Sunday, June 3, 2018

The Good God and Saints in Felltower

The main religion in my DF game is superficially Christian, monotheistic, and mostly derived from Catholicism. This because my last name ends in a vowel and I'm from New Jersey. Go with what you know.

I haven't really defined much, but we do have some of the major players in religion getting some in-game references:

The Good God is a masculine-defined god (Always "He") worshiped by pretty much everyone who isn't worshiping The Enemy in some form. Served by a large priesthood capable of spells as well as angels of various levels of power - few, if any, are ever encountered.

Opposing the Good God is . . .

The Enemy, sometimes referred to as the capital-D Devil, is served by cultists and evil folks of all kinds. He/she/it is served by demons of various sorts, mostly, and weird extra-planar beings of chaos and madness. Many evil cultists directly worship those beings. It's not clear if they are just aspects of The Enemy, or not. In any case, they can grant evil spells to evil worshipers.


We haven't defined many saints. So far we have the Seven Saints of Felltower (but no one is clear about who exactly they are), and one more:


Saint Buyya Duad the Thrice-Martyred is the patron saint of Brother Ike's* order. He's best know for his three martyrdoms and his many, many near-martyrdoms. He is the patron saint of matyrdom in general, he protects risk-takers, and he protects fools pretending to wisdom.


***

The overly-broad definition of The Enemy allows me to freely plunder AD&D, D&D5, Pathfinder, Labyrinth Lord, Rolemaster, video games, etc. for demons, devils, daemons, demons from the void and demons from beyond the pale, balrons, etc. to use in the game. It also neatly removes the whole AD&D cosmology which is a) cool but b) not what I want here. Same with having a single Good God instead of dealing with modern misconceptions of pantheistic religions ("I worship Artemis, so I totally hate that guy who worships Zeus!" Wait, what?) brought on by all growing up monotheistic. The saints let me play around with holy beings of all sorts.

Clearly I need to expand my repertoire of saints! (Just saying, not looking for suggestions - they'll occur organically now that I'm thinking about them.)



* Hjalmarr's sidekick cleric. Full name: Brother Iklwa Juma Deswayo N'Zinga.

10 comments:

  1. I really liked your idea with the Good God (so much so that I'm stealing it for my own mega dungeon DFRPG)!

    I went a step further and told my players that the Good God isn't, and doesn't claim to be, omnipotent or omniscient. Evil can win, and bad things can happen in secret. That's one of the main reasons the Good God wants priests and worshippers--so they can help out!

    One of them planning a cleric really got it. "That's why you don't say his name! It's like dialing 911. He doesn't have time to answer crank calls."

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    Replies
    1. Butch, that's great. I've been thinking the same sort of thing about my own (very upcoming and in development) game and I'm taking your concept as well. Thanks!

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    2. I'm pretty sure monotheism existed before this post.

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    3. No, in the real world.

      But even in Fantasy it existed or even good vs evil dualism etc

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    4. Yes, but just because something existed before doesn't mean the inspiration can't be taken from a more current use.

      Especially if you like someone's specific take on an idea.

      Which I think is the entire point of the comment you replied to.

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  2. Peter, how do the DFBTS fit into your cosmology? Are they servants of Big D, or are they something else?

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    Replies
    1. None of the players know, so I can't comment.

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  3. Do you have any neutral gods like the pagan gods? It could be cool to have some pseudo Norse, Greek and Celtic gods.

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    Replies
    1. Nope. My players may introduce pagan gods, but I'll pretty much curb-stomp "I worship Thor!" as just dragging too-specific Earth references in for no good purpose. We've got pseudo-vikings, but they have priests of the Good God.

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