Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="paradox42" data-source="post: 3223056" data-attributes="member: 29746">Regarding the worship of Evil deitiesOne thing that's frequently ignored about 'Evil' churches and deities, in D&D terms, is relative morality- that is, the Evil-aligned churches don't see themselves as "evil" unless they're deliberately adopting it for a sort of "bad boy mystique." A well-developed world that contains actual religions built around Evil deities (as opposed, say, to random cults of insane people occasionally getting together to venerate a deity or demon that most other people fear or despise) should contain carefully crafted creeds for those faiths which explain how the members of the cult see the world, and why they worship as they do. Typically, an Evil religion is based at least partly around the idea of "might makes right," since that idea is at the core of how D&D defines Evil.As an example, take a deity that's played a prominent role in my homebrew campaigns in recent years. His name is Nexus, and he's a LE deity whose protfolios are Power, Corruption, and Disease. I actually went to some trouble, a few years ago, to figure out just how those three concepts went together, and how people might come to see those concepts as worthy of veneration as opposed to fear, hatred, or disgust (which would be the common reaction particularly in the case of Disease). Nexus is known publicly for two major behaviors: one, he offers mortals "Deals" in exchange for their souls, much like the Devil in mideval European folklore; and two, his cults offer their services to local governments as police forces. Both of these result at least partly (and naturally) from the credo I came up with.The credo of Nexus can be summed up like this: The natural order of the cosmos is a vast power structure, wherein certain entities are stronger or smarter than others, and use that strength or intelligence to control those below. The structure is in constant flux, with powerful entities eventually using up too much of their power and becoming weaker, or spending their power on frivolous pursuits instead of maintaining or advancing their positions in the web. Their personal corruption becomes a systemic corruption which weakens and destroys their power base and thus frees up the power position for others to take. That this resembles the progression of a disease is no coincidence- disease is but this power-play carried out on a far smaller scale within the body of an individual.It's heartless, self-serving, and could easily lead a fanatic (particularly a priest) to commit atrocities- but it's something that a lot of people would be happy to believe! I know this, because two of my actual real-life players have remarked on how logical and reasonable they find the tenets- Nexus is a favorite game-deity for both of them. Interestingly, if I had to assign D&D alignments to their real-world personalities, one of those two would almost certainly come up Evil- or at the very least Neutral with Evil tendencies. So it seems the appeal works quite well as an in-world explanation.Do the same for other Evil deities, and the problem of why people worship them disappears. The D&D game as-is doesn't provide us with any such credoes, probably because to do so would open WotC and other publishers up to all kinds of lawsuits from concerned parents, religious fundamentalists looking to start up the anti-D&D hysteria again, and so on. Without such credoes, the Evil churches indeed make no sense- nobody in their right mind would follow them. The key, for building a world with a high level of believability, is to give people reasons for worshipping them- even beyond the usual villianous goals of power and wealth.</blockquote>

Verification