Monotheism in a Polytheistic setting?

[Dire Bare]

So I just cast Commune and ask "is Zeus a demon?" and then "is Zeus a devil?" and then "is Zeus chaotic good" and then I probably get a few more questions left over. In that way I've saved thousands of years of misunderstanding. Or I could plane shift to Olympus and ask around. And what cause would a monotheistic religion have to lie about this? Even an evil one? Why would they care what Zeus is? A monotheistic Chaotic Evil religion might say "yea, the other gods are good, big deal, worship with us or die" A monotheistic Lawful Good deity would gain what by insulting the other good deities?

I'm not saying what you're saying can't be made to work, I just would find it very difficult to run in a campaign subject to a certain level of scrutiny.

If my priest of the one true god communes . . . who is answering his spell? His deity and/or deity's servants. And they will most likely answer, "Oh yeah, that Zeus guy is a total demon." And how many characters in the world can even cast spells like commune, or better yet, planeshift. And if you do planeshift to Zeus' pad, and you believe him to be a deceptive demon . . . OF COURSE his servants are going to "lie" and claim he is benevolent. And they might not be too happy to see you, a priest of a god who claims their divine lord is a demon!

Why would a "good" religion lie about the metaphysical truths of the setting? Why do "good" religions of the real world demonize "good" deities from other competing religions? If it happens in the real world, shouldn't be hard to make it happen in your fantasy world.

I just don't see any difficulty whatsoever to use a monotheistic religion, good or evil, in your campaign world.

 

[Dire Bare]

The biggest question that needs to be answered here is, "Are they right?"

• If they are right, this means that the other priesthoods at large are in for a serious awakening.
• If they are wrong, you will need to determine what sort of proof (if any) will convince the priests of the truth. Based on your description, it is possible (and likely) that the priests will be fanatics and would rather die than see the truth.

While the question, "Is the monotheistic religion "correct" in their view of the multiverse," can be an interesting one to answer . . . I don't think it is the biggest question to be answered, or even really totally necessary. Sometimes it's fun to leave a few things vague for the players . . . the old World of Darkness games did that pretty well.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

If the characters are ever going to actually find out that reality, or if a major plot point actually hinges on the detail, then yes, this is something a GM should do.

If the point of having a monotheistic religion in the game is to explore the interactions between the mono- and poly-theists, though, this is not necessary, and, in fact, can be detrimental.

A major guideline for GMs that I have found useful is, "Don't specify what you do not have to." Specified facts are restrictions on what you can do later. Sometimes you want or need to make up the details early on. Otherwise, it can be left unspecified until you actually need to know the difference.

I would argue that it is essential to figure this out when you design the setting, regardless of whether or not the players figure it out. (Most especially if the point of having it in the game is to explore the difference between polytheists and monotheists). If you want to have a coherent campaign world where the actions of the divine NPCs can be made sense of, you need to know what the real state of the game world is so that you do not just do whatever seems kewl at the time and end up with an incoherent campaign world filled with more plot-holes than a Mission Impossible movie. It's no fun to explore something that the DM is making up as he goes along.

Now all of this is not to say that you have to tell the players what is going on. My own preferred method would be to tell the players exactly and only what their characters can experience and let them (accurately or innaccurately) piece together the truth behind it. I think the Arcanis campaign setting from Paradigm Concepts is an excellent example of this (though there is no monotheism/polytheism divide in that setting). They give plenty of information about the gods to play divine casters or devotees of the various faiths, and keep the exact nature of the gods ambiguous. That said, the writers certainly have very specific ideas about what is going on. That way, players can try to figure out what is going on when Illir tears the roof off of Solanos Mor and incinerates the patriarch--does it mean the Illir approves of Calcestus' actions? Or is something else going on? If you have an Illirite character (or even just one faithful to the imperial religion), this could lead to a crisis of faith or otherwise have dramatic impact on the character. But it would not be interesting to discern what was going on behind the curtain if it was all made up as they went along.

 

[Umbran]

So I just cast Commune and ask "is Zeus a demon?" and then "is Zeus a devil?" and then "is Zeus chaotic good" and then I probably get a few more questions left over.

And, when you are asking questions about gods, you accept the answers form unspecified beings from another plane because... the spell description in the PHB tells you to? Note that the characters in the game world don't have copies of the PHB...

 

[gizmo33]

And they will most likely answer, "Oh yeah, that Zeus guy is a total demon."

Yes, I agree, obviously the "good" deity, his servants, and his clerics who are in the know would all have to lie.

Why would a "good" religion lie about the metaphysical truths of the setting? Why do "good" religions of the real world demonize "good" deities from other competing religions? If it happens in the real world, shouldn't be hard to make it happen in your fantasy world.

I think there are a number of big differences between the real world and the default DnD world that contributes to the way I see the situation. First, the language and cultural barriers IRL are far greater than in the default DnD setting IMO. Secondly, the default DnD setting posits various ranks of immortal servants of various kinds, some that live in very close proximity to a given deity (eg. the angels). Thirdly, I see the Religion skill (and related skills like Arcana) as giving objectively true or false information - so you'd have to have a very high level cleric's Religion check give consistently false information. Two different NPCs with +30 religion checks don't get two different answers to questions on basic issues in the default DnD setting.

I just don't see any difficulty whatsoever to use a monotheistic religion, good or evil, in your campaign world.

I agree that if you're the DM and you don't see the difficulty than there is none by definition. Nobody disputes the existence of dragons in the campaign world, any sorts of arguments about physics or biology are moot given the nature of the genre.

You could proceed from the general to the specifics. Decide that you want a monotheistic deity with attributes like in the real world. Then attempt to rationalize the various inconsistencies as they arise. In fact, a skeptic could say that this kind of reasoning has a lot in common with RL religions themselves, and so ultimately my chances of convincing a DM that a certain kind of monotheism is inconsistent with the other aspects of the game world is no different than trying to objectively establish religious "facts" IRL.

 

[gizmo33]

And, when you are asking questions about gods, you accept the answers form unspecified beings from another plane because... the spell description in the PHB tells you to? Note that the characters in the game world don't have copies of the PHB...

Those beings are not unspecified in the important senses. You seem to be suggesting that the clerics of these gods really don't know what they're doing when they cast commune, and they might was well just be asking some random passer-by. Otherwise I don't get the implications of this.

Just because there exists no documentation in the game world that looks like the PHB doesn't logically mean that the equivalent information about the capabilities of spells doesn't exist. RL religions IME are often very thorough in their descriptions of many minute issues of the faith, and something important like "what does commune really mean" I think would be a very important and fundemental issue that a priesthood (that could rely so much on the spell for guidance) would know alot about.

 

[Voadam]

So I just cast Commune and ask "is Zeus a demon?" and then "is Zeus a devil?" and then "is Zeus chaotic good" and then I probably get a few more questions left over. In that way I've saved thousands of years of misunderstanding. Or I could plane shift to Olympus and ask around. And what cause would a monotheistic religion have to lie about this? Even an evil one? Why would they care what Zeus is? A monotheistic Chaotic Evil religion might say "yea, the other gods are good, big deal, worship with us or die" A monotheistic Lawful Good deity would gain what by insulting the other good deities?

I'm not saying what you're saying can't be made to work, I just would find it very difficult to run in a campaign subject to a certain level of scrutiny.

Commune: "The answers given are correct within the limits of the entity’s knowledge. “Unclear” is a legitimate answer, because powerful beings of the Outer Planes are not necessarily omniscient."

If your god believes the other gods are demons, that's the answer you get. Even if he's wrong.

In Ptolus the main theocratic empire centers on a god who ascended from being mortal. He was a paladin martyred by a demon pretending to be a benevolent sun god. The mortal ascended on his death, overthrew the demon and took over the false religion, revealing the truth of the demon. Later at one point the empire forbid the worship of any god but theirs. I see no problem with believing that a mortal ascended god would not be sure on the actual divinity of other gods or that a godless paladin who uncovered false gods and did not encounter true gods might continually have suspicions about the other supposed gods worshipped by mortals.

Lothian: "1 Don't worship demons, you lose your soul if you do. 2 Gods may actually be demons who pretend to be gods. 3 I know I am not a demon. 4 Therefore I'm the only god I can vouch your soul will be safe with. 5 I have a duty to protect human souls from being devoured by demons." This is not really an argument for a worshipper to move to Lothian as the worshipper cannot verify Lothian's point 3. It is an argument for Lothian to want to have people worship him exclusively.

 

[Herobizkit]

While the question, "Is the monotheistic religion "correct" in their view of the multiverse," can be an interesting one to answer . . . I don't think it is the biggest question to be answered, or even really totally necessary. Sometimes it's fun to leave a few things vague for the players . . .

For the players, yes, this will be largely unimportant. For the NPC followers, though, this is of ultimate importance. If the PCs decide they want to become allies/enemies of this religion or even make a PC of this religion, it will be important as well.

If this religion IS the "correct" one, there will likely be world-sweeping ramifications should this religion start a crusade against others. Followers of other Good faiths will be devastated to learn that they were following demons et al all along, while Evil faiths will simply chug along as is (for the most part). No one likes to be told they've been lied to, however, except maybe the priests of a God of Lies.

If this religion is "wrong", then the priests simply become another statistic for PC's to kill.

 

[Particle_Man]

Well since the gods don't have stats in 4e, one could look at it as a particle/wave problem.

Are the gods really separate entities, or different faces of one entity?

 

[gizmo33]

I see no problem with believing that a mortal ascended god would not be sure on the actual divinity of other gods

Good deities could send messengers to the ascended deity informing him of his error. Not sure that I can see how the ascended deity could continue with this mistake without calling into question his intelligence, wisdom, and/or alignment.

Of course part of your example AFAICT relies on the premise that a deity was actually able to successfully fake his identity (the demon you mention) in the first place. This bit of reasoning essentially is circular (the same messenger angels could pretty quickly spread the word among the highest eschelons of mortal priesthoods). I can see a demon masquerading as a god at a local level, but at the point at which a mortal is able to ascend to be a god that seems far-fetched.