Combining Monotheism with D&D deities

[Angel Tarragon]

Didn't the FR setting have an overgod named AO?

Yes, and it still does. I'm curious to know what your point is.

 

[fusangite]

Several monotheistic systems arose in a polytheistic context. In particular, one can look at the various forms of monotheism that arose in Ancient Greece and Ancient India. A single creator god was superimposed on top of an existing chaos of hundreds of gods. In Europe, this paved the way for the ultimate demotion of the original gods first to the status of inferior deities, then to demons/angels and finally to complete nonexistence. In India, things stopped at the demotion to inferior deities and Hindu culture became quite comfortable with the coexitence of monotheistic and polytheistic thought.

And in the West, this gradual demotion of the other gods can be traced from the creation of deities like Sarapis and the development of Neoplatonism by Plotinus. Even when one reads the City of God, the great orthodox Christian synthesis of Saint Augustine in the 5th century, note that Augustine does not deny that the gods polytheists worship are real -- in his view, they are just demons.

So, I think what you are proposing makes a lot of sense. The one thing I might recommend is that even if the majority of society understands these lesser gods to be angels or demons, I think that the priesthood and dedicated followers of these gods should still perceive them to be gods.

 

[Captain Tagon]

Interesting captain.

three questions:

can those who worship the one god still cast spells?

Yes, they can. But the only DnD spellcasting class used by the true church is wizards, who have a book knowledge of the god. Only the demons have worshippers with the class cleric.

how do you work the "good" gods being demons in disguise? (Presumably, if they're demons, they're not really good).

They aren't good. Just to stroke the egos some of the demons prefer to be reviled and feared, the evil gods, and some prefer to be loved, the "good" gods.

And third, aren't you dead? I mean it's not like we saw you die, but Kevin has already taken over your mercenary company and sent the reverend to inform your father of your demise.

Who really knows? I was shocked to learn of my death but for now Kevin seems to have things well in hand and my father should be okay.

 

[Turjan]

Several monotheistic systems arose in a polytheistic context. In particular, one can look at the various forms of monotheism that arose in Ancient Greece and Ancient India. A single creator god was superimposed on top of an existing chaos of hundreds of gods. In Europe, this paved the way for the ultimate demotion of the original gods first to the status of inferior deities, then to demons/angels and finally to complete nonexistence. In India, things stopped at the demotion to inferior deities and Hindu culture became quite comfortable with the coexitence of monotheistic and polytheistic thought.

Well, I don't think your description of the Indian system fits it to the point, at least if you do not restrict it to very ancient India. The existing gods are not seen as inferior to the "overgod"; they contain the "overgod" in themselves. The point is that it does not make a difference whether you see them as one god, a few great gods or hundreds of thousands of little gods. The Indian system considers this question as irrelevant. In a household, it is common that everybody picks a different god as his personal one. It's not a problem, because a god is something like a personified idea, or better ideal, of the divine, one of the many paths to the same goal.

If we transfer a system like this to D&D, the problem of 7 different churches for a monotheistic system vanishes without headaches. They would be able to compete for believers without being hostile to each other. You still can have your struggles for influence, but the system is clear and simple .

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Another way to handle it is to make the differences between priests not so much one of theory as of practice.

Your clerics belong to different orders with different styles of both faith and worship while holding essentially the same dogma.

Very medieval that way, the difference between the Franciscans and the Templars after all was not so much that they gave reverance to different saints as that they had very different ideas about what that reverence meant.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I curse the double post.

 

[Tonguez]

Two real world examples - the rise of Aten in Egypt under the heretic pharoah Akhetaten (who abolished the rival cults)

and the rise of the Oro cult in Tahiti (society Islands) wherein worshippers of rival gods were killed by followers of the war god Oro (who ironically is cognate to the Peace god Rongo (Lono) found in opther Polynesian Islands.

Oh and yeah making the DnD deities saints is a good idea and one I've used in an otherwise 'monoteistic' setting (during medieval times it was more common to invoke saints than it was to call on God, and even now the Virgin Mary is 'more popular' than Jesus in many countries)

 

[fusangite]

Two real world examples - the rise of Aten in Egypt under the heretic pharoah Akhetaten (who abolished the rival cults)

I'm not sure you want to use Ikhnaton as an example. Aside from possibly converting a group of nomads from Palestine, this project was an abject failure. And I would argue that the reason for that is that monotheism was imported and imposed rather than arising organically out of Egyptian thought.

The Hellenistic/Roman world spent 800+ years gradually evolving monotheism as a concept before it was legislated. And what with the relic trade and all, it was anywhere from another 500 to 1000 years before that evolution was complete.

When monotheism successfully cohabits with other gods, it is because the monotheistic system has found a way to create a space for them similar to the space the populace recognizes them as occupying.

Well, I don't think your description of the Indian system fits it to the point, at least if you do not restrict it to very ancient India. The existing gods are not seen as inferior to the "overgod"; they contain the "overgod" in themselves.

I'm sure it's just the Western lens through which I am viewing Hinduism but, for those of us who think in Western terms, this is hierarchical. In Western thought, the macrocosm is generally superior to the microcosm. When Hinduism (to the degree that this is even a thing, given that there is no actual -ism) has been explained to me in person or in print, I have always understood there to be a hierarchical relationship between the ultimate godhead and the household divinity. In all systems but Protestantism an ultimate god like I Am That Am must often act through some kind of intermediary periodically. In my admittedly Western understanding, it seems to me that for monotheistic Hindus the household divinity is being comprehended in terms of intermediation or hypostasis or their Hindu equivalent. While monotheistic Hindus, like medieval Christiansl, may see direct worship or worship via an intermediary as equally good, this does not mean that the intermediary is not inferior to the thing ultimately being worshipped.

The point is that it does not make a difference whether you see them as one god, a few great gods or hundreds of thousands of little gods. The Indian system considers this question as irrelevant. In a household, it is common that everybody picks a different god as his personal one. It's not a problem, because a god is something like a personified idea, or better ideal, of the divine, one of the many paths to the same goal.

I'm not disagreeing with this statement. The same is true of other polytheistic systems that cohabited with monotheism. Platonists, Stoics and other non-Christian monotheists in ancient Rome had similar theological constructs for explaining their relationship to divinity.

But there is hierarchy between a goal and a path. Path is, in my view, inferior to goal. The goal is perfection; the path is not perfection. Non-perfect things are inferior to perfection.

 

[Sejs]

It's actually pretty easy to do a monotheistic campaign. Works like so:

- Define that Clerics do not get their spells directly from their diety, and that prepared, spell slots divine magic is a trained discipline, similar to how a wizard's magic works. Remove the "one-step" alignment rule for clerics, and any "God Veto" on spells a cleric may cast.

- Allow Clerics of your One True God to pick any two domains that would be in accordance with whichever branch of the faith trained them as a spellcaster, excepting domains that would be antithetical to the deity, such as Evil, Death, Trickery, or what have you. Similar in concept to how a cleric of a concept or philosophy picks domains.

- Define that Favored Souls do get their spells directly from their deity, thru an innate connection with the divine, rather than a trained science. Unlike Clerics, have Favored Souls keep the deity alignment tether, and any God Veto on their spells.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The RuneQuest world, Glorantha, has a monotheistic culture (called the Brithini I believe) existing alongside pantheistic ones. I see no reason why you couldn't do the same in DnD. Cleric powers don't necessarily have to come from a real god anyway.