Rethinking clerics and religion, part 2

The main thing I don’t like about clerics is that they are the only ones who can invoke the gods. I mean, this is also kind of setting-related, and a matter of personal preference, but for me; I don’t like it.

In Circassa, the gods, powers, and nameless structure of reality the different peoples believe in are relevant to everyone.

One solution to this is to remove clerics entirely and allow every character to call upon their gods, powers, et cetera. I don’t really like this solution. Rather, I’d like all characters to be able to call upon their gods, with clerics having a few special abilities in doing so. This post will be dived into two parts; religion - rules; religion for all classes; the cleric.

This system has the following effects:

• Engagement with the gods is an optional part of the game for all characters for certain bonuses at the cost of certain rules.
• A form of prayer-healing that can be performed by anyone and gets a bonus from the cleric just being nearby, to prevent the cleric from being the heal-monkey.
• Clerical magic is entirely different from wizard magic. Clerical magic is a form of prayer in which the player asks for something to occur, the outcome of which is determined by a d6 roll modified by certain things (the player’s favour with that god, whether the prayer is related to the god’s portfolio…). If this wish is within the realm of possibility, the DM decides how the god will answer.

It's probably overly complicated. I might try to simplify it.

NOT PLAYTESTED AT ALL, PROCEED AT OWN RISK

Part 1: Religion - Rules

All players start with one to three connections with a deity. Usually, these will be:

• the patron deity of your class or (pre-adventuring) profession
• the patron deity of your city or homeland
• a family / cultural deity

“Deity”, here, can also mean an impersonal reality or force, akin to the Hindu Dharma, the Egyptian Maat, or the Tao of Taoism. See the end of this post.

Because I think a lot of what makes for compelling, mysterious gods is the absence of knowledge, I’d suggest keeping your players in the dark on these numbers and rolls. Normally I’m all for letting the players roll and be in charge, but I think the mechanics of deities benefit from obscurity.

FAVOUR

This religion system introduces a new stat called Favour. This Favour differs per deity per player. It represents how likely the god is to help you. You can only track the Favour of up to three different gods. If you have a connection to two gods, your maximum favour for each is 2. If you have a connection to three gods, your maximum favour for each is 1.

If you are a cleric, your maximum favour is 4 for one god, 2 for two others.

The lowest amount of favour you can have is -4. But only positive Favour (that is, above 0) can be used for prayers et cetera.

If you wish to stop tracking your Favour with one god, all gods, or wish to switch to another, just tell the DM.

TABOOS AND EDICTS

Favour goes down when you violate a deities’ Taboos and goes up when you act in accordance to their Edicts. 

If a player violates one of the Taboos, roll a d6. On 4-6, their favour is reduced by 1.

So, take your deities, give them names, territories (I interpret this as the area the god’s power works in; usually this will be “everywhere”), their portfolio’s (already decided), and holy sites. Then, going by their portfolio’s, give them Taboo’s (acts antithetical to their spheres) and Edicts (behaviour in line with their spheres).

So, for the cattle goddess I made in the previous post:

Name: Hentenao

Type: Deity

Culture: All Salori peoples (known as Hentahrahn by the nomadic Ura branch)

Territory: everywhere

Portfolio: Cattle, fertility, cattle disease, good marriages

By association: Faithfulness (in love, in business (cattle trading))

Symbols, images, statues: A cow, a woman with a cow head, two horns/a half moon/a half-circle.

Holy site: Home shrines for many farmers, temples and shrines in many cities, villages, great temple in Ennem Salor.

Taboos

• Theft
• Cheating (in love or otherwise)
• Animal cruelty (outside of food production or sacrifice)

Edicts

• Honesty
• Faithfulness

HOW TO GAIN FAVOUR

There are multiple ways of gaining Favour.

EDICTS

Favour can be gained by acting in accordance to your god’s Edicts. Edicts should be treated like Convictions. As Convictions are there to inspire roleplaying in an interesting way beyond alignment, so are Edicts. You won’t get a plus 1 Favour with the cattle goddess for every cow you pat on the head. You gain Favour for following an Edict when it is gameplay wise not optimal. In other words, you only gain Favour when you follow an Edict at the expense of “murderhobo” gameplay.

VOWS

You can make a vow to your god at any time. Write your vow on your character sheet. 

As long as you maintain the vow, your Favour cannot be reduced to 0, always remaining at 1. If you break the vow, your favour is reduced by -2. 

A vow can be related to your deity’s portfolio, but it doesn’t have to. Think about it as a sacrifice of effort. A vow of silence, a vow of going barefeet, a vow of poverty, a vow of never killing... A vow that will work for almost all personal deities is a promise of sacrifice should the god grant you favour. If you fail to actually perform this sacrifice upon return to civilization, your favour is reduced by -2 and you have a 1-in-6 chance of being Cursed.

SACRIFICES

You can sacrifice to your god at any time. If you don’t want to design specific sacrificial customs for your deity, assume that a sacrifice is food, money, flowers, and incense, sacrificed by burning.

There are three levels of sacrifices: improvised, simple, and lavish. The levels relate to the value of the things sacrificed, and the amount of Favour gained. Offering a sacrifice at your deity’s central holy site gives an additional +1 favour.

• Improvised sacrifice
• Site required: improvised / portable altar
• Cost: 1 gp
• Favour gained: 1
• Simple sacrifice
• Site required: local holy site (shrine, temple, grove)
• Cost: 5 gp
• Favour gained: 2
• Lavish sacrifice
• Site required: big holy site (city temple)
• Cost: 20 gp
• Favour gained: 3

HOLY SITES

Most personal deities have holy sites: shrines, temples, and one central holy site. These are important for sacrifices to be effective. They also give a +1 bonus to the success rolls of prayers performed there. However, shed blood or break one of the deity’s Taboo’s on the holy site, and you will lose -3 favour and be Cursed instantly.

Part 2 - Religion for all classes

These are religious “abilities” any player can perform.

PRAY FOR HELP

At any time, players can pray to one of their deities for help. They can only do this once a day, but don’t tell them. If a player prays for something, roll a d6. If the result is equal to or less than their Favour with that deity, it succeeds, and their Favour is reduced by 1. If the prayer is related to that deity’s portfolio, add a +1 to the dice threshold.

Prayer is limited in two important ways:

• The players must require help. The prayer mechanic cannot be used frivolously.
• This is not divine intervention, nor wish granting, nor a miracle. Rather, a succesful prayer is an invitation for you, the DM, to start thinking about a way to give your players a helping hand. An answered prayer should be indistinguishable from happy coincidence.

Examples:

• So, if a player prays to get out of a cave unharmed, maybe add a -2 to the amount of enemies in the next encounter.
• If a player prays to get out of a cave they’re stuck in, give them a tiny bit of help: perhaps they find a partially scrawled map two rooms over, or perhaps they can feel fresh air rushing by in the next passage.
• If a player purposefully prays for something impossible, like to turn into a dragon, or for the big bad lich to keel over dead, you can roll a dice, but just do nothing. If they keep doing stuff like that, cast the god’s Curse on them. 

THE HAND OF GOD

Once a day, you can invoke your deity’s power for any combat roll. Roleplay your battle cry of shouting their names, perhaps. The DM rolls a d6. If the result is equal to or less than their Favour, the roll succeeds, consuming the Favour. You can add +3 to the combat damage or spell effectiveness. If the deity’s portfolio is related to the combat action (battle, archery, magic, trickery), add an additional +2.

SAY YOUR PRAYERS

You can pray for the healing of your teammates as much as you like during any fight. You must touch them to heal them. Roll a d6. If the roll is lower than your favour + their highest favour (for any god) + the party’s cleric’s favour (to maximum of +2), they are healed for 1d6. This consumes 1 Favour of the person healed. You can choose to add more d6, but for every d6 added, you consume 1 of your own Favour.

CURSES

Curses are a negative type of divine action. Curses are cast by the deity, not by people. The best people can do is invoke them. Curses can only be invoked on characters with a favour below 1 by characters with a favour above 1. A requirement for curses to be invoked is that it be cast in response to a deep, personal wrong. 

Curses can be cast by anyone, including that farmer whose house the PC’s just set on fire.

To call down a curse, roll a d6. You roll against the others Favour, - 2. So if their Favour is -2 and yours is 3, you must roll below 5 - 2 = 3. This means that only a curse by a maximally favoured cleric versus a maximally despised criminal has a 100% success rate.

You cannot decide which curse will be cast.

Curses cannot be removed magically. Only by appeasing the god (raise your favour to maximum) or the party who invoked the curse can it be removed.

I suggest you make up a number of curses for your deity’s portfolio. This is work, so I’ll probably make a general “divine curses” table later. For my Hentenao, though:

• Cow head
• You have the head of a cow. You can speak, but your Charisma is halved, and people will treat you like a freak. You must eat grass for one hour everyday or suffer a -1 max HP reduction per day. (It isn’t very nutricious).
• Cattle hatred
• Cattle, if it sees you, will go crazy in an attempt to attack you.
• Infertility
• You are infertile. Not just biologically, but spiritually. Any incoming XP is halved. Every day, you misplace 5 coins of the most valuable coins you have. Nothing you do quite succeeds.
• Cattle disease
• You are cursed with a cattle disease. Your tongue becomes purple and swells up, boils rise out of your face. Any cattle you come near to will catch the disease and die. They’ll run you out of town if they don’t kill you.

Part 3 - GLOG Class: Cleric

Cleric

Starting equipment: robes, pilgrim’s walking staff (+1 CONS, 1d6 damage, 2-handed), deity’s amulet

Your maximum Favour is equal to your amount of Cleric templates.

A: Dedicated, Of the Cloth, Investiture

B: Prayerful, Oracle, The Power Compels You

C: We’re on a mission from god, Consecrate

D: Miracle worker

DEDICATED

As a cleric, you have dedicated yourself to one deity. You probably recognize other gods as real and often beneficial, but your god is the only one you need. You can only track your Favour with one god, but you get a +1 on any skill check related to that god’s portfolio.

OF THE CLOTH

You gain +1 Defense and +2 HP for every template in Cleric you possess, provided you wear no armour.

If your chosen deity has battle / war in their portfolio, you gain +1 Attack for every template in Cleric you possess, but only if you wear armor.

INVESTITURE

Given a medium to work with and an hour, you can carve an amulet or statuette of your deity. This amulet confers +1 Favour to whomever wears it for one day. You already have one. Brandishing the amulet gives you a 1d6 chance to repel creatures with harmful intent, effectively causing them Fear.

PRAYERFUL

Your prayers are more potent than those of laymen. 

• Your prayers need not be born of dire need to be answered.
• You can pray as often as you like, not once daily.
• Whereas the prayer of a layman may be answered in small ways, indistinguishable from chance, your prayers can be answered within the realms of what would be possible with a basic magic spell.
• You do not need to speak aloud to pray. But if you roleplay your prayer, you get +1 on your prayer roll.
• You may take half an hour daily to contemplate. Roll a d6. On a 1-3, your Favour is restored by 1.

ORACLES

You can ask your deity for a vision of any time. Gods do not speak in words. The wise way is to ask for guidance in a dream. Roll a d6. This consumes Favour.

Say we ask: where can we find the girl abducted by pirates?

• d6 Under your Favour
• A clear vision dream
• A small flower blooms, caged in driftwood. The waves of the sea flow between trees, you hear the call of swamp birds and you smell the rotting bog. (In a camp in the swamps)
• d6 On your Favour
• A confusing vision dream
• You hear the ocean and the creaking of wood, the wind rustling in the trees, frightened breathing and the smell of alcohol. (The ocean? Or the forest?)
• d6 Above your Favour
• An ordinary dream
• The king has given you the keys of the city for cleaning up his room.

You can of course go to an oracle and ask them to do it. Pro’s: it’s always the clearest, doesn’t cost you favour. cons: it’s expensive and you’ll likely have to go to the central holy site.

If time sensitive you can also ask for a vision in waking life; you’ll need to focus and prepare for a few minutes. This vision works if you roll Under Favour or On Favour, but on On Favour you must make a save or suffer a seizure and lose 1 Wisdom. The voice of the gods is hard to bear.

THE POWER COMPELS YOU

You can banish hostile beings with your amulet. Roll Wisdom + Favour. Treat this as a Fear mechanic. If used on magically animated beings such as undead, or on incorporeal spirits, has a 1d6 chance of instantly dispelling 1d6 of them. Costs 1 Favour.

WE’RE ON A MISSION FROM GOD

You’ve received a vision in which your god gives you a quest. It requires some interpretation (in other words, let players in on deciding the quest). From now on, you can overrule charisma or intimidation checks by saying “we’re on a mission from [deity]” once daily. Roll a d6 under your Favour to succeed. Complete your divine quest, and you will receive a permanent +1 to your prayer rolls.

CONSECRATE

Using your amulet and one substance from your deity’s shrine (water, sand, oil), you can consecrate objects and area’s. Consecrated objects are slightly more effective in whatever they do. Weapons or armour get a +1 to their stats when consecrated; +2 if used against evil magical beings. Consecrated area’s cannot be crossed by evil magical beings and have a 1d6 chance of repelling creatures of ill intent in general.

MIRACLE

A miracle is an act of god, a shift in reality.

A miracle can only be asked for once in-between lavish sacrifices or retreats to holy sites. Roll one d6 for all your Favour points. 

If the total is above 9, the miracle occurs. (Depending on how crazy the request is, the DM can up this roll by up to 5.) Your favour is reset to 1. If the DM says the roll is more difficult than 9 and you decide to go along with it, any double numbers rolled means that your maximum Favour is permanently lowered by 1.

If the total is below 9, the request is treated as an answered prayer. This consumes 1 favour.

A miracle can also occur spontaneously, when a cleric or the party is near death. This costs nothing but can occur only once, ever.

A miracle is extremely powerful magic. But there are limits. A fist-rule about miracles is that they should be *occurences*. A cleric can’t ask to be miraculously immortal, unless he ask it for just one day. A second rule about miracles is that they can’t effect an area larger than a city.

APPENDIX - IMPERSONAL FORCES

For impersonal forces comparable to the Tao, the Dharma, or the Maat, create Taboos and Edicts just the same.

You can still have holy sites as well as sacrifices, but see these as a way to balance your position within the Tao/Dharma/Maat.

Instead of “favour”, the cleric of the impersonal force has “attunement”. Attunement can only go up to 2, but it is not expended by prayer or other uses.

Instead of “prayer”, the cleric of the impersonal force tries to meditate and contemplate to more clearly allow the impersonal force to flow through her, to become closer to it. In doing so, a solution offers itself. In other words, the DM offers a way to solve the problem in response to the meditation.

The cleric of the impersonal force loses attunement if they lose their calm. If the cleric does act and roleplay calmness in their actions, they get a bonus to their stat rolls equal to their attunement.

Rethinking clerics and religion, part 1

This was to be a post about clerics and religion, but it turned out I had much to say on religion in the first place. Clerics will come later on.

Theoretical stuff

This may surprise you, but in daily life I'm doing my master in religious studies.

Now, the most surprising thing to come out of religious studies in the past decade or so is the discovery that "religion" actually doesn't exist. It cannot be defined.

Certainly the things, places, people, and acts that we call "religious" exist. But there's nothing that connects them all that can clearly be called "religious".

Religion, for example, isn't "belief in a deity" -- Buddhism doesn't make that cut. Even if some types of Buddhism do, those deities are so irrelevant it seems misleading to make that the criterium. It also isn't "worship", because what does worship even mean? It also isn't "ritual behaviour", because state ritual is something we don't call religion. It also isn't "emotional or ritual ecstacy", because then we would need to include music performances.

The concept of "religion" as we use it today has its roots in Christian belief and in colonialism. Before the colonial era, "religion" could not be pluralized. It always meant Christianity. The pluralization of "religion" into "religions" and the universalization of the concept -- the notion that all peoples have "a religion" is actually a way of mapping a Christian view of the world onto non-Christian peoples. For more info on this read The Invention of World Religions by Tomoko Masuzawa.

In other words, "religion" *actually* means "kind of like Christianity but something else". Christianity is the model of all things called religion. But Christianity may very well be extremely weird, a historical outlier, not something universal (I think this is the case).

Despite my society (and yours probably) being highly secularized, the concepts we use to think our way around the world - such as good and evil, but also this category of "religion" - are lifted wholesale from post-Enlightenment Christian thinking.

We really do believe there is such a thing as "religion" and that it has primarily to do with faith in Gods. But what is faith? I *believe* there might be some beers in the fridge. I *believe* I'm gonna wake up again tomorrow. But those aren't the kind of beliefs we're talking about. Religious faith is belief that is strongly and proudly affirmed.

Except for a large part of humanity, that isn't true. In many types of African and Asian ancestor cults for example, the ancestors aren't an article of faith, or supernatural. (The supernatural is another post-Enlightenment Christian idea.) The ancestors are just *there*. They believe they are real. But this belief is on par with the belief that there may be beers in the fridge. It isn't an emphasized kind of belief like faith.

In light of this, our fantasy religion needs reworking.

The cross has been used as an apotropaic symbol
in almost all Christian contexts.

Religion in fantasy

Granddad Tolkien never wrote much about religion in Middle-Earth, which is odd considering that he was a devout Catholic. Faramir and his boys do some praying to the "Lords of the West" before dinner and one time Sauron got an entire civilization to worship Satan but that is about it.

D&D type religion seems largely based on pre-Christian Mediterranean religion. As in, polytheism. (Also polytheism and monotheism is one of those fucky terms. I mean in what way exactly is Christianity polytheism if you've got three gods who are one AND EVEN if we want to overlook that one you've got a whole bunch of angels, saints, and demons. Just because a deity is evil and dangerous doesn't mean it isn't a deity!)

But I kind of suspect D&D doesn't really understand what Roman and Greek polytheism was really about. 

If we look at how religion is treated in D&D we see again a very Christian focus on *belief*, on intellectual things. Who is this god, what is their sphere (which always makes sense), and what is their symbol. Ok, so now we know some things, okay. And all these gods have organized cults and temples and priests and attendants. All these gods are real and all these gods can be supplicated to.

But its too neat. Look at actual polytheistic history. In the time the early Old Testament stories were written, deities had a very strong ethnic/national character. Sure, your god is real. But my god can beat up your god! But the reality of this god also implied that if you were in *that* god's land, you would have to sacrifice to him/her for good fortune and safety in those parts.

Pliny the Elder describes that Rome had a Temple of Fever, a Temple of Bereavement, and an Altar of Bad Luck, where you could come to supplicate these forces and keep them away.

Shiva, one of the most powerful and awe-inspiring Hindu deities, is also a dangerous and unpredictable madman. He's covered in the ash of cremated bodies, and his name, meaning "the auspicious one", is actually more a desire than a description, an attempt to supplicate him. Back in the Vedic times, the distant past of what would come to be known as Hinduism, Shiva was called Rudra, "the screamer", and rituals to him consisted of throwing a gift into the woods in the hope he'd stay away.

Similarly, Jorg Rupke in his book Pantheon writes that early Roman and Greek religion didn't have clear conceptions of the gods as *people*. Rather, they had a *ritual infrastructure*, rituals they could use or resort to in order to address certain problems. Many of these rituals included gifts of objects or statues or animals - but to *whom* this gift was, wasn't clear in the early days. To some unseen, mysterious power that lived at that spot. Then came the naming. Then came the images and statues.

This kind of weirdness isn't caught by the neat, clearly identifiable gods of D&D.

Shiva and his wife Parvati as one

Doing religion reverse

What if, coming up with the religious world of our settings - and by extension the "clerics" of our settings - we don't start with the gods at all? What if we start with acts - with rituals? What if rather we start with what people *need* here? What are they likely to develop and use their *ritual infrastructure* for?

Step 1: What do they need?

This will determine your group's *ritual needs*. Broadly, this can be spliced up into these questions. Go through every question and note down the words in CAPS that apply to your group.

1. How do they eat?
1. Do they farm rice or grain or other crops? -> CROPS
1. Do they depend on rain? -> RAIN
2. Do they depend on the river? -> RIVER
3. Are there crop diseases? -> CROP DISEASE
2. Do they farm cattle?
1. Are there predators eating the cattle? -> PREDATORS, CATTLE
2. Is the cattle fertile enough? -> FERTILITY OF CATTLE, CATTLE
3. Are there cattle diseases? -> CATTLE DISEASE
3. Do they hunt? -> HUNTING, PREY, PREDATOR, WEAPON TECHNOLOGY, SAFETY IN WILDERNESS
4. Do they raid others? -> BATTLE, WAR
1. On foot, by animal, by ship? -> WAR ANIMALS, SHIPS, WEATHER
2. What weapons do they use? -> WEAPON TECHNOLOGY, WEAPON STRENGTH
3. How do they feel about the other's gods? -> CONQUEST OF OTHER GOD
2. How do they live with each other?
1. Do they have a king or chief? -> AUTHORITY, OBEDIENCE
1. Does the king demand huge respect? -> ROYALTY
2. What gives him this power? -> ORDER OF THE WORLD, WISDOM, WAR...
2. Are they sedentary or nomadic?
1. If sedentary; see most of question 1
1. Are they a city-state -> CITY, WALLS, PROTECTION, TRADE, STRANGERS
2. Are they a state -> GOVERNMENT, STATE, LAW
2. If nomadic -> PACK ANIMALS
1. Are they dependent on oaths and honour in maintaining good relationships with other groups? -> OATHS, HONOUR, FRIENDSHIP, STRANGERS
2. Are different clans in essence different nations? -> THE CLAN, ANCESTORS
3. Is it important to have many children? -> FERTILITY, MENSTRUATION, SEX, PREGNANCY, BIRTH
1. What tends to kill young children? -> CHILD DISEASE, PREDATORS, LOCAL CLIMATE, FAMINE, WAR, SPOILED FOOD
2. Polygamy or monogamy -> MANY WIVES / HUSBANDS, GOOD WIFE / HUSBAND, CHEATING, GOOD MARRIAGE
3. Matrilineal or patrilineal? -> MOTHER, FATHER, ANCESTOR, ACCEPTANCE INTO FAMILY
4. What determines social status?
1. Honour in battle -> HONOUR, WAR, NOBLE DEATH IN BATTLE
2. Place in feudal/caste structure -> ORDER OF SOCIETY, CASTE, BIRTH
3. Learning and wisdom -> KNOWLEDGE, WISDOM, SCHOOLING, OLD AGE
4. Wealth and money -> MARKET FORCES, MONEY, SUCCESS IN BUSINESS
3. How do they live with the world?
1. Are there earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, natural disasters, monsoons? -> GOING AWAY OF NATURAL DISASTER / WATER / FIRE, ORDER OF THE WORLD
2. Are there forests, plains, deserts, mountains? -> SAFE PASSAGE THROUGH FOREST / PLAINS / DESERTS / MOUNTAINS, PREDATORS
3. What are animals to them? 
1. Dumb machines? -> SUPERIORITY OF HUMANITY
2. Dangers? -> DANGERS OF WILD ANIMAL
3. Mysterious other beings? -> MYSTERIOUS LOCAL ANIMAL

Step 2: What do they do?

Now take all the things you wrote down and consider which of the following rituals should address which *ritual needs*.

1. Big, collective rituals
1. These are rituals that concern things that are of paramount importance to the community at large. Feast days.
2. Big, individual rituals
1. These are rituals that concern things that are of paramount importance to a person or his family.
3. Small individual rituals
1. These are rituals that concern every-day things or that are done in reaction to something and can't have a big response.

Step 3: How do they do it?

Anything can be made ritual. A sacrifice is a ritual gift-giving. Ritual hunts are also a big thing. Perhaps oaths are a big thing in your society. Ritual war, ritual battle. Perhaps they mortify themselves, fasting or going away into the wilderness for a while. Feast days in which the normal structure of society is suspended in lieu of the theme of the ritual need. (Sex, for example).

Go crazy. If you have no inspiration:

Take the theme of your ritual need. Now put the word "ritual" in front of it. Now think about it. For some ritual needs it will make sense to have big collective (BC), big individual (BI), and small individual (SI) rituals; for others only big collective ones will make sense.

RITUAL [X] will in many cases already make sense, like "ritual hunt", "ritual war", "ritual fertility", "ritual law". But in many others you may be at a loss. Then a quick way of making something intelligible is to consider 2 big points: mimesis and exchange.

1. Ritual through:
1. mimesis
1. Ritual for [x] by imitating [x]. Ritual for cattle by imitating cattle.
2. exchange
1. Ritual for [x] by exchanging [x]. Ritual for cattle by sacrificing cattle.
2. Ritual for [x] by exchanging [y]. Ritual for cattle by sacrificing crops.

Now you might think: "wait, but this can't work for all. Ritual for child disease by imitating child disease?" So in ancient Roman religion you could sacrifice to Fever so it would stay away; similarly in medieval Europe people would donate a small silver imitation of the organ or limb that was cured after prayer/sacrifice (in thanks, after the fact). But in certain Native American cultures, if a baby was sick, you could hold a mock funeral for the baby, in order to trick the disease into thinking the child was dead. So imitating the death of a child can prevent the death of a child. This also has a bit of exchange in it, since you exchange a doll or fake child for your real child.

Depending on the ritual need, you might have these on individual and/or collective scale.

Here are some examples.

RITUAL RAIN -> 

B C: The women of the village gather buckets of water from the well and go around the fields splashing them with their hands, singing songs that call the rain down.

B I: If a farmer is worried about the rain, he may sacrifice some crops or cattle as gift to the rain if it will come.

S I: If a farmer is worried about the rain, he may call down the rain through the same songs.

RITUAL CATTLE -> 

B C: Cattle is sacrificed. Cattle must be given so that cattle will continue to be given to you. BUT ALSO: A ritual dance in which the men of the village imitate the fights of cattle in the mating season. 

B I: A farmer may draw a glyph saying "WOLF" on his cattle to keep the wolves away.

S I: The cattle looks sick! The farmer puts some earleaf herbs through their feed, since these leaves look like the ears of cows and is thought to be beneficial to them.

RITUAL SUCCESS IN BUSINESS 

I throw some money into the sea so that the ship carrying all my trade goods will not be swallowed by the sea.

Here's a cow for you, wilderness, keep the predators away!

Here one man dresses up as a wolf and is defeated in a ritualized dance-battle by the young warriors.

Big and collective rituals are probably calendar feasts that occur every year.

Keep in mind that people do these things *because they work* either *actually* or because they are *effective in addressing those worries*. So people do them not out of doctrine or belief, but because they are effective. So people will do the rituals that they think are effective, perhaps because someone else did it - their neighbours, their enemies, traders from away...

This Maasai dance was originally part of a celebration for killing a lion

Step 4: Where do they do it?

This is dependent on *ritual infrastructure* and is probably decided by people imitating other people. Big collective rituals are likely to take place on some sort of central square. Especially in terms of EXCHANGE people will probably go to a specific place, likely associated with the power to be the receiving end of the exchange. The sea, the mountain, the forest, a weird-looking hill, a strange rock. This is where your temples will be.

Step 5: Who do they think is behind it?

Now you have a ritual need, a ritual, and a place where the ritual is done. Now it is possible that the forces behind the ritual are understood not as beings with a mind, but as some sort of hidden world order, like the Hindu Dharma or the Egyptian Maat. In a clan-based society, the ritual need of clan identity and success may very well be mapped onto the dead ancestors (not technically gods, but for all intents and purposes, yes). Perhaps these dead ancestors and local mysterious animal are mapped onto each other: bam, totemism. "Our ancestor is the owl".

But if these forces are understood as beings with a mind - THESE ARE GODS.

But be sure you know what a god is. The Norse and Egyptian gods were very much mortal and could be killed. In fact the Ancient Egyptian word for god is the same as the word for soul of a deceased person. It's fine if you want to go with "immortal beings who govern certain aspects of the world" that's fine, but keep in mind that all those things could be changed for your gods.

What do these gods do? Is the same ritual place perhaps used for different rituals? This is how you get real, muddy gods, not the thought-out, overly systemic gods of D&D. Treat the ritual needs addressed at this place as the portfolio of the god residing there.

Cheat it a little. Throw in a ritual need that is unconnected to the rest. Athena is goddess of wisdom... but also war, after all. Don't be afraid to give the gods paradoxical forces as well. You would go to the same place for cattle-ensuring rituals, but also to address cattle diseases. So the goddess of cattle might well also be the goddess of cattle disease.

So in keeping with all the cattle things we've been doing, my group might have a goddess of cattle, fertility, cattle disease, and auspicious marriages.

But also keep in mind that this goddess may well be *just* a goddess. It is a mistake to believe that every god has to be the god OF something. Thor is the "god of thunder", but what is Odin the god of? Nothing specifically, or rather: so much that it can't be easily said. He is the god of wisdom, cunning, trickery, the dead, war, the gallows, runes, magic. 

I already said that you should not be scared to give the gods paradoxical forces. But the gods can also be paradoxical in that they can be positive and negative at the same time. Shiva, like I said, is one of the most revered gods in Hinduism, but is also a dangerous madman. The same can be said for Odin. Odin's magic (seidhr) is even something that was considered feminine in this society, something that only an unmanly or homosexual man would engage with, strongly frowned upon for men. Yet Odin practices it and is perhaps the most important god. The gods are always far beyond the laws and attitudes of the society that worships them.

Then name 'em and stuff. Keep in mind that the name is pasted onto a mysterious force that is supplicated there, so there will be many different names, many titles.

Step 6: Do some association work.

Now comes the weird stuff. Say your society has a real problem with snakes. Snakes are very dangerous, but also kind of sacred because of their power (to kill, scare, transfix). The people believe that snakes live forever because every month they shed their skin. What else sheds its skin every month? The moon. What also happens every month? Menstruation. Now you have the framework for a lunar snake deity associated with (snakes and the moon of course) fertility, sex, and (in a male-dominated society, perhaps) the secrets of women.

That's a bloody weird god. But it is good weird. It has texture. I believe it.

So with your WIP deities (cattle, fertility, cattle disease, auspicious marriages), go back through your ritual needs and see what else could be mapped onto this deity. But live in *their* world. They don't understand microbial biology, gravity, or why some babies are stillborn. Interpret those things through the lens of association with your deities, but also the world they live in: the moon, the mountains, thunder. Perhaps the deity is a cow. Perhaps the deity is the mother of the great mountains to the south. This way she could be associated with the South in general, and people might offer her prayers or touch her amulets every time they travel to the South. Perhaps she is the sun, and the stars are drops of the milk of her udders.

If you live in a tent, your god also lives in a tent. A very big one, made out of clouds perhaps.

If family is most important in your society, then your gods are a family (or families). Perhaps they are YOUR family! (Ancestor worship)

If the king is most important in your society, then the gods have a king.

If government is most important in your society, then the gods have a government.

Step 7: A new ritual need

Now you have a new ritual need: communicate with the god(s). Is this done through sacrifice? Prayer? Are there statues or images of her? Perhaps you sacrifice those, giving them to her? Perhaps you must abstain from touching cattle for a week before invoking her? Do people wear amulets invoking her power?

Perhaps... you can get someone else to do all this difficult business for you. Voilá, the ritual expert is born. Call him shaman, priest, medicine man, godspeaker, oracle, sacred virgin; you now have to some extent organized religion.

Step 6: Iteration, and decide how far you want to develop this. 

Both in terms of pantheon and institutions you can stop anywhere you like.

Perhaps the gods are still nameless and mysterious. Perhaps anyone can engage with them as well as any other.

But if the pantheon develops onward; how does it react to foreign gods? The gods of other peoples? Are they both understood to be real, will people forever speak of two families of gods? Are they incorporated into it? Or do they forever remain foreign demons?

Does it remain many gods for many needs? Or do a couple of gods become so important that the others have more or less vanished except from the local theater - the god of the village, the god of this tree. How are their ritual needs subsumed into the other deities? ("War" was important in Medieval Europe, but the Christian God is hardly a god associated with war. So saint Michael the Archangel assumed the ritual need for war, and could be prayed to for battle.) Has perhaps *just one* become so important, thus laying the groundwork for monotheism?

Who has access to the gods? The ritual place develops because ordinary people imitate each other, but perhaps authority will develop. Is it the spontaneous authority of the knowledgeable and old? This is likely at first. Authority that derives from ritual knowledge. Your child has broken his leg? My dear, you must do such and such.

But perhaps authority becomes structured and institutionalized. Perhaps there are priesthoods, perhaps there is dedication to one specific deity. Perhaps such dedication is also expected of those who come for the ritual. You cannot serve two masters, one might say.

This is really a matter of taste. And there is much more than might be done. Perhaps the king is a god. Perhaps there is one god in many forms. Perhaps there are monastery orders dedicated to all gods, or to the god-above-god.

But that is all extra stuff, stuff that you can come up with because it's cool. This whole post was more about rethinking the basics of religion; letting the gods be born organically out of ritual and association, not pre-determining them as having sensible and intellectually determined portfolios.

I hope it's useful.