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

Ok, I went back to check Faiths and Avatars, and it was apparently both- the Realms are polytheistic, but people do have patron deities that they revere above others.

I have generally been a big fan of gods and mythologies in D&D starting with the evocative art and different pantheons of the 1e Deities and Demigods and 1e Gods of Greyhawk dragon articles continuing into the fuller descriptions of gods and religions in the 2e Forgotten Realms god books such as Faiths & Avatars that even include god antics during the Time of Troubles that come across as cool myths, and the multiplicity of religions in the Eberron Campaign setting and the evocative mythology of the 4e Dawn War.

Often D&D has different gods but religion is basically clerics and a church. Druids were sometimes present as an old faith but left very vague on specifics. FR made druids specifically alt clerics with different class powers. Eberron has probably the most fleshed out druid stuff with multiple factions and roles that are specifically different than a cleric.

I have studied a bit about different real world religions both contemporary and ancient and I was a bit disappointed in the 3e Dragon articles on individual Greyhawk gods and the Pathfinder god articles, by Sean K. Reynolds. He tends to turn everything into a variant medieval catholic church version of a religion with each god having a specific creed, specific holy book, specific holy days where everyone gathers for a sermon in a church, etc. which is very different from the polytheism of say Hinduism or what we know of the ancient Greeks and Romans or the fantasy polytheistic religions in Conan and Lankhmar.

I really like the Eberron version of having multiple different religions in D&D, ancestor reverence, specific druidism, pantheon based, cult based stuff, blood of vol, etc.

Staffan said:

As a general rule, I think religion and faith are much more interesting than gods. That's why I like the Eberron way of making gods distant. It removes the focus from machinations among the divine (like in FR) to actions among the faithful, who may or may not be in accord with the actual divine powers.

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Those are not mutually exclusive things. A FR god of war could have one faction that likes to fight as soldiers in wars, another faction that tries to start wars, a third that is about tactically leading wars, and a fourth that believes in waiting to be consulted by secular leaders about the wars they are engaging in.

MGibster said:

I've always found D&D to be rather secular which is odd considering the inclusion of the Cleric, Paladin, and of course the myriads of gods floating around. I attribute this to two things, the first of which is the separation of magic into two categories: divine and arcane. The second reason is that D&D encourages player characters to look at the world through the lens of modern western liberal values heavy on individual rights with its freedom of speech, religion, property rights, and even separation of church & state.

For the most part, religion doesn't seem to matter in most D&D campaigns. No, not even for Clerics or Paladins. I'm hard pressed to think of any official D&D setting that does a decent job with religion. That said, I've tried to incorporate religion in meaningful ways in some of my campaigns. When I ran Curse of Strahd, for the first three levels I ran my own adventures outside of Barovia, and the church of Waukeen was an important part of the local community and an oft visited place by PCs and NPCs.

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I've experienced both. Many games that I have run or played in have had religion front and center. Typically when there are clerics and/or paladins in the group. Many games that I have run or played in have had religion in the background. Typically when there are no religious PCs in the group.

EzekielRaiden said:

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.)

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This is more or less true, although I do allow for any given culture to worship several deities and honor them on a regular basis per their portfolios (ie, pray to the Thunder for a good harvest, the Prince for a safe voyage by sea, and the Shield for courage in battle. Clerics and other divinely-powered people do tend to dedicate themselves to a single deity, however.

Staffan said:

In the Forgotten Realms, the gods were cast down to Toril and made to take mortal avatars roughly a century ago (in the change from 1e to 2e). It was a whole thing. For long-lived species, this is living memory. High-level people can go to the outer planes (whatever they are this week) and in theory see the gods, and high-level clerics can contact their gods directly. In FR, it might be rational to take an Athar-style approach to gods ("They are just very powerful beings, but they are not fundamentally different from us and not deserving of worship."), but not outright denial of their existence.

For the main pantheon in Eberron, that is not true. They do not reside on the outer planes. Doctrine says they reside in the world itself – Kol Korran is present in every marketplace, and Boldrei in every home. Arawai guides the hunter's arrow, and Onatar the blacksmith's hammer. But they are not there in a concrete sense.

There's also the question of what drives plots. In FR, many of the big plots are god-driven, such as the Time of Troubles or the Spellplague. The plots of the old Baldur's Gate CRPGs revolve around the offspring of Bhaal, the dead god of assassins (I haven't played BG3 so I don't know to what extent they have to do with it there, but the holy symbol of Bhaal features in the marketing so I'm assuming it's still a thing). In Eberron, it is not so. Eberron has big plots where Aundair wants to retake the Eldeen Reaches, or where one of the monarchs is a secret vampire, or where ancient evils may try to break free when the Stars Are Right, and things like that.

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Ok, so there is nothing about FR that prevents taking the same approach. Thank you for the verification!

Staffan said:

See, to me having actual proven gods stops the interesting exploration. It's like the babelfish: by proving God's existence, it makes faith impossible and therefore God vanishes in a puff of logic.

The interesting bit is religion, or what mortals think of gods and what that makes them do. To show a pair of examples:
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To me, the FR stuff above is just wacky nonsense, while the Eberron situation is very interesting because it focuses on how faith impacts concrete things in the actual game world.

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I disagree with this a bit.

For my purposes, faith isn't faith in a god who may or may not exist. Faith is do you understand the god's wishes well enough that the sacrifices and vows you make to them sway the power to help or protect you when you need. This allows for disagreements in doctrine and ultimately heresies.

This can happen because you can get conflicting information. Just because you are in "direct" communication with the divinity doesn't mean you mortal mind can correctly interpret the message from the transcendent entity. This isn't talking with you buddy Steve at the bar. This is the cleric going on a bender ingesting soma so as to be able to talk with their gods. The gods also don't have the same view of time as mortals do. They could be sending a cogent message that just applies to the culture 200 years from now after the cleric is long dead.

That said, I agree that religions are more interesting than gods. Most of my deities are worshipped in pantheons, often including the sinister or evil gods. Their worship is more of a bribe to stay away. This gives you holidays, festivals, and the surrounding culture that springs from that.

Minigiant said:

No dragon dumb religion is better for campaigns..

Dragon smart religion ends with the party dead and broke.

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but that's the best part! or so i've been told, anyway...

EzekielRaiden said:

Dragon smart religion where the Dragon is Bahamut could end up being pretty nice. Or, at least, the party would end up dead and broke for a noble reason.

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That's exactly what happens.

Most dragonborn will die involved in Bahamut's crusade against Tiamat.

Minigiant said:

That's exactly what happens.

Most dragonborn will die involved in Bahamut's crusade against Tiamat.

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Yet this inconstancy is such
I could not love thee (Dear) so much,
-- Richard Lovelace

The life of an adventurer is one of danger. Many, indeed most of them will die ignobly, merely in fruitless search of selfish fortune. If Death will be one's constant companion, is it not better to dance with her with head held high, with heart upon one's sleeve, with spirit roused to that which is best in us, and not that which is petty and weak?