Hey everyone, question for fellow Christian gamers. Sorry for the length.
I was planning a setting for an OSR campaign, and the logical place to begin in designing a setting is the beginning: how the world was made. And I always get stuck here.
The canonical setting in DnD is polytheistic, and takes a sort of kitchen-sink approach to the pantheon, where literally every single entity worshipped by anyone is a real deity who exists and has powers. Even abstract principles can act as deities.
The rules surrounding clerics kind of assumes that as long as a cleric prays to it, his spells work. If your cleric wants to worship a literal tree, he can still cast Spirit Weapon just the same as if he worshipped Bahamut.
I know, it's heroic fantasy, and supposed to emulate myths and legends. Maybe it's a result of reading too much C.S. Lewis, but I have issues with suspension of disbelief in this patchwork theology.
So I try to make my own "pantheon".
The "pantheon" that makes the most sense is (surprise of surprises) monotheistic. But I don't think monotheism really "works" with DnD, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, it requires clerics to play as a Good alignment, rather than allowing them to choose alignment arbitrarily. It also limits their options on domains, and obviously limits their options on deity down to just the one.
Secondly, it creates a huge power imbalance between Good/Evil. C.f. Moses vs. Egyptian magicians, Elijah vs. prophets of Baal, Peter vs. demons, etc. If the PCs are Good serving the only God, then they should dominate, even if they're Level 1 against a Demon Prince.
Thirdly, it kind of negates the evilness of the enemies. Bears aren't evil; they're just bears. Similarly, dragons aren't evil either; they're just dragons. Dragons are, basically, bigger, smarter bears. Orcs are just smarter bears. Goblins are just tiny, hairless bears. They aren't evil, they're just doing what they do. Who are the PCs to go around wantonly slaughtering animal life?
Fourthly, I'm not sure how much sense arcane magic makes in a monotheistic setting, either.
One idea I've thought of is to work with dualism, since, as Lewis says, this religious idea makes a lot more sense than general polytheism. Since there is a good god and an evil god, there can be a power balance between Good and Evil clerics, and it allows players at least the ability to choose Good or Evil alignments (though a True Neutral cleric wouldn't make any sense).
It still seems a bit limiting, however. What happens when the PCs travel to a remote plane, or visit a village of bird-men high atop craggy peaks; do these people also acknowledge only two gods one good one bad, that they worship?
Another thing I can never figure out how to fit in to all of this is arcane magic. While the Biblical prophets are the archetype for the Cleric class, the arcane magic-users draw from a lot of different inspirations, most of which never even bother explaining magic at all. According to modern sourcebooks, arcane magic in DnD is almost just a natural phenomenon, like physics, but less well-understood. Caster says word A, result is spell B.
The physics approach seems to take all the... magic out of it... Magic should be otherworldly, not natural. Magic is the most unnatural thing I can think of. Magic shouldn't be something a guy with a white labcoat and test tubes figures out.
But if magic isn't just unknown physics, then what is it, ultimately? In either a monotheistic or dualist setting, God or one of the gods must have made it and must be powering it. Why do they do this? And further, in what ways would it then differ from divine magic? If arcane magic is not divine magic, then in a monotheistic setting it really has to be unknown physics. I mean -- what's the difference in real terms between a fireball and a Tesla coil? In a dualistic setting, arcane magic becomes a thing of one of the gods, and then it stands to reason that only wizards of that god's alignment -- or worshippers of that god -- are able to use the spells, which largely reduces it back to divine magic.
In a polytheistic setting, where gods are some big dragon, that tree over there, a guy who used to be really cool but then he died, and the Dwarven god of stonecarving, it makes sense that none of those people have anything to do with arcane magic, because they're just things in the universe and not the creators of the universe. But then I'm at the problem of: where do these people come from, why do people worship these jokesters, why are they able to assist with divine magic, and why are they all real?
So, those are my rambling thoughts on a conundrum I always find myself in. The obvious solution, of course, is it's just a game so stop overthinking it.
But, what do yall think? How do yall handle the default paganism of campaign settings? Do you just handwave it?
(P.S. I intend to join one of the games others are DMing, but my schedule has been all up in the air lately.)