How detailed are your in-game religions?

[Li Shenron]

So how much description and detail do you put into what should arguably be one of the core elements of a game world.

I couldn't choose any of your options. The reason is that as a DM I let my players of religious characters (clerics or not) develop their own religion as much as they like. As a guideline, we try to stick to a published setting's pantheon - currently the FR one - but a player can invent her own new deity to worship, or can introduce a variant to an existing one, or can take an existing one as it is and flesh out details about worshipping practices, religious politics, myths and so on.

Why do I leave it to the players? First of all, because doing this for every single deity is a huge job for the DM, and a job which remains largely unuseful unless you have dozens of cleric players. And second because not everyone appreciate this job, but if someone likes to do that, I think it's more fair to leave it to him even as a player. This means that part of the setting is effectively co-written by the players, but that is ok with me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The gods IMC are so obscenely detailed that they all offer feats, prestige classes, allies, and special powers to those of all classes who follow them.

So much detail..........

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Here's an excerpt from what will eventually be a character handout for my campaign which I'm currently designing:

The campaign lacks a coherent pantheon – some clerics are servants of a single deity, some of several at once, some of philosophies which may or may not incorporate the gods and goddesses of the world into their doctrine. While no religion is monotheistic in an exclusive sense, some religious orders claim primacy for their god(s) over all others. The clerics of the World Mother, for example, claim that She is the creator of all things, including other deities, and especially the natural world; there are, however, druidic philosophies which do not recognise any deity of the force(s) of Nature at all.

The gods apparently do not require doctrinal purity in return for the favour they grant their worshippers – most clerics agree that this is an accomodation born out of the gods’ conviction that mortals’ believing part of the truth is better than none, and may lead them to the whole in time, though extremists of all stripes suspect that those clerics who dissent from the truth are merely drawing their power from the elemental forces of the universe loosely associated with the god they claim to follow, as clerics of philosophies do.

Basically, I'm trying to add a little more real-world flavour of competing religions and philosophies while still maintaining the actual, provable existence of the deities that D&D assumes. I was a big fan of Planescape back in the day - my favourite and longest-lived character was actually a Third Edition Planescape PC - and so I suppose I'm influenced by the existence of factions such as the Athar and the Believers of the Source in that setting. I may even have small cells of those factions and others like them in my campaign, come to think of it, since I want to make the planes accessible.

The main change that I suppose I am making is that it will not be possible to discern the "truth" about the gods and their relationships through mortal means. I like the idea of clerics who stray from the "accepted" dogma being accused of no longer drawing their divine magic from their gods, but from the multiversal forces of Good and Evil, Law and Chaos, et cetera, but I also like the fact that the truth of the accusation is impossible to uncover.

The complexities that arise could be fascinating. Do clerics always receive visions of the gods that they worship when praying for spells or casting commune? If they do, but they are accused of straying from the "correct" dogmatic path, does that exonerate them, prove that the gods don't require a precise set of beliefs, or suggest that it's possible such visitations are not necessarily "real"?

Perhaps clerics of some religions see visions of their gods, and clerics of others do not. It would be entertaining if the clerics of the World Mother (for example) never saw a personification of their goddess, but some of the druidic sects which don't associate themselves with a deity of Nature do see personifications of Nature from time to time - not necessarily a god, but who knows?

Mmm, delicious mixed signals.

 

[Yair]

Actually, in my next campaign the players ARE the gods...
(incarnated into mortal form. We'll play the mortals as low-level characters, and use hp and the capabilities of high-level characters to exemplify the caharacter's deific stature. That's the idea anyways, I haven't straightened up the details quite yet...)
I voted as the majority, but am somehwere between it an the next option: I give a few paragraphs on each god (from the FRCS et al, when relevant), but also a lengthy section about cosmology in general, the relation of gods to mortals, the afterlife, and so on.

 

[Whisper72]

Hmmm... definately other... I used a system in my last campaign where there are 8 major Elder gods (linked to the various elements (water, earth, air, fire, time, space, positive energy, negative energy) and the alignements (excepting true nuetral), the FR gods as other Major Gods (though this was not a FR campaign as such) and a host of Ascendants as demi-gods and other meddling powers. On top of that were a whole Cabal of God-Kings from some Empire that was defeated thousands of years ago, but with a few still surviving. Then there were the three exiled 'creation' gods The Trinity modeled somewhat on the Three Fates as found in greek and norse mythology.

All were described in their relationships to eachother and their history, but not great details on stats, churches, domains etc.

So... yes, religion plays a part, but usually not a huge one in day-to-day affairs of the PC's.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I give a brief write up but I group my gods, the accepted dominate, unaccepted dominate, middle ground dominate, then the lesser religions and cults same categories. This all goes back to my soapbox: defining good and evil in your game and building cultral taboos.

 

[Raven Crowking]

In the Middle World, you have imprisoned Elder Gods (think Lovecraft) in the Far Pit and Great Titans slumbering beneath the earth. The Great Titans are hardly involved, and few of their names are known. The Elder Gods, though, send their tendrils into the world, where they spawn abberations, and are worshipped by a few foolish mortals.

There are also Infernal Powers, who are consigned to the Hells (but can get out with mortal aid), Celestial Deities (up in the Heavens), and Faerie Lords (both in the Middle World and in Faerieland). Some of the Celestials and Faerie Lords get along okay -- the Church of the Seven Good Gods includes representatives of each. Some of the Faerie Lords, though, have fallen under the sway of the Elder Gods.

The highest level PCs in the game are 3rd level now, but two have Totem Spirits (requires a vision quest, which is potentially lethal -- two characters have died on them already -- but which can provide cool benefits using Totem Spirit feats I wrote). They have already met the Three Heads of the Well, a Rank 0 triumverate god of the Faerie Lord kind. The Three Heads gave them good advice, but (needless to say) they didn't follow it all, much to their cost....

 

[Balrog]

I voted "Lengthy" due to the fact that I use an altered Norse Pantheon from Deities and Demigods, but I probably should have gone with the last choice, as stories of the Gods and their religions dominate the history of my campaign. My campaign takes place about 1800 years after Ragnarok, and therefore only a handful of Norse Gods survive intact. A few younger Gods have been created and/ or reborn from the primordial chaos of Ragnarok, and the mortal races have had a tough road to rebuild their shattered world in the last 1800 years.

 

[Raven Crowking]

Thom's poll of the week. DM campaign design question this time. Clerics are one of the core classes of D&D. The one thing that should most influence their power, both from a roleplaying perspective and in terms of spell power, is the god or gods they worship and follow. So how much description and detail do you put into what should arguably be one of the core elements of a game world.

Here's a link to my general cosmology.

My "Deities & Demigods" document is already about 30 pages long (including the general cosmology). When it's done, I'll post some bits.....?

 

[Faraer]

Mircea Eliade yay. Carl Kerényi is another of those great mid-20th-century history-of-religion guys.