How do you treat religion in your games?

Ted Peterson, m8. MK, Peterson, and Khulmann are TES. Mostly Khulmann.

Kirkbride was a conceptual madman, it was a team sure but he's got the most meme/staying power.

Peterson is good. But, seriously, and I'm not trying to diminish what he wrote at all, but it's mostly in-universe fiction. If Kurt and MK didn't join in and totally overhaul the theological, metaphysical and historical content of the universe, no one here or anywhere would care or talk about any of the other writers of the series.

Not that I really disagree.

Nah, you guys are just fetchering casu-els too. Many important and very dank lores in Morrowind was written also by Douglas Goodall and Ken Rolston.

This, but gods are sufficiently advanced aliens.

Wow, that God is a huge asshole for not warning that it's just some naming difference.

Yeah, but none of it has much relevance outside of the game Morrowind. The concepts that MK wrote extend far beyond that. Even then, it's building off the of the base that only exists because MK came and said "let's totally change everything."

>dank

Why? Gods are just a hoax made by secret world government consisting of wizards.
Why do you think War Of Skies among "gods" resulting in Zumar's death started right after wizardry was outlawed in Zumarheim?

Bulmag, god of squares was actually 3 gnome wizards in a trenchcoat!

Not really. In my setting gods actually age and need to be replaced. The reason why there are different names for the same God is because eventually they forget thier original name and just rename themselves. Then they forget that name and so on. My campaign is the PCS trying to replace the gods

Gods are immensely powerful wizards, who decided they'd become gods themselves. Nobody knows if there were any "real" gods at some point.
Their followers do not know, that their gods are really humans.

You're right about MK being most important force in what made Morrowind so great, but you have to admit that even MK himself started to decline after Morrowind and now he blatantly sucks to state the ugly truth.

Thing is that Morrowind itself was magical and it's actually just a fluke that it became so good. There will never be another Morrowind and it was more of a product of it's circumstances and sheer pure luck rather than skills of it's developers. This is hardest "redpill" (lol) of TES/Bethesda to swallow.

Well, you're right about how Morrowind turned out, but it wasn't an accident though it certainly was the result of very specific circumstances. I disagree about MK declining. What he wrote for Oblivion is, on a technical level, better than anything in Morrowind (by anyone).

I meant mainly post-Oblivion stuff culminating into C0DA that reads like a bad fanfic. Although, I admit that C0DA sucks partly because it's supposed to be a comic rather than a written story.

Song of Pelinal and Remanada are good though. Really sad that MK never released Shonni Etta.

I don't personally mind C0DA (I mean, I like it), and I don't think it's really representative of his work today as a whole, not enough to say he's worse at writing now than he previously was.

At least we have excerpts. Stuff like Lament for Pelinal, too.

Gods are mysterious forces that are barely understood by their followers and never actually do anything in the mortal realm themselves. Religions are ultimately human organizations and the top priest doesn't inherently have a direct line to the god although more often than not he is clearly blessed. The best people can hope for is an omen in form of a dream or strange hallucination, or a visitation from the gods' immortal agents. That almost never happens outside of most pivotal events, and these beings remain mysterious and don't blab about things unrelated to their direct purpose.

There are certain Gods of Creation and Reality, but almost no one knows about them since the Creator God forbid the other Reality Gods from accepting worship or setting themselves up as Gods.

There are various Racial and Ethnic Gods. Some have divine power, others are just nature spirits, and some aren't real, but these guys are generally unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The ones with actual divine power will generally, by their own existence, be phased out of the material universe after a certain amount of time.

Then there's this one entity, that is essentially raw divine power left to fester in spite and bitterness, that ends up cannibilizing itself to create demons and Not!Behelits and things

Then, during a point when some ancient empire tried to fedora the universe away, a tear was briefly opened in the viel of reality, and there's these 3 eldritch entities trying to stick their fingers into everything.

Nearly all of these things are then interpreted and believed in vastly different way across different religions and ethnicities.

The spiritual plane contains Dominions - places that are formed and shaped by the beliefs and traditions of various cultures.

Most people find it necessary to imagine someone or something in charge of the higher realms. So most dominions are ruled by deities.

These gods have great power within their dominion - only thing they cannot do is change its nature as defined by mortal belief. They cannot act outside the dominion, except to restrict mortals from drawing power from it.

Most have more than a few servants, from both the spiritual and mortal planes. Divining or communing their will, asking for guidance and so on. Through these, their will is done.

As faith defines its gods, religions are generally "right" about their afterlife and deities. But have no say on those of other religions.

There are also the Forgotten. Dominions whose mortal counterparts have died or switched to another faith. Partially faded away, they are bad places to go to.

I've always liked the egregore/thought-form explanation.

On the desert wastes of one of the planets in my game sits a large metal structure. According to a theory advocated by a local religious group it is a guidestone left behind by ancient aliens to guide humanity to the next step in its evolution. According to another theory it is just a particularly large fusion generator built by a more advanced neighboring world. The reasons for this theory include: the object is a fusion generator, the parts have the manufacturer's logo stamped on them and a receipt for the sale of such a generator can be found in the archives of the neighboring world. However, because the science is still out there, the schools of the planet teach both theories and let the students make their own conclusions.

There are different variations on myths regarding the creation of the world, if that's what you mean. Some of those may even be close to the truth, but it's hard to be certain. Same goes for afterlife, since only extremely powerful necromancers can actually summon souls from beyond the veil with their memories intact, or travel beyond the veil and then back.

As for gods specifically, there are two kinds of gods: One class of gods is born of faith and ritual. These tend to be extremely powerful, but bound to specific area: generally the village/town that gave them birth and its immediate surroundings(though some have more reach than others and certain rites can create temples for them outside this area). There are also wizards who achieved immortality and sometime after centuries of existence became more than(and less than) human.

As for different types of gods, there are quite a lot. There is said to be a creator god, but interpretations of their nature will make them sound like anything from a merciful new testament God to a blind idiot Azathoth. Below the Creator are the various Authorities, whose titles differ depending on the terminology being used. Should the Creator be recognized as "King", they would be called the "Princes".

The Creator rarely intervenes directly, making the Authorities the closest thing to a direct expression of their will that one is likely to even notice. These beings are all on the level of a Demiurge and are rarely worshiped directly, as they have no interest in that. They do show favor to some, and it is possible to align yourself to the interests of a specific Authority. Their role is mostly to enforce the rules by which all are bound.

Of them all, the Authority over Evil is probably the most familiar and personable. The easiest to summon and contact, the most prone to interfering on a whim, and most mortal in habits and mannerisms. To "Evil" is granted free reign over the mortal and lower realms. Much of what is known of magic has trickled down from their teachings.

Then you have the rest of the gods, which is literally anything powerful enough to hold and defend that title.

I like to do a sort of comic book cosmology
You have the All Powerful Creator that is never seen ever
Then the Abstracts that represent universal constants that aren't widely known much less worshiped
Then the Anthropomorphic Personifications that represent lesser ideas Think the Endless from DC/Vertigo
Then the Gods that while extremely powerful compared to mortals aren't close to being the biggest kid on the playground
Anything below gods are spirits and minor elementals though they can reach godlike levels depending on the circumstances

Mortals tend to worship spirits or gods and don't really know of the higher levels outside a few sects and exceptional individuals

I liked his vague bits for the Knights of the Nine, but not his actual explanations of what they mean. Fucking gay crystal laser robots from the future.

I generally try to go the route that the Gods are there, they are present, but kinda stand offish dicks that only really notice you when you start to do things of note. Your average joe priest/cleric isn't going to get shit, but if you do something like, slaughter a dozen demons or worshipers of the opposing religion/ideas?

They'll maybe notice and take note. Maybe start answering prayers, even. Blessings.

This seems to work, my players seem to like it, and as a result of it, the average priest/cleric is pretty much a zealot, which adds some tension when you go dicking off near their temples if you're not the same God.

I dunno, i just rolled with it, and it seems to have worked lol.

There are 2 major world religions and dozens of smaller ones. Most of the smaller ones are branched off sects of the major ones.

Roughly 60% of the world's population follow the same original deity, but through a number of profits/saints/etc. Because the game I am running has characters who can be powered by divine sources most divine sources are in fact saints. Some spirits are known to multiple religions by different names, and these differing opinions cause debate.

It's roughly every 800 or so years that a new prophet comes along and starts an upheaval. it's a grand cycle turning over. One can see the cycles several hundred years on by civilization is prone to losing a lot of information during great wars.

I study classics, so cult is really prominent in my settings.
I want to branch out from the Greek world, though, and find out more about how other ancient cultures handled cult, especially among commoners.

I've also always been confused by whether or not you could belong to more than one cult. I've just never looked into it.
I would assume so? Hmmm.

This nigga gets it. It's just so much easier to make interesting cultures if you don't have to worry too hard about muh structured interconnecting cosmology (which is also fine, I just prefer it to feel organic).

I also like how weird TES gets, OP.

There's a few differnet faiths in the main area in the setting I'm working on.

Primal spirits, totems that embody traits found across a few animals for example the Tenacity spirit covers bears, boars, badgers etc.
Old style gods Not-Grecoroman and Not-Norse mainly
A religion with a lot of saints that I'm thinking is going to be either monotheistic or a very small divine family, Medieval catholicism, some Menoth, and some Dark Souls influence, its supercession of the Not-norse faith in the middle of not-europe caused a resurgence in the spirits since humans were more inward looking and civilization building not going out into the wilds and challenging them.

There's also some Fiends which are a grab bag of my favorites from DnD, Ninja Gaiden, TES etc.

In my setting spirits are real and gods are just the most powerful spirits in a given area in the same way a king is the most powerful person in a place.

The spirit world is a reflection of the mortal world so if you can get a bunch of people to act/think/live/practice a certain way in the physical world, the spiritual equivalent comes to reflect it.

So gods that promote happiness, purity, and all that, can chill in their spirit homes made of marble and jewels estate with golden roads and fountains of wine and if you want to have a bloodsport orgyhall full of blood and skulls then you had better start convincing the local mortals to believe in and do a lot more killing and raping. And gods that like nature and stuff tend to have domains that are just fantastic natural vistas full of whatever crazy plants and animals they want.

So in a sense all cosmologies are true because they are shaped by both the gods and the culture of the people who live there.