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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ilbranteloth" data-source="post: 7156200" data-attributes="member: 6778044">It's not intrinsic in the sense that everybody has to have one in every setting. But a cleric having a particular god was a part of the game (if not well supported), and the AD&D DMG even goes so far as to explain how certain level cleric spells are granted, up to 6th and 7th spells which are "granted by direct communication from the deity itself." Of course, OD&D had Gods, Demigods, and Heroes although I don't recall any discussion in the book about what to do with the long list of gods provided. They were a common topic for articles in Dragon magazine, with the Greyhawk, monster gods, etc. (along with the Forgotten Realms before it was published). Of the articles in Dragon that weren't written by Gygax in the AD&D era, the ones about gods were probably the most likely to eventually see themselves in print in official books.Of course, the original presentation (complete with stats as monsters) pretty much guaranteed that many players would just see them as super powerful monsters to kill.Religion and the gods became so ingrained in the the BECMI line that you had the "I" - Immortals set where the PCs themselves could become gods.So I wouldn't say that everybody having a patron deity is ingrained in the game, but the idea of religion definitely has been from the earliest days. I think that Dragonlance was the first where the gods (or lack thereof) was a central part of the campaign, though. That was seen as a radical idea at the time (which I think shows how the idea of having deities was expected), and the Realms was the first published campaign that I think really integrated the deities, simply because they were a significant part of Ed's campaign to start.The transition to 2e was when the Realms tied the fate of the gods to the worshipers as directly as they did.</blockquote>

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