non-interventionist gods (in a D&D world)

[mhacdebhandia]

Other than that, either someone here or (more likely) someone at the WotC Eberron forums (they have a separate "gods and magic" forum!) would be able to give you a rundown summary of how Eberron handles its faiths. It's a little too exhaustive for me to do right now, or I'd be glad to help.

I'm helping! Ah, I do love talking about fictional religions.

There are several major religions in Eberron. For our purposes, it's important to look at the main pantheon of the Sovereign Host, and their unpleasant "cousins" the Dark Six.

Together, they are fifteen deities that cover your normal bases for a fantasy pantheon. They are, in fact, similar to the classical Greek pantheon in that many of them are related. The goddess of agriculture and fertility, Arawai, is the sister of the Devourer, lord of the deep waters and the destructive power of nature. When the Devourer raped his sister, he fathered upon her the Fury, goddess of passion driven to madness. Arawai and the Devourer have another brother, Balinor, god of beasts and the hunt.

Aureon, god of law and magic, is married to Boldrei, the goddess of community and the hearth; the Shadow, god of dark magic and the corruption of nature, is said to be Aureon's literal shadow taken life.

Olladra, goddess of feast and good fortune, is married to Onatar, god of artifice and the forge; their sons are Kol Korran, god of trade and wealth, and the Keeper, god of death, decay, and greed for the souls of the dead. The three war gods are Dol Arrah, goddess of honourable combat and sacrifice, and here brothers Dol Dorn, god of strength at arms, and the Mockery, god of treachery and dishonour. The last of the Dark Six, the Traveller, is seemingly unrelated to the rest of the pantheon.

What's specifically relevant about all of these mythological relationships is that in Eberron, you can't travel to the extraplanar home of the gods and see them with your own eyes, or meet them as they walk the world as you might in other settings. Whether or not the gods even truly exist is a matter of faith - faith that is sorely tested when terrible conflicts like the century-long Last War or cataclysmic disasters like the destruction of the nation of Cyre occur and the gods seemingly do nothing to help. Do they simply not care, is this terrible suffering part of their design for the world, or might they not even exist?

A counter to the last possibility is the fact that all over the world, under different names and valued differently by various cultures, it is possible to see these fifteen gods in the religious beliefs and legends of cultures who seem to never have come in contact. The fact that theologians among the clergy of the Sovereign Host (or the Dark Six) can collect stories from cultures widely separated by time and geography and find the same stories about the nature goddess being raped by her brother, the god of destruction, and giving birth to the goddess of madness, argues strongly that the gods are real and have touched all the cultures of the world - even if the sahuagin of the deep oceans do revere Shargon (the Devourer) above all other gods and the humans of Khorvaire despise him as lord of uncaring, destructive natural forces and cling to his sister Arawai to help them survive, they still (as far as the scholars are concerned) essentially believe in the same deific personalities and the same myths and legend, just filtered through their own cultural perceptions.

The other thing this means is that, from the perspective of the worshippers of the Sovereign Host, other religions in the world are just distorted or narrow perceptions of the true pantheon of gods. The Church of the Silver Flame teaches that the Flame is a force of pure righteousness and goodness which can bind evil and protect the worthy; adherents of the Host point out that the mortal woman who sacrificed herself to help bind a powerful demon and became the Voice of the Silver Flame to communicate these teachings to mortals from within a symbolic pillar of fire was a paladin of Dol Arrah, goddess of the sun, honour, sacrifice, and combat - the Silver Flame is nothing more than Dol Arrah's way of acting in the cause of righteousness in the world, and the Church is simply misguided in believing it's an independent force.

Likewise, the Blood of Vol is a religious faith which absolutely accepts the existence of the Sovereign Host and the Dark Six - it just believes that all fifteen of the gods are evil, jealous of and hating the mortal races and have so cursed them with mortality and death itself. The faithful of the Blood of Vol believe that self-willed undead are glorious martyrs who have given up their chance at true immortality to fight on behalf of the living against the gods, seeking to find a way to conquer them and death itself and win eternal life for the rest of the world.

It helps the cause of the Blood of Vol that what is known about the fate of the dead is not exactly an enticing prospect - the souls of the departed travel to Dolurrh, the plane of the dead, where they dwell in gloomy twilight as their memories and personality are slowly erased until they become faceless shades who, themselves, eventually fade from existence. Now, the Sovereign Host teaches that the gods reward the righteous during life (and some believe that the souls in Dolurrh are being prepared in some way to travel on to the realm where the Sovereigns dwell, beyond the planes), and the Church of the Silver Flame teaches that those who fight against evil to protect others may be granted union with the Silver Flame after death rather than passing on to Dolurrh, but the reality is still a little grim.

My reason for going on at length like this is to show you that the consequences of gods who are silent and never show themselves to mortals can go far beyond some people simply believing they don't exist. When Dol Arrah never shows up to confirm or deny that the Silver Flame is simply an aspect of her power, you have a foundation for ongoing conflict that can never be resolved - just like the real world, hooray!

A final note on "worship the pantheon" versus "worship a god" - it's strongly suggested that most average people, and most of the experts and adepts who staff the temples of the Sovereign Host, revere the pantheon as a whole. Farmers might pray more often to Arawai for rains and a good crop, and smiths might offer thanks to Onatar when their work is successful, but neither would stint at praising Boldrei at their weddings or toasting Olladra when their families gather for a feast. Clerics generally worship the Host as a whole, though a sizeable number devote themselves to one specific deity, while paladins generally serve Dol Arrah or even Boldrei. The point, though, is that, just like in our own history, the worship of the pantheon as a whole with specific reverence done to individual gods on appropriate occasions is the rule in Eberron, not the exception.

 

[taliesin15]

Y'know, isn't the Monk class based on real world monks who are Buddhists? Speaking of non-interventionist "Gods", assuming Buddha would be considered a deity in the first place...

This brings up an interesting point in my mind: does anyone employ religious/mystical systems in d20 that are essentially Animistic?

 

[Eben]

I'm not quite sure what you're asking, then. It sound like you've already decided to use interventionist gods, since in your campaign they are an undeniable fact.

Sorry if I'm a bit incoherent. I'm just trying to think some things through before puting them before my players, just to find out that I've left a loophole you can drive a truck through.

I want to start a setting which is based on a federation of three states. One of these is a theocracy that managed to pull the churches together under a concept of a divine order. (There is of course still worship of indivudual gods as wel.)
This state used to fight out boder wars with one of the others. For the sake of the setting, I'dd still like there to be some strife between these factions. So I was thinking about portraying the people from the northern state as not very religious. But a first problem here is that an indivudual sovereign might decide that as a matter of policy it would be a good idea to distance his nation from religion, but the people witnessing the power religion are unlikely to follow their lords reasoning. (And lets face it: perhaps not all priests will be able to use divine magic, unless your campaign is about the discovery of divine magic, clerics casting will be fact rather than fiction.) But I can tackle that with the concept of divine order.
The real problem is: how can a nation, being led by some of the gods foremost representatives fight wars against people of a nation that excepts the existence of these same gods and worships? The answer to this would be this divine truce: the gods agreed not to meddle with the affairs of men.
So far so good. But why still grant powers then? By supplying power to some individuals you meddle with the affairs of men.

One suggestion above (and in the rules), is to make divine magic more esotheric in nature and not necessarily linked to the worship of a god or gods. Worshipping a god being just one of the ways in which to open a portal to draw upon divine energies. And if this is possible: the pantheon itself becomes subjective, like in Eberron, it would seem.

It seems like this last would be my best option. I'll just accredit the continued worship of one pantheon to tradition then and just take the risk that players will want to experiment with the possibility of an atheïst cleric.

Thanks for all the input so far.

Peter

 

[ruleslawyer]

Y'know, isn't the Monk class based on real world monks who are Buddhists? Speaking of non-interventionist "Gods", assuming Buddha would be considered a deity in the first place...

This brings up an interesting point in my mind: does anyone employ religious/mystical systems in d20 that are essentially Animistic?

I'd say any campaign using druids that worship the "power of nature" or some such would be doing so, and that route is mentioned at least once in the PHB.

As for interventionist vs. non-interventionist gods: Technically, nothing about divine magic per the RAW requires it to come from a god. It could as easily just be a different means of casting spells that uses a holy symbol and the occasional set of religious tracts as components. While it is true that almost every d20 game that doesn't assume interventionist gods removes the distinction between arcane and divine magic, that doesn't mean the converse can't be true.