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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sir Whiskers" data-source="post: 899700" data-attributes="member: 6941">*Ever had someone play an atheist?*  Not that I can remember, but I once played a superhero who didn't believe in magic (even though the group included a hero with arcane powers). There are always people who are exceptions.*How do you have the clergy of various Gods react to them?*  Depends on the specific religious organization. For example, early christians did not believe in other gods and refused to participate in any such ceremonies. Most pagan temples had no problem with this, but the roman emperors - who claimed to be gods - certainly did. Also, to flip things around, christian churches throughout much of the last 2,000 years have not taken kindly to those of other faiths, including atheism. It really comes down to the specific institution.*I am curious because I have seen many people argue that atheism is an impossible concept in DnD since there is quite obviously gods. One could easily argue though that the gods are merely extremely powerful beings who can be wrong and can be killed, thus are not really gods.*  Two points here:1) There are always individuals who dispute things that everyone else sees as self-evident, e.g., the moon landings were faked. If gods exist and interact on a regular basis in a particular campaign, atheists are likely to be very rare and not always rational. The more distant the gods, the more likely atheism, or something similar, would exist. I suspect it would still be very much a minority view - if you look at the real world, I don't know anyone who's seen a real god walking down the street, but atheists are consistently less than 5% of total population. Active intervention by deities doesn't seem to be a prerequisite for belief in them (at least among humans).2) The typical DnD setting presumes the constant and active presence of "gods" (whatever definition we use). But the game system does not require them. As others have posted, a campaign can be run without gods - in my currrent campaign, arcane and divine spellcasters draw power from the same source (the world is alive and full of power), but in different ways, which explains their different spell lists. There are creation myths, legends of powerful beings, and so on, but no active deities.  A DM just has to rule zero a few of the core rules on clerics to make this work.</blockquote>

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