Creating Your Campaign: Thoughts on Religions


From freepik.com

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons has religion.  The game has clerics, druids, paladins, and monks as character classes, this makes religion a part of the game.  As I say more than once here, this presents an opportunity for tremendous world building and richness to your campaign.

Religion as opposites

AD&D is a fantasy game and it draws heavily from sword and sorcery fiction.  This fiction had evil supernatural beings and evil deities (the god Set from Conan, for example).  This gives you the license to create some very black and white pantheons.  For example, deities of light/good/good deeds/etc. for your lawful good paladins contrasted with the opposite.

This also gives you the ability to create gray areas as conflict in the campaign.  For example, in some of my lands Death is an evil cult that needs to be stamped out.  In others it's not treated that way and members of that religion take care of after death rites for their populations.  In some areas misguided clerics have taken over the religion and twisted it, in other areas that hasn't happened.

Some religions might not have a true "evil" deity.  For example, I have an area in my campaign called the Sea of Grass.  Picture the Great Plains and the American West populated by an amalgamation of the Native American plains tribes and the Mongols.  With a nature-focused religion there isn't a true "evil" deity.

Religion as conflict

This topic is a huge source of conflict in our world and this can certainly be the case in a campaign.  Religious wars, religious themed kingdoms/empires, persecution, good vs. evil, these can all be themes in a campaign.  In my campaign I have a belief that doesn't like non-humans and magic.  As most of my players are playing elves, gnomes, and halflings this provides a source of conflict in the lands that this religion is dominant.

Religion as a way to live and act

Some religions dictate how their practitioners live and act.  This would be the case for clerics, monks, and paladins.  Paladins tithe, but they would also have vows and responsibilities that they have to uphold.  I always think of Knights Templar when I think of paladins.  This also suggests a hierarchy for the paladin and his/her order.  Monks have vows and are part of an order, this means that they don't exist separately from that but are following the order's instructions (even if the instructions are: Go help this party with their adventure).  Clerics should not get a free pass with how to act and their religious structure either.  For example, when you say you are going to "turn" the skeletons, show me your ritual for that!  

So there's a possibility for tremendous world building here.

Are deities things that your characters can encounter and possibly battle?

At least with my teenage friends back in the 80's, we took the Deities and Demigods book as giving us the ability to go to those planes of existence and fight those deities.  Now that I'm older I take them as more forces of nature - "killing" them would destroy reality (different story with demigods and heroes).  But this is something for you to think about and visit in your campaign.  One day those first level characters might be truly powerful...

What version of the religion fits into your campaign?

For example, I'm getting ready to run a sandbox campaign using my version of the frozen north (creatively called "The Frozen Lands" in my campaign).  It is populated by an amalgamation of Vikings, Cimmerians, and Barbara Hambly's White Raiders (Darwath trilogy).  They follow a version of the Norse religion.  I draw heavily from Neils Gaiman and Mike Vasich (he wrote an excellent book on Loki with a different take on the Norse mythos) and make it very grim, just like the lands.

Do you even need to invent your own?

Certainly you can and there is nothing wrong with that.  This is a lot of work when it comes to the world building and most of your players are going to miss the details.  You can also go back to the source material (Deities and Demigods or Legends and Lore) and borrow from there, which is less work for you.

Lastly, know your players

I have very different campaign settings for 14 year olds versus 50 year olds.  Like everything else in this game it is important to know your audience.

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