The DM must decide what role an individual faith has within the campaign's culture. This role breaks down into four parts:
- How the faith relates to other faiths;
- How the faith relates to the aristocracy;
- How the faith relates to the people; and
- How the faith relates to foreign faiths.
Relations With Other Faiths[]
Most fantasy cultures tends to fall into one of the following categories:
- Monotheistic By Demand
- Monotheistic By Dogma
- Pantheistic, Chief Faith Dominant By Charisma
- Pantheistic, Chief Faith Dominant By Strength
- Pantheistic, No Chief Faith
Here's what those terms mean within a campaign.
Monotheistic By Demand: The faith's god acknowledges that there are other gods, but demands that everyone worship him or her alone and not those other gods. If a culture is Monotheistic By Demand, it means that this one faith is the only one legally permitted within the culture. This faith is able to demand a tithe (discussed earlier in this chapter) of its followers.
Monotheistic By Dogma: Whether it is true or not, the faith claims that there is only one god or goddess and that everyone must worship that one being. If a culture is Monotheistic By Dogma, only the one faith is permitted within the culture. Typically, the worshippers are sufficiently inflexible in their belief that they often participate in religious wars in order to extend the domination of their own faith or suppress faiths they consider dangerous or heretical. This faith is able to demand a tithe of its followers.
Pantheistic, Chief Faith Dominant By Charisma: This culture concedes that there are several gods with individual faiths or cults associated with them. One, however, is the special favorite of the population, because they consider that god's attribute, personality, or blessings superior to any other god's. Most citizens of the culture worship this chief god and any other gods they choose. In this type of culture, the dominant faith typically asks but is unable to demand a tithe of its followers.
Pantheistic, Chief Faith Dominant By Strength: This culture concedes that there are several gods with individual faiths or cults associated with them. One, however, is supreme in power, either because it has a strong hold on the culture's ruling aristocracy or because the chief god has a power or promises rewards that make his worship necessary. (For example, even in a culture where many gods are worshipped, the god who decides how each person's afterlife is to be spent could be the dominant god; or the king of the gods, who rules the god of the afterlife, could instead be dominant.) In this type of culture, the dominant faith is able to demand a tithe of its followers.
Pantheistic, No Chief Faith: This culture concedes that there are several gods with individual faiths or cults associated with them. Though individual cults may be stronger or weaker than each other, none is dominant throughout the culture. Each faith can only ask, not demand, a tithe of its worshippers. Within the culture, individual communities may have dominant gods; and within those individual communities only, the chief god's worship will correspond to one of the "Pantheistic, Chief Faith Dominant By Charisma" or "Pantheistic, Chief Faith Dominant By Strength" categories. Some cities will not have dominant gods, or may have two or more dominant gods who have joint worship here but not elsewhere. All the gods worshipped within the culture will be perceived to belong to the same family, or pantheon, of gods.
Relations With the Aristocracy[]
Once the DM makes the decision about the sort of hold the faith has on the culture, he can decide what sort of relations the faith has on the country's rulers. This was discussed earlier in this chapter, under the heading "Rights of the Priesthood."
Relations With the People[]
Then, the DM can determine what sort of relationship the faith has with the population. All faiths exert some control over the flock, by helping interpret or define what the flock believes; some faiths exert more power, some less. Some abuse that power, and some don't. Some faiths rule the people, while others are the people.
The DM needs to ask himself these questions:
Is There A Priestly Caste?[]
That is, is Priest the full-time job of the priest, making priesthood something a little distant from ordinary humanity; or do most priests only act as priests part-time, having other occupations most of the time, and making priesthood something that any ordinary person can attain?
Just because Priest is a character class in the AD&D® game doesn't mean that the campaign culture has a priestly caste. In a specific culture, a character could be a blacksmith and also priest of the god of metalwork, or a soldier and also priest of the god of the sun, or a scribe and also priest of the god of death. The character's profession does not have to have any bearing on his priestly role... though it would be inappropriate to be a soldier and a priest of the god of peace, for instance.
In such an arrangement, the character lives in his home, works to make his living, and is an everyday fellow. On occasion, he puts on his priestly vestments and attends to his priestly duties (performing marriages, arranging and performing rituals, giving guidance to those who ask it of him, praying to the god for favors). Most of these events take place at the god's temple or church, but most of the faith's priests do not live there; only priests with no other quarters, and followers of the chief priest, would live there. (A priest could live in his own home while his followers lived in the temple!) With this sort of arrangement, priests are very definitely men and women of the people. They are not supported by tithes (though tithes probably led to the building of the temple), and just about anyone in the culture can become a priest.
However, if priests are a distinct caste in the society, then priesthood is (in addition to everything else) a job. It is the priest's principal occupation. Most priests live in the temple or in properties owned by the faith. It may be considerably more difficult to become a priest; someone intending to become a priest may have to go through years of education and enlightenment before becoming a priest. (This isn't all that important from a campaign perspective; player-character priests still start out at first level, but with the understanding that they've gone through all this teaching and training before they enter the campaign.)
Can The Faith Inflict Serious Punishments On Non-Believers?[]
This is a reflection of the faith's political power in the campaign culture. Does the faith have the power to inflict punishment on those who do not follow the faith's principals? Can they imprison, interrogate, or even torture or execute non-believers or worshippers of other faiths?
If they can, they're a very powerful faith in the culture, and one which can guide the culture into periods of religious terror (whenever they try to purge the land of heretics, or to conceal elimination of political enemies by pretending they're heretics and purging them) or into all-out wars with cultures of different faiths.
Giving a faith this right in a campaign means that there's always the danger of religious persecution in the campaign. If it's the campaign's main setting where a faith has this power, the player-characters may find themselves hired to oppose or even to help such an effort of persecution. If it's a foreign power, the heroes may find themselves helping fugitives escape that land, or may even face the oncoming juggernaut of an army when that faith decides it's time for a holy war.
Is The Faith Indigenous To This Population?[]
Did the faith in question spring from this culture, or was it introduced to this culture by immigration or war?
If it sprang from this culture, that's fine.
However, if it was introduced into this culture and supplanted an earlier faith, the DM has the opportunity to introduce some interesting story elements because of friction between the two faiths.
If the new faith conquered and eliminated the old faith almost completely, then there will be hidden, secret sects of the old faith still in existence... sects which plan to re-establish the preeminence of their god.
If the new faith has dominated and absorbed the old faith without destroying it, you can deal with changes to the culture resulting from that absorption. What if, in the old culture, female priestesses and their goddesses were dominant, while in the new faith male gods and their priests are in power? Or, what if the reverse is true? Or, what if the old faith oppressed one gender and the new faith treats them as equals? In any case, there will be ongoing struggles, especially struggles of politics and traditions, where believers in the old faith try to keep things traditional and familiar while believers in the new faith try to impose their own beliefs on the population.
As a variant of that, a campaign setting, or even an entire campaign, can be built around a missionary situation, where priests of one faith have been introduced into a setting where a different faith reigns... and have appeared with the intent of converting the local population to their beliefs. This is especially interesting where missionaries of a more sophisticated culture are sent to a more primitive region.
The priests of the new, intruding faith are sent with the purposes of educating the "natives," challenging and defeating their priests (if any), and converting the native population to the new belief. The priests might have to oppose soldiers of their own land, who are raiding and exploiting the natives, or may cooperate with them for the glory and profit of their own temples, depending on whether the DM considers this a "good" or a "bad" faith and cause.
In such a setting, player-characters could take on any number of tasks. They could be the new priests, spreading the new faith. They could be enemies of the new priests (perhaps they're priests of another faith altogether!) working to defeat the missionary efforts of the new priests. They could be warriors or foreign defenders of the native population, fighting the soldiers who steal the native culture's treasures and take natives as slaves. They could be those exploitative soldiers. In as complicated a situation as this one is, there are many opportunities for adventure... and for tough ethical questions for the DM to introduce into the campaign.
What Secondary Roles Does The Faith Fill?[]
The DM also needs to decide if a faith fills one or more cultural niches which are not intrinsically religious.
For example, a faith could be the principal educator of a society. Each temple would then also serve as a school, and all priests would have nonweapon proficiencies which allowed them to teach subjects or preserve knowledge. A faith with this privilege will be a powerful one in the culture, because it influences the thinking of each new generation.
A faith might have a secondary function as a shelterer of travellers. Each temple would have a wing or annex which was a sort of hotel for travellers, with many of the brothers and sisters of the faith "running the hotel." This makes this faith a principal waystation for rumors, and the church would be the first place that people would turn to for news.
The faith of the god of Wisdom might be the only one which could supply judges and advocates in trials. The faith of the god of Strength might supply all judges and marshals to athletic events. Perhaps only priests of the god of metalwork can mint coins.
It's extra work to introduce these small cultural elements into a campaign setting, but they add a depth of detail to a campaign for the DM who is willing to do that extra work.
Relations With Foreign Faiths[]
Once he's decided how the campaign's chief culture is arranged, the DM can make the same decisions about all the other, foreign, cultures in his world.
Then, if he wishes, he can add still more detail to the religious fabric of his campaign setting by defining how different cultures regard one another's religious practices.
Some cultures avidly welcome the introduction of new religious elements into their own. Pantheistic cultures, especially those which have no dominant faith, are likely to welcome worship of each foreign god that is encountered.
Some cultures violently oppose such an introduction. For example, a culture might be pantheistic, worshipping many gods, and yet still believe that its pantheon is the only true pantheon... and that all foreign gods and foreign pantheons are lies or demons.
Foreign cultures often worship some of the same gods as the campaign's principal culture, but do so under different names, with different rites, and believing in different stories about those gods. A tolerant culture will welcome new interpretations of their gods. An intolerant one will, at best, seek to educate the foreign culture to "correct its misunderstandings"; at worst, it will insist that the foreign land be conquered and forcibly "corrected."
This, then, is another way to add detail and texture to a campaign: By deciding how foreign faiths regard one another, and what effect that regard has on the cultures involved. These effects range all the way from increased trade and exchange of knowledge through war, conquest, and even genocide.