Monotheistic Religion - How to?

[WhatGravitas]

In a homebrew setting, you can get some of that ambiguity by writing your descriptions empirically from the perspective of an inhabitant of the world.

Hey, that's great technique! Not that the rest of your post was worse, but this stood out as immediate thing-to-do (while the rest was more food for thought).

Mmh... I really get an idea with all that stuff going on in this thread, thanks for helping, ENWorld hivemind!

Cheers, LT.

 

[prosfilaes]

Right. And we know how to measure those because?

We "know" how to measure right and wrong because every animal makes choices, knows that there are somethings that it should do (right) and that it shouldn't (wrong). When we're talking about a social creature with an excessive amount of brainpower, these concepts of what we should do and shouldn't do get the added complication of morality. There's enough differences in human beliefs, even about simple things like when it's okay to kill the outsiders, to say we don't know how to measure right and wrong as absolutes.

The more you lock the human concept of right and wrong to the universal concept of Good and Evil, the more bizzare and unplayable the setting will be. Even in D&D, people aren't always guided by Good; even Good characters get away with rough approximations, and the normal neutral humans at best play lipservice to the idea. But everyone is guided by their internal ideas of what's right, whether that demands always serving self first or taking care of family and friends or serving their country or world, or more likely some mixture. You start changing that arrow of what drives us, and you start changing what it means to be human.

Which is why In Nomine, for one example, doesn't make right or Good obvious; it makes for a much more interesting game if the PCs and their bosses can disagree among themselves about what's right.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

My apologies then, but I hope you understand that usually when someone quotes someone and then references them directly ('I think you...') that it is addressed to the person being quoted. So, hopefully, my confusion is understandable. Perhaps in the future you'll use a transition phrase to indicate when you've switched who is being addressed.



Anything along that line is not something that I can address at any length in this forum. However, I can say that orthodox Christianity is not dualistic, and Christian groups which emphasis dualism tend to be regarded as sects.



My point was in part that altering the D&D cosmology from its presumed polytheism to monotheism was in fact altering a key element of the cosmology, and some consideration in altering other elements needed to be made. One of the presumed elements of polytheism is that 'evil' (or for that matter 'good') is a thing of real and independent existence. That need not be the case if in fact we are dealing with a monotheistic world.



But asserting a True Neutral, while easy, is nearly the same as asserting what is the correct belief in that cosmology. D&D traditional avoids this with a cosmology which doesn't impose a belief system on the player. You can choose what you want to believe.



A statement which claims neutrality to be fundamentally correct.



No, there doesn't. Good can have independent existance completely without evil. It doesn't need a comparison. It is a real and fundamental thing. Likewise, someone who believes in evil can make the claim that evil has a real and independent existence, that good is in fact illusionary, and that evil will remain completely in goods absence.

I think this poster has in mind the concept that evil is really the privation of good, like darkness is really the privation of light.

 

[CruelSummerLord]

Here's an idea-bring in several monotheistic religions, all competing with one another.

This isn't too far off from real life-Christians worship the Christian God, Muslims worship Allah, some North American First Nations worship the Creator or the Great Spirit, and all have been in various forms of conflict and cooperation in real life. Religions have internal schisms, and they have external conflicts, but they're all monotheistic.

I've juggled a few ideas like this myself, and what I came up with is that there is an actual, genuine god, but that there are many different religions that worship him/her/it in their own way. IMC, it is the genuine religious belief and feeling that forms a connection between a mortal priest and a given deity, demon lord, saint, etc., and it's through that belief that the mortal priest is able to channel divine energy and use the abilities granted by their divine patron. Violation of their beliefs, whether intentional or otherwise, disrupts the connection and leads to problems in the receiving and casting of spells.

This explains why gods can have multiple sects and cults worshipping them-in the case of Pholtus, a priest might choose to follow the One True Path, but if he acts more like a priest of the Blinding Light, he would be punished, even though he is a worshipper of Pholtus. He would have to convert to the different sect, or found one of his own, otherwise his connection to Pholtus would suffer and Pholtus would punish him for straying.

Similarly, it's that feeling, worship and connection that allows different peoples to connect to this same, monotheistic god in their own ways, and receive spells from him/her/it, although their beliefs differ widely. It'd be as if (PURELY FOR THE SAKE OF EXAMPLE) that a Christian priest behaves according to the Christian way of acting, and so received spells from God. Then, for whatever reason, he suddenly starts acting and espousing beliefs like a Jewish rabbi, without actually converting to the faith. The connection is disrupted; even though he's following a legitimate path to receiving divine spells, it is not HIS path, and he needs to make it officially so before he can properly re-establish his divine connection and begin casting spells again.

This god might be a special case, who claims the entire continent as his own but allows the mortals living there to form their own interpretations, connecting with them and granting spells each according to their own faiths. As a result, a number of rival monotheistic faiths all spring up, each worshipping the same god but all espousing different beliefs and ideas.

 

[Ry]

LT - I've used a very similar approach and it was quite effective.

 

[John Morrow]

For my 4E points-of-light-inspired campaign, I'm leaning away from a pantheon, made up of a multitude of different faiths, but I'm going with a single, all-encompassing deity.

What I used in my D&D 3.5 campaign was basically a monotheist religion that had enough uncertainty built into it that it required faith.

There was a single outer plane populated by angels and saints, ascended mortals, devils and demons, and the souls of the dead. The outer plane was a sphere, with the Good pole separated from the Neutral middle by the river Lethe. Drink from it, lose your memories, and be reborn to a moral world. Separating the Evil pole from the Neutral middle was the river Styx, which was very difficult to cross (add ferrymen to taste). Souls of the dead wind up in the area that correspond to their alignment, thus it was very difficult for the Evil to get to the Lethe to reincarnate (they have to exist the Evil pole, cross the Styx, then trek across the Neutral region without being thrown back into the Evil region.

How the religion worked was that the Good outer plane beings believed and could sense a Good greater creator deity that transcended the Outer Plane and created and could control all of Creation. They believed that upon maximizing the number of Good souls in the Good part of the outer plane, they'd be able to transcend and join the Good creator deity is a sort of heaven. All of the direct intercession was carried out by saints (the clerics and paladins belonged to orders tied to saints) and angels, not the main deity. This level of indirection allowed religion to be a matter of faith because you basically need to trust that the single main deity exists and that the end game will results in the victory and transcendence of Good souls. Most of the Good angels and saints believed in the transcendent deity of Good but there could be some exceptions, allowing the possibility of Good but not monotheistic religions, if desired.

There were Neutral people (as well as some Good and Evil) who believed that ascending to the outer plane was a stepping stone on a path to perfection that would eventually allow them to transcend the outer plane or create their own worlds. There was another variant that was closer to ancestor worship. This was intended to have a bit of a Asian flavor to, with respect to reincarnation and perfection and ancestor spirits, as well as some other inspirations.

The Evil devils and demons argued that all of this was nonsense and all that they knew was all that their was and there was no greater purpose to existing that dominating and using what's known to exist. Evil in my setting was often similar to malicious psychopathy so the "Why?" to it was that Evil people enjoyed cruelty and hurting or killing others. They didn't care about any bigger moral questions.

Druids followed yet another faith. Each world had a spirit and it was the "spirit of the world" that druids served, thus when the died, they'd reincarnate onto the world that they served. Their interests were about the health of the world rather than any sort of transcendent morality, thus there could be Evil druids as well as Good druids. All ultimately served the maintenance and balance of their world.

The goal was that everyone could believe that they were right and it ultimately came down to a matter of faith. Do you believe in the transcendent Good creator deity that has granted souls free will so that they could choose to be Good and ultimately transcend creation to join the presence of that deity in heaven (there was a bit more to the cosmology that that, but that was the core)? Do you believe that the pragmatism of individual achievement and perfection will make one a deity or serving ancestors who have become like deities? Do you believe it's all about grabbing what you can and serving your dark desires? Or is your immediate focus the health and well being of your own world and nature? That all had an outer plane source of power and intercession didn't really answer the question of who was right.

Maybe not what you are looking for since it's less clear and certain than your ideas but I found that it worked out pretty well.

 

[hamishspence]

Deity has multiple aspects?

I got the impression that in Hinduism, for example, it was the same deity, evolving as the people eveolved, given different names: Brahma, Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna. However I do not know for certain, it has been a while since I read up on the subject.

Is the idea worth nicking? Could you pick different batches of Domains, attach them to different Deity names, and say it is the same being in different forms?

Forgotten Realms seems to do this. Chauntea has an older aspect called Jannath the Earthmother, who is the deity of the Moonshaes.