Question about religion

[tanis]

Good to hear it!

[sid6.7]

glad your back safe and sound! i look forward to the pictures i bet that was fun? or was it a rush? look forward to the new religions/Gods too...

[David Roomes]

It was rushed. Would like to have had more than 4 days of sightseeing. But it was good trip and everything went well.

[Delbareth]

Hi, guys. Man, have I been gone too long.

Hi Tanis!
We miss you!

[David Roomes]

Just a quick update. Work on religion continues. I knew this was going to be a big, slow, plodding project, which is one reason I avoided it for so long. But, work continues on religion. As promised, it's still at the top of the list. I'm going to finish the religion overhaul before I touch anything else on the site. So, that's all. Just didn't want you to think I had forgotten or abandoned it.

[sid6.7]

i know how it goes it takes me forever to update my site i gotta be in the right mood...

[tanis]

Sorry to hear about your friend, Dave, but glad that work has resumed, at least in Khoras years. XD;

And yeah, Delbareth, I tried to check on things here from time to time, but it was dark for a long time, and finally I just got busy with life, I'm afraid.

[David Roomes]

Well, I'm glad you stop in every now and then. Khoras may occasionally go "dark" every now and then, but I will always come back to it and add some more. Plus, Khoras is going to be online for awhile yet (another century or two).

[tanis]

So, I've been going back through the religion section (among others), and I've noticed/thought of some things I wanted to mention (in preparation for the future when Dave has the time available to work on Khoras again).

First of all, it occurred to me that, if one were to be really accurate about how religions function (though, this is, of course, a fantasy setting, and Dave's brainchild; so at the end of the day, he has final jurisdiction, to be sure), then more than likely each CULTURE, rather than each species/race would have its own religious structures. Bathyns would like as not never have heard of many Thullian/Rukemian gods, unless those gods had come there themselves, or missionaries had arrived from the east (excepting, of course, situations such as the pre-existence of , either of which would serve to add flavor to the setting.

For example, Imarus should probably, if there were to be a single human pantheon, be the chief god. But realistically, while Imarus's faith might be spread across all of Ithria, as his is a very old religion, even his worship might very well be a primarily Eastern phenomenon, and Barrinor, or Erylon, would likely not be spread equally across the continent, even in human populations.

I make this point for several reasons. One is this. As I said earlier, I absolutely adore the idea of the Cult of Ynthar. It is one of, if not my single most, favorite parts of this entire website. I am, as it happens, actually a philosopher by trade now, among a few other things, and the concepts behind the Yntharian faith have, in real life, actually affected my beliefs about the world (for those of you who would appreciate such things, I am tripartite, trinitarian, or trialist, in my ideas/beliefs about substance and/or property). There are other faiths within Khoras that I like quite a lot as well.

But the key thing is this. I love this site, and what Dave has managed is a beautifully believable world, which manages to combine fantasy setting clich?s with realistic and/or scientific justifications for things. In short, it merges the needs of a world where magic is real and gods and liches and other powerful beings act purposefully to achieve their goals, with the needs of a world in which 21st Century Earth-people immersed in a scientistic paradigm can easily and comfortably believe. It makes fantasy something believable for persons disenchanted from the kinds of naive expectations one would expect of a traditional, 20th Century RPG fantasy world.

But to do so, Khoras requires highly realistic, believable, and well-developed settings. Such things require as bold and expansive structures as Dave can devote the time to develop. In my short review of the religion section, I've come across some pages, such as the pages for Ynthar and Erylon, that are clearly from the period in site history from which I began to be involved with the site. I have also come across the page for Barrinor, for example, which appears to have been somewhat altered from what I remember.

I do not, I should make clear, have a problem with the restructuring of the site, necessarily. This restructuring is, I believe, necessary to the further expansion of the World of Khoras. And, in fact, any active work on the site is, to me, always a great joy, as this website has been both a source of constant intellectual stimulation, as well as a source of much enjoyment. However, I am a little worried that Khoras will lose some of its unique flavor if its deities, which are strange and unique as often as not, are too heavily neutered.

Don't feel like you have to shoehorn things together for simplicities sake.

In addition to this, I thought I might offer, if you were interested, Dave, my services in keeping the site well-ordered. I'm not certain exactly how you have the site put together, or what the site requires, but I'm not particularly busy in my life right now, and, if you were interested, I'd be more than happy to help you out by going through pages, fixing minor spelling and grammar errors, policing information for consistency and accuracy, and such.

Obviously, that would be up to you, but I thought you might appreciate not having to handle the site totally alone.

Anyways, as I said before I wish you and your friend luck, and am interested to see how things will continue to grow and develop in the World of Khoras.

[David Roomes]

Tanis, As always, it's a pleasure to have you on the forum.

I agree with you completely that religions should be broken up primarily by culture. Any culture which is somewhat isolated by geography will develop its own culture and religion. Those cultures which are in frequent contact (proximity, trade, etc) will invariably cross-pollinate each other with ideas. So, their languages, customs and religions will tend to influence each other, and given enough time, blend together.

There are some cases where the race and the culture are one in the same. The dwarves, for example, went underground and very effectively isolated themselves from other cultures. That's why they have such a distinct culture and why they would likely have a unique religion unrelated to anything on the surface. The baenites are another example of an isolated culture and their religion would be completely unique and unrelated.

At the other end of the spectrum, you've got several human and Grumman nations in eastern Ithria that interact frequently and have for many centuries. They would likely share a number of gods. Eastern Ithria is, in fact, the most active region with a number of cultures trading and lots of  travel. So that's one area where there will be a number of very old religions that are worshiped widely in numerous kingdoms. Western Ithria is a little more wild and broken up into separate cultures. This will be reflected in the new religion section.

So, yes, I'm agreeing with you. One of the big factors in religion is the culture that gave birth to that religion and how that culture relates to the world around it. The new religion section will have a mix of old, broad religions that are widely worshiped in some areas and younger, more focused religions that are the product of a specific region or culture.

One thing that you mentioned is that you're afraid if I monkey around with the gods too much, the gods will be neutered and lose much of their flavor. I definitely don't want that to happen. I do want fewer gods, but I want each of the remaining gods to have a great deal of character, flavor and detail. That's definitely one of my goals. I want each religion to be well thought out, very detailed, fascinating and believable. After reading the description of a religion, I want players to come away from it saying "I want to run a cleric of THAT religion!".

So far, this has proven to be a challenging writing project. However, I am enjoying it so far and I have come up with some really neat stuff that I'm proud of.

I am doing some research - real world religions, religions in gaming, etc. For starters, I perused all of the articles from DRAGON magazine that dealt with gods and religion. I found some interesting ideas in the old stuff (from the 70s and 80s). I then read some PDFs of D&D books.

I read a couple of different editions of the Deities and Demigods - including a recent version that was aimed at Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5 and the d20 gaming system. I didn't like that one at all. It's not that it was poorly written. Rather, they were focusing their efforts in the wrong place. Three things specifically bothered me about it:

1. For each god/religion, the writers spent most of their time giving the combat stats of the gods and specific abilities. That would be valuable information if your party was going to FIGHT the god. But how often is that going to happen? Frankly, if the adventuring party has enough power to take on a god, then the campaign is seriously unbalanced. Yes, it's true that maybe, just maybe, a party could reach such epic levels of awesomeness that they could, indeed, challenge a god. However, such a storyline should be incredibly RARE. So rare, in fact, that a DM should/could create the stats for the god as part of the game/story. He or she should not need the combat stats for every single deity. Anyway, that's just a pet peeve of mine. Combat stats for gods are almost completely unnecessary. And yet the writers of that particular book spent about 75% of each god's description on the combat stats. I'd also like to point out that the stats were, in my opinion, underpowered. These are freakin' gods! They should be ridiculously powerful.

2. Many of the gods were too similar. They had the same powers and the same limitations, over and over again, just tweaked slightly for their particular sphere of influence. It was like these deities came off an assembly line, with slightly different paint jobs. They lacked character. They lacked individuality.

3. The writers spent very little time on the actual religion. Again, they spent a lot of time on the combat stats, armor class, weapon damage and special abilities of the deity. But then, when it came to describing the people that worshiped the deity, the church, its rituals, its history, its reasons for being, how that religion interacts with the world around it... they gave only a sentence or two. There was virtually no detail at all given to the actual church and faith.

I want the new religion section of Khoras to be the antithesis of that Deities and Demigods book. I'm not going to weary the reader by tabulating mundane combat stats for the gods. I would rather craft each god carefully, weaving great tales of their exploits and lavishing each in rich detail. And, for each god, I want to spend at least an equal amount of time describing the church and faith. I want them to be unique. I want them to have flavor.

I haven't read much from other gaming systems. It's possible that there are some RPGs out there that have wonderful, rich and incredibly well written religions and gods. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know. I would love to read and be inspired. All I can say is that I read some of the recent material from Wizards of the Coast and I was... disappointed.


And yes, Tanis, I would love help with the site. I am always trying to fix spelling, grammar, poor writing, missing details, flaws in logic and so much more. What did you have in mind? Perhaps you should email me and we can discuss it offline. (Unless, of course, you had thoughts you wanted to share with everyone - which is fine. In that case, keep it in the forum). And if anyone else wants to help, let me know. If you see something broken, flawed or just misspelled on the site, please let me know. Point it out and I'll fix it. If you'd like to take a more active role in policing the site, speak up.

I started this site simply as my own gaming world, but I have no problem sharing it. I am always delighted whenever someone contributes something (which happens every now and then, but not very often). Perhaps one day, Khoras could turn into a community endeavor where lots of different people have direct access and contribute writing/art/creativity to sections of the world. To be honest, I'd be ok with that. I'm not sure how the logistics of such a thing would manifest, but having multiple contributors would be fun and would certainly accelerate the pace of work on the world.

Ok, I've rambled on long enough.   If you've actually stuck with me and read this whole entry, you have my gratitude.

Work on the religion section will eventually resume and continue. That I promise. And I do hope that everyone likes it when it's done.

[tanis]

Lol. Glad to hear that you are, as much as time and life allow, doing a fair amount of research.

Isn't Khoras the antithesis of almost everything Wizards does with D&D? It certainly seems like it. XD

I certainly can't imagine the need for combat statistics for gods. I can imagine a concerted effort of archmages and weaponmasters taking down Draxorith, but the numbers involved probably wouldn't exist on one continent. Maybe if the pre-Sundering Alliance had a go of it, but otherwise, the Avisarr is probably the better route.

And I'm very glad to hear things are moving again in Khoras. Forgive me if I came off a bit excited, one of my friends is doing new and exciting things in the, mostly psychological, study of religion (primarily non-belief oriented), so I've had plenty of time to discuss and debate the topic over the past few months.

[Laurent MEKKA]

I was looking at Khoras almost every day since you announced what will happen in July about religion
Good job, I like the way it's organized !
I have a question, I don't see Oberon in the dark gods, did he disappear ? If so, who do I have to use instead of him ? There's many Oberon temples, including one in the trackless mire I may use in my campaign, but my PC still dont know about it, so I can replace with the right god :p

[David Roomes]

Oberon is still here, but I changed his name. The new name is Barulda. (Pronounced "ba-ROOL-da"). Only his name has changed. In all other respects, he is Oberon. God of Undead, Necromancy, Death Magic and all other sorts of wonderfulness.

I had to change his name for several reasons. But most importantly, Oberon was the "King of the Faeries" in medieval and renaissance literature. I don't like that. I knew Oberon was a historical name, but I decided that I can't have my GOD OF THE UNDEAD sharing a name with the King of the Faeries. That just can not be tolerated. Hence, he gets a new name.

I think you'll like Barulda. He's basically the exact same as the old Oberon, but this time he's dialed up to 11.

The full page on Barulda will be unveiled in a couple of weeks. So far, I've been unleashing one god per day. Four have been released so far. More are coming...

[Laurent MEKKA]

Thanks, I was not sure if Barulda was a god from the previous gods.
So, it's great and I like the way they are categorized... Can't wait to see who are the ancients or the hallowed !
Is there a little place for cthulhuesque godlike creatures ?

[David Roomes]

Yes, I like the Lovecraftian mythos and I think a little bit of that style might creep in somewhere. Not sure yet, but I'll add something in later.