Designing Faiths
This chapter is for DMs who want to design detailed faiths and cults for
their campaign worlds. It's not prohibited for the campaign's players to read this
. . . but not all of them will find it useful. Players may wish to skip on to
the next chapter, "Sample Priesthoods."
As the Player's Handbook points out (page 34, first column), "In the simplest version of the
AD&D®game, clerics serve religions that can be generally described as 'good' or 'evil.'
Nothing more needs to be said about it; the game will play perfectly well at
this point."
That's true enough. But DMs who work to make their campaign settings into
interesting, detailed backgrounds for the campaign, won't be satisfied with that
simple approach. A big part of the color of any fiction setting, including
campaign settings, is the relationship of the supernatural world to the "real" world
. . . and gods, with priests as ambassadors to the human world, form a big part
of that supernatural element.
So, eventually, most DMs will want to work up at least the basic details of
who the gods are in his campaign world, how they relate to one another, and what
their goals are (especially those pertaining to the mortal world). This, in
turn, will let them enhance the role of cleric, druid and other priest
player-characters in the campaign . . . and that's what this chapter is all about.
In this chapter, you'll learn how to create specific faiths (related to
specific gods, natural forces, and philosophies); how to create the priests of these
specific mythoi; and how to relate the gods together into a full-sized pantheon
for your game world. In the next chapter, you'll find many examples of this
priesthood creation process.
Table of Contents