[UPDATED] Green Ronin Finds Religion In D&D 5E's BOOK OF THE RIGHTEOUS

Back in the early days D&D 3rd Edition, Green Ronin released two books for the game which I adored and still have to this day. One was the Book of Fiends: Legions of Hell (a supplement which was followed up by Armies of the Abyss). The other was Aaron Loeb's Book of the Righteous, an enormous 300+ page tome crammed full of religions to use in your D&D game. It detailed the churches, the rituals, the beliefs, and more behind a detailed pantheon of over 20 churches.

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UPDATE: This Kickstarter is now live.

So the book is coming to Kickstarter soon, and the new rules material will be written by Robert J. Schwalb, one of D&D 5E's designers (Schwalb produces his own current RPG, Shadow of the Demon Lord). Green Ronin, of course, is the company which brought you Out of the Abyss for D&D 5E. This book definitely won't be lacking in 5th Edition pedigree!

The original version contained these religions, each detailed with a half dozen pages on myths, workings, churches, orders, and more.

The Old Gods. The Eyes of Urian, The Foundations of Rontra, The Basins of Shalimyr, The Druids of Eliwyn, The Followers of the Nameless One.

The Gods of the Tree. The Healing Halls of Morwyn, The Temples of Terak, The Vineyards of Zheenkeef, The Scriptoriums of Tinel, The Sacristies of Mormelcar.

The Gods of the Womb. The Courts of Maal, The Houses of Darmon, The Lyceums of Aymara, The Guildhalls of Korak, The Hearths of Anwyn.

The Three Sisters. The Dark Sister, The Red Sister, The Golden Sister.

The Evil Gods. Asmodeus, Canarak, Hellos, Naran, plus some evil and heretical cults.

The original book also contained an overall cosmology, using religions in a campaign, and a bunch of rules including feats, spells, domains, magic items, artifacts, and creatures.

Below is a peek at the D&D 3rd Edition version, detailing one of the churches in the book. You can look at the whole 11-page church here (PDF); below is just a couple of excerpts. Obviously the 5E version will be redesigned for the current game and if Kickstarter does it's usual thing might have awesome stretch goals for new colour art and cool stuff like that (just conjecture on my part).

More as and when I hear it!

 

[BrockBallingdark]

I'm sure it won't be the gods of Forgotten Realms, since that would need to be published through DMs Guild and Green Ronin usually likes to do their own thing (Out of the Abyss being an exception).

No gods of the Forgotten Realms? I'm in for the KS!

 

[Awesome Adam]

With so few 5E books being published, we can get excited about the few that are. I have a TON of 3E books, but somehow I missed the Book of the Rigtheous. As long as we are hovering in the $30 range, I'm in for the Kickstarter.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I have a print copy of the 3E version. I’ve read it, but never actually used the pantheon of gods in play. We’ve played in Greyhawk and FR for the last 2 campaigns, so we’ve just used those gods. I’ll probably get a PDF of the 5E version, but it will probably be for a read, rather than use in play.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Despite being a huge fan of 3PP D20 stuff back in the day, and of Green Ronin, I never wound up getting this one. If it's focused on churches, practices, rites, holidays, etc., is there any reason one couldn't just lift all that material from the book and apply it to the gods of a FR/Greyhawk/homebrew pantheon? I imagine it'd just be a matter of changing some proper nouns and a few minor details, wouldn't it?

 

[Xavian Starsider]

I haven't been investing much into third party material for 5e, but this has me a bit excited. I don't remember the original and am sure I didn't have it, so this is all new content for me.

Side note: The cover shown above from the original looks like it would make an interesting counterpoint next to Curse of Strahd.

 

[Li Shenron]

Despite the 3e original being notoriously popular, I was never convinced of its utility. It was probably very well written, and the idea of detailing religions in depth is certainly great. What didn't win me was the fact that the book presented essentially a set of unprecedented religions, which you could use either as a whole or cherrypick, but if you are playing D&D in a published setting you already have the pantheons and you'd rather want more details on the official religions (that's for instance what Faiths and Pantheons did for me to run the Forgotten Realms); if you are on the other hand homebrewing, the Book of the Righteous can surely give you ideas to steal from, but personally I find it more fun to just design my own.

Overall I think the strength of the Book of the Righteous was in the fluff, so it would be a bit awkward to make a mere 5e crunch update. OTOH 5e certainly doesn't have a lot of crunch yet, so the crunch part could be proportionally more useful now than it was in 3e.

There is another possibility: that the 5e BotR will feature entirely new deities, and will be a successor of the 3e original only in concept, but not in content. This would make it interesting also for those who already have the 3e original, but disappoint those who actually want to use the old BotR deities in 5e games.

I am not sure, but overall I feel like this would be a great book to talk about rather than use (for me).

 

[MechaPilot]

Looking at the images in the OP, the book actually reminds me of the How to Create Fantasy Religions article* that I'm working on.

*I call it an article for a lack of anything better to call it. It is not going to published in a magazine, or anything like that, so it's really more of a personal project. However, if it turns out well I may end up putting it up on the DM's guild.

 

[TwoSix]

Despite being a huge fan of 3PP D20 stuff back in the day, and of Green Ronin, I never wound up getting this one. If it's focused on churches, practices, rites, holidays, etc., is there any reason one couldn't just lift all that material from the book and apply it to the gods of a FR/Greyhawk/homebrew pantheon? I imagine it'd just be a matter of changing some proper nouns and a few minor details, wouldn't it?

You could, but you'd probably to have the change the backstory and details of the pantheon to make it work, most especially for Forgotten Realms. The book has a whole mythic creation story that's one of the strongest parts of the book, and a fair amount of the church stuff makes less sense if it isn't included.

 

[Mark CMG]

One of my top ten books from Era 3.XE/d20. I don't know that this needs to be redone nor that it is really possible. I'm fairly certain that buying the original would be useful enough for any 5E GM who wanted to expand their homebrew setting in religious ways.

 

[mach1.9pants]

However I think that an updated book, with more deities & improvements and the little crunch (feats domains etc) changed to 5E is great. There are a lot of us that don't have this book and have no easy way of getting a copy. Might even be colour!