Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Korgoth" data-source="post: 5395356" data-attributes="member: 49613">Suppose that there is no overarching pantheon as typically posited for a D&D world. Suppose instead that there are only spirit creatures of relatively limited power. I say "Shintoesque" because I don't mean to just copy and paste actual Shintoism, or my notably limited understanding thereof, into a D&D world, nor do I mean that the world should be Asian-flavored or whatever.What I mean is simply that special places, like especially tranquil or disturbed or unique or weird places all have a spirit being; it could be called a god or a demon or just a spirit but all the same it is a limited and finite creature with rather territorial concerns. And that's as far as it goes, at least as far as anyone knows (philosophers and theologians might posit a Deity, but for our purposes this does not result in granted powers to the Cleric class, etc.).Clerics instead would be associated with a specific individual shrine, so that there would be tens of thousands of different individual religions. Some would grant powers (the Cleric class), some would not, and most would do so only inconsistently.Further, there would be no need to distinguish between the entries in the Monster Manual / Vault and the spirits. Maybe the spirit of this blighted grove is an owlbear. It's from the spirit world (i.e. it has a non-natural 'ecology'), but for game purposes, it's an owlbear. Maybe it's twins! Or maybe it is mated to an otyugh. The spirit world doesn't play by the same rules, after all.Such a world could be light on demi/humanoids. Maybe goblinoids are in there, maybe elves and dwarves. Whatever. If you play with tieflings, they would be the offspring of a spirit mated to a human. Don't think horns and such from WOTC tiefs. Think Inuyasha (but again, as easily in Western trappings as Eastern).In this version, all religion would be local. I don't typically like the way religion is handled in D&D. And while I'm rather the opposite of a Shintoist personally (and I'm really only ripping off a few concepts here, not bringing in the real-world religion which I'm not qualified to do anyway), it strikes me as an interesting way to set up a D&D world.</blockquote>

Verification