By The Book: New Religions, Schisms and Bigotry

[SHARK]

Greetings!

By The Book: New Religions, Schisms, and Bigotry

How do you integrate new religions into your campaigns? Do you develop schisms within the individual religions? How do you develop the inevitable aspects of religious bigotry between so many different religions—many of which are if not entirely opposed to each other—are still distinct from each other, and at largely in competition for “souls”, tithes, offerings, donatives, and other forms of economic and social patronage. In the competition for souls, money, power and influence, it sometimes seems quite a stretch to have all of these vastly different religions existing side by side with each other in whatever typical city and seldom experiencing friction, internecine warfare, rioting, pogroms, and outbursts of religious strife and ethnic and religious “cleansing.”

Naturally, including such material within the campaign provides numerous opportunities for any cleric characters in the group, but also for any character that is philosophically minded. When one considers how pervasive religion is and has been for most people, it is also easy to see how even characters that are not “religious”, or even a different race or culture entirely, can still be heavily impacted or drawn into such a circumstance by their friends, or people around them that form their own interpretations of such characters—often through the “lens” of their particular religiously-inspired world view.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

 

[Teflon Billy]

There is a really good book (probably out of print now) by Mayfair Games, written by the now deceased Nigel Findley, about a D&D religion and how a demon comes to a small town and basically creates a schism by making the local priest (a pretty well-loved and Charismatic guy) believe that some minor point of canon is wrong...and that he is getting the message from the God himself.

It was pretty neat the way it worked because--where there is literally no faith required that a god exists--the possibility for schism to be actually heretical is almost 100%.

I think the book was call "Seed of Darkness".

Anyway, that neatly leads into my point...that schisms in the D&D almost have to be the work of outside forces. There are far too many ways for the Hierarchy in question to "Check with the man upstairs"...or, more likely, just have the Heretics not get any spells. there you go: Heresy is discredited.

"We believe that Balkus, god of the trees, wants us to pray at Midnight rather than midday"

"And how is that working out for you"

"We have no spells as yet, but we are firm in our faith"

"Um....OK."

I mean, it's a little anticlimactic.

 

[mmadsen]

There are far too many ways for the Hierarchy in question to "Check with the man upstairs"...or, more likely, just have the Heretics not get any spells. there you go: Heresy is discredited.

I must agree. With no element of uncertainty or a leap of faith, D&D religion in fundamentally different from anything in the real world, where reasonable people can disagree about what's right and what's really going on. Clockwork miracles work against ambiguity.

 

[pawsplay]

"We believe that Balkus, god of the trees, wants us to pray at Midnight rather than midday"

"And how is that working out for you"

"We have no spells as yet, but we are firm in our faith"

"Um....OK."

I mean, it's a little anticlimactic.

Isn't it to a deity's advantage to continue to empower otherwise faithful worshippers rather than stick on minor points of canon?

And what if a sect simply becomes clerics of a belief system, and changes their time of worship while continuing to honor their patron deity?

 

[Bayonet_Chris]

Religious schisms

This is precisely why I dislike the arcane/divine distinction in magic. In my campaign, they are the same because it introduces that element of uncertainty. The only other way to deal with it is have the god truly not care - so different divisions still get their spells no matter what sect they belong to.

 

[Piratecat]

My favorite attempt at heresy and splitting -- and is anyone else thinking of the People's Front of Judea/Judean People's Front from Python's Life of Brian? -- involved an order dedicated to fighting undead. One of their legendary commanders, now considered a saint, came back as a skeleton to lead the Order. He was undead, the very thing they hated... but he was also clearly blessed by their God. I was curious how orthodoxy would interact with faith.

Similarly, I have a country in my world that worships the God of Law as the only true God. No pantheon for them! All the other worshippers of this God think that they're insane zealots, and don't like or agree with them despite the fact that they all worship the same deity.

One way to encourage splitting and cults is to have folks worship aspects of a God. For instance, my Sun god has a creator aspect, a sun worship aspect, a burning truth aspect, and the like. It's fairly easy to have different sects oppose each other when their focus is different.

 

[Celebrim]

Isn't it to a deity's advantage to continue to empower otherwise faithful worshippers rather than stick on minor points of canon?

And what if a sect simply becomes clerics of a belief system, and changes their time of worship while continuing to honor their patron deity?

Well, I think it probably depends on whether deities need worshipers. If they don't, empowering heretics is pointless. But, if the actually do...

Book of the Righteous (a book every D&D player should have) has an interesting take where certain dieties tolerate heretical sects within thier church with interesting histories for the diety to explain in part why this is so.

 

[Celebrim]

My favorite attempt at heresy and splitting...involved an order dedicated to fighting undead. One of their legendary commanders, now considered a saint, came back as a skeleton to lead the Order. He was undead, the very thing they hated... but he was also clearly blessed by their God. I was curious how orthodoxy would interact with faith.

And I'd be courious what the heck that particular diety was thinking. Are the gods normally that crazy in your campaign world?

 

[pawsplay]

Well, I think it probably depends on whether deities need worshipers. If they don't, empowering heretics is pointless. But, if the actually do...

If you truly don't need worshippers, theologically errored clerics are still nearly as useful as the regular kind, for whatever reason you were empowering them in the first place.

If you're a deity so impersonal and cosmic you don't actually "care" about them, but simply empower them because it fulfills your divinity, minor drifts from canon might not be enough to remove them from your grace at all.

 

[Celebrim]

If you truly don't need worshippers, theologically errored clerics are still nearly as useful as the regular kind, for whatever reason you were empowering them in the first place.

If you truly don't need worshippers, the only reason you may be empowering them is to encourage them (and others) to believe exactly as you do (out of a need for compansionship, ego, whatever). In which case, every minor deviation may be significant, and at the very least is contrary to your goals.