Campaign by Design
Part Three: Taking things on Faith
In my last installment of this column, I indicated that I would talk about religion next. I am as good as my word. This installment will address the challenges that arise from a variety of different approaches to faith and religion in fantasy gaming. I hope that by the end of this column, I will have argued convincingly that would-be campaign designers should view religion as one of the lynchpins of the world in which the characters live.
In my very first column, I made the point that good fantasy is just like any other kind of literature in the respects that really matter. Despite being ostensibly "escapist," the best fantasy grapples with exactly the questions that define any other debate on the human condition. Questions relating to faith are near the top of the list of "stuff that literature should be preoccupied with." So it follows that spirituality should be an important element of a campaign setting. I will begin by outlining several of the prevailing approaches used to present deities and religion in fantasy gaming and literature.
The Gods Are NPCs
One of the most common treatments of deities in fantasy is to situate a story's action in a world where the gods not only are real but are active participants in current events. This approach undoubtedly pays homage to Homeric epics in which the gods are involved in the causes, prosecution, and aftermath of a military conflict; it also draws on the tradition of Norse saga, Japanese and Chinese myth, and other entries in a long list of honored and vibrant cultural traditions. But I hasten to add that the inspirations for this approach lack a few important features that the originals have.
Mythology is a tricky field because it consists of religious stories that come from religions that are no longer practiced. This is not an issue when we talk about religious stories from religions that still exist. When a modern Christian (or a modern non-Christian who was raised in a Christian environment) reads a biblical tale like the story of Samson and Delilah, he or she can explain the "hidden" significance of that story. Samson's death amongst the Philistines becomes a prefiguration of a central Christian mystery, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. The story of the Fall of Man can be understood as a warning about humans' tendency to reach out for things that seem good but ultimately complicate our lives more than we anticipated or wanted.
To continue this latter example from Eden, an observant Roman Catholic might note that as the Fall begins with a meal, redemption from that fall is symbolized by a second meal. After Adam and Eve eat of the forbidden fruit, Yahweh curses them so that they will earn their food by labor. Later in Genesis, he reject's Cane's offering of vegetables and other produce, and accepts Abel's offering of livestock. Later the Israelites eat a Passover meal of lamb; and later still Christ becomes the Lamb of God. But at one further remove, the Eucharist celebrated at every Mass features a ritual meal—not of roasted lamb, but of bread and wine, of figurative flesh and blood but literal vegetables and produce.
The Exile from Eden is a very typical myth, if we take it as mythology. It is more or less intelligible at the "surface" level of meaning; it shows us the face of a peculiarly vengeful and unpleasant god. But to someone with knowledge of Christian doctrine, it gains a deeper resonance. It is not just a story, and it reveals that the snarling, over-reactive god in the tale itself has a face that also smiles. This is a crucial point; in the present day, biblical stories are accorded a degree of respect, even reverence, which does not characterize the average person's relationship to Greek mythology. The Bible receives this kind of respect because there are living Christians who demand that it receive that degree of respect. Everyone who worshipped a Greek god is dead, though. This does not mean only that there is no one alive to complain when authors distort or borrow from the Greek tradition; it means that there is no one alive who is truly able to recognize such distortions as might occur. And this holds true for all mythology.
If we consider Homeric epic in this light, I think we can see that an ancient Greek would have looked at the Iliad differently than a modern reader. It was a story, but it was not just a story any more than the stories in the Old Testament are just stories. The stories in the Bible are the starting point for several notoriously bitter disputes in United States public policy, most of them having to do with the First Amendment or with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered rights. The excuse for Socrates' execution was couched in terms that would be the ancient Athenians' equivalent to these debates.
In other words, these tales only work as religious literature if they are told in a religious context. Otherwise, Yahweh in the Old Testament is a psychotic tyrant who has problems responding to disappointment in a measured way. The Greek gods are a collection of nymphomaniacs and bisexual cross-species serial rapists. If we stick to a "surface" reading of either set of stories, they are equally horrifying. Nobody sane would worship Zeus or Yahweh if he or she believed that their depictions in myth were the whole story. Nobody could respect them enough to do so, because in mythology, the gods behave pretty much as mortals behave when they have enough power not to be accountable to anyone.
So I see problems with a campaign setting in which the gods intervene personally in mortal affairs. Abject, gibbering terror is not the same thing as worship. It is not the same thing as faith. And even if these divine NPCs are largely benign, if a fantasy campaign setting is merely a world in which mythology is literally true, DMs and players face serious limitations akin to those which face them in campaign settings like the Forgotten Realms, where the gods are literally NPCs, and where epic-level mortal NPCs are hiding under every rock. The question, "what should we heroes do about this," changes to, "why hasn't Thor hammered this problem into the ground already?" Or possibly, "Why did Alanis Morissette just make Ben Affleck's head explode?" It makes a good novel or story. But there are huge problems with this approach in games. And these problems are mitigated simply by making the gods less involved in mortal affairs.
The Gods Are Involved but Not Active
One way to accomplish this goal is to allow the gods to remain "people" in a sense but circumscribe their actions. Doing this constitutes a move away from treating the gods as NPCs; instead of speaking directly to the PCs, a deity under this system would send a messenger—literally an angel—to deal with the PCs. Further disconnection between the gods and the events of the game world is achieved through other strategies, like curtailing the gods' ability to perceive and react directly to matters that do not pertain to their special areas of concern. In this approach, the gods are still accessible to mortals, in the sense that their existence can be verified by observation. But their avatars do not walk the earth. This approach is a bit like worshipping Bill Gates. You know he's real, but most Microsoft employees do not get to call him on the phone to ask a question or get him to do them a favor. The gods make policy decisions, but they do not come down to street level any more than the President of the United States would fight on the front lines in Afghanistan. Such things are a "once in a great while" affair even under the "Gods are NPCs" approach; in this approach it simply does not happen. Instead of being real people, the gods in this approach are personifications of universal forces like chaos, good, evil, order, love, hate, and so on. A deity's power in this approach is centered on the handful of related concepts that each god represents.
This approach has several benefits over one which treats the gods as NPCs. First, it removes the need for an explanation of why the gods get directly involved in some cases but not others. Second, it ensures that gods are distant enough to allow mythology to develop around their religions. And thirdly, it gives a clear role for outsiders to fulfill in a campaign setting. The result is less work for the Dungeon Master, and a better level of versimilitude because there is little need to explain away inconsistencies. This approach is also casual enough to fit in with the expectations of a generation of gamers who are conditioned to respond to the likes of the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk settings, which feature much more active deities. It makes a good compromise solution.
The weaknesses of this approach are that it requires some initial setup by the Dungeon Master so that all the players understand what is happening, and it is possible for the Dungeon Master to get caught up in the idea that the gods are personifications of ideals without taking time to think through any questions about what ideals make for a convincing deity. Without this kind of planning, the "Involved but Inactive" approach to deities and religion can descend to farcical levels very quickly. As an example, take Herne the Hunted, a minor character in Terry Pratchett's novels Lords and Ladies and Wyrd Sisters. Herne is a god of the hunt, but he is the god of hunted prey—all those creatures that, as Pratchett writes, are destined "to end their lives as a brief, crunchy squeak." Funny, yes. But not really the stuff of divinity. Equally serious is the risk that a Dungeon Master will use a paradigm that treats the gods as personified ideals as the occasion for some philosophizing with the PCs as a captive audience. Without some degree of self-censorship, this approach to religion in the game can provide a channel through which the Dungeon Master bludgeons the PCs with his or her personal ideology, possibly to the detriment of gameplay.
To overcome these weaknesses, a Dungeon Master planning to use this approach should think through the possible consequences of conferring deity status upon a concept. As an example, consider deifying fire. It is a common occurance in fantasy literature, but if you look at mythology there are not very many gods of fire. Instead, there are mythological figures whose religious symbolism is tied up with images of fire. It is a subtle distinction, I grant you. But it is important. Hephaestus, the Greek god most often associated with fire, is not really a god of fire. He is the god of craftsmanship and metallurgy, and he has a strong association with fire because smiths need a heat source in order to work most metals. Vesta, the Roman goddess most often associated with fire, is not a fire goddess. She is the goddess who watches over Roman family life, so the Vestal Virgins maintain a sacred hearth where the fire never goes out, and fire becomes a symbol for the sanctity of married life and the family unit. Lesson learned: a great symbol or metaphor still has to refer to something other than itself. Fire is not very interesting if it is symbolic of heat. It is a great symbol for lust, anger, understanding, hope or love. If the gods are personifications of ideals or emotions, you're on the right track. If they are personifications of "blowing stuff up," or "Socialism is dumb," you probably are not on the right track.
The Gods Are Distant and Mysterious
If treating the gods as NPCs is one end of a spectrum, the other end is where the Dungeon Master treats them pretty much as we treat them in the real world. Nobody can prove the existence of a god or gods. People with faith sometimes assert that they know God exists, but what they really mean is that they strongly believe that God exists. None of us finds out whether there is a God until we die, and nobody has died and come back to issue a reliable account of the experience.
If the gods are NPCs, then they will occasionally inflict divine punishment on evildoers. They will set the record straight when mortals screw up. But we all know that in the real world, genocides go unremarked by God or man until long after the fact, and even a lifetime afterwards there will be high-ranking priests and scholars who insist that the whole thing was a sham.
If the gods are NPCs, then black-hearted villains have patron deities from whom to draw inspiration and support. But if the gods are distant and unknowable, the clergy of good deities and evil deities alike are just people, doing good or evil for religious and personal reasons and with no more power than a wizard or sorcerer.
And this brings us to Arthur C. Clarke's famous observation, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Can clerics perform magic on the strength of their faith? In a Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting, yes. They can. But turn Clarke's assertion around. Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology. We do not know why it is that a single hydrogen atom can exist in two places at once. But it can. This seems magical to me, although I am sure science will eventually be able to explain how that works.
By the same token, a campaign world in which the gods are distant and a cleric's magic is inexplicable is perfectly tenable. People in the real world claim to see ghosts. The most probable explanation for ghost sightings is that a lot of people are delusional and allow themselves to be tricked into thinking that they saw a ghost; the idea is pretty attractive if you're the adherent of a religion that assures you that there's an afterlife. But over the years, a lot of money has gone into attempts to prove or disprove the existence of ghosts, usually accompanied by a refrain of, "There's so much in the world we don't understand. Maybe ghosts are real and we just don't have enough science to explain it."
Apply this same line of reasoning to a fantasy setting, and use it to explain where a cleric's power comes from. This approach will raise a couple of issues worth thinking about. First of all, the "one step" rule for clerics' alignment might be due for a facelift. If the gods do not take a personal interest in the affairs of mortals—including their own priests—then it seems reasonable to me that clerics of any deity can be of any alignment . . . provided that they truly believe that their actions are consistent with their god's wishes. This opens the door to abuse, since a player could take advantage of the "rules" by arguing that his chaotic evil priest of a lawful good deity really does believe that he should sacrifice people on the altar. To prevent this kind of problem, the DM will have to formally prepare a list of actions that the clergy of a given deity must NEVER undertake.
A related problem is the question of what to do with innately good and innately evil outsiders. In the 'standard fantasy' paradigm, these creatures are the servants of deities, and act as their direct agents in the world. But if the paradigm shifts so that the gods are distant and mysterious, innately aligned outsiders must change roles. This need not be a glaring change. Instead of treating devils as the innately lawful evil servants of lawful evil deities . . . treat them as innately lawful evil beings who pursue their own ends. This approach offers a number of interesting avenues. Perhaps some devils actually believe in the existence of the gods. Or perhaps they are cosmically in tune with the essences of law and evil, and seek to stamp out chaos and good wherever they find it.
My Tolrea setting has taken this approach. I do not mean to suggest that this makes it the only approach, or even the best approach for every DM or every campaign setting. But as I decided what kinds of questions I'm interested in exploring through the campaigns I will run in this setting, I thought that it would be best if the gods were distant from Tolrea. I wanted an agnostic kind of world, where morality comes in grayscale. More than that, I wanted to have a setting with as few "outer boundaries" as possible. I have chosen to leave the afterlife open-ended and cut loose demons and angels from the gods because I want there to be mysteries for every level and type of character to explore. There will always be a new frontier for my players to explore.
Next time, I'll discuss something a little "crunchier" than my topics to date. Military organizations show up in fantasy of all sorts, from the watchmen of Pratchett's Ankh-Morpork, to Glen Cook's mercenaries in the Black Company, to the eponymous orcs of Stan Nicholls's series about the constituent troops of a barbarian horde, and everywhere in between. Come back and read for the first part of a multi-part series on
- How to distinguish between professional warriors, trained militia, and cannon fodder
- Which weapons and armor are best, and why
- Wartime economics in the campaign setting
- Logistics for the barbarian horde
- Mercenaries of every shape and species
- Spellcasters on the battlefield
