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The Jack
2018-09-27, 09:37 PM
Keep in mind that we're not allowed to discuss real world religion.

We could probably point out that fictional religion X is similar to, say, A certain faith that dominated Europe, because of it's iconography/ clerical organizational structure/ etc, but I'm pretty sure we couldn't discuss the merits and cons of that faith or whether fictional X is an accurate representation of real world Y.

I for one, really, really got into Maglubiyet's pantheon the time I played a Hobgoblin. A terrifying overlord god, niche gods for that particular part of goblinoid society you like; plenty of opportunity for internal conflict and heresy but juxtaposed by a lawfulness/fear that keeps you in line. You can work out so much about another goblinoid by their own preferences; There's one for every alignment your particular goblinoid race favours; Hobs get a nice choice of L, LE and E. The Iconography of each god's great, with a terrifying executioner axe held over every other god's item. My favourite DnD pantheon I've read into.

I also love the Garou faith from WoD. Sure, the book of nod's nice and all, but the werewolf faith is:
A: metal as ****. You're saving mother earth from the big bad father Wyrm, the destroyer of a whacked out triat.
B: excellent propaganda for players to get riled up on. You're mother earth's chosen monsters, violently riding the world of evil is your sacred duty.
C: Very flawed, but not so much that it's immediately obvious to any new player.

oudeis
2018-10-10, 05:26 PM
Eberron is better at presenting religions and faith than just about any game I've seen. Theology and cosmology are so much deeper and more organically intertwined than other D&D world that there's scarcely any comparison. I wish I could come up with ideas half as creative as the Sovereign Host, the Dark Six, and the great Progenitor dragons that created the world. My favorite is the Silver Flame, though I have to admit I tend to scrub away some of the nuance and make them more the unadulterated good guys than they should be.

As good as Eberron is, Runequest is even better. The divine cults- they don't call them religions or faiths- are so detailed and so well thought-out you can almost see them existing in our world. They absolutely feel like authentic bronze-age mythologies.

I'll second you on religion in 'Werewolf'. I like it much better than 'Vampire' because it isn't as tied into specific real-world faiths. 'Mage' is about as good, but more Sci-Fi, 'Changeling' slightly worse, and while I'm impressed by 'Wraith', I just found it too bleak to play. I haven't really looked at any of the other White Wolf games.

Lacco
2018-10-11, 01:38 AM
Seeking.

Any kind of seeking.

Riddle-seeking. Or Seeking of Mr. Eaten's name.

Psyren
2018-10-11, 01:41 AM
I'm less a fan of Eberron's gods actually. I like a nice Celestial Bureaucracy, where the gods are active players (and empirically provable) but where the status quo is so clogged with procedure and red tape that they can barely get anything done on their own, thus needing to rely on adventurers and their churches to do most of the heavy lifting. In Eberron, every "deity" might as well just be an ideal or concept, which isn't inherently a bad thing but it's not really what I'm looking for in divinity either.

Satinavian
2018-10-11, 02:25 AM
I prefer those where gods are distant and communication with them is really difficult. Where not even priests that wield their power can really be sure about the gods wishes and can be very wrong. Where theologicians can argue about canon and dogma but never expect an answer from above and instead have to rely on scarce and cryptic instances of revelation and accounts of rare prophets (who also might have misunderstood stuff).

I also like if gods are less concerned with morality and more with their portfolio. So much so that they often seem more as a force of nature than a being with a will. Ideals and rules from the god should only really concern portfolios, everything else should come from culture/church.



That all said, i really dislike most of D&D religion with Eberrons take being the most tolerable of the bunch.

Pleh
2018-10-11, 07:22 AM
I'm less a fan of Eberron's gods actually. I like a nice Celestial Bureaucracy, where the gods are active players (and empirically provable) but where the status quo is so clogged with procedure and red tape that they can barely get anything done on their own, thus needing to rely on adventurers and their churches to do most of the heavy lifting. In Eberron, every "deity" might as well just be an ideal or concept, which isn't inherently a bad thing but it's not really what I'm looking for in divinity either.

Actually reminds me of that "ultimate Dragon Chess" with the funky name.

Puts a picture in my mind of a set of gods sitting down to play a game, which ends up generating many planes of reality, including the material. Over time, some of the stronger game pieces became aware they were in a game and started to learn some of the rules.

While the gods gradually have grown less and less powerful, not in ability, but in legal moves remaining that advancd their goals, the dragons have grown in power, having the advantage of entering the game late and possessing more short term goals and strategies.

Concrete
2018-10-11, 07:42 AM
I like Pathfinder's Abadar.

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Abadar

He's just such a great mix of divinity and completely mundane goals. A god of just bureaucrats, trustworthy merchants and competent rulers, neither good, nor evil.

He's boring in just that specific kinda way that tickles my imagination. He has a vault that contains a perfect example of everything ever built, ranging from (I imagine) the most excellent toothpick ever made all the way up to the most magnificent machine.

He has a holiday centered around tax collection for goodness sake! Such a magnificent dork.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-11, 09:03 AM
Many years ago, a friend of mine played a Monk of Wolvenar, a horribly underdefined god in Palladium Fantasy.

He sat down as turned almost EVERYTHING into a saying of Wolvenar. He spent time out of game thinking of these little epigrams, and would toss them out whenever he needed something to say.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-11, 09:58 AM
I also like if gods are less concerned with morality and more with their portfolio. So much so that they often seem more as a force of nature than a being with a will. Ideals and rules from the god should only really concern portfolios, everything else should come from culture/church.


Same here.




That all said, i really dislike most of D&D religion with Eberrons take being the most tolerable of the bunch.


The whole "a deity for every race, a deity for every alignment" thing is... so bad.

Pleh
2018-10-11, 10:56 AM
The whole "a deity for every race, a deity for every alignment" thing is... so bad.

I tend to downplay racial components when using the standard pantheon. Corellon, Moradin, Gruumsh, Lolth, Yondalla, et al tend to be depicted in my games as champions of their race who became demigods over time. They don't have huge importance to the world at large an more stand as icons of the culture they represent. You could meet them in the world, as most of them are longer lived from their pseudo divinity, but it would mostly be like meeting another PC who managed to max out their levels, spends most their time guiding their people as leader or adviser to the leader. Kord ends up in this category, too, though he tends to not have a specific racial culture devoted to him. Gets along great with various barbarian tribes who maybe don't have their own unique racial champion in the PHB.

I also downplay neutral deities to a lesser status. Boccob, Obed-Hai, Fharlagnhn, are forces of nature, but generally don't do much anything besides help maintain the status quo. They just strike me as rather passive divine personalities, which makes them rather bland to incorporate into stories. You could meet a super colossal avatar of Obed-Hai tending to a great forest like a garden and he might seem like a storm giant on steroids, because he is a nearly literal force of nature, but ultimately he's a lesser deity because he is so disinterested in the world the PCs occupy.

The real deities, in my view, are those that epitomize ideals that matter to the PCs much more directly. Heironeous and Hextor represent the conflict of law being protective or exploitative. Cuthbert and Olidammara represent the strict adherence to or defiance of the law. Pelor (with or without the Burning Hate interpretation) and Nerull fight one another over the very state of mortality (it's just that the Burning Hate Pelor leaves mortals in a much bleaker state of existence). These are the top tier deities in my stories; the ones that move and shake the world the PCs live in. Most everything else tends to be rather peripheral to their experience.

hotflungwok
2018-10-11, 12:27 PM
The whole "a deity for every race, a deity for every alignment" thing is... so bad.
The problem is that this is how humans make gods, a god for each region, a god for each ideal, a god for each unexplainable thing. They get mixed up and combined and repurposed every now and then, but it's all there. It makes the gods relatable. The more important gods also tend to be about more important things. If nature is really important in your area, guess what's going to get worshipped? Everything in your society revolves around cows? Guess what's going to be considered holy? It's also easier to get ferverous over some things than others. There's lots of paladins of Honor and Justice, and not so many of Boredom or Turnips. In a lot of mythologies the gods need worshipers, they get power from it. So the gods tend to be things people really believe in, again, the important stuff.

All these things produce the kinds of gods we see, and all else being equal the same thing would happen in a fantasy world. It's no good having a god of nuclear physics in the stone age, or a god of snigglefritz if no one knows what snigglefritz is.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-11, 12:56 PM
The problem is that this is how humans make gods, a god for each region, a god for each ideal, a god for each unexplainable thing. They get mixed up and combined and repurposed every now and then, but it's all there. It makes the gods relatable. The more important gods also tend to be about more important things. If nature is really important in your area, guess what's going to get worshipped? Everything in your society revolves around cows? Guess what's going to be considered holy? It's also easier to get ferverous over some things than others. There's lots of paladins of Honor and Justice, and not so many of Boredom or Turnips. In a lot of mythologies the gods need worshipers, they get power from it. So the gods tend to be things people really believe in, again, the important stuff.


This is getting into things that we probably can't discuss here, and for which specific examples just cause things to disappear, so I'm only going to say this and leave it.

The nice, neat, boxed and wrapped concept of deities with specific areas of interest and agreed-upon "domains" similar to what we see in most published D&D settings... are an artifact of shoddy 1800s "scholarship" and Bowdlerized middle-school textbook presentations, combined with the perceived needs of gaming.

Thinker
2018-10-11, 01:29 PM
A big problem with D&D-style gods is the idea of worship. Very few deities grew more powerful for being worshiped. Very few even cared about worship. Instead, they were appeased - sacrifice your favored goat to have a good harvest so Demeter knows you really love her, burn this incense before your sea voyage to avoid a sea monster because Poseidon likes its smell, etc. You wanted the gods to be placated. They might participate more actively with their chosen ones - Cuchulain, Heracles, etc.

As for the substance of D&D gods, some of them are OK, but many are superficial and bad. You have your racial gods. They're in my OK group because many groups certainly identified a patron deity of their homeland (Athena for Athens, Nanna for Ur, etc.), but they were often more than just a patron for a homeland. You would see priests performing a ceremony for Athena in Corinth, Thebes, and even Sparta if it was the right time of year or for the right outcome. Other gods are worse - gods of "Good" or "Law" for example. A god of Good appears in Celtic mythology, but that was really about being good at doing a lot of things. You did have gods who fought against chaos, but that was one part of one thing that they did.

While there are many tales of gods taking vengeance on the immoral, that morality was often tied to the beliefs of the culture of the people. Many similar gods were worshiped in Rome and in Greece, but the morality of the people was different. Compare Aeneas to Odysseus. Both are stories about returning (or creating) home. Aeneas is driven by duty to the gods and to his people and sacrifices his personal well-being in that pursuit. Odysseus is almost entirely self-interested and often abandons those who help him or who he is responsible for (no member of his crew makes it home with him). Odysseus is driven by personal glory - taking up the Trojan War in the first place. He is driven by revenge against his suitors. He is cunning and deceitful. Aeneas is forthright and dutiful. Both legends represent ideals of their culture, despite being about the same event. Both are the "good guys", even while being involved with the same gods and the same conflicts.

Kaptin Keen
2018-10-11, 01:59 PM
I've made one that I like.

See, there's The Pantheon - basically every deity you care to shake a stick at, I never give enough of a damn to flesh it out, I just deem that there's essentially a god for everything. All the temples are huge affairs dedicated to a random mess of different deities.

Then, there's the other gods.

The other gods are mortals who have ... transcended. They don't play by any of the rules. They don't have domains or spheres of influence, they have no churches, their names are secret, they have no set goals or anything of the sort. They're just always in the background, and I can be enormously annoying about not letting players get any closer to the truth.

But should anyone be interested enough, you can start the search for a seeker - that is, someone who knows a bit more.

There's only one way in: Trade. Find something one of the gods want, and trade that thing for a name - the name of The Ninth (cause ... there's nine of them, and you always get the lowest of them first).

The Nine are not out to help their seekers. They're pretty much out to help themselves - but they will trade fair (-ish) if you can provide them with something that interests them.

No player has yet delved very deep into this - but the concept works wonderfully as a background mystery. And eventually I'll succeed at tricking some poor bastard into learning more =)

Nifft
2018-10-11, 03:21 PM
Greyhawk did some interesting things.

- Overlapping pantheons; often multiple pantheons per race (if the race has multiple cultures). There is no "one true god of X".

- In-world syncretism; characters could recognize multiple gods as aspects of the same universal ideal / concept / divinity, and worshiping that syncretic composite worked.

- In-world ascension; characters could meet former mortals who became gods, some entirely through their own efforts. The nature of divinity was always somewhat mysterious.

- Ad-hoc pantheons; if you look at some setting books, you'll see locations listing which gods they venerate, and often those gods have been chosen from several different pantheons. Each location has its own mix of divinities (and associated holidays). Some gods are more common than others, but no gods are universal.

- Some near-monotheistic cultures: Baklunish religion, for example, and the Theocracy of the Pale.


The 3.5e PHB presentation of the "common pantheon" ignored a lot of Greyhawk's complexity.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-11, 03:27 PM
Greyhawk did some interesting things.

- Overlapping pantheons; often multiple pantheons per race (if the race has multiple cultures). There is no "one true god of X".

- In-world syncretism; characters could recognize multiple gods as aspects of the same universal ideal / concept / divinity, and worshiping that syncretic composite worked.

- In-world ascension; characters could meet former mortals who became gods, some entirely through their own efforts. The nature of divinity was always somewhat mysterious.

- Ad-hoc pantheons; if you look at some setting books, you'll see locations listing which gods they venerate, and often those gods have been chosen from several different pantheons. Each location has its own mix of divinities (and associated holidays). Some gods are more common than others, but no gods are universal.

- Some near-monotheistic cultures: Baklunish religion, for example, and the Theocracy of the Pale.


The 3.5e PHB presentation of the "common pantheon" ignored a lot of Greyhawk's complexity.

So Greyhawk did something a bit more "natural".

Why is it that Greyhawk feels buried under a bunch of other stuff and several layers of "generic-fication", when it sometimes sounds like a better setting than others that D&D iterations have promoted more aggressively?

Pleh
2018-10-11, 03:55 PM
So Greyhawk did something a bit more "natural".

Why is it that Greyhawk feels buried under a bunch of other stuff and several layers of "generic-fication", when it sometimes sounds like a better setting than others that D&D iterations have promoted more aggressively?

It may be more robust, but perhaps it wasn't quite as generic as the vanilla handbook was trying to be. The PHB definitely feels to me like it was trying to cite some useful default standards with plenty of room to ad lib rather than giving players a predefined setting.

"My cleric of pelor focuses on Pelor's sense of charity" rather than, "I am a cleric of the church of Rao." The flexibility of the concepts seems to me to be more of the intent, though I can see based on previous conversations why that would be less appealing to you.

Nifft
2018-10-11, 04:23 PM
So Greyhawk did something a bit more "natural".

Why is it that Greyhawk feels buried under a bunch of other stuff and several layers of "generic-fication", when it sometimes sounds like a better setting than others that D&D iterations have promoted more aggressively? Probably because it's specific and highly opinionated, and contains product identity stuff. Incidentally, that's an issue which I have with 5e's presentation too -- they default to one specific setting for their examples of generic stuff, yet that setting is very specific and highly opinionated.

The 3e team seemed to want to provide a toolkit for homebrewers, so they erred on the side of over-generic. They removed a lot of Greyhawk's complexity -- and that's fine, except insofar as it set expectations for overly simplistic settings.

They probably didn't see much value in writing yet another representation of a complex & organic setting -- I mean 2e was current when 3e was first being written, so their context was that finding good write-ups for Greyhawk was easy.



It may be more robust, but perhaps it wasn't quite as generic as the vanilla handbook was trying to be. The PHB definitely feels to me like it was trying to cite some useful default standards with plenty of room to ad lib rather than giving players a predefined setting.

"My cleric of pelor focuses on Pelor's sense of charity" rather than, "I am a cleric of the church of Rao." The flexibility of the concepts seems to me to be more of the intent, though I can see based on previous conversations why that would be less appealing to you.
Oh yeah. Greyhawk isn't generic. It's nuanced (if you dig a bit), and it can be interesting as an example of what organic growth might look like, but it's not a toolkit for homebrewers.

What they could have done instead of simplifying Greyhawk is provide examples of the types of things that Greyhawk did:
- Here are three small pantheons from different regions
- Here is how this one small town mix-and-match from the above 3
- Here is how this other large city mix-and-match
- Here is how a specific city-state with its own patron god integrates a few mix-and-match
- Here is a monotheistic religion
- Here is an animist religion
- Here are some ancestor worshipers
- Here is a godless religion

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-11, 05:32 PM
I have to say that I do prefer worlds that focus on religions than pantheons. The world I'm designing uses spirit worship and genius loci, but only particularly powerful spirits get actual cults dedicated to them (all local, although you're expected to at least respect the gods of neighbouring cults even though you don't worship them). This extends to one city having a cult dedicated to it's own genius loci. But what one river cult believes is very different to what anther believes, as is of their god manifests as a great fish, a naked person, a great serpent, or since other form.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-11, 06:07 PM
Probably because it's specific and highly opinionated, and contains product identity stuff. Incidentally, that's an issue which I have with 5e's presentation too -- they default to one specific setting for their examples of generic stuff, yet that setting is very specific and highly opinionated.

The 3e team seemed to want to provide a toolkit for homebrewers, so they erred on the side of over-generic. They removed a lot of Greyhawk's complexity -- and that's fine, except insofar as it set expectations for overly simplistic settings.

They probably didn't see much value in writing yet another representation of a complex & organic setting -- I mean 2e was current when 3e was first being written, so their context was that finding good write-ups for Greyhawk was easy.



Oh yeah. Greyhawk isn't generic. It's nuanced (if you dig a bit), and it can be interesting as an example of what organic growth might look like, but it's not a toolkit for homebrewers.

What they could have done instead of simplifying Greyhawk is provide examples of the types of things that Greyhawk did:
- Here are three small pantheons from different regions
- Here is how this one small town mix-and-match from the above 3
- Here is how this other large city mix-and-match
- Here is how a specific city-state with its own patron god integrates a few mix-and-match
- Here is a monotheistic religion
- Here is an animist religion
- Here are some ancestor worshipers
- Here is a godless religion

To me, the D&D iterations seem like very specific systems that beg for a fleshed-out setting that matches their quirks.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-12, 10:49 AM
A big problem with D&D-style gods is the idea of worship. Very few deities grew more powerful for being worshiped. Very few even cared about worship. Instead, they were appeased - sacrifice your favored goat to have a good harvest so Demeter knows you really love her, burn this incense before your sea voyage to avoid a sea monster because Poseidon likes its smell, etc. You wanted the gods to be placated. They might participate more actively with their chosen ones - Cuchulain, Heracles, etc.


But when you get right down to it, placation and propitiation are forms of worship. A sailor might not particularly LIKE Umberlee (she proudly takes the title "Bitch Queen", after all),but he offers to her because that helps keep him safe... and he offers to Valkur and Shaundakul for the same reason.

I think far more poisonous to D&D-style gods is not the concept of worship, but the pervasiveness of the idea of a patron deity... that the average person has a single deity on which they rely for most things, and that going to other deities for things in their purview is a betrayal of that. Do you need to ward away the cold to survive? Make a promise to Auril. Do you want to keep thieves away from your business? Sure, you offer to Helm, He Who Guards, but you also make an offering to Mask, so He keeps His thieves away from you. Scared of the Undead? Sure, pray to Lathander, who hates them... but also to Myrkul, who can keep them away from your home if you pay him.

1of3
2018-10-12, 11:13 AM
I think there are two vastly different things people look for gods or cults. If you like cults, you will love Faiths of Eberron. If you like gods, the Faerun approach might be more to your liking.

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-12, 11:29 AM
I think far more poisonous to D&D-style gods is not the concept of worship, but the pervasiveness of the idea of a patron deity... that the average person has a single deity on which they rely for most things, and that going to other deities for things in their purview is a betrayal of that. Do you need to ward away the cold to survive? Make a promise to Auril. Do you want to keep thieves away from your business? Sure, you offer to Helm, He Who Guards, but you also make an offering to Mask, so He keeps His thieves away from you. Scared of the Undead? Sure, pray to Lathander, who hates them... but also to Myrkul, who can keep them away from your home if you pay him.

I've found that patron deities can work, but it requires religions to be localised (you don't worship the 'god of X', but the god of your region), it requires gods to either work together or allow others a bit of dominion over their geographic area (or to not exist), and other such things. I want to go into a bit more detail, but I'll stray into real world religions (dead religions, but still), but the key point is that you need a setup where 'this is our god' works, which tends to mean you have to leave leave most 'god of X aspects' out of it (Indigo Jim might be more honourable than the always rambling Smiling Spider, but this doesn't mean that Jim is the 'god of honour' or Spider the 'god of talking'), and you essentially end up with a bunch of monotheistic religions that may or may not recognise the others as valid (as well as some potential religions that worship several of these deities).

I remember that when I first read the 3e Deities and Demigods book I thought loose pantheons and patron deities were cool, but these days I kind of get annoyed when I can't write my nonpriest character's religion as 'X pantheon'.


I think there are two vastly different things people look for gods or cults. If you like cults, you will love Faiths of Eberron. If you like gods, the Faerun approach might be more to your liking.

I have to say that I'm still looking to pick up a copy of the 3e Eberron book for exactly this reason. I adore cults/religions, I adore settings which have both deific and philosphical religions (essentially ones with and without actual 'god' figures), I adore settings where no one religion can actually claim to be objectively right, and I adore settings where my choice of religion can have social consequences.

Eberron is the one D&D setting that has all of that, and that makes me desperately want to play it even more than the pulp stylings or magitech (which are both cool, but secondary to the religions for me).

In many ways I've found out that I don't care about a cult's actual gods at all beyond a name. Sure, Lightning Christine might be X, Y, and Z, but more important to me when running a session or playing a character is the cult's tenants, holy days, potentially organisation and ranks, standing in society, and view of other religions. I need a name so characters have something to swear by, and some loose guidelines to how they're viewed are nice, but honestly the religion is more important than it's objects of worship.

Arbane
2018-10-12, 11:47 AM
I'm rather fond of two different BRP games and their approaches to religion.

RuneQuest has Glorantha, the only fantasy RPG setting I know of written by an practicing shaman, which has multiple overlapping occasionally-contradicting pantheons and the statement 'All Myths Are True'. A PC can join multiple cults to different gods (each of which is willing to provide different magic if you'll trade them power for it), but it'll take up a lot of valuable adventuring time. (You can't be a dedicated priest of more than one, there just isn't time.)

Stormbringer has Michael Moorcock's Gods of Law and Chaos and the Elemental Lords, and a system called 'Elan' to keep track of how they feel about the deeds you're doing. While you can boost it by worshipping them, it's possible to be favored by a god without ever having heard of them.

Thinker
2018-10-12, 11:56 AM
But when you get right down to it, placation and propitiation are forms of worship. A sailor might not particularly LIKE Umberlee (she proudly takes the title "Bitch Queen", after all),but he offers to her because that helps keep him safe... and he offers to Valkur and Shaundakul for the same reason.
I had in mind the idea of regular, frequent, communal religious ceremonies in temples and a personal connection with the divine when I said "worship", but you're absolutely right. Placation and propitiation are absolutely ways of worship.



I think far more poisonous to D&D-style gods is not the concept of worship, but the pervasiveness of the idea of a patron deity... that the average person has a single deity on which they rely for most things, and that going to other deities for things in their purview is a betrayal of that. Do you need to ward away the cold to survive? Make a promise to Auril. Do you want to keep thieves away from your business? Sure, you offer to Helm, He Who Guards, but you also make an offering to Mask, so He keeps His thieves away from you. Scared of the Undead? Sure, pray to Lathander, who hates them... but also to Myrkul, who can keep them away from your home if you pay him.

I agree with all of this. I don't even think that something like this would be difficult to implement in RPGs and gives religious characters so much more to work with.

Nifft
2018-10-12, 11:57 AM
I think far more poisonous to D&D-style gods is not the concept of worship, but the pervasiveness of the idea of a patron deity... that the average person has a single deity on which they rely for most things, and that going to other deities for things in their purview is a betrayal of that. Do you need to ward away the cold to survive? Make a promise to Auril. Do you want to keep thieves away from your business? Sure, you offer to Helm, He Who Guards, but you also make an offering to Mask, so He keeps His thieves away from you. Scared of the Undead? Sure, pray to Lathander, who hates them... but also to Myrkul, who can keep them away from your home if you pay him.

1e Clerics could do this -- there was no expectation of exclusivity until 2e specialty priests, which may have come from FR but I'm not sure.

3.x has given us pantheonic settings (e.g. Eberron).


I'd like it better if there were some kind of option like Exalted has, where being a priest means you're good at communicating with the gods & spirits, good at asking for favors / placating their emotions / demanding their submission -- not that you're dedicated to exactly one of them.

There's nothing wrong with also having a divine champion concept which is dedicated to one divinity, but having that be the expected norm is kinda toxic.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-12, 12:56 PM
I think far more poisonous to D&D-style gods is not the concept of worship, but the pervasiveness of the idea of a patron deity... that the average person has a single deity on which they rely for most things, and that going to other deities for things in their purview is a betrayal of that. Do you need to ward away the cold to survive? Make a promise to Auril. Do you want to keep thieves away from your business? Sure, you offer to Helm, He Who Guards, but you also make an offering to Mask, so He keeps His thieves away from you. Scared of the Undead? Sure, pray to Lathander, who hates them... but also to Myrkul, who can keep them away from your home if you pay him.


An absolutely crucial point -- the thing with polytheism presented as if it were a set of competing monotheisms (that kinda acknowledge each other's deities) makes me want to pull out the hair I have left.

Most people who held to polytheistic beliefs related to deities a bit like a gang of very powerful and spiteful "service providers", with overlapping services offered (so you could get TV from your phone provider or phone from your TV provider, or...), and a customer service system that would cut off your access or curse you with bad reception and lots of spam calls if you hit the wrong button or didn't call in or forgot to pay your bill.

Paleomancer
2018-10-12, 01:26 PM
I personally like Lovecraftian entities. Something about facing an entity that utterly dwarfs you and is so alien that human morality is potentially nonapplicable, is weirdly reassuring in a scary way (more like a natural disaster incarnate than a person). I tend to expect much more of more allegedly relatable deities (who I feel should know better), which is probably part of the reason I intensely dislike most D&D portrayals of deityhood (what I think about Faerun’s alleged gods is unprintable, and Dragonlance’s pantheon is even worse).


An absolutely crucial point -- the thing with polytheism presented as if it were a set of competing monotheisms (that kinda acknowledge each other's deities) makes me want to pull out the hair I have left.


I concur with your assessment. I will admit that the idea of monotheistic faiths acknowledging the existence of rival divinities, and competing therein, is an interesting concept... if executed well. I’ve yet to encounter a D&D setting where it is done well. Even OOTS’s own dabbling in this realm has shown nothing more than a seemingly inherent toxicity of such divine cosmologies, and the risk that a rule-breaker (usuall evil, chaotic, or both) can present to such a realm is enough to make one question why particularly treacherous deities would ever be tolerated.

I do feel the worst decision TSR and WotC made with respect to their fictional religions was to have gods devoted to evil. Not having evil-aligned gods per se, but gods that embrace evil. Having deities that justify their portfolio according to some twisted code, makes for much more interesting and terrifying villains, who are no less evil and can even justify having followers who think alike. There was someone on this forum doing reworked versions of the core D&D deities that was much more like plausible mythology (need to look them up again). As a key example, their Nerull was genuinally terrifying, a force of oblivion devoted to the end of everything, including undead and itself, but it was on the basis that Nerull blamed itself for creating life and thus pain, evil, and suffering, and sought to end what it felt was a mistake. As a result, I could see why a genuinally caring, NG individual would worship Nerull on the admittedly fallacious logic that if life is pain, and pain is bad, life is bad. In contrast, standard Nerull is a cartoonish “reaper” who apparently hates life but loves unlife?

Psyren
2018-10-12, 01:48 PM
Actually reminds me of that "ultimate Dragon Chess" with the funky name.

Puts a picture in my mind of a set of gods sitting down to play a game, which ends up generating many planes of reality, including the material. Over time, some of the stronger game pieces became aware they were in a game and started to learn some of the rules.

While the gods gradually have grown less and less powerful, not in ability, but in legal moves remaining that advancd their goals, the dragons have grown in power, having the advantage of entering the game late and possessing more short term goals and strategies.

I'd say they have plenty of legal moves remaining, it's just that their moves depend on fallible mortal clerics and churches. So sometimes the piece doesn't do what you want it to, or can even repent and turn against you. Like raising children in a way, which is an allegory OotS itself has used frequently with its own deities.


I like Pathfinder's Abadar.

https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Abadar

He's just such a great mix of divinity and completely mundane goals. A god of just bureaucrats, trustworthy merchants and competent rulers, neither good, nor evil.

He's boring in just that specific kinda way that tickles my imagination. He has a vault that contains a perfect example of everything ever built, ranging from (I imagine) the most excellent toothpick ever made all the way up to the most magnificent machine.

He has a holiday centered around tax collection for goodness sake! Such a magnificent dork.

I love a lot of the PF deities and he is definitely near the top. Also the only LN deity with a paladin order, simply because of how useful keeping the peace is for fair trade and open commerce.

Noteworthy also is that he made it to Starfinder, where his church has become the largest corporation in the galaxy. Fostering civilization was apparently a strong investment, in divine terms.

Nifft
2018-10-12, 02:09 PM
(...) As a key example, their Nerull was genuinally terrifying, a force of oblivion devoted to the end of everything, including undead and itself, but it was on the basis that Nerull blamed itself for creating life and thus pain, evil, and suffering, and sought to end what it felt was a mistake. As a result, I could see why a genuinally caring, NG individual would worship Nerull on the admittedly fallacious logic that if life is pain, and pain is bad, life is bad. In contrast, standard Nerull is a cartoonish “reaper” who apparently hates life but loves unlife?

Original canon Nerull wasn't a cartoon -- he was part of the Flan pantheon's natural order.

Beory (the earth goddess) had two husbands: Pelor the life-giving sun, and Nerull the life-taking scythe. Beory's child (Obad-Hai) lived for one year before being reaped by Nerull.

Good people probably wouldn't worship or venerate original canon Nerull, but that's fine -- being part of the natural order isn't necessarily good, since originally nature was neutral.

That said, being part of the Flan pantheon isn't necessarily good or even neutral, since the Ur-Flan were horrific necromancers and might have made their own population largely extinct. (Or not. It's unclear why the Flanaesse was so sparsely populated when the Oerdians and Seul migrated east.)

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-12, 02:56 PM
I personally like Lovecraftian entities. Something about facing an entity that utterly dwarfs you and is so alien that human morality is potentially nonapplicable, is weirdly reassuring in a scary way (more like a natural disaster incarnate than a person). I tend to expect much more of more allegedly relatable deities (who I feel should know better), which is probably part of the reason I intensely dislike most D&D portrayals of deityhood (what I think about Faerun’s alleged gods is unprintable, and Dragonlance’s pantheon is even worse).


Faerun's deities and totally warped "theology" should make mortals justifiably want to rebel, to overthrow the gods, to storm the planes and tear down the walls and burn the palaces. "Choose one of us as your 'patron', or face suffering to make your mortal troubles seem small, and eventual oblivion!" Ugh. It's blackmail fig-leafed by "divinity".

~~~~

The old "gods" in one of the settings I'm working on have a Lovecraftian element, in that way -- they were like forces of nature, like gravity or light or "entropy", than they were like big powerful petty humans -- combined with elements of the wandering / Quixotic star gods of "space rock" and a certain era of comics, the generational conflict of the mythical history of certain past pantheons, etc. They came from "before" time, and were more like the multiple "souls" of reality than they were gods. They weren't aligned with human concerns because they didn't come from humans -- in a reality where these timeless ultra-powerful entities were actually real and long predated not just mortals or life but the universe itself, I see no reason why they'd have to be highly in sync with mortal concerns. They were fascinated (sometimes morbidly or dangerously) by mortals for a variety of reasons, but their entire experience and thinking and mental space was both larger than and sideways to humans.

They were eventually overthrown and locked away by a group of post-apotheosis formal mortals (the "old gods" can't be destroyed any more than gravity or energy can be destroyed), and those new deities are far more aligned with mortal thinking and concerns because they arose as mortals and are inextricably linked with mortals.




I concur with your assessment. I will admit that the idea of monotheistic faiths acknowledging the existence of rival divinities, and competing therein, is an interesting concept... if executed well. I’ve yet to encounter a D&D setting where it is done well. Even OOTS’s own dabbling in this realm has shown nothing more than a seemingly inherent toxicity of such divine cosmologies, and the risk that a rule-breaker (usuall evil, chaotic, or both) can present to such a realm is enough to make one question why particularly treacherous deities would ever be tolerated.

I do feel the worst decision TSR and WotC made with respect to their fictional religions was to have gods devoted to evil. Not having evil-aligned gods per se, but gods that embrace evil. Having deities that justify their portfolio according to some twisted code, makes for much more interesting and terrifying villains, who are no less evil and can even justify having followers who think alike. There was someone on this forum doing reworked versions of the core D&D deities that was much more like plausible mythology (need to look them up again). As a key example, their Nerull was genuinely terrifying, a force of oblivion devoted to the end of everything, including undead and itself, but it was on the basis that Nerull blamed itself for creating life and thus pain, evil, and suffering, and sought to end what it felt was a mistake. As a result, I could see why a genuinely caring, NG individual would worship Nerull on the admittedly fallacious logic that if life is pain, and pain is bad, life is bad. In contrast, standard Nerull is a cartoonish “reaper” who apparently hates life but loves unlife?


I think that would be LudicSavant's new takes on the D&Deities, and frankly those versions are orders of magnitude more believable -- starting with the fact that the attitudes and practices of the believers, the religion as integral part of the society/culture, that's all front and center.


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443831-My-pantheon-s-take-on-Nerull
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?448397-The-Deep-Ones-Twisted-Seas-and-Alien-Light
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?450352-Wee-Jas-the-First-Lich
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480130-Lolth-Lady-Luck
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?461424-Corellon-Larethian-King-of-the-Gods
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445953-Olidammara-the-Laughing-Rogue
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445290-Erythnul-the-Many
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?451475-My-pantheon-s-take-on-Hextor


My opinion on deities in a pantheon is that for the most part each should be defined more by their own areas of concern ("domains"), and their own personalities, than by being "the good deity" or "the evil deity" or whatever.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-12, 03:19 PM
I agree with all of this. I don't even think that something like this would be difficult to implement in RPGs and gives religious characters so much more to work with.

A long time ago, I wrote a bit on the "generic cleric", as the non-specialty priests in 2e were called. I can't get to it from work (seriously my work filter seems to roll a die every day), but the idea of a priest who was on good terms with multiple deities works well. I also liked borrowing from Shadowrun's interpretation of Voudoun... you had a primary Loa, but you could forge relationships with other loa, and gain their benefits, as well. In D&D, you might even rate that by alignment... from LG, my primary deity should be LG, but I might also have alliances with NG or LN deities, and might be able to perform ceremonies for other deities.


1e Clerics could do this -- there was no expectation of exclusivity until 2e specialty priests, which may have come from FR but I'm not sure.

I'd cite the Theocracy of the Pale; there wasn't an expectation of exclusivity, but it certainly existed as a concept before 2e.



I concur with your assessment. I will admit that the idea of monotheistic faiths acknowledging the existence of rival divinities, and competing therein, is an interesting concept... if executed well. I’ve yet to encounter a D&D setting where it is done well. Even OOTS’s own dabbling in this realm has shown nothing more than a seemingly inherent toxicity of such divine cosmologies, and the risk that a rule-breaker (usuall evil, chaotic, or both) can present to such a realm is enough to make one question why particularly treacherous deities would ever be tolerated.


Hackmaster/Kingdoms of Kalamar does this, to an extent, though I'm not a huge fan of how they do it. There's worship, there's being anointed to a deity, and there's being ordained to a deity. Each faith has enemies and allies within the singular pantheon, and different races do tend to skew towards certain deities (orcs are really big into the Emperor of Scorn and the Creator of Strife, but might also like the Shackler, the Dark One, the Locust Lord, or the Battlerager and still be pretty orc-y). Anyone can worship a deity. Someone who is anointed to a deity reaps certain benefits, but also agrees to limit their worship to the deity and their allies. Someone who is ordained is a cleric, and limits their worship to their singular deity.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-12, 04:07 PM
A long time ago, I wrote a bit on the "generic cleric", as the non-specialty priests in 2e were called. I can't get to it from work (seriously my work filter seems to roll a die every day), but the idea of a priest who was on good terms with multiple deities works well. I also liked borrowing from Shadowrun's interpretation of Voudoun... you had a primary Loa, but you could forge relationships with other loa, and gain their benefits, as well. In D&D, you might even rate that by alignment... from LG, my primary deity should be LG, but I might also have alliances with NG or LN deities, and might be able to perform ceremonies for other deities.


Long ago in my D&D days I played a character who wore a couple of necklaces with the holy symbols of every non-loathsome deity in that GM's setting on them, and had a few levels of nonspecific "cleric" that represented "I get this from here, and that from there, and those from these, and..."

LibraryOgre
2018-10-12, 04:48 PM
Long ago in my D&D days I played a character who wore a couple of necklaces with the holy symbols of every non-loathsome deity in that GM's setting on them, and had a few levels of nonspecific "cleric" that represented "I get this from here, and that from there, and those from these, and..."

Benny, from the Mummy, comes to mind.

Really, a 3.5 concept for these kinds of clerics that I like: Only domains. You have say, 4 domains at 1st level, get all their powers and can free-cast your spells. As you level up, you get a few more domains, and maybe the option to switch them out.

A lot less CODzilla, a lot less generic.

Nifft
2018-10-12, 05:02 PM
I'd cite the Theocracy of the Pale; there wasn't an expectation of exclusivity, but it certainly existed as a concept before 2e. Yeah I brought them up earlier. They're an exception, not the default. Monotheism should be a thing because it's certainly a viable concept, but it shouldn't be the only thing.


Long ago in my D&D days I played a character who wore a couple of necklaces with the holy symbols of every non-loathsome deity in that GM's setting on them, and had a few levels of nonspecific "cleric" that represented "I get this from here, and that from there, and those from these, and..." I like that a lot more than the One-True-God type.

It allows spell repertoire expansion, too, as you discover ancient rites of dead cults or pore through the revelations of a holy madman.

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-12, 05:32 PM
I have a setting where all magic is prayers to the gods. People follow the religion of the place they grew up, which will likely focus more on a subset of the gods based on what's important to the area, but then it comes down to it a desert magician prayering properly to the god of the ocean will give safe voyage the same as a coastal magician will, because it's giving the exact same respect to the exact same god.

If you particularly revere a deity and they particularly like you then you might recieve boons, but those will generally be along the lines of 'a magic item'.

Ninjadeadbeard
2018-10-12, 08:29 PM
Kill.
Six.
Billion.
Demons.

Here is a link. (https://killsixbilliondemons.com/comic/kill-six-billion-demons-chapter-1/)

There is no other response when asking about the best fictional religion. And remember, Reach Heaven Through Violence!

LuminousWarrior
2018-10-12, 08:54 PM
I'm very fond of non-Evil death deities.

LudicSavant
2018-10-13, 12:13 AM
I think that would be LudicSavant's new takes on the D&Deities, and frankly those versions are orders of magnitude more believable -- starting with the fact that the attitudes and practices of the believers, the religion as integral part of the society/culture, that's all front and center.


http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?443831-My-pantheon-s-take-on-Nerull
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?448397-The-Deep-Ones-Twisted-Seas-and-Alien-Light
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?450352-Wee-Jas-the-First-Lich
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?480130-Lolth-Lady-Luck
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?461424-Corellon-Larethian-King-of-the-Gods
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445953-Olidammara-the-Laughing-Rogue
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?445290-Erythnul-the-Many
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?451475-My-pantheon-s-take-on-Hextor


Yup, that version of Nerull is indeed mine. Glad you guys like them, by the way! Wonder if maybe I should post the rest of the set on GitP, since a lot of folks have been requesting it.

sktarq
2018-10-13, 01:56 AM
Wonder if maybe I should post the rest of the set on GitP, since a lot of folks have been requesting it.

Please Do....massive fun.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-13, 09:06 AM
I'm very fond of non-Evil death deities.

When I play the Realms, I actually include Kelemvor, even before the Time of Troubles, because I don't want the god of the dead to be evil. A nice LN seems far more reasonable.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-13, 10:44 AM
When I play the Realms, I actually include Kelemvor, even before the Time of Troubles, because I don't want the god of the dead to be evil. A nice LN seems far more reasonable.

Do you include the thing about the wall and obligatory worship?

Nifft
2018-10-13, 10:46 AM
When I play the Realms, I actually include Kelemvor, even before the Time of Troubles, because I don't want the god of the dead to be evil. A nice LN seems far more reasonable.

Hmm, I wonder if Wee Jas has been described as "nice".

PhoenixPhyre
2018-10-13, 12:30 PM
As to gods of death, I actually have two who are associated with parts of that portfolio.

The first (the Hollow King) is the executioner, the assassin of the gods. He presides over the untimely end of those who commit crimes or contract with demons. He doesn't really have a separate church establishment in the main play area other than a few separate organizations of priests, assassins, and spies who actively carry out his work on those that can't be arrested publicly.

The second (Melara, Lady of Mercy) is associated with rest, winter, natural endings, and healing. She's a downright nice person and her clergy are traveling healers and graveyard tenders. Her only real big no-no is creation of intelligent undead (as that prevents a soul from traveling on to whatever its destination might be). Her worship is part of the Church of the Seasons, the primary religious organization in one of the main countries.

For all 16 of my gods, while there may be people who feel more attuned to one or the other (and clerics are sponsored by a specific god), most people venerate whichever one is important right now. In the main country the 4 seasonal gods get pride of place but the rest are appeased in season. No racial pantheons exist--dwarves in that one country tend to primarily worship the god of mountains, stone, and endurance but dwarves elsewhere may not be religious at all or may worship any of the others or all of the others.

There are also groups that are animists (venerating the local spirits), those that revere ancestors (some of whom have actually ascended to demi-god status), one that is a hybrid of worshiping two of the gods in particular but mainly through the Queen Ascendant, an ascended mortal who is now a demi-god.

The difference between the gods and the demi-gods is that demi-gods are less powerful individually but also less bound by strictures and more able to intervene. They have warlocks, not clerics (although the overlap in abilities is strong). Gods are basically the customer-service middle-management of the universe, each taking care of a few mortal-facing areas. The gods are not responsible for the elements or most other, non-mortal-focused things. The current set was chosen by the operating mechanism of the universe (which doesn't get involved with mortals) from powerful mortals after the last set sacrificed themselves (not entirely voluntarily) to keep the universe functioning after BAD THINGS (ie: PCs) happened to it.

LibraryOgre
2018-10-13, 12:34 PM
Do you include the thing about the wall and obligatory worship?

TBH, I find it largely irrelevant. I'd probably use it as it was first presented... for whose who either denied the gods entirely or who broke faith with them.


Hmm, I wonder if Wee Jas has been described as "nice".

Compared to Myrkul?

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-13, 12:36 PM
When I play the Realms, I actually include Kelemvor, even before the Time of Troubles, because I don't want the god of the dead to be evil. A nice LN seems far more reasonable.

Ah, Kelemvor. He's probably the only FR deity I actually like, because he does seem to care about everybody and wants to be fair, but was essentially overruled by the other gods.

Plus there's a lot to be said for LN gods of death/the dead. My setting includes a LN god of death who would probably come off as LN (I rarely use alignments), they're also the god of healing because they don't want mortals to die before their time (an idea I try to import to any setting honestly).


Do you include the thing about the wall and obligatory worship?

The thing that annoys me the most about the wall is that when Kelemvor very reasonably decided not to use the darn thing it was the good gods who lost all the worship. Because apparently promoting ideals or helping people means diddly squat, the only way for good deities to have loads of worshippers is to be the only path to a good afterlife. It's not like they didn't manage before the wall was created, did they just spend the entirity of the wall's existence lazing around because they knew they had an easy ticket to worshippers, and suddenly when they have to put actual work in again they're all upset? So they gang up on a guy who is trying to treat people fairly and force him to institute a punishment for people who didn't suck up to anybody enough. Sounds like any rage against the heavens is very justified.

Because really, who sounds like the good guy here. The person attempting to set up a system where people get rewarded according to their deeds, or the guys wanting to turn the afterlife into a game of nepotism?

Nifft
2018-10-13, 12:59 PM
Compared to Myrkul?

Don't know enough about Myrkul to have an opinion on that.


Ah, Kelemvor. He's probably the only FR deity I actually like, because he does seem to care about everybody and wants to be fair, but was essentially overruled by the other gods.

Plus there's a lot to be said for LN gods of death/the dead. My setting includes a LN god of death who would probably come off as LN (I rarely use alignments), they're also the god of healing because they don't want mortals to die before their time (an idea I try to import to any setting honestly).



The thing that annoys me the most about the wall is that when Kelemvor very reasonably decided not to use the darn thing it was the good gods who lost all the worship. Because apparently promoting ideals or helping people means diddly squat, the only way for good deities to have loads of worshippers is to be the only path to a good afterlife. It's not like they didn't manage before the wall was created, did they just spend the entirity of the wall's existence lazing around because they knew they had an easy ticket to worshippers, and suddenly when they have to put actual work in again they're all upset? So they gang up on a guy who is trying to treat people fairly and force him to institute a punishment for people who didn't suck up to anybody enough. Sounds like any rage against the heavens is very justified.

Because really, who sounds like the good guy here. The person attempting to set up a system where people get rewarded according to their deeds, or the guys wanting to turn the afterlife into a game of nepotism?

Huh, he does sound nice.

Paleomancer
2018-10-13, 03:36 PM
Plus there's a lot to be said for LN gods of death/the dead. My setting includes a LN god of death who would probably come off as LN (I rarely use alignments), they're also the god of healing because they don't want mortals to die before their time (an idea I try to import to any setting honestly).


A nice idea, though I like the idea of a LG death god even more. A deity that takes time to be compassionate to, and mourns for, every soul that transitions from life to death, while still aware of its cosmic role and responsibilities therein, would be a fantastic character. Making it the patron of certain (reasonable) paladins or necromancers (in the old sense of people who speak with the dead) would be fantastic... I need to write this up :smallbiggrin:



The thing that annoys me the most about the wall is that when Kelemvor very reasonably decided not to use the darn thing it was the good gods who lost all the worship. Because apparently promoting ideals or helping people means diddly squat, the only way for good deities to have loads of worshippers is to be the only path to a good afterlife. It's not like they didn't manage before the wall was created, did they just spend the entirity of the wall's existence lazing around because they knew they had an easy ticket to worshippers, and suddenly when they have to put actual work in again they're all upset? So they gang up on a guy who is trying to treat people fairly and force him to institute a punishment for people who didn't suck up to anybody enough. Sounds like any rage against the heavens is very justified.

Because really, who sounds like the good guy here. The person attempting to set up a system where people get rewarded according to their deeds, or the guys wanting to turn the afterlife into a game of nepotism?

I've long wondered why even add such a bit of fluff to the setting at all? The wall adds nothing and seems like something a truly "good" deity would reject, even if it came at a cost to their own power (if mortals are expected to make sacrifices, why not deities who allegedly embody such virtues?). Especially since the setting makes it clear rejecting the gods through this is "wrong," and not even just a cultural perception either. If I remember correctly, in some hack Faerun novel I read ages ago, supposedly the whole "get rid of the wall" was a plot by Cyric to game the worship system and "destroy" the gods of good, or some similar alleged excuse. Given that Mystra has been destroyed at least twice, I think, for minor offenses, why doesn't someone just put Cyric with Tharizidun and throw away the key?

SimonMoon6
2018-10-13, 04:24 PM
{Scrubbed}

The Jack
2018-10-13, 05:55 PM
{Scrubbed}

Psyren
2018-10-13, 06:26 PM
Benny, from the Mummy, comes to mind.

Wasn't he used as part inspiration for the iconic Factotum (or was it iconic Chameleon) too?

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-13, 08:28 PM
My next biggest beef is the "everything works like the monotheistic religion that I happen to know about" conceit that runs through most such fictional religions. This includes the already-mentioned "treating polytheistic religions as if they were monotheistic". This also branches out into character classes like Paladin and Cleric, both of which are heavily modeled on That Of Which We Must Not Speak (real world religions, one in particular, in fact). Most priests of polytheistic religions would have no use for plate mail armor, yet they automatically become proficient in it. And the concept of "religious warrior" meaning "a worshiper of the one and only one Lawful Good deity because there is no other deity" is plainly ludicrous in a polytheistic fictional religion, in which the LG gods are no more or less important than any other gods.

Just honing in on a couple of points, because they're the parts of your post that deserve the most discussion.

First off, I have seen monotheistic priests in a pantheonic religion work (in The Dark Eye), but it's a very loose pantheon, the way miracles work means that gods having exclusive priests is better for them, and if you weren't a priest you just prayed to the god that was most suitable (good chance it's the god of agriculture, maybe the god of healing, and you'll invoke the god of death at funerals...). Full miracle working priests are also rare, most villages have to make do with a wandering priest to perform religious rituals. Oh, and before I go into it in a more generic fashion, the priests all had a focus depending on their patron, and only those of the goddess of honour tend to be shown in armour with weapons (because most have other things to spend the Thalers on).

On the Cleric and Paladin, the Cleric is tied up with a load of problems I have. O off it's supposed to be a wandering warrior priest, that's why they have armour proficiency, and was originally intended as a priest of the vague 'gods of good' (heavily implied to stand in for TWSNBN). They also began this random tradition a lot of games have with seperating 'arcane' and 'divine' magic, rarely with any actual reason given in-universe. Magic is no longer magic, it has to be it's own specific type of magic. In general I've begun removing 'priest' classes from my games and treating all magic as 'divine' magic, at least from the point of view of the characters.

The Paladin is essentially the problems of the Cleric, taken up to eleven. It's an incredibly specifc wandering religious knight with minor magic powers, or in 5e a more fighty wandering warrior priest.


My next biggest beef with fictional religions for RPGs is the "all the gods are real (except the ones worshiped by people that you know in the real world)" concept. This makes little to no sense to me, since I consider the story (the mythology) to be the most important part of a religion. If you're telling me Marduk is real, than I know he created the Earth out of Tiamat's corpse. But if you tell me that the Greek and Norse gods are true too, and they have their own different creation myths... and everything in those religions is ALSO true... well, I have a problem with that. I'm not a big fan of the shamanistic "everything is true, even contradictory things" idea.

The other alternative is that everything in those mythologies is false (none of the creations myths are real; actually the Earth just sort of showed up one day and, oh yeah, Tiamat is still alive). But I have a real problem with that. If the stories are false, and the gods' only reason for existing is in the truth of those stories, well, then the gods shouldn't exist.

The gods have been definitively proven to exist? My settings don't have them as firmly established, otherwise everything gets a bit too black and white.

SimonMoon6
2018-10-13, 08:30 PM
{Scrubbed}

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-13, 08:50 PM
I feel like you're looking at things wrong.

Can you give an example of a fictional polythiest faith behaving monotheistic?


Most D&D and D&D-like settings get polytheism wrong in exactly that way, expecting each person to have a deity they're dedicated to as if it's a collection of monotheistic faiths that grudgingly recognize each other as valid -- instead of most people going to all deities, to each for the things that deity is connected to / concerned with.

LudicSavant
2018-10-14, 02:37 AM
The "pick one god to worship, but acknowledge others" mode of belief is called monolatry or henotheism (depending on the particulars). It is distinct from both polytheism and monotheism.

Florian
2018-10-14, 04:13 AM
@SimonMoon6:

Have you taken a look at how Golarion handles those issues?

There're "tiers of divinity", but those tiers do not reflect "power" and "power" doesn't reflect station of a deity. The highest tier are the "functional deities", with the deity been the representation of some "cosmic truth" or "basic building block of the multiverse" (ex: Pharasma is death and life, Apsu is the beginning of the circle, Groetus is the end of the circle and so on.), while the lowest tier are so-called "hero deities", like Cthulhu, Thor, spirits of the land and such.

Please note that Golarion is resented through a marked humanocentric, cultural and racial lens. The main write-up takes an Avistani POV (roughly, greco-roman understanding of deities), which can be markedly different from how the Orisian, Azlanti or Tian-Xia POV is. Even a major deity like Phantasma can be understood in different ways or even be worshiped under separate aliases.

@Max Killjoy:

Hm... Ok, compare the D&D "Great Wheel" to the PF "Great Beyond" and it actually makes sense (PF explains it better):
- You have 9 aligned Outer Planes and a soul will end up in one of them
- You can worship a deity that is not an exact match with your own personal alignment. See: One Step rule.
- Deities have their own domains within and as part of a Outer Plane with slightly different rules than their parent plane.

Let´s compare some cases:
- Anton (LG) is a Paladin, following the Paladin Code of Abadar (LN)
- Bettina (LN) is a Helknight, following the Godclaw Pantheon (ranging from LG, LN to LE), feeling the strongest connection to the teachings of Torag (LG), but has a strong leaning towards slipping to LE.
- Christopher (LE) is a Samurai and follower of the Order of the Black Daimyo. Being a Tian, his actual believe is in the philosophies of Sangpotshi and Tamashigo (roughly: buddhism and shinto)
- David (N) is a Druid and by default a follower of the Green Faith.
- Elisabeth (LE) and Fiona (LN, leaning towards LG) are sisters and both hail from Cheliax, both are followers of the Sisters of the Night pantheon. E is a Sanguine Angel and has progressed to the stage that the was granted outsider apotheosis, while F is a Diabolist and her soul is twice shackled by a contract with Hell, once for being granted the power of a Diabolist, the second time for having signed an Infernal Contract, even while she voluntarily serves in the Shining Crusade.

Now, when they all die, their souls will reach the Boneyard, be judged and sent to their final destination.

Anton could either end up in "generic" Heaven (LG), or be granted a place in Actun, Abadars realm on the Plane of Axis, despite the difference in alignment.

With Bettina, things will get a bit more complicated. Her "generic" destination would be Axis (LN), but she could also be granted a place in Forgeheart, Torags realms in Heaven. Being a Hellknight, she tapped into a lot of power gained from Hell, you know, the usual deal of "Fight fire with fire", but unless she really slipped and got into a binding contract, Hell would not be her final destination.

Christopher might be a member of a purely worldly order inspired by General Susumu, but the Black Daimyo will not have any real reason to drag his soul to Hell. Rather, he is bound for reincarnation after judgement, with a Karma that will have him deal with either Kami or Oni in one way or the other.

David will be judged and reincarnated as part of the natural order.

Elisabeth is out of luck. Outsiders are already the merging of body and soul and have no final destination, unless their patron deity directly interferes. She can only hope that one of the Bitch Queens likes her. Fiona is also out of luck. She sold her soul twice and even while she's battling alongside Paladins to fight a demonic incursion, she's used her free will as a human to sell her soul to Hell for power.

I think it´s easy to see where that differs from, say, the stupid things that the Forgotten Realms did with the Faithless and the Wall of the Faithless, all that. It´s actually quite interesting to read up on the whole "River of Souls" concept and how that meshes with the Planes, deities and pantheons.

Thinker
2018-10-14, 11:25 AM
My main beef with a lot of fictional religions is that they are created backwards. The whole point of religions is to have an explanation for the natural world (without having to, you know, learn science). People make up stories about why the sun is in the sky only during the day or how the Earth (and those extra little dots in the sky that can't be very important) were created, often with a bias towards explaining things that aren't true (like why are humans (especially MY particular group of humans) the most important things in all of the universe?). Only after we learn that it's Apollo's chariot that is the sun and that Marduk made the Earth and the Milky Way out of the corpse of Tiamat, only then do we start worshiping Apollo and Marduk.

In other words, it is the stories that should come first and THEN the worship of gods, not the the other way around. Too often, in fictional religions for RPGs, the gods get created first (we need a god of Plants because there is a Plant domain in the game... what interesting stories are there about him? Who cares?)
An unfortunate truth about game settings is that most people don't care about most of the content of the setting. It is a game first and foremost. Players want to know the minimum amount of information possible to play the game and not how the world is theorized to work according to some religious philosophers. As a game creator, your opportunities for exposition will inform things like class choices, character abilities, monsters, and the problems that the players encounter during play. The people who interact most with the gods are those who play priestly characters and they're almost certainly not going to read your stories about why the sun is in the sky or why the stars come out at night. Therefore, for a game setting, it is best to figure out what you want your religions to do first and fill in some details later.


My next biggest beef is the "everything works like the monotheistic religion that I happen to know about" conceit that runs through most such fictional religions. This includes the already-mentioned "treating polytheistic religions as if they were monotheistic". This also branches out into character classes like Paladin and Cleric, both of which are heavily modeled on That Of Which We Must Not Speak (real world religions, one in particular, in fact). Most priests of polytheistic religions would have no use for plate mail armor, yet they automatically become proficient in it. And the concept of "religious warrior" meaning "a worshiper of the one and only one Lawful Good deity because there is no other deity" is plainly ludicrous in a polytheistic fictional religion, in which the LG gods are no more or less important than any other gods.
I agree that polytheism being regarded like monotheism is annoying. Still, warrior priests aren't that big a deal. They have some historical support and it makes sense if you want to bring in-game religion into the game for the players. Your NPCs can all wear robes and contemplate existence. The clerics and paladins will actually solve problems. Though, the idea of a priest who has a primary connection with a single deity has support in some ancient polytheistic religions.


My next biggest beef with fictional religions for RPGs is the "all the gods are real (except the ones worshiped by people that you know in the real world)" concept. This makes little to no sense to me, since I consider the story (the mythology) to be the most important part of a religion. If you're telling me Marduk is real, than I know he created the Earth out of Tiamat's corpse. But if you tell me that the Greek and Norse gods are true too, and they have their own different creation myths... and everything in those religions is ALSO true... well, I have a problem with that. I'm not a big fan of the shamanistic "everything is true, even contradictory things" idea.

The other alternative is that everything in those mythologies is false (none of the creations myths are real; actually the Earth just sort of showed up one day and, oh yeah, Tiamat is still alive). But I have a real problem with that. If the stories are false, and the gods' only reason for existing is in the truth of those stories, well, then the gods shouldn't exist.

You have a few options to resolve this:
Syncretism - What I call Jupiter, you call Zeus. You don't have to go full on one-to-one, but you can have some of the main gods be approximately the same.
You're only getting part of the truth - Tiamat was used to create the earth, but not all of the earth. Just the earth over in Mesopotamia.
Someone is wrong - The earth really is Tiamat, but Gaia is a real being who was created by Chaos from the still-forming earth after Tiamat died. Both perspectives are the truth, just not with all of the facts.
None of them have the truth - The gods can control the natural world without being its creator.
The gods aren't such a big deal - They don't control the natural world, but they want people to think that they do either out of malice or to protect them from the truth.

I'm not sure why you need a religion to be fully accurate in the first place.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-14, 01:00 PM
The "pick one god to worship, but acknowledge others" mode of belief is called monolatry or henotheism (depending on the particulars). It is distinct from both polytheism and monotheism.

Absolutely, but there appears to be confusion in many fantasy settings (fiction, gaming, or both) about what they're actually presenting. The deities are presented as the "god of this" and the "god of that" and so on, but the mortal characters too often act like Conan and Subutai during their conversation about each other's gods and which is the greater.

In a way I think that "patron deity" is just another cheap stand-in for creating actual an actual "person" as a character, in the same way that Alignment and Race and even Class are... something that can be written in on the character sheet and repeated as shorthand, "I'm a level X (race) (class) follower of ______!"

Nifft
2018-10-14, 02:34 PM
Absolutely, but there appears to be confusion in many fantasy settings (fiction, gaming, or both) about what they're actually presenting. The deities are presented as the "god of this" and the "god of that" and so on, but the mortal characters too often act like Conan and Subutai during their conversation about each other's gods and which is the greater.

I think there's some spillover from our experiences with evangelical / proselytizing people IRL which leads some players to treat their particular patron as a monotheistic deity, which must "win" against other gods by converting NPCs to their One True Faith.

This is obviously stupid if the whole pantheon is equally divine.

But it's understandable that some people come to portray what a religious character would behave like through the lens of monotheism.

LudicSavant
2018-10-14, 03:11 PM
Absolutely, but there appears to be confusion in many fantasy settings (fiction, gaming, or both) about what they're actually presenting.

I agree.

(10characters)

The Jack
2018-10-14, 03:22 PM
Where to begin?

Firstly, clergy operate differently to normal worshipers. Just because the populace is polytheistic doesn't mean every member of the clergy is going to cover every god.

And, if every god is real, but they all have different influence on different people, why wouldn't they fight? Why wouldn't they tell their people that they're the best and that X,Y and Z gods are terrible demons/evil. You forget, Demons et al are true too in DnD, so it should be laughably easy to discredit rivals and weaken their powerbase. What gods get their strength from, be it worship, an aspect of existence, or maybe they were just always there, is something that changes from fiction to fiction, but if you kill all the orcs, the god of orcs is going to suffer.

Oriental adventures is bull, The default classes in 5e cover everything* you might want to be in an oriental game and creating a super-exclusive Samurai class for Samurai, rather than just picking a fighter with the noble background, is a decision of ignorance (and you're having bad-wrong-fun, clearly). A warrior monk in faux Japan/Thailand/India would seek the best armour available to them, as would any other warrior, regardless of the gods they believe in.

Also, sweet christmas man, did you read what you wrote? Vikings and Greeks were around before steel plate armour was a thing (Bronze armour came in plates but...) However, if they did have warrior clergy, then those warrior clergy would've gone for the best armour available to them... and if they were around during the time of later armour, they would've wanted the best. It's context; If viking raiders were around today, they'd be using firearms.

*where it fails for oriental games, it fails for European games too.

As for your 'stories came before gods' argument
Would that necessarily be true in a world where the gods are quantifiably real? I didn't think so. However, as others have said: the books are for a player/game master, it's better to not bother with that so that the players/Game masters can make up their own stories for their gods.

SimonMoon6
2018-10-14, 04:17 PM
An unfortunate truth about game settings is that most people don't care about most of the content of the setting. It is a game first and foremost. Players want to know the minimum amount of information possible to play the game and not how the world is theorized to work according to some religious philosophers.

Well, of course, there is a difference between what a player needs to know and what the DM/GM needs to know. Just as in a Call of Cthulhu game, you don't start off telling the PCs what the deal is with the Cthulhu Mythos, it is possible to avoid telling PCs in a D&D game every detail about the gods, while still having those details available to the DM. The players don't need to know everything about the setting, but the DM does (more or less). The DM needs to know that the sun is not a big hot ball of gas that is 93 million miles away but rather is just what we see when Apollo rides his chariot across the sky. (After all, the distance to the sun is important for those Spot checks to be able to notice it.) The DM needs to know that Tiamat is dead. The DM needs to know that the reason for the seasons is NOT that the planet is tilted on its axis but rather it's that whole Demeter/Persephone/Hades thing. The setting needs to be detailed in this way.


Therefore, for a game setting, it is best to figure out what you want your religions to do first and fill in some details later.

I think world-building issues need to be dealt with at the beginning (or pre-beginning) of the game, so that you don't accidentally contradict yourself later. If people in a D&D game try to teleport to the Sun and you say, "Good luck with that 93 million mile journey," you have then created a world in which it is impossible for Apollo to be the sun god who rides his chariot across the sky. So, now what the heck is the point of Apollo? Oops, you've just ruined one entire god.

SimonMoon6
2018-10-14, 04:51 PM
{Scrubbed}

PhoenixPhyre
2018-10-14, 05:30 PM
{Scrubbed}.

No. That's not the point of a god. You're importing a very a-historical, modern, western idea from the real world into fiction. Fictional worlds do not have to work like you believe myth did in the real world.

In my setting, there have been at least 3 different types of "true gods" and there are multiple god-like entities that don't meet the current definition of "god." None of whom embody the concept of their domain.

First, there were the Primordials. Why did they exist? Because the Dreamer, the one who created everything, dreamed them up. This was well before matter was created, so these were loose concepts. 9 were created.

* Fire (Energies)
* Earth (Solid matter)
* Air (Gasses)
* Water (Liquids)
* Light (Law, Progress)
* Darkness (Memory, Stability)
* Life (Organization, Creation)
* Death (Destruction, Decay)
* Concordance (Compromise, Change, Loss)

After the Dawn War, when Concordance rebelled against the Dreamer and the Eight (and lost and was thrust down to the Abyss), the Primordials were refashioned into the planar structure of today and the Great Mechanism was created to regulate the affairs of the universe. For millennia there were no "gods" and no need for them. Faith had no power.

2700 years ago, the Third Wish opened up the channel of faith between man and the planes. This entailed the promotion of powerful beings to the rank of "God". Hundreds of them--whatever was believed in strongly became a source of power to which a "god" could adhere. That left many beings vying for fragments of belief--dozens all claiming to be the "one true god" or the "god of the sun"; each constrained in power by the attention paid by mortals. For the one key restriction of that Third Wish was that the gods cannot act except according to the faith of mortals.

This chaotic state of affairs, with racial and local pantheons, with holy wars and syncretism, lasted for about 2500 years until the Cataclysm. This event, triggered in part by the release of Concordance from the Abyss and in part by mortals tampering with an artifact of the Dreamer set off ripples that threatened reality itself. As an act of desperation the gods, compelled by the prayers and faith of their worshipers, enacted the Sacrifice, giving their own existence to stabilize the planes. Only four stayed behind--they merged with the Great Mechanism, sacrificing their own wills and identity.

50 years after the Cataclysm (or so), reality had settled down enough for new gods to be called. This time, however, things were different. The Great Mechanism dedicated 16 streams of energy so that these new gods, the Congregation, would be independent of the faith of mortals. In exchange, the 16 chosen souls (all previously mortals) were handed a portion of the faith-loci, roughly organized into domains. Their jobs, enforced by the Mechanism, are to watch over and deal with disturbances in those domains. This means answering prayers, ordaining clerics and servants, sending messengers, etc. Note that the domains are mortal-centric--the domain of the Sun is really the domain of what the Sun symbolizes for mortals. Heat for the crops, light to work by, freedom from fear, strength, honor. Not the physical sun (which is a lamp lit by the Great Mechanism at the center of the Material Plane), but the symbolic sun. Same with all the other Congregants.

There are three other types of ascended beings that might be called "gods":

* Demigods are raised up by the Congregants to serve them and aid in their tasks. In many areas, these are worshiped instead of the more remote Congregants.
* Ascended Heroes are mortals who, through strength of will and veneration from the mortal plane, have carved out astral domains for themselves. They cannot sponsor clerics, but they do empower warlocks. These range in power all across the spectrum. They're much more free to act than the Congregants are and do not have domains as such. Instead, they're most powerful when dealing with concentrations of their worshipers.
* Contractors made deals with fiends for immortality. In the process, they are stripped of much of their mortal identity. They retain power and capabilities that the fiends don't possess natively (being able to live un-summoned on the mortal plane among those) but they're not really "gods".

Note that different cultures orient themselves to the Congregation and the heroes differently. Some act like it's a Roman-style client/patron system. They venerate all the gods, but devote themselves to the teachings and mystery cult of one of them. Others are "monotheistic"--not denying the existence of the others but denying the need to worship the others. This is most common with the more powerful ascended heroes. Yet others ignore the Congregation entirely, believing them to be mostly pointless. They turn to the veneration and appeasement of the local kami, spirits of nature and the elements. Many other patterns exist as well.

The Jack
2018-10-14, 06:37 PM
YES, you can create a world where the gods are boring. That seems to be your response to everything I write. "Why can't I first create a setting where the gods are boring and have no purpose? Then I don't need them to have a purpose or stories written about them explaining their purpose." YES, you can do that. But that's terrible. The religion has no purpose.

{Scrubbed}

well, you can go the Ten thousand gods route, the spirit route, or whatever you want to call it.
There's a Sun, therefore there is a sun god.
Perhaps there's a god for every star, perhaps there's a god for all stars, perhaps there's both.
Someone invents computers. There's a computer spirit. Someone reproduces computers and improves on them, they strengthen a the spirit.
Someone kills the last goblin, there's no longer a goblin god. A man beats his wife, and there's a wifebeater god...


Also, about clerics.
If only a minority of people can manifest clerical magic
Then they're going to absolutely dominate the social order, and whatever religion they share with the masses is going to be significant. Real life clergy were significant figures in society and were hugely influential; imagine how much that would be amplified if so many people could claim and prove direct divine favour and communication? The human factor is huge.

And, well, there's gnostic thought to throw in there.
Maybe It wouldn't be in the interest of gods to let people know the true metaphysics of godhood, just like how nobody in the food industry wants people to know the truth about diets (fat is good for you! Sugar is evil! Salt is great!) What if everyone could become a god or the god? It would be in the best interests of the current gods to keep the mortals mortal, lest they shake things up.

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-14, 07:05 PM
Oriental adventures is bull, The default classes in 5e cover everything* you might want to be in an oriental game and creating a super-exclusive Samurai class for Samurai, rather than just picking a fighter with the noble background, is a decision of ignorance (and you're having bad-wrong-fun, clearly). A warrior monk in faux Japan/Thailand/India would seek the best armour available to them, as would any other warrior, regardless of the gods they believe in.

The four human classes in BD&D covered everything, and I'm a bit torn on the cleric as a seperate class. We can add in extra layers, like backgrounds, focuses, subclasses, heroic paths, and other things to represent more diverse concepts. A Paladin is just a Fighter with the Priest background, a bard a Rogue with the Performance focus.

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-14, 09:34 PM
{Scrubbed}


{Scrubbed}

In a fictional world, maybe the god really is the sun. Or maybe the god embodies the son. Or the god is in charge of the sun. Or maybe the god is the manifestation of collective mortal reverence for and anxiety about the sun. Or whatever.

Florian
2018-10-15, 01:17 AM
{Scrubbed}.

Not necessarily true.

I guess you're going at this from a very western and modern POV, but serious mystical world-building doesn't work that way, especially when it comes to "science" (as we know it). The rules there are more based around "as above, so below".

Again, take Golarion as an example. The "First World" and the Fey were the trial field for the gods at creating a prime material plane (aka reality). Here, they tried out different things, like causalites, flows of time, physical states, creating life and mater with different combinations of connection to the "Planes of Power" and such. After their trials, they discussed the various options and settled on how to really go for it on the next try. Like an unhappy artist, they used the same canvas and painted the next version of "reality" over the "First World", without deleting or scrapping it. (Basically, the First World is metaphysically too close to the Positive Energy Plane, while the Shadow Plane is too close to the Negative Energy Plane. Both therefore have very different "laws of nature" when compared to the Prime Material Plane, which sits in the middle of both energy planes)

It´s simply the underlying fact that the goddess of Life and Death is exactly that, the reason why life can exist and will die.

The star Cynosure is the physical manifest entry to the realm Cynosure, home of Desna. If you were to teleport there or use a spaceship, you could actually try to gain entry.

Basically, you could do the same with the sun: Any sun in the prima material plane is an entry point to the home of Apollo and very suns radiation stems from Apollo.

Frozen_Feet
2018-10-15, 03:50 AM
{Scrubbed}

Roland St. Jude
2018-10-15, 10:41 AM
Sheriff: Please avoid real world religion in this thread.

oudeis
2018-10-15, 01:06 PM
Does this include historical religions, i.e., those with no current practitioners? Could we draw a date line at around 1,000 years ago?

Max_Killjoy
2018-10-15, 02:45 PM
Does this include historical religions, i.e., those with no current practitioners? Could we draw a date line at around 1,000 years ago?

We probably just need another venue to discuss this topic as related to gaming, which is a shame.

Anonymouswizard
2018-10-15, 03:35 PM
Does this include historical religions, i.e., those with no current practitioners? Could we draw a date line at around 1,000 years ago?

The rules are a bit weird. I've just gone through the rules post to check, and we're supposed to read with the widest possible breadth, so by my reading that means that even if the last practitioner died out 4368 years ago then it's not allowed. If a mod could clarify this I would be grateful.


So let's see, what makes an interesting religion for RP. I think we've effectively split ourselves into two camps:
-The Gods camp, where the deities and their myths are the most important bit.
-the Cults camp, where practices, place in society, and scriptures are the most important bit.

Note that here I'm using myths to mean beliefs about the deity and scriptures to mean beliefs about the world.

Now ideally every religion will have all of this, but I'd much rather know how my character fits into society.

The Jack
2018-10-15, 05:37 PM
So let's see, what makes an interesting religion for RP. I think we've effectively split ourselves into two camps:
-The Gods camp, where the deities and their myths are the most important bit.
-the Cults camp, where practices, place in society, and scriptures are the most important bit.


I don't think so. A competent GM should be able to run both, and a good player should ideally consider both. I'd be delighted for my players to be reciting scriptures, parables and stories they made up for their character's, to take an active stance in working out what their faith means to them.

I played a hobgoblin knight, a fighter, who was a strong believer in Nomog, the ways of Nomog, and a secret heretic against Maggy (let's not try to spell his name); who he thought was unrightfully at the head of the goblinoid pantheon. But I took magic initiate, and I had invented scriptures of Nomog to recite for casting my spells, got religious tattoos, and I lived life around the concept of what I thought aught to be hobgobliny, inventing inspiring short stories of Nomog's greatness to encourage others to live the way I/Nomog would.

It was a lot of fun, and i don't think I started the character thinking I'd be so religious, I just got into it. I spent time discussing the merits of going paladin or cleric with the GM, but I was happy to be a fighter, because I think religion shouldn't be the exclusive domain of people who get spells from gods (alright, I took cleric magic initiate at level four, of course I took thaumaturgy and used it to look more like the chosen one of my god, but I was really into it by then)

Nifft
2018-10-15, 07:05 PM
Thinking a bit more about this topic, my favorite religious system might have been the one in Exalted.

- Gods were real, but most of them weren't particularly worthy of worship.

- Ancestor spirits were real, and they could at as gods. Some were pretty decent.

- Elementals were real, and they did represent nature, but nature wasn't morally superior to any of the many alternatives -- in fact nature is artificial at its root, and you (or anyone else) could potentially improve upon what "nature" means at any level of reality or abstraction.

- Demons were real, and they totally wanted worship, but they weren't always worse than gods.

- You could be a Priest, which meant you were better at talking to gods / impressing gods.

- You could (pretend to) be a god. You could accrue benefits from worship. That's why the other gods do their thing, after all: they get paid in magic from prayers.

- You could kick over the existing major religion to re-distribute prayer-bucks where you want them to go.

- You could go around kicking god-butts and making them do their jobs instead of acting like warlords, but there's already a faction doing that. Don't let them catch you, they studied on killing Anathema after all.

- You could storm the gates of Heaven and demand that someone else do that god-butt kicking thing for you.

- You could storm the gates of Heaven and demand that you get command of the Aerial Legions so you can warlord it over all the other warlords.

- You could show up at the gates of Heaven with an invitation and partake in the politics of the Celestial Bureaucracy.

- You could go out in the Wyld and make your own Heaven, with hookers and blackjack, but that's basically what Malfeas did already so you might just want to go visit there instead.


The lack of an overarching morality telling you what you SHOULD do was really glorious. It allowed a lot of exploration in what people might do if given power without direction.

The variety of religious expression was also neat. There were enough similarities that you could explore real-world religious themes and issues, but enough significant differences that the stories we told didn't seem insulting or demonizing towards any real-world religions.

Thinker
2018-10-16, 08:42 AM
The rules are a bit weird. I've just gone through the rules post to check, and we're supposed to read with the widest possible breadth, so by my reading that means that even if the last practitioner died out 4368 years ago then it's not allowed. If a mod could clarify this I would be grateful.


So let's see, what makes an interesting religion for RP. I think we've effectively split ourselves into two camps:
-The Gods camp, where the deities and their myths are the most important bit.
-the Cults camp, where practices, place in society, and scriptures are the most important bit.

Note that here I'm using myths to mean beliefs about the deity and scriptures to mean beliefs about the world.

Now ideally every religion will have all of this, but I'd much rather know how my character fits into society.

Put me in a Mechanics camp. In an RPG I'm more interested in how the characters are supposed to interact with religion. What benefits/drawbacks does that create?

LibraryOgre
2018-10-16, 08:49 AM
Does this include historical religions, i.e., those with no current practitioners? Could we draw a date line at around 1,000 years ago?

The Mod Wonder: You may be surprised as to which religions have modern-day followers. Thus, it applies to all religions, save those in a purely fictional context.