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ShortQuests -- individual adventure modules! An all-new collection of digest-sized D&D adventures designed to plug in to your game.

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="thormagni" data-source="post: 2646612" data-attributes="member: 13637">Actually, I can see a few interesting ways that religion can be played in RPGs without unbalancing the entire universe.First, you can have the scenario where gods need followers to gain power. Maybe there is an invisible, but potent energy that flows from the pure faith of prayers. A powerful extra-dimensional being desires power to advance its agenda, so it begins actively seeking followers in the material realm (let's call this the Monsters Inc., scenario.) A cleric who advances the god's agenda and brings in new followers will receive rewards in the form of spell power. Maybe it takes the god one point of mana to give a first level spell to a cleric, but he gets one point from each believers' prayers, or some such. And an evil god would also want to generate new followers, so he can have more energy to advance his agenda.Secondly, maybe gods don't exist until someone believes in them (this is the theory behind the game Black and White.) The more people believe, the more real the god becomes. If enough people believe, then the god can make the transition from the spiritual plane to the material plane. For example, a great hero dies and many people believe in him, telling tales of his exploits. Their belief gives him reality as a god in the spiritual realm.Thirdly, maybe the gods are extra-diimensional beings who are actually in thrall to their "followers" here on the material world. Much as sorcerors or wizards draw on extra-dimensional energy, clerics would draw on specific named entities for their spells, in essence tying the gods down like the Lilliputians tied down Gulliver. Fourth, and this may be my favorite, maybe the gods only exist as forces of nature and clerics tap into that force and ascribe human motives to a power that is beyond our ability to comprehend.  Why don't the gods walk the earth? Well it could be for a variety of reasons. Maybe the greater gods are too powerful to manifest on the material plane without disrupting the very fabric of reality. Perhaps their existence would be too much for the minds of mere mortals to fathom and their appearance would drive their followers stark, raving mad, or shut down their minds entirely. Perhaps they don't walk the earth because we are too miniscule to deal with or the affairs of our little material ball of mud are just too minor to draw a god's full attention from the many planes of existence they exist on in the spiritual realm. How exactly would a force representing strength, or fire, or wisdom actually walk on the earth? Maybe the gods are so busy they don't have time to stop by earth, what with all the prayer granting and dispensing of favors and powers (the Bruce Almighty theory.)</blockquote>

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