D&D 5E [5e] Book of Righteous

The [5e] Book of Righteous just landed as a physical product with me and it's a lovely piece of publishing.
I have to say I like the idea of the Great Church as a pantheon based meta cult, and the mythology is well crafted to provide enough familiarity to most [DND]D&D[/DND] players shared common core. As such it integrates very well with the PHB and the DMG, even when it presents it's own cosmology, it ticks all the usual D&D boxes, and even has sidebars for the perennial post 4e question of 'Where are the Feywild and Shadowfell?".
I was surprised at first how all the gods are good, with one clear exception and some minor ones. However I can kind of see that this makes for a very stable homogenous culture that works well for a 'we are the good people and we adventure and kill baddies' group, but there are more than enough spaces, niches, examples of linking in extra religions and diversity. However.. Warhammer Old World or Moorcock's Young Kingdoms or Glorantha this is not.
Familiar and accessible is not a bad thing, and after my first run thru I can see that it's a very high quality book and probably the 'missing' core book for me.
The rules crunch is nice, and in keeping with 5e, so extra archetypes, backgrounds, new domains, a few spells and some magic items, but nothing that mucks with the 5e design methodology. However one could also ignore that if you wanted to maintain a 'core book only' rule at the table, even the new domains are not essential, if very nicely done.

I felt it was all very 'good'. So maybe I need a 'Book of the Unholy' to counterbalance it..

However, my reason for posting, apart from my first freeform thoughts, was to ask the collective ENworld mind to share with me either your thoughts on how you'd use or not use this book, AND/OR how you used the 3.5e version in your gaming last time out.

I am hoping for insights to help me imagine how to utilise this..

Book of the Righteous was up and by far one of the best 3rd party books to come out under the OGL during the 3.X era. It serves as an excellent plug-n-play mythology and pantheon for a given world. But it also serves as an excellent tool for creating your own set of deities and churches. BotR excels at showcasing the interrelation between pantheon and cultus. There is a sense of lineage and family between the deities. The deities have their own legends, stories, and myths. They have servants, saints, sacred animals, holidays, etc. They have cults, orders, hierarchies, and schisms.

In regards to the plethora of "good" deities in comparison with "evil" deities, I found that (1) a breath of fresh air, and (2) more compelling in terms of socio-religious verisimilitude. Evil deities who twirl their mustaches do tend to be comparatively rare in real world religions, though deities who are massive pricks are often par for the course no matter your pantheon (e.g. Assyrian, West Semitic, Egyptian, Hellenistic, Roman, Norse, etc.). But most cultures generally develop a pantheon of deities who are regarded as worth worshipping, because civilization and mortal lives are dependent on their favor and powers. To that end, BotR gives you a pantheon that the vast bulk of a world's populace actually would want to venerate. Morally good, morally neutral, and morally evil people will all be venerating a "good" deity from their own idiosyncratic understanding of the deity, regardless of the deity's alignment.

Definitely one of the better books in 3rd edition.

Aldarc said:

In regards to the plethora of "good" deities in comparison with "evil" deities, I found that (1) a breath of fresh air, and (2) more compelling in terms of socio-religious verisimilitude. Evil deities who twirl their mustaches do tend to be comparatively rare in real world religions, though deities who are massive pricks are often par for the course no matter your pantheon (e.g. Assyrian, West Semitic, Egyptian, Hellenistic, Roman, Norse, etc.). But most cultures generally develop a pantheon of deities who are regarded as worth worshipping, because civilization and mortal lives are dependent on their favor and powers. To that end, BotR gives you a pantheon that the vast bulk of a world's populace actually would want to venerate. Morally good, morally neutral, and morally evil people will all be venerating a "good" deity from their own idiosyncratic understanding of the deity, regardless of the deity's alignment.

Click to expand...

I get that. Kinda. I'll need to soak in it a bit longer but right now they are all feeling a little too 'modern', what some religions regarded as good in history we'd view quite differently now, and in fantasy one can (should) go beyond that. However.. D&D had always been a modern mind set in a comfortable fantasy pseudo nostalgia place, and that's fine and has it's place at the table. What I liked is the space the book gives to add or twist it, with no need to break it.. I think there is room for a Mother of Monsters goddess, in fact that might be the Lillith goddess, just as she could also stand in for or be Lolth.

Yes, I am starting to appreciate the calm normal and fun canvas they've painted and how different tables might or might not take that in different ways.

I also quite liked the fact that although it doesn't have a setting, it suggests one thru the text, and later reminds you of some of the places in the mythology that you *might* want to put on the map.

Green Ronin should thank you.

I voted "thinking about buying it" due to 1) you brought it to my attention, and 2) your favorable review.

satbunny said:

I get that. Kinda. I'll need to soak in it a bit longer but right now they are all feeling a little too 'modern', what some religions regarded as good in history we'd view quite differently now, and in fantasy one can (should) go beyond that. However.. D&D had always been a modern mind set in a comfortable fantasy pseudo nostalgia place, and that's fine and has it's place at the table. What I liked is the space the book gives to add or twist it, with no need to break it.. I think there is room for a Mother of Monsters goddess, in fact that might be the Lillith goddess, just as she could also stand in for or be Lolth.

Yes, I am starting to appreciate the calm normal and fun canvas they've painted and how different tables might or might not take that in different ways.

I also quite liked the fact that although it doesn't have a setting, it suggests one thru the text, and later reminds you of some of the places in the mythology that you *might* want to put on the map.

Click to expand...

Well, outside of a couple of gods, like Morwyn, Maal, and Rontra, there are plenty of aspects to each of the gods that aren't anywhere close to good. You just need to play them up as such.

Terak worshippers can easily lean towards fascism.
Tinel worshippers can be classic dark cultists looking for dark rituals, much like Vecna worshippers.
Zheenkeef worshippers are dissolute drunks, and absolutely unreliable.
Darmon and crime syndicates can go hand in hand.
Barbaric tribes and blood sacrifice go well with Shalimyr and sometimes Urian worship.

Basically, any culture that isn't the Western European analogue of the "Great Church" can follow a religion that's the dark version of the god's agenda.

I might buy it for review purposes, but it's not the type of book that I expect will have an impact in my game. I prefer distant gods and uncertain religions....

I am reading it again and taking notes and TwoSix is right. The seeds of evil lie in many of the cults, and indeed quite legitimate political conflicts over different worldviews.
As for distant gods and fuzzy religion, these gods are distant, and as said above, the religions are much less monolithic when you read closer. The main conflicts over religions here will be human not divine and probably as much as proxies for human agendas than religious ones.
I have to say that I am very forgiving of sloppy proofreading with regard to dropped prepositions, but this book did need another visit to a sub editor. They don't seem to affect the very small rules chapter just fluff.

In other news using it with Mythras/OpenQuest/Runequest would be a few hours creating very short cult skills/spells summaries.




Sent from my SM-G901F using Tapatalk