D&D General Too many cultists

[Salthorae]

OMG - you can’t just go and start killing gypsies and taking their stuff, they’re not Orcs!!!

what if they’re...orc Gypsies!!!

 

[generic]

OMG - you can’t just go and start killing gypsies and taking their stuff, they’re not Orcs!!!

OMG - you can't just go around killing Orcs and taking their stuff, they're not Undead!!!

 

[Salthorae]

OMG - you can't just go around killing Orcs and taking their stuff, they're not Undead!!!

What if they’re undead orc Gypsies?

 

[generic]

What if they’re undead orc Gypsies?

Okay, a line has been crossed.

 

[Wiseblood]

1)How about Druids? Armys of animals

2)Something like The Puppet Masters ( or body snatchers)

3)A Puppet Master with teams of small homicidal golems with special gimmicks?

4)Aliens or Terminators a threat from outside space or time like githyanki.
Foes that seem omnicient but only because they are from the future.

5)An alternate reality where the PC’s are viewed as cultists.

6)A military force eg. civil war or occupying forces

7)A powerful legitimate business just ruthless and amoral or perhaps a guild or conglomerate

 

[uzirath]

D&D has too many cultists in their adventures. Let’s give them other ideas to replace cultists.

Personally, I love me some devious cultists, but I'm always game for a diverse array of foes. For this list, although I tend toward shades of grey in my campaigns, I'll aim for foes that most PCs (and their players) would probably see as inherently evil (like Cthulhu cultists):

1. Doppelgangers infiltrating everywhere.
2. A cabal of enchanters using charm spells to enslave people.
3. More mundane slavers.
4. An evil deity who has secretly slain and replaced the good deity of a dominant religion. The existing structure of that religion is being warped and subverted, creating schisms and all sorts of delicious chaos.
5. Wizards or scientists who are developing Really Useful Tools that have a nasty side-effect that they are conveniently ignoring.
6. A plague of alien plants (?) falling from the sky, a la War Against the Chtorr.
7. Another race who believes that only genocide against insert sympathetic race will make the world a better place. (For a bit of interesting grey, make the target race less sympathetic... someone is out to exterminate orcs.)
8. A group of assassins who believe in racial purity and strive to cull half-breeds from the population. Secretly they are kidnapping prime "specimens" of each race to breed. (Sounds suspiciously like a cult. Oops!)
9. A mysterious illness is wiping people out. Obviously caused by the Cult of Death. But, no, ultimately it turns out to be a natural plague. Ingredients must be found to create a cure. Perhaps one of the ingredients must be obtained from the Death God.
10. A monster/race whose natural climate is different from campaign normal is striving to change the world to better fit their physiology. Fire elementals for global warming trying to move the planet closer to the sun (or conjure a second sun). Ice Mephits for expanded glaciation. Swamp Muppets for Dagobah!

 

[Farealmer3]

I quoted your post to a discord contact because I liked it and they gave a reply I feel I should post.

e) There would be absolutely no such thing as separation of church and state, and certainly not seen to the great extent seen in the Middle Ages where you had a secular head of state and a parallel religious heirarchy which only partially overlapped the secular organization. No, justice would be dispensed by a cult, either formally as a recognized office and role in government or informally because the Police Union was a cult. The Judge might formally be part of a cult with the recognized role of judging, or defacto in control of the judicial system because Judges tended to have membership in a cult and anyone not in the cult was actively undermined by the judges that were in the cult. The army itself would be a cult. The king himself was the head of a cult that corresponded to the national identity.

I think that there is room for seperation of church and state, because of D&D's character class system. Full on theocracies would be societies run by clerics, and have no seperation of church and state. But if the ruling class is wizards or warriors or some mixture of different character classes, then they can't really be a full fledged theocracy, because then the people at the top of the food chain would need to be clerics. So in societies not run by clerics, there needs to be some distinction between church and state, even if clerics are still embeded in the hiearchy of the state and the state uses their services.

b) Most worship ought to be communal rather than private. Most worship probably isn't particular sincere or pious as we understand the term, any more than most people pay taxes out of sincere love of their government. Most worship would be perceived as transactional. I'll do this, now don't murder me and maybe I'll get some benefit out of it.

You can put piousness and transactionality on the same axis and just have most worship be transactional. But that is not the most interesting appraoch. Its much more interesting to put them on seperate axes and map them onto alignment. So worship would be transactional for lawful aligned gods, and their followers, because from their perspective religion is a contract between mortals and gods. For the chaotic gods and their followers, worship would be something that is done because its intrinsically pleasent for them. For good aligned gods and their followers, worship is sincere and pious. For evil aigned gods and their followers, worship is an excuse for personal gain and visiting petty cruelties on others. For neutral alligned gods and their followers, its a little of both.

 

[Bohandas]

How about gypsies? They can have the elements of a cult (fanatical loyalty to the clan) and a criminal organization. They could be a foe in some adventures or provide rumors, gossip, or services and goods not available from more law abiding shopkeepers.

they're associated with a real world ethnicity so that's a no-go.

Import the similar but distinct Vistani from Ravenloft instead

 

[Jd Smith1]

Multi-tasking at it's worse. I meant to say "Don't forget resources".

I felt that was covered under 'wealth'.

 

[Bohandas]

they're associated with a real world ethnicity so that's a no-go.

Import the similar but distinct Vistani from Ravenloft instead

Or better yet, use carnies. That gives you the same shady traveling fortune teller vibe without being associated with any particular ethnicity.