Religion in TTRPG Fantasy

I recently watched a video that I’d had on my watch later for a while, so we’re here to talk about religion in fantasy worlds. Well, specifically, religion in fantasy roleplaying games which involve interacting with the gods. Seems like I’m narrowing it pretty hard off the bat, but it’s necessary. See, the video I watched was “Do Fantasy Pantheons Make Sense?” by the YouTube channel The Grungeon Master, and he says that this is common across all fantasy. I’m not sure that’s true. It is common in D&D, however, and in many other fantasy RPG settings that take tropes from D&D, so I want to talk about this in terms of worldbuilding.

There’s a lot that I agree with The Grungeon Master on, and the video articulated a feeling that I don’t think I’ve done a good job putting across before. Specifically, why is it that D&D-style polytheism feels so alien to people who have studied ancient polytheism like that of Greece or the Norse countries, or who are affiliated with modern polytheism like in Hinduism or various folk, regional, and new religions. Grungeon lays out several points (not in this manner, I’m paraphrasing here) which I think are important to fleshing out the dissonant feeling that tabletop polytheism gives.

• The power of the gods (and their servants) is obvious. One of the key differences between tabletop deities and real-world deities is that tabletop deities have clear, unambiguous ability to interact with the world. There is evidence in a way that real-world deities and religions will struggle to provide, and will have almost no hope of confirming scientifically.
• The power of the gods is not limited. This could actually be considered two related points, so I’ll break them out. In both, however, tabletop deities are unlimited and real-world polytheistic deities are limited.
  — The gods can do anything they want. Each god is able to complete nearly any action, of any level of power. This means that each god can solve any problem. They don’t rely on one another.
  — The gods are not restricted by portfolio. The lack of restriction, coupled with the fact that gods can do anything, means that there’s no reason to call for one god for a first kind of problem and then a different god for a second kind of problem. This is one of the cornerstones of real-world polytheism, and it just doesn’t make sense with the way D&D deity systems are constructed.
• Priests in tabletop fantasy worlds are not religious functionaries by power-level, but they are not wonder-workers by disposition. Basically, clerics/priests of even 2nd or 3rd character level in D&D can do wonders of the kind that are saved for Christian apostles (i.e. the ones with Jesus) and other religious saints. At the same time, in a lot of settings, we’re supposed to accept that hundreds if not thousands of such people are just milling around, hanging out in temples, not affecting anything major.
• The existence of evil gods. Specifically, as Grungeon points out, this makes little sense when the idea is that gods are “powered”/”fed”/”supported” by the level of worship they have from mortals; very few people would choose to worship evil gods, and therefore they should be either very minor (and without much effect in the world) or totally forgotten.

I do have ideas on what you can do to make a D&D/tabletop pantheon something that feels more like actual polytheism. But the question should be asked: is that something you want to do? One thing that is pretty clear is that the way D&D religion works is based on the fact that a divine mage is a type of player character. In other words, D&D religion isn’t meant to make sense for a society, it’s meant to provide a series of deities which can be connected to clerics (and other players, as needed). It’s geared towards the specific class and advancement system used by D&D. And that might be something that you want.

Basically, I’m not laying this out here because I think this is how you are “supposed to” do things. I’m doing it because I think having a system that gels more with how humans actually believe does make a more interesting system for me, and I believe other people are interested in that idea, too. But this is an option for worldbuilding, not a correction. I just want to be clear about that.

World Polytheism

I will lay out two broad kinds of religious patterns which I think would be pretty straightforward to implement into any setting that you might be working on. First, though, I want to give broad-brush solutions to some of the problems I talked about earlier. This will be helpful if you want to go along your own path but you’ve thought about these issues before; they can push you ahead on your own road. These solutions are geared towards a “world polytheism” model, largely because this is the most straightforward; if there’s any interest, maybe I’ll sketch out a different kind of system at a later time.

• The power of deities should not be tied to worship. I think this is actually a hard thing to reckon with, though it might not seem like it. The idea that a god gets more powerful with the more worship they receive, and that gods may even need it, is satisfying on a mechanical level. That is, in game terms, it makes sense: there’s a clear exchange there. It creates a way for gods to go to war and for their adherents (including perhaps the players) to have a real effect on the outcome. But it also introduces a lot of contradictions into how the deities work and interact with the world. To me, the easiest thing is to say that the deities simply are; the reason to worship will come with the next point.
• Each deity should have their domain and should only be able to act within it. This can be taken in a number of different ways, I think. For one, we might say that this only relates to what non-chosen can call upon deities for. Or we could say that even the chosen (such as PC clerics/priests) are strongly restricted in what they can do. On another line, we might say that the domain is a kind of container for the kinds of things that a deity can do (a deity of storms can only act related to actual weather storms) or it could be a kind of jumping-off point (a deity of storms could also be called upon to aid “a storm of arrows”, or “storming a castle”, or to make someone’s mood “tempestuous”, etc.). The point is that there are somethings which a deity can’t do, so there’s a reason that a person would have to call upon more than one deity.
• Most people should not restrict their worship. In D&D, it’s common to think of everyone in a big city as having their own specific god that they worship. I’ve seen it called a henotheistic model. It’s an odd kind of henotheistic model, compared to those in the real world, and I don’t think it really hangs together. Even if a person had a favorite god in this type of setting, that is not the same kind of thing as the devotion common in tabletop fantasy. Instead of that, most people should be worshipping every relevant god, whenever it is relevant. Most should take part in every major festival.
• There should be a separation of cleric-hood (i.e. being a religious functionary) from prophet-hood (i.e. being a miracle worker, or a PC cleric). In some part this gets into a low-magic/high-magic divide which I’m going to try not to dig too deep into right now. However, one of the main dissonances of tabletop fantasy religion is that people with amazing powers are expected to simply be sitting in temples and doing paperwork. Or put it another way: we’re often forced to accept that a city with a huge temple full of trained clerics will somehow still have sickness, injury, and death in the city, because the clerics are busy for reasons, even though most will not be expending many of their spells in any given day. The cleanest way to get around this is to simply say that regular religious functionaries don’t have the powers that tabletop PC divine mages have, and divine mages are something special rather than typical.
• Rituals should provide a known but unreliable way for those who are not divine mages to interact with the gods. Essentially, this provides a reason for all these religious functionaries who are not divine mages to exist (beyond the paperwork, etc.).
• There should be no conflict of domain. If deities are not really bounded by anything but their domains, why would there be competition within domains? Why two gods of the sea, two gods of the air? This does happen in real-world religions and polytheisms, but it becomes more difficult to square when we’re talking about beings with evidential powers. Essentially, say there are two gods of the sea who exist: their domains are “the sea” without any difference. If one is more powerful, why would anyone call upon the other? If they are clashing, that creates something else to solve; are either of the gods reliable if they often clash, or should an arbiter god be called on? And unless the god of the sea in one pantheon has no power in the pantheon of another god, this is a clash rather than a reason for another pantheon.
• Deities must be singular. This is related to the point about domain conflicts, especially considering other pantheons. Deities may have “aspects” (as they’re usually called in D&D), which is to say, different forms or versions which are worshipped by different groups at the same time. However, a deity can’t use its aspects to be multiple deities. Each aspect of each deity has to have the same domain(s) and powers as every other. That is to say, a deity cannot be a god of wealth to one group and a god of death to another; whatever they are, they must be to all groups. This is because each deity’s power does stretch across the world, and if we are not using a model where the type of worship has an effect on the deity, and we’re not having any overlap of domain, then a deity can’t take up a different domain simply by appearing in a different form.
• Most evil people do not worship evil deities. This is a kind of culmination of all the other points. The public nature of tabletop religion worshipping evil deities is primarily because the power of evil deities is based on their worshippers; for a deity to be powerful, it has to have a significant presence. This is not the case here. Further, people who are called evil aren’t likely to advertise themselves if they don’t have to. Any worship of evil deities is likely to be personal and related to a specific act (such as calling upon a god of murder before committing such) or, rarely, in small cultic groups.

Possible Solutions

To set-up for the two specific solutions I’m going to detail, I want to put a set of deities in front of you. This will hopefully help you to visualize as I go forward. If you played D&D 3.5, these may seem familiar, but with new names. I’ve also not used racial deities here, primarily due to the “world polytheism” concept; any “race-specific” deities would either be aspects of listed deities or defied heroes (who act more as intercessors to existing gods than new gods on their own).

So here is the list of our deities, with short descriptions and D&D alignments.

• Anubis, god of retribution (LN)
• Apophis, god of slaughter (CE)
• Ares, god of tyranny (LE)
• Artemis, goddess of the woodlands (NG)
• Dionysus, god of rogues (CN)
• Hades, god of death (NE)
• Hel, goddess of corruption (LN)
• Helios, god of the sun (NG)
• Heracles, god of strength (CG)
• Hermes, god of roads (NN)
• Loki, god of secrets (NE)
• Osiris, god of valor (LG)
• Pan, god of nature (NN)
• Thoth, god of magic (NN)

Of these, four will be the primary or greater gods: Hades, Helios, Pan, and Thoth. These are chosen because their domains are key to life for many people. The sun is a major benefactor of the world and has been worshipped all throughout world religions. Nature is how food and everything else is provided. Magic is the main other force which can affect the world. And all people (and living things) will experience death. These four are the ones which will be worshipped the most throughout your setting, and all four should be worshipped by everyone who worships any one of them. They can be worshipped in a single temple with a shared clergy, a single temple with separate clergies, or separate temples entirely, but each major city will have a prominent way to worship all of them. The calendar will also probably be marked by the festivals for these four deities in particular.

Then there are the Evils: Apophis, Ares, and Loki. Alignment-wise she doesn’t fit, but Hel might also be placed among the Evils based on domain. If there was a separation between god of death and god of the dead here we might put Hades here (as god of death), whereas the god of the dead (possibly Anubis or Hel?) would take Hades’s place as one of the greater four. The Evils are not widely worshipped but they might be major part of a shared mythology, and likely would be warned against (somewhat like a boogeyman figure).

And all the others – Anubis, Artemis, Dionysus, Hel, Heracles, Hermes, and Osiris – would fall under the category of lesser gods. They might be well-known but would not have the consistent breadth of worship that the greater four do. Very likely, a single city will be considered the major center of a lesser god’s worship for a whole country or even wider. This isn’t to say that these gods are actually any less powerful than the greater gods (or the evils), it’s just that their level of worship is not the same.

With that in mind, here are the two models that I would suggest.

Solution 1: The Church-Corporation Model

This is the “high church” model: we’re assuming that there are a significant number of miracle workers up and down the priesthood. In this model, most priesthoods/clergies would resemble a mix of guilds and corporations more than they would Christian-style churches. This is because the miracle workers in the church would be applying their skills to produce better products. A temple of Heracles (god of strength) might decide to put effort into making weapons, and they would then be able to use divine magic to make those weapons even better. Eventually, they would likely be the most trusted weapons makers in the area; those who wanted to be weapons makers would go to work with them, whether as full priests or not; and this process would repeat over other industries. This would not only provide “employment” for these miracle workers, so they’re not just sitting around not doing miracles, it would also put the “cooperative” nature of the domains to work in practice. A god of carpenters, let’s say, would be represented in the form of a temple which actually provided a function and, therefore, a reason to exist alongside other temples of different gods.

This model allows for priesthoods etc. largely as described in most high-magic settings: organizations which feel much like a Christian church in size, scope, and organization, full of priests who (in the fantasy setting) can actually make use of their powers. Most divine mages in the world will have gone through a temple as a worker and left for some reason, rather than being full-time worshipper or a freelance problem solver. The priesthood(s) of the greater gods are likely to be split, due to the fact that they will be handling larger numbers of active worshippers; if it’s appropriate for such a group to have a corporate side (perhaps the priests of Pan would farm?), that would be a kind of sworn association separate from the actual priesthood. It’s the lesser priesthoods who would be primarily church-corporations, both functions co-existing in one organization.

Solution 2: The City God Model

This is the “low church” model, where the separation between cleric and divine mage is strongest. In this concept, there will be a difference between “state religion” and “popular religion”. As far as popular religion goes (that is, the religion that regular people believe and follow), veneration of the greater gods is the most common and engaged. However, in many places, this worship will be somewhat secondary. The state religion is the one which is endorsed by the government. Usually, especially in a fractious semi-feudal situation, we’re talking about the titular god for a city or town; hence, “city god model”. In other cases, we’re talking about a more complex pantheon, perhaps including the greater gods or perhaps not.

Regardless, what is important here is that the state religion frequently does not have devotees in the same way as the popular religion. Those who take part in it do so because the state wishes to worship a particular deity (or deities) for reasons of social cohesion and for other political gains. And because it isn’t connected to the people, it doesn’t draw those who become divine mages. Here, the priests in official temples are likely not to be divine mages and instead will simply be religious functionaries who carry out the state’s rituals. These priesthoods will definitely not be corporations or guilds for any commerce. They’re established just to operate this state priesthood as a political tool.

In this model, most divine mages will be freelance wonder-workers rather than being connected to a specific temple. This also opens up the possibility for cults of personality based around such healers, much like how reputed healers in the real world draw in followings of devotees. It’s likely that there would be a proliferation of “saints” in such a setting, and very likely that some of these figures would become worshipped as city gods by the communities they aided or even founded.

Single Devotion

The last thing I want to talk about is the concept of single devotion, or devotion to one deity above (and instead of) others. I don’t want to get rid of this concept for the D&D cleric (and similar classes), not only because I think it is mechanically important but also because I think this isn’t a major break with real-world polytheism. The gods require their experts and personal servants. Just because one decides to become such a servant, devoting themselves primarily to the worship of one deity above others, that doesn’t mean that they would call on other deities any less. Instead, they are taking on a specific role, and doing the duty of that deity. So you don’t have to think that there’s an issue for being a cleric of one deity even the religion in your setting is a better reflection of real-world polytheism.