Design and Development: Religions

The standard template for D&D religions seems to be that people pick a god and that's the god they worship, sometimes on a racial (read: species, but we're talking classic D&D here) level (the god of elves!), sometimes on a class level (the god of magic!). A farmer prays to the god of farming and a warrior to the god of war. Temples exist for each individual god and you go worship there as you please or whenever mass is.

The question is, should we hold on to that classic style in Bluestone? Are there a variety of temples dedicated to each god that is worshiped in, say, Ashford Bay. Or do they organize the groups into pantheons, something similar to say, Eberron? So perhaps a major god and two minor gods with similar portfolios would be called The Triad and have their own temple or perhaps the humans would mix together a group of gods and the gnomes would group together another (with some potential cross-over, either realized or not) and each have separate worship.

Or maybe a mix of both, some places/species only revere gods individually while others like to group them into pantheons. More things to ponder...

Musing: Religion Part 2

One of the common misconceptions (or, indeed concepts if written into the setting) is that every holy man is a cleric or a druid. Every temple you wander into, the head priest is a cleric of some level, often with lower level cleric apprentices. I like to call this the Forgotten Realms syndrome. Deminar is simply not designed that way.

From a game perspective, I've already mentioned my belief that an adventurer should be rare, in order to maintain the uniqueness the player's feel when their characters interact with the world. How special are you when you're one adventurer among a countless horde after all?

Within the world, it wouldn't make a lot of sense either. Unlike the arcane spellcasting of a magic-user that manipulates the very building blocks of creation, divine spellcasters are fueled by the gods themselves (or from various patron spirits amongst the druids). A god has to sacrifice a bit of his own power to give a cleric the ability to cast spells or turn the undead and, despite the power of the gods, their power is finite. Every bit of power given to a patron on Deminar is power that the god no longer has at his disposal to fight off rival gods. The gods are locked in a power struggle, and a god that does not have enough worshipers or who foolishly expends his power on both planar and mortal followers risks having his domain taken over by a lesser god or having his domain absorbed by another major god. Because of this, a god can't simply gift every being that prays to him with power. On the other hand, gods receive their power from mortal worshipers as well as the souls of those faithful that pas beyond mortal life. What better way to convert followers then to show a god's power through a mortal vessel (since no god can directly influence the mortal world)? Like any power struggle, this is a delicate balancing act between attracting more followers through displays of faith and power and holding onto enough power to protect their position.

This is why clerics are more then simply undead hunters, they are also traveling emissaries of their faith. They are divinely appointed to spread the good name (or vengeful wrath) of their god, converting new followers through awe or fear. A cleric who forsakes this duty soon finds himself without his abilities, as even the smallest bit of a god's power is precious and the deity is always looking for the most effective way to use it.

Design and Development: Gods

I've talked plenty about the gods before, in fact, the greater cosmology of a setting seems to always be a high point for me, be it designing or reading about it. When we originally developed Deminar we had a good number of gods figured out, nine major powers representing the nine alignments, plus a score of lesser gods that dealt with a variety of specific aspects, concepts, and states of being. The same god may be worshiped by several different groups, each who call him a different name, and worship a different aspect of his portfolio and believing that the other groups are worshiping a different or even false god (and indeed, going to battle over such slights). There may be hundreds of different religions among all the islands of Deminar, the isolation between each other means even more radical offshoots of the same deity could be worshiped.

The question is, how many of these gods do we introduce in our first book? The Bluestone Isles are not that large, but they do feature a diverse number of species and one major metropolitan area. Enough variety for several deities to have a home. I don't think there should be too many gods in the Player's Guide, especially with this one acting as a low-level beginner's guide. You don't want to overload player's with too many choices to begin. However, I do want to introduce the concept of different species (or even the same species) worshiping the same god under a different aspect/ideology/practice without them even realizing it. Though it wouldn't be spelled out that it was the same god in the Player's Guide (that's what the DM's Guide is for), meaning to players, it would seem like just a different god.

So, how many? Just the major ones? A few of the major ones? How many minor gods? Are there minor gods very specific to Bluestone? What would be a good target number for how many different types of deity worship exist on the Bluestone Isles?

Musing: Religion Part 1

There are two major forms of religion on the Bluestone Isles, druidism and deity worship. Both are intrinsically linked to one another, but the separation of ideology between them means they will forever be at odds.

Druidism is the belief that everything has a spirit, be it a living creature, inanimate matter, or a concept or idea. The spirit may be a part of something (the souls of all living things) or the spirit could be a guardian and caretaker of it (like the spirit of a river or the spirit of war), but it a force possessed by all things. The ultimate testament to the faith is the Druid, someone who can commune with spirits to obtain an array of powers and abilities.

Deity worship, on the other hand, is the belief that the powerful beings worshiped as gods created the world and everything that exists on it. They created all living things, set about the laws that make the world work, and developed every concept from love to war. When a soul dies, it travels to the plane of the god that the being worshiped and who's tenets it lived by the most, or the plane of the god that is most befitting the being's punishment, if it worshiped no god or violated his god's tenets. The ultimate expression of the power that the gods wield is that of the Cleric, someone who can focus the very power of the gods into a variety of spells and the ability to drive away the undead.

Both religions have many ties to one another, those that worship the gods very much believe in the souls that exist in them, while the druids cannot deny the power of the gods, nor their duty to claim the souls of those beings that die. However, their are core differences in their beliefs that have stopped the two from ever existing fully entwined.

While practitioners of druidism believe in the gods, they do not believe the gods created all that is. The gods are simply a group of spirits, powerful indeed, but not even the top of the spirit hierarchy. While their positions are important, their are things that have existed long before they did and play a much more important role in the world.

Those that worship the deities see the gods as the ultimate powers in existence, and that everything that is, is because of them. Also, these worshipers do not believe that everything has a spirit, certainly not non-living things and concepts. More extreme believers (but not the followers of all gods) do not even believe that unintelligent living things (such as many monsters, beasts of burdens, and wildlife) have souls and the most extreme do not even think that all intelligent species (their enemies in particular) have souls, so killing these beings is not any worse then cutting down a tree.

So who is right? Are the gods supreme beings that created all that exists and have the power to destroy it on a whim? Or are they simply just part of a larger spiritual hierarchy that has always been and always will be? These questions ensure that while the two religious ideologies may not always be at one another throats, they will never truly get along.