evil.

Quote from: Old One Eye;794042Interestingly enough, in the generic 5e milieu, it is your position which would require moral relativism.  Good and evil are objective in 5e DnD.  Animate Dead is objectively neither good nor evil.  You must apply moral relativism in generic 5e DnD to get to the position where animating the dead is considered evil.

Maybe. But if expressing an opinion is just going to get me called names by the peanut gallery I'm rapidly losing interest in the topic.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;794029This carries an interesting implication for religion, since maintaining the order of the universe (such as the barrier between life and death) and caring for the well-being of souls is traditionally a religious or quasi-religious role. Are the necromancers in your game religious functionaries, or rivals to the priesthood? Or have they largely supplanted the priests?

Maybe, maybe not.  If souls are detectable and quantifiable, necromancy could very easily be a science.  See Ghostbusters.  Depends on what the DM prefers.

In D&D 3e, Animate Dead is Necromancy [Evil].
In D&D 5e, Animate Dead is 'not a good act and most often used by evil casters.' Which suggests some possible gray.

In Unknown Armies you probably animate the dead by fucking a corpse or something insane, so it's probably evil and destroys your sanity.

Quote from: dragoner;794043Maybe. But if expressing an opinion is just going to get me called names by the peanut gallery I'm rapidly losing interest in the topic.

I promise not to call you names.  I would be dissappointed in my own level of maturity were I to stoop to such.  

As for the opinion you are expressing, it is a perfectly fine and valid opinion for any given campaign.  However, as rpgs are games of the imagination, anything I can imagine is viable for whatever game I choose to run.  As such, it is extremely easy for me to imagine a milieu where necromancy is an objective good, objective evil, or objectively neither and subject to the milieu inhabitant's moral relativism.  As I am currently waiting to run the next session of generic 5e DnD Hoard of the Dragon Queen this afternon after watching my alma mater hopefully get a homecoming win, the game I am running takes the moral relativity stance on necromancy.

Quote from: One Horse Town;794041Why on earth are people getting so heated?

I purposely left the bloody wording loose so that people could talk about what they fucking liked - i didn't expect an argument about what the topic should be about and who is 'right' or 'wrong'. Take that shit and associated word-games back to RPGnet where it belongs.This site is about gaming.

We were doing fine till someone took it to trollsville. Hell we even enguaged THAT in open minded discussion till it went off the tracks.

Is there good necromancy? In 5th ed there sure is. PHB even points that out.

QuoteThe School of necromancy explores the forces of life, death and undeath. As you focus your studies in this tradition you learn to focus the energies that animate all living things.

and

QuoteNot all necromancers are evil, but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies.

Raise Dead itself is a necromantic spell. As is Resurrection and True Resurrection. So is Clone and Astral Projection. Hell. Blindness/Deafness is necromancy! Causing someone to catch a cold (Contagion) is necromancy.

Quote from: dragoner;794014No, the desecration of graves, is from the part of raising the dead, so you actually don't know the total meaning if you think it's all about Ouija boards. It's not pertinent to the op anyways.

You don't know what you're talking about. Necromancy literally means only "diviniation through communication with undead spirits". "Raising the dead" as applied to necromancy is a creation of fantasy fiction and games of the late 20th century only. Its nothing to do with the "total meaning" except inside your head and assumptions based on rpgs rather than any sort of actual research. And since this has already been discussed, your ignorance on the matter is obviously willful, so have fun with that.