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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3877490" data-attributes="member: 4937">Monotheism is significantly more complex than polytheism.  It's not something I would personally try to attempt in a campaign setting.   But...You will have a significantly easier time with a monotheistic diety if you don't decide on the dieties alignment.  You can decide on the alignment of the dieties church, or maybe churches, and you can decide what those churches think that is the alignment of thier deity and what they think is thier own alignment.  But you should leave your campaign as vague as possible on what the diety itself actually thinks.In a world with a single diety, just about everyone no matter thier opinion or thier alignment thinks of themselves as good.  Almost no one will think of themselves as working for evil.  Instead, everyone will believe that they have a handle on what is good and what isn't.One way to spin that is that if a lawful evil person casts detect evil in the presence of a chaotic good person, he'll detect the chaotic good person as 'evil', and vica versa.  Your perceptions will always be colored by your frame of reference.  You should play coy with who is the good guys and who is the bad guys.  Ideally, you should play both sides well enough that even you aren't always certain who is in the right.  Let the player's decide.The basis of a schism is there even if the diety is clear, because a world with a singular source has an ambigious complexity that polytheism avoids.  Conflicts won't be over whether or not you should be cruel or whether you should be kind.  Conflicts will be over which is the higher virtue mercy or justice, and over things like whether you express more courage by engaging in violence or refraining from it.  The violent won't think of themselves as cruel, but as just.  The passive won't think of themselves as cowardly or oppurtunists, but as being peaceful, tolerant, and self-controlled.  There are plenty of things we consider virtues that can come into conflict on thier own, and plenty of things that we think of as virtues which in inmoderate amounts or when excercised without wisdom don't look alot like virtues.Most people won't argue over the ends.  But everyone will argue over the means.</blockquote>

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