Rites and Role-Playing

In a lot of campaigns, it's easy to ignore one of the priest's foremost functions: He's also the officiator at lots of rites, rituals, celebrations and ceremonies.

Every faith will have its own rituals and other special events; careful, judicious use of these will add a lot of detail and flavor to a campaign.

The DM shouldn't sit down and work up a lot of rituals for each priesthood in his campaign, and then keep them juggling around in his mind until they emerge, one by one, during adventures. But what he should do is bring individual ceremonies and priestly events into his campaign as adventure and story hooks.

For example:

"Jeriash, your party arrives in the city on October 30th. Now, you could head on from there the next day, but November 1st is Vine Day, which commemorates your goddess stopping her work for the year, winter setting in, wine-making ceremonies, and so forth; it sort of behooves you to volunteer your help at the local temple for that event . . . "

The Vine Day celebration, a Mardi Gras-like costumed parade featuring wine-drinking excesses, is a good opportunity to inject some color into the current storyline, but that isn't all it has to be. The DM could wrap an entire story around it; for example, imagine trying to capture a group of ghouls as they roam these streets strewn with drunken, costumed celebrants.

Though the DM shouldn't work up all a priesthood's usual ceremonies in advance, whenever he does create one, he should make note of it. If he doesn't, and the right time of year rolls around again, the players will inevitably remember it and wonder why Vine Day isn't being celebrated this year . . .

Following are descriptions of a number of different types of rituals. Each of these can be adapted to the characteristics of different faiths and different gods. Not all cultures and not all gods will feature each of these types of rituals; the DM should decide which apply to which gods and to which societies.

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