>For instance, in the 16th century, a number of humans were transported to Yrth from France, bringing with them dangerous knowledge of Protestantism, and gunpowder.
lmao
This.
True good-evil alignment system only works in a Christian world. Every other faith has a right-wrong dichotomy with no regard to morals, only ritual.
He's not wrong in the sense that most of our right-wrong distinction comes from a background of Christian philosophy and ethics. Heck, Secular Humanism basically started out as Christianity with the serial numbers filed off.
Most of us would find non-western morality to be pretty abhorrent in practice like in Shinto or Hinduism where certain people are outcast and antagonized just for doing menial but necessary jobs like butchery or waste disposal. There's a reason that the version of Karma that we hear about isn't the full hardcore doctrine of Karma that they actually promulgate in India where people who are born into suffering are basically seen as "deserving it"
Reminder that the East India Company hired their soldiers from Brahmin farming communities. People don't really care to investigate what the caste system meant in practice before the perfidious Albion completey re-organized legal property relations to the demerit of how indians managed their own affairs.
>Most of us would find non-western morality to be pretty abhorrent in practice like in Shinto or Hinduism where certain people are outcast and antagonized just for doing menial but necessary jobs like butchery or waste disposal.
Both the outlaw status and the dishonoured status of being unable to represent yourself was present in the West as well. Executioners are the classic example of it.
do christcucks actually think they invented morality? modern morals were stolen from greco-roman philosophy
which christcucks stole and rolled into their desert cult. They didn't invent shit and the implication our morals come from them is not only categorically wrong but claiming it just makes you look like a tard who failed third grade history
>do christcucks actually think they invented morality?
Yes. It's an authoritarian system of blame management. Credit for good things flows uphill to religious leaders and eventually to god, blame for bad things flows downhill to worshipers and sinners, you don't understand anything about Western culture until you understand this.
7 months ago
Anonymous
western culture is not built around Christianity, only America and that's fading fast
7 months ago
Anonymous
>he thinks america is built around christianity and not 17th century enlightenment ideals with deist and christian flavoring
7 months ago
Anonymous
america is literally built on puritan values do christians REALLY not read history at all?
Jesus every time you idiots post you show your flagrant ignorance and it's fricking embarrassing
Greco-Roman morality had completely collapsed by the time of christ and was mostly based on bootlicking and narcissism. Watch less israelitetube and eat less lead paint.
7 months ago
Anonymous
>christianity ISN’T based around bootlicking and narcissism
And Islam is all about tolerance for fellow man, kek
In the original lore Araby from warhammer was Islamic
Which is 200% based, Sigmar, Lhorne and Ursun are all b***hes compared to power of true faith. Allah is one God and Muhammad is his prophet, Inshallah Allah Ackbar
I dont, I normally Just say its just like catholicism, with Jesus Christ, Virgin Mary and the whole package.
If Im feeling creative, I try to incorporate different manners of worship, asthetical or slight theological differences originating from pagan (such as Roman religion) or from primitive christianity.
If i'm feeling REALLY creative, I try doing something similar to Narnia.
I generally dont spend much time creating relegions as I prefer to focus on things that impact the player experience in a more direct way
I personally think puritanism is neat >Socially conservative >Anti-fun actual war on Christmas >Insular >Government is decentralized and nearly theocratic with church leaders varying from influential to outright rulers
Maybe not good for the main religion, but could be fun for a regional religion.
Absolutely, I think these linda of variations do add a lot.
In my most "creative" settings, Elves (that are actually all half-elves) who live in their traditional societies practice something more akin to a protestant Christian faith, they are nomadic, dont follow the patriarch, dont believe in Saints and their monks are ever-wandering isolationist pilgrims.
They even have their own forest/road/mountain shrines.
This, of course, has led to conflicts.
>>Anti-fun actual war on Christmas
tbf, people celebrated christmas back then the way football hooligans celebrate their favorite club winning today: by getting ridiculously drunk and starting fights. Their solutions might have been draconian, but the reasoning was understandable.
Well it wasn’t just that, it was also people working on Christmas as well. The core plan to do so on a larger scale (many of the Roundheads in the English civil war if not Puritans themselves were at least adjacent) entailed shuttering businesses on Christmas so people wouldn’t work and were less able to gather for celebrations outside of church.
Outside of religion the English Civil War is a good era for inspiration with weird cults and social ideologies forming like the Diggers.
>Outside of religion the English Civil War is a good era for inspiration with weird cults and social ideologies forming like the Diggers.
true. even some of the stuff that was made-up back then, like the adamites, can be pretty interesting stuff in of themselves.
They also banned all sorts of other frivolity - music, theater, dancing. And they had that autistic predestination thing going on, making them hardly Christian at all.
The setting becomes twice as unique if it's a generic fantasy world but everyone is a Christian who believes Jesus died for their sins.
I usually do "catholicism with the serial number filed off". Mostly because me and my players are all (at least culturally) catholic, so everyone has an intuitive understanding of how the religion works and it's place in the world.
If you were extremely autistic you'd probably have layers like ancient people did >folk beliefs like "these villagers believe their ancestor is also the local god and possibly Zeus" >pan-national beliefs usually maintained by the elites, such as Zeus living on top of the Big Mountain >theologians like Hesiod and their texts such as Theogony which posit all women are prostituteS who steal your stuff and Zeus regretted inventing them >philosophers like Plato who seem to have been pro-atheist/agnostic and saw religion as more of a vehicle to teach people to not be shitters and thus advocated for myths that portray Zeus as a rapist to be suppressed by the authorities and only the ones who which show him to be an orderly god-king should be disseminated, to encourage slaves and peasants to act deferentially towards their betters and maintain societal order
Unique because nothing in real world religions is like them? Or unique because it's something you created that isn't just a carbon-copy of real world religion?
For me I just do what said: have different levels of religious belief across the region, with different spirits or gods worshipped at different scales.
The gods are physically present in the world at all times.
The fact that Yalg'boefrit can personally beat the shit out of you when you displease him would have a massive impact on how religions would work.
>UR NOT REAL WHATCHA GONNA DO SMITE ME???? >Jesus Christ teleports in front of you and smites you with a brick to the face
Would this make the faithless stronger or convert more people?
>unique
Grow up and realize anything you create with this as an objective will be dogshit anon.
Thematic resonance is king and one sufficiently strong theme beats any number of super original tweests and subversions.
People are joking, but full-on lifting an existing world religion and modifying it slightly actually works very well.
I played a campaign where the main religion was...the Catholic Church. Jesus and Pope and everything (though not Rome). The Church kept a monopoly on "divine" magic, but it was never clear if it was actually divine in origin, or just the Church having special wizards.
First, real life gods are rarely narrowly defined by a singular domain. They are usually the patrons of multiple things and not always that directly related, like war AND love.
Second, the are allegories of forces humans do not understand and try to appeal to them and personalize them.
Third some think that religion comes from ancestor worship. Different families may end up worshipping the same common ancestor. In time, they are deidefied. In antiquity, a lot of people claimed to be distant descended from different gods or demigods.
Fourth, gods may have different aspects and may be attributed different things depending on the region. Gods have epithets.
Fifth, because religion and myth are not static, but living and evolving things, gods often ended up with a lot of contradictory elements, especially if they represent fickly elements: A loving mother and an adulterous spouse. A generous boon-granter and cruel and spiteful too.
This isn't related to your post, but jesus christ if you're going to be drawing on a computer, the least you can do is just put some actual text into your explainer image.
The person you’re replying to is clearly requesting that the artist uses the programs in-built text inserted (like you’re reading right here!) with a consistent and readable font rather than handwriting the text.
You might notice in the original drawing that the writing starts large and gradually gets smaller: that’s because the artist realised they were running out of space. That is one disadvantage of writing the text out with drawing tools rather than the purpose-built text tool.
>First, real life gods are rarely narrowly defined by a singular domain. They are usually the patrons of multiple things and not always that directly related, like war AND love.
That's because many of these gods are created by merging other gods together. For example, Mars was the Roman god of war, but also of agriculture. From what we can tell, Mars was primarily a deity of agriculture and fertility with only a minor protection aspect until the Romans decided he was basically the same as Ares. You can also see how Mars changes from mostly an older, bearded man to a younger, clean-shaven man as Greek influence increases.
>You can also see how Mars changes from mostly an older, bearded man to a younger, clean-shaven man as Greek influence increases.
I thought Greeks liked beards and Romans didn't?
Like all societies, they had trends. Look at the US hairstyles 20 years ago and now, it's totally different trends, and this isn't a new phenomen. Society changes with time, and at some point, Rome loved beards just as in others, it hated it.
Frick off OSP wanker. Even the math frail c**t admitted she has no fricking grounds to stand on that leap just as the wikipedia page she sourced it on. The entire sumerian bawd to (greek thot to) rome moron daisy chain has more holes than the sum of orgies all their cult members had combined. Its like claiming that chink commies cultural values are related to those of pre-wu china. Then again if servs managed to gaslight morons to think their name isnt the sandBlack personized version of slave and pakindis bribe the greengays to claim they are clean while dying from cancer villages and pollution, i guess some youtube bawd that doesnt know the difference postulate being broken vs having a projection conversion can do the same.
I dont give a frick that some artists 200 years late went "this looks cool". Doesnt change that the Ishtar-Aphrodite link is self-sourced moronation when half of europe has more fitting barbarian gods from slavic to norse ones that were far more likely to be adapted during the early city states than a dead cult it shares 0 traditions with other than mental gymnastics based on linguistics.
>Ishtar is Aphrodite
No. While Greco-Roman Polytheism is syncretic there is no indication that Aphrodite originated in the middle east, she shares all of her Ishtar traits with the Indo-European Freya.
>The cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia,[26][27][28][29] which, in turn, was influenced by the cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as "Ishtar" to the East Semitic peoples and as "Inanna" to the Sumerians.[30][28][29] Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians, followed by the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon. The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[31]
>Aphrodite took on Inanna-Ishtar's associations with sexuality and procreation.[32] Furthermore, she was known as Ourania (Οὐρανία), which means "heavenly",[33] a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven.[33][34] Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar on Inanna-Ishtar.[32] Like Inanna-Ishtar, Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess;[32][27][35] the second-century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia, which means "warlike".[36][37] He also mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms.[36][37][38][32] Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in the oldest strata of her worship[39] and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins.[39][40]
>Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians
This is due to the Greco-Roman havit of direct association of deities. Greeks didn’t think that Amon was like Zeus they thought he literally was Zeus.
I'm actually working on that for my own setting and can use some help.
The gist of it is that there are four primary deities in the setting. Each one represents one of the four elements of the setting, those being Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, along with a few other, secondary domains. Just to name one or two each, Fire is also the god of War and the Smith god, Water's god is the god of Healing, the Air god is tentatively the god of Commerce, and I'm thinking that the Earth god might be the god of Knowledge (though if you guys have any suggestions for more things they can be the patrons of like mentioned, I'd appreciate it). To be clear, none of the elemental gods align with either good or evil in terms of morality. So, when Fire burns things, or caused volcanic eruption or something, it's not out of malice, but just because that's what fire 'does', just for one example.
Now that you've got the background information for them, we can get back to the religions I'm trying to craft. I was thinking that some of the cultures and races might worship one or two of the gods above the others even if they have temples for them all. After all, an aquatic race, or a port city, would obviously prioritize the Water god's faith over the Fire god's, for one, but I still need to add more details for the priesthoods of each elemental faith and their rituals. My best ideas right now is that the Fire priests have arcane marks branded onto their skin and have ritual dances based on IRL fire dancing, and that the followers of the Wind god use airships and look to the stars and other patterns skies for signs of the future and other divine messages, I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for this if you have some.
I knew I was missing something, I wanted to say that I wanted to avoid copying ATLA's take too closely, but I forgot to mention it. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.
Legends vary because the Greeks didn't have a coherent religion, they had a group of characters (that sometimes differed) and each city-state told their own weird stories about them. Everything we know now is just what survived, not a broad canon.
>First, real life gods are rarely narrowly defined by a singular domain. They are usually the patrons of multiple things and not always that directly related, like war AND love.
That's because many of these gods are created by merging other gods together. For example, Mars was the Roman god of war, but also of agriculture. From what we can tell, Mars was primarily a deity of agriculture and fertility with only a minor protection aspect until the Romans decided he was basically the same as Ares. You can also see how Mars changes from mostly an older, bearded man to a younger, clean-shaven man as Greek influence increases.
I'm pretty sure Mars was always the god of war. His identification with Ares came later.
Fantasy gods, usually being existences that actually can incarnate and run around beating people up, are usually more static than real life gods who tend to be seen as distant or hands off.
Because of this, fantasy gods are really like "This is Fire-O, lord of fire". But historical religion has different gods rising or falling in popularity over generations, some kings like Akhenaten trying to force his favored god Aten on Egypt lead to the purging of Atenism after his death and the re-assertion of Amun-Ara and shit like that. By the end of the Egyptian period, gods like Thoth and Isis had become more popular in general with masses of people who either believed in quasi-gnostic beliefs or who believed Isis would resurrect them after death.
In fantasy the closest you get is "bimbob became weakened because of a lack of worshippers and then got devoured by ultra-satan". The marvel superhero nature of fantasy gods precludes most fantasy authors from writing good religious mythologies.
Well the easy way to make shit memorable is to simply define your gods along the lines of pantheist religions where they're just regular dudes but moreso and/or have the divine carry flaws inherent to their being but they're still a better option than the alternative. Think something like Crom from Conan.
For example: I'm running a Godbound wuxia game and the gods the players are currently trying to overthrow are the Thousand Honored Ancestors. The THA are the direct vassals to the Jade Emperor and were taken with him to fight a war of conquest on the Empyrean.
Though they were raised to the status of godlike power by the Jade Emperor, the THA were once flawed mortal martial artists before casting off their flesh to ascend and thus carry two notable flaws: They cannot learn or assimilate new information on a conceptual level, and their power is inherently tied to the Eight Pillars which draw upon the dragon lines to empower them. This then informs why wuxialand has eight holy cities dotted around (to house the macguffin pillars) and also why the culture has remained stagnant for the thousand-year interim deadlock since the THA left the material plane (If you don't honor your ancestral bloodline your ancestors will disown you and you go to hell, also your ancestors are ontologically senile and racist so you can't let blood feuds die out or build your house in a nonstandard pattern or basically improve your lot in any way if you want to be pious. Bastard children and orphans are universally loathed, slavery is both rampant and running on wildly inefficient methods meant for 1000 year old robot labor, and disownment is the highest dishonor.)
This also defines other stuff like the imperial family technically being regents for God Himself and the censorate being formally adopted eunuchs due to blood hierarchies.
tl;dr fantasy gods are best when they're both carrot and stick and they have to be appeased just as much as drawn upon.
Create a different paradigm of thought for a certain social relationship and then justify it with some form of religious belief based around natural phenomena.
For that you need a collections of paradigms to choose from. Many posters on this board barely know there are alternatives to their own.
I personally think puritanism is neat >Socially conservative >Anti-fun actual war on Christmas >Insular >Government is decentralized and nearly theocratic with church leaders varying from influential to outright rulers
Maybe not good for the main religion, but could be fun for a regional religion.
Such a unique paradigm lends itself beautifully to a post apocalyptic world where everyone serves demons and live like little devils.
>make a religion for the setting >most of the time it comes off as shallow, has no nuance, and adds nothing to the setting >alternatively actually put effort into making something original >now you have to make every character in mind with the morals said religion teaches >it's completely alien to the player, they can't read your mind, they have no idea how to act in this world >Nor would the players actually care to learn.
Seems like a wasted effort, making a setting that is fundamentally unintuitive for players actually playing the game. Better to go for the 90s JRPG's vague "Looks like Christianity but isn't explicated stated to be" that's found in games like Dragon Quest and Shining Force.
You don't. Just steal shit.
But honestly, just create a genesis story (doesn't have to be factual) then imagine how 5 different groups might interpret them over thousands of years.
Personally my unique genesis is that God made the reality and the world then broke himself into separate aspects and let those conscious parts of himself fill/shape the world. This made the fae. God soon got bored because all these creatures were just wind up toys. God made humanity and gave them a divine spark, which gave them free will.
So the worlds religions are mostly folklore based on fae, polytheism based on the aspects, atheists who only worship magic, and some sects that are monotheistic.
how does /tg/ feel about gods that are disinterested or cannot affect the world in any way?
my setting has only one God, "The Watchman" who is provably real (he periodically appears as a giant guy in the night sky) but everyone innately knows he is powerless to change the world or the future. He occasionally points at important people or places though, and sometimes shows emotion.
I create generic fantasy gods for everyone else, and then give humans a deity called 'the martyr' who was killed at the gallows by elves so all of the iconography is based on nooses and hanged men.
>awful Amazon show
Honestly my first association was that one SCP. Though, to be fair, "what if Christ was executed by some way other than crucifixion" isn't too insane an idea that I can buy it came about multiple times via convergent evolution.
The crucifix wasn't just a means of execution, it was a strong piece of roman branding, and then the romans were the ones who took over the religion. It would be like if your holy savior were a Black person hanging from a tree and then all your bishops wore ghost costumes.
>take little known real mythology and give it a fresh coat of paint
This is what every world builder/fantasy author has done, because it works. Creating a "unique" religion is impossible, since the very concept of a religion has baked-in real world presumptions in it.
If your world has visible celestial bodies in the sky, you can be sure people on the ground are worshiping them. If there's a huge ass mountain or other natural wonder, gods could be holding court atop. People always and everywhere petition the same things from divine beings: wealth, love, revenge, protection, health etc.
Is a unique fantasy religion even really desirable? Seeing as this is /tg/ and not Ganker, do you really need an intricate and complex history and theology to facilitate playing beer and pretzel games?
A religion has a number of things it must do:
1: Explain the inexplicable, explain why the world is as it is (and why YOU should be happy with what you have)
2: Provide a doctrine for good behaviour, the do's and the dont's
3: Present an ultimate goal the good believer can work towards that will lead to salvation.
Religion also needs specific practices and rituals, it helps them stand out and builds a sense of community and belonging, specific sacred places, and someone who is learned in the lore of the religion and hold positions of power because of it, but the organisation of the religion is secondary to the core of it.
Real religions don't occur like this, of course, but we aren't making a real fricking sect here, we're making something that's useful for a tabletop game.
pic unrelated
ah, it was just the best word I could think of at the time. I meant it more as a reward for good behaviour, like the christian heaven, but also valhalla for the vikings, or escaping the cycle of rebirth in buddhism. It's the (good) thing the religion wants you to try and get to.
For the world of my current story there are two primary deities, one a god of Light, Creation, and Chaos, while the other is a god of Darkness, Destruction, and Order. The first endlessly churns out new ideas to add to the world (like a stream of consciousness writer that writes whatever comes into their head), which the second either refines to make sure it will fit in said world, or destroys if it won’t (like an editor), most monsters being creatures that managed to slip through anyway, same for cursed items and shit like that. Just to make sure there's no misunderstandings, they're not aligned with human morality, so neither is evil. They're not 100% good either, admittedly, but still.
As for the religions, I was thinking that they would each have a major faith corresponding to them, the former being less formal and centralized, and the latter being more structured and with a stronger central authority akin to a Pope, with most artists and other creative types belonging to the former and most government officials and similar individuals belonging to the latter, one person I asked suggesting that the latter could outright be a part of the government. What do you think, anything to add? Any thoughts on how each one might work, especially their rituals and things like how each handle marriage, funerals, etc. besides the Order god's religion having couples sign special contracts? What about the holy vestments for each faith, besides doing something like picrel for the Light god?
I designed it specifically to feel as much like Catholicism as possible until you actually really pay attention to what they're saying and realize that they're using familiar words but in a different way.
"Christos" for example means Anointed One. This is just a generic term for saints in this religion, so people will say "Oh Christ" in the same way a Christian might say "Saints preserve us."
Did I do this because I say "Christ" a lot in exasperation? Yes. Is that blasphemy? I'm not really sure, it's more of a title than a name, isn't it?
What do the priests and priestesses in your setting's religions wear when conducting their holy duties? It seems like every fantasy setting these days copies either Christians priests and/or nuns, or Japanese Miko and calls it a day like with picture related, surely we can do better than that.
Have their names be merely the current name for forces older than civilizations and history.
Set them up to have an opposite they are opposed to, preferable one that isn't just objectively evil. Have the god of duty and war opposed to the god of freedom and peace and their followers at best don't get along or at worst act against each other.
Communicating with the god should never be direct, it should be through signs, omens, or in the biggest most dramatic moments, some avatar but that's getting iffy.
You want them to feel as little like something the could meet face to face let alone defeat.
Make them capable of death, but have dead gods still give off some power to their followers.
The verisimilitude doesn't come from the made up religion, but rather how people interact with it. Thats where it falls flat and seems totally superfluous in 99% of settings.
Kind of. The Valyrians converted to the Faith of the Seven for convenience and support, and attempts to revert to their ancestral religion sparked wars. At the same time you see Stannis being seen as either a dangerous man following a strange foreign religion or a good man misled by a foreign witch. Religion is clearly important but the specific importance varies from individual to individual and from religion to religion. For example Rhollor actively prostelytizes, the seven are aggressive at holding their ground at least while the old gods are a pretty passive religion and don’t even care what religion their ruler is as long as they can practice it.
This. The vast majority of authors are, like most modern people living in western societies, vaguely agnostic and barely give a shit about religion. When someone says they're a Christian what they normally mean is that they kind of believe in God but haven't gone to church in well over 10 years and mostly don't care about it. When they say they're an Atheist what they mean is they just don't care about it.
This rubs off in a lot of fantasy setting, making religion an irrelevant afterthought with names slightly changes from a Wikipedia list (The norm for "Christian" writers.) or unambiguously a waste of time for stupid characters that aren't the MC (The norm for Atheist writers.).
real advice: for many fantasy religions, a good place to start is a creation myth. look at what you want from the setting, figure out how shit got started, and mythify it.
It’s easy. For the good guy religion: > Copy/paste Christianity and then make it polytheistic. Exaggerate it’s good qualities and ignore the bad ones.
For bad guy religion: > Copy/paste Islam and make it polytheistic. Then exaggerate the bad qualities and ignore the good ones.
Not sure if really original, but I like to toy with the idea of pantheons where all of the gods' domains revolve around a certain overarching theme, but they can be applied metaphorically to more abstract qualities.
For example, a Dwarven pantheon where each deity is a god of a certain kind of craft. The blacksmith deity also serves as a god of order, while the mining deity also serves as a god of knowledge.
Alternatively, an Elven pantheon based on different biomes. The forest deity is also a god of life, while the desert deity is also a god of death.
In the setting that I built this system for, the human pantheon is based on heroic qualities (courage, strength, perseverance), but was replaced by a universal monotheistic religion with saints that act as the mechanical equivalent for patron deities.
The halfling pantheon is based on personal good qualities (hospitality, humor, compassion), and the gnome pantheon is based on schools of magic.
Also, no pantheon has evil gods. All gods are considered good by their followers, but outsiders might view them as evil.
Why were they replaced, and are you talking about in-setting or on a meta level? And how would someone view a god of something like courage as evil, that makes no sense to me. I need more information on this. I'd especially love to hear about the Gnome pantheon you mentioned just now that's based on magic schools.
NTA, but I'll try to be nicer about this. Your goal shouldn't be the pursuit of uniqueness but to embrace elements you are genuinely interested in. I think most people who pursue uniqueness who do research on religion would only read the surface elements of a particular religion, and only apply surface things, like what rituals people do. But if you're someone who is intrigued with how people interact with their beliefs, as
The verisimilitude doesn't come from the made up religion, but rather how people interact with it. Thats where it falls flat and seems totally superfluous in 99% of settings.
pointed out, you might start delving into its nuances like what these rituals mean to them. For me personally, I like studying the development of religions, it's not much for me to read a faith's final form but all the layers of development that contributed to it. This anon
If you were extremely autistic you'd probably have layers like ancient people did >folk beliefs like "these villagers believe their ancestor is also the local god and possibly Zeus" >pan-national beliefs usually maintained by the elites, such as Zeus living on top of the Big Mountain >theologians like Hesiod and their texts such as Theogony which posit all women are prostituteS who steal your stuff and Zeus regretted inventing them >philosophers like Plato who seem to have been pro-atheist/agnostic and saw religion as more of a vehicle to teach people to not be shitters and thus advocated for myths that portray Zeus as a rapist to be suppressed by the authorities and only the ones who which show him to be an orderly god-king should be disseminated, to encourage slaves and peasants to act deferentially towards their betters and maintain societal order
I think has a pretty decent explanation on it. I often see people picking a single concept, like a religion based on fire or water, writing all sorts of things that relate to them but they always come off as arbitrary to me, like giving worship to a people who live somewhere hot because fire is hot, or giving water worship to sailors already surrounded by water who probably rely more on wind. I personally like to start developing religions in a prehistoric time and bake thousands of years of historical events and conflicts that culminate to a set of beliefs.
>For me personally, I like studying the development of religions,
Okay, neat, do you have any particular sources that you can recommend for studying religions, especially if we want to create our own for campaign worlds, please?
>Thank YHWH, the spirit in the sky, Emmanuel, Jove, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jonah, Adam, and Ezekiel. Thank the One True Immutable White Christian God, Eternal, Creator, All-Present, All-Knowing, All-Loving, All-Kind, All-Good. Thank you oh Lord and guide we your flock as we pass our days in this fallen world, full of witchcraft and wickedness.
Problem?
Cagots too and of course israelites. The latter's funny as usury is indeed a dick move but the nobility lucked into a setup whereby they could repossess the wages of sin ever other pogrom while keeping their hands clean behind layers of deniability.
If you were extremely autistic you'd probably have layers like ancient people did >folk beliefs like "these villagers believe their ancestor is also the local god and possibly Zeus" >pan-national beliefs usually maintained by the elites, such as Zeus living on top of the Big Mountain >theologians like Hesiod and their texts such as Theogony which posit all women are prostituteS who steal your stuff and Zeus regretted inventing them >philosophers like Plato who seem to have been pro-atheist/agnostic and saw religion as more of a vehicle to teach people to not be shitters and thus advocated for myths that portray Zeus as a rapist to be suppressed by the authorities and only the ones who which show him to be an orderly god-king should be disseminated, to encourage slaves and peasants to act deferentially towards their betters and maintain societal order
The role of clear, verifiable revelation in fantasy worlds adds an interesting wrinkle to the cultural accretion you describe. Different races may have varying cognitive predispositions towards the different influences too.
https://i.imgur.com/knB6Nal.jpg
How do you create unique fantasy religions?
The starter pack applies to this hack, what a surprise. Often my settings draw from dreams (insomnia's silver lining) so it's just a matter of elaborating on surreal foundations. For instance one where the world was an hourglass with the "sun" being sand falling through the hole between bulbs and igniting from compression/friction (the blue of daytime sky was cyan smoke). The cycle of filling-days and emptying-nights were bracketed by passage through a solar furnace, given the Arabian nights aesthetic implied by a setting that's mostly sand including the phoenix as emblem of destructive rebirth through fire was a no-brainer.
So the cult of the "Pinioned Crown" germinated. The Phoenix/Simurgh/Konrul is the firstborn of each epoch-day which all other life is a degenerating echo of unto the lowly flightless wretches, it is also consort-parent-child of the Sun (whose beams are imagined as razor-edged feathers). The cult's mostly concerned with sacrifices (the pungent smokes are "spiritual airs" that aid in arcane ascent as a thermals do physically) and stockpiling incense which they're convinced are needed to ensure the Phoenix's proper hatching in subsequent cycles.
>The role of clear, verifiable revelation in fantasy worlds adds an interesting wrinkle to the cultural accretion you describe.
No, because in ancient times people thought thunder was Zeus punishing unbelievers and that alchemists and healers were sorcerers (prohibited by law in some places) and that regulated medicine itself was a gift from the god of healing (hence the modern snake staff symbol that was his emblem).
"Technology is indistinguishable from magic" is a gay and moronic trope, because it's almost wholly spouted by people living in a post-technological world where machines previously only available to plutocratic millionaires, presidents, military commanders and kings became available to the average moron to dick around as they pleased. Even the internet 40 years ago was just Compuserve pay by the hour messaging but now even a smelly failpenis from Manila can get a 500 dollar smartphone with a month's wages and pay for a cheap phone plan so he can ruin Ganker with his inanity and moronation.
Yeah sure, one cult says that and another says its the writhing of a cosmic serpent. Seeing an actual hammer-wielding tian up there regardless of the creed you subscribe to and more importantly doing so repeatedly (none of that "no more overt blatant miracles because muh test of faith" bullshit). Where the frick does Clarketech come into it anyway? Your schizophrenia or your moronation?
>Outside of religion the English Civil War is a good era for inspiration with weird cults and social ideologies forming like the Diggers.
true. even some of the stuff that was made-up back then, like the adamites, can be pretty interesting stuff in of themselves.
Ideological nudists are fun people to combine with the search for "primal" language in the gibberings of feral children.
Look up some really weird or obscure religious practices or at least ones that aren't really that common of a knowledge. Like Stylites. The weirder and more obscure the better, Stylites are just an example.
Then, try to figure out what Gods would actually want that. Are they real or just believes?
In my setting there are few more or less minor pantheons, with gods being partially mortals who ascended to godhood as one of the first things that happened after the main god made mortal races for fun. And the religious practices. The rest are pretty much minor spirits in comparison, where pretty much every village has their own few gods and Deities who are spirits, wise creatures from other planes, even sometimes monsters who are just smart enough and actually help the people. But they are nothing next to a actual proper god who would pretty much wipe the floor with them if they decided to get off their ass and do something fun that day.
Something truly unique is pretty hard to make, but something that's weird and different from the norm is attainable.
Huh, I wasn't considering Zoroastrianism when I came up with the idea. My gods work together most of the time though, odd disagreements over whether to keep or destroy a creature or being notwithstanding. Regardless, if you have any more thoughts on what I can do with this idea besides copying Zoroastrianism, I'd love to hear them please.
Reminder that the East India Company hired their soldiers from Brahmin farming communities. People don't really care to investigate what the caste system meant in practice before the perfidious Albion completey re-organized legal property relations to the demerit of how indians managed their own affairs.
>Most of us would find non-western morality to be pretty abhorrent in practice like in Shinto or Hinduism where certain people are outcast and antagonized just for doing menial but necessary jobs like butchery or waste disposal.
Both the outlaw status and the dishonoured status of being unable to represent yourself was present in the West as well. Executioners are the classic example of it.
I'm not saying ostracization was a uniquely evil or non-western phenomenon. My main point is that our contemnporary conventional notions of good and evil (at least, here in the West) emerged/evolved from christian notions of good and evil which may not be directly compatible or even applicable to other systems of morality such as those found in Hinduism or Shinto, both of which have their own traditions and definitions of what is right and what is wrong
For an example that's closer to home, how would one apply the common standards of good and evil to the morality of a Nietzschean ubermensch? One would have to radically modify the notions of right and wrong just to approach an accurate description of that system. So much so that "good" would not be the same "good" as we generally use it and our conventional "evil" would scarcely capture that which the ubermensch finds detestable.
I'm trying to think of one I like. I can name ones I hate. >Faerun
too many gods, it leads to an overloaded portfolio where only a few really matter and are recognizable. I guess that's common to paganism but it just feels over the top too many in Faerun and in Pathfinder. >"The light" or anything like that, vaguely inoffensive karma made into a kind of semi-sapient thing
most pussied out trash. It's lazy and utterly boring. >Warhammer
seemed reasonable with how many gods there were, and that it was mainly the big-name ones that were of consequence. So I kinda like that. >ASOIAF
pretty mid. The seven feel shitty. R'yllor is manichaean good vs evil which is alright but light versus evil is played out now, the tree-faces were classical spirits, the iron men worship something under the deep. But the seven? It just feels phoned in not-catholicism. They exist and...that's it. It'd be like a fantasy Christianity that has no story about Jesus and why he sacrificed himself, no old testament no genesis no garden of eden.
Considering that religious rites are often performed at important points in a follower’s life, like weddings, funerals, etc., how do you create rites for such occasions and what have you made? I’ve mainly stolen them from Christianity and added some actual magic, but I want to get more creative for my next one, if just to stop my players complaining about how unoriginal it is.
>describe Christianity >swap the names to fantasy ones >smile as millions of turbo-fedoras obsess over it and reference it and enjoy it to death because their atheism is so paper-thin all it takes to get around it without them even knowing it is a couple of name changes >tell my friend Clive to do the same >he does and the exact same thing happens, lmao >have a good-natured laugh at the stubbornness of humanity in the face of the infinite love of God
Tolkien was right, stories are holy, and once he saw it he couldn't unsee it. He coped by telling himself that all stories were secretly about Jesus (an idea that he got from Clive).
>to get around it
homie, anyone who thinks fiction has to "get around" personal beliefs to be enjoyed is moronic. The Legendarium is enjoyed because it's good fiction, if that's not enough and you need that to bolster your in-group too it's because you're pathetic.
>homie, anyone who thinks fiction has to "get around" personal beliefs to be enjoyed is moronic.
I don't think I'm contradicting your central point here, I think it's just your choice of words, but Tolkien put in a lot of work just giving himself permission to write and enjoy a pagan story. >On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the 'gods' of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted- well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.
The result was a beautiful meditation on the relationship between creation and subcreation, and I can appreciate that as a fictional device without needing to "get around" anything, but that's just because I'm an atheist.
Good point however I was specifically taking exception to the way
>describe Christianity >swap the names to fantasy ones >smile as millions of turbo-fedoras obsess over it and reference it and enjoy it to death because their atheism is so paper-thin all it takes to get around it without them even knowing it is a couple of name changes >tell my friend Clive to do the same >he does and the exact same thing happens, lmao >have a good-natured laugh at the stubbornness of humanity in the face of the infinite love of God
thinks people from broad walks of life enjoying Catholic theming is somehow a gotcha. If "their atheism is so paper-thin" applies it's because anything fragile enough to fear dissenting fiction has branding rather than a worldview. Co-opting appreciation of quality into an excuse for in-group/out-group chest-beating is desecration.
>For me personally, I like studying the development of religions,
Okay, neat, do you have any particular sources that you can recommend for studying religions, especially if we want to create our own for campaign worlds, please?
Steal from actual religions, shift things around, combine them and hope no one notices.
Learning the common roles present in almost any religion is also good.
Several years ago I was in a campaign that went to level 20 and just became a plane hopping mess, anyway. I was thinking of creating a setting where these old characters got together and used their magic to create a universe all their own, safe from the troubles of their previous one.
Naturally, they'd be worshipped as gods by any inhabitants of the various worlds because they are relatively indistinguishable from what one would imagine a god would be.
However, since they're at their core just really powerful adventurers when they visit places nobody can actually tell they're "the gods" and they don't act like caretakers. The creation of the universe was a fire and forget sort of thing. I thought that might be interesting
do christcucks actually think they invented morality? modern morals were stolen from greco-roman philosophy
which christcucks stole and rolled into their desert cult. They didn't invent shit and the implication our morals come from them is not only categorically wrong but claiming it just makes you look like a tard who failed third grade history
You are genuinely the least intelligent person I have ever seen on this website. And that's saying a whole fricking hell of a lot. You'll only find dumber people than you on twitter or reddit.
It just works.
Nice try
Here is some real lore
This is a lie. It was pure alcohol, no LSD or mushrooms were involved. I'm pretty sure he said so explicitly.
It was alcohol, coffee, and cigarettes. Brainlets think creativity can only come from mind-altering substances, but it's more complicated than that.
It also wasn't creative, he merely read a bunch of hindu spiritualism and regurgitated some semi-lucid memes from it with game characters
Bro to this day TES lore is some of the most wild shit i have ever dove into just because of how fricking memey it is.
The setting becomes twice as unique if it's a generic fantasy world but everyone is a Christian who believes Jesus died for their sins.
Based Banestorm enjoyer
>For instance, in the 16th century, a number of humans were transported to Yrth from France, bringing with them dangerous knowledge of Protestantism, and gunpowder.
lmao
This.
True good-evil alignment system only works in a Christian world. Every other faith has a right-wrong dichotomy with no regard to morals, only ritual.
Isn't that extremely reductive?
He's not wrong in the sense that most of our right-wrong distinction comes from a background of Christian philosophy and ethics. Heck, Secular Humanism basically started out as Christianity with the serial numbers filed off.
Most of us would find non-western morality to be pretty abhorrent in practice like in Shinto or Hinduism where certain people are outcast and antagonized just for doing menial but necessary jobs like butchery or waste disposal. There's a reason that the version of Karma that we hear about isn't the full hardcore doctrine of Karma that they actually promulgate in India where people who are born into suffering are basically seen as "deserving it"
Reminder that the East India Company hired their soldiers from Brahmin farming communities. People don't really care to investigate what the caste system meant in practice before the perfidious Albion completey re-organized legal property relations to the demerit of how indians managed their own affairs.
>Most of us would find non-western morality to be pretty abhorrent in practice like in Shinto or Hinduism where certain people are outcast and antagonized just for doing menial but necessary jobs like butchery or waste disposal.
Both the outlaw status and the dishonoured status of being unable to represent yourself was present in the West as well. Executioners are the classic example of it.
do christcucks actually think they invented morality? modern morals were stolen from greco-roman philosophy
which christcucks stole and rolled into their desert cult. They didn't invent shit and the implication our morals come from them is not only categorically wrong but claiming it just makes you look like a tard who failed third grade history
>do christcucks actually think they invented morality?
Yes. It's an authoritarian system of blame management. Credit for good things flows uphill to religious leaders and eventually to god, blame for bad things flows downhill to worshipers and sinners, you don't understand anything about Western culture until you understand this.
western culture is not built around Christianity, only America and that's fading fast
>he thinks america is built around christianity and not 17th century enlightenment ideals with deist and christian flavoring
america is literally built on puritan values do christians REALLY not read history at all?
Jesus every time you idiots post you show your flagrant ignorance and it's fricking embarrassing
Greco-Roman morality had completely collapsed by the time of christ and was mostly based on bootlicking and narcissism. Watch less israelitetube and eat less lead paint.
>christianity ISN’T based around bootlicking and narcissism
And Islam is all about tolerance for fellow man, kek
Everything you benefit from in society was made by Christians.
In the original lore Araby from warhammer was Islamic
Which is 200% based, Sigmar, Lhorne and Ursun are all b***hes compared to power of true faith. Allah is one God and Muhammad is his prophet, Inshallah Allah Ackbar
I dont, I normally Just say its just like catholicism, with Jesus Christ, Virgin Mary and the whole package.
If Im feeling creative, I try to incorporate different manners of worship, asthetical or slight theological differences originating from pagan (such as Roman religion) or from primitive christianity.
If i'm feeling REALLY creative, I try doing something similar to Narnia.
I generally dont spend much time creating relegions as I prefer to focus on things that impact the player experience in a more direct way
I personally think puritanism is neat
>Socially conservative
>Anti-fun actual war on Christmas
>Insular
>Government is decentralized and nearly theocratic with church leaders varying from influential to outright rulers
Maybe not good for the main religion, but could be fun for a regional religion.
Absolutely, I think these linda of variations do add a lot.
In my most "creative" settings, Elves (that are actually all half-elves) who live in their traditional societies practice something more akin to a protestant Christian faith, they are nomadic, dont follow the patriarch, dont believe in Saints and their monks are ever-wandering isolationist pilgrims.
They even have their own forest/road/mountain shrines.
This, of course, has led to conflicts.
The best part about the Puritianism is that their descendants fight to preserve Christmas.
I agree. We need more fantasy Puritanism
>>Anti-fun actual war on Christmas
tbf, people celebrated christmas back then the way football hooligans celebrate their favorite club winning today: by getting ridiculously drunk and starting fights. Their solutions might have been draconian, but the reasoning was understandable.
Well it wasn’t just that, it was also people working on Christmas as well. The core plan to do so on a larger scale (many of the Roundheads in the English civil war if not Puritans themselves were at least adjacent) entailed shuttering businesses on Christmas so people wouldn’t work and were less able to gather for celebrations outside of church.
Outside of religion the English Civil War is a good era for inspiration with weird cults and social ideologies forming like the Diggers.
>Outside of religion the English Civil War is a good era for inspiration with weird cults and social ideologies forming like the Diggers.
true. even some of the stuff that was made-up back then, like the adamites, can be pretty interesting stuff in of themselves.
>like the Diggers.
They're hilarious because they're the perfect horseshoe of Randians and Communists. They even birthed literal anti-roads movements.
They also banned all sorts of other frivolity - music, theater, dancing. And they had that autistic predestination thing going on, making them hardly Christian at all.
I usually do "catholicism with the serial number filed off". Mostly because me and my players are all (at least culturally) catholic, so everyone has an intuitive understanding of how the religion works and it's place in the world.
That's too easy.
If you were extremely autistic you'd probably have layers like ancient people did
>folk beliefs like "these villagers believe their ancestor is also the local god and possibly Zeus"
>pan-national beliefs usually maintained by the elites, such as Zeus living on top of the Big Mountain
>theologians like Hesiod and their texts such as Theogony which posit all women are prostituteS who steal your stuff and Zeus regretted inventing them
>philosophers like Plato who seem to have been pro-atheist/agnostic and saw religion as more of a vehicle to teach people to not be shitters and thus advocated for myths that portray Zeus as a rapist to be suppressed by the authorities and only the ones who which show him to be an orderly god-king should be disseminated, to encourage slaves and peasants to act deferentially towards their betters and maintain societal order
Make the actual believes totally batshit insane.
Also this. Religions need more layers to them in fantasy worlds.
What do you mean by unique?
Unique because nothing in real world religions is like them? Or unique because it's something you created that isn't just a carbon-copy of real world religion?
For me I just do what said: have different levels of religious belief across the region, with different spirits or gods worshipped at different scales.
Read more primary sources and watch less israelitetube
The gods are physically present in the world at all times.
The fact that Yalg'boefrit can personally beat the shit out of you when you displease him would have a massive impact on how religions would work.
>UR NOT REAL WHATCHA GONNA DO SMITE ME????
>Jesus Christ teleports in front of you and smites you with a brick to the face
Would this make the faithless stronger or convert more people?
If you're given the choice between brick or no brick, most people are going to go with no brick.
>unique
Grow up and realize anything you create with this as an objective will be dogshit anon.
Thematic resonance is king and one sufficiently strong theme beats any number of super original tweests and subversions.
People are joking, but full-on lifting an existing world religion and modifying it slightly actually works very well.
I played a campaign where the main religion was...the Catholic Church. Jesus and Pope and everything (though not Rome). The Church kept a monopoly on "divine" magic, but it was never clear if it was actually divine in origin, or just the Church having special wizards.
Why do you think we're joking?
First, real life gods are rarely narrowly defined by a singular domain. They are usually the patrons of multiple things and not always that directly related, like war AND love.
Second, the are allegories of forces humans do not understand and try to appeal to them and personalize them.
Third some think that religion comes from ancestor worship. Different families may end up worshipping the same common ancestor. In time, they are deidefied. In antiquity, a lot of people claimed to be distant descended from different gods or demigods.
Fourth, gods may have different aspects and may be attributed different things depending on the region. Gods have epithets.
Fifth, because religion and myth are not static, but living and evolving things, gods often ended up with a lot of contradictory elements, especially if they represent fickly elements: A loving mother and an adulterous spouse. A generous boon-granter and cruel and spiteful too.
This isn't related to your post, but jesus christ if you're going to be drawing on a computer, the least you can do is just put some actual text into your explainer image.
>anon doesnt know
oh anon.
lurk more homosexual
Huh? There is text in the image. What are you talking about?
Hi there autist anon!
The person you’re replying to is clearly requesting that the artist uses the programs in-built text inserted (like you’re reading right here!) with a consistent and readable font rather than handwriting the text.
You might notice in the original drawing that the writing starts large and gradually gets smaller: that’s because the artist realised they were running out of space. That is one disadvantage of writing the text out with drawing tools rather than the purpose-built text tool.
All the best,
Welsh Dragon.
Explain what you meant. NOW.
>First, real life gods are rarely narrowly defined by a singular domain. They are usually the patrons of multiple things and not always that directly related, like war AND love.
That's because many of these gods are created by merging other gods together. For example, Mars was the Roman god of war, but also of agriculture. From what we can tell, Mars was primarily a deity of agriculture and fertility with only a minor protection aspect until the Romans decided he was basically the same as Ares. You can also see how Mars changes from mostly an older, bearded man to a younger, clean-shaven man as Greek influence increases.
Damn Hellas, subverting our traditional Roman Religion
>You can also see how Mars changes from mostly an older, bearded man to a younger, clean-shaven man as Greek influence increases.
I thought Greeks liked beards and Romans didn't?
Like all societies, they had trends. Look at the US hairstyles 20 years ago and now, it's totally different trends, and this isn't a new phenomen. Society changes with time, and at some point, Rome loved beards just as in others, it hated it.
Mars was an agricultural god because of growing seasons being tightly related to when you could wage war.
>Aphrodite Areia
Ancient Greeks believed their gods went on adventures in different lands under pseudonyms
That's Ishtar
Aphrodite is Ishtar.
Frick off OSP wanker. Even the math frail c**t admitted she has no fricking grounds to stand on that leap just as the wikipedia page she sourced it on. The entire sumerian bawd to (greek thot to) rome moron daisy chain has more holes than the sum of orgies all their cult members had combined. Its like claiming that chink commies cultural values are related to those of pre-wu china. Then again if servs managed to gaslight morons to think their name isnt the sandBlack personized version of slave and pakindis bribe the greengays to claim they are clean while dying from cancer villages and pollution, i guess some youtube bawd that doesnt know the difference postulate being broken vs having a projection conversion can do the same.
Just stop and consider that we're living in a reality where celtic Situla art got strong middle eastern influences by way of Phoenician works.
I dont give a frick that some artists 200 years late went "this looks cool". Doesnt change that the Ishtar-Aphrodite link is self-sourced moronation when half of europe has more fitting barbarian gods from slavic to norse ones that were far more likely to be adapted during the early city states than a dead cult it shares 0 traditions with other than mental gymnastics based on linguistics.
Here's how ancient greek religion worked. This is all you need to know.
That's how all polytheistic religions worked.
that's how all religions work
>Ishtar is Aphrodite
No. While Greco-Roman Polytheism is syncretic there is no indication that Aphrodite originated in the middle east, she shares all of her Ishtar traits with the Indo-European Freya.
All scholars disagree with you
>The cult of Aphrodite in Greece was imported from, or at least influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia,[26][27][28][29] which, in turn, was influenced by the cult of the Mesopotamian goddess known as "Ishtar" to the East Semitic peoples and as "Inanna" to the Sumerians.[30][28][29] Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians, followed by the Paphians of Cyprus and then the Phoenicians at Ascalon. The Phoenicians, in turn, taught her worship to the people of Cythera.[31]
>Aphrodite took on Inanna-Ishtar's associations with sexuality and procreation.[32] Furthermore, she was known as Ourania (Οὐρανία), which means "heavenly",[33] a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven.[33][34] Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar on Inanna-Ishtar.[32] Like Inanna-Ishtar, Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess;[32][27][35] the second-century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia, which means "warlike".[36][37] He also mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms.[36][37][38][32] Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in the oldest strata of her worship[39] and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins.[39][40]
>Doesn’t list any scholars
>Pausanias states that the first to establish a cult of Aphrodite were the Assyrians
This is due to the Greco-Roman havit of direct association of deities. Greeks didn’t think that Amon was like Zeus they thought he literally was Zeus.
my religion is rubbing ishtar's feet/ishtar's feet rubbing me
Fellow lord of culture
So footgay religion?
I'm actually working on that for my own setting and can use some help.
The gist of it is that there are four primary deities in the setting. Each one represents one of the four elements of the setting, those being Fire, Water, Earth, and Air, along with a few other, secondary domains. Just to name one or two each, Fire is also the god of War and the Smith god, Water's god is the god of Healing, the Air god is tentatively the god of Commerce, and I'm thinking that the Earth god might be the god of Knowledge (though if you guys have any suggestions for more things they can be the patrons of like mentioned, I'd appreciate it). To be clear, none of the elemental gods align with either good or evil in terms of morality. So, when Fire burns things, or caused volcanic eruption or something, it's not out of malice, but just because that's what fire 'does', just for one example.
Now that you've got the background information for them, we can get back to the religions I'm trying to craft. I was thinking that some of the cultures and races might worship one or two of the gods above the others even if they have temples for them all. After all, an aquatic race, or a port city, would obviously prioritize the Water god's faith over the Fire god's, for one, but I still need to add more details for the priesthoods of each elemental faith and their rituals. My best ideas right now is that the Fire priests have arcane marks branded onto their skin and have ritual dances based on IRL fire dancing, and that the followers of the Wind god use airships and look to the stars and other patterns skies for signs of the future and other divine messages, I'd love to hear your thoughts and suggestions for this if you have some.
Just steal shit from ATLA
I knew I was missing something, I wanted to say that I wanted to avoid copying ATLA's take too closely, but I forgot to mention it. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.
I like war
GENTLEMEN
Legends vary because the Greeks didn't have a coherent religion, they had a group of characters (that sometimes differed) and each city-state told their own weird stories about them. Everything we know now is just what survived, not a broad canon.
I'm pretty sure Mars was always the god of war. His identification with Ares came later.
How did Aphrodite get so defanged? Was she split into her and Ares somehow?
All you need to know here.
So link it, goober. I do enjoy what a useful source GURPS is for just...any given topic. Even if you're not using GURPS itself.
NTA, but speaking from experience? Also, I second that link request.
have you tried looking in, I don't know, the GURPS general and/or PDF thread?
By J. Naylor huh?
Fantasy gods, usually being existences that actually can incarnate and run around beating people up, are usually more static than real life gods who tend to be seen as distant or hands off.
Because of this, fantasy gods are really like "This is Fire-O, lord of fire". But historical religion has different gods rising or falling in popularity over generations, some kings like Akhenaten trying to force his favored god Aten on Egypt lead to the purging of Atenism after his death and the re-assertion of Amun-Ara and shit like that. By the end of the Egyptian period, gods like Thoth and Isis had become more popular in general with masses of people who either believed in quasi-gnostic beliefs or who believed Isis would resurrect them after death.
In fantasy the closest you get is "bimbob became weakened because of a lack of worshippers and then got devoured by ultra-satan". The marvel superhero nature of fantasy gods precludes most fantasy authors from writing good religious mythologies.
Read real religions and borrow from them.
Well the easy way to make shit memorable is to simply define your gods along the lines of pantheist religions where they're just regular dudes but moreso and/or have the divine carry flaws inherent to their being but they're still a better option than the alternative. Think something like Crom from Conan.
For example: I'm running a Godbound wuxia game and the gods the players are currently trying to overthrow are the Thousand Honored Ancestors. The THA are the direct vassals to the Jade Emperor and were taken with him to fight a war of conquest on the Empyrean.
Though they were raised to the status of godlike power by the Jade Emperor, the THA were once flawed mortal martial artists before casting off their flesh to ascend and thus carry two notable flaws: They cannot learn or assimilate new information on a conceptual level, and their power is inherently tied to the Eight Pillars which draw upon the dragon lines to empower them. This then informs why wuxialand has eight holy cities dotted around (to house the macguffin pillars) and also why the culture has remained stagnant for the thousand-year interim deadlock since the THA left the material plane (If you don't honor your ancestral bloodline your ancestors will disown you and you go to hell, also your ancestors are ontologically senile and racist so you can't let blood feuds die out or build your house in a nonstandard pattern or basically improve your lot in any way if you want to be pious. Bastard children and orphans are universally loathed, slavery is both rampant and running on wildly inefficient methods meant for 1000 year old robot labor, and disownment is the highest dishonor.)
This also defines other stuff like the imperial family technically being regents for God Himself and the censorate being formally adopted eunuchs due to blood hierarchies.
tl;dr fantasy gods are best when they're both carrot and stick and they have to be appeased just as much as drawn upon.
Create a different paradigm of thought for a certain social relationship and then justify it with some form of religious belief based around natural phenomena.
For that you need a collections of paradigms to choose from. Many posters on this board barely know there are alternatives to their own.
Such a unique paradigm lends itself beautifully to a post apocalyptic world where everyone serves demons and live like little devils.
>How do you create unique fantasy religions?
Why do you want to?
>make a religion for the setting
>most of the time it comes off as shallow, has no nuance, and adds nothing to the setting
>alternatively actually put effort into making something original
>now you have to make every character in mind with the morals said religion teaches
>it's completely alien to the player, they can't read your mind, they have no idea how to act in this world
>Nor would the players actually care to learn.
Seems like a wasted effort, making a setting that is fundamentally unintuitive for players actually playing the game. Better to go for the 90s JRPG's vague "Looks like Christianity but isn't explicated stated to be" that's found in games like Dragon Quest and Shining Force.
I don't really try very hard and instead just use pilfered Abrahamic memes because I often find polytheism tedious.
You don't. Just steal shit.
But honestly, just create a genesis story (doesn't have to be factual) then imagine how 5 different groups might interpret them over thousands of years.
Personally my unique genesis is that God made the reality and the world then broke himself into separate aspects and let those conscious parts of himself fill/shape the world. This made the fae. God soon got bored because all these creatures were just wind up toys. God made humanity and gave them a divine spark, which gave them free will.
So the worlds religions are mostly folklore based on fae, polytheism based on the aspects, atheists who only worship magic, and some sects that are monotheistic.
how does /tg/ feel about gods that are disinterested or cannot affect the world in any way?
my setting has only one God, "The Watchman" who is provably real (he periodically appears as a giant guy in the night sky) but everyone innately knows he is powerless to change the world or the future. He occasionally points at important people or places though, and sometimes shows emotion.
Congratulations, you created one of the most boring and uncreative fictional religions in all of written history.
I create generic fantasy gods for everyone else, and then give humans a deity called 'the martyr' who was killed at the gallows by elves so all of the iconography is based on nooses and hanged men.
Should orcs instead. The nooses symbolism suddenly becomes much more flavourful.
>so all of the iconography is based on nooses and hanged men.
I've heard that one before.
You shouldn't have any right to laugh at anon's purity...
I also watched that awful Amazon show
>awful Amazon show
Honestly my first association was that one SCP. Though, to be fair, "what if Christ was executed by some way other than crucifixion" isn't too insane an idea that I can buy it came about multiple times via convergent evolution.
The crucifix wasn't just a means of execution, it was a strong piece of roman branding, and then the romans were the ones who took over the religion. It would be like if your holy savior were a Black person hanging from a tree and then all your bishops wore ghost costumes.
Do you mean Good Omens?
>take little known real mythology and give it a fresh coat of paint
This is what every world builder/fantasy author has done, because it works. Creating a "unique" religion is impossible, since the very concept of a religion has baked-in real world presumptions in it.
If your world has visible celestial bodies in the sky, you can be sure people on the ground are worshiping them. If there's a huge ass mountain or other natural wonder, gods could be holding court atop. People always and everywhere petition the same things from divine beings: wealth, love, revenge, protection, health etc.
Is a unique fantasy religion even really desirable? Seeing as this is /tg/ and not Ganker, do you really need an intricate and complex history and theology to facilitate playing beer and pretzel games?
It helps facilitate my wine and bruschetta games
A religion has a number of things it must do:
1: Explain the inexplicable, explain why the world is as it is (and why YOU should be happy with what you have)
2: Provide a doctrine for good behaviour, the do's and the dont's
3: Present an ultimate goal the good believer can work towards that will lead to salvation.
Religion also needs specific practices and rituals, it helps them stand out and builds a sense of community and belonging, specific sacred places, and someone who is learned in the lore of the religion and hold positions of power because of it, but the organisation of the religion is secondary to the core of it.
Real religions don't occur like this, of course, but we aren't making a real fricking sect here, we're making something that's useful for a tabletop game.
pic unrelated
>salvation
Why so Christian, anon?
ah, it was just the best word I could think of at the time. I meant it more as a reward for good behaviour, like the christian heaven, but also valhalla for the vikings, or escaping the cycle of rebirth in buddhism. It's the (good) thing the religion wants you to try and get to.
Alright, I can get behind that one!
Use Christianity bro
You don't. You just make the world's religion Christianity and bury that freakshit paganism crap in the closet with your obvious furry fetish.
For the world of my current story there are two primary deities, one a god of Light, Creation, and Chaos, while the other is a god of Darkness, Destruction, and Order. The first endlessly churns out new ideas to add to the world (like a stream of consciousness writer that writes whatever comes into their head), which the second either refines to make sure it will fit in said world, or destroys if it won’t (like an editor), most monsters being creatures that managed to slip through anyway, same for cursed items and shit like that. Just to make sure there's no misunderstandings, they're not aligned with human morality, so neither is evil. They're not 100% good either, admittedly, but still.
As for the religions, I was thinking that they would each have a major faith corresponding to them, the former being less formal and centralized, and the latter being more structured and with a stronger central authority akin to a Pope, with most artists and other creative types belonging to the former and most government officials and similar individuals belonging to the latter, one person I asked suggesting that the latter could outright be a part of the government. What do you think, anything to add? Any thoughts on how each one might work, especially their rituals and things like how each handle marriage, funerals, etc. besides the Order god's religion having couples sign special contracts? What about the holy vestments for each faith, besides doing something like picrel for the Light god?
I designed it specifically to feel as much like Catholicism as possible until you actually really pay attention to what they're saying and realize that they're using familiar words but in a different way.
"Christos" for example means Anointed One. This is just a generic term for saints in this religion, so people will say "Oh Christ" in the same way a Christian might say "Saints preserve us."
Did I do this because I say "Christ" a lot in exasperation? Yes. Is that blasphemy? I'm not really sure, it's more of a title than a name, isn't it?
>using Jesus’ name as a catch all term for holy men
This feels like this would piss off any atheists AND Christians in your group. You should do it
>Take Catholicism
>Split god up into several vaguely Greek inspired gods of specific roles and such
>Change nothing else
done
What do the priests and priestesses in your setting's religions wear when conducting their holy duties? It seems like every fantasy setting these days copies either Christians priests and/or nuns, or Japanese Miko and calls it a day like with picture related, surely we can do better than that.
Have their names be merely the current name for forces older than civilizations and history.
Set them up to have an opposite they are opposed to, preferable one that isn't just objectively evil. Have the god of duty and war opposed to the god of freedom and peace and their followers at best don't get along or at worst act against each other.
Communicating with the god should never be direct, it should be through signs, omens, or in the biggest most dramatic moments, some avatar but that's getting iffy.
You want them to feel as little like something the could meet face to face let alone defeat.
Make them capable of death, but have dead gods still give off some power to their followers.
The verisimilitude doesn't come from the made up religion, but rather how people interact with it. Thats where it falls flat and seems totally superfluous in 99% of settings.
also the worldbuilding that comes from conflicts that arise from religions/their adherents interacting
Do you guys think GRRMartin did a good job of that in his books?
Kind of. The Valyrians converted to the Faith of the Seven for convenience and support, and attempts to revert to their ancestral religion sparked wars. At the same time you see Stannis being seen as either a dangerous man following a strange foreign religion or a good man misled by a foreign witch. Religion is clearly important but the specific importance varies from individual to individual and from religion to religion. For example Rhollor actively prostelytizes, the seven are aggressive at holding their ground at least while the old gods are a pretty passive religion and don’t even care what religion their ruler is as long as they can practice it.
This. The vast majority of authors are, like most modern people living in western societies, vaguely agnostic and barely give a shit about religion. When someone says they're a Christian what they normally mean is that they kind of believe in God but haven't gone to church in well over 10 years and mostly don't care about it. When they say they're an Atheist what they mean is they just don't care about it.
This rubs off in a lot of fantasy setting, making religion an irrelevant afterthought with names slightly changes from a Wikipedia list (The norm for "Christian" writers.) or unambiguously a waste of time for stupid characters that aren't the MC (The norm for Atheist writers.).
real advice: for many fantasy religions, a good place to start is a creation myth. look at what you want from the setting, figure out how shit got started, and mythify it.
I mean, haven't we as humans done that IRL already?
It’s easy. For the good guy religion:
> Copy/paste Christianity and then make it polytheistic. Exaggerate it’s good qualities and ignore the bad ones.
For bad guy religion:
> Copy/paste Islam and make it polytheistic. Then exaggerate the bad qualities and ignore the good ones.
1. take real world religion
2. replace every important figure with cute asian woman
Not sure if really original, but I like to toy with the idea of pantheons where all of the gods' domains revolve around a certain overarching theme, but they can be applied metaphorically to more abstract qualities.
For example, a Dwarven pantheon where each deity is a god of a certain kind of craft. The blacksmith deity also serves as a god of order, while the mining deity also serves as a god of knowledge.
Alternatively, an Elven pantheon based on different biomes. The forest deity is also a god of life, while the desert deity is also a god of death.
I like this idea. I'd sure love to hear more about what you're thinking on this. Like, what would you do with the gods of humanity, for starters?
In the setting that I built this system for, the human pantheon is based on heroic qualities (courage, strength, perseverance), but was replaced by a universal monotheistic religion with saints that act as the mechanical equivalent for patron deities.
The halfling pantheon is based on personal good qualities (hospitality, humor, compassion), and the gnome pantheon is based on schools of magic.
Also, no pantheon has evil gods. All gods are considered good by their followers, but outsiders might view them as evil.
Why were they replaced, and are you talking about in-setting or on a meta level? And how would someone view a god of something like courage as evil, that makes no sense to me. I need more information on this. I'd especially love to hear about the Gnome pantheon you mentioned just now that's based on magic schools.
Go frick a trumpet
Don't
Just make stuff that's cool instead of striving for some empty ideal of uniqueness
And how do we make cool fantasy religions then? Please, enlighten us.
There is no we, Literary Lord. There are the creative people, and there is you. You will never be one of them.
NTA, but I'll try to be nicer about this. Your goal shouldn't be the pursuit of uniqueness but to embrace elements you are genuinely interested in. I think most people who pursue uniqueness who do research on religion would only read the surface elements of a particular religion, and only apply surface things, like what rituals people do. But if you're someone who is intrigued with how people interact with their beliefs, as
pointed out, you might start delving into its nuances like what these rituals mean to them. For me personally, I like studying the development of religions, it's not much for me to read a faith's final form but all the layers of development that contributed to it. This anon
I think has a pretty decent explanation on it. I often see people picking a single concept, like a religion based on fire or water, writing all sorts of things that relate to them but they always come off as arbitrary to me, like giving worship to a people who live somewhere hot because fire is hot, or giving water worship to sailors already surrounded by water who probably rely more on wind. I personally like to start developing religions in a prehistoric time and bake thousands of years of historical events and conflicts that culminate to a set of beliefs.
>For me personally, I like studying the development of religions,
Okay, neat, do you have any particular sources that you can recommend for studying religions, especially if we want to create our own for campaign worlds, please?
Just start with your hang-ups and personal issues.
I have a degree in anthropology so I usually just steal something from real life.
>Thank YHWH, the spirit in the sky, Emmanuel, Jove, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jonah, Adam, and Ezekiel. Thank the One True Immutable White Christian God, Eternal, Creator, All-Present, All-Knowing, All-Loving, All-Kind, All-Good. Thank you oh Lord and guide we your flock as we pass our days in this fallen world, full of witchcraft and wickedness.
Problem?
I just invent lots of weird gods I like and don't care about making them logical or realistic, pic related.
So, what are some of the other gods and cults that you've made?
You first, LL
Study folklore, and then apply what you learn. the same goes for all fantasy worldbuilding.
Cagots too and of course israelites. The latter's funny as usury is indeed a dick move but the nobility lucked into a setup whereby they could repossess the wages of sin ever other pogrom while keeping their hands clean behind layers of deniability.
The role of clear, verifiable revelation in fantasy worlds adds an interesting wrinkle to the cultural accretion you describe. Different races may have varying cognitive predispositions towards the different influences too.
The starter pack applies to this hack, what a surprise. Often my settings draw from dreams (insomnia's silver lining) so it's just a matter of elaborating on surreal foundations. For instance one where the world was an hourglass with the "sun" being sand falling through the hole between bulbs and igniting from compression/friction (the blue of daytime sky was cyan smoke). The cycle of filling-days and emptying-nights were bracketed by passage through a solar furnace, given the Arabian nights aesthetic implied by a setting that's mostly sand including the phoenix as emblem of destructive rebirth through fire was a no-brainer.
So the cult of the "Pinioned Crown" germinated. The Phoenix/Simurgh/Konrul is the firstborn of each epoch-day which all other life is a degenerating echo of unto the lowly flightless wretches, it is also consort-parent-child of the Sun (whose beams are imagined as razor-edged feathers). The cult's mostly concerned with sacrifices (the pungent smokes are "spiritual airs" that aid in arcane ascent as a thermals do physically) and stockpiling incense which they're convinced are needed to ensure the Phoenix's proper hatching in subsequent cycles.
>The role of clear, verifiable revelation in fantasy worlds adds an interesting wrinkle to the cultural accretion you describe.
No, because in ancient times people thought thunder was Zeus punishing unbelievers and that alchemists and healers were sorcerers (prohibited by law in some places) and that regulated medicine itself was a gift from the god of healing (hence the modern snake staff symbol that was his emblem).
"Technology is indistinguishable from magic" is a gay and moronic trope, because it's almost wholly spouted by people living in a post-technological world where machines previously only available to plutocratic millionaires, presidents, military commanders and kings became available to the average moron to dick around as they pleased. Even the internet 40 years ago was just Compuserve pay by the hour messaging but now even a smelly failpenis from Manila can get a 500 dollar smartphone with a month's wages and pay for a cheap phone plan so he can ruin Ganker with his inanity and moronation.
Shut up stupid
Yeah sure, one cult says that and another says its the writhing of a cosmic serpent. Seeing an actual hammer-wielding tian up there regardless of the creed you subscribe to and more importantly doing so repeatedly (none of that "no more overt blatant miracles because muh test of faith" bullshit). Where the frick does Clarketech come into it anyway? Your schizophrenia or your moronation?
Ideological nudists are fun people to combine with the search for "primal" language in the gibberings of feral children.
It doesn't matter whether the religion is unique. What matters is that it works for your world and game.
Look up some really weird or obscure religious practices or at least ones that aren't really that common of a knowledge. Like Stylites. The weirder and more obscure the better, Stylites are just an example.
Then, try to figure out what Gods would actually want that. Are they real or just believes?
In my setting there are few more or less minor pantheons, with gods being partially mortals who ascended to godhood as one of the first things that happened after the main god made mortal races for fun. And the religious practices. The rest are pretty much minor spirits in comparison, where pretty much every village has their own few gods and Deities who are spirits, wise creatures from other planes, even sometimes monsters who are just smart enough and actually help the people. But they are nothing next to a actual proper god who would pretty much wipe the floor with them if they decided to get off their ass and do something fun that day.
Something truly unique is pretty hard to make, but something that's weird and different from the norm is attainable.
Huh, I wasn't considering Zoroastrianism when I came up with the idea. My gods work together most of the time though, odd disagreements over whether to keep or destroy a creature or being notwithstanding. Regardless, if you have any more thoughts on what I can do with this idea besides copying Zoroastrianism, I'd love to hear them please.
I'm not saying ostracization was a uniquely evil or non-western phenomenon. My main point is that our contemnporary conventional notions of good and evil (at least, here in the West) emerged/evolved from christian notions of good and evil which may not be directly compatible or even applicable to other systems of morality such as those found in Hinduism or Shinto, both of which have their own traditions and definitions of what is right and what is wrong
For an example that's closer to home, how would one apply the common standards of good and evil to the morality of a Nietzschean ubermensch? One would have to radically modify the notions of right and wrong just to approach an accurate description of that system. So much so that "good" would not be the same "good" as we generally use it and our conventional "evil" would scarcely capture that which the ubermensch finds detestable.
>For an example that's closer to home
Gypsies.
I'd rather discuss interesting fantasy religions already on paper and why people enjoy them.
I'm trying to think of one I like. I can name ones I hate.
>Faerun
too many gods, it leads to an overloaded portfolio where only a few really matter and are recognizable. I guess that's common to paganism but it just feels over the top too many in Faerun and in Pathfinder.
>"The light" or anything like that, vaguely inoffensive karma made into a kind of semi-sapient thing
most pussied out trash. It's lazy and utterly boring.
>Warhammer
seemed reasonable with how many gods there were, and that it was mainly the big-name ones that were of consequence. So I kinda like that.
>ASOIAF
pretty mid. The seven feel shitty. R'yllor is manichaean good vs evil which is alright but light versus evil is played out now, the tree-faces were classical spirits, the iron men worship something under the deep. But the seven? It just feels phoned in not-catholicism. They exist and...that's it. It'd be like a fantasy Christianity that has no story about Jesus and why he sacrificed himself, no old testament no genesis no garden of eden.
>an overloaded portfolio where only a few really matter and are recognizable
And which gods are those?
Selune, Shar, Mystra, the dead three, bahamut and tiamat
Considering that religious rites are often performed at important points in a follower’s life, like weddings, funerals, etc., how do you create rites for such occasions and what have you made? I’ve mainly stolen them from Christianity and added some actual magic, but I want to get more creative for my next one, if just to stop my players complaining about how unoriginal it is.
This is good and all novels should be written this way
>describe Christianity
>swap the names to fantasy ones
>smile as millions of turbo-fedoras obsess over it and reference it and enjoy it to death because their atheism is so paper-thin all it takes to get around it without them even knowing it is a couple of name changes
>tell my friend Clive to do the same
>he does and the exact same thing happens, lmao
>have a good-natured laugh at the stubbornness of humanity in the face of the infinite love of God
Tolkien was right, stories are holy, and once he saw it he couldn't unsee it. He coped by telling himself that all stories were secretly about Jesus (an idea that he got from Clive).
It's been years since I read his books, but surely he changed more than that.
The most Christian thing in the whole legendarium is when Eru throws a israelite-god tantrum and sinks Numenor. And everyone hates that part.
I don't know anyone who "hates that part."
>to get around it
homie, anyone who thinks fiction has to "get around" personal beliefs to be enjoyed is moronic. The Legendarium is enjoyed because it's good fiction, if that's not enough and you need that to bolster your in-group too it's because you're pathetic.
>homie, anyone who thinks fiction has to "get around" personal beliefs to be enjoyed is moronic.
I don't think I'm contradicting your central point here, I think it's just your choice of words, but Tolkien put in a lot of work just giving himself permission to write and enjoy a pagan story.
>On the side of mere narrative device, this is, of course, meant to provide beings of the same order of beauty, power, and majesty as the 'gods' of higher mythology, which can yet be accepted- well, shall we say baldly, by a mind that believes in the Blessed Trinity.
The result was a beautiful meditation on the relationship between creation and subcreation, and I can appreciate that as a fictional device without needing to "get around" anything, but that's just because I'm an atheist.
Good point however I was specifically taking exception to the way
thinks people from broad walks of life enjoying Catholic theming is somehow a gotcha. If "their atheism is so paper-thin" applies it's because anything fragile enough to fear dissenting fiction has branding rather than a worldview. Co-opting appreciation of quality into an excuse for in-group/out-group chest-beating is desecration.
bump
he boomped aaaaaaaa
Steal from actual religions, shift things around, combine them and hope no one notices.
Learning the common roles present in almost any religion is also good.
Also, do greatly consider how said religion affects a given culture and people participating in it.
Pick 4 random objects and 4 abstract concepts. Make sense of it. Start a religion with that. You said unique not good.
By cribbing from actual religion, philosophies, folk lores. If you have some actual beliefs then involve those too.
Several years ago I was in a campaign that went to level 20 and just became a plane hopping mess, anyway. I was thinking of creating a setting where these old characters got together and used their magic to create a universe all their own, safe from the troubles of their previous one.
Naturally, they'd be worshipped as gods by any inhabitants of the various worlds because they are relatively indistinguishable from what one would imagine a god would be.
However, since they're at their core just really powerful adventurers when they visit places nobody can actually tell they're "the gods" and they don't act like caretakers. The creation of the universe was a fire and forget sort of thing. I thought that might be interesting
You are genuinely the least intelligent person I have ever seen on this website. And that's saying a whole fricking hell of a lot. You'll only find dumber people than you on twitter or reddit.
>christcuck projecting his moronation on others
keep your mouth shut, cultist
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