On Religion (Belated Conclave Blog Edition)

Here are some miscellaneous ideas that were supposed to be for the the conclave blog thing.

The problem is I tried to just polish up some existing notes and then started writing a new Cairn 2e background (which I've given up on for now) and next thing you know there was a pope and it was too late.

Part 1: Falsehoods Worldbuilders Believe About Religion

This is a reference to "falsehoods programmers believe about names".

I have a non-Christian religious background, both religiously and culturally. I tend to not talk about my own cultural background these days. But it is fairly notable that people tend to think that all religions are one of the following two religions:

Christianity
A specific set of Ancient Greek beliefs as understood in pop culture.

So here is an extremely incomplete list of falsehoods worldbuilders often believe about religion, based on a combination of people I have known and their beliefs and a lot of time spent on wikipedia. I'm a bit reluctant to name specific religions as inspiration for these, because a lot of what I'm thinking of is not just the beliefs of a particular religion, but the beliefs of a particular religion as believed by a particular culture in a particular point in time, which probably doesn't fully represent what other people believe.

The Actual List (of Falsehoods)

You can only follow one religion at a time.
Religions have gods.
Religions have holy texts.
Religions have a canonical set of beliefs that everyone agrees on.
It is important that members of a religion believe the correct things.
Gods have human attributes.
Gods have a physical form on some level of existence.
Gods created the world.
There is a clear distinction between gods and other supernatural beings.
Gods dictate correct and incorrect behaviour.
Gods need or want followers.
Religions believe that the faithful are rewarded after death.
Religions care about faith, as a concept.
Religions believe that good people are rewarded after death.
Religions believe that bad people are punished after death.
Religions describe an afterlife at all.
Religions desire converts.
Religions allow converts.
Religion is clearly distinct from culture; you can always easily determine what beliefs or actions are religious and which are secular.
Religions which enforce strong social norms align with modern, conservative notions of those social norms.
Conversely, religions which do not align with modern, conservative notions of social norms do not have strict social norms.
Religion is a well-defined concept.

an abstract, geometric, symmetric drawing

Part 2: Religion In My Implied Setting

I'm slowly settling on a vaguely defined, implied setting in at least half of what I do. It especially exists in my solo Cairn games but you may recognise aspects of it in other things I have written.

Despite listing all of that above, I am not going to do anything wildly unconventional, to set expectations.

Religions in my vaguely defined setting. I am actually not going to do anything terribly unconventional, despite the above list. This default setting mostly exists in my solo games but also to some degree in some of the adventures I write I guess, and more in the things I haven't written.

What gods are like

I like having gods be local: beings of power that you can deal with directly, like factions. They're usually weird and capricious, with motivations not in line with mortal concerns. They exist on a spectrum with spirits and other supernatural forces: the difference is that they are more powerful, and they intrinsically effect the world around them in some way.

In particular, gods can die, but it permanently changes the world, usually for the worse. If the god of a river dies, the river runs dry. If the good of the deer of the forest die, the deer sicken and die and then there are no more deer. If the god who watches over the village dies, calamity after calamity happens until the village is abandoned.

There are important gods as well, like the gods of the sun, but these are above most adventurers' paygrade. A large city will have a temple to the sun, and the priests will make offerings to encourage it to keep rising, but that's probably not your problem. You are unlikely to personally have any issues with the sun, or any problems you can reasonably ask the sun to solve. There might be holidays around the god of the sun. In that way they are a lot like an emperor: the emperor's coronation day might be a holiday, but you have little direct interaction with them. The gods you deal with are more like local nobility.

Gods generally do not have gender as we understand it. They do not have a physical form, but have small areas of strong influence (e.g. a temple or a holy site), and large areas of weak influence (e.g. a forest or a village). They may occasionally manifest a physical form in those areas and often have several shapes that they prefer taking.

Some Cairn rules

The way I've been modelling their power in Cairn is assigning them some spells they can basically cast as much as they want within their areas of influence. Some they can cast only in their areas of strong influence. They can directly intercede in mortal affairs, but their scope is limited. Clerics do not intrinsically have access to these spells, but may be better at asking for help from their gods in areas of power.

Some gods:

The deer god of deer mountain. Appears as a deer with golden antlers. Will only allow those it deems worthy to hunt its deer - otherwise trespassers are trampled to death.
- Spells anywhere on the mountain: Anthropomorphise, auditory illusion, hatred (on deer), frenzy (on deer)
- Spells in its holy glade: Beast form (Cast on someone else), Command, Cure wounds, pacify. Can also cure any contagious disease.
The god of the village of Cold Rock. A very old rock in the middle, that is always cold to the touch. A shrine was built around it. The god wants to protect the village from danger from outside - or what it thinks is danger.
- Spells anywhere in the village: control weather, earthquake, fog cloud, phobia
- Spells next to its shrine: ward, snuff, raise spirit, icy touch
The East Wind of the Straits of Tears. Sailors make an offering before passing through this perilous route so that the winds don't dash them against the rocks. This god, it is said, is easily offended, with certain words being best avoided. Many do not speak at all after the sacrifice is made.
- Spells: control weather, that's all it needs.

Clerics

Clerics and priests and so on generally don't go adventuring because they usually have daily responsibilities and are expected to remain respectable. Adventuring is not really respectable.

Clerics, as mentioned, don't get spells from their gods, but religions as institutions are more likely to have access to spellbooks and are especially likely to have thematically appropriate ones. In general, a cleric's power comes from being part of a long-lasting institution with political importance: from the loyalty of their followers, the wealth of the institution, their importance to mortal power, and maybe some relevant artifacts. Clerics are also likely to be educated, and to have access to secret knowledge.

Extremely WIP Cairn cleric background

I started writing a cairn class for an ex-cleric, but I ran out of time. There is exactly one table, not even complete, that I think is worth sharing at the m:

Why are you no longer a priest?

At your temple, a priesthood lasts 7 years, and now it's done.
Your temple was destroyed, sacked. Perhaps you have sworn revenge, or perhaps you want to rebuild it elsewhere.
You were assigned to the priesthood as a child, but as an adult, wished to see beyond its walls and fled.
You were kicked out due to corruption: asking for bribes, or stealing from temple offerings.
You were kicked out due to heresy: your beliefs were unconventional, or your temple lost a political battle, or political reforms forced uniformity on the religion. You were forced to flee, or ordered into exile.
You are still a priest, but you belong to a remote temple of a minor god and your duties are limited. You do weddings, births and funerals, and a few yearly holidays, but otherwise you need to find other ways to make ends meet.

Part 3: Types of Gods

I don't really like the usual fantasy domains, because they seem mostly based on a limited set of real world religions and also not have a lot to do with how people live their lives and what is important to them. Like probably a lot of religions have a god associated with "thunder" but I think it was not necessarily one of the most important things people would have a god for. But having sets of domains is convenient for designing games. So here's an alternative set

Gods of the state. The sun, the king, humans who become gods, etc. They represent power and authority, justice and the law. They are most concerned with right and wrong, and their followers are most likely to have institutional power. They are most likely to be hierarchical in nature and to require uniformity in belief. Paladin-types would be associated with these, whether they represent justice or tyranny. You are most likely to deal with this god's representatives, rather than this god directly.
Gods associated with sustenance. Gods of farming and the harvest, the seasons, the hunt, the rivers and the sea. Everyday gods, maybe small and local ones. Celebrated in festivals that mark the rhythm of the years. Of most immediate concern to ordinary people. Clerics may be more informal, more embedded in the community, with more regional customs and more differences from village to village.
Chthonic gods: gods of the underworld, of death, of curses and oaths and vengeance. Perhaps gods that go unnamed, that are propitiated rather than worshipped. Feared, but not necessarily evil. Death is a part of life. Laws may also fall under their domain, but only the oldest laws, laws even the gods fear to break.
Mystery gods. Gods of secrets, the knowledge of the universe. Books and monasteries, or initiation rituals and hidden places. Remote places, altered states of mind. Things only a few are meant to know. Old and forgotten gods, and gods that appeared yesterday. It's disappointing that this type of god is usually relegated to evil cults, because there is so much more that you can do that's interesting.
Gods of the home. Your ancestors. The hearth. Children and childbirth. Sickness and health. A home altar, or perhaps something small you carry with you as you travel. A mischievous spirit. Few priests: perhaps someone to bless your house when you lay its foundations, but it's everyone's individual responsibility otherwise.
Gods of work. Of wealth and good fortune, of travelers and merchants, of artisans and skill. A god for a guild; for a marketplace; for a ship; for a harbour; for an old mill, or the winds that drive it; for the magic that keeps a blade sharp. These gods are very specific, and their worship is aligned with other institutions and traditions.

Combining These

Picking some random combinations:

gods of the state + mystery gods: A temple that only a select few can visit, the center of royal power, the place the ruler communes with the gods and thus gains the right to rule, would make an excellent dungeon.
Gods of the home + gods of work: Certain jobs stay within certain families, the worship of the relevant god passed down from generation to generation. A mill, perhaps, where the last miller died, and now the mill is angry.
Chthonic gods + mystery gods: almost too obvious a combination. But perhaps you have sworn to take revenge, or you must find a particular sword that can slay the dragon or something, and the only way you can do that is prove yourself in the dungeon of someone or other and gain an audience with a god at the gates to the underworld at the bottom.

You could also have more than one god in each category. A village with a god of the fields, of the forest, and of the sea as their main gods (each falling under a god of sustenance) tells you something about how the town sees the world. A town with 4 gods representing 4 civic virtues (gods of the state) also tells you something about it. Maybe these gods aren't even considered to be supernatural beings, they are explicitly meant to be metaphorical. Contrast against one whose state religion consists of the patron god of three powerful families who compete for power.