Tag: polytheism

(O)D&D’s Cleric makes sense for (O)D&D, but it makes increasingly less sense outside of the euromedieval milieu. What if you’ve got a much more immanent and plural divine in your game world than in the euromedieval model and what if there really isn’t much of a good/evil, law/chaos thing in your campaign?

Wandering Shinto-Doctor Class

…

Special Abilities:

• Can “cast” Cleric spells as per Cleric.
• At level two, choose or seek out a supernatural ally (think: patron).

…

Authority (replaces Turning):

• Roll d20 + number of spells available yet to cast today – 4
• Call on the authority of your allies and attempt to argue/plead/reason with one or more outsider/abdead/demon/oni/yokai as if you and it were on the same level. Discourse occurs in the pre-language spoken by all such creatures and is not properly telepathic or audible. Discourse is with the leader or leaders of the group (combine HD if more than one). If the roll results in a number equal to or greater than the total HD of the opposing side, they will “settle down,” depart, or simply sit down, frustrated. Bonus points for making an argument the GM considers would be persuasive to the opposing side. Takes a d3+1 rounds to complete conversation. No limit on uses. Lesser beings will likely follow the lead of their more powerful cohort, but not always. Can always be used to communicate with these kinds of creatures, if not sway them….

— Shinto-Doctor-Mushi-Shi Clerics for OD&D and B/X – games with others

Religion isn’t something that gives comfort, and worshipping a deity isn’t done because you’ve picked a cosmic side or because you agree with what that god stands for. You follow a religion because the god is real and you worship it because if you don’t, you won’t gain its favor and the world out there is a very cruel place.

If there is a pantheon set up like the Greek or Norse gods, then you don’t pick one of the bunch to worship. You follow them all, even the ones with alignments directly opposed to yours, because you still encounter their domains in your life and The God Of Random And Slow Deadly Death is probably the god you need to placate the most even if you like it least.

But on a pulpier level, the gods aren’t the creators and wardens of slices of creation. The gods are just beings of great power who are drunk on that power and people worship them because they have power, and religion and worship is a zero-sum game to these entities….

— Ye Gods – LotFP

Author’s emphasis.

People who have grown up in the Judeo-Christian and Moslem spiritual traditions have usually been taught to believe that the concept of one god is more advanced than the idea of many. But there are advantages to the many-faceted experience of the Divine Being. One is that by celebrating the rich diversity of supernatural forces within God, the believer is allowed to realize that the struggle between good and evil, creation and destruction, and life and death is not something that takes place outside the Divine Being, between a finite God and an external force like Satan. Not only is this way of looking at the Divine Being more honest, it also helps remind us of Its immensity. Unable to simplify the struggle between life and death to a “Good Guy/Bad Guy” scenario, we are forced to face the truth that the “God beyond God” is far more mysterious than our human comforts and discomforts.

In addition, polytheistic spirituality works against our normal human tendency to reduce God to a cardboard caricature of ourselves, our parents, or our tribes and nations. By maintaining the diversity within The Holy Thing and, at the same time, by recognizing Its ultimate unity, the believer can experience a Being whose very complexity blocks his or her attempts to trivialize, idolatrize, or domesticate It. The soul simply cannot grasp such complexity or shrink It to monoscopic proportions. Instead, it is forced to experience the Divine Being from a dazzling, multiscopic perspective. It is also forced to confront the absolute limits of all human ways of thinking. This can have the same effect on the soul that Buddhist koans do. Buddhist koans force the mind to imagine the unimaginable—“the sound of one hand clapping”—then to snap and release the soul into an ecstatic experience of oneness with its Source and final Destiny. That was the goal of the ancient Maya shamans and all those who, meditating on the complex unity of The-Holy-First-Father-Decapitated-Dead-Creating-Thing, tried to achieve oneness with the Mystery from which they had come and to which they hoped to return.

— The Shaman’s Secret, pp. 93-94

Emphasis mine.