Religion Brainstorming Ideas

[Emerikol]

So I thought I'd post a thread about religions and Gods and innovative ways you've developed them for your campaigns. I got the idea chatting with Fenris in another thread.

So I am going to throw out some ideas but just know that I do things differently campaign to campaign. I like a lot of variety. One campaign I might have distant gods that can't really be met and in another they will appear and can be fought.

So I hope people will just post interesting things they've done with their gods and religions.

I will do my first post here but I might post something different again.

So this idea comes from the concept that Gods can me met and fought. But I want my gods to be too much for almost anyone including other lesser gods. So even a 20th level group is likely going to lose to one of my greater gods almost certainly but as the power level decreases they might have a chance.

So here are the attributes of my greater gods in one campaign (they have all these things in common)

Hit points: Tons. Maybe a couple thousand but at least a thousand. (Maybe a tough guy god has 2k but a weaker god would have 1k)
Attributes: Maxed out to whatever the max is in your world. 50 maybe?
Actions: They can take 6 simultaneous independent actions every turn
Powers: They can cast any cleric or magic user spell at will by thought so no VSM required with a single action.
Avatar: So unless they are on their home plane, their death just means they return to their home plane for 1000 years and their access to this plane is more limited. On their home plane they can be slain.

Any mind affecting spell only affects one of the six actions. So if you could dominate a greater god, only one action is yours and he can oppose any physical movement of the body with one of the other actions. So suicide via domination is not possible.

These gods likely also regenerate at a high rate but none of them wait that long as a full heal is one action away.

When using a gate-like power, their subordinates cannot refuse them and will come to their aid if on their home plane. I tend to make gods entering the prime more difficult so that may or may not work without fail. Typically if it's possible for a human then the god can do it as well at minimum.

For lesser beings, I dial down the hit points, attributes, and actions. At some point, I also make the spells at higher levels once per day.

 

[Fenris-77]

The idea of mine mentioned above of is as follows. The cosmology has two complimentary halves. On the one hand you have the gods of civilizations, representing human skill and endeavor that builds and tames: so crafts, farming, hunting, etc. On the other hand you have the gods of the deep wild, which are the gods representing those forces, human and otherwise, that tear down civilization: so wrath, plauge, unrestrained growth etc.

Those are not good and bad halves, but something more like a natural cycle, combined with the idea that people tend to worship the familiar and fear the strange.

 

[Richards]

In my last 3.5 campaign I had the PCs spend five adventures on Gamma Terra, the home of the Gamma World campaign setting. While there, they encountered a group of mutant humans who had very dwarven features. They called themselves the Brotherhood of Zontok, and this was the creation myth of their god, Zontok:

"In the beginning, there was darkness and void without form. And then Zontok said, 'Let there be light!' - and lo, there was light.​

"And Zontok then created the heavens and the earth and the seas and all manner of animals to populate his world. And He created mankind in His own image and sent him out to populate the world. Zontok then went up to His castle at the top of the world and looked down upon the earth, to see what mankind would do with the gifts He had given them.​

"For some time mankind flourished, spreading out among the world and living in harmony with nature. But then, mankind discovered warfare and broke into separate tribes to make war upon each other. Great was their cunning, creating more and more powerful weapons over the years to slay the other tribes, until they poisoned the air and the land and the seas with their warfare.​

"Zontok looked down upon the poor earth and said, 'If mankind wishes to wage constant war, I will create new life to destroy mankind, that they may perish and be replaced with new masters of the earth.' And then did Zontok open the minds of the beasts, giving them great cunning and the ability to fashion their own weapons to eradicate mankind.​

"And the Beasts Who Think Like Men did bring mankind to its knees, nearly wiping them off the face of the world. Only then did mankind recall the early days before warfare and how plentiful was the food and how pleasant the lands and the seas and the clean air. And mankind cried out to Zontok, begging forgiveness and asking to be restored as the masters of the earth.​

"Zontok replied to His creations, 'This I will not do, for you have lost favor in My sight. But you may earn back My favor – and your right as rulers of the earth – by defeating the Beasts Who Think Like Men. Prove to Me your worthiness to once again inherit the world and all will be as it once was.'​

"And that is the Brotherhood's most holy edict: to seek out the Beasts Who Think Like Men and slay them. Only then will the world return to the paradise it once was."​

The Brotherhood dwarves were deferential to the elves and half-elves in the party, believing them to be members of a race of celestial beings called the Servants of Zontok, who served Him by roaming the world and spying upon the progress the Brotherhood was making against the Beasts Who Think Like Men (the intelligent creatures of animal stock, like the hissers, hoops, badders, arks, and so on from the standard Gamma World bestiary). The PCs ended up assisting the Brotherhood band they encountered, taking on a nest of hissers that had made their lair in an abandoned missile silo. It wasn't until the very end of that adventure, when the Brotherhood dwarves sang one of their holy hymns about bringing the word of Zontok to the remaining humans (mutated or otherwise) scattered across the globe that the players pegged just who it was these dwarves were worshiping. (The PCs, of course, had no idea as they didn't have the cultural background to put two and two together.) But the song, "The Laws of Zontok," began with the following words:

"Oh, you'd better not pout, you'd better not cry, you better not shout, I'm telling you why, the Zontok Laws are coming to town..."​

Two of the Brotherhood the party met up with were named Nikolai and Kristoff, names that made perfect sense in hindsight. And they rode "herdbeasts," mutated mounts of reindeer and elk stock.

Johnathan

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hmmm...in various campaigns:

1) Lolth had an aspect worshipped by a particularly dangerous sect of Drow. To them, she was The Red Widow, and they were much more cannibalistic than other Drow societies.

2) Moradin literally created the dwarves as mortal earth elementals, each formed from particular minerals. And the mineral types determined what a particular dwarf had as a favored class: granite => fighters; marble => bard; opal => wizards, etc. I never ran this setting, in part because I wasn’t 100% sure if dwarves were entirely composed of said minerals, or only key anatomy.

3) in a high level campaign, I had a trickster god annoy the party a la Mister Mxyzptlk did Superman or The Impossible Mad did The Fantastic Four.

 

[Emerikol]

In another campaign, I had the elves basically worship a spirit like force prevalent in nature and represented specifically by giant trees. They revered these trees and would go to great lengths to protect them. They were present during the ages when the gods warred for control and thus do not believe they are gods at all but just very powerful beings. So Elves are like atheists except they believe nature itself is worth venerating.

I also played these Elves as a matriarchal society with two castes. The nobles and the commoners. Elves in general had a low birthrate but nobles had an extremely low birthrate. The nobles were immortal and the commoners were just long lived by human standards. So elves in general did not like involving themselves in things that might get them killed as they treasured life. The death of an elf was considered an infinitely bad outcome.

Only commoners and male nobles could practice magic but noble women could not. All of the noble women were psionic and bonded with their men at marriage. The bond was permanent until death. Upon bonding the males were subservient to the females and tended to obey them in all decision making. The females were the only ones allowed to rule. They were divided up into houses eached ruled by a supreme Lady of House X. These leaders of the houses would meet every twenty one years to elect a queen.

If a noble woman bonded with a commoner male, it was considered a travesty (as the noble blood maintained the psionic lineage) and the woman was typically exiled and shunned.

 

[uzirath]

I ran a campaign once which featured a forgotten water god. The being had been worshipped long ago but his faction was overthrown by other water deities and his worship faded away. This was intended to just be some minor background material to add to the sense that the campaign world had a long history. The PCs, naturally, had other ideas and became fixated on the ancient cult. They eventually journeyed to the elemental plane of water, met the former god, and became the first acolytes of his second rise. I don't recall how it all played out in the end (this was... 30 years ago), but it was a fun campaign.

 

[pemerton]

I bought Monte Cook's Requiem for a God while running a Rolemaster OA game. A dead god became a prominent feature of that campaign: the paladin (warrior monk) ended up freeing the dead god from the Void so that he could come back to life.

That campaign also included an adaptation of the original Freeport modules and the island on which the lighthouse was built was the stone body of the dead god on earth. The lighthouse ended up being the headquarters of the paladin's holy order.

 

[Numidius]

I'm using mainly demigods/demons/ascended-saints in my campaign, which can have a phisical presence and an active role in shaping the savage lands and human realms.

 

[Voadam]

I use a mish mash of stuff.

I start from a base that divine power is a power source and clerics and druids and such tap into it, they are different traditions of magic with a distinct power source from arcane (and psionic and such). Gods are not the source of divine magic, clerics can worship or not and the actual nature of gods is not certain, but there are beings called gods who might or might not be divine power beings. Since gods are not gatekeeping divine magical casters there can be things like a corrupt cleric of a good god or an overzealous inquisition paladin.

Many people in world believe (and many churches preach) that gods are the source of divine magic and are of a specific nature with afterlife domains and such, though this is not necessarily actually the underlying reality.

I use the Ptolus Holy Lothian Empire, with the official imperial religion of Lothianism the church of an ascended paladin. This allows a very byzantine/medieval D&D church base with a familiar montheistic/henotheistic feel.

This is overlayed over many polytheistic areas the empire has assimilated or conquered, so there are many pantheons of old gods (Greyhawk, FR, Golarion, Real World ones, and many more fantasy ones). This allows a variety of god traditions including more traditional/classical polytheism where the gods demand rituals and sacrifices be performed for them, but not necessarily that people live according to any ideals as a follower of a specific god.

I also have Lothian theological theories of how other or certain other gods are false, either made up or powerful non divine gods being worshipped as gods (what the Heldannic people call Zeus is just a storm giant and not actually a being like Lothian who is actually divinely empowered by his ascension). Lothian was martyred by a demon lord he unmasked who was masquerading as a Sun God, so false gods are a big theme for the Lothian church.

I also have nontheistic traditions like strains of druidism where the focus is on nature and reincarnation and not nature gods. This could be room for things like varieties of buddhism or taoism, or pseudo religions like the Blue and Red temples from Saberhagen's Sword series.

Also non theistic divine magic traditions so many secret societies have their own divine magical spellcasting traditions, like the Athenaeum which collects and protects and disseminates knowledge has a tradition of knowledge focused clerics.

 

[Emerikol]

@Voadam I swing that way on occasion as well and it's a nice twist if the group is used to gods being more ever present and influential.

A twist on your idea might be that clerical magic is divine power as you say but perhaps in the case of Paladins you could say their power does come via a god.

In one of my campaigns, I had a family of gods that pretty much dominated a region of the world and were thought of as "the church" in terms of medieval outlook. The comparison is Christianity though ended there as the gods were far more like Olympians but far more hands off. I had a warrior goddess that was the daughter of the all father style head of the family. All paladin's were considered followers of her and they were required to be celibate. The teaching of the religion was that the goddess would appear in the dreams of her paladins and satisfy them and they would be committing a grievous offense if they lay with another human woman. And yes in this world all Paladins were male though it might be an interesting premise if they weren't .