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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9406474" data-attributes="member: 18">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*.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).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!".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.</blockquote>

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