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Religions in D&D
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<blockquote data-quote="WayneLigon" data-source="post: 6226419" data-attributes="member: 3649"><p>What mechanical things are involved in a person in the real world deciding to devote his life to a deity. People often speak of 'hearing a calling' but they are not being literal. They feel drawn to acts or devotions that they feel complete them as a person.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, the thing you might need to do is step back from human values. Look on all that man has wrought as a cancer killing a healthy body and you might be closer to the feeling most of the druids and nature priests might evoke. Or the idea that the drive of humans to sculpt an environment to suit themselves needs to be channeled or curtailed in order to make sure they don't throw something out of balance. A nature priest is going to be very much aware of the the idea of an ecology as a huge jenga tower - one wrong move and the whole thing comes crashing down until some means of equilibrium can be restored. Nature will restore things, eventually, but maybe nature priests prefer that it never has to in the first place. Or maybe they take an inhumanly long view of history, working towards goals and ideals that won't see fruition for decades or centuries. (This is why druids are historically neutral - players are used to thinking of them as allies because they can be PC's but Druids are not your friends. They act in ways that benefit everyone and everything in some way - it might be that one day they are defending a village from a bear that has become maddened by infection and they help the villagers hunt and kill it. Ten years later they destroy the dam upriver, flooding the area and killing everyone because the area needs to lay fallow for a half-century or more, so it can become fruitful once more). </p><p></p><p>If you want a system here's one off the top of my head: you might want to create a series of traits or ideas a religion embodies and note the strength of each. For instance our nature priest might see a small forest, a wolf pack, and a human farmstead as being essentially equal to each other, each equally important to the goddess and thus the priest. Now the townsmen see the forest as lesser than themselves. It provides them with wood and food and when those things run low it's useless to them. Likewise they see the local wolfpack as dangerous predators out to kill sheep and travellers. The wolves are lesser than themselves. The nature priest sees each as equal. Townspeople that go out and kill the wolfpack are murderers, just as if they'd gone to the farmstead and killed all the people there. To the nature priest, the wolfpack is a tool of the goddess to cull the weak and unwary. The wolf that goes and kills one of the farmstead people just because it was easier than hunting a deer would get chastised by the priest, maybe even executed for murder and his pelt presented to the farmhouse people. (That WOULD be a creepy scene, the PC's commiserating with the farmfolk when the local druid knocks on the door and lays a wolfskin on the table, says 'your son's murderer has paid the ultimate price', and walks out). </p><p></p><p></p><p>Another way of looking at religion in D&D might be something very much different from any sources we normally find on Earth. In the D&D world, the supernatural is real and eminent. You don't have to dither and worry if you're doing right by your god - there are signs that show you yes or no. Heck, there is even a cheap item that won't allow you to commit an act against their precepts without warning. Maybe in the D&D world people interact with their gods as routes to personal power. It's a business deal - you grant me powers and status, and I spread your ideals and work towards whatever goals you want. There might not even be the concept of 'faith', since their works and embodiments are there for anyone to see.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="WayneLigon, post: 6226419, member: 3649"] What mechanical things are involved in a person in the real world deciding to devote his life to a deity. People often speak of 'hearing a calling' but they are not being literal. They feel drawn to acts or devotions that they feel complete them as a person. Well, the thing you might need to do is step back from human values. Look on all that man has wrought as a cancer killing a healthy body and you might be closer to the feeling most of the druids and nature priests might evoke. Or the idea that the drive of humans to sculpt an environment to suit themselves needs to be channeled or curtailed in order to make sure they don't throw something out of balance. A nature priest is going to be very much aware of the the idea of an ecology as a huge jenga tower - one wrong move and the whole thing comes crashing down until some means of equilibrium can be restored. Nature will restore things, eventually, but maybe nature priests prefer that it never has to in the first place. Or maybe they take an inhumanly long view of history, working towards goals and ideals that won't see fruition for decades or centuries. (This is why druids are historically neutral - players are used to thinking of them as allies because they can be PC's but Druids are not your friends. They act in ways that benefit everyone and everything in some way - it might be that one day they are defending a village from a bear that has become maddened by infection and they help the villagers hunt and kill it. Ten years later they destroy the dam upriver, flooding the area and killing everyone because the area needs to lay fallow for a half-century or more, so it can become fruitful once more). If you want a system here's one off the top of my head: you might want to create a series of traits or ideas a religion embodies and note the strength of each. For instance our nature priest might see a small forest, a wolf pack, and a human farmstead as being essentially equal to each other, each equally important to the goddess and thus the priest. Now the townsmen see the forest as lesser than themselves. It provides them with wood and food and when those things run low it's useless to them. Likewise they see the local wolfpack as dangerous predators out to kill sheep and travellers. The wolves are lesser than themselves. The nature priest sees each as equal. Townspeople that go out and kill the wolfpack are murderers, just as if they'd gone to the farmstead and killed all the people there. To the nature priest, the wolfpack is a tool of the goddess to cull the weak and unwary. The wolf that goes and kills one of the farmstead people just because it was easier than hunting a deer would get chastised by the priest, maybe even executed for murder and his pelt presented to the farmhouse people. (That WOULD be a creepy scene, the PC's commiserating with the farmfolk when the local druid knocks on the door and lays a wolfskin on the table, says 'your son's murderer has paid the ultimate price', and walks out). Another way of looking at religion in D&D might be something very much different from any sources we normally find on Earth. In the D&D world, the supernatural is real and eminent. You don't have to dither and worry if you're doing right by your god - there are signs that show you yes or no. Heck, there is even a cheap item that won't allow you to commit an act against their precepts without warning. Maybe in the D&D world people interact with their gods as routes to personal power. It's a business deal - you grant me powers and status, and I spread your ideals and work towards whatever goals you want. There might not even be the concept of 'faith', since their works and embodiments are there for anyone to see. [/QUOTE]
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