Quote from: Cole;410293...the priests of several largely-suppressed cults might rebrand the bloody-minded local gods to whom they pay tribute as saintly figures in order to secretly increase their followings (and their coffers.)

This is a very interesting concept that isn't often explored in RPGs, but could make for a very cool aspect of an in-game faith. There are lots of examples in history where a conquered people continued to worship their old deities by simply renaming them to similar aspects in the conqueror's faith.

Quote from: IceBlinkLuck;410296This is a very interesting concept that isn't often explored in RPGs, but could make for a very cool aspect of an in-game faith. There are lots of examples in history where a conquered people continued to worship their old deities by simply renaming them to similar aspects in the conqueror's faith.

In a fantastical game you could also have the situation where arguably well-meaning locals, thinking something like "Jesus is great and things are better since we have converted, but if no one is propitiating Bugg-Shash, he will get all riled up and that will be bad," so they decide to work some of his rituals into their dogma. Maybe they dedicate them to "Saint Bedivere" after some martyr they threw into the Pit of Bugg-Shash before they converted, work some of the heathen glyphs into St. Bedivere's iconography, etc. Maybe some of the Bedeverist rituals get pretty bloody too, in secret. But, they think, arguably it's for the greater good of the congregation. Something like that.

Or a crafty god in the mold of Odin or Lugh could himself deliberately impersonate a mortal wonder-worker so as to get "adopted" as a saint in his human guise.

Quote from: Lizaur;410207I think it's been the preferred way to worldbuilding for a very long time, the "top-to-down" approach. My problem with that is that I think a lot of DMs/writers start for the Uttermost Top: they define the the Universal Truth behind the Creation of the Whole Campaign World, leaving no room for uncertainty. I'm not talking about different interpretations of the same divine beings, I'm talking about religions so divergents as Hinduism and, say, australian aboriginal animism. A fine exemple is Middle Earth: a profet can come out from the desert of Harad preaching a new godless faith that revolves around philosophical principles and the elemental forces, but the existence of Eru and stuff renders him absolutely wrong. And I think is a pitty: I don't want, as a DM, to know the ultimate truth of my campaign setting, moreso my players.

I agree. Also, I always found worldbuilding by that model boring as fuck. I only care about stuff that is relevant to the game at hand, to the situation at hand. If I develop a Creation myth is because a PC needs to know it. And so on.

And of course, I do not give a flying turd about consistency. Religions are not consistent.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;410209As for realistic polytheism, the biggest offender I see in D&D is treating each of dozens of deities as miniature monotheisms, with church heirarchies that mimic Christian congregations in which one person pretty much attends only one denomination for their whole life. In the real world, in modern and historical polytheism, common folk would provide offers to many of the various deities.

Yep. The Pundit makes a very good case for FR.

Quote from: Imperator;410303I agree. Also, I always found worldbuilding by that model boring as fuck. I only care about stuff that is relevant to the game at hand, to the situation at hand. If I develop a Creation myth is because a PC needs to know it. And so on.

I certainly respect that as a choice, but there seems to be an assumption in this discussion that establishing a firm and transparent cosmology is always inferior.  FRPGS so often deal with things like the afterlife, clerical power, and planar travel that I don't see why the interest in creating a culture that mirrors or comments on the culture of our opaque world should necessarily trump the interest in establishing from the top down what the cosmic rules are, which generally includes some understanding of who (if anyone) is in charge.

In this world the Irish will tell you one thing about ghosts, dragons, and fairies, and the Japanese will tell you totally contradictory things about ghosts, dragons, and fairies.  That doesn't mean that a good FRPG setting must include totally different rules for ghosts, dragons, and fairies every time the adventurers are in a new culture, or that the rules for ghosts, dragons, and fairies should be left vague.  I don't see any significant difference between ghosts, dragons, elves, and gods.

I see a lot of statements in this thread like "religions aren't consistent", "that's not how monotheistic (or polytheistic) religions really work" etc...  I agree, but with one very important caveat...in a world where God, if he exists, does not choose to manifest himself.

Elliot basically nailed it.

Quote from: Elliot WilenBut 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.

I think that's really the reason why.  You take a monotheistic God, have him grant his priests the power to do miracles with the frequency that a D&D Cleric casts spells, and there is no Atheism, there is no Heresy or Apostasy.  Any Cleric of sufficient level can Commune and find out what the Truth is.  Literally, there is only "Yahweh or the highway".

In order to make it interesting, you have to add doubt and mystery in order to have it reach the level of complexity our real world religions have.  Your God decides not to reveal the truth.  He wants people to find it for themselves.  But then He ends up granting powers to both sides of a religious war and you have to conclude that 1.) He doesn't exist - which is impossible because he grants powers or 2.) He's an uncaring or L/N-E and we're all screwed, might as well be a mage.

The result is, when your clerics have real, visible, power in the world, you go with dualism or polytheism, otherwise you end up with a real cosmic mess of questions the only possible answer to is "God works in mysterious ways."

Quote from: CRKrueger;410404The result is, when your clerics have real, visible, power in the world, you go with dualism or polytheism, otherwise you end up with a real cosmic mess of questions the only possible answer to is "God works in mysterious ways."

Many people think this way in real life, though, don't they?

A genuine monotheistic world is unrealistic anyway. The Abrahemic religions themselves aknowledge the existance of other gods (thus the commandment to only worship this one) and those religions have consistently come into contact with other gods who generally were proved to be weaker.
So you can have a monotheistic culture - as in one where one religion dominates - but even that will tend to define itself in oposition to the other.

Quote from: jibbajibba;410429A genuine monotheistic world is unrealistic anyway. The Abrahemic religions themselves aknowledge the existance of other gods (thus the commandment to only worship this one)

I'm not theologian, but this seems dubious.  I can see this applying to the ancient Hebrews, but Christianity for a long time as acknowledged only one god, and it's pretty much one of the core tenants of Islam.

"There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet"

God is God fool. I pity the fool who don't believe in God.

Quote from: Cole;410411Many people think this way in real life, though, don't they?

Yes, but "divine magic" isn't very visible, it's generally ambiguous at best to many eyes, and people of different beliefs can cite "miracles" or other "divine magic" coming from their deity or conception of the spirit world. Without ambiguity and subtlety in divine interventions, the one god ends up looking like a schmuck.

Quote from: MonkeyWrench;410439I'm not theologian, but this seems dubious.  I can see this applying to the ancient Hebrews, but Christianity for a long time as acknowledged only one god, and it's pretty much one of the core tenants of Islam.

First note, the idea of exclusively worshipping one god while implicitly accepting the existence of others is called henotheism, and yes, it's believed that the ancient Hebrew belief started in this state before evolving into monotheism.

Second, as you note, monotheism as a social phenomenon is perfectly realistic, although if the setting is a large enough geographical area, it will probably be challenged by competing beliefs.

Third, monotheism as a setting-ratified cosmological certitude isn't something I'd associate with realism or unrealism, but it can be seen as realistically representing the local worldview of culture that's chosen as the focus of the game. So for example you could say that Christianity has it all right in a game focusing on medieval Europe, but while this may reinforce the subjective sense of "getting inside the head" of a Christian PC, it'll pull the rug out from under non-Christian ones.

Quote from: CRKrueger;410404I see a lot of statements in this thread like "religions aren't consistent", "that's not how monotheistic (or polytheistic) religions really work" etc...  I agree, but with one very important caveat...in a world where God, if he exists, does not choose to manifest himself.

Elliot basically nailed it.



I think that's really the reason why.  You take a monotheistic God, have him grant his priests the power to do miracles with the frequency that a D&D Cleric casts spells, and there is no Atheism, there is no Heresy or Apostasy.  Any Cleric of sufficient level can Commune and find out what the Truth is.  Literally, there is only "Yahweh or the highway".

In order to make it interesting, you have to add doubt and mystery in order to have it reach the level of complexity our real world religions have.  Your God decides not to reveal the truth.  He wants people to find it for themselves.  But then He ends up granting powers to both sides of a religious war and you have to conclude that 1.) He doesn't exist - which is impossible because he grants powers or 2.) He's an uncaring or L/N-E and we're all screwed, might as well be a mage.

The result is, when your clerics have real, visible, power in the world, you go with dualism or polytheism, otherwise you end up with a real cosmic mess of questions the only possible answer to is "God works in mysterious ways."

It depends what kind of monotheism you have.  You don't even need a religious "war" as such, you can have rival factions, all of which end up being able to commune; possibly where God obviously accepts the various positions so they end up being less of theological importance, but more of political or social importance.

Obviously, another possibility is that you could have a single god, grants spells, etc. but the debate is over whether this is a god worth worshipping or not.  The "Unbelievers" could be those who reject that authority, rather than the existence of the god.  You could have druids who worship a generic force of nature rather than a rival god, wizards who seek to find their own path to immortality without bowing to a god, etc.

You can also obviously have a setting where God is relatively silent; you can get rid of a spell like Commune, or you can just limit it somewhat (after all, the traditional Commune spell doesn't really let you get a full-blown conversation); God could be very cryptic about certain questions that society may consider of great theological importance.

And of course, you can have games (like Forward... to Adventure!) where there's no difference in the magic system between priests and wizards (they use the same spell lists), so that magical power is not even partially monopolized by the priesthood.

There's lots of options that don't automatically mean an "everyone has to agree" kind of theocracy.

Also your final premise is somewhat flawed: in our own world, for large swaths of the medieval period in terms of time and area, there really was no doubt in the overall social zeitgeist that God did in fact exist and granted miraculous power.  That's something people nowadays have trouble wrapping their head around: that for medieval christians, muslims, or jews there was no question that God was real, it was a foundation-level assumption of how the world works. You can say "well yeah, but god didn't go around announcing his existence to people", except that to them, he did, ALL THE FUCKING TIME.  Saints were receiving magical visions of God on a pretty fucking regular basis.  This shit was as real to them as it would be in a typical fantasy world.  So in your own fantasy world, unless you had an all-oppressive or constantly physically (rather than "mentally") manifesting God, you really wouldn't be in all that different situation than how things would have been like in medieval europe.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;410460Yes, but "divine magic" isn't very visible, it's generally ambiguous at best to many eyes, and people of different beliefs can cite "miracles" or other "divine magic" coming from their deity or conception of the spirit world. Without ambiguity and subtlety in divine interventions, the one god ends up looking like a schmuck.

He didn't, though, for the entire period we're talking about.  It took the age of enlightenment to really change the whole mental view of this. I know this is very hard to grasp for the typical person in the post-modern philosophical world, but it was really like that. There were divine magics and miracles happening on a very regular basis. The power was a reality.

Yes, god wasn't always reliable, but then neither does magic have to be in a fantasy game: opponents make saving throws, your remove curse isn't high enough level, etc.

RPGPundit

Also, there's two different kinds of settings that we can describe here:

The first is one that is a setting-fundamental monotheism.  The world has only one god, period.  Some people might worship something they mistakenly believe to be a god (demons, nature spirits, or whatnot) but they're wrong.

The second is a setting with a monotheistic culture.  The main area of the setting has a monotheistic religion.  The question of whether this is really the only god in town is either not answered by the setting, or it is answered in fact in the negative, but that doesn't matter in terms of the society (or at least, it doesn't matter until some rival god comes along as a menace to the society of the setting).  The Bowlands area of my FtA!GN! Setting is basically this kind of monotheistic game setting.

I'm actually challenging the fact that there aren't enough of either of these kinds of settings.

RPGPundit