D&D General Religion in D&D: Your Take

[Bedrockgames]

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 tend to think more in terms of religions than gods if that makes sense. So there are going to be objective deities but there are also going to be varying interprations of them and different groupings of them (unless the gods themselves are extremely hands on)

 

[Celebrim]

I tend to think more in terms of religions than gods if that makes sense. So there are going to be objective deities but there are also going to be varying interpretations of them and different groupings of them (unless the gods themselves are extremely hands on)

Even if the gods are very hands on, they may be open to different interpretations of what they stand for or different cults around them worshiping them in different aspects. Or they may themselves have dual natures. For example, the sun goddess Showna in my game allows herself to be worshiped as both healer and destroyer, as both the loving goddess of light and warmth and the killing vengeful goddess of fire. Her cults in the frozen North are very different than those in the baking deserts of the West. The goddess Aimara is the goddess of beauty and love but seems to allow a heretical sect of assassins called the Fly Men to persist within her cult despite official pronouncements against it. And it doesn't get much more 'hands on than' in my game - it's the Homerian world of gods and the descendants of gods around every corner.

Gods are complicated and they have complicated motives and natures. There can be multiple valid and sometimes even conflicting interpretations of what they stand for.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

I do have few concepts for campaigns and characters in Forgotten Realms in particular I would like to try, that tie directly to gods being very real and active. The characters in particular are:

• Orc Oath of Redemption Paladin of Grummsh, who believes that Grummsh has gone mad when losing his eye and drove Orcs mad with him, he is now on a quest to heal his god by discovering and delivering to him a new eye - Eye of Vecna.
• Half-Orc fist-fighting Cleric of Uthgar, who is on a quest to spread worship of Uthgar among the Orcs, as true champion of physical strength, to undermine Orcish pantheon and redeem the Orcs.
• Haven't decided if this one will be either paladin or cleric, but a worshipper of the goddess Evening Glory - formerly neutral goddess of love and undeath, that in 5e Adventure League content got driven mad by imprisoment in Amber Temple of Ravenloft. The character would be on a quest to find a way to heal their diety and restore her to her old state.

Dunno where these takes on divine-mortal relationships place me.

 

[sunny---folk]

NOTE 1: this thread is in D&D general because I think D&D does religion a little differently than other fantasy games due to the traditional inclusion of classes like the cleric and paladin. That said, feel free to discuss other fantasy games if they are appropriate.

NOTE 2: This thread is about fantasy religions and how the gods and their servants interact with playing D&D. It isn't about religion in general. You can use real world religions (ancient or current) as examples in discussion, but let's not make it about real world religions, please and thank you.

With that out of the way:

I was listening to a Great Courses on life in the ancient world and in talking about Mesopotamia and especially ancient Egypt, it got me thinking about how religions works in our campaigns. D&D religion is a weird chimera of myth and history, with mostly bad takes on both (at least as it relates to real world religion). That said, I find the place of religion in a D&D campaign to be fascinating and think there is some room for a discussion on how we, as individual worldbuilders and GMs especially, portray that element.

Dragonlance was a strong early influence on my view of how religion fits into a D&D campaign. I have leaned on the trope if the return of the lost, forgotten and/or old gods a bunch of times. Not being a religious person myself, I don't really model these forgotten faiths on anything particularly real, but rather use the trope as a way of talking about cycles of civilization and apocalyptic ends to them.

I also rather like the portrayal of religion in Eberron, where there are multiple religions that take very different forms, from pure philosophy to monotheism to traditional D&D pantheons.

One thing I have only toyed with in short games or one shots is the idea of legitimately living gods walking the earth, ruling their cities or otherwise directly lording over mortals. Like, if the city gods of Mesopotamia were active and not just bound to their statues. Being a cleric would be a different thing if your god summoned you before her to answer for your behavior on last week's dungeon delve.

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 absolutely love both polytheistic and monotheistic religion models. I am running a Wildemount campaign (Critical Role setting) currently, and it is centered on the monotheistic country in a polytheistic world. It is a lot of fun to flesh out the idea that in a setting with multiple confirmed gods, Xhorhas believes the Luxon is the one true faith.