Do you have diverse religions in your setting...

I don't even bother dancing around it.
If you put in the full caste of Christianity, and the millions of offshoots it has, it can be amazingly diverse.

Not really. There's more interesting things to be done in fantasy than "The Church hates The Other Church!"

That's actually really interesting.
Probably the case due to the devs limited understanding of Christianity, what with them being Japanese and all.

>it's far more accurate to describe it as Animism/Shinto
It's made in Japan, so that's a given.

Trying to do so. I've got not!Catholicism with a bigger emphasis on saints (clerics usually have a patron saint instead of Big G as the immediate source of their powers), of course, but I'm trying to be more creative with some things. For instance, there's a heretical sect that insists the "saints" were actually people who ascended to godhood through magic and enlightenment, so where the mainstream church is suspicious of magic, the heretics outright revere it. The pagan "pantheons" are mostly made up of fey and other extremely powerful entities that aren't D&D-style gods, so their "clerics" are actually druids or warlocks. There are some exceptions, as proper (though less powerful than Big G by far) gods do exist.

Also, the vaguely Norse guys revere lycanthropy as a gift from the gods (it literally is, for a given definition of gift) and the faithful who are blessed with it have control over it. I thought it would be fun to have a society that heartily approves of being a werecreature.

I highly doubt that, the gothic western apperance is window dressing especially when you consider there is no emphasis on a Captial G God. The Church of the Healing Blood is anything but a pale imitation of monotheism.

Interesting. I have a few ideas of religions in my setting that have set the tone of fascination for me.

One of them is a religion formed by joining two different religions under one. This came to be as the King from the costal regions, with the help of his mainland wife from a friendly tribe basically set out to join the two and set down rules Naicia style for it. There are still groups who practice the old ways but they are harassed and often targeted by Church Paladins.

Another is an all female religion where there are two layers of the cult; The public facing one which takes in orphaned girls and trains and educates them and then inner cult that worships the a moon goddess based on the Maiden/Mother/Crone in wiccan. They don't prostelyze but often wind up being respected and sought after tutors and nannies for wealthy sorts.

I love how he rationalizes his. Violent actions by saying he is the hand of god, that god needs a mortal character to enact his will, and the fact he has justification from the bible ("happy are those that seize your infants..."/ jesus in the temple) is a big plus.

i've been building my world for years and playing in it almost as long
i took the time to make several pantheons ahead of time, get the basic ideas down, then if my players stray close to interacting with a religion, i flesh that given pantheon out.
it has worked well, my pantheons are far more diverse and described than, say, forgotten realms. but, the world i created is far more detailed than forgotten realms and is larger. pantheons include everything from minor spirits of the land up to greater gods in some cases.

My gm is currently running his own written campaign in ad&d 2e, and if we ever run into a slowdown in the plot, he falls back on religious shenanigans. For the most part it's regular d&d gods but he added some fluff, the main religious focus is on the two players that follow loviatar; one example of fluff is all members of the order wear the exact same regalia, so you have no idea how important the person you are talking to is.

He's implied to be a prophet killed by (not) Romans and somehow by miracle survives. He then uses his ultra-charismatic demeanor to lead a tribe to the land of Zion, and (depending on player choices) succeeds in murdering fucking everyone who puts up resistance. It is literally the Book of Joshua or a quench of Jesus if you play nice. It is so amazing, clever, and remarkably subtle that I staunchly doubt any game will ever surpass it.

I always wanted to have the exact same religions in a completely fantasy world.
Having Christianity, Jesus, Islam, Muhamed, etc but in a full fantasy world, with Elves, Lizardmen, etc.

If only for catholic lizard men praying to a crucified raptor jesus

Syncretic religions are always fun, I've thought about trying to work one into my setting as well.

One bit that I forgot to include was the Aztec-inspired one. The basic premise is that the head of the pantheon is a human god-king, and all the infamous human sacrifice? They're to empower him to keep the other "gods" of the pantheon from going nuts. At some point in ancient history, a group of sorcerers committed ritual suicide to empower one of their number sufficiently to stop the powerful demons rampaging around the jungle. The result was this god-king fellow, who beat the shit out of the demons so hard that he was able to overpower their very wills, and, being unable to permanently kill them, he instead "recruited" them into the pantheon. So long as the blood of sorcerers and mighty warriors flows, he has the power to keep them in their semi-benevolent, compliant state, but if the sacrifices stop...

I've been working on my religions as well, and I decided one of the cultures of my world worships a pantheon that is, in reality, one god exhibiting his many facets and personalities. He does this as he flails screaming through space following getting shit on by a cosmic horror. He's basically in pieces, and shifting in and out of reality at random.

In the stting I'm currently running ther isi the Not! catholic church in which saints play a major role. they have a pretty stritc code of conduct and don't belive in holy pardon in life, only when killed in a holy maner does your soul goes back to god.
In palarel there is also a crumbling empire that used to belive in a god but they managed to kill it with magic, so they now revere people that have ascended through magic and themselves as they are part of the greatest empire that ever was.

Human sacrifice is a component the religion I mentioned as well. The mainland people are farmers and herders but during times of drought or affliction affecting their flocks they believe human sacrifice is needed to appeach their god.

However, they would try to avoid sacrificing their own by occasionally raiding the coastal tribes. This went back and forth until the Coastal tribes were united and the King launched his unification war on the mainlanders. He acquired the help of a friendly mainland tribe and secured their help through marriage but through them also managed to merge the two religions and try to strip away the human sacrifice bits coupled with selectively killing various shamen of the enemy tribes who did not submit to the reforms.

In game terms, the religious figures for the mainlanders were druids and they were being forcibly converted to clerics essentially.

I feel you. I tried playing a character whose personal beliefs were more like the ancient Canaanites, and then my GM when presenting things from his background made it more and more clear he thought I was playing a viking. It killed me on the inside.

That's one of my favorite things about dark souls/bloodborne. Western architecture and fantasy/horror set in a world with metaphysical themes (or in the healing churches case, interpretations) derived primarily from a very Japanese mindset is just a good combination for interesting world building.

I see a whole lot of games that following the polytheist route, with pantheons of gods.

I've always wondered what it would be like if there was just one main monotheistic religion, and other gods are considered by the main religion akin to demons and their followers as cultists.

I think that would be a pretty interesting way of playing religion in a game.

Have any of you done this in your games?

I love the hardcore catholic imagery of Warhammer and Warhammer 40k so I try encapsulate that.

You could go the Banestorm route and import all the real world religions. In that setting, a bunch of people from the middle ages were magically teleported to a standard fantasy world with elves, dwarves, and orcs. It's a pretty good low fantasy setting.

I base my religions on the Dharmic faiths

The lizardfolk have Taoist philosophy represented by black and white dragons, and have long tired of explaining that one cannot exist without the other. This, combined with immigration, has lead to the fracturing of their great state between Traditionalists who worship both equally, and splinter groups who demonize one and elevate the other.

The not!asian country, which was raided heavily by the lizardfolk, has a mash-up of catholocism and animism revolving around the four elements (salamanders as fire, fish as water, etc.) where all spirits come from the death of a greater god-martyr. Their antagonistic force is represented by a black dragon.

Dwarves have a very Greek-esque 'fallible gods' thing going on. According to myth, the original four dwarves were born immaculately from stone. Water is considered a force of evil and natural disruption - which might explain the dwarves' inherent distrust of humans and lizardfolk, who both arrived via ships. Dwarves are very insular, so not a lot of contamination.

The human pantheon has four main gods, with eight 'secondaries'. The primary gods are often related to natural parts of the world; warmth of light, winds that blow ships and turn windmills, rainfall, and fertile earth. The four elements.

The elven religion is a mashup of wiccan and classic lovecraft, where the gods are left most nameless. All-are-one, one-is-all. Supposedly, the gods are ally dying out in an epic tale that mirrors the death chapter of the not!asian's central deity. One of the few named gods has a name that, with a few syllables slurred, becomes the name of the grandfather figure of the human pantheon. Both of these gods were represented by aged hunters who traveled with a wolf companion.

Which may or may not be the same wolf who ate his way to godhood (and the size of a small mountain) and now lays dying somewhere in the mountains, 'blessing' pilgrims with lycanthropy to leave him the fuck alone so he can die in peace.

I really wish monotheism was done more in fantasy without the god being some almost lovecraftian evil or some weird cult.

muh dick

I'm starting to view people that say fedora this and that are like aggressive homophobes. They really want the cock. You really want that fedora.

>Canaanites
Who?

9th century but with magic, go!
How will different religions explain holy "magic" working when other religions do it?

Dwarves and Elves have pantheons of physical gods; why anyone who's neither a dwarf nor an elf would worship them is anyone's guess.

Goblins have scientology-like religion that's primarily concerned with making money from the gullible believers. Of course they're trying very hard to convert everyone, even if they aren't particularly pious themselves.

Gnomes created their god because they were jealous of other races who had legitimate religions. It's basically an extremely powerful Hactar-like computer that the gnomes have lost control of.

Humans have a fairly young monotheistic religion and a bunch of older religions still surviving with considerably weakened gods. Religious conflicts are still fairly common. Nobody goes to war because of religion, but you can be denied service or mistreated based on your faith.

Panotti are just atheists; not that they deny the existence of gods, they just don't understand why anyone would bother with worshipping them.

Orcs are basically Hindus: they worship every god they know of. Why not? The more gods you pray to, the higher the chances that at least one of them will listen to you.

Blemmyes have a Führer-like personality cult centred around their greatest hero. He's not actually a god, and they don't call this personality cult a religion, but that's what it is for all intents and purposes.

Arimaspi worship the world's original creator, who is pretty much a Lovecraftian Elder God. Their existence is a permanent jihad against everyone.

I'm , and to a large degree that's what my setting is. While there are proper gods in the Norse or Greek sense, there are few of them and most of them are viewed as traitors to Big G God who wanted to usurp dominion over Creation. The chief of these is the fallen goddess of nature, who in a fit of rage and envy was responsible for creating the beastmen to be an incessant thorn in the side of civilization. As a result, druids are generally hunted down with extreme prejudice by the church, though they still attempt to evangelize among the beastmen.

The rest of the pantheons are almost entirely fey, dragons, devils, demons and so forth. Enormously, wildly powerful beings that are still far from being actual gods. I've always thought that was a neat concept - a good explanation for pagan pantheons without raising too many metaphysical questions.

A catch-all term for the pagans that used to inhabit Israel in ancient times. Their religions involved the practice infant immolation, sacred prostitution, and a belief that rain was a fertility god's semen, among other things.

> Blemmyes

Patrician taste.

You'd think they'd have gotten the message of "pack up and leave" when God sent SWARMS OF HORNETS ahead of the Israelite army. Anyone who stayed obviously had some kind of death wish.

youtube.com/watch?v=glP-gH_n3Yc

It's actually something I have a hard time with.
So I'm trying to do better and elaborate the kind of beliefs my not-nerubian spiderfolk could have. They come from solitary giant spiders that only come together into an empire by force and magic (except some social spiders who are the basis of said empire), many remained feral or in small communities and didn't joined.
I got this for now:
> Some sort of "traditional" beliefs from before the empire foundation, maybe some sort of shamanism
But I don't know shit about shamanism.
It should have many variations through two axis: an "old ways" more individualistic variation vs a modern "imperial approved" version, and variations among the numerous subspecies.

One of the object of those beliefs is moulting, symbolising change of life and time. Some old legal customs may count time in moultings (you may be forgiven some minor offences when you're "born anew"). Some believe old molted exoskeletons should be burned to truly go on in life, some superstitions involve your past life haunting you in the empty shell of your past molts (and some form of necromancy actually give credibility to such beliefs). Others actually use molted exoskeletons as material: social spiders use it as a construction materials, some warrior subcultures use moult-armours or weapons, or tools. Maybe I could get some sort of ancestors cults through it?
May add some Aztec-like cyclic cosmology, where the world itself molt anew.

Traditional customs may also revere non sapient giant spiders, for being "pure", untouched by the taint of civilisation, still living in an Eden garden of sort. Some titanic spiders are basically living gods, being fed alive to them may be an usual execution method or reserved only for the most honoured convicts, or maybe even a way of honourable suicide. Maybe all of this depending on the ceremonial.

> An more recent "old god" cult, sinister but somehow unifying.
For another time.

That's according to the old testament, Hebrew may actually have been Canaanite themselves.

We have the Church of Khrone.

He demands eternal combat and the blood of non believers to be slain in his sacred scrolls, but that's just a misinterpretation; it's actually a religion of peace you see.

Episode IV: The Fedora Strikes Back

In my setting there are 4 main religions. 2 are different interpretations of the same fundamental truth, the other two are more "local" in their truth.

Sakkra (Lizard folk from not- Morocco/ Mediterranean) and humans of the Western islands view celestial bodies as Gods of law and judgement. Their light creating order where there would be chaos. The sun is the original and one true God, where the stars are his children, born to watch over the endless worlds where his gaze cannot reach. The two moons are broken gods that maintain a more twisted version of order. One can twist nature into a fae like interpretation. Brutal and treacherous, yet beautiful.

The other moon creates the shadows of true life. Undead, animated objects, twisted creatures that are a mockery of true order. Neither is malicious, just a broken reflection of the will of the Gods.

Unlike demons and the unknowable reaches beyond dark space, these creations do not burn in the light. Demons left without a host or anchor fry even in star light.

The Rahkshasa (four armed cat people from not-India) and humans in their lands have a similar religion. They think all gods are equal, that the sun is just the closest, and is therefore stronger. Where the Western interpretation puts emphasis on the sun and an individual's patron God, the Eastern version has most people venerating hundreds of gods.

In my setting people are aware of several gods, but only feel thankful towards one.

I always imagined EP still has some strong humanistic Christian faiths.

I mean, the rather scifi concept of an Omega Point (basically, all matter and energy in the entire universe contained into a single entity with an absurd high level of consciousness) was invented by IIRC a Catholic priest that thought all religions got God backwards.

God in his view isn't the start point of reality, it's the final end point of reality.

The whole idea of creating God fits EP like a glove.

That's no longer an assumption. It's a fact.

Hebrews are simply a sect of Canaanites that dumped their entire pantheon except the head god.

After Angels appeared and made it clear that they served a higher power, the various factions are all certain about the existence of the Divine and have tried their best to fill up the holes themselves.

>There is one Maker, the Shepherd King is his prophet, and the way of man must be righted.

>There is one Maker, the white three are his servants, the black three are the nemesis of creation, and the three without are the wheel upon which the universe turns.

>The Maker is the nine that were twelve, and we worship the noble aspects of the nine and detest the perverse aspects of them.

>The Maker is the anthropomorphic personification of the birth/death cycle of the universe, and it possesses functions, failsafes and other mechanisms to facilitate the process that we in our limited cognizance confuse for sentience and purpose.

>Fuck, so we were worshipping like thirty six gods when there's only ten? The Crone is still there, right? Our endgame was hinging on that.

>So the Maker is the earth right, I love talking to animals.

>Fucking Maker get out of my pocket dimension and stop eating us REEEE

Oh, ok. I didn't want to be too affirmative on stuff I don't really know.

>No Egyptian and Mesopotamian religion
>No Canaanite religion
>No Animist-centered religion
>No Iron Age Yahwism
>not Christianity not having multiple denominations to represent Orthodox and Protestant belief

Those other things I'm guilty of, except for Wiccan things. But those above are some of the religions in my setting

I'm totally okay with crossing that line between fey, dragons, demons, and gods. Like Dwarves think Giants are demigods. Dragons can be considered both demigods and flying reptiles, demons obviously can be worshipped as gods.

They provide power to their followers, so what makes them different from actual gods?

That's the question and one of the things I dislike about D&D because aside from Warlocks using Arcane and Clerics using Divine how they achieve that seems way to similar to warrant them being seperate things. How is getting power from a Fey creature different from gettin gpower from a diety.

Warlocks are direct bargains and pacts, Clerics tend to be holy and get their power through hymns, scripture, and ceremony. God doesn't literally come down and do things for you, otherwise Divine Intervention as class feature that rarely works wouldn't be a thing. since all the spells would be divine intervention in that case.

I go with write what you know, so there's a lot of similarities to irl faiths but I try to keep it fresh. The replacement I have fir abrahamic faith in my setting is a Sun/Moon worship that varies around the globe.

The Ancient Humans and Halfling cultures follow a Dualistic interpretation of the faith that's largely oral and traditional. Sol is the Father, and Luna the mother. Every aspect of living beings, wrath, kindness, violence, or peace is represented as both a part of them and as an Aspect that has it's own unique identity. Life is complicated so there's a lot of them. Every solar aspect has an equal and inverse lunar aspect and visa versa. There's no official holy book for Cestal, as it's called, so the minute specifics of the faith vary region to region. This also gives way to an almost uncountable number of aspects as smaller pseudo deities; it's not uncommon for two neighboring villages to worship very different harvest deities for example. Cestal has a kind of gray morality to everything that human rulers have loved historically. "Sol is sometimes wrathful and so am I, how can that be wrong?".

East of the human Kingdoms in the new(ish) world where the settlers follow the Church of the Sun, which is really two parts empire and one part church. They're interpretation of the faith is distinct in that it teaches that Sol is the "good deity" to be revered and Luna the "evil" one to be destroyed. On top of this they also teach (and have quite a bit of evidence to support) that particularly good or faithful mortals become saints of an Aspect when they die. Traditional Cestal has no holy physical manifestations of any kind, so for the last odd thousand years the Church of the Sun has had a huge leg up when it comes to converting new believers. The Church is in no-way human centric either, completely unlike Cestal which teaches that only humans and particularly faithful halflings will get to the afterlife.

cont.

The Church of the Sun has to-date conquered a dozen or so weaker Cestal-based kingdoms and colonies to incorporate and convert them into the empire. Recent rulers have lost their taste for blood, but there's still an incredible amount of animosity between the prosperous empire and the fading, ancient, human kingdoms.

why would you need more than Zarus?

That's easy. Those guys are evil. They're worshipping demons, or evil gods that want to do evil things. Duh.

I´m currently trying to build an HRE/crusade like setting and I basically only have the christian stuff in there. With the three main religions basically worshipping the same god, with simply very different views and versions of him. Cath is, they´re all wrong.

The only other accepted semi divine beings are angels and demons/djinn, which are also perceived as different depending on the believer. Then there is the not!cthullhu cult I´m still working on.

I´m currently looking for all sorts of abrahamic stuff to take inspiration from. Only big thing I have really planned so far is the "god" being murdered by the Hashashin stand in and the anti-pope pulling some really stupid stunts.

*catch is, they´re all wrong.

I will really like to play a religious character but I just don't find the inspiration.
Are there any good or mediocre fantasy novels that heavily feature religion or clerics?

The Holy Bible

>slowclap.gif

I've only really gone into depth on the Aarakocra.

Their religion is extremely hierarchical and wrapped in obscure traditions and rites. Clerics must study for long hours to become knowledgeable enough of these rites to minister to their people.

The high priests have a special place in their society, serving as advisors to the rulers and a spiritual center for the people. They also have to burn their pilot feathers to perform the religious ceremonies that let Aarakorca fly, sacrificing their own ability for the good of their people. It's a pretty shitty life, honestly, but somebody has to do it.

I want to go more in-depth to all the other religions but it's surprisingly hard to do so. Even my birdpeople are basically just ripped off from Judaism.

For my part, since my setting is for 5e, the key distinction is whether or not the power is "heavenly." Fey and demonic power both come from a different plane of existence, of course, and dragons, god-kings, and nature spirits produce their own power, derive it from arcane means, or draw it from the Earth itself. Divine power (Clerics, basically) comes from Heaven, and even fallen gods retain some of their Heavenly nature.

jokingly suggested the Bible, but in all seriousness, speaking as a Christian, it's worth a read even if you're not interested in following its teachings.

For what you're looking for, I'd recommend the second half of Genesis, the first half of Exodus, Joshua, Judges, maybe Samuel and Kings if you want politics and brutality, and then in the New Testament the Gospels and the Book of Acts.

I'm using the kingdoms of kalamar campaign setting, and it's pretty well detailed. They cover pretty much everything I want to know about the pantheon.

There are about 45 faiths, some of which are popular and important, some more obscure and outlawed/taboo in certain places. Their interactions and outlooks are also pretty well explained. So are their holy days, sacrifices, things of import, goals of the church, and how they treat followers.

This is also useful in creating about 40 or so unique clerics, each of which have their own set of beliefs, powers, spell lists, and abilities (It's a little like having 40 additional classes).

I actually did like the detail for Oath of the Ancients Paladin that Fiends and Fey are considered Faithfless, and that the Oath of the Ancients is as old as elves and the practices of Druids, like they come hand in hand.

How strange a relationship that elves as descendants of fey combat against them as they have no faith. It also suggests that fiends and fey are a much older enemy than the undead.

I've actually read parts of the bible for the literary value. Bertolt Brecht did the same.
I think I've read some of the books you mention but that was years ago before I started playing tabletop games but I get an idea of how could I play a religious character based on the bible.

Rate my religion Veeky Forums.

The basic idea is that of a wave between two endpoints. The two end points being pure physicality and pure emotion. Everything in reality exists on the wave which goes up and down, above and below, the line between the two end points.

At 9 points along the wave it intersects the line, these 9 points between 9 archetypical beings. These beings do not have power over the wave or the end points, but were the first to congeal. As time moves onward more beings congeal and form out of the ether, in the case for emotion, or are constructed, in the case for physicality. This line, and wave, are called the range.

Humanity as a whole believe in nine original tribes of man. These, though they do not know it, being the nine archetypical beings.

The truth is that the Nine Original Tribes of humanity is more accurately expressed as the Nine Sires of Man, who owe their origin to the One That Was Two And Many, he who named himself and became he and his brother, balancing points upon the Range and that which form the sliding scale of physicality. The Nine are those who sired man, but indeed there were far more, numerous expression of physicality being placed between the two extremes of Emotional and Physical purity (They are all part of the One That Was Two And Many). Nine sired what is now humanity, and indeed still meddle with the world around them to a greater or lesser degree.

However the nine were not man. They merely created their expressions of man. Humanity is not monolithic but a blanket term for beings of sapience who exist upon the range.

The world as most know it, which is inhabited by man as we know it, exist between the fourth and fifth intersections, biased towards physicality.

A similar concept inspired what I think is one of the few half-decent ideas I've had.

Of all the civilized races the Elves are unique in that they revere no gods. They know the gods exist and aren't stupid enough to antagonize them but they're not the object of worship.

This is odd because in my setting all gods must be worshiped in some form, even evil aligned ones, though with that case it's more appeasing them so they don't fuck you over if you aren't evil yourself.

Anybody who doesn't tends to find themselves having problems with tasks related to that gods domain or just their general life and in the case of city or nation-wide neglect facing punishment or disaster.

And yet the elves are perfectly fine.

The reason for this is that during the dawn of their race they made a pact to only but always be in service of the fey lords and even the gods are forced to abide by it.

Eventually though a bunch of shit happened and the ancient fey lord (singular I mistyped) vanished leaving the elves vulnerable to rival fey forcing them to flee into the mortal world.

Most elves still await the return of their master. The Drow are exception who've abandoned him and made a similar pact but with individual demon lords instead.

One religion's god picks worthy people to bestow powers upon them, others are given them by demons, or by deals with lesser gotds.

Didn't GURPS Banestorm do something like that?

this is exactly what I was looking for, thanks

That's really awesome! I think of something like a wavelength of light. That the real world and what we see is just a small part of light. Great concept

As an experienced GM, I've learned that the less said about any of that the better. Players generally don't care and the ones that do care in the wrong way.

The other two main faiths are racial specific. One is a an animistic and ancestor worship based religion. It's practiced by mutated decedents of elves and humans. Your ancestors are determined by your skill and passion more than family. You could be born into the weaving clan but if your calling is the hunt, you will be "reborn" in a clan that adopts you. Sprits lie in craftsmanship, be it the cultivation of new kinds of crops and fruit, or just making a basket. "Unnatural" objects are those that have no spirit in them. Usually mass produced objects.

The other faith recognizes the other gods but ignores them for their own. 7 gods that are both physical manifestations, as well as spiritual entities. Each is an aspect of a single higher God. They represent the four classical elements, life, death, and the mind. Fire, cold, lightning, poison/acid, holy, necrotic, psychic. Each has a metaphysical and emotional aspect as well as sub categories. These also tie to chakra like points on the body. Heart for fire, chest for air etc. People of this group are all interconnected by near invisible strands of fate. They used magic to manipulate their own place and the place of others in the web. Their God is no where near the level of the celestial gods afformentioned, but it isn't concerned with maintaining reality so it can be more active

The religion of the Not-Muslims in my setting is based on this:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Christian_views_on_Muhammad
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Termagant

Medieval Christians had some weird ideas about Islam.

The religious usually are either very hostile towards each other, or treat each other with a dull indifference when we rp.