roguerouge
First Post
"Ours is the one true pantheon! You heathen druids with your nature worship must worship our pantheon or face the consequences!"
Not much difference, really.
Not much difference, really.
How Might D&D Religions Differ From Real Life Religions?
DrunkonDuty
he/him
This is why I like RPGs, so much room for different worlds to be built.
One thing did occur to me: someone mentioned above that an atheist character could point to Mount Olympus and say: 'Sure Zeus is up there, but that doesn't mean the tyrannical, patricidal, spiteful, serial-rapist is worthy of worship.' And I agree; this could be a perfectly valid thing to say in a fantasy world. But the corrollary to it is 'Oh crap, here come the Furies.'
By which I mean: in this scenario, whether he is a God or not, Zeus is real enough, powerful enough and spiteful enough to smite those who disrespect him. So most folks keep in line and go to the temple regularly and pay their tithes and make their sacrifices out of fear of retribution as much as hope for benefit and love for the god. Others do it out of actual piety or a desire to be part of the ruling elite. But some folks rail against Zeus and his tyranny. Which could be the basis for a good War Against the Gods game. Funnily enough I have a part completed campaign based on just this idea, 'Theomakos.'
cheers all.
One thing did occur to me: someone mentioned above that an atheist character could point to Mount Olympus and say: 'Sure Zeus is up there, but that doesn't mean the tyrannical, patricidal, spiteful, serial-rapist is worthy of worship.' And I agree; this could be a perfectly valid thing to say in a fantasy world. But the corrollary to it is 'Oh crap, here come the Furies.'
By which I mean: in this scenario, whether he is a God or not, Zeus is real enough, powerful enough and spiteful enough to smite those who disrespect him. So most folks keep in line and go to the temple regularly and pay their tithes and make their sacrifices out of fear of retribution as much as hope for benefit and love for the god. Others do it out of actual piety or a desire to be part of the ruling elite. But some folks rail against Zeus and his tyranny. Which could be the basis for a good War Against the Gods game. Funnily enough I have a part completed campaign based on just this idea, 'Theomakos.'
cheers all.
Snoweel
First Post
Not much difference from what?
roguerouge
First Post
Please see OP's initial question. My joking answer was that there would be not much difference between the behavior of pantheon-based societies from a monotheism-based societies. That's the real question, to my mind, because most people in polytheism-based societies were pretty sure that their gods existed because they worked miracles every day.*
IMO, a goodly portion of this thread has actually been about how DnD religions would be different from a CONTEMPORARY secular society, not an historical religious society.
*(Because life without advanced science is pretty miraculous; it's pretty magical with advanced science too.)
El Mahdi
Muad'Dib of the Anauroch
Something I haven't seen mentioned on here yet is the way religions are used in the A Song of Ice and Fire books and the A Game of Thrones RPG. There are a few different polytheistic religions, each with different pantheons, with a few deities with comonality to some pantheons, but not a lot of real examples of magic or miracles. There are stories and witnesses to what some see as miracles, but no absolute proof that these are miracles, or magic, or even proof that the gods exist. In fact, most miracles and magic can be just as easily explained as alchemical effects, or just plain tricks.
Although never mentioned in the books, I don't see why there couldn't be people with atheistic philosophies, or even groups that adhere to atheistic concepts. Note: Historical Reference Only - Atheistic philosophies have existed in the real world since the 6th Century BC, and possibly even earlier. - End Historical Reference. But, if people in the Game of Thrones universe, or any fantasy setting, were atheistic, I think they would probably be very rare. They'd most likely be looked upon as either heretics, or if lucky, just crazy.
Even in the Forgotten Realms, where giant Avatars of the Gods actually battled eachother on the surface of the world, not everyone would have seen such displays. For the majority of Faerun, they would only have heard stories of what happened, not unlike stories of the Greek and Roman gods. There could still be people who don't believe that it was real, and don't believe in the existence of the Faerunian gods.
Using FR as an example, there could be arguments for all of the ideas presented in this thread. The argument could be made that arcane magic comes from the Gods, ala Mystra (of course, not in 4E though
). Someone who doesn't believe the Gods exist could make the argument that clerical magic is actually no different than arcane magic. I guess one could even make the argument that magic itself doesn't exist at all, it's actually all psionics of one form or another (this one could be a really fun idea to play around with for a PC, especially a psionicist character).
I think for me, D&D religions realy don't differ at all from real world religions. Every religion in D&D, or any RPG setting, at least has a basic correlation to a real world religion or concept. As creative as RPG designers, GM's, fantasy authors, and RPG players are, I've never seen a unique religious concept in an RPG that hasn't already been done in the real world. I'd like to see a truly unique religious concept, but I just don't think it's possible (was that the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down). There are real world religions and cults that are much wierder than anything conceptualized in an RPG. When it comes right down to it, I really do think there's nothing new under heaven.
Although never mentioned in the books, I don't see why there couldn't be people with atheistic philosophies, or even groups that adhere to atheistic concepts. Note: Historical Reference Only - Atheistic philosophies have existed in the real world since the 6th Century BC, and possibly even earlier. - End Historical Reference. But, if people in the Game of Thrones universe, or any fantasy setting, were atheistic, I think they would probably be very rare. They'd most likely be looked upon as either heretics, or if lucky, just crazy.
Even in the Forgotten Realms, where giant Avatars of the Gods actually battled eachother on the surface of the world, not everyone would have seen such displays. For the majority of Faerun, they would only have heard stories of what happened, not unlike stories of the Greek and Roman gods. There could still be people who don't believe that it was real, and don't believe in the existence of the Faerunian gods.
Using FR as an example, there could be arguments for all of the ideas presented in this thread. The argument could be made that arcane magic comes from the Gods, ala Mystra (of course, not in 4E though
). Someone who doesn't believe the Gods exist could make the argument that clerical magic is actually no different than arcane magic. I guess one could even make the argument that magic itself doesn't exist at all, it's actually all psionics of one form or another (this one could be a really fun idea to play around with for a PC, especially a psionicist character).I think for me, D&D religions realy don't differ at all from real world religions. Every religion in D&D, or any RPG setting, at least has a basic correlation to a real world religion or concept. As creative as RPG designers, GM's, fantasy authors, and RPG players are, I've never seen a unique religious concept in an RPG that hasn't already been done in the real world. I'd like to see a truly unique religious concept, but I just don't think it's possible (was that the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down
). There are real world religions and cults that are much wierder than anything conceptualized in an RPG. When it comes right down to it, I really do think there's nothing new under heaven.
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Fourth Edition solves this nicely, as maintaining your divine powers is not dependent on the tacit approval of your god. Your powers are granted by a ritual, sort of like an ordination ceremony. Do something the god likes, you don't gain any more power than you should have at your level. Do something the god didn't like, you keep your powers. It's up to the earthly church or organization to take matters up with you. The church or an officer of that church or religion gave you your powers, not the god.
You could, in theory, have an evil character hoodwink the church elders and make them think the character is devout, and wind up with a evil, power-hungry cleric of a good god. He might want to be part of that church because it is popular and he thinks the followers will be easy to manipulate, or because it's the only religion practiced in the region. Which I tend to think is more interesting than knowing who is wearing the white hats and who's wearing the black hats all the time.
So the degree to which there is "proof" of gods' existence is entirely up to the DM and the campaign setting. Yes, the cleric is zapping people with "divine powers" but the ability to do so was granted by a ritual, and there are many forms of magic and other powers in the world... each of them, interestingly enough, associated either closely or loosely with one of the planes. One could easily make the argument in a 4e world that there is no proof as long as this distinction between 4e and earlier editions is kept in mind.
This distinction also makes this discussion somewhat 'forked', in that I think there would be a difference between the similarities between religions in older D&D and how they can be portrayed mechanically in 4e, and how each of those relates to what we know of real-world religion.
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Raven Crowking
First Post
I, personally, dislike this "solution". I didn't care for it in 3e, and I do not care for it in 4e. In order to have "an evil character hoodwink the church elders and make them think the character is devout" I simply had the character hoodwink them in terms of which god was granting that character power. Moreover, a cleric who claims to worship Thor might never discover that Loki has been fuelling his spells after he fell off the "true path" long ago. Heck, one 2nd Ed game I ran was based on the idea that the "gods" were not who they claimed to be at all.
RC
Very simple - the guy who can do the full-on spell is off killing trolls and dragons, and isn't around to wrangle my car keys for me.
Maybe the gods have some special folks who work more direct miracles, and maybe they don't. Either way, that doesn't usually help me in my day to day life, because those people are not accessible.
And, honestly, how often do people actually go for the right, optimal solution? There's a "right way" to keep my lawn green and well groomed, too - call in the Scotts fertilizer guys, install a sprinkler system, and hire a landscaper. But guess what? I don't do that, even though I know the results would be better if I did.
I think a polytheist would be more likely to accept the existence of gods outside his own pantheon. They're just not the ones he worships, and of course his own gods are stronger than those of his enemies.
Some real-world pantheons even explicitly refer to other gods. For example, the Norse worshipped the Aesir, mainly. But the mythology included a war between the Aesir and the Vanir, which ended with the Aesir winning, and in order to maintain the peace they did a mutual hostage-exchange of sorts - which is where Frey, Freya, and Njord came from.
Lord Zardoz
Explorer
The first difference is that most D&D religions cannot deny the existence of the other gods, though that just sets them apart from typical monotheistic religions, not greek / norse style religions. There would be a much lower chance of having someone in the church hierarchy working directly contrary to their gods wishes. If a god disapproves of torture outright, than it simply won't happen in any setting where the god is directly granting power to their followers.
I would view most D&D religions and how they interact with one another to modern political parties from multi-party systems (ie, Canada, Britain, etc). Competing 'good' religions may work together to block a directly opposed religion, but they wont hesitate to accuse one another of all sorts of things.
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