Fantasy Religions

[DerVVulfman]

An old Article I had for a couple years and
decided to post... I didn't write it.

Fantasy Religions
by Xanqui

Tired of the same old religions? Want to try something new? This will guide you through several different steps towards creating a religion that is beyond just a God and worshippers.



Note: If you are offended by anything in this article, please know that this is intended to spark creative ideas, not change anyone's views. None of the ideas in here are intended to contradict your belief. In my articles, sparking creativity is far more important to me than making sure that I don't offend anyone.

The common belief for many storytellers is that, even on strange worlds, religion will basically be the same thing: there is a higher being of some sort out there that has a major influence on society and individuals. Or there could be many higher beings. It doesn't matter either way though, because it's always the same basic principle. However, religion can be more than just that. This is a guide to other forms of religion that you might not have considered yet, but if your story focuses around a war, you may want to include religion, and you may want to try something new.

Let's begin with the basic principles, and we'll build off from there. It's important to have a grasp on where religion comes from before you go off and start creating your own.


How a Religion is Born
First, we'll begin with the setting. In this case, we'll use the one place in which all of us are familiar: Earth. Way back in the day, when dinosaurs just died out, and people were roaming the world, cavemen were forced to kill animals in order to survive. Everything was about survival. Religion wasn't important to them. But people had a higher ability to think than animals, and they came to realize this.

All these cavemen are killing these animals, and they start to find an interest in them. Whenever they kill one, they feel a huge rush, which we now know is adrenaline. But they thought it was something else. Perhaps the spirits of the animals passed through them and became one with them. Or maybe they went someplace else, and passed through their hunter on the way there.

As humans grew more intelligent, religion became more complex. People came to realize the unbelievable things in life, like lightning or fire. Something had to be creating this. It was something powerful, too. From there, you can probably see how we ended up with Greek and Roman mythology, or whatever religion exists. The deaths of animals, lightning, earthquakes, all of those are symbols that represent one religion or another.

It only makes sense why we would believe that the heavens must be beyond the skies. But what if there was no lightning? What would happen if the species in your story only ate plants? If you have a story, I want you to stop reading this for a moment and consider all of the things about the society in your story. What makes them tick? Do men have an advantage over women? Is there a difference between men and women?

By this point in the article, I am assuming that you have thought about the previous paragraph, so I'll move on. If you haven't written a story, or even begun planning one, even better. You can use this as a guide for starting your religion. ...In the story, of course.

What is is that makes us believe that there must be a higher being? It's simple: safety. As long as we feel safe and secure, then we know that the god is on our side. It's protecting us. If we were born safe and lived forever in eternal bliss, what use would we have in a god? We would never know harm. We would never know pain or suffering. There would be no war, and everyone would be eternally happy.


The Utopian Gods
In a utopia, there is no need for religion. Read any story that takes place in the future in an oppressed society. The closest thing to religion in Brave New World by Aldous Huxley is the belief that Henry Ford was the founder of society. But they believed that because he sparked a revolution in the automobile industry and created assembly lines: the basis to the structure of the world. Without assembly lines, there would be chaos in that story. In fact, people are created through assembly lines. But if you take it down to the bare bones, the reason the people believed Ford was god was because they felt safe in their oppressed society.

I believe that Aldous Huxley is a genius, and if you've not read it, READ BRAVE NEW WORLD. It's not a boring story at all, and considering the date it was written, it's creepy how realistic it is. I guarantee you that you will enjoy the book.


Vegan Religion
Now let's look at a vegan society. They don't eat animals, so they never had the exhilaration of killing one. This would be a society in which people have no need for adrenaline. Without that, there would be less war, since people wouldn't be so angry so easily. Man and animals would live in harmony, and the animals may evolve to be as intelligent as humans. But that's going way off topic. (If you haven't played it, I highly recommend playing The Sandbox of God, which can be downloaded here in GW).

Where would religion come into play in a vegan society? Perhaps the discovery that different plants have different effects when consumed would spark something. People may believe that they are magic, and would proceed to believe in the healing powers. Hey, isn't that a bit familiar with us? Yes and no. The people feel safe with animals, but maybe some plants cause people to die when they eat them. Obviously there must be a contrast between these plants, creating a sort of good and evil. Maybe some plants even cause people to go insane and on killing sprees.

Now there is fear. But there are plants that cause people to lose their fear (drugs), and so people believe that the plants represent a God versus Satan sort of thing.


Reincarnation
Now it's time to take this article in a whole new direction, the direction in which the first paragraph of this article stated. What would religion be without a higher being? In the vegan society, there wasn't any sort of higher being. There was only the plants. But let's look at the human brain. It's a fascinating thing. It uses impulses and chemicals to tell our bodies what to do. But what controls the brain? Is it a soul? If it is a soul, where does it go when the body dies? What if it doesn't go to heaven, but just stays where it was, only in another dimension?

Reincarnation is a fascinating theory. There are so many beliefs that surround it that it's hard to tell which one is more plausible. My theory is that, if it does exist, people are given a list of things to do over a period of time, say ten thousand years. When they die, they come back, and continue to complete the list. Everything is does subconsciously though, and you don't know that you're completing this list.

The other theory is that everyone is reborn into a new personality. So in one life, a soul is a housewife, and in the next, it's President of the United States. The idea is to gain an infinite amount of experience and something happens afterwards I guess. I don't fully understand it.

Anyway, there has to be a reason for believing in reincarnation. Let's take the eyes of a newborn baby. I hear many a story in which parents look into the eyes of their child, and without knowing exactly why, just know that that their son is years ahead of them. But how can this be? They're only babies. However, if they've experienced things over the course of dozens of past lives, and the parents have only experienced a few lives, then this might explain it.

Let's compare a homeless man on the street to someone who leads nations into an unforgettable reign. The homeless man is experiencing his first life, so he's got nothing to help him out. He's inexperienced, poor, and his first life just plain sucks. He dies off. The next life, he's now got a better shot, but he ends up being a grocery store clerk most of his life, and then dies. In his third life, he makes it through middle school, but drops out and become the manager of a fast food joint. As he builds up experience with each life, he improves the next time around. Eventually, he has experienced everything, and is going to achieve his absolute destiny, which will change the course of the future forever. That homeless man and the powerful leader are the same person, only in different lives.

Reincarnation can be a fascinating concept for your plot. It can be used as a second chance. Or it can be used to explain why some kid manages to save the world.

But in order for reincarnation to be believed by people is by some sort of hint. Maybe early on in society, some guy experiences deja vu. Or maybe many people experience it. They have dreams of things they never did, or have strange pains that they can't explain. Maybe a child is born without a foot, so people believe that it was cut off in his last life.


The Undeniable God
Most religions are based on faith. Faith relies on the ability to question whether something exists or not. But religions don't necessarily need faith in a story. What if people knew that these gods existed, and they could be seen at any time during the day?

Perhaps a world could exist in which a powerful race leads a less powerful race. This advanced species demands that the people worship them, but if the people pray to them, they can received immediate feedback.

But here's a different direction: what if the gods left undeniable traces of their existence? Maybe they left behind massive structures or statues that people recognize as symbols for the gods. This could lead to some serious twists in a plot if it turned out that the structures had actually been left behind by a former species that had died out because of war or something.

Structures like Stonehenge and the Pyramids mystify the world today, but we brush theories that it could have been left behind by aliens or something away. We've already established our beliefs, so no one really takes these theories seriously and is acknowledged for it. All it does is raise questions, but many fear to give answers because they worry that they may sound ridiculous.


The Planet is Our God
The theory of Gaia comes from the Goddess of Earth, so if your story doesn't take place on Earth, you may want to avoid using the term "Gaism." This is the belief that the world itself has a soul and that it serves as a god. There are many variations of this theory, but the main one is that deep in the core of the world exists a spirit that breathes, giving life to the world on its surface.

But this can range to many other ideas. Trees, clouds, or even mountains could possess these spirits. Just imagine what would happen if people believed strongly that trees had minds of their own, and were what guided religious people, and companies started cutting them down because wood was a useful tool. It would be a story of an epic religious war full of twist potential.

Unfortunately, this sort of religion is scoffed at by most people. A lot of people just HATE it. Look at Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. People don't like this sort of thing because it's been proved false by science. But that doesn't mean that it's been proved false in the world that you've created.


We Choose Our God
What would happen in a totalitarian world when it comes to religion? Obviously, religion would be much different. Leaders would want to immortalize themselves before they died, so they would convince people to believe that they will become their gods when they die. Back in the Roman day, this was something that many leaders desired. Upon their death, if they have enough people pray and give money to the church, then the leader becomes one of many gods.

You could take this a step further though. Perhaps people could elect their leaders, and if they're good enough, then the people would elect them once again to become the next god. There could be some awesome assassinations stories with something like that.


Society and peace would not exist without religion. We are not born with all the tools to make our lives happy. Without religion, there would have been no hope for some people whose lives were ruined in the Dark Ages. Religion is what brought this world back on its feet. As long as people have hope, they have a chance to survive.

Religion can be a very powerful tool in your story, and it's perfectly fine if you want to stick to the old formula of a single god leading all of us. Religion and society go hand in hand. As society develops technology, religion becomes more obsolete. But when we've created so much technology that religion ceases to exist, there will be a massive downfall, and our only hope will be to look to the skies for help. History repeats itself, and this has happened before, only on a smaller scale.

We will never completely understand our universe, and in order to fill in the holes of the unexplained, we believe in a supernatural force. How did the universe come to exist? A scientist will tell you that the big bang created it. How did that happen? He will tell you that the universe was once a tiny ball, but the heat inside of it caused it to expand. Where did that ball come from? Could it be nothingness? But how does something come from nothing, let alone all the tools necessary to create life and allow it to become advanced enough to create technology that would be used to discover how it all works out in the first place?

Do your characters question these things? Their questions may lead you towards what they truly believe in. Even if you don't believe in it, let your characters try. There's more to them than you might think.

[RosyPosy]

Helpful tip: Give some historical reason for not only the religion but the tendencies the people of that religion have. Make them vague but important cause it needs to carry some emotional and deeply relevant ideas about basic principles of life. You want your zealots and you innocents- your critics and and secularists- the true believer and the person who found religion. You dont wanna fall into the trap of making the religions people looking the same or having the same opinions; thats the distinction of a cult. so before you start building icons and cool stories- think about how those stories and symbols would be used by real people to cope with their modern problems aswell as the persons who lived with it when it just started up.

Whatever you do- dont make the mistake of FF10. A good example of this kind of thing- Radiata Stories.(please play that game and if you cant watch lets plays online to get a feel for how to do something like religion right)

[Ahzoh]

You guys, ight be interested in the concept of constructing cultures, which deals with things like this.

You are also forgetting Atheistic religions... not all religions have gods.
Vrkhazhian religion doesn't, but it is shamanistic.

"But when we've created so much technology that religion ceases to exist, there will be a massive downfall"
No, there will not.

[JayRay]

I make it no secret of my personal religious beliefs, so I often struggle with religions or beliefs systems outside my own. However, and I like to reference C.S. Lewis in a lot of my discussions of religion in fantasy.

C.S. Lewis put forth a lot of Christian Allegories in his books relating to "The Chronicles of Narnia" - Aslan being Jesus and so on and so forth. So, even in keeping with that idea, I found that symbolism of one's religion, or lack thereof, can carry over into the RPG game quite well.

Ancestry Worship - You don't necessarily need gods in a game, if you have prophets or aged wise ones who left the world after passing down a particular set of laws or a great comtribution, was the father of a great nation. People can develop orders and well, cults, to carry a sort of Apotheosis of an ancestor. For added fantasy, you can have that ancestor actually still contact his people, or even a malignant usurper who portrays himself AS the ancestor as a means to subjugate a society.

Light World/Dark World - Rather than belief in one specific (or mutiple deities), there could be an understanding that instead, millions of spiritual agents or forces aid in positive aspects, and the same balanced amount chimes in with their battle cry for the negative aspects. A varied version of this could possible be attributed to the ideas of the Force, being neutral, but having agents (Jedi) and (Sith) in conflict, but both using the same supernatural flow between them.

Cybertheosis - Belief, much like in Utopian Gods example, but instead of being placed into the creator of a specific function-achieving machine, but in the sentience of the machine itself. Take for instance the idea that technology continues to grow in power and ability to obtain information as an incremental rate, year by year, as more and more information is able to be stored on smaller and smaller receptacles. Imagine if the same was true with A.I. and that sentient begets ego, and ego then begets megalomania, and then a (fake) belief that this A.I has transcended knowledge, becoming omniscient. Now, while no machine could possibly ever know absolutely everything, it would be interesting to see if these machines command deity-like 'worship' from organics. The Borg from Star Trek, might be considered a crude version of Cybertheosis, as it believed its Collective is all-knowing, and individual organics were FORCED into serving the collective with their cultural distinctiveness being change to serve them. They also believed that they were omnipotent, from the most used term listed for the Borg 'Resistance is Futile'

Royalty Worship - Now, while our own history loves to worship their kings like gods (The God-King Xerxes, Pharoahs, China's Emporers) I love the stories of Dark Sun, where the Sorcerer Kings would use a combination of magic and psionics to rule with absolute power over a slave mass population in a world where quite literally, the Sorcer Kings held life and death in their hands. In a world where there is very little to no water, and such powers exalted these men to the status of gods, it became no doubt that the closest worshippers of these royals actually saw some of their holy prayers take tangible form, due to the psionic nature of the kings.

Chess Team - This is a simple concept in religion... two gods, or a god and an anti-god. Each one can only direct his agents on the world. Now, these agents, can often have SOME of the powers of their benefactor, but not all, just like a chess player can move any piece on the board to a square if he follows the rules of the board, but each piece has a different path and different power (Bishop moves diagonally only)(Rook, Knights, Queen, Kings and Pawns respectively)Now the pawns might be the most mortal or approachable, even possible able to be dispatched in a storyline, but the main agents, the gods keep them around for as long as possible. Chess never favors the pawns, just as a spiritual battle never favors the lackey, but in a power vaccuum, each lackey has a chance for greatness in ambition, just as every pawn can become a potential queen.

I'm sure there's plenty of other one-off religious ideas out there, so I had to add this...

[Ahzoh]

How about Shamanism?
"A practice that involves a practitioner reaching altered states of consciousness in order to encounter and interact with the spirit world and channel these transcendental energies into this world.
A shaman is a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of benevolent and malevolent spirits, who typically enters into a trance state during a ritual, and practices divination and healing."

[JayRay]

Oh and btw, grr!

People don't like this sort of thing because it's been proved false by science.

How many other things had science "proven" that had to be back-pedaled when it was realized that those who were scoffed were right all the time? *rolls eyes*

[Ahzoh]

Oh and btw, grr!

People don't like this sort of thing because it's been proved false by science.

How many other things had science "proven" that had to be back-pedaled when it was realized that those who were scoffed were right all the time? *rolls eyes*

I can't think of single instance...

[RosyPosy]

Never confuse the two as rivals- if religion restricts Science its because its people have lost their control of it and have become a cult. science doesnt smash religious stories or narratives on purpose- infact if you listen to theoretical-Physicists youd swear it was a religion ,very romantic and optimistic. like wise, religious themes like the afterlife tend to be victims because they were made in a time where all those questions were on the table and hell they still are. Just cause the doubt of souls is way more justifiable than a belief in one doesnt mean there is no afterlife- it just means one idea for how itd work is no longer viable.

Im pretty anti-religious for moral reasons but you never have a community that big without alot of good people and ideas being in it. And many of those people and ideas offered their lives to science. As Hank green likes to say- history refuses simplicity.
thats why my tip was about diversity and complexity. You want the player to honestly think about the culture and beliefs of your people. Imagine if you hoped in Dragon age- AND ALL MAGES WERE TVIENTER. Would kinda suck the life outa that culture yeah? all templars bigoted anti-mages. Speaking of dragon age- Thats a perfect example of how to do religion in games- as opposed to Mass effects Hanar XD a laughable attempt.

In the real world the function of religion can be disastrous because it has the ability to make good people think bad things. If it was just; a bunch of evil people walkin around doing evil stuff, wed reject them entirely.after all if you asked christians why they are- I heavily doubt their answer would be; "Cause I hate homosexuals."
I have a friend who uses christianity to fight his suicidal thoughts. While logically thats prolly antithetical- His reason is entirely comfortable for him. the best part of that though is he still has agency- it was his choice- so all those negative sides of religion, he can edit because hes Secularist. That means his moral ideas are his and he has to answer for them if they do him wrong.

the religion can be a massive influence and they can be critical of others practices- but like I said earlier- if you made a culture where the religion IS their personality, youve just created a cultist. While totally on the table for characters The distinction is helpful when writing.

Secularists have two notable things that seperate themselves from cultists.

• Choice and Agency

They have to sound like they have a reason to believe.
They also shouldnt seem like the religion dictates their actions.

• Self-fulfillment and strong sense of purpose.

Basically why does it appeal to them and what do they see themselves doing.
Alot of the time religiously charged goals dont have religious themes at all.
On a list of commons - To be a good person{A good father/mother/roll model ect}
-To do well in ones career- to find happiness and peace.
Although if your character is an official in the religion giving them goals based on it is perfectly fine too.

Remember Final fantasy 10? remember how none-ofthe npcs seemed to have these traits? thats cause yevon is a cult.
The sad thing is I dont think it was meant to be. Hopefully I can help you avoid that pitfall.

[Bounty Hunter Lani]

If you follow your religion to the letter, you're a cult?

Sounds super offensive...

In Final Fantasy X, most people did follow Yevon as closely as possible, by the way. If it was "Against the teachings", they usually didn't do it.
Why else would people cheer for a creepy guy like Seymour?

Anyway, just wanted to clear up the fact that if people are following their religion in the game, that doesn't make them a cultist. At the most, they'd be a "Zealot", and there is a HUGE difference.

Oh, and you can have your people believe in things that they normally wouldn't believe in this world, since ya know... magic likely exists in your games? Just a thought

(And if you still don't get that last part, think of a Shaman. They do weird things, and we'd normally laugh, but what if it started to rain after they did their weird dance and chants? Or what if someone prayed to the planet, and the planet answers? It's YOUR game, do what ya want!)

[RosyPosy]

If you follow your religion to the letter, you're a cult?

Sounds super offensive...

I wouldnt really care if I offended somone who Is so untethered from reality.
Im anti-religious for a reason, History shows how well a total belief in your religion can lead to bad things.
everything from science suppression and oppression of minorities. Im transgender and bi; Christianity has been a roadblock one of some serious worry for my kind. So yeah I dont consider those people or types of people reasonable. In the US Christianity is a cult in some states. the fact that I can make a destinction really just shows my patience and loyalty to histories complex nature.

something that irks me greatly though is peoples insistance that religion should be protected like race or sexuality. its not a trait- its an idea and one that can be varied. you might as well protect political constructs too at that point. I like the ability to criticize these things. I shouldnt be forced to publicly respect someones ideas, speacially if theyre lamentable Like that homophobic belief christians sometimes hold.. but thats just a tangent.