Minor Detail

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

The town's priest is named Brion. (Whether or not he's the town's only priest and the one Monica has referred to in his journal depends rather on whether Steve and Ruth play again.)

Brion is a kind man, a competent healer, and something of a scholar; he is somewhat timorous of combat.

Comments

[cellio]

This makes sense to me. In particular, D&D (at least previous editions; haven't looked closely at 3rd) had this IMO broken view of religion, where you worshipped (and could serve) one and only one god regardless of the pantheon's structure. Yet if you look at real-world polytheistic societies, like the ancient Greeks or the Vikings, you see that what god(s) you prayed to depended on what your situation was, and was thus variable. You didn't have priests of Odin who had no relationship with Thor or Freya, and so on. So I'm glad to see Brion with a "primary" god but working with the pantheon as a whole.

I would guess that if the pantheon's gods call for regular worship get-togethers, they'd be pretty much god-inedependent and would be attended by most of the village.

[ralphmelton.livejournal.com]

D&D still has that view of religion. I agree it's broken.

(Another way D&D's theology is broken: evil gods. I'm not convinced human history contains much worship of evil gods.)

I do think that people who are especially blessed by the gods (i.e., clerics and paladins) will have a special relationship with one god, who might get jealous if they're not giving him/her priority. But I do think that most people will give due respect to a lot of gods, with variable priorities that reflect their own circumstances.

I might revamp the whole pantheon D&D describes, or I might just let it wither since the party doesn't have a blessed character.

One thing about D&D gods that we don't have a real-world example for, though: D&D gods do grant real miracles with far less ambiguity than in our history. I'm not sure how this would affect belief and worship--it would certainly mean that you wouldn't find too many atheists.

[cellio]

I agree about paladins and clerics. "Just plain folks" can have a more casual relationship with the entire pantheon, but those actively dedicated to the religion would have a "patron", so to speak.

Evil gods: this actually ties into the whole question of the alignment system (which I think you said you kind of wanted to ignore for now). I don't think anyone decides to "be evil"; it's just that his definition of "good" is one that most others don't agree with. (Ironically, yeserday afternoon the adult study -- between services -- revolved around the question of whether humans are naturally good, naturally evil, or naturally neutral. Maybe I'll bring it up in my journal.)