Book of the Righteous, The

[Messageboard Golem]

The Book of the Righteous presents the most comprehensive pantheon ever seen in the d20 System. This massive, 320-page hardback provides more than 20 pick-up-and-play churches corresponding to gods that feature in most fantasy campaigns (god of war, god of justice, etc.). Each church features lavish detail, including in-depth information on its clerics, holy orders, dogma, prayers, and rituals. These churches can be used in any campaign to bring a whole new level of detail to the religious characters. Plus, for those who dont have a complete cosmology in their game, The Book of the Righteous provides a comprehensive mythology that unifies all of the gods in the book. That mythology, and its corresponding cosmology, is not tied to an existing campaign setting, making it as portable and useful as Green Ronins critically acclaimed Freeport series. The Book of the Righteous also features a new core class, the holy warrior, and new prestige classes, feats, spells, domains, magic items, and artifacts. Third in Green Ronins Arcana series, The Book of the Righteous is a divine sourcebook like no other.

 

[JoeGKushner]

The Book of the Righteous
Written by Aaron Loeb
Published by Green Roinin Publishing
GRR1015
ISBN: 0-9714380-6-4
www.greenronin.com
320 b & w pages
$39.95

It’s difficult to describe a book like this for a couple of reasons. Up to now, 3rd edition books on deities have had a bit of a focus on deities as beings of immense but stated powers. The Scarred Lands took care of this a little with the use of Avatars but they’re still stated. Book of the Righteous on the other hand, more often reads like a collection of myths and lore from an ancient era.

This book contains the background information, including myths, history, and background needed to slate it into almost any campaign setting. It does this not by focusing heavily on the deeds of the gods in the mortal world, but on the gods themselves. It starts with a single creator in a nameless void, a being whose name is to this day unknown, the Nameless One. From him comes another, his second, Kador. During this time, the Nameless One leaves but Kador, now into his own power, helps create others who in turn create the great Tree, Eliwyn, and from this tree come more gods and after a death and rebirth of the tree, the five mortal races of human, elf, Halfling, dwarf, and gnomes. That in a nutshell is the basis of it.

Of course there’s much more detail than that. For instance, Kador goes mad with power and has a war with the other gods and is cast into Hell where he eventually becomes Asmodeus. Yes, that’s right, the book has numerous ties to other Green Ronin products like Armies of the Abyss and Legions of Hell. I strongly suspect that the groundwork laid here will be vital in the third book in the fiendish series that’s going to cover the Daemons next year.

The background as a whole is solid, thought provoking and definitely inspires the GM to form his own little myths and ideas to place a race here or a race there. The only drawback I see to this method of cosmology is that it means there are no racial gods. While this concept has become more popular in many campaigns like Scarred Lands and Kalamar, there are still elements within those settings and the elements, like a race having a preferred god, are still evident here. Actual racial gods themselves though? Nope.

The main body of this work is interested in providing grounding for GMs and players to work off from when using religion in a game. The churches include numerous pieces of information to help guide the GM in crafting tools that work for his world. Church descriptions start with a brief myth to give the reader an idea of what this religion is about. Often times these myths show how the gods created new races like the titans or merfolk but in doing so, they tie the world into the gods. Also included is what the god is associated with. What type of animal does the god represent? What type of element? What type of symbol? The god’s Alignment is laid out in a single sentence leading into Representations which details how the god is often draw, sculpted or depicted in icons. Now that you know what the god is and what he looks like, the author provides you with the Purpose of the God and the Servants of the God.

The Church of the God also goes into much detail. For example, you get structure, doctrine, common prayers, holy days, saints, the god’s view of the church, preferred weapon, holy orders, holy warriors, and prestige classes.

That’s a lot of information. It’s important to note though, that not all of the gods have the same amount of description. Now doesn’t this go against all the advertising that talks about how no god will be left under detailed? Well, no. See even though the Nameless One has left the world, there are still those who contemplate him and these are the monks of a campaign setting and even though The Tree of Life, Eliwyn is listed as a god, its more a force worshipped and protected by, yup, Druids. I can easily see those using the Shaman’s Handbook incorporating Shaman into the same faction as Druids. In both cases though, there are no prestige classes.

One of the easiest ways to use this book is through the Pantheon, a church organization where all of the gods are worshipped. This idea is rarely used, and I think outside of the Hunt: The Rise of Evil campaign setting, the idea of worshipping the Pantheon as a whole is often underused in fantasy FRPGs in general. Here, the Pantheon is a mighty body where Paladins work as knights and clerics work for the good of all. In many ways, it’s very Christian like in its ideals. Be good to your fellow man, live a good live, you know do the things you’re supposed to do. Of course those who work for the Pantheon will note that its also a political body and those who are skilled at such games may chose to join the Prestige Class of the Deacon. This class gains numerous bonus feats to augment their abilities with various charisma-based skills. I’m actually in the process of rewriting the bonus feat selection since I’m either going to let the feat count as a Refined Skill Focus with a +3 bonus or a +2 bonus to two skills.

One of the great things about the book is it introduces a concept that I haven’t seen put into core use in a long time. Back in the days when Mayfair was publishing the City State of the Invincible Overlord, there was a class called the Avantari. These were basically paladins for different faiths. I’ve seen different takes on paladins done through prestige classes in several books including the Librium Equitis II, but I haven’t seen an attempt to customize them as a core class that I liked until now.

The book introduces the Holy Warrior as a core class. Unlike the Paladin who serves the forces of law and good and in this book, the Pantheon as a whole, the Holy Warrior is a core class that gains powers based on his god’s spheres of influence and abilities. The book provides a ton of special abilities that the GM can use to customize his own game with if he’s not using the gods of this book. Such abilities are labeled as domain abilities and the Holy Warrior starts off with four and gains two more at second level. The main customization of the Holy Warrior happens with the Gift of God where they gain special abilities based on the god they worship. Here I don’t think Green Ronin went far enough because the Domain Abilities are fairly simple to understand and use but without providing more ground work on what levels of spells the Holy Warrior should have access to, I can see campaigns where everyone is going to want to play a priest of X instead of Y because X gives “cool skillz” or something similar.

In addition to many prestige classes, there is a whole chapter to new rules including eleven new feats, one new skill, nine new domains, and numerous new spells, magic items and monsters. In the monsters section, I was glad to see the Phoenix return to D20 but more pleased by Metteron, a companion to Terak, the ruler of the gods. Metteron is a huge outsider and is “the lord of all animals in Heaven, the greatest of their number, and father to some of the world’s most noble beasts.” The inclusion of such a creature pleases me for a number of reasons. First, I can use it as a Beast Lord to tie in to the Shaman’s Handbook. Next, I can use him to explain different races and creations. Third, he’s a powerful creature and can showcase the strength of the gods without providing stats for the gods themselves. In a similar vein, I was glad to see Raguel’s stats because this is an Archangel and its good to see how Green Ronin, known for their evil books, handles such a creature. Suffice it to say that he’s powerful. It’s also useful to have Raguel here because he has direct ties to Iblis from Legions of Hell.

For those who already have a campaign setting and aren’t sure how to use this section, the lifesaver will be chapters nine and ten. Chapter nine provides the GM with ideas on how to set up adventurers with a focus on using this book and campaign ideas on how to integrate this book while chapter ten provides some ideas on how to use these as new gods, gods from another plane, and methods of changing the mythology behind the gods themselves. These two chapters provide most of the tools that a GM needs to integrate this fully into Freeport or another world with light details and without coming out directly and saying it, Greyhawk. For example, the listing of gods in the mythology section has a simple list of gods like God of Dwarves: Korak, God of Death and Magic: Mormekar. Gee, a female god of death and magic? I wonder who that could be in the standard D&D pantheon?

One of the strengths of the book is the art and graphic design. There isn’t a single piece of what I’d say is poorly draw or illustrated work. There aren’t huge gaps of white space. The book is easy to read and very easy on the eyes. When the book boasts on the back cover that it’s fit for the gods, they made sure to use a lot of great artists to insure that ranging from Drew Baker, Jennifer Meyer, Steve Lawton Mike Vilardi and others to make the book top notch.

Is the book perfect? It’s just about perfect in its own universe. It ties together many things from Legions of Hell and Armies of the Abyss and is completely compatible with the Shaman’s Handbook. When it has to be meshed with other settings, some problems start to creep in. For example, since the Pantheon is mainly a just and good organization of gods and those gods that are unjust are often unknown, it becomes a little problematic when one wishes to introduce gods like the gods of Chaos found in the Warhammer setting or some of the more vile gods of evil in the Forgotten Realms in a very open manner. It’s one thing to have an orc horde worship some nameless god whose true purpose is disguised but its quite another when they’re lead by a one eyed general who claims he is the reincarnation of their god. Its also a little thorny with issues like Freeport because as we all know and love the city of pirates, there are often activities that point to ‘Outsider’ (read Cthulhu Mythos) creatures that have been spotted in the city and making sure everything meshes can get a little messy and requires some ground work.

In addition, while I agree with the idea that gods don’t need stats, I also feel that since 3rd edition does support character play, to one extent or another, to the point where characters can challenge the gods, that providing some type of stats or baseline for them, even if its just their avatars ala Divine & Defeated, would’ve been a good thing. Of course said stats might show up in a web expansion or something but that future remains to be seen.

I was also a little disappointed that more prestige classes for all the gods weren’t presented. In many instances, I could see why they wouldn’t do this. It helps fit in the non-standard classes that may have religious ties like monks and druids, but at the same time, there are so many aspects to some of the gods that one can’t help but wonder… where’s the first web supplement?

The Book of the Righteous is perfect for those who are playing in a world with a sparsely detailed world with little religious background on both church and god, like the Necromancer modules or Fiery Dragon modules, or are looking for more detail in religion for various types of gods like say for Greyhawk.

Are there things I’m missing out on this review? Yes. I haven’t really gone into the section on cosmology, which provides a very nice overview of the sphere in which this book is set. I haven’t gone over the names of each god and the prestige classes that follow them. I haven’t gone over the section on Putting Your Faith in Evil, as that’s primarily a smaller section aimed squarely at the GM who needs to insure that his players have some adversaries worthy of their mettle. For not including these things, I apologize but one must realize that it’s a book over 300 pages long and I don’t want the review to equal it in size.

If you’re looking to add a new core class, numerous prestige classes, monsters, feats, and spells to your campaign, then the Book of the Righteous is for you. If you’re looking to add a whole bunch of powerful monsters in the forms of gods to your campaign, then move on to Faiths and Pantheons and Deities & Demigods because the gods in Book of the Righteous do not have stats and indeed, from the text, are above and beyond such things.

REVIEWER'S NOTE:
The Green Ronin Website has a seperate section called the Tree of Life that allows players and GMs to post their ideas and methods of using the book. Excellent free resource.

 

[Listlurker]

First off, I apologize in advance for the extreme length of this review, but since "The Book of the Righteous" (TBotR) is a relatively expensive hardcover ($39.95 US) I felt I owed it to any potential readers to do as detailed an overview as possible, so that they might make an informed choice. Hopefully, they will also realize that this astounding rules supplement is worth every penny they might spend.

It's true. "The Book of the Righteous" is a truly amazing product. This three-hundred-pages-plus hardcover is the best sourcebook for D&D game gods that I have ever seen. It's beautiful -- both visually (the artwork and the layout are top-notch) and in its dedication to providing useful, adaptable information to overworked DMs. The amount of thought and care that went into producing TBotR is evident on every page. Author Aaron Loeb and the rest of the contributors are to be commended.

But there's so much here, I don't really know where to begin. I've been putting off writing this review for precisely that same reason: it's a BIG book, packed to the brim with useful things. It's easy to find information in this volume -- thanks to well-laid-out pages, with plenty of sectional subject headers, a Table of Contents, and an Index -- but there's so much in TBotR that deserves mention, I'm really not sure how to do both the book and the review reader's curiousity justice in a readable format.

Perhaps I'll simply break down what's in the book by section and include some notes on the game deities provided. That way, prospective buyers can get a basic sense of what's here, and then use their browsing time at the game store to decide if the actual, detailed presentation of the content does it for them. Deal? Okay, here goes:

*Chapter One: The Introduction*

Everybody skips the introduction, right? Well, this time you might want to read it, because this introduction addresses the questions many potential buyers of TBotR probably have on their minds right now, namely: What Is This Book For? Why Do I Need This Book? (especially if I already have a D&D gods book) Why Should I Care About Religion In My Game? and so on. To the author's credit, this isn't the only place where these questions are answered -- later chapters expand upon the short answers given here by providing practical information on implementing/adapting TBotR into existing D&D campaigns and campaign worlds.

*Chapter Two: The Mythology*

This section details the cosmology of the book's pantheon, and provides a short listing of the deities in TBotR. The cosmology (the story of how the universe came into existence, and the disposition of its planes of existence) is intentionally archetypal -- it echoes a number of real-world myths and religions without relying too strongly on any one source. It's also completely optional for DMs. You don't have to accept this cosmology to use the deities in TBotR. The book assumes this cosmology when describing the interactions and interrelations of the deities later in the text, but swapping out the cosmology for your own version is fairly effortless. The cosmology doesn't matter so much, in and of itself, it simply sets up the dramatic relationships within the pantheon. The basic planar information provided will be familiar, and of interest to anyone who owns a copy of "The Manual of the Planes".

A timeline of the universe, and a diagram of the planes as TBotR configures them, round out this section.

Before I list the included deities, I should explain something: Green Ronin Publishing does not support the idea of "racial gods", as they attest on page 297. So, while all the traditional races of D&D (humans, elves, half-elves, dwarves, gnomes, half-orcs and halflings) are tacitly a part of TBotR's world-view, there are not separate pantheons for each of these races.

Korak, for example, is the Lord of the Forge. While the dwarves love him, trace their racial origins to him, and typically represent him as dwarven in their religious iconography, Korak is neither dwarven nor human per se. His race, if you will, is "deity". Likewise, the elves may especially revere Aymara, the goddess of love, desire, beauty, and the arts -- but so do members of the other races. The orcs don't have a racial god, like Gruumsh, here to fan their hatred -- but there's a demonic lord of Destruction, Violence, and Rage (one of a handful of evil deities in this book) who makes Gruumsh look like an overly-ambitious tribal chieftain, anyway.

In the TBotR, *all* the deities are available to every race. The racial tags below merely indicate certain more-obvious racial choices.

Here's my deities guide for "The Book of the Righteous". I have listed only the major one of the few evil deities provided (as adversaries) in the book, since the text suggests that DMs may wish to keep the exact nature of the evil powers sketchy until PCs confront those forces. Also note that certain good or neutral churches listed below have heretical, evil offshoots for DMs to toy with.

======

The Great Church -- The Lords of Heaven (i.e. the entire pantheon as a whole). Uses standard D&D clerics and paladins

Urian (m) -- Air and Sky (includes Night, Sun, and Moon). Free preview at www.greenronin.com

Rontra (f) -- Earth (includes Plants, Metals, Farmers, Miners)

Shalimyr (m) -- Water (includes Oceans and Sailors)

Eliwyn -- Druids (i.e. Eliwyn is the cosmological Tree of Life in TBotR. Druids who prize Nature regard Eliwyn as an emblem of same)

Nameless One -- Monks (i.e. The Nameless One is the mysterious God-Over-All who created existence and then withdrew. Monks contemplate his/her/its nature)

Morwyn (f) -- Healing and Wisdom (includes Peace and Mercy)

Terak (m) -- War and Valor

Zheenkeef (f) -- Wine, Madness and Inspiration (includes Creativity, Prophecy and Gnomes)

Tinel (m) -- Magic, Knowledge and Truth (includes Secrets and Science). Has both a chaotic good and a neutral aspect, and factions for each.

Mormekar (m) -- Death and Rebirth (includes Slayers of Undead)

Maal (m) -- Law and Justice (this deity judges the dead, including PCs, and rules on type of afterlife, or reincarnation) Preview at www.greenronin.com

Darmon (m) -- Travel, Wealth, Joy (includes non-evil Rogues and Messengers)

Aymara (f) -- Love and the Arts (includes Beauty, Passion, Marriage, Bards and Elves)

Korak (m) -- The Forge and Artisans (includes Dwarves)

Anwyn (f) -- Home and Hearth (includes Halflings)

Naryne (f) -- Nobility and Leadership (also oversees the Land of the Dead)

Canelle (f) -- Victory and Strength

Thellyne (f) -- Woodcraft, Nature and the Hunt (includes Rangers, Elves and Gnomes)

Asmodeus (m) -- Lies, Power and Fire (formerly Kador, a Lord of Heaven governing Fire, who rebelled and was cast out of Heaven)

======

*Chapters Three Through Seven: The Deity Details*

This is the lion's share of the book. Almost every deity is described under headers for the following categories: name, associated myth(s), associated concepts, alignment, common representations, purpose/motives, and servants (either avatars or, more commonly, special messenger creatures such as celestials).

Next, the church of the deity is described, followed by suggestions concerning church structure. Doctrine, common prayers, holy days (events, not calendar dates), saints (if applicable), the deity's view of the church, plus the god's (not necessarily the clergy's) preferred weapon are also put forward.

A discussion of church-related character classes follow. Most churches have a Cleric class ( with Domains listed here), a new Holy Warrior class (i.e. a sort of paladin customized to the particular faith, both in terms of alignment and abilities) and one or more Prestige Classes.

Although there are a *lot* of these classes, it's rewarding to wade through them, as some might pleasantly surprise you. While an order of "knights in shining armor" Holy Warriors in service to the goddess of Nobility might not raise an eyebrow -- what about a Prestige Class secret society sworn to combat the forces of Hell ... all in the name of the goddess of Love? Or a Prestige Class available from the god of Death which allows any evilly-aligned character to be reborn as a fierce champion for good, seeking to atone for past crimes? The list of cool things goes on, if you're willing to look.

One interesting concept here is the idea of the Great Church. Unlike other published D&D pantheons, the deities in TBotR really do form an official alliance -- an official pantheon. Standard 3E cleric or paladin characters in a campaign using TBotR are considered to be followers of the Great Church, an organization which reveres all of the Lords of Heaven as a group. But rather than being just a catch-all for generic characters, The Great Church is just as vibrant and detailed a church as any other in this book (Did I mention that the "servants" listed for the Great Church are Archangels -- essentially, maximum hit dice huge Solars with names, personalities, and attitudes? Finally, the forces of good have counterparts to the "named" devils and demons of D&D).

Because the Great Church deals with all the Lords of Heaven, it may even be the best church for PCs whose players are most interested in the deities contained in this book. Such players are given an in-game rationale for knowing and learning as much as possible about each of the Lords of Heaven.

One word of warning about the deities in TBotR -- be advised that there are *no* deity statistics (hit points, epic abilitues, and so on) in this volume. Would-be godslayer PCs will be sorely disappointed in TBotR, because these deities are not designed to be epic-character fodder at any point in a D&D campaign. Indeed, the myth provided for Tinel, the god of magic, stands as a clear, story-driven warning to arrogant PCs who might imagine that they can ever truly usurp the gods.

*Chapter Eight: Evil Deities*

Since this *is* "The Book of the Righteous", there are only two other evil deities described besides Asmodeus. The listings are partial (only Clerics provided) although Green Ronin has said that it hopes to have further information available as website downloads eventually. Also, Green Ronin Publishing has already published "Legions of Hell" and "Armies of the Abyss" and the content of those books, not surprisingly, mesh with this one.

As above, since some DMs may wish to keep the nature of the evil deities secret in their campaigns (a possibility the book suggests) I will not say anything more about this chapter.

*Chapter Nine: Campaigning*

This chapter starts off with one of the best overviews of alignment and what it means in D&D that I have seen in some time. The alignment definitions are
almost flawless, forgetting only that true Neutrality can now also indicate agnosticism or a complete lack of interest in spiritual or moral questions.

The chapter also features useful things like a list of gods and churches by alignment; a matrix of church attitudes toward one another; a list of geographical sites related to the book's cosmology and mythology that you can drop into your campaign world, plus campaign and adventure hooks.

The remainder of the section looks briefly at relevant DM issues for the game world (perks of faith, law, the evil races, heresy and blasphemy, the forms of faith). While short suggestions are made, the book does not try to tell you how to run your fantasy-world faiths in the day-to-day. And since TBotR is meant to be generic and (im)portable to any D&D world, such nitty-gritty details are best left to individual DMs anyway.

*Chapter Ten: Do It Yourself*

Speaking of portable, chapter ten is dedicated to helping you adapt TBotR to your existing D&D campaign. It starts out with a bulleted list of all the key ideas presented in the book's mythology and cosmology which will have to be addressed or accounted for if you plan to change the book's content as given -- or if you plan to import content from TBotR into an existing campaign world. Other "importation" issues are discussed, and broad suggestions are given on how to incorporate only the pantheon itself into an existing game world with a minimum of fuss.

*Chapter Eleven: Additional Rules*

It starts off with an in-depth look at the new Holy Warrior class, and includes how to handle it if used as a multi-class option. All the expected information is here: experience progression chart, description of Special Abilities, spell domains by church, and so on.

Next, it's skills and feats time! There are eleven feats listed, most of which are clerical or religious in nature. Of the general feats, Martial Instructor seems interesting. as it allows both the teaching of weapon proficiencies, and the ability to train anyone to become either a first-level warrior or fighter. There's only one new skill, Famous, which can be used for improved reaction checks.

There are nine new clerical domains (ten, if you count Champion, which is simply a domain created to frame the abilities of a standard D&D paladin in terms of TBotR's new Holy Warrior class) and they are: Beauty, The Dead, The Forge, Home, Inspiration, Justice, Night, Oracle, and Truth.

Out of the nine domains, we get about 22 new divine spells. Be advised, though -- the text warns that some of the spells listed can only be found written up in another book, "Pocket Grimoire Divine". However, I looked, and I couldn't find *any* spell that wasn't listed in either my "Player's Handbook" or "The Book of the Righteous" itself. If spell writeups have been omitted here, there can't be very many gone, so DMs could always just make a "next best" substitution when the need arises.

Magic items and new creatures are also included in TBotR and, as you might expect, they all have some sort of divine or divinity-related aspect to their natures. Of magic items, we have enchanted stoles (stoles being the linen scarves worn by priests) with thirteen variations. We're also given eight Minor Artifacts; five of which are staves (each staff corresponding to one of the five senses). The are also two Major Artifacts provided, either of which could easily serve as a significant quest-object in a D&D campaign.

The new creatures include Animal Spirits (the monkey-like hanumanis, and the rabbit-like pooka -- and yes, Harvey, pookas can turn invisible), as well as the bizarre Handmaid of Zheenkeef, and the jokester fox known as Ix.

Metteron -- the leonine father of all good beasts, and companion to Terak, deity of War and Valor comes up next, followed by another powerful Outsider -- the mythical Phoenix.

Finally, Raguel the Archangel of Divine Retribution is statted out. While Raguel is the only one of the seven Archangels mentioned in the Great Church section to be written up in this book, Green Ronin is planning a Celestials supplement which will, no doubt, bring the others to us. In the meantime, Raguel serves as an example from which clever DMs can extrapolate.

*Appendix I: A Treatise on the Divine*

This is an "in-character" document written by the Great Sage Matalou. It basically takes most of the cosmology and patheon information in TBotR and puts it into an in-game context. DMs can use excerpts from this famous treatise to "remind" PCs of what they know about the history of the Lords of Heaven and the nature of the universe.

*Appendix II: Gods and Races*

It's got a geneaology of the gods, followed by a glossary. That's right, a glossary! Need to look up a concept quickly? There it is. Talk about making it easy on overworked DMs!

*Appendix III: Religion Reference Guide*

Pulls together some basic information on the deities, and the titles used by their churches, for quick reference.

*Index*

Yes, an index. Green Ronin loves you.


That's it! To anyone who has actually read through all of this, my thanks. I now return you to your regularly scheduled ENWorld ...

 

[Psion]

The Book of the Righteous

The Book of the Righteous is a book in Green Ronin's Arcana series whose goal is to expand on the role of magic in d20 System fantasy campaigns. The Book of the Righteous introduces a complete and self-consistent pantheon for use in d20 System fantasy games, with mythology and game mechanics to support it.

A First Look

The Book of the Righteous is a 320 page hardcover book priced at $39.95. The book is written by Aaron Loeb.

The cover art, by Brian Despain, depicts a huge deity sitting on a throne holding a sword while a human stands before him in petition.

The interior is black-and-white. The interior art is of generally good quality and includes work by Toren "Macbin" Atkinson, Steve Lawton, Andrew Baker, Stephanie Pui-Min Law, Britt Martin, Mike Vilardi, Chris Keefe, Jennifer Meyer, James Ryman, Mike May, Ken Capelli, and Todd Gamble.

The interior art includes some cosmology pictures by Todd Gamble that are very similar in style to the illustrations in Wizards of the Coast's Manual of the Planes.

The interior layout is clear and attractive. The chapter, section, and page headers use an attractive back-shaded white font. The interior text density is high, using a dense font, but the paragraphs are double spaced. The table layout is attractive and I didn't notice any major layout or editorial gaffes.

A Deeper Look
Warning: This section contains spoilers regarding some secrets in the book.

The Book of the Righteous is organized into 11 chapter plus three appendices.

The first chapter is an introduction. It lays out the purpose and approach of the book, and outlines the contents. One important statement is that the book does not use real world myths, but it does mimic many real world myths to give it a more authentic feel.

The second chapter is entitled The Mythology. It provides and easy to digested nutshell version of the myths behind the creation of the universe, the divinities, and mortal races. As told by the mythology, there was a nameless creator responsible for the creation of the universe. He created the world and the four elemental deities, and departed from the universe. From these four deities, all other deities were born in one form or another. Some deities were turned from law and good by a force of pure corruption. This corruption caused Kador, the god of fire, to become evil, and he eventually becomes the king of hell.

The cosmology outlines in this chapter appears to be a subset of the cosmology defined in the Manual of the Planes. As such, it should be easy to expand out the existing mythology here if you prefer the setup in the manual of the planes.

The third through eighth chapters describe the various deities and churches. There are 20 deities in all, but a total of 22 faiths. Each of the deities has their own faith. There is also "the Great Church", which is the church of the common man which reveres all the deities instead of just one; the Great Church is a good analog for the catholic church if you desire one in your campaign. There is also a faith called "the conspiracy" which is, in truth, a faith devoted to Asmodeus/Kador which has subsumed the faith of another deity.

Each faith is outlined in great detail. Each section includes information of the name of the deity/church, important myths, alignments, representations, purposes of the deity, the structure of the church, doctrine, common prayers, holy days, saints, how the deity views the church, and game information such as preferred weapons and clerical domains.

To make it easy to fit the faiths to your game, each has sections with small symbols that gives you seeds and connection points to tie it into the campaign. For example, the seat of power of a church, holy days, religious sites, and other details are vaguely defined but left to the GM to integrate.

Most of the churches have three holy orders. These orders correspond to classes. One holy order consists of clerics, another of holy warriors (see the additional rules section below). The third order is a prestige class with abilities specific to the deity's portfolio. In addition to the pertinent information about the prestige classes and clerical and holy warrior domains, many deities have minor changes to their classes, such as different class skills for clerics.

The deities and faiths outlined in the chapters are, in brief:
- The Great Church
- Urian (NG) - God of the air and sky. Similar to mythological sky figures such as Zues and Ukko.
- Rontra (LG) - Goddess of the Earth. Mother/grandmotherly figure similar to Gaea and Dannan.
- Shalimyr (CN) - God of Water. Similar to figures like Poseidon.
- Eliwyn (N) - The Tree of Life. Essentially non-sentient, the source of power for druids and wellspring of life. The tree bore the fruit that lead to most mortal races.
- Nameless One (N) - The nameless one is the original creator of the universe, whose name created the universe and could destroy it again. The nameless one has no clergy, but monks seek spiritual enlightenment through contemplating his mysteries.
- Morwyn (LG) - Goddess of Healing and Wisdom
- Terak (LG or LN) - God of War and Valor
- Zheenkeef (CN) - Goddess of Wine, Madness, and Inspiration
- Tinel (CG or N) - God of Magic, Knowledge, and Truth
- Mormekar (N) - God of Death and Rebirth
- Maal (LN) - God of Law and Justice
- Darmon (CG) - God of Travel, Wealth, and Joy
- Aymara (CG) - Goddess of Love and the Arts
- Korak (NG) - God of the Forge and Artisans
- Anwyn (LG) - Goddess of Home, Hearth, and Servants
- Naryne (LN) - Goddess of Nobility, one of the "three sisters."
- Canelle (CG) - Goddess of Victory and strength, one of the "three sisters."
- Thellyne (NG) - Goddess of Woodcraft, Nature, and the Hunt, one of the "three sisters."
- Asmodeus/Kodor (LE) - God of Lies, Power, and Fire
- Canarak (CE) - God of Destruction, Violence, and Rage
- Thellos (NE) - God of Greed, Gluttony, and Desire
- Naran (LE) - God of Tyranny, Pride, and Cunning

Finally, in the chapter on evil faiths, there are a number of heretical evil splinter cults of the good faiths. These splinter sects are made possible by the heretic feat, which allows a priest to have an alignment more than one spot away from the deity's and still be able to use clerical powers.

The ninth chapter provides ideas and advice for utilizing the material herein - and religions in general - in a campaign. This includes adventure ideas, placing geographical sites of religious significance, political positions of churches, evil races, heresies, and the form that the various chucrches take in the campaign.

Chapter ten is entitled Do It Yourself. It provides GMs with advice on utilizing and adapting the deity descriptions herein to their campaigns. To this end, it identifies many of the fundamental assumptions of the mythology and cosmology of the pantheon so that GMs can work out any conflicts between the Book of the Righteous pantheon and that of their own campaign world.

Other points addressed are differences between the included cosmology and D&D's "great wheel" and reconciling or combining the pantheon herein with your own or one of another publisher.

The eleventh chapter presents a number of additional rules for use with the religions presented in the book. One of the most interesting innovations is the holy warrior. The holy warrior is a core class that serves a specific church or deity. All holy warriors are good, even if the character's patron deity is neutral with respect to good and evil. No holy warriors serve evil deities.

Holy warriors are a flexible class. Each holy warrior chooses two domains. Like clerical domains, which domains may be chosen depends on the deity. However, unlike clerical domains, holy warrior domains do not determine spell access. Instead, they determine which abilities the holy warrior gains at first and second level.

Paladins are basically a specific implementation of holy warriors. A holy warrior with the champion and guardian domains has the same class abilities as a paladin.

If you are not comfortable with the concept of a holy warrior as a core class, guidelines are provided to introduce them as a prestige class.

There are new feats to support the religion and religious characters. As examples, Domain Specialization allows a cleric to cast domain spells spontaneously much as healing spells, Heretic allows clerics to transcend alignment limitations for a deity, and Profound Faith allows a character to use charisma in place of wisdom when determining spells available to the cleric. However, a few feats turn me off. Martial instructor adds a questionable training mechanism to the rules, and Famous grants the character access to a fame skill, which is a clumsy way to handle fame in the campaign.

Nine new domains are introduced: beauty, the dead (similar to Ravenloft's repose domain in that it is concerned with natural death), the forge, home, inspiration, justice, night, oracle, and truth. New spells are also introduced with these domains. Unfortunately, none of these is represented in Green Ronin's recent Pocket Grimoire Divine.

Finally, new magic items and creatures are presented that stem from the mythology and church description chapters. For example, the five staves are unique magic items used by the leading characters in one of the holy orders dedicated to Tinel, and the creatures section contains servants of the god like various animal spirits and the Handmaids of Zheenkeef.

The first appendix is A Treatise on the Divine. This is a player safe, exhaustive version of the myths spelled out in pieces earlier.

The second appendix is entitled Gods and Races. Essentially, it is a glossary that outlines how various figures and races fit into the mythology of the book. This is a very convenient reference for those (like reviewers ) who want to get the gist of the book without a lot of reading.

The third appendix is entitled Religion Reference Guide. It summarized the most important salient information (including game details such as clerical and holy order domains) for each of the faiths listed herein.

Conclusion

The Book of the Righteous is a monumental resource, and perhaps the best "idea mine" for the d20 system since the Manual of the Planes. The pantheon and mythology detailed herein has a great deal of depth to it and provides a flurry of details useful in playing clerics and other religious characters as well as introducing religious themes into a campaign. The book will obviously be of the greatest use for those who do not have well developed pantheons of their own, but the "Do It Yourself" chapter provides sufficient advice to make its applicability much broader.

Further, the style and organization of the book, with primers and a glossary, makes it very easy to digest the content.

A few of the mechanics bother me, but those are small points and for the most part can be omitted with little harm. As a fan of an old article in the Dragon magazine called A Plethora of Paladins, I was rather enamored by the concept of the holy warriors for more alignments than lawful good.

There are a few possible sticking points in the book. For one, many people (myself included) disdained the idea of having Asmodeus as the ultimate evil deity (originally suggested by Green Ronin's Chris Pramas in the AD&D 2e product A Guide to Hell); The Book of the Righteous cements that viewpoint. That said, the main reason that I disdained it (that I already had central evil figures in my game that I felt ill at ease overshadowing) shouldn't be a problem if you are adopting the book's pantheon, as it makes sense here, unlike the old Guide to Hell. A second sticking point is that the book openly disdains the concept of racial deities, and this is a major assumption of many GMs and settings, and the "Do It Yourself" chapter seems rather less accommodating on this point than it is on many others.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[GameWyrd]

It was sacrilegious. I read most of The Book of the Righteous either in bed or here beside the PC. You just have to pick up the hardbound tome to know that the correct way to read the book is to rest it on an altar or pulpit, light a respectful amount of candles and share the carefully composed mythology with an eager congregation.

The back of the Book of the Righteous claims; "[…] the most comprehensive religious tome the d20 system has ever seen." It’s an entirely justified claim. The same paragraph goes on to say, "While other books waste pages on god stats you’ll never use, The Book of the Righteous gives you a dynamic, lifelike religion that add depth to any campaign". Interesting use of the word ‘dynamic’ but this claim is pretty much true as well. I love god books but I hate god stats; I love god books because I like to piece together the implied mythology and the relationships, if any, between the gods. The Book of the Righteous really does play straight into my Perfect Book zone. It’s always possible to do better and Green Ronin wasted no time in publishing an errata that’s more than an errata. The Tree of Life is a bit like a software patch for the book in so far as it fixes a few points and offers up some extra material all for free. As quickly as the Tree of Life came out, this review is just a review of the hardback book.

This is a huge book. 320 pages. That’s not the biggest tally ever but The Book of the Righteous has a strongly sewn spine and you can clearly see the groups of bound pages by looking down the top of the book. The Book of the Righteous also uses small and dense text. If the text size used was similar to other books in the $39.95 price range I guess that that we’d be looking at about 380 pages instead. The size of the book is an interest rather than an important gauge on whether the supplement is any good or not. However, I suspect that you can tell that I think the Book of the Righteous really is rather good.

You’re not a moron. Too many d20 products seem to be written for the lowest level of reader. Straight away I noticed just how the suggestions and advice was presented in the book; you’re assumed to be smart enough to be able to implement the mythology of deities and servants by yourself. For example, each religion has their holy days and these aren’t packaged with some made up date because you can’t work out a suitable date on the calendar yourself and instead they come with suggestions like "early in the year". The issue with holy days is one taken straight out of the "fill in the blanks" aspect of the book, one that’s even marked with a special icon so you can see it coming.

The book is a member of a surprisingly small group of books which are "GM trying to run a campaign friendly". There are generous photocopy permissions – all of chapter II and appendixes I and II as well. Chapter II lists the Gods in a quick table and includes what they’re the God of. For example, "God of Sea: Shalimyr" and "God of Healing: Morwyn" but "God of Slaughter: See Chapter VIII". This means your photocopied Chapter II does not spoil any surprises for your players. The mythology presents the Gods as they initially battled against corruption, banishing corrupted powers to Hell and so your averagely informed townsperson will know who the God of Death is but isn’t likely to know who the God of Orcs is (since Orcs aren’t even mentioned in the most widely known creation story) and may not even know that there is a God of Slaughter. This mirrors the way real life pantheonic religions tended to be (Greek, Norse, Egyptian, etc [the usual suspects for RPG conversion]) and that’s alluded to in the Book of the Righteous. It’s not an accident. It’s a design.

The Book of Righteous presents a series of mythological stories. It begins with the creation myth and then as the book moves forward to look at the 20 churches contained inside it shares more of these stories. A "church" is the whole organised religion of the god or deities worshipped by its members and not an isolated building. The goal is to breath life in to clerics and other members of that religion. The goal is to give your cleric more material to work with than (and I quote) "I worship the God of Thunder" "Thunder is good". And the book succeeds in this. It really and truly does.

I’ve said that each Church is introduced with some more myths but there’s very much more than too. Churches have a typical alignment, associations with others, servants and often a clearly defined purpose. The structure of each Church is clearly spelt out (for example, Pope at the top and people putting money into the coffers at the bottom) and doctrine to keep people inline and promote the interests of the faithful (or the faith itself). Doctrine is often presented as a list of quotes and commandments that you can bring straight into your game. For example, "There is no joy without suffering" sounds like a typical bite of doctrine from an organised religion too me. Churches have saints too and rather interesting, since this is a fantasy world, we can also see what the particular god thinks of their own church!

One of the subtle benefits the Book of the Righteous brings but one that as a picky GM I’m thankful for is that it becomes clear why a Cleric’s favourite weapon is their favourite weapon. It’s important to say though that this isn’t just a book for Clerics. In fact, the Book of the Righteous presents the Holy Warrior as a new class. The claim is that the Paladin class doesn’t really equate to a church specific Holy Warrior. The Paladin does good for the whole pantheon, the say, whereas the Holy Warrior is specific to individual gods. I could argue either way for on this point but I’ve seen worse. This addition means that the scope for prestige classes becomes larger. All the prestige classes in the book are religious bias, how could they not be? Not all of the many prestige classes in the book are cleric bias though. If you want to smite unbelievers in the name of Healing – then you can.

There are more than just prestige classes for those of us who like to see some new mechanics with new RPG purchases. In the appendixes you’ll find a long list of new special character abilities and these relate back to the introduction of a whole new class and the prestige classes which appear along with their church earlier in. There are also new feats and skill as well and the predictable list of new clerical domains (Beauty, the Dead, the Forge, Home, Inspiration, Justice, Night, Oracle and Truth). There are new spells as well.

The Book of the Righteous isn’t simply a good book because it has so much in it. You may never need to buy another god book again but that’s not really the point. The Book of the Righteous scores such a strong success because of the way it holds itself together with intelligently constructed mythology and then stays intelligent with its presentation and the implementation of this mythology to players and GMs alike. Such attention to game detail includes making it "as worthwhile" for a PC cleric to follow the God of Roads as it is to follow the God of Secrets. The pantheon’s creation myth stands up to the D&D planar uberscape too. In fact, the creation myth lends itself wonderfully to Manual of the Planes style maps where you can see globes, pillars and discs rotating around one another. Even in the creation myth itself you’ll find [bracketed comments] explaining just what the equivalent plane (or alignment) is. As well written as the book is I don’t think it’s possible to sit down and read it from cover to cover. What I found myself doing what reading through one church or mythology and then being inspired to see if or how that would tie in with another church and going off to read that section as well. There was much page turning.

I just could not help but be impressed by the Book of the Righteous.

* This GameWyrd review first appeared here.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

The Book of the Righteous is the latest book in Green Ronin's Arcana series, which includes The Secret College of Necromancy and Arcana: Societies of Magic. This is the first hardback in the series, and is a massive undertaking which attempts to provide a number of plug-n-play churches which can be slipped into any campagin.

I should note that I am a fan of deity books, and I almost always end up "stuck with" the cleric in games. The original Deities & Demigods, Legends & Lore, and books like Faiths & Avatars were among my favorite gaming books of all time. I am happy to say that, despite my inital skepticism, BotR did not disappoint me in any way.

The book is a massive hardback, weighing in at 312 pages, with only two pages devoted to an index and one to the OGL liscence. The body text is incredibly dense, and I kid you not when I say this is a hefty chunk of reading material. Margins are almost nonexistant, columns are spaced closely together, and the illustrations never seem like pagefillers.

The art ranges from average to very good, with contributions from around a dozen artists. This provides a variety of looks and feels, which is a little different from the more defined look that would come from a smaller art team. However, I was pleased with most of the artwork, and it all seemed to relate quite well to the text it accompanied. My only quibble is with the cover art, which seems to be rather static. I'm not sure if this is meant to reinforce the distant nature of the gods, but the god depicted on the cover doesn't even seem to acknowledge the existence of the mortal by his foot. In addition, the same art is repeated on the back cover, and due to is color manages to obscure much of the text describing the book.

The book describes a pantheon of twenty gods. In Dieties & Demigods terms, the pantheon would rank somewhere between a "loose" pantheon and a "tight" pantheon. Though the gods tend to be diverse and somewhat squabbling, all twenty are non-evil, and are united against the forces of evil in the world. Only a handful of evil gods are described. Though the gods have interdependencies and relationships, it doesn't seem like it would be any problem at all to simply swipe a god or two for use in your own campaign.

At first, I was a little put off by the lack of evil gods. However, once I thought about Green Ronin's reasoning behind this, it made more sense. The majority of people are simply not going to worship the gods of baby eating and torture, so it makes sense that there just wouldn't be all that many of those gods. In addition, the gods described in this book seem a bit more aloof than Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk gods, and a number of their churches have schisms resulting in different viewpoints on the nature of the god, as well as a handful of evil cults who worship the darker side of some of the neutral gods.

Chapter 1 of the book is an introduction and describes such things as "why do I need to care about religion?" It takes a few friendly potshots at "that other" god book, and explains why this god book is different.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the mythology. I wont' go into the specifics here, but the mythology admittedly combines a number of familiar elements from real-world myths and creates a believable story of creation, both mortal and divine. This chapter also covers the cosmology assumed by the rest of the book, which is different from the standard cosmology but familiar enough that it shouldn't cause anyone any problems.

Chapter 3 presents the "Great Church," which reminds me of the Wal-Mart of churches. All of the gods have shrines in the Great Church, and the common folk can go there to venerate whichever god they need to pray to at that time. Because the church is so pedestrian, it has a great appeal among the common man, which translates into a lot of secular power. However, the worship there is a rather watered-down and homogenized version of what you would find at any of the churches dedicated to one god or another.

Chapters 4-7 go into detail on each of the twenty gods and their churches. A typical entry is around 10 pages, with an illustration of the god, his symbol, and one or more of his priests or followers. Considering the density of the text, this is an astounding amount of information on each church.

Each entry begins with one or more myths about the god in question. These provide a great context for understanding the god and his church, and tend to be quite interesting. Some of them touch on the creation of heavenly bodies, or the creation of wine, or other such ideas.

The book then describes the god, and the natural phenomena, creatures, virtues, and worshippers associated with him. Each god is given an alignment, though some of them are seen to have more than one alignment, which results in schisms among their mortal worshippers. For example, Tinel, god of knowledge and magic, is either true neutral or chaotic good, and damned if mankind knows how to figure out which one is right.

The church descriptions are lengthy, and provide a breakdown of the organization, common prayers, dogma, clothing, holy days, and saints of the faith. Each church has its clerics fully described, in addition to at least two other orders: holy warriors, and a prestige class. The holy warriors are derived from the paladin class, but essentially get to change around some abilities to make them more suited for individual gods. This is a very neat idea and one that will see use in my campaign for sure.

Chapter 8 describes the four evil gods of the pantheon. Many might not like the fact that Asmodeus is the main evil god. I'm not sure which way I feel just yet, but the description of him makes it seem like he could make as excellent a god as he does an archdevil. This chapter also discusses the evil or heretical cults of the mainstream faiths.

Chapter 9 is entitled "Campaigning" and provides ways in which to use the mythology presented. It begins by providing interpretations of the various alignments as a religous scholar of the pantheon might see them. This is a very well-done section and is a better explanation of the various alignments than provided in the PHB, though it does take more of a "how does a chaotic good god act" stance than a "how does a chaotic good character act" stance.

The chapter discusses the relationships between the various churches. It also provides adventure hooks for various churches and describes the things you should think about when designing a campaign from the ground-up.

Chapter 10, "Do It Yourself," is much like chapter 9, but is aimed more towards fitting various parts of the book into an existing campaign. It discusses different ways in which your current mythology and this new mythology could overlap or meld. It also talks about ways to tweak the mythology to create the feel you're looking for.

Chapter 11 provides the rules for the holy warrior class, a number of obligatory new feats, and a handful of new domains, spells, magic items, and creatures. To be honest, I haven't gone over these with a fine-toothed comb looking for balance, but there aren't that many and they don't seem, on first glance, to be too overpowering.

Appendix 1 provides a much more in-depth history of the gods than that presented in chapter 2. Appendix 2 is a glossary, and Appendix 3 is a guide to the various forms of address used by the churches.

Overall, I was very impressed by this book. If you ask me, this is what Deities & Demigods *should* have been. While the gods described in the book may not be for everyone, I think they are detailed enough that most GMs should be able to pull a lot of useful information from this book. While the $39.95 price tag seemed steep to me at first, there is an awful lot of reading material and useful gaming material in this book, and I found it to be worth every penny.

Oh, and this is my first review, so if I did anything wrong, don't hesitate to yell at me.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

The Book Of The Righteous is the third in Green Ronin's Arcana series and gives a comprehensive set of churches and cults, holy orders and mythology, in a form designed to be used in any fantasy campaign setting.

The Book Of The Righteous comes in at $39.95 for 320 pages. This is the same price and page count as the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting, though Book of the Righteous is not in colour (both are hardcover). Use of space is good with a decent font size, small margins and very little white space. The mono internal art runs from poor to good, with most being at the upper end of the scale, The cover art is also good, depicting a petitioner in front of a huge warrior god seated on a giant throne with an owl on his shoulder. The writing style is elegant and engaging, whilst the editing also appears extremely good, especially considering the size of the book.

The Book Of The Righteous states a fairly challenging goal in Chapter One: Introduction - to provide a number of extremely detailed religions with deity, organisation, beliefs, clerics, fighting arm, and prestige classes, each of which can be plucked out for use in a homegrown campaign. In addition to this, the aim is also to show the interrelationship between each of the gods and their followers with an uber-mythology/cosmology to tie the whole pantheon together, so the book can be used in its entirety if desired.

Chapter 2: The Mythology, presents the mythology and cosmology that ties all the gods in the future chapters together. The chapter begins with a listing of the twenty three gods detailed in the book (the term god is used for both male and female deities here). Each deity is given a title reflecting their areas of power - e.g. The God of Valor, God Of Slaughter, God Of Learning, etc., which makes it easier to relate a certain god from the book to one in your own campaign, ignore the actual names of the gods, and look in the right place to steal material to round out information on the god in your campaign (or for players, the god their character worships if OK'd by the GM). There follows a 3-page mythology of the creation of the world, the birth of the gods, the creation of celestials and demons, the war of the gods, the birth of PC races, and on up to the present situation. There is also a timeline chart showing this in pictorial form. The chapter ends with a short section on cosmology, looking at the different planes (which include versions of Heaven, Hell, planes of energy and elements, and transitive planes). There is an interesting clockwork-like picture of the relationship between the different planes by Todd Gamble.

Chapter 3: Practicing The Faith: The Great Church, begins with an overview of the template the book uses for each of the detailed religions within the Great Church, a religious body that worships all the gods. Each religion in chapters 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and (to a lesser extent) 8, gives the following information:

* The God - Name, Myths, Associations (including related animals and favoured races), Alignment, Representations (symbolic/iconic imagery), Purpose, and Servants (usually powerful celestials)

* The Church - Description, Structure, Doctrine, Common Prayers, Holy Days, Saints, God's View Of The Church, and Preferred Weapon

* Holy Orders - Clerics, the role of the new Holy Warrior core class introduced in the book, and Prestige Classes and Other Orders

A nice touch is that where campaign-specific information is required to be input from the GM (such as placing a Holy Day in his campaign calendar, these sections are highlighted with an icon. Additionally, the book develops a number of plots and conspiracies in some of the churches that would be normally of less interest to a PC (e.g. comfort and peasants) than others (e.g. war). This theoretically should increase the level of interest in these normally mundane religions. The remainder of Chapter Three is dedicated to the Great Church, and covers the information listed in the template above. The Great Church tends towards law and good, and has a lot of worldly power.

Chapter 4: Practicing The Faith: The Old Gods, discusses the faith of the five powerful religions that follow the oldest gods.
* Urian is an archetypal sky god with power over the sun, moon, stars, thunder, lightning, and wind.
* Rontra is an archetypal earth goddess with power over plants, gems and metals, farmers, and miners.
* Shalimyr is the archetypal water god with power over rain, the seas, lakes, rivers, and fishing.
* Eliwyn is the archetypal goddess of nature and is worshipped by druids and rangers (there is no church as such).
* The Nameless One - the archetypal distant creator god who is 'worshipped' by monks (again, there is no church as such).

Chapter 5: Practicing The Faith: The Gods Of The Tree, covers the children of Eliwyn:
* Morwyn - goddess of mercy, healing, forgiveness, mothers, and peace.
* Terak - god of valour, war, and physical strength.
* Zheenkeef - goddess of inspiration, wine, madness, and prophecy.
* Tinel - god of magic, knowledge, and truth.
* Mormekar - god of death, rebirth, and the destruction of undead.

Chapter 6: Practicing The Faith: The Gods Of The Womb, are the children of the gods of the tree, and are more popular with the mortal races as they concern themselves far more with the world than their parents or grandparents:
* Maal - god of justice, law, and the dead.
* Darmon - god of travel, trickery, joy, luck, diplomacy, and thievery.
* Aymara - goddess of love, music, marriage, and bards.
* Korak - god of smiths and artisans.
* Anwyn - goddess of the hearth, the home, servants, and peasants.

Chapter 7: Practicing The Faith: The Three Sisters, covers a single church with three goddesses:
* Naryne - goddess of nobility, royalty, and leadership.
* Canelle - goddess of victory, athletics, and competition.
* Thellyne - goddess of the forest, hunting, and tracking.

Chapter 8: Putting Your Faith In Evil, covers four evil churches and a number of evil sects. The information in this chapter is far less detailed than in the previous chapters. A direct quote may be useful here as way of explanantion - GR say "There are a few reasons for this: 1) This book is intended to be useful for any campaign, and we know that a lot of GMs prefer to flesh out their own evil conspiracies; 2) Green Ronin offers a fair amount of evil already, in Legions Of Hell, and Armies Of The Abyss, and not coincidentally those books complement this one nicely; 3) while some people do play "evil campaigns," our experience is that most divinely powered characters are aligned with good, or at least non-evil, gods...". Though I'm not in full agreement with these arguments, there is enough detail for each deity for a GM to use the faith as an enemy of the PCs and as part of the logical pantheon that Aaron Loeb has created here.
* Asmodeus is the lord of Hell, god of fire, power, lies, and revenge.
* Canarak is the god of rage, violence, and destruction.
* Thellos is the god of greed, gluttony, and desire.
* Naran is the god of tyranny, pride, and cunning.

There are also six evil sects:
* Cult Of The Bloody Blade - a sect of Maal who believe that the end justifies the means.
* Cult Of The Bounded Rod - a racist sect of Terak.
* Cult Of The Icy Breath - a sect of Mormekar that raise and become undead.
* Cult Of The Bloody Libation - sect of Zheenkeef who practice immoral acts to excess.
* Cult Of Everlasting Night - heretical sect of Urian, insanely bent on destroying the sun and moon.
* Cult Of Possession - sect of Darmon who gain wealth by any means.

Chapter 9: Campaigning, looks at ways to integrate the ideas in previous chapters into your campaign. This is for those who say - "this is cool, I want to use all of it". The chapter takes a look at the meaning behind the nine alignments, the relationship between the different churches (including a cross-referencing table), how to integrate places mentioned in previous chapters, and a number of adventure and campaign ideas. The remainder of the chapter discusses some game-related and philosophical issues such as the definition of evil crimes, heretical teachings vs. blasphemy, and questions a GM should ask herself when incorporating the information in previous chapters into her campaign world (What are services like?, Who runs the churches?, etc.) with accompanying advice. One thing to note is that the book takes a very dogmatic stance on racial gods - there are none.

Chapter 10: Do It Yourself, is more for those GMs who already have their own campaign world, and gives ideas for integrating and modifying parts of the book they like for use within their own campaign world. This is done by first listing the underlying assumptions of the world view presented in previous chapters. This should quickly identify the conflicts that exist between the cosmology, mythology and religions presented in The Book Of The Righteous and those of the GM's campaign world. The rest of the chapter then looks at ways of amending and changing aspects such as planes, names, churches, and mythology. Advice centres on the idea that there is something in the book for everyone, so there is even advice for integrating some of the ideas for use in an already well-detailed mythology/cosmology/pantheon. There is also advice on amending some gods to be racial deities, though the book strongly veers away from this idea elsewhere.

Chapter 11: Additional Rules, introduces the concept of the holy warrior. This is a new core class, replacing the paladin. The concept is an interesting one - each religion has holy warriors, who receive powers according to their god and relevant domains. For example, at 1st level, a standard paladin receives four domain abilities related to the Champion and Guardian domains: detect evil, lay on hands (from Champion domain) and divine grace, divine health (from Guardian domain). At 2nd level, he receives two more domain abilities (smite evil from Champion and aura of courage from Guardian). At 3rd level, he receives a Gift Of God (chosen from one of the abilities detailed in each church section for Holy Warriors). He continues to receive further Gifts Of God as he rises in level, and also gains a Special Mount/Companion at 5th level. Holy Warriors from different churches gain abilities from different domains and gain Gifts of God relevant to their church. Apart from these changes, the BAB, saves and spell progresion are the same as a paladin. What you end up with is essentially a paladin specialised for each church in a similar way to a cleric. There are guidelines for using the Holy Warrior as a prestige class if its use as a core class is anathema to you. The various holy warrior abilities are listed and summarised in tabular form. Eleven new feats and a new skill, Famous, are then offered. The Famous skill is tied to the Famous feat, which has a prerequisite of having performed a heroic action publicly, but it still doesn't quite work for me that you can just pump points into being famous without having to perform more than one heroic action. Nine new domains (beauty, the Dead, the Forge, Home, Inspiration, Justice, Night, Oracle, and Truth), 22 new spells, and a few minor and major artifacts are also presented. The chapter ends with seven new creatures, including an archangel of divine retribution.

Appendix I: A Treatise On The Divine, is a history of the gods, written 'in character' by a famous sage. This provides a total mythology which can be given verbatim to the players or used sparsely to add mystery and revelation to the campaign world.

Appendix II: Gods And Races, gives a chart showing the genealogy of the gods, and a fairly exhaustive glossary.

Appendix III: Religion Reference Guide, gives a table summarising the deities, their alignment, and cleric and holy warrior domains. It also includes the correct way to address clerics from the various churches - e.g. a 7th-level cleric of Rontra would be called a Grand Prelate, and addressed as 'Mother Isabella' and introduced as 'The Grand Prelate, Mother Isabella, of the Sowers of the Foundations Of Rontra'.

The book finishes with an index.

Conclusion:
This is a very impressive book, perhaps most notably in the detail with which each god, its church, its clerics, holy warriors, and its doctrine are presented. If nothing else, it should act as a benchmark for the kind of detail we would hope to see in future texts covering religions, and a template for specifying information on your gods in your own campaign. At its most useful, it provides a total and complete pantheonic world-encompassing religion for those who are begining their own campaign world. There are a few dubious crunchy bits here and there, but nothing that can overwhelm the epic scale of the book and its huge potential for both GMs and players.

 

[Nail]

review of The Book of the Righteous
by Aaron J Loeb, Green Ronin Publishing

ISBN: 0-971438-06-4
MSRP: $39.95
hard-cover, 320 pgs, good TOC, good index

Why'd I buy it?
I've been looking for material to spruce up the religious aspect of my campaign. Clerics and Paladins seems to be rife with role playing opportunity and adventure hooks, and yet the material I've seen so far was lacking (like WotC: Defenders of the Faith). I was especially interested in the "Holy Warrior" new core class and in how a "complete description of each god's church" would look like. I was not disappointed...in fact, I was very pleasantly surprised.

Overview
This book can be used in many different ways: it's a complete patheon and mythology of gods, it's a "pick-and-choose" box of common gods plus detailed churches, and it's a "do-it-yerself" tool-kit for making the gods of your campaign world relevant to your players. It succeeds at all of these things...and if you think about it, that's pretty amazing.

The book prose is tight and entertaining. Rule changes are clearly spelled out, and are repeated where relevant. The game mechanics seem simple and balanced (although I've not yet play-tested it myself). (And a further note to all of those crunch-lovers out there, like me: There are game mechanics in here where there needs to be.) Overall, a very well written and insightful book.

The Complete Pantheon and Mythology
I loved reading this section -- it reminded me of Greek, Norse, and Native American myth. It's good story, and it tempts me to include it, lock, stock, and barrel, into my home brew campaign. And it's probably pliable enough for me to tweak it here and there and then do just that.

Plug n' Play gods and their churches
What I'm more likely to do, however, is take the gods and their churches out and plug them in where they fit into my existing home-brew. The book gives quite a bit of help for this sort of thing. The churches are well laid out, and yet they can be self-contained; that is, the churches don't wholy depend on the mythology presented in the book. Useful, that.

Kudos, BTW, on the structure of the book with respect to churches, clerics, "paladins", and new PrC. It's all wrapped up in a seamless whole, so that the relationships between the clerics, "paladins" (holy warriors, a superior concept, IMO), and the secret orders (PrCs) is believable and very playable. Makes me (almost!) want to play a goody-two-shoes Holy Warrior.

Cosmography Tool-kit (or "how the gods, the universe's creation, and the Planes of Existence fit together")
The thing this book is best at, IMO, is how it opens up Myth and the Gods for you to tinker with. Paired with the excellent WotC offering, Manual of the Planes, I'm not sure there's anything else you need to come up with a compelling and logical cosmography. How the universe is created => how the gods act => how their churches are structured => how PC clerics et al. act. It's all there, so that if the PC asks....well, he'll get at least one answer....
******************************************
Conclusion

• 
  Production: 5 - Excellent. Fonts, headers, and spacing is very good. Layout and organization is excellent. I was very happy with both the table of Contents and the index. Note to publishers: this is how it should be done for all products!
  
  Art: 4 - Good. The art work quality is good, most of the time, and the art work is very topical to the text on the page.
  
  Game Mechanics: 5 - Excellent. The new core class (Holy Warrior) is expecially good.
  
  "Cool" Factor: 5- Excellent. Even the name is good (shout "Book of the Righteous!" a couple o' times...you'll get what I mean). The mythology and churches are especially inspiring.

Overall: 5 - Excellent. If you are a DM with a home-brew world, you're a fool for not having this book. It's that good.

 

[John Morrow]

FIRST IMPRESSIONS
Book of the Righteous (BOR) is perhaps the best RPG supplement I have ever purchased. That may sound like hyperbole, but I can't say it any other way. I have never seen religion handled so completely or so well in any game I have ever played. If you have any desire to insert a completely consistent, logical, and interconnected cosmology into your campaign, then BOR is for you.

It would be hard to write a concise review that did this book justice, but I'll touch on the high points.


FORM
BOR is a mammoth hardcover book. It's monstrously huge. 320 pages of information packed between two sturdy attractive covers. The interior art is not colour, but it is well done. The art of the cover is appropriately imposing. The book is well written and seems tightly edited. It is an entertaining read and I found it hard to put down.


FUNCTION
So what is BOR? It contains a ready-to-use pantheon of some 20 gods with well-designed churches and associated cleric and paladin (holy warrior) classes. Prestige classes are included for most of the churches as well. There is even information on hidden, twisted cults and sects that pervert the will of some of the gods, as well as a little information (not enough to satisfy me!) on the one major evil power (he's not a deity per se) and his minions.

In addition to these things, all laid out in exceptional detail, there is a compelling and consistent mythology to tie all of these churches together. At the risk of offending some people, I found the mythology and cosmology in this book to be much more intriguing than most real world religions. That may say more about the state of my immortal soul than it does about this book though...

The purpose of all of this is to allow a DM to drop the churches and/or the mythology into any campaign world allowing for instant credibility vis-à-vis religion. For anyone who likes to play clerics, this supplement will make your character's life infinitely fuller.

For each deity, the book lists myths told by the worshippers of the particular god in question. It then outlines the god's associations - what are the god's domains? What animals are associated with the church? Who worships this god? Next the book describes the god's alignment, as well as how the god is generally represented. How do worshippers picture the god? What is his holy symbol? Next, the book discusses the god's purpose. What is the god interested in? Why? What is his ultimate goal? Finally, the servants of the god (immortal servants, such as angels - not mortal worshippers) are described.

After this level of detail about a god, the book then shifts to describe that god's church. A description of the church and its structure is followed by details of the church doctrine. A few common prayers and holy days are listed, followed by the god's main saints. Interestingly, there is then a discussion of the god's relationship with the church. Not all gods support or even like their churches. Some are indifferent to the mortals. Interesting take on this. Finally, each church's preferred weapon is listed.

Next, the book delves into the holy orders of each church. Most churches have 3 holy orders - an order of clerics, an order of holy warriors (paladins), and an order of some sort of prestige class. These are all generally well thought out and interesting. I particularly like the idea of holy warriors for all churches, not just Lawful Good ones.

After these lengthy sections on the various gods and churches, the book has an interesting section on "Campaigning", which contains an excellent discussion of alignment. Each alignment is described in relation to a cosmic perspective, and each is related to an ideal or concept. For example, Chaotic Good relates to "freedom" while Lawful Good relates to "Charity" and Neutral Evil to "Greed". It's a new take on alignment that I found refreshing.

The rest of the section deals with various aspects of incorporating religion (and specifically these religions) into your game, including a short section on stopping players from abusing their character's role as a servant of the gods.

There is also a chapter on creating your own mythology, or incorporating some parts of the book and not others, but frankly the content as provided is so good, I can't imagine wanting to change much of it.

There are also the obligatory new feats, abilities, spells etc. Some of this is good and some mediocre, as per most these days, but honestly, I was sold on this book long before I got to this bit. You could easily pick and choose what to keep and what to pitch from this section.


FUN
Is this book fun? Heck, its fun to read let alone use. I would love to play a cleric in a campaign that uses this supplement. It totally takes clerics out of the cookie-cutter role of combat medic and gives them life and purpose.

One thing I really like - there are no stats for gods. This is not an addendum to the Monster Manual. The gods do not have hit points. They don't have levels. They are gods. Raise your hand against them and be smitten.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Buy it. Read it. Use it.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Review of Book of the Righteous by Green Ronin Publishing

The Book of the Righteous is a complete cosmology. This book describes everything someone would need to run these gods, churches, and religions a role playing game. The cosmology described is a new one featuring new gods, myths, churches, and legends. It is without peer in the area it covers. Deities and Demigods, The Divine and the Defeated, Gods, and other books that have been published dealing with divinity pale in comparison. The Book of the Righteous covers everything except stating out the gods.

The Book of the Righteous is 320 pages and it costs $39.95 American dollars. It is one of the larger books yet published as well as one of the more expensive. The book is packed with ideas and useful information. The text is easily readable and well spaced. This is one of the best-organized books I’ve seen. The table of contents and the index together makes referencing this book very easy. Throughout the chapters are headings for the different sections aiding one who is scanning a section for a particular topic. The art is all black and white and it aids in getting across the purpose of the chapters. Most of the pictures have captions to explain exactly what it is. As a whole this book has an amazing production value.

The book starts with an introductory chapter. While brief, it tells you exactly what you are to find in this book as well as some great advice on gods and clerics. Reading this chapter should tell you if this book is right for you.

Chapter two goes into the mythology and the cosmology of the gods. It gives myths for the creation of the world, the gods, and all the races. It is very complete. The next five chapters cover the individual gods and their churches in great detail. It starts with the god and his/her name and myths that concern him/her. It goes on with associations of the god and alignments. It details the representatives of the god, the god’s purpose, and the servants. Next it goes into the church and the church’s structure. It tells of the doctrine and gives some examples for common prayers. There are also holy days, Saints, the god’s view of the church, and the proffered weapons. It talks about holy orders, clerics, Holy Warrior Class (See below), and prestige classes. There are eighteen different churches are fully detailed. Each can easily become the central point in a campaign or be used in less active ways.

The book also has a chapter all about Evil. It lists four churches in the same amount of detail as the good churches. It also gives evil sects of the other described churches. These can easily be used by the players or can be used as a nemesis organization.

Chapter Nine: Campaigning is my favorite chapter in this book. This chapter gives specific advice on how to use all the previous information and fit it seamlessly into any world. It has an easy reference table showing how the different churches get along. It gives some ideas on where to place different holy areas. It then gives some good adventure hooks as well as campaign ideas.

The Next Chapter is about integrating this book and using its ideas into a world with gods already set up. It is relatively easy to extract many of the great ideas from this book and apply to different, yet similar gods of other pantheons.

The last chapter is Additional Rules. In here one will find a new core class, the Holy Warrior. This class is an alternate version of the Paladin. Its abilities reflect that of its god. There is one class that is highly versatile. Depending on what domains your god has determines your abilities. The chapter list some new feats that are very religion and cleric oriented. One of these feats, Domain Specialization, might be a little strong. This feat allows the spells of one Domain the cleric has access to to be cast spontaneously. There are some domains that this might be too powerful when combined with. There is a new skill, Famous, that allows a fame mechanic to be used. Then there are some new domains, new clerical spells, magical items, and creatures. All of which have a religious feel to them.

Lastly, are some appendixes that really bring another level of depth to this book. The first is a series of writing as written be a sage about the history of the gods. It is a great prop that can easily be used with the players allowing them to have information from a well-known source. The second appendix is a glossary of names and races for easy access. The third appendix can be photocopied and used as quick reference sheets.

Overall, this is a very well done book covering areas that have been untouched by many other products. This book can easily be used as a full cosmology filled with very interesting myths and gods. It can also be used to help broaden existing pantheons and adding more depth and detail to them.