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

[GSHamster]

Has anyone else been slightly puzzled by how D&D religion is often basically a henotheistic theology (pick your god of choice) that does not really follow similar polytheistic ecclesiastical structures of let's say the Greco-Roman pagan world, but more monotheistic-like (i.e. medieval Christian) ecclesiastical structures?

I think the primary reason this is the case is because the interaction with religion is almost entirely through one class, the Cleric (two if you count the Paladin).

And with the Cleric, there is a pressure to focus on one god because it provides a point of differentiation. A Cleric of Bane is different than a Cleric of Pelor, and that has often been backed by mechanics. Players always like options when making characters. Making choice of god an option for Clerics with mechanical repercussions was an obvious leap. But it does end up setting up the focused churches.

One interesting technique I've seen in fantasy literature, but not games, is to have the churches mirror the pantheons. A good example is Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion novels, where acolytes of the Father, the Mother, the Son, the Daughter, and the Bastard participate together in rituals, even though they belong to different orders.

 

[steamboat28]

Honestly, the way things are set up, D&D faiths (with a couple of noteworthy exceptions) aren't technically polytheistic, in regards to worship at least. There are multiple faiths, each with its own god (or sometimes pantheon), just as there are in real-world religions. They're presented as a single pantheon in the PHB for 3.5, because that's a super-distilled version of the default campaign setting for 3.5, where the relations between deities and their cults is more complex.

 

[Bagpuss]

As long as there is 'obvious' evidence of a god's existence, i.e. the ability of his/her priests to do magical things, then it's going to make a dramatic difference to the world.

• 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)
• Heresy is harder to establish if a god's 'opinions' are clear cut. One of the major factors in real world religions is schisms between different factions following the same gods. Protestant vs Catholic, Sunni vs Shia, etc. These can only really occur if there is any question about the god's actual opinion on issue X. If when Martin Luther posted his proclamations on the door of the church in Wittenberg god had struck him dead (or he'd lost his cleric powers) there would have been no reformation. This may or may not come into a fantasy religion depending on how clear cut a god's opinions are and how much that god interacts with the mortal plane. You do also have the possibility of a god of lies providing power to heretics of another god to create a schism in the flock.

Just some thoughts for now... might come up with more later.

I'm going to address these to points.

First Atheism.

I think it would be entirely possible to be an atheist, wizards do magic without claiming any divine origin and it works okay, primal classes get their powers from nature spirits and the like, genies and other creatures can provide wishes and services.

You could believe

• These things claiming to be gods are little more than slightly more powerful spirits. No worthy of worship.
• While clerics claim these powers are divine they are as internal as arcane magic no greater creature provides them.

Heresy again depending on how involved the gods are religious schisms are more or less likely to occur. In most fantasy settings the gods rarely get that directly involved in affairs, even the spells that are supposed to directly commune with the deity only give vague responses to limited questions at lot of the time. Plus when you had the eight axis alignment system a Lawful Neutral or Chaotic Neutral god could have followers that were on the Evil or Good axis. You can bet that is going to create a schism.

Back in the day we played a God level campaign where all the characters played Gods and their avatars, I played a CN God of Fire that actively encouraged the CE part of it's cult to go round burning things to the ground. While at the same time accepted offering from CG firefighters, bakers and metal workers that dealt with fire in their every day lives. So long as each worshipped me and thus improved my power I didn't really care.

 

[Aldarc]

Honestly, the way things are set up, D&D faiths (with a couple of noteworthy exceptions) aren't technically polytheistic, in regards to worship at least. There are multiple faiths, each with its own god (or sometimes pantheon), just as there are in real-world religions. They're presented as a single pantheon in the PHB for 3.5, because that's a super-distilled version of the default campaign setting for 3.5, where the relations between deities and their cults is more complex.

Polytheistic simply means belief in the existence of more than one theistic deity. Henotheism, as was popular in much of the Ancient and Classical world, simply placed veneration of one deity over all the others (e.g. Yahwistic religion of Judah) - typically as a city's patron deity - but its assumptions are inherently polytheistic.

 

[HungerSquid]

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?

I see a lot of advice out there about making D&D religions like real world religions. However, I tend to disagree with a lot of the notions I see in this advice. As a person who believes that all real world religions are all just superstition, I think D&D religions would be much different.

Some people like the idea of using conflicts between different sects of the same basic religion because of the drama it can provide. While this is true, I don't think a god that actually exists would allow this to happen. And I think you can get just as much drama in conflicts between followers of different gods, even ones with the same basic alignment.

On the other hand, maybe some chaotic deity might get his kicks watching followers argue over details. Maybe a chaotic evil war deity would enjoy seeing bloody conflict between his sects. Who knows?

I don't see that you could have clerics that were terribly corrupt when their God actually exists. If the God did not smite them outright, they would likely at least refuse them spells, which should out them to other clerics as not pious enough. I suppose there might be two types of priests; those who do miracles and those who do not. Maybe the non-casters could be corrupt. But what religious hierarchy would give them any real power when there are many demonstrably faithful miracle workers?

I see a lot of DM's using one or a few main human religion(s), like the Catholic church in the middle ages. I like the idea of polytheism carried forward to the middle ages. If there are numerous real gods, wouldn't competition likely keep things more balanced rather than one deity having way more power in the world than others?

Not that campaigns that go against my ideas can't be fun. I've played in numerous ones, and had lots of fun. I'm just saying what I think might make more sense in context.

 

[Ixal]

D&D religion is weird. Basically you have dozens of monotheistic faiths next to each other which all acknowledge that the other gods exist.
It makes much more sense if people would not have a primary god and instead turn to whoever is currently useful, more on a bartering kind of system than actual worship.

Similar how ancient polytheism in Europe worked.

Collections: Practical Polytheism, Part I: Knowledge

Today we’re going to start looking at one facet of how polytheistic religions function, their practicality. This is going to be a four-part series (II, III, IV) looking at some of the general…

acoup.blog

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Politheism from real world are possible in D&D worlds, but we should be careful about the Hinduism, a religion with millions of followers in the real life. If it is in your tabletop and no Hindu knows what happened, then you are free for actions like the facts from the videogame saga God of War.

Maybe there aren't true atheists in D&D worlds, but misotheism ("I hate gods") or maltheism ("my opinion is gods are they are cruel and they don't take no pity on mortals").

The trope of the sinnister minister, the wolf with lamb's clothing may be very known, but this can so dangerous like the homophobia or racism. Let's remember today "Lone with the Wind" has got a previous disclaimer about the slavery, or the crows, the characters from Disney's cartoon movie "Dumbo" aren't wellcome for the current standards. Maybe your opinion is anything isn't wrong and it shouldn't be cancelled, but others can disagree you. Or the rules about politically correct could change in the future.

I disadvice totally divine spellcasters in sets based in our real History to avoid troubles like some poisoned questions: Could the Rose of Guadalupe save you against attacks by supernatural monsters, or to heal supernatural creatures as vampires and lycantropes? could a priest by the Chinese patriotic church be as good as a true Catholic exorcist to expel demons, and a female anglican priestess? or could the sacred power defend the leader of the Anglican church, the UK queen, against spells casted by a neopagan witch? could vampires be hurt by bones by a martyr, a Irish fray killed by Lutheran corsairs?

 

[Haiku Elvis]

Politheism from real world are possible in D&D worlds, but we should be careful about the Hinduism, a religion with millions of followers in the real life. If it is in your tabletop and no Hindu knows what happened, then you are free for actions like the facts from the videogame saga God of War.

Maybe there aren't true atheists in D&D worlds, but misotheism ("I hate gods") or maltheism ("my opinion is gods are they are cruel and they don't take no pity on mortals").

The trope of the sinnister minister, the wolf with lamb's clothing may be very known, but this can so dangerous like the homophobia or racism. Let's remember today "Lone with the Wind" has got a previous disclaimer about the slavery, or the crows, the characters from Disney's cartoon movie "Dumbo" aren't wellcome for the current standards. Maybe your opinion is anything isn't wrong and it shouldn't be cancelled, but others can disagree you. Or the rules about politically correct could change in the future.

I disadvice totally divine spellcasters in sets based in our real History to avoid troubles like some poisoned questions: Could the Rose of Guadalupe save you against attacks by supernatural monsters, or to heal supernatural creatures as vampires and lycantropes? could a priest by the Chinese patriotic church be as good as a true Catholic exorcist to expel demons, and a female anglican priestess? or could the sacred power defend the leader of the Anglican church, the UK queen, against spells casted by a neopagan witch? could vampires be hurt by bones by a martyr, a Irish fray killed by Lutheran corsairs?

"Could the sacred power defend the leader of the Anglican church, the UK queen, against spells casted by a neopagan witch?" Hell yeah! She's at least a 13th level cleric and I bet she wielded a mean warhammer back in the day. Don't believe me? Do you ever see any undead around Buck house? No. Case closed.
Slightly more seriously what religion is and how it interacted with society today is so different from what it meant in the ancient world you can't really compare. It wasn't about belief in gods as much as what you believed was the best way to curry favour and avoid their wrath. Polytheism was such a given that there was no point fighting over what you believed in. If you encountered a new people with different gods you just mapped them onto the ones you had or added them in if they seemed new. Even Judaism the originator of Today's Monotheism had the original commandment "thou shall have no other god before me" not no other God exists. The way tradional and historic Catholics treat saints is a closer match for how the ancient world treated gods.

 

[AtomicPope]

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

*zaps him again

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

We should take care when we use elements from the real life. For example in the old Far-West movies the indians, the North American aborigines were the bad guys, but decades later the point of view is different. Adding details of the type "DaVinci Code" may very dangerous.

If your story is in the ancient Israel, you can tell about the periods of moral decline, and a good example is the story of the prophet Hosea and his sinner wife Gomer, but pagans can't defeat Israel but when Yahweh wanted the golden calf whorshipers to be punished. Don't you notice the potential controversies? For example a Irish saying pope Pious V and Joan of Arc could defeat Dracula or other vampire-lord because they are saints, literally, but Henry V of England and Elisabeth I couldn't because they are excommunicated, with a "bad karma".

Or "the vampires are supernatural creatures, they scientific origin is not possible because blood is not enough nutritious comparing with the meat or the carrion, and blood by animals should be enough". Could I use a picture of X-Pijing instead Christians holy icons to expel jian-shis (Chinese vampire)? Could a vampire to be hurt by water from the source in Lourdes (where Virgin Mary appeared), and from the Ganges river? Could Hong-Xiuquan be a divine spellcaster in D&D? (No, he couldn't, he was a fool, a false prophet). Could be the corpse of Muhammad Ahmad be a sacred relic? (No, it couldn't it because today practically no Muslims believes him to be the mahdi).

Other example, you get into troubles if in your story the Muslims are the good guys, fightings against the pagans for the ridda wars, in the time of Abu Bark, the first calipha, destroying the temples of the Jahiliyyah (age of ignorance, pre-islamic Arabia). Or the DM has Chinese roots, and her story is about the legendary heroes from Chinese mythology helping the characters against the Otoman empire. Here the Turkeys could be angry if they were informed.

Only real religions could be added in your campaign if all factions share the same faith (and players shares a similar point of view about the faith). It is too risky with the antagonist faction follows a different religion. Of course cardenal Richeleu can be the antagonist if you are playing in France XVIII century, but if the villain is a Joseph Smith's disciple, like the victims of "A Study in Scarlett" the first Serlock Holmes's book (it is not a spoiler if I say the murder wanted vengeance) then the things may be different.