Religion that is basically portrayed as a clubhouse for a particular super powerful dude is objectively inferior to religion that attempts to explain the world within the setting.
Debate this claim and justify your shitty religions if you dare, shitGMs.
The super powerful dudes made the universe and set up club houses to stroke their ego and maintain their super powerful dude status.
Be careful. This thread might draw out that one user who flips his shit over this topic.
On the topic; I agree. I like to blend the two in high-fantasy campaigns. Deities exist to satisfy natural phenomena, but they're willing to lend aid to devout followers. In low-fantasy, it's explanations for natural phenomena every time. Miracles are rare to the point of legend. Of course, the most important part is making sure that the religion makes sense for the culture that adheres to it.
I wholeheartedly concur
Nothing worse than gods being treated like catalog pieces
Mythology is the collective dream of a people, it both shapes and explains the world
Cultural mores, traditions, magic, and social structure are bound up within myth
Why does every religion within a setting have to be of a single type? Why is there only ever one pantheon, or one monotheistic religion with nothing else, or just spiritualism?
Theological consistency
Even the Romans weren't dumb enough to say "Every mythology is 100% true"
It was more like "their gods are just our gods with funny names"
In east asia they widely synchronized mythologies, but they made the pieces fit for internal consistency
Whether Buddha was merely a foreign immortal, or the nature gods were manifestations of bodhisattavas, or the king of the gods/first being was more like a vague metaphysical idea than a personal deity
You're not me, which means that my work is progressing in a positive sense, byt here's the thing: these two
absolute chucklefucks aren't getting the point.
Godliness is a title conferred upon something by the religious. Religions precede divinity. Mythology is a minor, pop diversion of religion. It comes somewhere between, at the most generous, music and food in its importance to culture.
Cosmology, theology, philosophy - these are the foundations of religion, not fucking "gods", who come long after the axiomatic assertions of the faithful, or shitty, trite "mythology" which is effectively divine fanfiction.
To make a believable world, it is necessary to populate it with believable people, and believable people DO NOT form fanclubs for their gods - they CREATE gods that match the fundamental beliefs they have about reality, and before they even do that, they create RELIGION.
One let's me think about god.
The other let's me fight him.
Which is better?
Well that of course depends on whether the world that we're building has active deities or inactive dieties. If the gods had a very real hand in shaping the world and guiding mankind through visions, boons, angels and prophesy, then wouldn't it mean that the culture is instead a reflection of the godhoods that acted upon it?
Fight me IRL faggot
Religion emerges from animism and stories originally meant to explain take on deeper meanings as time passes
Go suck off Campbell
I hate settings where there is a definite cosmology. I like settings where gods are real, or rather real entities are worshipped as gods.
That's not at all true in World of Darkness.
These things you call gods are not gods by nature. They are just powerful beings.
Godliness is a title, an approximate one, granted by the religious, and it far more frequently has nothing to do with power than anything to do with it.
In any case, there is no difference between a setting with "active gods" and "inactive gods" because "god" is just a vehicle to espouse a more fundamental truth about reality.
In many popular settings, especially Forgotten Realms (the default and most produced one for D&D5) the gods are a very real thing. Each one is an individual- whether a primordial that survived and helped the gods like Kossuth or a mortal that ascended like Myrkul or Mystra or Cyric or many others- that has been given a mantle of power and jurisdiction over certain domains by Ao, the overgod. Mantles, powers, domains, and godhood have been transferred many times, though a defining thread seems to be that if people still worship a god they will empower it, even if it was killed and can only return as a shadow of its former self with only a slimmer of its earlier portfolios.
For these settings, religion and philosophy regarding the gods is starkly different from our own world, which lacks the big guys channeling power into widespread clerics/paladins or occasionally walking the world in corporeal form. In our world and settings with similarly "inactive gods", they can be considered part of philosophy. But when one directly tells you what they want and do and gives you the power to heal or shoot hellfire at who they want you to, you can't argue much. Some might believe that the gods are just glorified maguses and don't deserve treatment as all powerful beings, and many monastic or psionic philosophies teach personal inner power to emulate that divinity, but that doesn't stop the gods from being there.
I enjoy Eberron's religions a lot. Not everything is absolutely clear or set in stone, divine casting can be learned and practiced without apparent "permission" or "approval" to a god's earthly doctrines, and there are several religions that teach vastly different things about the world formed anywhere from the ancient past to the influence of (relatively) modern parties. In settings with "uncertain" divinity, you can ascribe gods that serve purposes in the world instead of the other way round.
>Posts worst goddess
That's not Aqua.
what kind of religion/culture might develop if people figured out the concept of entropy?
Second worse then, but Aqua isn't a nep.
Gods in my setting didn't make the world. When people get details wrong, or think the gods are responsible for the sun, moon, etc. Some good gods may speak to a prophet and set them right, others might use it as a means to increase the devotion to them and thus their own divine power.
Because of this, very few religions in my setting have creation myths, maybe worship gods for sweet afterlife perks or for their divine blessings to aid them in their daily life.
>Your face when your setting boils down to a series of excuses for the PCs to murderhobo increasingly bigger things
In a setting I'm working on, the peoples of a particular nation (the Balkins/Turkey of this world) are the only strongly religious groups, because there are a bunch of demon gods that sleep under the earth inside this nation, making it impossible for people to lie, no one has nightmares, sometimes illness, disease and death are visibly and obviously removed from the situation, and the 'darkness' is much safer than in any other part of the world.
They tend to be intensely xenophobic, and the only ones who leave the nation are though who have been born directly under the sign of these gods, thus giving them magic.
So in this case, the religion is less about making a clubhouse for superdudes as it is a cargo cult for people living in this geographic region trying to have control over what amounts to forces of nature.
What do you do when you defeat him? Roll up a new character to defeat your old one?
I don't know, I've never done it. That would be quite cool though.
Found a nation I think?
The god/dess of renewal or rebirth.
Idiot, plain and simple.
Your time will come, heathen degenerate.
Lonely heart worst goddess
Beru best goddess
fite me
Disgusting pederast, Noire is the One True Goddess, not a loli hag bitch.
Praise Lastation, Nowaru Ackbar
I mean
Some gods are just gigantic animals who guard a particular forest/river and are more difficult to kill than normal
If being a god is about powerlevels then the average wizard is a god
My point is the opposite of that. Godliness has nothing to do with power. If you make a setting where some jackass creates reality, that jackass is not automatically a god. Having unlimited power does not make you a god. Being worshiped as god makes you a god, and that condition is only arrived at after people have constructed a view of reality which posits that gods exist at all.
I've always liked this guy. The Dungeoneer #24, Dec '80/Jan '81.
>Fire God by Scott Zeppa
>No. Appearing...1
>AC...2
>Hit Dice...3+1
>Align...CE
>HP...20
>Fire God can only be hit by magical weapons. Attacker(s) must withdraw after four melee rounds for one round unless the attacker takes [a] Potion of Fire Resistance or wields a Sword of Cold. If not, the attacker must wait the one round before he/she may return to combat. The Fire God has a pet Hell Hound.
And you thought Lolth was weak with her sixty-six hit points, huh? This guy's sword & sorcery as all fuck.
Fuck off deendee-rone.
You're twisting the definition of "God" to fit your assertion that "Godliness" is a prerequisite.
Or are you saying that "Creator" and "God" need to be considered mutually exclusive until that Creator gets some sort of following in the form of a religion?
>loli hag bitch
Good thing Vert is the opposite then.
Noire pleases old men for shares.
Being a "creator" is completely and totally unrelated to the quality of divinity/godliness.
I must have subconsciously misread that to Blanc because I can't imagine anyone actually praises that rotten, perverted sow, Vert. She is a worthless trash goddess, unfit to even have her own game or candidate.
Noire is a cute, perfect, smart, hard working goddess with a good little sister and a stable, prosperous nation.
Noire is the One True Goddess
Praise Lastation
Nowaru Ackbar
So God is not someone who creates, God is only someone who is recognized as a God?
Steve who lives down the road is a God if enough people say "Sure, Steve's a God".
I feel like that's a flawed way of looking at it, especially since within our lexicon, a God is almost always an ultimate creator, or someone with absolute dominion over one certain thing or concept.
Steve, within normal frames of looking at it, is not a God, Steve is a cult leader. He ostensibly has no true dominion or power over anyone beyond everyone listening to what he has to say.
>god is not someone who creates...
Correct. Steve may well be a god. The demiurgic creature responsible for our mortal torment and the existence of physical reality is not a god. That British prince is a god, whatever is responsible for taking care of you when you die probably isn't.
Godliness is only associated with "ultimate power" because of kikery. In reality an ultimately powerful being is highly unlikely to be a god, because it is obscured and associated with and by all the dark materialist bullshit we put up with. Gods are specters, spooks, and such, because they are painted into being by the faithful. A living specimen can come close to that ideal, he can wear the mask for them, but regardless his power or knowledge, he is not god, just a creature which might be called that way.
I mean, if we want to go full relativist, sure. I agree with what you're saying. Anything is a God if enough people, or a majority within a culture "elects" it. The absolute truth will more than likely never be known until we breath our last, and we wind up wherever we wind up, probably confused and alone.
I was just trying to normalize the frame of reference to the point where we can answer the question; If user wants to make a "God", but no one in his world knows about it, is user wrong for calling it God?
And in my opinion he's not committing that huge of a crime, the language conveys what the language is trying to convey.
Yes he's both wrong and criminally so.
Devise first the cosmology, then the religion, then the culture, and then you can paint in a god.
If he wishes simply to have powerful creatures which claim the title, fine, but it's both boring and inconsequential to the formation of sensible religions in competition to that dreadfully bland cult.
The problem with that is not all worlds will work in the same way as ours does.
If doing "first the cosmology" includes an incredibly powerful, all-encompassing being who created everything, calling that god makes sense.
If no one knows the truth of that "first cosmology", then religion, culture, and their personal gods will all spring up naturally.
I mean, technically you could call it something silly like "The All-Being", or whatever, but wouldn't you be pitching just as much of a fit if Christianity / Judaism etc. called their gods "All-Beings"? It's all about what you're assigning to the word, rather than the effectiveness of the language itself.
>calling that god makes sense
No, that thing is just a powerful creator, it is not a god. Gods are created after the mind works out a need for them.
Yeah, that does sound right now that I think about it. You can't really have it called God if no one is worshiping it. I get what you're saying.
I also think it's a distinction not many people are interested in making, when they do their worldbuilding exercises it's easier to simply say "alright, here's god, let's go from here" without really considering what it means to be considered "god".
That's dumb. You're dumb.
He's a dude with three hit dice, a dog, and the ability to make fire! What's not to love? He could be beaten by a determined party of starting characters, if they felt like it.
Who says that gods walking the earth need to be powerful and not just, well, "one of us"? This shit's more of the "dude has magical powers, clearly he must be worshiped" variety.
Not everyone needs to be Lord Dunsany, y'know. Sometimes you can throw weird shit at the wall and see what sticks. Let the party find a god sitting in their temple in a village that worships them, and let them slay the fucker if that's their wish. Or maybe the Pharaoh just gives them a divine quest. I dunno, it's fun to think about.
My game has ended up by a lot of improbable chance being about a kid growing up to become God while the PCs essentially build their own myth to pave the way to the throne. I already explained how the setting came into existence to them, and it ended up this one is taking a pseudo-Norse bent and about to explain how a new world will be born from it. So I guess both? I dunno.
Bump for continued discussion of kami and religion and why your setting's religions suck
Normal, mundane humans in real life sometimes create fanatical cults of personality around themselves. Where independently-existent spiritual entities with agendas that drive them to interact with human society exist, shouldn't they have the capacity to be at least as good at that sort of thing?
>objectively inferior
>objectively
>objective anything on a topic as absolutely unfalsifiable, unprovable, and personal as religion
>I am too dumb to understand the difference between what makes an interesting world building exercise and what makes a glorified fanclub
It sounds like I've missed something interesting; would someone mind pointing me towards it?
KANAKP give me the snack.
The central religion of my game worship what is basically super Sayian jesus
Ah, it's either the person I mentioned or an impersonator. Of course, you're still too busy spouting your opinions to pay any attention to what you are responding to. You are also still operating under a shit ton of assumptions about the opinions and thoughts held by those you are insulting. You need to calm down, recognise your failings, and realise that you are not the smartest person in the thread. Don't try name dropping academics who write on this topic. You can't simply co-opt their ideas and expect anyone to really consider you a worthwhile source. Yes, I remember you trying that in the past. It didn't impress me then, and it won't now.
If you humble yourself, then you might be worth the effort it would take me to truly improve you. Everything I've mentioned here are just the very basics you would need. Imagine how I could improve you if we went beyond the basics. It would be wise of you to take this opportunity. Any more ad hominem and I will ignore you as I do all other trolls.
*tips fedora*
What about a religion that does not 'attempt' to explain the world in the setting because it objectively is the world? Or rather, the cosmology is already understood and the religion is literally the codex of natural laws upheld by spirits of nature?
>Noire is a cute, perfect-
But she's still flat. Give her a couple years, even Blanc might be less flat than your goddess. Honestly, how can she even call herself a woman with such pitiful mounds?
I've done pretty much all the variants for religions in settings that I can think of. I've had settings where the gods were known things that maintained their own following because mortal worship grants them power. I've done settings where people try to explain the world with god's, when no such gods existed but the cleric's and Paladins were able to manifest power through sheer willpower, mistake as power granted by the divine. I've done settings where people have tried to explain the world with god's, who actually do exist but humanity has bits and pieces of it wrong (such as worshipping two gods who actually are just the same god at different times of the seasons). And I've also done settings that use the previous variations but with the adage that all the gods people normally worship were created by some even greater overgod that's so vast and unknowable that he's a mystery unto himself, which scholars and theologians alike have been trying to understand for centuries and even the lower gods barely know anything about.
I think my favorite though was the setting where there was only one Overgod, but he presented himself in various forms, being worshipped as multiple different and sometimes opposed gods. The reason? Nobody knows, what few people actually know there's just one Overgod either go insane, or outright disappear. He has -some- kind of purpose, setting humanity up with various teachings and sometimes pitting them against each other. We just don't know what that plan is, or how close it is to fruition. Or what will happen when said plans finally do come to fruition.
This is only the status quo in high fantasy setting where gods are very obviously involved in things, since they're trying to emulate Greek Mythology. Most settings for DnD are high fantasy.
Have your tried not playing DnD?
I agree, but it depends on the setting.
In a low fantasy world then they should be like a real religion and set down vague rules and try to explain the world.
However, making it a fanclub for a powerful dude makes way more sense when the gods are real, physical beings that their worshippers can gather around. There's no point in explaining the creation of the world the war god is actually present to declare that he didn't create the world so go worship his sister the creation goddess if that's your deal. Some settings do have gods that intervene and are very direct so with absolute proof and a personality attached to the god then the clubhouse concept is justified.
Who seeks control o'er the eternal ring
>Religion that is basically portrayed as a clubhouse for a particular super powerful dude
I actually want to play such a thing now.
>Aqua's temple is a lavish, beautifully decorated building
>Except for the crude, wooden sign nailed to the door that reads "Aqua's Klub House. No Axis Cult or cowtits allowed"
>Demands sacrifices from her followers in the form of chips, fried chicken and shitty German export-only lager
>Every year there's a "hot stud" festival that includes such sacred sports as naked wrestling (muscular men only)
>Disobedient members and apostates are punished by public roasting (figuratively)
>Crusades are declared regularly, but they're just panty raids and/or egging raids on Axis Cult temples
>"Aqua wills it" is not an expression of fanaticism, but more acceptance of Aqua's inevitably stupid whims
>Aqua claims to be all-knowing and her followers routinely ask her for advice, but she can barely do basic math