Relations With Foreign Faiths

Once he's decided how the campaign's chief culture is arranged, the DM can make the same decisions about all the other, foreign, cultures in his world.

Then, if he wishes, he can add still more detail to the religious fabric of his campaign setting by defining how different cultures regard one another's religious practices.

Some cultures avidly welcome the introduction of new religious elements into their own. Pantheistic cultures, especially those which have no dominant faith, are likely to welcome worship of each foreign god that is encountered.

Some cultures violently oppose such an introduction. For example, a culture might be pantheistic, worshipping many gods, and yet still believe that its pantheon is the only true pantheon . . . and that all foreign gods and foreign pantheons are lies or demons.

Foreign cultures often worship some of the same gods as the campaign's principal culture, but do so under different names, with different rites, and believing in different stories about those gods. A tolerant culture will welcome new interpretations of their gods. An intolerant one will, at best, seek to educate the foreign culture to "correct its misunderstandings"; at worst, it will insist that the foreign land be conquered and forcibly "corrected."

This, then, is another way to add detail and texture to a campaign: By deciding how foreign faiths regard one another, and what effect that regard has on the cultures involved. These effects range all the way from increased trade and exchange of knowledge through war, conquest, and even genocide.

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