Religion is nearly universal in the real world throughout history, basically every culture has had at least one faith. But religion takes many forms from how many gods exist within its cosmology, to their relation to humans, how it is organized and so many other facets. Moving religion into fantasy adds even more options with the potential for divine magic, angels, demons or other servants of the gods appearing in the story. In this blog post I will look at some of the key things to consider about building religions in a fantasy rpg trying to do it in a logical structure you could follow.
The first step is determining if your religion is the only one in the setting or if there are multiple religions. And if there are multiple religions do they all point to the same god(s) in different ways or are they worshipping different entities? These questions are important to start with because they really start the process of determining how the religion you are building fits into the world, because like any part of your setting, it informs and is informed by the other elements. The only religion creates a very different feel than being one of three, five or ten different faiths and the conflicts between them. A single religion might still not be one big happy family, with worries of different factions within the faith and the potential for heresies and conflicts of doctrine.
Next is the need to determine if this is a monotheistic faith (so one god), polytheistic faith (more than one god) or if there aren’t really any gods but powerful forces or spirits (such as worshipping the sun and moon or believing that the volcano near you holds a powerful spirit of some kind). Is there an ancestor worship aspect to the faith? This might be the most important single decision that is made about a religion as it will impact everything else about it. RPGs often use a polytheistic group of gods that each have their own domains and areas of focus, like the ancient Greeks, Romans, Norse, Egyptians and many others, you have war gods, sun gods, law/justice gods, thief gods and different characters can worship different gods. In a patheon are all the gods roughly on the same side, or does it have its own divine factions?
Third is how organized is the religion? Is this structured like the Roman Catholic Church with a lot of central organization and hierarchy, well established rites and clear rules separating who are priests and other religious leaders? Or is it very decentralized with minimal formal organization and less rules on how to become a religious leader? Maybe it is somewhere in between with a few tiers of organization and some healthy unofficial or unwritten yet well known rules or that officially equal religious figures have a well established unofficial hierarchy. A highly structured faith is likely to have churches or temples in every town, maybe every village, cities will probably have huge, impressive cathedral-like structures that are the seats of powerful, high ranking religious leaders that could be major players in local politics. Completely decentralized faiths might have no official temples or if they do instead of one huge structure in a city each district could have their own smaller one. Priests in cities might have more unofficial standing and power than rural ones instead of actually being their boss or boss’s boss. Ones in the middle might have official central organizations that consist of every priest or cleric of the entire faith or be divided regionally and have a nominal head, but day to day the local priest has little to no oversight.
Now we get into the first real fantasy element of building a fantasy religion, is there some kind of magic granted by the gods or spirits? Many fantasy RPGs have this one one level or another, D&D and pathfinder have clerics that are powerful casters usually focused on healing magic and buffing their allies. Warhammer fantasy roleplay has different small spell lists for priests of different gods that make them operate very differently, even when you are considering the non-chaos human pantheon. Related to this question, how does the faith view non-divine magic? Does it consider wizards and sorcerors to be evil, or just another power base to compete with? Are some magic users officially approved by the faith in some way?
How much does the god or gods interact with the world directly? Are these like Greek or Norse gods where they wander the world at times, have half-mortal children and can pass for a mortal when necessary? Or are they more concepts or so distant that you will never see them on the mortal plane? Maybe it is somewhere in between, where priests or a subset of them can communicate with the gods in some way, possibly through visions or prophecies. This choice will significantly impact the feel of your world and even the encounters the players could have. Even mid-level heroes in a Greek or Norse inspired world have likely interacted with gods or demi-gods, whether they realize that or not.
Are there related organizations tied into the central one? Different religious orders, such as monastic orders, different types of priests, religious warrior orders, religious arcane magic orders? In a polytheistic faith are priests or entire orders devoted to a specific god, or the pantheon as a whole? It probably shouldn’t be the first thing you need to worry about in a setting, but having multiple orders of priests, warrior monks and the like can add some really interesting depth to your setting. These can easily be sources of quests, threats for the party to overcome, or another scheming power base in the tapestry of a vibrant kingdom. This area can take up as much time as you want. The real world and especially history is full of these groups. Paladins in D&D and pathfinder are heavily based on warrior monk orders like the Knights Templar and the Teutonic Knights, and you can can have good shining beacons of Paladin Orders, but also ones that aren’t quite as glowing white and pure or even pure evil and serve dark gods. What would an orc warrior-priest order look like?
How connected to learning and education is the faith? Are they involved in the centres of learning? Many real world universities, including very old ones, had very strong religious ties when they were founded. At points in Europe the catholic church was basically the only producer of new copies of books and a significant percent of the literate population were priests or monks. Maybe the faith wants the general population to be ignorant and dependant on it for knowledge, knowledge after all is power.
Are there offshoots of the main faith? Major religions in the real world are not monoliths, about ⅓ of the world is at least nominally Christian, but that includes Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Protestant, and other groups, some of which members of the first three would not consider to be Christian. Islam has multiple sects, primarily Sunni and Shia. Judaism also has different groups. I am less familiar with Hinduism and Buddhism but I am sure they also have various different doctrinal groups. Having different sects of the same general faith can add layers to the culture of different lands, making them seem both similar and different at the same time. These divides between sects can inform many of the political divisions between various powers. After the protestant reformation, the faith of the the reigning monarch became very political and that faith would largely decide what other powers would be allies and enemies. Religious groupings may also be shaped by these political realities, even after England and Scotland shared a monarch, their church hierarchies remained entirely separate despite their very similar beliefs and organization. Scottish lords and clerics strongly resisted attempts by monarchs to fold the Church of Scotland into the Church of England and attempts to do so often created wider problems for the monarchy.
Beyond sects, are there heretical groups that exist at the fringes of the faith? These differ from sects in that while different sects may disagree on many issues, they exist at a size, distance or political reality that makes completely eliminating them impossible. Their views may also not be so different that the two sides view each other as completely beyond reasonable disagreement on issues of the faith. Heresies are generally smaller, more extreme and often somewhat secret, at least once they have officially been declared to be heretical. The rise of a significant heresy or doctrinal difference often leads to great gatherings of powerful and learned religious figures. These religious conclaves can last for months or even years and the lead up, event itself and aftermath can all spawn all sorts of interesting things that impact an rpg group. In the lead up, the areas around where the conclave will be held may see a rise in security as local secular leaders crack down on bandits, other criminals and monsters on the fringes, trying to avoid attacks on travelling religious leaders. But those warriors come from somewhere, and nearby regions may see a rise in banditry and monsters as they go looking for greener pastures.
How does this faith interact with the different intelligent species of your world? Is it mostly confined to one species? Does it view the founding species differently from others? Are there unofficial barriers to some progressing within the ranks of the faith? In D&D the main pantheon is fairly widely worshipped by many intelligent species with some rarer (and often very evil) species having their own god(s), whereas in warhammer humans, elves and dwarves all have their own gods that all seem to exist as separate entities. Going in some directions with this can clearly be very challenging as you could end up with a religious organization that is clearly mirroring real world racism onto fantasy species, many people won’t want to explore such issues in their gaming and it would be very easy to misstep.
Are divine servants important to what you are trying to do? Can an angel appear to the players with a message from a god? Do evil deities send physical demons to reap souls in a very personal and violent way? Can these divine servants free themselves from the control of their god, to fall and become mortal? The appearance of direct servants of the gods in the campaign could be a powerful moment, but likely they should be used sparingly. The same should apply to the wider world. Though a theocracy that regularly receives messengers from the gods could be a very interesting nation in a setting.
Building a fantasy religion is something that always has further niches that could be explored and likely no matter how much work you put into it on some level it will never be as deep as the faiths of the real world that have in most cases had centuries to shape and develop. It might be a good idea to dive deep into a few areas, fleshing out the history and organization of specific parts of the faith and leaving the rest fairly barebones unless/until you need to develop that as well. You probably don’t need eight related sects that each have multiple related organizations, hierarchies and slight twists on a large and complex pantheon of deities.
Are there major features of fantasy religions that I didn’t cover? Are there ideas I mentioned that should have been elaborated on more? Did the double length blog post work or was it too much in one shot? I have a fairly religious background so things that may seem obvious to me might need explanation to others. The plan for next time is the last of the paths of Dragon Magic, the Path of Living Fire.
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