Greetings!

In my Thandor campaign, I have several varieties of monotheistic religions, as well as a large number of different Pagan religions. In many such locations and regions, the Church is strong and righteous. Churches and temples are typically well-organized, and possess considerable material resources and wealth. Furthermore, larger and more prominent religions generally also have extensive political connections and influence.

I find it more rewarding to have many religious characters--NPC's--to be consistent in their values and at least somewhat disciplined, strong, and righteous. Churches are, after all, a source of strength, inspiration, renewal, and shelter for most of the Player Characters. Having different Church members and religious clergy often be corrupt, weak, if not themselves totally evil and depraved, is generally less useful. While such a dynamic has been popular throughout our culture in recent decades, I use such a dynamic sparingly by preference.

In a fantastic world where vampires, Undead, various evil spirits, demons, are virtually everywhere, as well as hordes of terrible monsters and evil, savage races, I think that many churches would be very strong and dynamic in such a struggle to save society and civilization.

Do you have a general approach to playing religious characters in your campaigns? How are churches depicted in your campaigns socially, politically, and spiritually?

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

Generally speaking, I approach any sort of organized religion as any organization: good people at the bottom, corrupt self-serving assholes at the top. Also, the vast majority of the clergy are not spellcasters and they tend to be found at the bottom of the organization, for the same reason. Spells are granted to clerics by their faith in the deity that the organized religion worships, but again, the higher you go, the more bureaucrats and self-serving people you get. You might periodically get people who remain incorruptible and rule the clergy by the tenets of their faith, but this tends to be rarer. If people can be empowered by the deity directly though, they will rise to the top of the church, but will in fact be met by opposition by the bureaucrats and non-spellcasting religious leaders. In fact, I would envision as described by Dostoevskiy, in the parable of the Grand Inquisitor.

This is reversed for cults and Evil churches. Since objective Evil can be defined as selfishness and self-interest, the interest of the individual and the interest of the Church become unified and thus, the evil deity is more than happy to keep offering its power to its faithful, since they are not breaking their tenets. If you've ever played Magic the Gathering, the Orzhov Syndicate is probably the best example of this - a church that literally practices debt and greed as the primary motivators of their faith. If WotC didn't fuck them up as of late, they would make for a very interesting entity in the world.

Cults are interesting, because they would be an inversion. The lower echelons that aren't initiated into their mysteries would not have access to magic, but the higher you go, the more magic power the members have.

I've never thought about it in detail. As with most social organizations, I treat them as background elements unless they're needed for a particular adventure.

When I deign to world build, then I use a religion that mixes Ancient Egyptian religion with Catholicism and Afro-Caribbean religions in order to explain away why clerics and paladins have Christian aesthetics. The official religion of The Empire venerates the Invincible Sun as its omnipotent but distant creator deity, with various angels and saints (often culturally specific) prayed to for specific needs. Druids, witches and sorcerers (who more or less represent Proto-Indo-European religion writ large) draw their power from the Old Gods who were venerated before the Church of the Invincible Sun showed up and started subjugating them; they're generally considered persona non grata unless they get baptized a la Merlin. Warlocks and blackguards/hellknights (who are based on the Malleus Maleficarum) draw their power from deliberate pacts with demons from the hells and are dangerous criminals. Wizards (who are based on Hermeticism) have a more mechanistic view of the universe and perform magic by emulating the Word(s) used by the Invincible Sun to create the universe in the first place; they're distrusted by the church authorities for their borderline heresy but aren't illegal.

I think the corrupt church trope works best when played for comedy. E.g. the church is extremely sexually repressed and deliberately recruits the men with the largest genitals to positions requiring chastity, most priests and paladins fall when an incubus/succubus/witch/other monster/all of the above seduces them and shows them how amazing sex is, the church regularly performs exorcisms on political dissidents but since they're almost never possessed this instead causes them to be possessed by demons and that accounts for most of the monsters around, the church are basically incompetent morons responsible for almost all the ills they're supposed to fighting... that sort of thing.

I mentioned it in your thread about cults, but I typically do not have monolithic religious organizations in my current game. That is because it's based on Asian themes and religion has rarely been particularly unified over there. Even in my last campaign setting where there was an analogous organization that mirrored the medieval Catholic Church, it really depends on what I need for the current arc. Churches, whether or not you believe in the theology, represent an ideal. However the people who make up the clergy are still human/mortal. That means they can be devout, true believers who seek righteousness in word and deed or they can be opportunistic, political schemers who use their positions to exploit others.

That being said, "church man bad" is a trope that I find has become overplayed since it became mainstream in the 2000's. So I will usually play my religious characters, npc's and pc's, according the the ideals of their faith. Obviously they fail because they are imperfect, but they try.

Since my current campaign is based on Asian history and mythology, the religious institutions tend to be fairly decentralized. By and large, though, individual temples and shrines are well respected by the general populace. Politicians, of course, view them as tools or impediments to power. Outright worshipers of evil deities and supernatural entities are treated with the appropriate degree of skepticism, but aren't openly persecuted as even evil gods serve a purpose within the Celestial Court.

I should probably mention that faith in gods and their precepts is pretty strong in my game world. That's because the world is highly unstable, with magical storms that warp the landscape happening with alarming frequency. And there is ongoing proof of the gods' work, even if they never appear in the physical realm any more. As a result, most people need some sort of anchor in their life when the world is so dangerous.

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2022, 11:07:59 AMDo you have a general approach to playing religious characters in your campaigns? How are churches depicted in your campaigns socially, politically, and spiritually?

If I'm playing a character who's religious, I usually play them as seriously as I would practice my religion myself, i.e. fairly devoutly but not fanatically and aware enough of personal shortcomings not to get on too high a horse.

I have to admit that I usually didn't bother developing the religious organizations in much detail beyond what was needed to back up the PCs -- there was a god or goddess, the PC indicated they were spending time on prayers to Him/Her or money on the temple, dropped His/Her name into conversation appropriately, and that was it -- mostly because none of us were much interested in the topic at the time. I'd put more politics into how churches affect the setting now, but I'd have to have a group of players all confirm they were interested in adventure plots more complex than that before I bothered.

(ETA: If I did get into a campaign where that was an issue, I'd probably do a version of an in-setting conflict I've been developing for a fantasy series I plan to write, where the older faith in twelve elementally-themed world-builder powers named the Wardens is in uneasy balance with a Catholic-analogue church worshipping a human Redeemer and her colleague Saints -- "Saints and Wardens!" is a common all-purpose oath in the major setting continent. Good vs. Good is always a theme I like examining.)

A PC should be what they tell the DM they are.  They can't have all the benefits of the class, without the associated character role.  A Cleric, Priest, Inquisitor, Paladin, or devout follower must embrace the whole character.  Whatever they claim to be, there should be consequences for forsaking the path of righteousness.

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2022, 11:07:59 AM
Do you have a general approach to playing religious characters in your campaigns? How are churches depicted in your campaigns socially, politically, and spiritually?

I've mainly have the church as uncaring at best and psychotic at worst. Because groups with extremist ideology tend to make great villains and most of it is loosely based on our own history.

Also given the fact that there are so many schisms in fantasy religions they mostly keep trying to kick the shit out of each other. For that low fantasy medieval setting, it's pretty much a given that the church will be one of your big adversaries.

Quote from: SHARK on July 12, 2022, 11:07:59 AMDo you have a general approach to playing religious characters in your campaigns? How are churches depicted in your campaigns socially, politically, and spiritually?

Totally depends on how the gods interact with the world.

In 40k, does the Emperor really know the hearts of all his citizens with the ability to smite the wicked? Or is Emperor worship just a cult? Do his priests really have a psychic bond to him? Or are they just like medieval priests where the level of faith and decency is completely variable across individuals?

I tend to like Greek mythos style pantheons. AKA, in Mazes & Minotaurs, you won't have corrupt priests of Zeus fucking over their flock because they'd get charred by lightning bolts.

Also, does faithfulness to the god's credo affect their spellcasting ability? AKA, if a cleric can be a heretical douchecanoe and still get all their spells per day, then you'll get lots of douchecanoes in the setting. BUT if clerics lost power if they don't tow their god's party line, then you will see much more fidelity in churches.

I love playing fanatical religious characters. Far more fun than lukewarm PCs. Regardless how gods work in the campaign, MY character believes he is extremely close to his god at all times.

My campaign is in Greyhawk, so I use the Greyhawk pantheons.  However, instead of each culture having their own deities, I'm leaning more toward a single pantheon where the deities are the same but called something else by each group.  Certain churches are more active, while others are worshipped more passively or seasonally.  The Church of Pholtus, although Lawful Good, is becoming sort of a pain for the party as they are also ultra strict and intolerant of others.

What I loved about WFRP is that the 'do gooders' in the church are nearly as dangerous as the enemy. They show no mercy whatsoever.

"You saw a witch cavorting in the woods you say? Well, in that case, we'll burn you alive and kill all your family too. Why take a chance?"

I take a more agnostic approach toward deities. One of the issues with a setting where the Gods are real people who go around doing things is that you can't have things like religious schisms. You can't tell people to "have faith" when God can show up anywhere and tell you exactly what is the correct course of action.

If my approach is agnostic, then how do I explain the spells cast by druids and clerics? Faith. The church can accuse any cleric or paladin who doesn't fall in line of heresy or witchcraft and there's no way to falsify the accusations.

So in my setting, there's also an additional faith that split off from the Church of the Invincible Sun that serves a role analogous to a mix of Islam and the Protestant Reformation. Or basically Red Priests from A Song of Ice and Fire.

I don't think a church organization is needed at all. Ancient paganism was generally just a hodgepodge of different local cults. Priests would mostly only be found in cities or at major holy sites. Moreover, they were often primarily administrators who were appointed by governments to manage a temple or temples for a certain amount of time. I've also run a campaign where there were no religious hierarchies and clerics were simply devout people who had been blessed by the gods with divine powers.

I usually run all my D&D games in Greyhawk.  My players recently rolled up two separate Clerics of St. Cuthbert in our latest game, so I'll emphasize the Church of St. Cuthbert as the main Lawful church.  I run B/X with custom subclasses for PCs, one of which is a Cleric subclass called the Zealot.  One of the St. Cuthbert Clerics has the Zealot subclass, so the righteous smiting of evil and the distribution of holy retribution will be stressed.  Which is fine with me, as I find those things to be alot of fun. 

Strong and/or forceful religions or pervasive faith is one of those things that I change fairly radically from setting to setting.

I've done the mix and match, some good, some bad, mostly just people thing.  I've had powerful churches focused on good or ill, willing to root out the ill or good amongst them.  I've had an imperial church in lock step with the gods and empire to enforce a narrow slice of mind control on the populace enforcing loyalty.  And those were the good guys!  I've also run campaigns where it is barely touched as needed by the players, and even a couple where the setting was such that there really wasn't anything akin to organized religions.  More disorganized, local animist or ancestor beliefs that had no appreciable, overt effects that an adventurer would normally care about.  And of course I've done the various typical fantasy pantheons.