Monotheism in D&D

[Plane Sailing]

Firstly - please stay away from real-world religions guys. It nearly always ends in tears (or at least unproductive arguments which are against the rules of ENworld).

On the level of monotheism, I think there are several interesting ways of doing it, some of which are mentioned here. My own campaign is monotheistic - one god, but there are many different named sects (e.g. Asura the healing fire, Asura the fount of wisdom, Asura the compassionate warrior, Asura the righteous avenger). Each sect has its own domains. There are also banned, evil sects (Asura the black circle, Asura the fire of destruction, Asura the devourer of souls).

All gain their power from the same divine being. In this campaign the clerics have been noticing a change over the years - the highest spell levels always have to be requested. Once upon a time Asura would say 'NO' or 'YES', but then it became "if you will", and latterly "if you must" and some have been having dreams of their god increasingly bound by the prayers and requests of its followers...

Eberron has another take on the matter (which is perhaps more in keeping with the literal reading of clerics in the PHB!) and that is that divine spells are all a matter of faith anyway, the Eberron gods are remote and unknowable and clerics of any god can be of any alignment - it is their faith that provides the power. This can work for monotheistic settings too.

Cheers

 

[fusangite]

Firstly - please stay away from real-world religions guys. It nearly always ends in tears (or at least unproductive arguments which are against the rules of ENworld).

I find this happens less than one time in ten. The majority of my productive discussions on ENWorld have been about such things. I think a review of threads that have made good use of real world historical precedents will show they have been amongst the most civil and most informative.

Also, how can you even conceive of not making reference to real world religions? All of the terms of our debate are based on real world analogies. It is scarcely possible to talk about anything in D&D without reference to real world things.

 

[NewJeffCT]

You didn't mention Protestant, Calvinism, Armenianism or Methodist.

Sorry, I thought I had put a few aspects of Christianity in there, followed by ETC to make it known that there were others... because I don't know enough about actual real world religions to list every different aspect of each religion.

 

[NewJeffCT]

I find this happens less than one time in ten. The majority of my productive discussions on ENWorld have been about such things. I think a review of threads that have made good use of real world historical precedents will show they have been amongst the most civil and most informative.

Also, how can you even conceive of not making reference to real world religions? All of the terms of our debate are based on real world analogies. It is scarcely possible to talk about anything in D&D without reference to real world things.

Troll! (just kidding!!!)

But, part of the reason I started this thread was because I good a lot of good information on something that was also based upon real world religions a few weeks back when I started that Celibate Paladins thread. While there was some strong disagreements, it was always civil and both sides made good arguments.

I think some sort of divine aspect (saints/angels/etc) would work well for a monotheistic deity, as somebody said, St. Christopher for Travel. You could even have the non-humans have their own aspects of the one god - maybe the elves think of the god as female (blasphemous to many human clerics, while elf clerics think the same of human clerics for thinking God to be male), while dwarves think of the one god as a gigantic blacksmith whose beard makes up the mountains of the world.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I have to say that I really dislike the 'divine aspects' approach to monotheism in DnD. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary ones are that I think it is both a crude translation and that it misses out on the level of inidividual agency within the divine that tends to be the hallmark of monotheistic systems. Further, it really tends to deform the rather weird relationship between a divinity's higher servants and his worhippers into something far more normal and hierarchical. Which is terribly sad loss given that it would utterly sap the dramatic tension possible without such a hierarchy, where would Paradise Lost be if it were clear to the world exactly where angels, humans, and demons stood?

When I run a monotheistic world I incorporate the diversity inherent in DnD divine magic through the following exceedingly simple and elegant formula:

The manner in which you give worship is reflected in the magic that you get.

So if you worship the one divinity through communion with nature then you pick up plant and animal domains.

If instead you spend your time in strict ascetic devotion to a military order and the way of life it enforces then you pick up protection and war.

To me this is far superior to the idea of differentiation through saints and outer powers because it recognizes the profound capacity for individual human innovation within religion that was the hallmark of medieval monotheistic religion.

It makes perfect sense to me to model St. Francis by having a guy show up who discovers and organizes a new mode of clerical worship based around travel, poverty, and song and thus gains new domains and prestige classes. It cheapens the drama if what really happens is that he finds a new servitor to deal with

 

[Emiricol]

I think that's the same thing, really. Only the names change. But again, this reinforces that such a system is workable in practice, whether you call your flavors of religion "Saints" or "Methods of Worship". Crude translation they may all be, but they work well and add much flavor.

 

[NewJeffCT]

When I run a monotheistic world I incorporate the diversity inherent in DnD divine magic through the following exceedingly simple and elegant formula:

The manner in which you give worship is reflected in the magic that you get.

So if you worship the one divinity through communion with nature then you pick up plant and animal domains.

If instead you spend your time in strict ascetic devotion to a military order and the way of life it enforces then you pick up protection and war.

To me this is far superior to the idea of differentiation through saints and outer powers because it recognizes the profound capacity for individual human innovation within religion that was the hallmark of medieval monotheistic religion.

It makes perfect sense to me to model St. Francis by having a guy show up who discovers and organizes a new mode of clerical worship based around travel, poverty, and song and thus gains new domains and prestige classes. It cheapens the drama if what really happens is that he finds a new servitor to deal with

Interesting idea and you make some good points. My questions:

1) With an “aspect” system, you have the structure in place to make sure somebody continually worships the right aspects of the angel or saint or whatever. How would you run it if Joe or Jane PC said that they wanted to worship 6 different clerical domains? If you have the saint/angel structure, you can at least say, "That is not the way of Saint Bob, as his focus is A, B and C and not X, Y and Z. If you want X, Y & Z domains, you should worship Saint Helen."
2) Does your system have a duel God/Satan system, or do evil clerics just worship through necromancy or evil or similar?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

I have to say that I really dislike the 'divine aspects' approach to monotheism in DnD. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary ones are that I think it is both a crude translation and that it misses out on the level of inidividual agency within the divine that tends to be the hallmark of monotheistic systems. Further, it really tends to deform the rather weird relationship between a divinity's higher servants and his worhippers into something far more normal and hierarchical. Which is terribly sad loss given that it would utterly sap the dramatic tension possible without such a hierarchy, where would Paradise Lost be if it were clear to the world exactly where angels, humans, and demons stood?

When I run a monotheistic world I incorporate the diversity inherent in DnD divine magic through the following exceedingly simple and elegant formula:

The manner in which you give worship is reflected in the magic that you get.

So if you worship the one divinity through communion with nature then you pick up plant and animal domains.

If instead you spend your time in strict ascetic devotion to a military order and the way of life it enforces then you pick up protection and war.

To me this is far superior to the idea of differentiation through saints and outer powers because it recognizes the profound capacity for individual human innovation within religion that was the hallmark of medieval monotheistic religion.

It makes perfect sense to me to model St. Francis by having a guy show up who discovers and organizes a new mode of clerical worship based around travel, poverty, and song and thus gains new domains and prestige classes. It's just not the same drama if all he does is find another servitor to deal with.

 

[TerraDave]

fear not the church

My campaign world attempts to adapt real-world religion to D&D, after all the world is based on our very own Earth. I agree that it there is the possibility of "issues" popping up, but in the 10 years of gaming in this world, I have yet to have a problem.

Right, our campaign world has a "holy church", "orhodox church" and other religions with real world precursors. I have never had the kinds of problems that sometimes seem to be feared when using RL religion, and if anything having Catholic players and a church they can relate to has added an extra dimension to the game

 

[Emiricol]

I have to say that I really dislike the 'divine aspects' approach to monotheism in DnD. There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary ones are that I think it is both a crude translation and that it misses out on the level of inidividual agency within the divine that tends to be the hallmark of monotheistic systems. Further, it really tends to deform the rather weird relationship between a divinity's higher servants and his worhippers into something far more normal and hierarchical. Which is terribly sad loss given that it would utterly sap the dramatic tension possible without such a hierarchy, where would Paradise Lost be if it were clear to the world exactly where angels, humans, and demons stood?

When I run a monotheistic world I incorporate the diversity inherent in DnD divine magic through the following exceedingly simple and elegant formula:

The manner in which you give worship is reflected in the magic that you get.

So if you worship the one divinity through communion with nature then you pick up plant and animal domains.

If instead you spend your time in strict ascetic devotion to a military order and the way of life it enforces then you pick up protection and war.

To me this is far superior to the idea of differentiation through saints and outer powers because it recognizes the profound capacity for individual human innovation within religion that was the hallmark of medieval monotheistic religion.

It makes perfect sense to me to model St. Francis by having a guy show up who discovers and organizes a new mode of clerical worship based around travel, poverty, and song and thus gains new domains and prestige classes. It's just not the same drama if all he does is find another servitor to deal with.

Please don't repeat yourself. It takes forever for a page to load for me on EN World, and all I get to see for my troubles is you telling us yet again how elegant your system is and how crappy everyone else's idea is... again... verbatim... the same... reposted. Repeating your praise of your system and dismissal of all other ideas but your own does not make it any more correct. Your opinion remains just that - your opinion.

And considering that your opinions seems to boil down to the idea of saints/outer powers being "terribly sad" and "the dramatic tension possible without such a hierarchy", your opinion is one which I have to strongly disagree with. I would argue that such a hierarchy, populated as it would be by worshipers and clergy who are, after all, mere men, has a much greater potential for dramatic tension. Certainly no less.

Do you get your magic from worshipping Saint Nature, patron saint of nature, who requires his followers to live at one with nature? Or do you get your magic from living at one with nature? Either way, you live at one with nature and have spell X Y and Z. I understand you love your system. It's got a different flavor for doing the precise same thing, and flavor is good. But mechanically it's the same as every other idea put out - the difference is simply the trappings, at its core.

Anyways. Good luck, NewJeff, with coming up with something that has the flavor and mechanics you are looking for. There's been a lot of good ideas posted here, so I'm hopeful you can work something out, probably better