Making Religion Matter in Fantasy RPGs

Religion is a powerful force in any culture and difficult to ignore when creating a gaming setting. Here's some things to consider when incorporating religions into your campaign.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

The Question of Gods​

When we look at religion from a gaming perspective, the most interesting thing about it is that in many settings, the existence of deities is not in question. One of the most common arguments over religion is whether there even is a god of any form. But in many fantasy games especially, deities offer proof of their existence on a daily basis. Their power is channelled through clerics and priests and a fair few have actually been seen manifesting in the material realm. This makes it pretty hard to be an atheist in a D&D game.

While the adherents of any faith believe the existence of their deity is a given fact, having actual proof changes the way that religion is seen by outsiders. In many ancient cultures, people believed in not only their gods, but the gods of other cultures. So to win a war or conquer another culture was proof your gods were more powerful than theirs. While winning a war against another culture can make you pretty confident, winning one against another culture’s gods can make you arrogant. Add to that the fact you had warrior priests manifesting divine power on the battlefield, you are pretty soon going to start thinking that not only is winning inevitable, but that it is also a divine destiny. Again, these are all attitudes plenty of believers have had in ancient days, but in many fantasy worlds they might actually be right.

Magic vs. Prayer​

If a world has magic, it might be argued that this power is just another form of magic. Wizards might scoff at clerics, telling them they are just dabblers who haven’t learned true magic. But this gets trickier if there are things the clerics can do with their magic that the wizards can’t do with theirs. Some wizards might spend their lives trying to duplicate the effects of clerics, and what happens if one of them does?

The reverse is also interesting. Clerics might potentially manifest any form of magical power if it suits their deity. So if the priest of fire can not only heal but throw fireballs around, is it the wizards that need to get themselves some religion to become true practitioners of the art? Maybe the addition of faith is the only way to really gain the true power of magic?

Are the Gods Real?​

While divine power might be unarguably real, the source of it might still be in contention. A priest might be connecting to some more primal force than magicians, or tapping into some force of humanity. What priests think is a connection to the divine might actually just be another form of magic. As such, it could have some unexpected side effects.

Let’s say this divine power draws from the life force of sentient beings. As it does so in a very broad way, this effect is barely noticed in most populations. A tiny amount of life from the population as a whole powers each spell. But once the cleric goes somewhere remote they might find their magic starts draining the life from those nearby. In remote areas, clerics might be feared rather than revered, and the moment they try to prove they are right by manifesting the true power of their deity, they (and the townsfolk) are in for a very nasty surprise.

Can You Not Believe in Them?​

There are ways to still play an atheist character in a fantasy game. However, it does require more thought beyond "well I don’t believe in it." That's a sure way to make your character look foolish, especially after they have just been healed by a cleric.

What will also make things much tougher is having a character that refuses to benefit from the power of religion due to their beliefs. They might insist that if they don’t know what in this healing magic, they don’t want any part of it, especially if the priest can’t really explain it outside the terms of their faith. That this healing works will not be in doubt. So are they being principled or a fool? If the explanation for magical healing isn’t "this is just healing energy" but "it’s the power of my deity, entering your body and changing it for the better" the character might be more reticent about a few more hit points.

When it comes to deities manifesting on the material plane, it’s a little harder to ignore them. But this isn’t always evidence of the divine. A manifesting deity is undoubtedly a powerful being, one able to crush armies and level cities, but does that make them divine? While the power of a deity is not in dispute, the definition of what is actually divine in nature is a lot muddier. This is ironically harder in a fantasy world where lich-kings, dragons and powerful wizards can do all the same things many deities are supposed to do.

What Are Gods?​

So we come back to the question: Whether you are a cleric, adherent or atheist, of what actually is god? What quality of them demands or inspires worship beyond the fact they are powerful? Plenty of philosophers are still trying to figure that one out. While in a fantasy game their existence and power may not be in question, whether they are holy or even worthy of trust and faith might be much harder to divine.

 

[Oofta]

I would say your personal beliefs about the real world are irrelevant.

Right, but some people are saying that a person that has an atheist PC is rejecting the premise of the campaign. As a player if I have an atheist PC it says nothing about the campaign world or the DM's world building. If the DM says there are gods and I'm running an atheist PC then my PC is wrong.

Okay.

It's fine as long as you are willing to accept the potential consequences from other NPCs and metaphysical side effects. Aesir healing magic might work poorly on you, if at all. You might alienate the shopkeeper. Depending on the setting assumption you might be regarded as just another guy or a crazed madman.

But are you being a jerk about it? Are you bringing millitant atheism to a table that has devout church goers in real life? As you following a philosophy that is contradicted by the in-game fiction of the immanence of the gods or powers? If the setting is like Eberron, that seems reasonable. If it's like Tekumel it's not.

He was never argumentative, he didn't really care what other people thought. Why do people assume an atheist will be militant?

As far as not providing healing, that would be a jerk move. The PC primarily started out as a thought experiment but it became an interesting hook with and a differentiator from my other PCs.

Other than some discussions on philosophy it didn't come up often, although his belief that there was no afterlife became a serious motivation.

If you are tell me that my PC can't be an atheist then you're telling me I do not have final say on what my PC thinks. That's a major red flag in my book.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

A lot is left up to the DM.

It's been a while since I looked at the 5e DMG, but, isn't there are fairly lengthy section that talks about designing pantheons for the game? Or am I misremembering another DMG?

While I'm generally not one to argue in favor of DM authority, I do think this is one place where DM's really should have the lions share of the power. Religion in D&D settings is kinda weird. It drives so many adventures - those evil cultists are a religion after all, is the basis for about a 1/3 of the classes (cleric, druid, monk, paladin, arguably rangers and warlocks too, never minding faith based sub-classes) but actually shies away from making it a feature of play.

I totally get why. Totally understandable.

But, I can also understand why it's a bit frustrating too. There's always this enormous elephant in the room whenever you read D&D settings and whatnot about why is religion playing such a tiny role when it's described as being so important.

I mean, even in settings like Dragonlance, where religion really is one of the core elements of the setting. Being atheist in Dragonlance would be seriously weird. Hey Fizban, umm, yeah, you're just a collective delusion, man.

But even then, there's virtually no reference to any faith based elements. Name three holy holidays in Dragonlance, for example. Heck, I'm a fan of the setting, and I cannot actually remember any. I wonder how much of this goes back to Tolkien - the go to base for a lot of FRPG settings - where religion is more or less completely absent from the stories.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

If the gods exists and can grant favors and powers to those who observe/pray, why can't they punish or "learn" atheists directly? Direct godly intervention would be filled with as many horror stories about the downfall of non-believers as much as delivered miracles, you'd think.

At some point, why would said god "care" about atheism. Not all polytheist religions have gods depends on mortals. It's true in Sumerian religion IRL, replicated in Exalted's Creation or the Forgotten Realms at some point, but it's not the general way. Zeus didn't care about whether people believed in him. He cared that you didn't claim to be equal to the gods and did'nt display hubris, but he certainly wasn't expecting individual behaviour closely. The true question is why would an atheist in a world where favors and powers are granted by doing a ritual to a god would think that this god doesn't exist. If "sacrificing a white calf to Asclepios while reciting verses and inhaling the fumes of incense-like herbs" was getting a 100% healing rate for cancer IRL, do you think people would say "no, thank you, I don't believe Asklepios exists" and die against all provable evidence? I can imagine someone holding the position that "I don't want to have anything to do with Asklepios and I prefer to die rather than doing that calf sacrifice" but not because they'd deny the provable existence of something.

 

[Hussar]

If the DM says there are gods and I'm running an atheist PC then my PC is wrong.

Totally fair. But this isn't what was referenced by others earlier. I was being told that not only could the player announce that their character was an atheist in the setting, but I also had to accept that the player might be right. "My character is an atheist, but, I'm wrong" is a very, very different thing than what I was arguing against.

What's your take on that?

 

[Oofta]

Depending on how he's portrayed, saying Thor is just an illusion is almost like saying weather isn't real.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding your point, but I don't see how a god would be less of one just because they came into existence through the collective actions and beliefs of mortals. That's basically the origin of the Chaos Gods (and other Warp entities) in Warhammer 40k.

Depending on the level of the illusion it can have very real effects on the world. Doesn't make it anything other than an illusion. The Illusory Dragon spell doesn't create a real dragon, even if it can kill you. An illusion of a god isn't necessarily any more real. Or ... take the Iron Druid book series. There are a ton of gods, but the gods that Atticus follows were once just druids. Some would consider them gods, others would not. Depends on your definition of what a god is. Star Trek is another example. Is Q a god? He's certainly incredibly powerful. Some people think so, others do not.

But it's also not particularly relevant to what my PC believed. He thought gods were basically illusions, a grand example of magical forces wrought large.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

If you are tell me that my PC can't be an atheist then you're telling me I do not have final say on what my PC thinks. That's a major red flag in my book.

Eh, I tell the players in every one of my games, for any system, that their PCs can't be Evil, especially the ones that use that as an excuse to be a jerk in-character.

 

[Oofta]

Not really. The player is directly telling everyone at the table that their characters are wrong. Not only that, the player is directly telling the DM that the DM is wrong about the setting. And then expecting everyone at the table to be okay with it, not have to suffer any consequences for it and be able to play his character exactly that way without any problems.

Do you actually think this is behaving in good faith?

Like I said, people would go absolutely nuts if I outright told them that something wasn't true about their setting. That I insisted that my version of the truth must be respected in this game, regardless of what the DM says.

But this is my point: as a player I accept your word about the way the world works. What a PC believes, says or does is frequently different from what I believe, say or do. It is absolutely not "the player is directly telling the DM that the DM is wrong about the setting. "

Ah, now this is a slightly different thing.

If you are perfectly willing to entertain the notion that your character is wrong then I have no problems. That's not atheism, that's agnosticism. The whole "gods don't need my worship" schtick is agnosticism as well.

Atheism is the outright denial of a deity. In a setting where the DM is telling you that gods exist, that's flat out telling the DM that the DM is wrong. OTOH, "My character believes whatever he or she believes, regardless of whether it's right not" is a rather different matter.

Agnostic: a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as God, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.

Atheist: a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.

My PC believed gods were an illusion, not that what they were was unknowable.

 

[Cadence]

Eh, I tell the players in every one of my games, for any system, that their PCs can't be Evil, especially the ones that use that as an excuse to be a jerk in-character.

I don't think I usually explicitly tell them not to be evil in mine. But I do try to let them know that their character needs to be able to find/stick to/be ok with working with the party.

 

[Oofta]

Eh, I tell the players in every one of my games, for any system, that their PCs can't be Evil, especially the ones that use that as an excuse to be a jerk in-character.

I tell my players that they can do anything they want but if I feel they are about to knowingly cross the line into evil I will warn them. If they continue, the PC becomes an NPC under my control. I never tell my players what their PCs think or feel unless it's just fluff (you feel a chill run down your spine) or there's magical compulsion involved.

 

[Cadence]

My PC believed gods were an illusion, not that what they were was unknowable.

At the opposite end, I had a character who was sure the Divine was real and had been trying to become a paladin, but got in an argument with the Supreme Being because he couldn't believe how the afterlife and protection of souls worked could possibly have been right. What do you mean they might just be destroyed!?! With no more chance than that to show their worth!?!