Monotheism in a Polytheistic setting?

[Is_907]

Have any of you messed with this at all? I am really wanting to have a monotheistic organisation / faction in my setting.
In fact, I almost want it to be as strong a religion as the polytheistic options.

I am thinking that the people of this country/province will mostly be monotheists and, hopefully, that will be one of hte points of contention between them and the neighbouring countries.

Anyone had success with this? Failure? Tips? Tricks?

 

[Dyson Logos]

I've played in games that were completely monotheistic, as well as played in (and run) campaigns where a monotheistic culture is strong.

In a 3.x campaign, the trick would be to offer a fairly large variety of domains to the clerics of the monotheistic religion, and to make sure one of the deity's alignments is Neutral to allow for the most variety of worshippers (Neutral Good, or Lawful Neutral would be my suggestions) - or to allow worshippers of all religions to be clerics of the god (like in Eberron or Arcanis).

One of the major benefits of a monotheistic religion in a mixed setting is that all the churches of the faith can be expected to work together, instead of having to deal with internal strife within the pantheon traditionally seen in classic D&D settings.

 

[Nymrohd]

My homebrew has several religions, including a couple of monotheistic ones. I always disliked the fact that many campaign settings seem to have one big pantheon with mainly variation of worship locally or in some exotic location (one of the things I love in Eberron is that it does not do this). I certainly think it helps the campaign. As for monotheistic religions working better together than churches of different gods of the same pantheon . . . well the real world should disprove that better than I ever can

 

[Is_907]

Okay, thanks for the tidbits, guys. This is a 4e game, so alignment won't be such a huge issue... although I know my players naturally flesh out their alignments more on their own than the 4e rules suggest

I'm planning on having a single church to worship this monotheistic god at the moment. Maybe I'll add more diversity to it later, though. We'll see.

 

[Crothian]

I like it in theory but when I've seen it in games there is always conflict and war between the two. I'd like to see Monotheism that can co exist aside Polytheistic religions.

 

[Nymrohd]

Well Eberron has that (The Silver Flame and the Sovereign Host do not like each other that much but they certainly don't go at war against each other).

 

[Herobizkit]

Hallowed are the Ori.

Stargate did this very well in their depiction of the Ori, a race of Ascended (extraplanar) beings who use displays of great power as enticement to convert entire populations into following their religion.

This power is demonstrated by Priors, who are essentially "super-evolved" humans infused with the power of the Ori; in D&D terms, these followers could be priests or actual Avatars/Aspects of the Ori.

You could use this paradigm to model your own monotheistic religion. However, if your religion insists upon the exclusion of all other Gods and their followers (or that the other Gods are false Gods), your religion will have a LOT to prove to its own followers.

 

[gizmo33]

As for monotheistic religions working better together than churches of different gods of the same pantheon . . . well the real world should disprove that better than I ever can

Even two different sects within the same monotheistic religion can be violently opposed to one another. The problem, IMO, from the versimilitude perspective is that you would think a deity and his servants could pretty easily put an end to theological debates about the will of the deity.

For example - succession (ie. who's going to be in charge) has been a cause of schism in real world religions. But it's hard to imagine such a thing happening in a world where visiting angels and commune spells and such exist. Yes, you can imagine some local fraud/deception with regards to this, but it's hard for me to imagine a thousand-year division among a gods worshippers not being settled by the deity himself.

And this relates to my overall feelings about monotheism in DnD. First, I'm not sure what kind of monotheism we're talking about. Perhaps the "you should have no *other* gods before me" sort of thing - a tacit recognition of the plainly (?) demonstrable fact that these other gods exist. So really, monotheism is just a taboo of sorts placed on the followers of a certain god that they never pray to another god. Doesn't seem to much different than a typical DnD campaign.

I think a "no other gods exist" type of monotheism would be a lot harder - given how close the outer planes, and divine servants, and clerical magic, etc. are to the world's inhabitants. If other gods don't exist then where are there clerics getting their spells from and how long could that go on before (with the help of divination or trips to the astral sea) the whole thing were detected? Or the other gods do exist, and the mono-god is lying about it - which has implications on alignment issues. Or maybe you can venture into some equivication, for example some sort of pantheism where the other gods are aspect of a universal god. In fact, given the seeming complexity of real world religious explanations for things (ex. the trinity) maybe I'm being too picky.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

I like it in theory but when I've seen it in games there is always conflict and war between the two. I'd like to see Monotheism that can co exist aside Polytheistic religions.

The dominant religion in my homebrew is a montheistic one, but the God is busy feasting and frolicking in his heavenly palace and can't be bothered to help his mortal worshipers. This job is handled by some sort of saints: mortals which after their death went to their god and offered to help the souls of the departed finding the god. These souls are the source of undead, possessing spirits and other evils in the world. Each saint my spawn a sect which venerates it while belonging to the monotheistic church. It's a bit like the monastic sects of the roman-catholic church in the midle ages. Each of these sects can have different tenets, follow different goals and offer different boons (domains, channel divinity) to their priests. There exists no canonical list of these sects. If you need/want a different sect, Bingo! there you go.

The main church has thus developed a tendency to incorporate other deities in their cosmology, calling them saints, and they are very open about it, not forcing the former believers of such gods to openly join the church.

This works only, of course, if the gods make no "personal" apearance.

 

[gizmo33]

In a 3.x campaign, the trick would be to offer a fairly large variety of domains to the clerics of the monotheistic religion, and to make sure one of the deity's alignments is Neutral to allow for the most variety of worshippers (Neutral Good, or Lawful Neutral would be my suggestions) - or to allow worshippers of all religions to be clerics of the god (like in Eberron or Arcanis).

On the topic of domains - IMO there is some basis for the variety of domains not having to be substantially different than for the other deities. While in *theory* the god is the god of everything, what I see in practice is that the expression of the gods power is usually confined to a limited set of symbols. In other words, *everything* never seems to be the holy symbol for the "God of Everything".

For example, art historians might say that Late Roman Empire Christian symbolism borrowed heavily from the cult of a certain Sun God. If you were to base your religion on such a deity, then I think it would be safe to say that darkness, or even the ocean was not considered a domain for purposes of cleric powers. In fact, even if his symbol were a fish (representing some teaching from the faith) - a whole set of domain powers regarding fishes might not fit. In the end, you could suppose some sort of notion that the Sun (or whatever) is *the* most holy of the things in creation, and that the domain for those clerics is only Sun for that reason.

On the topic of alignments - I find it very challenging to suppose a range of alignments for deities who have a strong ethical component (which may or may not be an issue in this case). It's nice for purposes of simulating some of the legends of the Middle Ages (corrupt priests, schisms and all of that) but it's hard to imagine in a magical/fantasy world with divinations and such.