I'm hitting a familiar roadblock for my next fantasy campaign. That of the whole spiritual aspect.

First, a few things about the campaign:

-Low, tricky magic. Think more LotR, Westeros and Harn than Forgotten Realms
-World flavor is not medieval but more in line with late antiquity and dark exotic threats. Sword and Sorcery in the vein of Conan and aesthetic in line with Glorantha and Artesia.

It's humanocentric. Threats come mainly from your fellow humans (warfare, politics... religion?) as well as dark cults reviving unspeakable horrors (I guess a lil bit of CoC and Warhammer there).


I'm struggling with a lot of metaphysical aspects. Creation myths, religion as institution, monotheism or polytheism, etc...
I'd like for religion not to be vanilla but that's the one aspect I never pull off to my satisfaction. I know for a fact I don't want DnD-like cleric "superpowers" for this campaign but I don't know if I should rule out any form of divine intervention altogether.

I did toy with the idea of Gods solely being capricious beings who torment humanity but that's way too pessimistic. I'd like some shading in there. I guess I just don't know where to start.

Can anyone help?

My current RQ fantasy campaign world is VERY much like what you describe. It's late bronze age, near eastern/asian in influence, powerful magic is rare (though charms and small blessings are common), it has an S&S vibe, etc.

EDIT: See this thread for some thoughts on the subject by me, clash, Jocelyn, MZR, and others (if you haven't already): http://www.roludo.ca/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=1631

The best religions tend to be tied to their setting. Tell us about the setting, and we can help you come up with a religion. Also, what system are you thinking?

I would run it backwards in a slightly different way:

Imagine the coolest thing possible happening at your table as a result of having this religion in your game.

i.e. a human sacrifice the characters are swooping in to stop as monsters gibber just outside reality

or

a smarmy balding cleric demanding extortionate "tithes" while glowering armored knights back him up

or

a humble parishoner beseeches his god in a terrible moment, and the PCs arrive to save him

or

whatever. Then, work backwards to make gods and religion capable of creating that awesomest-possible-moment.

Then do it for the second awesomest.

And so on.

Yeah, examine "What are the cultures like?"

"What was Conan like when it came to gods?"

"How much of each element is important."


How badly do you want religion to influence play and adventures? What can you do to make that interesting without falling into the idiocy trap (All religions are corrupt! All religions are evil! All religions are anything!)

That threat is amazing! It pushes a lot of my buttons currently, such as "faith" as opposed to divine manifestations. Much to digest here, thanks!

I may use Unisystem, or CORPS or a Chronica Feudalis hack. I'm really not fussy about that right now. As for telling you about the world, I'm a little lost for words. I think it's best for me to answer JD so you get where I'm coming from:



This is an awesome way to do it, I agree. Here's the thing: I usually do reverse engineering like that and I'd like to see something grow more organically. I'd like to see what comes out of the creation myth, how divinity affects the world, whether there are other planes of existence, how it impacted cultures, empires, magic and so on.

I'm going for a sandbox style of play so it's not like I will push for a specific campaign style anyway.

I do have preconceived notions such as Matheson-like vampires roaming in large parts of the world, underground cities and arena games as offerings to dark entities but everything is up in the air.

I would like to start from the "beginning" and make it evolve from there. Just not sure how to go about it, though

Don't.

Make shit up as you go along, i.e. dish out information to PCs on a strict need-to-know basis, and don't be afraid to steal mercilessly from history, myth and literature. There's nothing wrong with a pantheon consisting of Thor, Mitra, Set, Istar and Cthulhu. If anything, your players will thank you for it.

If someone is playing a priest, ask them what sort of religion would they want to follow. Hell, let them have a hand at creating it, along with you. Everyone wins.



Gods are very powerful psychic parasites who somehow thrive on human worship (an oldie, but a goodie). Or just very powerful aliens who are having an unintelligibly complex and aeons-long philosophical discussion, and intend to use their human followers as experiments to get their points across to each other.