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Post by jmccann on Mar 24, 2015 0:01:47 GMT -6
I have been thinking about religions in a quasi-medieval setting. One common feature of D&D campaigns is that there is often a hodge-podge of religions more or less randomly jumbled together without a lot of regard to given to how the religions would interact together. Often there is an analog to Christianity, or some cults w/ aspects similar to Christianity (e.g. St. Cuthbert), existing alongside one or more polytheistic religions, nature cults, and who knows what else.
It seems to me that typical D&D settings with have more in common w/ pagan antiquity in terms of differing religions in close proximity than with later periods. In actual history, once Christianity achieved some critical mass and was adopted by Constantine, there was a little bit of see-sawing, but its uncompromising ideology caused it to sweep aside previous religions once it was adopted by Theodosius. There were heresies and schisms, and conflicts w/ pagans on the frontiers, but you don't really see a stable situation which looked anything like the D&D religious setup. Similarly, Islam quickly established itself across a great swathe of territory. There were pockets of other religions within the Muslim area and some non-muslims achieved some prominence, but again, no arrangement resembling D&D religions seems to have ever existed. So it seems that a typical D&D hodge-podge with lots of polytheistic religions and a Christian (perhaps Muslim as well) analog should not really be a stable configuration of religions if they are constituted as the real-world historical religions were.
Finally then my question. How can a number of different religions, including Christian and Islamic analogs, be realistically set together in society in a stable way, in a typical D&D setting? Or thinking about it a little differently, how can you start with religions having fairly real-world elements, and derive a setting with a number of religions conducive to a D&D campaign? I have a few ideas, but I'd like to hear the comments of others before going into them.
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Post by rsdean on Mar 24, 2015 3:11:13 GMT -6
It's not my period of history, but I'd look up 16th-18th century India as a model, with Islam, Christianity, and polytheistic Hinduism all mixing in various proportions...
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Post by kesher on Mar 24, 2015 7:50:00 GMT -6
See, I think the, let's say "verifiable existence" of deities changes the assumptions to such a degree that any historical analog is pointless.
Personally I find a lot of inspiration in how Leiber handled gods in Lankhmar...
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Post by Scott Anderson on Mar 24, 2015 9:48:02 GMT -6
Holy war, if you use it, is a feature not a bug. But there are lots of examples of medieval settings which are more accepting and cosmopolitan than we take for granted in our collective imagination.
I set my campaign in fantasy transylvania at the turn of the 16th c. At least three kinds of Orthodox, Catholic, Lutheran, Calvinist, and muslim adherents lived in that time and place and religion was a secondary motivator to ethnicity. It's a nice analog to elves, dwarfs, hobbits and men. And orcs. Lots of orcs.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 10:21:48 GMT -6
D&D has always treated gods as superheroes. One character might worship Superman, one Green Lantern, and another Wonder Woman. So they aren't really religions in the earthly sense. For example, there might be half a dozen sun gods but none of them actually controls the sun; they just have sun-theme superpowers.
Runequest does a better job with this sort of thing but it also reverses the power cycle. The gods are entirely dependent on their worshipers for their powers (even their own existence), whereas D&D assumes that gods grant powers (i.e. spells) to their worshipers but are otherwise not dependent on them. More like Clash of the Titans.
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Post by Scott Anderson on Mar 24, 2015 15:44:55 GMT -6
Frank Mentzer's immortals are at least in theory are dependent upon number and zealotry of their worshipers. He has a nice article up on Pandius about it.
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Post by talysman on Mar 24, 2015 16:08:58 GMT -6
You can get away with an old-fashioned polytheism, where everyone in a region worships the god of that region (which may be expressed as one god, a married pair, some kind of triad...) but other gods may get minor sacrifices/prayers for specific situations, sort of like asking a saint for a blessing.
If you are in Athens, you make regular offerings to Athena, but if you are a sailor, you probably make an offering to Poseidon before a voyage, even though myth has it that Athena and Poseidon were rivals for the the city of Athens... and in private, you make minor offerings to to Hesta, your household gods, and whatever other gods are important at the moment. And when you go to another city with a different god, you don't challenge the priesthood there for worshipping the wrong god, you pay appropriate respect in public, and if the god of your home city is important, you keep making observances to your home god in private.
If you want a Christian analog in that kind of setting, you adopt some of the external symbolism, but you don't make the religion a proselytizing monotheism that denies other gods unless you *want* conflict.
... Or you go the other way and set up some Christian/Islam-style religions in in conflict. Each country or city will be dominated by one sect. Other sects might be tolerated as private observance, as long as they don't draw attention to themselves, or if you're lucky, reasonably tolerated. But they might also be banned outright.
I sort of run it that way. The lead religion is the Church of Urizen, a Christian analog. Worship of Ahania is a rival in foreign lands, a pseudo-Islam. Urthona and Red Orc are druid deities and generally banned, although some areas might tolerate Urthona a little (Red Orc is the focus of the Chaos Druids and is in open warfare with civilization, so it is never tolerated.) If a player wants to pick any other god, they are considered odd heretics or members of minority cults from some distant tribe. How they are treated is basically a matter of reaction rolls modified by local intolerance levels.
But it helps that in my world, clerics get power from their faith, which lets them order around minor spirits in the name of their deity. They do *not* get powers directly from the deity, although they may interpret it that way. So, my gods aren't *objectively* real.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 24, 2015 17:09:31 GMT -6
Okay, let's go back to the beginning, OD&D. I'm not talking about anything later.
"How can a number of different religions, including Christian and Islamic analogs, be realistically set together in society in a stable way, in a typical D&D setting?"
Mu.
D&D is first and foremost a game. At first it was "I'm gonna go to the lawful temple." Then I started saying "I'm going to go to the First Church of Crom Scientist." Then other names like "Mitra's Witnesses" and "Church of St. Cuthbert of the Cudgel" got added.
I don't think you can realisitcally have the mixmaster religious setting of original D&D, and that was never a goal of the original game or its writers.
"First and foremost, it is a game." -- Gary Gygax
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Post by Porphyre on Mar 25, 2015 15:59:12 GMT -6
...
William Blake, right ?
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Post by kesher on Mar 25, 2015 19:03:59 GMT -6
Hah--I missed that first time through! Awesome! I wanna play in Blake's Albion...
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Post by Falconer on Mar 25, 2015 21:57:37 GMT -6
I thought Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword helped explain a lot of the assumptions in D&D. Christianity and Paganism coexist, albeit not in a “stable” way. Though I never somehow thought that D&D assumed a stable situation. I think of the intro in B2: “The Realm of mankind is narrow and constricted. Always the forces of Chaos press upon its borders, seeking to enslave its populace, rape its riches, and steal its treasures. If it were not for a stout few, many in the Realm would indeed fall prey to the evil which surrounds them.”
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Post by tetramorph on Mar 26, 2015 13:04:30 GMT -6
Hey, jmccann, good question. In my campaign, the church is very clearly a fantastical version of the medieval Christian one. Not all clerics are adventuring clerics. These just function in the normal way one might imagine. Adventuring clerics all have powerful patrons (saints or angels) that grant them "boons" (their spells). This introduces a layer of distance between the Christian god (God, if you believe they are the same) and the fantastical shenanigans we game in D&D. It has worked nicely so far. No one cries "Blasphemy!" or "stop being so preachy!" either way. It works. I then have "saracens," as in the French matter. These are neutral men like dervishes, etc. They are knights that come and challenge you, etc. There are still covens and glens with pagan priests and priestesses around. These are neutral until confronted by men of Law (the church). If they do not convert, they become Chaos. Well, that is how I try to do it. Hope that helps towards the OP.
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Post by Fearghus on Mar 26, 2015 13:59:12 GMT -6
I thought Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword helped explain a lot of the assumptions in D&D. Christianity and Paganism coexist, albeit not in a “stable” way. And Carahue was a Muslim if I recall correctly.
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Post by talysman on Mar 26, 2015 14:54:04 GMT -6
...
William Blake, right ?
Yep. I'm no Blake scholar, so I don' take all the details from his mythos, mostly just the names and a handful of details, like Ahania being Urizen's wife. But the druid part is contrary to Blake's writings, where druids are rationalists and thus associated with Urizen. I took my image of druids from the TV series Merlin, where the druid religion has been banned and is in conflict with the king and the kingdom. I keep a lot of the details of the Church of Urizen sketchy, so that if a player wants to play a cleric of Urizen, they can just make up whatever theology they want and it is assumed they are from one of many competing sects.
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Post by jmccann on Mar 27, 2015 22:40:43 GMT -6
See, I think the, let's say "verifiable existence" of deities changes the assumptions to such a degree that any historical analog is pointless. I think your modern attitude is influencing your thinking quite a bit here. Before science provided the explanations we take for granted, storms/ disease/ whatever would have been interpreted as "verifiable existence" of deities. So clerics' powers and other divine manifestations in the game are different in degree but not categorically different from what was interpreted as divine presence in premodern times in our world. So I don't agree that historical analogs are completely pointless. I think it changes things somewhat though.
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Post by jmccann on Mar 27, 2015 22:52:41 GMT -6
You can get away with an old-fashioned polytheism, where everyone in a region worships the god of that region (which may be expressed as one god, a married pair, some kind of triad...) but other gods may get minor sacrifices/prayers for specific situations, sort of like asking a saint for a blessing. SNIP If you want a Christian analog in that kind of setting, you adopt some of the external symbolism, but you don't make the religion a proselytizing monotheism that denies other gods unless you *want* conflict. This is basically the approach I am taking. There are a couple of polytheistic systems along w/ some druidic/ shamanic types. I want to have multiple sects of Christian analog (some quite hostile to others) with varying degrees of adoption and power and saints' cults. I want the clerics of different religions to each have varying powers and a very different feel. They do *not* get powers directly from the deity, although they may interpret it that way. So, my gods aren't *objectively* real. Can you explain why you set it up this way? Tetramorph has a similar arrangement with a Christian analog although it seems he does it as a distancing mechanism to avoid causing offense or irritation.
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Post by jmccann on Mar 27, 2015 23:02:06 GMT -6
Hey, jmccann, good question. In my campaign, the church is very clearly a fantastical version of the medieval Christian one. Not all clerics are adventuring clerics. These just function in the normal way one might imagine. Adventuring clerics all have powerful patrons (saints or angels) that grant them "boons" (their spells). This introduces a layer of distance between the Christian god (God, if you believe they are the same) and the fantastical shenanigans we game in D&D. It has worked nicely so far. No one cries "Blasphemy!" or "stop being so preachy!" either way. It works. I then have "saracens," as in the French matter. These are neutral men like dervishes, etc. They are knights that come and challenge you, etc. There are still covens and glens with pagan priests and priestesses around. These are neutral until confronted by men of Law (the church). If they do not convert, they become Chaos. Well, that is how I try to do it. Hope that helps towards the OP. I'd like to hear more about how this works in terms of game mechanics, and how it functions in play. I see you have a blog, I'll have to head over there to do some reading. Do clerics all belong to the fantastical church? Do the pagans provide the anti-clerics? And how do you differentiate their powers?
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Post by talysman on Mar 27, 2015 23:36:34 GMT -6
They do *not* get powers directly from the deity, although they may interpret it that way. So, my gods aren't *objectively* real. Can you explain why you set it up this way? Tetramorph has a similar arrangement with a Christian analog although it seems he does it as a distancing mechanism to avoid causing offense or irritation. I do it because I don't want objective deities, or certainty. Players find a cult that claims their god lives in the lowest depths below their temple? Maybe it does. Maybe they imagine it. Maybe it's not a literal god, but something big, powerful, and mindless, like in a swords & sorcery story. Cleric of Urizen meets another cleric of Urizen with contradictory beliefs? No way to know which is true. Maybe neither. Cleric of Urizen learns some unpleasant truth that suggests Urizen isn't real? The cleric may lose divine power as a result... but that's a side effect of loss of faith, so if their faith is restored, they regain their powers.
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Post by Porphyre on Mar 28, 2015 3:21:11 GMT -6
I think every single cleric I played was the only follower of his own make-up religion. One was a former shepherd who had a religious epiphany and strongly professed a biblical One God (noone took him seriously), another one had elected to worship the moss-covered statue of a forgotten god/king in the forest, and another one was an insane chaotic "burn'em all" variety who swore by the "six-tongued flame of th" dark fire" destined to ultimately consume the universe.
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Post by tetramorph on Mar 28, 2015 9:23:57 GMT -6
I'd like to hear more about how this works in terms of game mechanics, and how it functions in play. . . Do clerics all belong to the fantastical church? Do the pagans provide the anti-clerics? And how do you differentiate their powers? I learned from Necropraxis' blog to think in terms of clerical "boons" instead of "spells," per se. I used his ideas for inspiration and I came up with 12 boons that open up as possibilities as adventuring clerics advance. So, 1 boon for lvl 1 ("Health"), 2 more for lvl 2 ("Light and Truth"), 4 more for lvl 4 and finally 5 more at lvl 7. Cleric lvl indicates how many boons they can call down "in the field" in one day. Some clerical "spells" are achieved through a combination of two of the other boons, so, e.g., health and command = "raise dead," once a week, etc. Now, that was what I felt I needed to do to make it feel simultaneously more "Christian" in mythos while avoiding offense or irritation (nice wording there, thanks for that) on the other. I don't think anyone would have to go to my extent of re-ruling to get the same affect in their campaign. It was just what I wanted to try. In role-play, it means that PCs are never casting out demons in "Jesus" name or turning undead by pronouncing the Trinity or something. That is reserved strictly for sacramental stuff going on in an official church service and so almost never needs to come up in literal play. Instead they cast out and turn "in the name of the Law / of all that is Good / of the Truth / of the King of Heaven / etc." They call down boons by invoking their patron, never god/God or Jesus directly. And, yes, I am following Tolkien (The Monsters and the Critics) and Lewis' (That Hideous Strength) shared vision of that liminal "dark ages" when the church was waxing while paganism was waning but where there could still be some neutral and even lawful magic-use, like Merlin who was both half-fay and baptized, etc. So all Lawful clerics are members of the church. Adventuring clerics can perform sacramental ministry at home, in a chapel, at a church or cathedral. In the field, because of their patronal commitment, they also have these boons from "heaven" they can call down. Even a normal, NPC cleric of the church can turn undead, but probably no boons unless they have had an adventuring past from which they have retired. The clerics need these boons to bring Law out of Chaos in the Underworld and in the Wilderness so the "Heavens" have allowed patrons to dispense these special miracles for this "missionary" purpose. I see this all as unfolding core Christian mythos archetypes. I am not going for a game that stays interesting b/c we keep multiplying diversity of descriptions and options but that stays interesting b/c it deliberately and deeply engages core and perennial archetypes. So I am not going for pantheons of gods and intrigue b/w human factions and the like. The good guys are good, the bad guys are bad, the undead and the demons are out to get us all! Something like that. Pagan are neutral until the gospel (of the Law of Heaven) is proclaimed to them. Accept = Lawful. Reject = Chaotic. The battle line for the last battle is now drawn in the sand. So some pagans are anti-priests, some are neutral. Neutrals act more like MUs with healing abilities. Anti-priests have reverse boons and instead of turning / exorcising, they command and hex. There are also hypocritical anti-priests hidden within the Lawful church. They are revealed when someone finally notices them using a dark boon or commanding undead, hexing with demons, etc. Hope that helps you imagine what I am going for without overburdening with too much detail. Feel free to ask more questions and let me know what you think. Thanks for asking!
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Post by Falconer on Mar 28, 2015 12:03:12 GMT -6
Hm, and Lewis also liked using certain Roman gods more-or-less straight up as good angelic/Valarin entities under God’s authority—most prominently Mars, Venus, Jupiter, etc., in the Space Trilogy, but also in Prince Caspian he used Bacchus, Silenus, and Pomona. IIRC there is also a lesser/savage manifestation of Venus in That Hideous Strength, so that could be useful.
More along conventional lines is the legend of Tannhäuser, which goes something like this: Tannhäuser is a poet who finds the Venusberg, the home of Venus, and spends some years there enjoying her favors. Finally he leaves, convinced that man is not meant to live like the immortal gods, but must live a life of struggle and repentance. When he returns to earth, people are horrified that he has lived in hell. He goes on a pilgrimage to Rome to seek absolution from the Pope, but the latter says it would be easier for his papal staff to bloom into flowers than to forgive such sins. (And then it does.)
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Post by tetramorph on Mar 28, 2015 12:15:18 GMT -6
Hm, and Lewis also liked using certain Roman gods more-or-less straight up as good angelic/Valarin entities under God’s authority—most prominently Mars, Venus, Jupiter, etc., in the Space Trilogy, but also in Prince Caspian he used Bacchus, Silenus, and Pomona. IIRC there is also a lesser/savage manifestation of Venus in That Hideous Strength, so that could be useful. Yes, absolutely. There is a book written on Lewis' thing with the planets. I would totally be open to that in my campaign. But, as in That Hideous Strength, they would, after the ascension of the King of Heaven, worship him and not be happy about their continued worship on earth. Perhaps broadly tolarant, especially of the ignorant.
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Post by xerxez on Mar 30, 2015 22:54:07 GMT -6
What an excellent thread!
I can only say how I do it....in my principal campaign world there is a monotheistic church/temple which in most important respects mirrors the medieval church hierarchy socially and politically.
Old religions exist--and the "true church" owns that these ancient gods hold powers (hence, their shamans and clerics can cast spells)..but has a theology which maintains that such "gods" are in fact really only very powerful miscreant supernatural beings whose followers have not yet understood the highest revelation...that the single Deity of the "true church" is in fact the only real "God" and that one day this God will subject all subordinate entities to His or Her if you prefer eternal reign...
For clerics of the "true church", part of their role play as a cleric is to portray the disposition of adherents of this faith...patiently and fervently (or smugly and self righteously, as befits the particular character) trying to get the pagans to realize that the true God loves them, stand ready to forgive them for their theological misconceptions and to own them as soon as they abandon lesser spirits for the Supreme God.
If you have a pagan character in my campaign, part of your role play is to greet such assertions with patient bemusement or undying hatred, as befits the disposition of your character....
In my campaign world, the one true God bestows his miracles only upon true adherents.
Thus, clerical position in the Temple hierarchy does not necessarily determine spell casting ability. You might see a high level Bishop who is really only a bribed and controlled fraud--and who, if it came down to it, could not cast a single clerical spell--but yet appears to be higher in level than a 2nd or 3rd level cleric who humbly serves the church in a lower position but who can cast clerical spells.
The church culture is such that this fraudulent bishop might try to make every pretense and appearance of being a cleric of true ability. Since spell potency is regarded as a sign of the God's favor, even the phonies attempt to maintain an appearance or reputation of being a spell caster. The more diabolical pretenders might even be wizards or possess magick items which imitate clerical magic before the less discerning...
There is as much corruption in the Temple as there was in the medieval church...but only truly lawful clerics have spell casting abilities.
And there are rumors about those priests with past exploits that sound illustrious but who have not recently shown any miracle working power...
But more alarming still, there are truly gifted clerics who in following the will of the one true God are considered heretics because they have run afoul of the political structure....
But for all that, the "pagans" outside the true religion quietly shake their heads--they too have spell casting abilities and know in their hearts that this is a gift of their Old Gods...who cares if the Temple says those Gods are demons or misguided Demi-Urges?
That's all just a matter of theological quibbling...
It is the results which matter.
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Post by kesher on Mar 31, 2015 9:18:39 GMT -6
I think you have about 1,000 campaigns-worth of ready-made conflict in that post alone. Awesome.
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