The Inherant Vapidness of Mythology in D&D

One of my deep-seated dissatisfactions with most D&D campaign worlds is the way the gods are presented. For some reason, each world is content to give you a couple of pages of deities with a brief description of their alignments and spheres of influence. Second edition AD&D tried to spruce this up a bit by giving clerics distinctive spell lists based on their chosen power, a practice that semi-carried over into 3e.

I can sum up the source of my dissatisfaction in two broad strokes. The first is the ludicrous idea that all gods have clerics. Why on earth would Hokalas, the Sorcerer Supreme, have a priesthood of armored, mace-wielding clerics who have the same spells and ability to turn undead as the clerics of Deb'fo, the Knight of the Gods? Do you know what you call a priest of the god of magic? A magic-user.

While B/X D&D contains rules for chaotic (i.e., evil) clerics--outright called anti-clerics in some editions of the game--the base cleric is a militant champion of Law whose spells and abilities are deliberately drawn from Biblical and post-Biblical Jewish and Christian sources. Clerics are wholly unsuited as the priests of nature gods (that's what druids are for) or gods of magic, thievery, harvests, love and pacifism. The hierarchy implied by their level titles (high-level clerics are presumed to be Patriarchs in their faiths) isn't suited for good but chaotic gods either.

My second problem comes out of my love of culture, religion and mythology. Simply put, there is a richness in real-world religion and its interactions and evolution that is completely lost in most D&D worlds. This is partially deliberate: Gary Gygax was a devout Christian, and while he didn't mind his player's characters interacting with the pulp-fiction version of Thor or Artemis, he didn't want to include anything that he really believed in--hence why there are no stats for Lucifer or Michael in the Monster Manual.

One of the things that I really like about the Kingdoms of Kalamar is that the gods are more than a list or a paragraph. Each one is detailed with their common titles, their names in different cultures, their symbols, their holy days, the kinds of sacrifices their followers offer, the name of their body of believers, and enough details that you can find adventure hooks for every one. It also gives a very basic creation narrative which is pregnant with even more adventuring hooks: An ancient war of the gods, several dead deities, a missing (and possibly imprisoned) Creator Goddess (an interesting take on the "idle god" motif common to many real-world mythologies), setting up the current stage.

While I think Kenzerco did a great job in most respects, they are missing some common elements of real-world comparative mythology: There is no cataclysm to compare to the Flood Myth, no real analogue to the creative sacrifice or dying god, no "elder gods" (e.g., the Titans) overthrown by the current crop, and no listed axis mundi, world tree, or sacred mountains (or other locations, though there is a vague mention of possible locations that connect to the elemental planes, presumably from D&D's "Great Wheel Cosmology).

We'll grant that many of these elements are probably localized by the various cultures: The Elosi would clearly view Dijishy, the City of History, as the axis mundi, while the Fhokki would probably consider a mountain in the Jorakk Mountains to be the home of the gods, etc. Given the apparent capriciousness of Tellene's Creator, it wouldn't be too hard to imagine a race of elder gods who displeased her and were overthrown in the First Winter before the Age of Spring. And my own take on Tellene does include a sinking of the great bulk of Svimolzia in the age before the great migrations.

The other missing element, which again is probably something that you'd have to explore culture-by-culture, is the relationship between the various gods. As it stands, the gods seem more like Platonic ideals of concepts like Justice, Truth, the Elements, the Wild, Storms, Corruption, etc., than personal beings. What to do with that?

My final complaint about religion in Kalamar specifically is that there is no real sense of which gods are most important to which cultures. I've tried to map out which gods are venerated where to see if there are any patterns, and while a few have emerged, there's less than I'd like. You don't get a sense of certain deities being distinctly Dejy vs. Kalamaran vs whatever. Yes, the Dark One is the patron god of the Krangi hobgoblins. That's the exception, not the rule. Contrast that to Greyhawk, which told you which gods emerged from which cultures, even if there was an assumption of syncretism in the world.

I guess this is a long way around saying that the approach of KoK to mythology and religion is better than most campaign worlds, but still a bit vapid for my tastes. One of the things I hope to do in this blog is explore the various cultures of Tellene--and that includes exploring their beliefs about the gods and the higher worlds (other planes).