How Might D&D Religions Differ From Real Life Religions?

[doctorhook]

- the exception is the divine force known as the silver flame, which is incarnate in the capital of thrane - you can walk in and see it if you get permission. This has perhaps led to a more aggressive faith (although there are at least 3 main strands of that faith too - conservative, liberal and radical in temperament).

FIFY.

It is a take on "D&D religion" which I find somewhat more attractive than the typical take from the old days.

Cheers

I hear that, brother! This approach to fantasy-religion allows for somewhat more nuanced religious conflicts than the ol' Time of Troubles, "I-sit-next-to-my-deity-every-Tuesday-morning-on-the-commuter-bus", Forgotten Realms approach.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I don't think faith would nearly apply in the typical DnD world. Since the evidence for Gods in nearly all DnD worlds is directly available, it would not be a matter of whether you believed, but who you choose to follow. This should have a rather large impact in nearly all aspects of life, but that is up to your world.

I'm not so certain - if you wanted to have doubt and faith be more upfront in your campaign, you could easily have non-believers who claim that clerics are just using arcane powers, and that there is no divinity behind them. I've never really gone that way myself, but I could entertain that argument.

 

[Snoweel]

I'm not so certain - if you wanted to have doubt and faith be more upfront in your campaign, you could easily have non-believers who claim that clerics are just using arcane powers, and that there is no divinity behind them. I've never really gone that way myself, but I could entertain that argument.

I've always wondered what's stopping wizards from claiming to wield the power of a deity(ies).

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

Power is not directly granted by the gods to their clerics, thus allowing for bad guys to exist within temple or church structures.

<snip>

It is a take on "D&D religion" which I find somewhat more attractive than the typical take from the old days.

I never realised this about Eberron but then I never bought it. Might have to have a look at it sometime. I've actually accomplished a similar effect in a different way. My gods don't have an alignment, and each has both positive and negative traits associated with them. Their worshippers can therefore be of any alignment and still function within the same church on the mortal plane. I think to have any really interesting stories involving religion there needs to be that level of ambiguity about a deity's true wishes. If it's too clear cut then the story quickly devolves into us vs them which lacks any spark.

 

[Goblyns Hoard]

the churches power and control would be near absolute...

I'm going to nit pick here for the purpose of a (hopefully) interesting conversation.

I'd say that it isn't the church's power that is near absolute in this situation - it's the god's. The reason for this nit pick is the corruption that was rife within some churches in medieval Europe - where the church was functioning to put power in the hands of the leaders of the church, and not always acting in line with the teachings of their own faith. In that situation discussion of the church's power is obviously appropriate, the church leaders were usurping the power of their god to enrich their own mortal lives.

But if the power to accomplish things on the mortal plane comes directly from the ability of a god to impart their power on clerics, then those clerics don't have the ability to usurp that power. If they start to use their power for their own benefit over the will of their god, they're going to find out very quickly that those powers just don't work any more. So they have to continue to go about doing what their god actually wants them to do, which actually requires a great deal of character to do. As a comparison consider Bartleby in Dogma - pissed off at the fact that he has to serve for eternity, has plenty of power but is very constrained in how he can utilise it, and when he steps out of the lines gets crapped upon by god...

So in a world where the gods are very evident it's possible paladins & clerics will be quite rare - no one needs to be convinced by you that the gods exist and you spend your entire life serving their will without a lot of freedom to do what you want to do...

 

[Staffan]

Atheists will not exist - or would be considered crazy. It would be like not believing in elephants, or possibly like being a Holocaust-denier (not wanting to raise politics, just provide an analogy)

Agreed. The closest thing you'll get to an atheist would be something similar to the Athar from Planescape. "Yeah sure, Zeus exists up on Mount Olympos, but he's not a god. He's just a very powerful being, but that doesn't make him worthy of worship."

Most people will probably not worship one god exclusively, particularly if your gods have the fairly standard 'portfolio' divisions. There's no point praying to Avandra for sun for your crops, or Pelor for a safe journey.

This is emphasised pretty heavily in Eberron. The primary pantheon is called the Sovereign Host, and consists of nine gods who each have influence over a particular aspect of civilization. Most people worship the entire pantheon. The blacksmith would pray to Onatar to watch over his crafting, to Kol Korran to help with his business, and to Dol Dorn to bring his son home safe from the war. There are some people who focus their worship on a particular Sovereign, but they're considered to be strange.

There's also a pantheon of evil (and one CN) gods, called the Dark Six. Legend has it that they were once part of the Sovereign Host, but were kicked out for being bad. Some people pray to them as well in times of need or just because they feel that a particular aspect of them is appropriate at the moment. For example, someone seeking to woo the love of his life might pray to the Fury, who is the god of Passion.

Eberron's gods also do not involve themselves with the world. They might not even exist - they certainly don't seem to be around on any plane people can go to, or anything like that. People don't have direct communion with the gods or anything like that. That leaves room for differing opinions, and heresy, and stuff like that.

The clergy of the Sovereign Host are pretty accepting of varying opinions. When the human civilization has encountered new cultures and discussed religion, their attitude hasn't been "Oh, your war god is wrong, he does not exist. You should worship Dol Dorn instead." It's been more along the lines of "Oh, so you worship a war god called Gru'umsh. That's interesting. We call him Dol Dorn."

 

[Voadam]

"Your deity doesn't exist"

"I'm sorry? I was just zapping someone with GODLASERS and you're telling me they don't exist"

"Yeah, you call them god lasers, but they look just like the magic lasers of the wizard over there to me. Just because your magical tradition says your power comes directly from the gods does not establish that it does. Magic doesn't prove gods."

In 3e you had options for godless clerics. In 2e you had options for priests getting their powers from faith alone or from abstract forces or in Dark Sun from elemental powers or powerful sorcerer kings. All of them can call down flamestrikes. Clerical magic does not itself establish gods.

Even the appearance of an avatar or the full deity itself is not necessarily enough to remove all doubt from observers. You have some people saying Pharoh is a god, others say he is merely a powerful ruler claiming to be a living god. Mortals with magic makes this harder to establish conclusively for an observer who cannot see the rulebook or character sheet that says human or god on it.

 

[Voadam]

What features of real life religions couldn't apply to D&D religions?

What features probably wouldn't apply?

In what ways would (or could) D&D religions mirror real life religions?

There are no wrong answers, or at least I don't think there are.

Your thoughts?

Most D&D religions have a default pantheistic base cosmology so monotheistic religion probably would not apply.

Gods could be distant and unknowable with a mostly hands off approach leaving things to mortals to handle mostly on their own.

Gods could act through mortal intermediaries such as oracles.

Religions could have stories of the acts of the gods.

Religions could provide structure for the worship of gods.

Church hierarchies could arise.

Religious institutions could become politically active and powerful in society.

Lots of flexibility in how religions can be used in a D&D world.

 

[Umbran]

"I'm sorry? I was just zapping someone with GODLASERS and you're telling me they don't exist"

"Yeah, now prove that those are form a god, and not from some other source."

I think the "evidence of the existence that the gods exist" is way, way overstated. There's all sorts of sources of various magical events in the D&D rules - any edition. Everyone gets to produce fantastic effects. Miracles abound. What proof is there for the root origin of any of them?

Especially when the 3e rules explicitly state you can have clerics and paladins who don't follow gods. Sorry, that blows the whole, "gods clearly exist" right out of the water.

Consider: you can change the metaphysic out from under all divine powers - so they come from belief, rather than an actual god - and nothing else changes. The players don't even have to know! How strong is the case the gods must exist then?

 

[Raven Crowking]

Miracles abound. What proof is there for the root origin of any of them?

Especially when the 3e rules explicitly state you can have clerics and paladins who don't follow gods. Sorry, that blows the whole, "gods clearly exist" right out of the water.

Agreed, and this was true of 2e as well, where clerics/priests could specifically gain their powers from cosmic forces and/or philosophies.

Of course, one of the chief differences between a pre-modern and a modern worldview is that, in the pre-modern worldview, almost everything has some form of animus, can be considered "alive" in a sense, and can be considered to have volition. (In modern times, when one says that a gun "wants to" be shot, we have a sense of a more ancient worldview.) Gods in this sense are not necessarily anything special. The world abounds in spirits that have their own goals and powers.

One very common premodern idea was that magic, rather than being a force itself, invoked those spirits to do the magician's bidding....and those spirits could and would skew the request to their own ends. The unpredictability of some earlier edition spells model this, IMHO, quite well.

One notes, however, that "prove that your godlaser is divine" might be answered with said godlaser rather than a rational argument, especially if the cleric were far more powerful than the questioner. Abuse of authority is probably no less prevelant in a D&D world than it is in the real one.


RC