by Mark Rosenfelder
The Language Construction Kit and its offshoots explained how to create languages, mostly by explaining how natural languages work. This book takes the same approach to creating religions, looking at the wide variety of real-world religions. It’s not too long or technical, but it has a lot of things that will likely be new to you.
Why create a religion? Well, there’s no faster way to create an engaging and plausible culture. Religion gives you:
- A set of basic values for your people, and the things that distinguish them from other nations
- Myths and stories everyone knows
- Motivations for quests and other stories beyond personal enrichment or grievances
- A wide range of terms and metaphors
- A place to start with greetings, the calendar, premodern medicine, law, architecture
- Interesting prohibitions— what you can’t do affects stories and civilizations deeply
- Reasons for revolt, if your people need them
- A chance to indulge your poetic or spiritual side, if you have one
Without research, we’re apt to create something like the major religion of our own country, or cults we’ve read about in the news. I’ve tried to offer a worldwide perspective, including shamanism, Native American religions, and Yorùbá religion. At the same time, I’ve gone topic by topic, in order to focus on the characteristics of religions and what options you have, rather than introducing the Top Ten Religions one by one.
What’s in it?
- A set of choices you can use to randomly create an interesting religion
- Chapters on mythology, gods, cosmology, the afterlife, ritual, wisdom, and spirituality
- Reviewing the staff (from shamans to priests to monks) and real estate
- How religions deal with the challenge of modern times
- What makes religions attractive; also how they go bad
- A chapter particularly for conworlders and gamemasters on how to use religion to make your stories go
- Sketches of two Almean religions, an an example of how to get started
Myths about religion
As a teaser, here’s a list (from the introduction) of things people may believe are true of all religions, but aren’t. The first, but not the only, surprising thing about religion is that almost any component is optional.It has godsIt’s either monotheistic or polytheistic
The gods are omnipotent
The gods are wholly good
The clerics are a powerful, unified hierarchy
It has a list of required beliefs
It has rituals
It has priests
It has scriptures
Its primary purpose is to explain cosmology
Its primary purpose is to underline human power structures
It requires a knowing acceptance of falsehoods
It’s inherently oppressive
It requires temples (or the equivalent)
Everyone believes it zealously and uncritically
It’s intolerant of other belief systems
It’s slowly fading away
It provides a comforting afterlife
It’s required to make people behave morally
It improves people morally
A religion imposes the same morality and goals on everyone
You can’t belong to more than one religion
Only members of the pantheon are worshiped
It has the same beliefs and practices as a thousand years ago
Its zealots have the same beliefs and practices as a thousand years ago
It has the same beliefs and practices as a hundred years ago
It will stick with the same gods, at least
It’s focused on sin and guilt
FAQ!
- When is it available?
- The paperback is available now! The e-book should be ready shortly.
- How much does it cost?
- The price is $16.75 print, $7.50 Kindle.
- Is my favorite religion in it?
- Very likely. But it's all the others that will teach you something new. Conworlds get way more interesting when they have more than one religion.
- But I don’t like religions!
- I’d argue you have a belief system anyway— and even if not, if you’re creating a world with people in it, belief systems will appear. You can always create a religion more to your own liking. Or if you think religions often go bad... don’t your stories need villains?
- I don't want a copy of an existing religion.
- All the more reason to know what the range of earthly religions is like. Your conlangs improve when you know all the linguistic options, even if you want something very alien. Besides, I talk about futuristic, alien, and animal religions too.
- Is this going to be dangerous to my faith or lack of it?
- That’s not my intention, in either direction. I’d just like to see better religions in created worlds, rather than Reheated Catholicism or Greek Gods Renamed. It may be unusual at first to look at religions from an anthropological, non-judgmental perspective, but I think religions are too fascinating to ignore.
- Isn’t this all covered in the DM’s Guide?
- If you play D&D, I hope you’ll throw out some of its bizarre ideas about religion in favor of my suggestions. And if you play alternative RPGs, religions are a great way to motivate roleplay, and player/DM co-creation.
- Isn’t this all covered in the Planet Construction Kit?
- Ah, a discerning reader. There’s a lot more to say about religion than I could fit in a single chapter. Plus I’ve learned more and I’m eager to tell you about it.
