Religion; fact or belief?

[Obnoxious Hydra]

Apologies if this belongs better in Homebrew Design, but I think this can fit in this section without breaking any rules.


Anyway, when people are making worlds with established religion, do you prefer to make it so that;
a) The world has a set of active, real gods, which are proven to exist, regardless of whether they're active or not,
b) The world has multiple religions which believe in different gods, of which none, some or all are real but nobody knows.

Also, for the sake of simplicity, a world like the OOTS world where there are several seperate groups of gods, all worshipped seperately but known to be real, will be included with a).


I think most fantasy worlds have real gods; there's not really any fantasy worlds which come to mind that have multiple religions, other than the Elder Scrolls universe, inwhich there are a set of real gods who are worshipped by different names around the world.

Most of my early homemade worlds also had proven gods, but recently I've been becoming more fond of low-magic worlds, and so I've found that multiple belief systems fits better, and can also make for interesting storylines with things like crusades.

[Yora]

I don't personally like "physical gods", like they are presented in D&D or how they appear in Greek myth.

In a world where mortals have magic powers and there's a lot of demons and angels, such gods aren't really special. They simply are mages or angels who are really really powerful, but they can't really do anything that everybody else could potentially do, if they trained at magic long enough.

I also don't like gods who design and engineer the universe to work by specific rules they chose. Instead I prefer it, when the gods have to work within natural laws even they can't overcome.
Shaping the lands and enhancing primitive vermins to civilized humanoids is okay, but if they designed everything from scratch, everything would be perfect and there is no motivation for them to do anything. If they created people, why would they create them in a way that they can be disobedient to the gods? Why construct a universe with weak points that can only hurt the gods?
But if the gods have limitations of what they start with and how much they can change it, such things become justified.

Religion becomes most interesting, when it influences how a character interpretes and judges situations that happen around him. Do we have a problem? Is everything fine? Does something have to be stopped? Should we assist in doing it? Have I made a mistake? Should I be tollerant? Should I try to get people to take a different oppinion?
These situations arise when you have evidence about the nature of the universe, life, souls, forces of god and evil, but which does not automatically lead to a single possible conclusion.

"One man stabs a knife into another mans chest. The other man falls to the ground and is dead." This is a fact, everyone has seen it, nobody has doubts about it, the man who did it does not deny it.
But what could it mean?
"One man mugged another and killed him to get his purse."
"One man was mugged and stabbed his attacker to save his own life."
"One man carried out the death sentence passed for a crime the other commited."
"One man carried out the death sentence passed for a crime the other did not commit."
"One man had succumbed to a wasting illness and the other showed him mercy."
"One man was possessed by a demon and his own soul destroyed, and another killed the body to send the demon back to hell."
The possibilities are endless, and all of them would mean very different things for how you would judge the mans action.

And I think that's a great way to handle Religion in fiction. There are some things that pretty much everyone observes and agrees on, but there are many different ideas about the context in which these supernatural things exist and in what relation they are with each other.
For rich religions, I think the best starting point is to not allow for "normal conversations" between mortals and gods. Gods have to think in patterns and concepts that a mortal mind simply can't grasp and even if the gods to communicate with mortals, they can only provide a terribly simplefied version of what they actually mean. And then you get to the next stage where the mortals argue with each other what these revelations mean and how to best put them into mortal language to share with other people.

Filling the gaps with what one thinks to be most likely or plausible to be true, and the implications for what is right and wrong are where Religion can add the most to a fictional world and also be the most fascinating.

[akma]

My gods tend to be real. Real and extremly powerfull - their mere presence destroys worlds.
However, gods are not the only beings worshipped in my main setting, and there are a few non godly beings that are real, but completly diffrent from what they are believed to be.

There are beings that were created to mock the worshipping of gods, and their intent is to get their believers to die in a way that will "harm" their "cause" (according to their oppinion, the ultimate goal of a worshipper is to die for their god). They tend to claim they are gods of something that doesn`t exist.

There are also beings who worship what is basically a garguntan version of themselves, having diffrent theories on why they abondoned them and how they can get them back, all wrong.

In a diffrent setting beings worship planets and other space stuff, but I haven`t decided if those things are alive or not.

[Wyntonian]

In the setting in my signature, Patria, there are several different religions. They have priests who can cast spells. They sometimes perform miracles. But there are no gods whatsoever.

That doesn't stop crusades, prayers, the power of faith or holy warriors to lose an ounce of their power, though. One of the largest nations is a theocracy. Every ruler has some variation of divine right (Blessing of ancestors, regent of god, "direct" line of "heavenly" emperor and collectively chosen as the ruling class, respectively), and religious conflicts are commonplace.

Instead of deities, there's a whole range of spirits; elemental, natural, ancestral and animistic.

There's also some Fey Lords, who wield power on par with a minor demigod (or, y'know, 20th level wizard), but they're tightly focused. Some are amused to have little cults spring up around them, and you might see a rural housewife leaving a bowl of cream out for the wood sprites.

So, in conclusion, I asked myself "what would literal deities add that I want?" and the answer was.... nothing.

[Salbazier]

I think most fantasy worlds have real gods; there's not really any fantasy worlds which come to mind that have multiple religions, other than the Elder Scrolls universe, inwhich there are a set of real gods who are worshipped by different names around the world.


Eberron. In fact, option B fit how religions normally described in Eberron.

As for my preference, I like most a world where religions are rather like the (modern) real world. So, something like B. Lots of religion with people having disagreement over who got it right. There may or may not be a 'real' truth about the nature of divinity and the world (which may or not be relevant) but is not something everyone in the world readily accept as 'fact'.

I don't like Anthromorphic gods in greek style, because.., yeah like Yora said. They don't feel special/mystical/divine enough. I don't think I ever made a pantheon of gods (usually I made monotheistic religion. I have at least one world where shamanism is quite dominant) but if I do I would model it like Eberron's Sovereign Host. They would be more.. 'abstracted' and 'mysterious' is the best words I can think of.