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Need advice: Making Religions, Not Just "Here's The Gods. Pick One"
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<blockquote data-quote="77IM" data-source="post: 6890478" data-attributes="member: 12377"><p>A few quick things to keep your work relevant:</p><p></p><p>1) Focus on how the clergy and followers of each religion function in society. For example, which temples offer the PCs healing? Do any offer other services (magic item identification, for example; or things like messenger service or teleportation; or free food and board for the poor; or martial training and missions; etc.)? Are any antagonists, like evil cults, or troublesome, like two religions that are at odds with each other? Is there a state religion, or are some religions outlawed? These are things that actually impact game play, so the players might care about them. The finer points of doctrine aren't relevant to most games so don't even mention it.</p><p></p><p>2) Give each religion 2-3 really stupidly obvious descriptive elements. Like, a religion in which the clergy wear purple robes and giant hats, and they begin and end every conversation with, "May the Eye of Misfortune never gaze upon you," and their temples look like giant stone beehives or pineapples or something of that shape. Outlandish descriptive elements help the players remember the religion. "Oh yeah, the Eddurites? Those are the purple guys with the Eye of Misfortune stuff, right?"</p><p></p><p>3) For the cleric player: Summarize 1-2 beliefs and 1-2 practices for each religion. No more, because you don't want the cleric player to get overloaded with information and have trouble deciding between religions. The practices shouldn't be onerous, but should be things that regular people wouldn't do very often (e.g., pray 5 times a day, while turning to face a holy site). The beliefs should be things that are non-obvious or contradict other religions (e.g., belief in an afterlife and belief in reincarnation are somewhat contradictory; it's possible for a religion to believe in both, but also possible to believe in just one, and believe the other guys are just wrong about it). Ideally, the beliefs motivate the PC to action in some way (e.g. "never suffer an undead to exist" or "the only true virtue is helping the less fortunate.") Really good and interesting beliefs are <em>hard</em> to do right; the other posters on this thread give some good advice about it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="77IM, post: 6890478, member: 12377"] A few quick things to keep your work relevant: 1) Focus on how the clergy and followers of each religion function in society. For example, which temples offer the PCs healing? Do any offer other services (magic item identification, for example; or things like messenger service or teleportation; or free food and board for the poor; or martial training and missions; etc.)? Are any antagonists, like evil cults, or troublesome, like two religions that are at odds with each other? Is there a state religion, or are some religions outlawed? These are things that actually impact game play, so the players might care about them. The finer points of doctrine aren't relevant to most games so don't even mention it. 2) Give each religion 2-3 really stupidly obvious descriptive elements. Like, a religion in which the clergy wear purple robes and giant hats, and they begin and end every conversation with, "May the Eye of Misfortune never gaze upon you," and their temples look like giant stone beehives or pineapples or something of that shape. Outlandish descriptive elements help the players remember the religion. "Oh yeah, the Eddurites? Those are the purple guys with the Eye of Misfortune stuff, right?" 3) For the cleric player: Summarize 1-2 beliefs and 1-2 practices for each religion. No more, because you don't want the cleric player to get overloaded with information and have trouble deciding between religions. The practices shouldn't be onerous, but should be things that regular people wouldn't do very often (e.g., pray 5 times a day, while turning to face a holy site). The beliefs should be things that are non-obvious or contradict other religions (e.g., belief in an afterlife and belief in reincarnation are somewhat contradictory; it's possible for a religion to believe in both, but also possible to believe in just one, and believe the other guys are just wrong about it). Ideally, the beliefs motivate the PC to action in some way (e.g. "never suffer an undead to exist" or "the only true virtue is helping the less fortunate.") Really good and interesting beliefs are [I]hard[/I] to do right; the other posters on this thread give some good advice about it. [/QUOTE]
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Need advice: Making Religions, Not Just "Here's The Gods. Pick One"
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