settings with full-fledged religions (as opposed to the standard mix n' match)

[petermcleod117]

Hello!

So, one thing that I have always found interesting in D&D is write-ups of full-fledged organized fantasy religions in D&D. The primary approach to D&D is usually "here's a list of gods, and what each of them does. choose one and get spells", which is not a particularly interesting approach. On the other hand, D&D has also produced some of the more interesting fantasy religions I've encountered.

For example:
-In Ravenloft we have the Church of Ezra, "Our Guardian in the Mists", a lawful neutral deity of protection whose followers have different interpretations of her dogma depending on which domain they live in.
-In Eberron you have a host of interesting religions, from the Sovereign Host to the Path of Light to the Church of the Silver Flame, each with it's own dogma, organization, and regional variants.
-In Swashbuckling Adventures (a D20 adaptation of the 7th Sea setting) you have the Church of the Prophets, a highly organized gnostic religion devoted to scientific investigation and opposed to the practice of magic.
-In Midnight, you have the admittedly somewhat edgy but still very interesting Church of Izrador.

Those are the ones I can remember off the top of my head. But you can get the picture, I think: instead of choosing a god to worship, you are choosing a faith with all that entails.



Do you know any other good settings which have fully developed religions like these? I would love to investigate some more settings, especially now that I have the time to do so.

[Buufreak]

Does Athas being silence to the gods count?

[Bonzai]

In my homebrew setting, each culture has their own distinctive religion and dieties. I wanted it to feel very organic in that sense. No one knows the "true" story of creation. God's rise and fall along with the cultures that revere them. Once they get past lesser demigod status, they can no longer materialize in the material plane, and have to rely on worship and their clerigy to influence the world. There may have been some primordial creator God in the long forgotten past, but their name is long forgotten.

Examples of various religions in my setting:

Dark Elves in my setting do not live underground. Instead they live in a jungle that is so dense that light seldom reaches the ground. They evolved to thrive within the darkness beneath the canopy. They worship a Demonic demi God that is very near ascending to become a full fledged diety. It is doing so through steady streams of ritual blood sacrifice. As a result their culture revolves around raiding, capturing Slaves, and perfecting blood magics to control them.

In the Island nation of Mercia the people are renowned sailors and ship wrights. The survival of the nation relies on sea trade, therefore their primary religion focuses on God's of weather and the sea, though many pick up faiths from the various lands they visit.

In the Kingdom of Federim they worship a patheon of saints. All of whom achieved some sort of miraculous deed in the kingdoms past, and as such they are invoked by the people for strength, guidance, and protection in matters in which they are associated with. Each Saint has various shrines and churches scattered across the kingdom. (I refluffed the binder class. Instead of channeling vestiges, they are friars that channel the power of the various saints that they worship. Each vestige is instead a Saint, and has been rewritten and fluffed to match up with historical events.).

In the land of Jah'kora, Ashanti is the primary diety. She is a goddess of fate. It is she who determines a person's destiny. If someone manages to somehow cheat death or avoid their fate, Azumat, her servant and a lesser diety in his own right, will send his followers to collect Ashanti's due. The Reapers of Azumat are an order of holy monks/mystics/assassin's. They receive their targets through holy visions. They often include sentient undead, those resurrected without Ashanti's blessing, or those that otherwise cheat to avoid their fate.

To me this feels a lot more natural than an entire world having one true and correct pantheon of God's. Its a lot more work for me, but it also provides opportunity to flesh out the culture and history of my setting in the process.