D&D General building a faith around the assumptions of the cleric instead of in spite of it?

[Mind of tempest]

1) Don't try and build "gods". Build interesting religions. Some of these might have gods, some might not. They might even share a god with a different faith. So much of the blandness of D&D religion comes from a belief that it has to be this bizarre mismash of 12th-century Catholic crusaders who for reasons never explained worship Zeus or Thor. (Basically a antiquity-era polytheistic faith shoved into a medieval era monotheistic religion)

do you have any ideas on how to do that as I seem to be better at making things when I am not dealing with a blank page?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

do you have any ideas on how to do that as I seem to be better at making things when I am not dealing with a blank page?

It depends on how deep you want to go with your world-building, but you need to fundamentally think about "What is the purpose of religion" and think about the role it plays in peoples lives and how it is tightly coupled to culture and history. How does a religion develop in our world, what features does it have, and how might that inform your own creation.

Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Orthodox, Copts, Sunni, Shia, Jew all worship the same "god" (as D&D would put it), but do they feel the same, religion wise?

Modern religion tends to worship inside their "temples" (ie church, mosque, etc) but a fundamental feature of classical paganism was the fact that most worship happened outside the temple. (How much D&D "polytheism" has even considered that?) Something as simple as that can start to inform your thinking.

 

[Mind of tempest]

It depends on how deep you want to go with your world-building, but you need to fundamentally think about "What is the purpose of religion" and think about the role it plays in peoples lives and how it is tightly coupled to culture and history. How does a religion develop in our world, what features does it have, and how might that inform your own creation.

Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Orthodox, Copts, Sunni, Shia, Jew all worship the same "god" (as D&D would put it), but do they feel the same, religion wise?

Modern religion tends to worship inside their "temples" (ie church, mosque, etc) but a fundamental feature of classical paganism was the fact that most worship happened outside the temple. (How much D&D "polytheism" has even considered that?) Something as simple as that can start to inform your thinking.

I was going to have a divide other whether they worship in a formalised temple or whether they are more classically pagan, not a bitter divide but two cultures never the less, with a complex syncretism with a different almost godless faith to casually explain how dnd monks are also a part of it.

any idea on how to do a many god hierarchical temple?

 

[QuentinGeorge]

I was going to have a divide other whether they worship in a formalised temple or whether they are more classically pagan, not a bitter divide but two cultures never the less, with a complex syncretism with a different almost godless faith to casually explain how dnd monks are also a part of it.

any idea on how to do a many god hierarchical temple?

If there are two competing religions, then the simplest explanation is that one is a "newcomer", and there hasn't been much syncretization yet (this tends to eventually happen once the faiths begin to accommodate each other). A recent conquest, colonisation, or migration of a different people, perhaps. The dnd monks could even be the outcome of the first element of syncretisation, alternatively one of the religions might have a monastic element that is becoming prominent,

 

[Voadam]

any idea on how to do a many god hierarchical temple?

Research about Hinduism.

Research about multi-god temples in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt.

Example to model could be what is known about The Temple of Karnack or the Luxor Temple.

 

[Mind of tempest]

If there are two competing religions, then the simplest explanation is that one is a "newcomer", and there hasn't been much syncretization yet (this tends to eventually happen once the faiths begin to accommodate each other). A recent conquest, colonisation, or migration of a different people, perhaps. The dnd monks could even be the outcome of the first element of syncretisation, alternatively one of the religions might have a monastic element that is becoming prominent,

I am assuming the monk is coming from another compatible faith that the residence gods find either acceptable or desirable to work with for whatever reason.
for what the thing that originated the monk is I have no idea about yet.

Research about Hinduism.

Research about multi-god temples in Ancient Greece, Rome, and Egypt.

Example to model could be what is known about The Temple of Karnack or the Luxor Temple.

I will do that, any idea what exactly I am looking for as I have no idea how to do a research assignment nor do I know what exactly I am looking for?

 

[Mind of tempest]

This is what I got so far not exactly up to standards yet.

Structure of the??? And their temple.
The temples organisation is split into two parts
The priests who perform rights for the lay worshipers and the ????
The priests?

The ???? might be imagined as a divine task force opposing undead influence and performing tasks that either benefits the god directly or seek to do things that will please their patron god or the pantheon

 

[Flamestrike]

right off the bat I have a hard time calling it faith.

faith is believing with lack of evidence (in my mind)

Avoiding real world religion for a moment, you (in most settings) not only get powers, not only can meet angels, but you can (at higher levels) talk to or go meet your god.

I was having a discussion with a Muslim IRL the other day (I'm Agnostic personally) and he asked me that even if assuming I had died, and was standing in front of Allah on judgement day, would I believe in the religion then.

I answered 'No'. Honestly.

That's not anything about Islam specifically; in the same vein should a Demon or Angel could appear in front of me, or God, Buddha, Thor, or Ganesha pop over and say 'hello', or people suddenly disappear via the Rapture, and it proves nothing to me.

There is no spoon.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I was having a discussion with a Muslim IRL the other day (I'm Agnostic personally) and he asked me that even if assuming I had died, and was standing in front of Allah on judgement day, would I believe in the religion then.

I answered 'No'. Honestly.

That's not anything about Islam specifically; in the same vein should a Demon or Angel could appear in front of me, or God, Buddha, Thor, or Ganesha pop over and say 'hello', or people suddenly disappear via the Rapture, and it proves nothing to me.

There is no spoon.

fair point

 

[Voadam]

I am assuming the monk is coming from another compatible faith that the residence gods find either acceptable or desirable to work with for whatever reason.
for what the thing that originated the monk is I have no idea about yet.

I will do that, any idea what exactly I am looking for as I have no idea how to do a research assignment nor do I know what exactly I am looking for?

Since you are looking for possible models on a polytheistic temple these are real world ones that a bunch is known about.

Hinduism is a diverse living polytheistic faith with over a billion followers so it is a possible model (and from the diversity, multiple possible models) to gain an insight on how to do a polytheistic faith in a game. Wikipedia articles, children's books about Hinduism for Hindus, The Idiot's Guide to Hinduism, fairly concise online articles, library copies of the Teaching Company's college classes on introduction to Hinduism (audio CDs or DVDs) are all possible pathways to getting an insight.

Different strains of Buddhism and Taoism include polytheistic faiths as well and could be similarly used as different models.

Ancient classical and to a lesser extent Egyptian polytheism has a lot of research and knowledge about them as well and similar researches could be done. For western fantasy audiences this is typically the mythology base that comes to mind first and is most familiar, even if the actual religious and temple and worship aspects are not familiar to most modern Western audiences.

These are if you want a realistic model for your game's polytheism.

This is for a game so other priorities are reasonable too.

Other models could be media genre ones, if you like pulp fantasy genre stuff then reading R.E. Howard's Conan stories for how various religions and religious practices are portrayed in different stories would be a great basis, keeping in mind cultural sensitivity issues as you read 30's pulp fantasy. He is a great writer and different religions and religious practices come up in stories involving Stygian Set worship, Pictish religious practices, Mithraism, and Conan's relationship with Crom and Bel and such.