Quote from: Cole;410106I'm not sure what you mean here. Could you elaborate?

Disclaimer: It's been about 10 years since I've touched any Forgotten Realms "fluff" so I might have my head up my ass.

As I recall in FR a character NEEDS a Patron deity in order to have someone willing to vouch for their soul as it enters the afterlife.  This applies to everyone, not just priests, and the implication is that this deity is the sole deity the person is devoted to.

In addition if a character is A) an atheist or B) unaligned with a god they're sent to a special place in one of the nether planes reserved for the unbelievers.  Presumably they're tormented by some creature or something.

This has direct game mechanic effects when you're talking about resurrection spells.

Quote from: The Butcher;410136From the other thread:
The observation on D&D Cleric is worth developing a little bit further. I've recently come to realize that D&D Clerics make a lot more sense under Monotheism.

For D&D I prefer with increasing frequency to scratch clerics and just give magic-users all the spells. I.E. spell-using priests would just be magic-users with a religious inclination. I think that given a monotheistic setup, potentially the monotheistic priests might instead be granted the ability to perform a miracle in the name of their god, but not on the kind of "on-demand" basis that spell casting implies. I think that the ability to perform miracles would be unlikely to be put in the hands of a PC.

I think in a monotheistic society, most PCs probably belong to that religion, but I also think, as has been mentioned by more than one poster already, that a priest probably has more important responsibilities that would make him disinclined even toward more altruistic adventuring than the typical looting and pillaging.

I guess that (outside of the D&D model) the character of the saint who wanders around performing miracles here and there until someone martyrs him is a kind of adventuring archetype; it would be hard to do right. I don't see having five or six saints, or having a saint who follows the other characters around and gets one vote in the party meeting on whether they want to overthrow Baron Von Vile by force of arms vs. use subterfuge prove that Baron Von Vile is an impostor.

Maybe you could use some kind of Ars Magica type of setup where you have one saint and his various devotees and guardians. As much as I enjoy reading about the sometimes bizarre things that Medieval saints are supposed to  have gotten up to, I'm not enthralled by the idea of this as an RPG, though.

99% of the original question can be phrased as "why not monotheism in D&D", because D&D, and games that are heavily influenced by D&D, make up that proportion of the FRPGs written and played.

Given that, a lot of the reason can probably be ascribed to the S&S literature influence. This ties into the American-ness of most fantasy RPGs including D&D. I'll bet if you look at European FRPGs, you'll find more of them that, as part of being based on real history, include representations of Christianity...although possibly alongside of other religions whose followers have access to "powers".

Then you have to ask what the "polytheism" of D&D is. It's mostly a form of dueling henotheisms. Even in cases where there's a truly monotheistic religion in the game-world, as a social phenomenon and even as a source of "powers", it's rarely affirmed by the game design as being actual metaphysical truth: that is, there will usually be alternative religions that also offer "powers". If the game's rules were a theology lesson laying out "how things are", then I don't think anyone in the world could take a really monotheistic perspective.

So with that as a groundwork, what it boils down to is, if you want real monotheism in an RPG, you have to design in an actual metaphysical one true way. Now, this works fine if religion doesn't offer much "magical power" to overbalance other elements of the game world, and provided the will of the Divinity is obscure to humans on day-to-day matters. This is pretty much what held in Christian Europe throughout history: people could easily sustain belief in a single God because miracles were rare and there wasn't a visible proof that a particular interpretation of scripture was correct or demanded specific actions in government or daily life. In short, in real life, free will existed even though philosophers could spin theories about whether it was "really" real.

But if you have a setting where God really exists, is omnipotent, gives his followers powers to intervene in daily life, and reveals a single truth, and where furthermore religion as a social phenomenon exists and (of course) worships the single god, then you basically have a theocracy and there's little for conflict anywhere.

(At least that's it as a sketch. My wife is hungry and we have to get some breakfast. Her will be done!)

Quote from: MonkeyWrench;410102I can see it being a lot of things actually:

Hobby inertia.
(...)
Reluctance to offend.
(...)
Lack of knowledge about how religions work.

This, pretty much.

You can expand #2 to something more like "reluctance to draw religious zealots and religion-bashers" who too easily relate the game world to religious arguments in the real world.

Quote from: Cole;410139For D&D I prefer with increasing frequency to scratch clerics and just give magic-users all the spells.

That's one of the most popular alternatives to approaching what I call "the Cleric problem" in D&D. "Problem" may be a misnomer, but the gist of it is that the Cleric is not the sort of character one reads about in the fantasy literature that makes up D&D (and neither is his close cousin/usurper, the Paladin, Three Hearts and Three Lions notwithstanding). There are no mace-swinging warrior-priest healers in Middle-earth, or in the Hyborian Age, or in Lankhmar.

Me, I've grown too fond of D&D to do away with the Cleric entirely. When I want to go "Cleric-less", I usually run something else.

Quote from: The Butcher;410148That's one of the most popular alternatives to approaching what I call "the Cleric problem" in D&D. "Problem" may be a misnomer, but the gist of it is that the Cleric is not the sort of character one reads about in the fantasy literature that makes up D&D (and neither is his close cousin/usurper, the Paladin, Three Hearts and Three Lions notwithstanding). There are no mace-swinging warrior-priest healers in Middle-earth, or in the Hyborian Age, or in Lankhmar.

Me, I've grown too fond of D&D to do away with the Cleric entirely. When I want to go "Cleric-less", I usually run something else.

I cannot arrive at the reason why, but the Paladin doesn't bother me as much.

I think that monotheism, if you take a God as typically portraited in FRPGs (that is, an actual god who replies to prayer by granting miracles and spells, who interacts directly with the world's denizens and all) is boring as fuck.

Also, polytheism is usually boring as fuck, because gods meddling with mortals and messing around is also boring as fuck unless you are Homer, or your gods can have their ass kicked by mortals.

What I would like to do is a fantasy setting where priests are just like those in our world: people who claim to be connected with the gods, but unable to prove them as the gods don't answer prayers or make their existance proven. Heck, even Conan stories show that at the end of the day, gods like Mitra are messing around with people (The Phoenix in the Sword features something like this, if I'm not wrong).

I would like a world in which a fantasy hero can completely ignore religion (like some charcter in Viking sagas) and the priests cannot prove him wrong by smiting him with a Solar Lance or whatever. Or worst, by the actual god stepping in and saying "You atheists are fucking stupid."The priests claim to be able to explain magic and the universe, but as usual, their explanations suck ass. Something like that.

Quote from: Cole;410149I cannot arrive at the reason why, but the Paladin doesn't bother me as much.

I'm guessing because the Paladin has more direct translations in terms of archetypes, including Knights, Champions and the like, whereas the Cleric is sort of middle of the road, murky in that regard: half priest, half templar, half healer. It's a construction of the D&D game really. Started as a response to an in-game issue at Dave Arneson's table, and evolved into its own thing with the original game. Sure, you can talk about characters like Archbishop Turpin, but these characters were associated with the Cleric construct after the fact, rather than a foundation for it.

Quote from: MonkeyWrench;410102I can see it being a lot of things actually:

Hobby inertia.  I'm not sure why polytheism started as a default but by now it seems to be expected.  My main problem with this is that it isn't presented like real world polytheistic religions, but as a multitude of hybrid poly/mono religions - ex: Forgotten Realms, and it's "If you don't follow one god you're screwed"

I know exactly what you're saying here, but you just happened to pick maybe the worst possible example, because FR is one setting that doesn´t work that way. A lot of people might play it that way, but if you read the source material itself its pretty clearly one of the most authentically "Polytheistic" settings around.

But yes, most people who do polytheistic settings don't even do those right.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;410170But yes, most people who do polytheistic settings don't even do those right.

RPGPundit

That's my problem specifically. I like polytheism in RPGs too. I like all the gods in Ptolus and all. My problem comes from the fact that in many cases they are completely divorced from any religious/cultural background that would make any sense. For instance in the Forgotten Realms where you have all these different deities that basically acknowledge each other - there are no cultural specificities beyond which god your tribe favors amongst the zillions of gods in the superpantheon of the realms. No different names for the gods. No contradictions between the cultures at all. This makes no sense whatsoever.

Compare that to a world like Glorantha where each Pantheon has its own version of what really happened prior to the first Dawn, who's responsible of what, how Orlanthi remember the Lightbringers and how they brought back Yelm from the Underworld, while Yelmites remember that Orlanth killed Yelm in the first place, while Elves do not give a shit about that version of events. These sorts of things. That makes a LOT more sense, to me.

Quote from: Nicephorus;410126In RPG terms, Christianity has more than one deity.  At the simplest, you also have the devil, not a common PC choice but there for the bad guys.  You also have lots of lesser entities that are apparently capable of granting powers, such as angels, saints, Mary, and demons - they're grouped into two sides but could be considered different cults. There are also the angels that chose neither God nor the devil in the conflict wandering around.

No version of modern Christianity works that way. All four of the above sentences are completely wrong.

RPGPundit

By the way, the concept of "monotheism" in most D&D and other fantasy settings always has upset me as terribly wrong. You have a vast territory, with dozens of kingdoms and peoples of diverse ethnics and happens that everybody worships the same gods of the same "megapantheon", besides the obvious differences in culture, backgrounds, etc. It seems to me artificial and historically incorrect, like an "Unified Theory of Gods" or something like that. Where are the different interpretations or the mutually-exclusive myths? Sometimes I view the monotheistic settings a lot more believable.

I have more to say (great topic!), but very quickly for the record 4e Dark Sun has no deities, clerics/paladins, or miracles, and the religions are mutually incompatible false cults created by insane sorcerors, so there's that.

And: All RPGs are monotheisms.  DM = God.

Quote from: RPGPundit;410176No version of modern Christianity works that way. All four of the above sentences are completely wrong.

So you'd use a modern interpretation of Christianity for a fantasy game, which typically has medieval trappings?  Those who are turned by the devil or possessed by demons would be treated as followers of Christ and the powers they gain would be the same as those of Christian priest?

Quote from: RPGPundit;410176No version of modern Christianity works that way. All four of the above sentences are completely wrong.

RPGPundit

Yep. I totally agree. The only game I've seen it properly handled is Aquelarre, where, at best, praying to a saint can grant you a bonus to a skill roll. If you want a miracle, God is the man to ask.