D&D General Religion in D&D: Your Take

[Ruin Explorer]

One of the things that I absolutely insist on is that your pantheon should look like deities that average people would actually want to worship, a standard that pretty much every official D&D setting hard fails.

Absolutely this. It is incredible how hard official D&D settings tend to fail this (even Eberron raises eyebrows here). The most vital and real parts of human life are often glossed over in ways that real-world polytheistic and animistic religions just don't*.

Faith is unimportant to most religions, and shouldn't be used as a synonym for religion any more than church should be used as a synonym for religion.

Definitely agree. That's why I'm saying calling religions "faiths" and talking about "faith" a lot is unhelpful in the Gods Walk The Earth kind of scenario. Because faith in modern English, particularly in the US, has strong monotheistic and Abrahamic overtones which make it an unsuitable term for what's going on with most fantasy settings, particularly well-conceived ones (it can also be unhelpful historically, as you suggest).

In a typical D&D setting, the model for a holy war is less likely to be a crusade or a jihad as it is to be the Greeks versus Troy - no less brutal and horrific for the fact there is no one god in question but a dysfunctional brutal family playing out their family drama with mortals as tools for their own grievances and also the cause of their own further grievances against each other.

For my money, what the Greeks did to Troy was indeed more brutal than Crusades or the like tended to be. As was what the Romans did to Carthage. What I'm trying to get across is that when a massively powerful supernatural being with a specific ideology and values is giving you orders, things are going to look more "Cambodia Year Zero" and less "And now you all have to convert to our similar religion" or "Keep worshipping whoever you like, you just pay taxes to us now!".

As opposed to what?

I think you actually explained what it's opposed to fairly well. Faith doesn't mean it's historical meaning of "trust and fidelity" and hasn't for 80+ years, maybe longer, maybe more like 200+ or even 400+. It didn't mean that to the original creators of various early D&D settings either. It's just an unhelpful word that causes confusion at this point, in my view. Trust or fidelity are much better words.

* = I blame again half-assed mid-century-esque Classics education for this, and loads of books that ludicrously simplify Greek, Roman, and Norse religion - I also, let me be clear - blame patriarchal and misogynistic attitudes and narrow minds among a lot of early D&D designers for making this worse - Zeb Cook would be one of the few I'd say isn't really guilty of this - Taladas pushes back fairly hard on it, but still has to be "technically Krynn", which limits what can be done. There's also a bit more going on which we can't really discuss here because it might border too much on discussing RL religion.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

As opposed to what?

Revelation, and/or transcendental union with the sacred/sublime.

Something that, at least from my studies, is common to at least one major branch of every theistic religion, and even some non-theistic religious traditions (e.g. "Pure Land" Buddhism has stuff in that direction.) Animistic and ancestor-worship type traditions would certainly have less of this, but revelations from the ancestors would still be a thing in most cases.

In a typical D&D setting, the model for a holy war is less likely to be a crusade or a jihad as it is to be the Greeks versus Troy - no less brutal and horrific for the fact there is no one god in question but a dysfunctional brutal family playing out their family drama with mortals as tools for their own grievances and also the cause of their own further grievances against each other. Whether or not the gods are handing out orders is less relevant than that they are taking sides and messing in the affairs both directly (taking chariots and fighting alongside the mortals, and occasionally even getting wounded) and indirectly through divine favor influencing the outcome of battles both personal and corporate.

I very much agree with your post except that I don't think there is a contradiction between gods walking the earth in living memory and historical religion and politics because all of those historical societies themselves believed in gods walking the earth in living memory. And I really dislike faith as this nebulous power rather than its historical meaning of fidelity and trust. But for that matter, I really dislike in setting "faith" meaning much of anything because as soon as you bring up "faith" in the context of religion then you are doing a Christian pastiche rather than any sort of historical polytheism. Faith is unimportant to most religions, and shouldn't be used as a synonym for religion any more than church should be used as a synonym for religion.

It seems to me your issue is not the use of the word "faith"--because, as stated, at least one of revelation and transcendental union are common to essentially all theistic religions, and appear even in many non-theistic ones--but rather that people conflate faith and piety. One can be pious without any faith at all; we have the concept of "filial piety," for example, which has little to nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the cultural norms of a particular region (e.g. ancient Rome and both ancient and modern China placed enormous value on filial piety). Piety is often religious, but is not always so. Faith, on the other hand

I see where you are coming from but don’t necessarily agree angels can’t be powerful messengers that inspire awe. There are many example in the Bible that have angels as messengers and the people they appear to are afraid or in awe. Those experiences can still be transcendent.

Okay. It sounded like you were saying, "Just get rid of the gods interacting with anything PCs see or do. They aren't necessary, and wouldn't care even if they are present." I find that pretty disappointing if playing a religiously-inclined character.

I’m also not saying the gods can’t have a moral compass or ideal but only that their power and is so beyond mortal understanding. That power isn’t dependent on mortal worship. That’s my preference is all I’m saying. Would a god be upset if a mortal was breaking its laws? Probably. Does it care enough to do anything? Probably , if it was so observed in its own dealings. Clerics are there to deal with mortals. Angels can send messages and dispense Justice if need be. The god will rarely intervene.

I guess I just feel that if one or more PCs are either (a) devoutly religious, or (b) specifically connected to religion (e.g. Cleric or most interpretations of Paladins, even though Paladins no longer require a deity), that that thus implies the players themselves want to have interactions on that level. Even if the gods might normally never intrude into mortal life because there's no point, these mortals--especially as they gain levels--merit attention at least occasionally.

But, again, I am a Christian myself. I have a personal relationship with God IRL. This colors my expectations of gods, especially good ones. A benevolent and powerful entity that can observe vast amounts of space (and possibly time) simultaneously is one that, even if their power isn't dependent on mortals, should still care about mortals. Having gods be totally incomprehensible alien weirdos is for Cthulhu. Having gods that are aware, but just busy attending to the myriad adjustments of existence that bring things closer to their preferred state of things (e.g. Bahamut trying to promote Good and Law across the multiverse) is quite reasonable. Having gods that literally could not give two poops about mortals because of their "higher perspective" or the like is, frankly, something I consider hogwash--a convenient excuse for unforgivable apathy.

 

[Celebrim]

I think you actually explained what it's opposed to fairly well. Faith doesn't mean it's historical meaning of "trust and fidelity" and hasn't for 80+ years, maybe longer, maybe more like 200+ or even 400+.

Your first estimate of 80 years is closer. By the time you get 200 years back, it's proveably the "trust" or "fidelity" mean that in common vernacular still only exists in phrases like "faithful spouse". You can demonstrate this by opening a 19th century dictionary like Webster's and looking up the definition of "faith" and how much it differs from what you'll read in a modern dictionary.

But it sounds like we are mostly on the same page here. My point is that when modern religious people use the word "faith" they mean something closer to what the word meant in the 17th or 19th century than what non-religious people mean, and that the modern term is irrelevant to most D&D settings and either term is irrelevant most real-world religions.

 

[Maxperson]

In a typical D&D setting, the model for a holy war is less likely to be a crusade or a jihad as it is to be the Greeks versus Troy - no less brutal and horrific for the fact there is no one god in question but a dysfunctional brutal family playing out their family drama with mortals as tools for their own grievances and also the cause of their own further grievances against each other. Whether or not the gods are handing out orders is less relevant than that they are taking sides and messing in the affairs both directly (taking chariots and fighting alongside the mortals, and occasionally even getting wounded) and indirectly through divine favor influencing the outcome of battles both personal and corporate.

In a typical D&D setting the gods almost never war against one another. Losing all of your followers means death, and losing a good chunk of them means losing a lot of power. Who wants to risk that?

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

In a typical D&D setting the gods almost never war against one another. Losing all of your followers means death, and losing a good chunk of them means losing a lot of power. Who wants to risk that?

Yeah, this is the kind of design I dislike when integrating gods and religion into a campaign. To me the gods exist exclusive of mortals and mortal worship. The gods could wipe mortals off the planet and they’d still exist. I feel gods should be pure forces of nature, the building blocks of the cosmos. Most origin stories start with the gods creating creatures, including the mortal races so I’m not sure why they are so dependent on mortal worship unless they’ve invested a good portion of their power into those mortals. Which is kind of a neat way of explaining why they need to maintain their followers. I just don’t happen to like it.

 

[Raiztt]

Losing all of your followers means death, and losing a good chunk of them means losing a lot of power. Who wants to risk that?

This has got to be one of the worst fantasy cosmology conceits; that gods need worship to exist and it exists entirely to justify why gods would be active rather than passive and mysterious.

 

[Celebrim]

Revelation, and/or transcendental union with the sacred/sublime.

Which is not the definition of the word faith though. Different religions have different words for spiritual communion or the apprehension of the sublime, sacred, or numinous and that state is a commonly described state in religious practice. But I don't know one of them that uses faith in that manner as a synonym for that.

It seems to me your issue is not the use of the word "faith"--because, as stated, at least one of revelation and transcendental union are common to essentially all theistic religions...

I don't disagree with the evidence just I don't see what your evidence has to do with your thesis. Faith is not a synonym for revelation, communion, or enlightenment or whatever a particular religion technically calls it.

people conflate faith and piety.

I do agree that people unhelpfully conflate faith and piety, but not with the conclusions your draw from observing this. Faith is much more often nonreligious in character than piety is. While you can have piety to your parents, often this occurs in the context of a religion that involves ancestor worship - as in both China and Rome (which also both had worship of the Emperor). If reverence reaches the level of piety, then it's generally religious in character. Faith on the other hand is generally not religious in character and is only really an important part of one religious system, and really not in the sense that most modern people assume (whether you believe God exists is basically irrelevant in Christianity). However, that's getting off topic.

My point is simply that all religions teach piety. In polytheistic religions what is piety is usually all that matters. There is a ritual transaction going on where input A produces output B - spells rather than miracles. D&D's setting generally makes faith unimportant because it's loosely based on polytheism. Piety on the other hand, that is simply obeying or paying homage to, is a big deal. In Greek polytheism no one thought of Zeus as faithful, almost no one believed Zeus loved them, and almost no one loved Zeus. It may or may not have been a good thing to be someone that Zeus loved, but if he did it probably wasn't on account of your character. All of that was irrelevant to religious practice. What was important was Zeus was a king and deserved a certain reverence that if withheld would bring his attention to you in a decidedly unhelpful manner. Whether you had any personal feelings about the king or his behavior was irrelevant. Ditto the rest of the list.

 

[Celebrim]

This has got to be one of the worst fantasy cosmology conceits; that gods need worship to exist and it exists entirely to justify why gods would be active rather than passive and mysterious.

It's definitely heavily overdone. I think Pratchett popularized it and then everyone does it now. Except, it doesn't even really work in Pratchett's setting because it's really only the small gods in his setting that need it. The intermediate deities like "Death of Humans" (and to a lesser extent Wintersmith) don't need worship and don't really receive it, it's just that they conform themselves to human expectations in order to relate to them. The greater deities like Azrael (or presumably the Creator of Creators that made Azrael) not only don't need worship but are largely outside of mortal purview. Pratchett never attempts to tie the small gods that need worship to his larger cosmology the way some D&D settings very confusingly do.

 

[Celebrim]

In a typical D&D setting the gods almost never war against one another.

Definitely not true of Oerth of Greyhawk, Oerth of Faerun, or Krynn. What D&D setting are you thinking of?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

This has got to be one of the worst fantasy cosmology conceits; that gods need worship to exist and it exists entirely to justify why gods would be active rather than passive and mysterious.

And the most frustrating thing is...there are plenty of other ways to accomplish this goal. 4e's World Axis cosmology does not do this--the gods genuinely do not require anything of mortals, especially since they predate the existence of the mortal world to begin with. Yet its gods are still quite interested in actively shaping affairs in the world, to the point that other powerful forces (the Primal Spirits, mostly) prevent them from interfering as much as they would like to.