By The Book: New Religions, Schisms and Bigotry

[Kahuna Burger]

In 3rd Edition, anyway, clerics don't need the permission of their gods to steal...erm, use....divine magic, so a heretic still gets spells. The "simple check" is true in 1e and 2e, but not in 3e.

RC

"Steal"? Not so, my good man! The forces of divine magic are available to all to use, and you cannot steal them anymore than you could steal your breath from the air, just because another man claims he breathes only by permission of his goddess! It is an ocean that many find easier to access from the harbors and docks of one city or another, but if you choose to put your own boat in the water from a wild cove, or even swim out from a rocky beach, and you have the strength and purpose the ocean is there for you! Your time in it is not stolen from a dock that you simply chose not to use. [This message has been brought to you by the Mortalist Hospice Group of Enworld, stop in for some ale and conversation! All are welcome!]

More to the point.... I would disagree that in a setting with definitive gods* a true heretic could gain spells. A true heretic being one whose beliefs and actions go against divine wishes rather than mere church doctrine but still believe he is following the same god. You can gain your divine spells by worshiping a diety OR by dedicating yourself to an abstract philosophy - a true heretic does neither and thus, imo, gets no spells.

*nothing in the PHB or DMG imo requires that the gods be real. every cleric could be a philosophy cleric with a slightly more complicated philosophy. iirc, this is the case in the Oathbound setting, where actual divine intervention is non-existant within the Forge, but there is a ambient divine energy that fuels all clerics, whereever it is they think their power is coming from.

 

[WayneLigon]

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.

The history of how such stuff was managed is bascially a history of how we looked at D&D.

In the past I'd almost wholly ignored it. We'd had arcs and campaigns based on most other aspects of human society but almost entirely ignored how society interacts with religion. If you have a known pantheon of, say, 5 gods and your typical 1-5 dark gods then obviously any 'new' religion is false or actively evil.

Not really any arguement about that since for so long a time we assumed that those big cathedrals and churches and abbeys were packed full of cleric-classed people. Clerics were, per capita, the most-represented character class by far. You get someone to 10th level or so and boom, they can talk directly to their deity. Get 'em high enough level and they can either go talk to him, or bring him down to earth for a little chat.

Oh, you'd get your occassional evil priest, seduced by his station or by the dark gods. Some Detect Evil or other divination usually put that out of the picture pretty quick. But the idea that an entire religion would arise or fall or really change in much of any way was silly. If they deviated too far, they stop getting spells or the god himself would come down and put a stop to that, some members of the church would erupt in blue fire or have their heads explode and that would be that.

There might have been some friendly rivalry between some religions in the same pantheon, but that was about the extent of it. When you have the threat of the dark gods and the monsterous humanoids, any difference between CG church and LG church seems to fade into the background.

Then around 1985-1990, things started to change. A long time away from concentrating on D&D -- and some growing up on our parts -- showed us how other games handled such things and that we didn't have to do things so in line with the rules as written. We started to pay attention to the nature of the gods and make some notes on just what they wanted. The concepts of older groups of dieties, younger deities, rival gods from other cultures, all this began to percolate in. We paid more attention to how the gods were handled in various works of fiction, and how that interacted with basic human nature.

First, we broke from the (erroneous, anyway) idea that the various divination spells were basically infallible. The ones that were became not so much so. We broke from the idea of gods that were so directly involved in their clerics lives that they'd come down and fix things if things got too out of whack.

About 1995 we're getting into Eberron territory, where the gods are nebulous things that might not even really exist, or are so removed from the world that they themselves really don't much care what happens to it unless something monstrous happens that directly affects them. They empower clerics and paladins to be their eyes and ears and arms on the material world. Because those agents are human, they are subject to the full range of human foible and nobility.

 

[imbiginjapan]

I'd expect that in a world where many gods definitively exist, are aware of each others' existence, hatch schemes against each other, and engage in petty rivalries and politics, a 'heretic' in one religion could easily find himself being granted spells by another god, possibly without being aware of it! What better way for a devious god to waylay members of another's faith than to poison the well by granting greater powers to those who preach another path?

The old OD&D Wrath of the Immortals set imagined gods similar as a bunch of overgrown humans vying for political domination. In this type of setting a minor god looking for greater power within his sphere could theoretically (for example) plant an avatar on earth to start a war between a major god and her main enemy, and while she is distracted, begin planting the seeds of dissent within her followers far from the nexus of conflict.

 

[Voadam]

In my Wildwood game, many gods are worshipped, and many clerics and church traditions believe the gods empower the clerics, but all clerics are in fact actually godless whether they know it or not.

There can be evil followers of good gods. There can be differences of orthodoxy within a religion. Gods can be real or entirely made up. They can be real and uncaring with limited knowledge and perception even though their followers believe they are caring and omniscient.

You can worship spirits, demons, powerful beings, single gods, pantheons, or follow the divine in one unpersonified form or another.

Churches and religions are established, but having multiple different ones is easy to do in my game.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I'm going to further muddy the waters. IMC there are two forms of divinities: Gods and Spirits.

Gods are divine, outer-planar beings that have certain cosmic attributes from "birth." They gain power from followers, giving them incentive to involve themselves with the material planes. Gods can show different "aspects" to different cultures to gather followers. They have a portfolio based on their personality/knowledge. For instance the God of Love is a god that enjoys love and the aspects of love. During their angsty "teen" period, the God of Love could appear as the God of Unrequited Love, the "college" god of Love is the God of Lust, and later a more mature, family oriented God of Love. These different aspects can have wildly different churches & followers and the God will be disinclined to give them up.

Spirits are embodiments of a concept that are "native outsiders" on the material plane. The Spirit of Love isn't "made" of love, but they completely Grok love. They are the champion and defender of Love. They can be killed but another Spirit of Love will show up eventually. The followers of Love are connected to the concept of Love, not the Spirit, and draw their powers from the concept. The Church(es) of Love and the Spirit of Love may have never interacted, be closely intertwined, or even at odds. Some spirits tend to die off rather frequently and have churches that treat the Spirit much like the Pope; a transitory, temporal power that should be respected but isn't entirely in control of the church (college of cardinals) and whose edicts can be rescinded at a later date.


The kicker here is that Gods try to steal the followers of Spirits and other Gods for the power and some spirits try to gather followers just to weaken the gods. Furthermore, churches of the same spirit can be at considerable odds with each other over doctrine, the role of the Spirit in church functions, or even the fundamental nature of the Spirit/Concept duality.

Very messy, very organic and very entertaining to me.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

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

In my version of Greyhawk, the many different churches are often wracked with internal debates, differences and discussions on theology and the interpretation of writings and doctrine, much like the differences between Catholics and Protestants, or between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims in Islam.

The way I see it, the gods are very real and have their own beliefs-but they give a very broad set of guidelines to their followers, that those human followers then interpret and put their own gloss on. It is this belief and devotion that forms a connection between god and follower, and allows the former to grant spells to the latter. As the cleric's faith and connection become stronger (in game terms, as the cleric gains levels), the cleric can use more and more powerful spells and abilities.

The real-life Bible can be a perfect example. Biblical scholars are always debating many different aspects of the religion, and Christians are involved in endless debates with one another. While there are many common threads linking the various versions of the Bible, it goes without saying that different followers interpret different parts of Scripture. I see no reason why D&D religions can't be the same way.

In a sense, it is the cleric's belief system that allows them to be able to gain divine power; violating their code of ethics disrupts the connection and causes them to lose power. Different sects can receive spells from the same god, and still be punished if they violate the edicts of their own sect. A real-life example would be, say, if a Catholic priest were denied spells for acting more like a Methodist, even though both sects worship God.

This divine-connection theory does not necessarily require an actual god-different hermits, holy men, shamans, witches, medicine men, or witch doctors might worship things like the sky, the sun, or a mountain range and acquire divine powers of their own. It would be their sincere and devoted worship and belief that would allow the cleric to cast divine spells-their worship and devotion allows them to connect to a given outer plane and renew their clerical powers. A wide variety of prestige classes, variant classes, and other powers can be developed from this.

It's also worth noting that evil gods can openly establish full-fledged temples even in cities and countries of good alignment-the sects that tend to operate openly don't engage in evil plots to destroy or conquer, but rather deal with the more savory aspects of their god's portfolio. The followers of a god of disease and plague, for instance, might be mainly concerned with treating and burying the diseased and sick, and jostle with good-aligned religions to do so. The followers of a god of murder and death might be more concerned with making sure that those who die alone and unmourned receive the dignity of a decent burial or cremation.

As a result of all this, there is often fierce debate and political maneuvering within a church, and different religions are constantly competing with one another for converts, donations, and other forms of support. However, most of the time this is not violent; the followers of evil deities who operate openly tend to be members of less-violent sects who know better than to pull any funny business. They put up with peasants throwing rocks at their temple-no need to give them an excuse to burn the temple. Some particularly heated rivalries might lead to blows and street fighting, but not clerics of Pholtus and Nerull who meet in the streets of Greyhawk, for instance-the Pholtans despise the Nerullians, but also know that to mess with the Nerullians will only bring trouble from the city authorities, and the Pholtans know they must obey the law, distasteful as it is in this situation.

 

[fusangite]

Greetings!

By The Book: New Religions, Schisms, and Bigotry

How do you integrate new religions into your campaigns?

Well, the problem is that the very idea of "religion" does not get on with polytheistic systems. Although we use the Western word "religion" when we talk about Shintoism, Hinduism or Buddhism, there isn't really a comparison between polytheistic worldviews and monotheistic worldviews.

The idea of cult initiation being universal rather than a privilege of a small subset of society doesn't really jive with polytheisms. Lay practitioners in pagan systems have essentially nothing required of them; they can pick and choose amongst gods, rituals and organizations pretty freely.

In societies that did not go through a pretty unique experience of fusing the Abrahamic faiths with Greek philosophy, the effects of new religious movements are fundamentally different: new organizations form but they are not polarizing. Sure, there might be the odd mystery cult or philosophical school that offers the package of what our religions offer but these things operate within the matrix of polytheism; they don't hive off from it. For instance, in the 1970s, the Mar Thoma Christians of India fought to remain governed by the Hindu Code in legislation and also fought against the project of amending the dowry legislation contained therein.

While my polytheistic worlds have clear moments where certain cults' priests align with particular political actors and voice (or fight in the name of) their god's support for or opposition to a political or military cause, doctrinal issues do not polarize society.

When I have run games with theological schisms, they have been set on earth and are alternate history games that sometimes explore themes in Christianity. The problem is that God's position on a particular issue is always evident because the games have a simulationist Prayer mechanic that, like Teflon Billy's, notifies the players pretty directly of what is up with the god.

How do you develop the inevitable aspects of religious bigotry between so many different religions

I try to infuse the campaigns with a generalized sense of bigotry. I prefer situations where society isn't polarized but it is nevertheless divided into a lot of little groups that are all suspicious of one another.

In my quasi-historical campaign, we're dealing with this issue right now. One of the characters is Jewish and the mixture of tolerance and bigotry is great. These people are inferior to you and wrong but they are part of your society. Provided they can maintain their own inferior, smaller social sphere, they can excel in a subset of your society's occupations. And I find I'm more interested in a deeply bigoted society that maintains a basic equilibrium from its variagated castes rather than in societies that polarize radically over tiny points of ideology. But that's just my personal taste.

Sure, there are movements like the Bacchae, the Druids, Falun Gong or the Cathars who are beyond the pale and must be destroyed but these groups are exceptional in advocating someting so socially destabilizing that society collectively freaks out at them. But but those moments tend not to be sustainable arrangements. Either fight acquires a geography and it turns into a war, the intolerable dissident movement is successfully suppressed or the majority society runs out of energy and reaches an accommodation with the group. And it's this latter scenario that I prefer.

—many of which are if not entirely opposed to each other—are still distinct from each other, and at largely in competition for “souls”,

That's what I like in polytheism. Your average lay polytheist is willing to attend the major festival of any god. Not only is it fun; it's was civic minded. High holy days are like a series of country fairs. Devotion to one god in no way precludes another because most relationships with divinities are not love-based; prayers are closer to bargains with divinities made by priests on behalf of worshippers. The annual rain god festival is like the whole town going en masse to haggle for good weather; public ritual is like buying into a 19th century mutual insurance scheme.

The only thing you can really do to upset people in this system is refuse to participate in these rituals. But as long as you and your kids show up for all the festivals, why should anybody care what you are doing the rest of the time? You're discharging your civic duty.

tithes, offerings, donatives, and other forms of economic and social patronage.

In my polytheistic societies, cults are not mass organizations. They are run by small priestly elites and, if they are mystery cults, a number of initiates. But the way these cults' social patronage works is like the masons -- the system fails if too many people get in on it. So, those in charge of the faiths have a big incentive to keep the clubs exclusive.

So, your average cult operates more like the Scientologists than the Christians. They make a lot of moves in high society but in most social ranks, regular devotion is to minor divinities like guild gods or lineage ancestors and takes place at a family or workplace altar rather than in a major temple.

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.”

I think that this would be (and indeed was) the case if you had a set of competing monotheisms living next to each other but when you have polytheistic systems I think we would see the kind of tense, bigoted harmony that existed in most of the ancient world.

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

I think this the key point. If a society gets polarized, I think the sides will be weird amalgams of cultic, lineage, occcupational and other loyalties rather than a clear, opinion-based ideological fight.

 

[Celebrim]

Fusangite: Excellent post.

 

[Kesh]

Eberron religion handles this nicely.

To elaborate: in Eberron, no one really knows what the gods are or if they even truly exist. Sure, something grants clerics their spells, and something answers their prayers, but...

This leads to all sorts of interesting situations where conflicting information or doctrine can come about. Plus, you get all sorts of interesting "new" faiths, like the Silver Flame. No one really knows what the heck that is all about. A good example would be the Silver Flame's stance on lycanthropes and shifters: some see the persecution of all lycanthropes as a blight on their history, while others exalt it. Some want to extend the crusade to shifters, while others who supported eliminating true lycanthropes are uncomfortable with killing shifters too.

Throw in various Druid sects, local folk beliefs, and various cults of The Dragon Below/aberrations/the Dreaming Dark/etc. and you get tons of inter-religious conflict. The intra-religious conflict comes when someone reinterprets scripture, or claims to have recieved a new understanding of it through their own spells/prayers.

I think Archivists from Heroes of Horror can also introduce conflict into a religion by "discovering" old texts & spells, or attempting to incorporate a new belief/spell into their faith. Older, entrenched members of the clergy/faith may object for their own reasons, while the character winds up gathering followers who agree with him/her. Guess what? Your PC just started a cult!