Voadam
Legend
I like having a variety and spectrum of religions in my game for players to engage with or not as they choose and for different things to be able to come into play.How does religion fit into your D&D campaigns? What models of religions and faiths do you prefer? Are their settings that do religion really well for you? Do you make it an important part of worldbuilding or even play?
I do a cosmological model where divine spellcasters are simply a spellcasting tradition that tap divine power, they are not granted power actively by gods and there are nontheistic clerics and even some magical secret societies use non religious clerical tradition spellcasters.
This allows different god and religious models and makes it easier to use plot elements like heresies and schisms and following false gods and corrupt clerics or infiltrator clerics in good churches or good paladins going overboard in crusades and inquisitions as possibilities.
Cults can spring up over heroes and dragons and giants and angels, gods can be little (nymphs) or big (Olympians) and walk the earth or distant and never seen and there can be different in world theories on what they are and what defines them and what they are like.
I typically run a homebrew mashup setting of multiple campaign setting elements and generally run modules and adventure paths in a fairly open sandbox way with a lot of options for player involvement in choices and some setting development.
The biggest religion thing is the almost continent-spanning henotheistic Holy Lothian Empire from Ptolus with the fantasy fairly medieval church of Lothian an ascended martyred paladin with a vast widespread church structure with political influence and cathedrals and bishops in cities throughout the empire and inquisitors and orders of knighthood and tons of saints, many who are incorporated from outside stuff (including gods).
Lothian allows a lot of fantasy medieval church tropes and options.
Part of my setting backdrop is an imperial civil war including the head of the church seeking to become the head of the empire and assert control over the entire church as a fantasy pope versus bishop control over their bishoprics in outer areas of the decaying empire that have become essentially independent city states. Accusations of corruption of the church flow both ways against both sides.
The empire being henotheistic and having a primary relationship with the Lothian church still allows there to be other gods and pantheons with followers in the empire too, so I use the gods of Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms and Golarion and other pantheons in different places in and out of the empire and they can be options for PCs and allow more polytheistic styles of issues with Isis mystery cults and non-christian based styles of polytheistic religions in the world.
I also like having multiple options for cultures so different groups of my Orcs might worship the typical Gruumsh pantheon while others follow the Golarion Orc gods or the Warhammer ones or they might be Klingon culture and have killed their gods, or be fanatical followers of one-eyed Odin.
I am also a big fan of the Conan model where some areas might have overlapping religious traditions that vary regionally, so some people might see Bane as the FR tyrant god while others see him as 4e Dawn War war god with some seeing him as the same being and try for some syncretism with others sticking to only one version as the truth of the God.