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

[dave2008]

I’ve already attempted to run that campaign once. Never again! (If only Theros had come out sooner, maybe it would have worked out better than it did.)


If we’re lucky, we’ll get the fleshed out Piety system in the new DMG.

What do you mean by fleshed out? It seems pretty clear and robust in Theros, what else needs to be fleshed out?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

What do you consider the "classic fantasy pantheon model?" I', just not sure what you mean by this

Anywhere between half a dozen and several dozen deities, each of which has a specific (pseudo-Greco-Roman style) "portfolio" of things under their purview, but each individual person dedicates themselves only to one god (very vaguely like certain Hindu traditions, but it's really modeled on Christianity with different ethics), or very rarely a pre-existing alliance of deities (such as the Triad, made up of Torm, Ilmater, and Tyr or Bahamut while Tyr was dead.)

 

[cbwjm]

Oh absolutely- if you have a god of the harvest, you go to them to ensure a good crop, if you have a god of commerce, you go to them to bless a business venture- D&D wants people to be devoted to one god, whose worshipers all have the same basic powers as other god's faithful, so each god is a "one stop shop" for all your divine needs!

In ancient times, you could have your household god or gods, patron gods, gods who are appeased and gods who are actively worshiped and there were scores of deities who actively had a hand in one's life!

I don't think dnd wants everyone following a single god, it's just that the whole pantheon thing was not well explained, or at least not front and centre. Clerics are devoted to a single deity, which isn't too far from the real world, however, they've gone all in so there is no other god worth worshipping or offering a prayer to. We have examples of people dedicated to a single god or temple in the real world but I believe they were more temporal than spiritual, as in head of a temple to Jupiter. It wouldn't have been expected for them to be solely devoted to that single deity.

 

[MarkB]

I don't think dnd wants everyone following a single god, it's just that the whole pantheon thing was not well explained, or at least not front and centre.

There's also the Forgotten Realms being the default setting. FR does tend more towards "pick your deity and stick with them" as its default assumption for religion.

 

[cbwjm]

There's also the Forgotten Realms being the default setting. FR does tend more towards "pick your deity and stick with them" as its default assumption for religion.

I think even for FR, you'd have your patron deity, but you'd still make offerings to others as needed. A warrior might have Tyr or Tempus as their patron, but they'd still make offerings to Chauntea for a good harvest if they were working a farm in their downtime. I think they played up the patron too hard while not playing up the pantheon enough.

They did explain this in 2e, but I think it may have just been in a supplement when it really should have been in the main box set/book for each edition.

 

[GrimCo]

Religion heavily depends on type of game i run.

In my Ravenloft meets CoC setting, there are no gods. There are churches, faiths, but not gods. There is no divine/arcane division, all magic is just magic, just different type of channeling.

For my more historical fantasy, i use real world religions, no gods actually exist.

Generally, i prefer settings where god either don't exist or they don't give a damn about mortals. But i love good religious war as setting backdrop.

 

[John R Davis]

It must be quite hard to imagine. The Gods have real power. Miracles abound. Even your average priest can purify food, create water etc.

Given this religion in my games is nearly always very important. It is in the real world where the gods do nowt, so ultra important when the gods can actually do visible real stuff.

Religious intrigue, factions, conflict, etc tend to be big themes

 

[Aldarc]

I typically prefer a more Eberron-like approach to religions in my TTRPGs. (Also, I'd give a shout out to religions in Iron Kingdoms.)

A lot of religion in Eberron is based around the worldviews of people who live in the world in relation to the realities and mysteries of the world. For example, three different elven religions are rooted in fearing both death and losing their ancestors in Dolurrh, particularly after losing their "Moses" figure: i.e., positive-energy necromancy, negative-energy necromancy, and embodying the ancestral spirit. There is a similar worldview about death that then bleeds over among (mostly) non-elves to become the Blood of Vol, though it also diverges from necromantic beliefs of the elves. Then we have the ethno-religious worldview of the kalashtar represented in the Path of Light. There is the Church of the Silver Flame and its theology formed around an actual spirit(s) that exists within a Silver Flame that manifests on Khorvaire. So when you look at Eberron, it's not just about picking from a pantheon of deities; instead, it's about picking your worldview.

I don't use the same religious set-up in all of my settings that I have run or created for D&D or otherwise. However, I do have a lot of common tropes that I often find myself remixing and reusing:

• animistic religions dealing with the reality of spirits, whether in this world or in a spirit world
• a humanistic ethical/legalistic religion, which often ends up something like a sort of hybrid of various influences: Islam/Judaism/Confucianism/Qun (Dragon Age)/Khala (Starcraft Protoss). So there are not so much priests as there are legal scholars, ethical philosophers, and teachers concerned with a harmonious society, governance, as well as good/proper living.
• a nature-oriented belief system (life/death/rebirth): sometimes includes a Green vs. the Dark or Fey Lords
• dead gods whose spirits inhabit the earth in geographically-bound locations and seal ancient evils within
• astrological gods embodied in constellations who reveal the will of the heavens through the stars
• a Trimurti-like set of draconic deities (i.e., creator, preserver, destroyer)
• cults of ascended heroes/immortals: lit. hero-worship cults
• veneration of an angelic host, which is sometimes accompanied by a belief in a cast out an Adversary (and their minions) who sought supreme power over the entire host
• an iconoclastic mystery cult that believes in a single engimatic deity who created existence with a single word. They venerate the power of words, language, writing, runes, and symbols but prohibit images of their deity.

Overall, I like showcasing a diversity of religions, cultures, differing worldviews, and syncretistic beliefs in my settings. You may have a land or nation where a people may commonly believe in one or more views above at the same time.

 

[Minigiant]

don't even wanna touch dragon smart? ok. i see how it is.

No dragon dumb religion is better for campaigns..

Dragon smart religion ends with the party dead and broke.

 

[James Gasik]

I don't think dnd wants everyone following a single god, it's just that the whole pantheon thing was not well explained, or at least not front and centre. Clerics are devoted to a single deity, which isn't too far from the real world, however, they've gone all in so there is no other god worth worshipping or offering a prayer to. We have examples of people dedicated to a single god or temple in the real world but I believe they were more temporal than spiritual, as in head of a temple to Jupiter. It wouldn't have been expected for them to be solely devoted to that single deity.

I know the Forgotten Realms at least follows the "worship a single deity exclusively" model (or at least, it did). I always had the impression this was so in other campaign settings, but I couldn't tell you why.