I have a problem with conventional fantasy games which take only a superficial effort to resemble the society they are meant to resemble. Gary Gygax at least began with war games which grew out of historian's interest in imaginatively speculating on how things might have been different had battles in history ended differently. It gets worse though when the people who play rpgs stop looking at history and just take whatever they see in a game book as good as history, and then others follow taking what they wrote till there is the current Pathfinder anything and kitchen sink approach to fantasy gaming. You find Vikings sailing along side 17th century pirate ships as if there is no influence between them.
The particular gripe I have (being the topic of this post) is that Gary was interested in many things and offered a whole bunch of ideas, and many who had less interest in history than Gygax took it up, including issues of fantasy religion. SO originally D&D introduced clerics as a character modeled on western medieval fighting clergy and martial orders like the Templars and Hospitalars. They were clearly modeled on the Roman Catholic Church with the spells and prohibitions that one would expect of such cinematic versions of those fighting priests. But with the advent of Deities and Demigods, bunches of pagan pantheons come into play, only the gods of those religions are merely treated the same as saints in the Catholic scheme, while the worldview does not cross over. Furthermore, there is no game mechanic for encouraging anything theologic for the cleric's motives, so religion is pretty squishy in D&D and most fantasy games of that kind.
I contend that the problem, is that Christianity is a huge anomaly in it's view of God, sin, origins, teleology, and ethics compared to anything that came before. Buddhism is the only thing that comes close, and it is problematic for other reasons. If you are going to make a fantasy religion for a game, it should have something that it answers about spiritual life, not merely what temporal powers it can give you to smite others. It should answer one or more of the following questions:
Where did we come from?
Why are we here?
What has gone wrong and why?
What do we do to live with that?
What happens to us after we die?
Not all real world religions handle all of these, but they should only believably exist when they answer some. They should also, in general, provide some useful benefit to society in general, including moral, ethical, and social grounding and unity. Anything that does not serve long term social value is unlikely to survive. Cthulhu mythos cults may crop up here and there, but such nihilistic stuff does not build, but destroys.
This all in mind, here is an idea that comes to me for a pagan religion that is both very alien in flavor from the Roman Catholic model, but does both offer a social benefit, as well as answering some of the spiritual questions. There is even a schismatic, heretical sub-cult.
Here is a sample of a realistic pagan religion, rooted in actual real world sects. They are very different in worldview from the modern west, but they are heavily modeled on real religion nonetheless.
Beliefs and Practices
A soul in fear, anger, hatred, greed, and obsession ("The Five Follies" at death will not find rest and will become a devil spirit.
To insure peace at death, one must learn to become free of The Five Follies.
This is done through a process of increasing asceticism, and confrontation with and embrace of taboo practices.
- They begin by living in cemataries, with initiates assuming the duties of grave diggers, and pall bearers, and those who accept and handle offerings for the dead
- Novices assist with mortuary duties - cleaning the corpses, preparing food offerings for the sect, excarnation (defleshing) of cadavers, and preparing ritual meals for the priests
- Priests perform ceremonies of pacification, inscribe the prayers on cadavers before defleshing, inscribe and bind the bones for burial, and burn what parts remain in order to collect the ash which they bless for ritual use
- High Priests spend most of their time in meditation, but do perform the rituals of pacification for the whole of the cemataries, and occasionally venture out to perform the binding of unquiet ghosts which they keep in spirit jars which they prepare and keep in the center of the communities
Initiates to the order are distinguished by their brown robes and shawls, their shaved heads, and the ceremonial shovels which they keep. This is the last time they will ever cut their hair.
Novices take gray robes, and begin to learn the inscriptions which they practice scribing with ink made of grave ash, lime, and resin onto their fellow novice's skin.
Priests receive their white robe - the last article of clothing they will ever wear. It will never be repaired or replaced. They begin to confront taboos more aggressively. They begin to practice ritual cannibalism, sleep a night with corpses before final processing, and begin to live more and more removed from daily affairs. They craft the skull bowls from which the order eats, drinks, and receives alms. They may be called out to do healings when other medicine fails, acting as "sin eaters" who take the wounds ritually upon themselves.
High priests have little contact outside the sect, and largely live in meditation, naked, covered in grave ash. They seek to destroy any fear and break every taboo to free their souls for the passage into death. The final barrier is denial of even food and water, sustaining themselves only on the flesh and blood of their own bodies in a ritual fashion. They prepare a final meal of their own flesh for those Priests that they choose to replace them. Their bodies are not defleshed or cremated, but are buried in ash pits to mummify. The new High Priests will eventually exhume the mummies, and place them in the Halls of Memory - catacombs below cemataries where the living priests may from time to time consult the dead through the mummies.
Schismatic Sect
A heretical branch practices more proactive rituals. They may actively go out at ritual high holy days to find those they have been observing as exemplary of individuals bound to the Five Follies, and ritualistically murder them. They perform ritual cannibalism, and then bind the ghosts into spirit jars in order to proactively prevent them from doing mischief in the future. They may also actively seek out haunted communities to perform exorcisms (spirit binding) for money, and possibly use captive spirits from previous victims to create haunted places. They also offer curses for money, and proactively seek to practice unspeakable rites, breaking taboos to speed their own ways to release from the Five Follies.
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Some other seeds of ideas:
A goddess of fertility, motherhood, and a tutelary household deity (surely a primary goddess for that society) calls all new brides to receive blessings by serving for a day as temple prostitutes (inspiration: Ishtar/Astarte)
A grain and harvest god of fertility and the fields, who also serves as a tutelary god protecting territory in a defensive war capacity calls for a spring sacrifice to consecrate the fields before planting by raising a chosen young man on a stake over the field who will serve as the vessel for the god to protect the field from ravage by beast or man; a bride is offered after harvest in thanks to the god for abundance (inspiration: several pagan religions, though not like any particular one)
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Now these are not particularly savory notions to those who enjoy the ripples of Roman Catholic virtues, but they are more realistic in that they offer a perceived service to the continuation of the society, and imply some ideas about the relationships between god and man, god and land. Perhaps I will write more on this.
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