Ten reasons why your TTRPG campaign needs religion

Happy New Year!

In this period when a large part of the western world remembers the birth of a baby in the middle east two millennia ago, it seems an appropriate time to talk about religion.

Not so much about my or your personal beliefs – this is a blog about role-playing games – but about how gods and religion affects your campaign world.

You can get by without religion featuring in your roleplaying campaign. I did through my first years of D&D as a teenager. But if you are, I think you’re missing out, and I hope to persuade you of this in this post.

Before I get onto that, and to help me with some definitions, it’s time to review a recently received publication.

Heretic’s Guide to Devotion and Divinity

In the autumn of 2022, I joined Eventyr Games’ Kickstarter for “Heretic’s Guide to Devotion and Divinity”, and the book arrived in August. It sat on my in pile for a while, and then I finally got round to opening it up and reading it. I could hardly put it down for the first couple of chapters, and it really got me thinking and inspired me for my campaign.

So, a quick review of the book.

Chapter one starts off by defining divinity, or rather, helping you to define divinity in your world. Things to think about:

• Do gods exist? How much do people believe in them?
• How many gods are there? One? Two – opposed aspects like good and evil? A pantheon like the Greek gods? Or forces of nature like the pagans?
• How are the gods organised? Do they have any sort of hierarchy? Are they split into sub-groups? How much do they interact with each other?
• Where and how do they live? Are they extra-planar beings? Essences which are everywhere and nowhere? Living in the world somewhere like the Greek gods in Olympus?
• How do they come into being? Have they always been around? Were they created in some way? Or were they once mortal but have somehow become transformed?
• How can the gods influence the world? Just through divine magic (like clerical powers), communicating with mortals, sending agents to act in their stead? Create miracles? Or can they actually manifest in the world themselves? And if so, how much can they do, and if this is limited (which is probably a good idea), what is that limits them? Convention? Politics with the other gods? Or something more absolute?
• What do the gods want? Why do they even care about the mortals?

If you’re stuck for inspiration, the book offers various roll tables you can use as a starting point. They also develop two sample pantheons, one fairly classic one similar to the ones in various D&D publications, and the other draconic, which illustrate what they’re talking about.

The first chapter finishes with stat blocks for deities of different levels, and suggestions about how to give distinctive features and abilities to the different deities without unbalancing them.

Chapter two looks at Devotion – how the religion actually affects the world.

• Why do mortals worship? What is the role of religion? Is it a way to worship and show reverence (and maybe get boons back or avoid banes)? A community for the followers to belong to? A set of rituals to follow? A means to power?
• How are religious organisations organized? What are their precepts? How visible are they? How do they rule? How do they fit into the nation state? How do different religions interact? How do the members of one religion struggle with each other?
• How do people show their devotion to the religion? Specific signs and symbols like the fish of the early Christians? Specific acts of devotion? What holidays and special days do they have, and what traditions are associated with them? Specific rituals? And can the rituals have an actual in-game effect?

They suggest quite a few different rituals in detail, along with mechanical effects as a result, along with sacrifices to try to get divine favour, and potential divine retributions.

Chapter three is character options, including new divine subclasses and new divine feats. You may be interested; to my mind there are already far too many character options to get my head round anyway.

Chapter four introduces some divine NPCs who have some sort of religious powers, along with stat blocks, services offered, magic items them might be able to sell, and other reasons you might find them useful, along with associated quest hooks. It also describes various sects and cults, along with some people in them and possible hooks. Probably more use as inspiration for your own NPCs than direct drop-in to your campaign, but plenty to pick from.

Chapter five has several holy quests – mini adventures and locations which you can drop into your campaign or use for inspiration.

Chapter six talks about divine magic – boons that deities can give and vows that mortals can take in order to get something from the deity (and suggestions of how to deal with broken vows). It then finishes with 37 new magic items.

The book finishes in chapter seven with a selection of 50 new celestial creatures, foes and other divine monsters, with stat blocks suitable for fifth edition.

You can get your own copy of Heretic’s Guide to Devotion and Divinity here, in PDF and/or print.

Why should you include religion?

When I was starting in my teens, with the Menzter BECMI D&D sets, my main character was a cleric. But I didn’t really think about the fact that his powers and spellcasting came from a god. It was just like the water or electricity – a utility that’s on tap, but doesn’t require much in return except paying the bill off-screen – like having a direct debit that goes out of my bank without thinking about it.

When I restarted playing, part of the background I developed for my first campaign included the religions and beliefs of a couple of different cultures living in the same land. These had several deities each, including how they are said to appear in the world, and the religions of the two cultures had different precepts which overlapped in some ways, clashed in others.

I had ideas for how these might come into the story, and indeed how they might drive some of the later parts of the campaign, but the campaign headed off in a different direction before I had time to really start bringing them in, and then ended up in a different country and fizzled out. When I started up a new campaign (set in the new country), I started to build up the immortals who were worshipped in that city, along with some details of their churches and temples, but the whole campaign has been rather “need-to-know” – as in I’ve improvised details when the characters encounter them – so I haven’t really defined the religions in the same way I did for my first campaign.

I have had vague intentions of bringing in signs from the Immortals, but without having a good feel for them, I haven’t been able to improvise. So we know a bit about some of the temples, in particular the temple of the paladin (when he went there for training) and the library of the temple of Khoronus (when they went there for research), but I don’t really know how the Immortals might manifest their presence, or their intentions for the party.

Reading Heretics Guide to Devotion and Divinity reminded me of all the good things (for a campaign) that religion can bring, and has inspired me to properly flesh this out – which I will do in my next blog post. But in the meantime, here’s why I think I need religion in my campaign, and why it will help you in yours, in classic countdown style.

Ten reasons why your campaign needs religion

10. The Immortal is a cleric’s or paladin’s source of power

The powers of Clerics and Paladins come from their church, their Immortal, and/or the power of their beliefs. That makes the church an important part of their back story and their character.

The paladin and new cleric in my campaign both worship Ixion the sun god, and Robbie has been trying to represent this without much help from me. I really need to define what Ixion stands for.

9. The church precepts give options for roleplaying

A church will have expectations of how their members behave, and plenty of back-story to play into. How much the player wants to lean into it may vary, but it gives them plenty of opportunity for roleplaying and ways to establish a distinctive character.

At it simplest, these can give the player behaviours and beliefs to follow, but a player may decide their character rebels against one or more of the precepts – in which case, what are the consequences?

A previous player’s cleric worshipped Al-Kalim and the Way of the Eternal Truth. This influenced his behaviour here in “the land of heathens who don’t know how to behave properly,” leading to some nice role-playing moments. Sadly that player had to leave, so we no longer have the benefit of Yasir’s pearls of wisdom.

8. The beliefs system can inform how the world works

How the gods work, whether they can influence the world directly or just remotely, whether they are actual beings with personalities, or more like nebulous collections of ideas, whether worship actually affects the power of the being or not – all these things say something about how your campaign world actually works, and gives the players hints as to how to interact with it.

At the moment this is all rather too amorphous. I have an idea of it all in my head, but I don’t think the players know it, and I’m pretty sure it doesn’t come across in the world.

7. Churches are (or can be) powerful organisations

If your campaign involves politics, then churches and religious organisations are great candidates for one (or more) of the factions vying for power and influence. Characters can help or hinder them, or act as go-betweens, either publicly or surreptitiously (great for plausible deniability). Their plans may be affected by how the church would react. Or maybe they just need to make sure they pitch their interactions correctly for an NPC of the church in order to influence them in some way.

They have already had some dealing with the churches of Khoronus and Ixion. I have improvised some of Khoronus’ influence on politics; so far the church of Ixion in Akorros hasn’t had any political influence. And there are definitely some factions missing…

6. Churches are great sources of quests

A well-defined church will have various purposes and priorities, both in terms of their teachings and beliefs, and also to build the power of the organisation and/or the people within the organisation. To further these aims, they may need adventurers willing to get their hands dirty on their behalf – either for the support of the church, or more prosaically for gold. They may have ancient relics to be found, high-up officials to be protected, rebels or rivals to be silenced. Or the characters may be able to engage their help in thwarting NPCs whose designs run counter to those of the church (as is currently happening in my campaign).

One mission the party undertook recently was to retrieve a book which had been stolen from the library of Khoronus. After retrieving it, the church and the party are working together to try to palm off a counterfeit version on the faction who they believe might have been behind the theft.

5. Religions provide conflict

If everyone agreed, life would be easy and there would be no conflict. But that doesn’t make for a good story. Different religions have different priorities, and so you can expect that their aims and beliefs will conflict in some way. This gives characters challenges when they need to interact with members of different religions…particularly if they aren’t aware of the differences up front. It also gives reasons why people may be in conflict.

The Angry GM suggests having 5 religions. As he says:

The basic idea behind designing a D&D mythology is to create a number of thematic conflicts that will reflect the stories you want to tell in that world and throughout that campaign. … the number five is the perfect number for this sort of s$&%.

He suggests setting up five thematic conflicts, and then building belief systems/churches/gods based on pairs of these so that each one conflicts with two others. These conflicts should be such that there isn’t an inherent “good” and “bad” in any pairing. In his example, he gives

• Justice vs. Compassion
• Tradition vs. Progress
• Freedom vs. Safety
• Idealism vs. Pragmatism
• Determinism vs. Free Will

He then pairs Justice and Idealism, Compassion and Tradition, Progress and Freedom, Safety and Determinism, and Free Will and Pragmatism to form the ideals of the five gods.

The next step is to come up with the gods that represent these – let’s say Assurion, Belthior, Cassandra, Dimestra and Entariol. A follower of Assurion with their belief in justice will conflict with a follower of Belthior’s belief in compassion, and their idealistic beliefs will conflict with a follower of Entariol’s belief in pragmatism. And so on.

Of course, you should choose conflicts that make sense to you and your campaign. And maybe this is all a bit deterministic for you, in which case you might like a wider pantheon, or something less defined…

This is definitely an area where my campaign is lacking. At the moment all the religions get on pretty well. As well as more factions, I need belief systems which lead to character conflict.

4. Religions are a good source of NPCs for the world

Religions are organisations, made up of people. Those people all have their own interests and ambitions and ways in which they interpret the church teachings, either for the benefit of the church or for themselves. Also ways in which they make use of their connections to the church, or possibly secretly violate their connections to the church (which the characters can make use of if they find out). All sorts of possibilities!

It also helps to have a good selection of religions to choose from. I realised in our last session that I didn’t have enough religions, when I improvised a religious itinerant on the road who called “Repent! Repent!” When the characters interrogated them as to why, and who was saying so, I realised I needed a god for them to be serving. I didn’t feel that any of the three gods were really appropriate, so I just ended up saying “Khoronus” because that’s the main god. I really need a different god who would be more appropriate for something like this.

3. Religions have festivals and celebrations

Do you want a festival or occasion to provide the backdrop to an adventure? Churches and religions have feast days, observances and other reasons to get people together. Whether it’s a regular service – multiple times per day, daily, weekly – or whether it’s something more seasonal – a harvest celebration, the longest day, the feast day of a saint, the first new moon after the blooming of the jubjub plant – a festival or celebration brings people together.

You can play this for background colour, as a reason to have crowds in the streets, something that brings key NPCs into a known location where the characters can intercept them, a ritual which needs the characters to obtain a particular ingredient, or as a distraction which the characters can use to achieve something clandestine.

I’ve got a harvest festival coming up, and I’ve seeded that one of the factions the characters are investigating might be trying to use it for an assassination. They’re hurrying to finish their current quest in time to get back to try to prevent it.

2. Immortals are the ultimate quest-givers

Inscrutable, with their own agendas, the Immortals will have particular schemes which they wish to make bear fruit. But they cannot just will these changes into being, so they need agents of change to make them happen. The characters (both PCs and NPCs) could be sent on quests, or otherwise engaged to try to move the Immortal’s plans forward. Or the PCs could find out about a plan an Immortal has which will be bad for the village/town/country/world and move to oppose them.

I have various vague ideas that some gods will try to engage the characters to deal with a growing problem, but I don’t yet know enough about the gods to know how to bring this in.

1. Religions provide colour that makes the world feel real

All of these add up to the feeling that the characters are moving through a living, breathing, real world, and helps the players immerse themselves in the story and act and feel for the characters, rather than just mechanically rolling dice.

All the different touches that the players have to interact with, the conflicts, the events, the characters, even the buildings – as long as it feels consistent – help convince the players that their characters, and the characters they interact with, are real flesh and blood, and help put the role-playing into  the role-playing game.

Conclusion

So, what do you think? Have you got religion (at least for your campaign)? Have I persuaded you?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a pantheon to develop…