MetaMythos - RPG Campaign and World Design

World Design/Multi-Cultural Fictional Settings/Religion and Campaign Creation

World Design Background Details Cities, Populations, Subsistence and Land Area World Builder Questions Creation Game Worlds - A Matter of Taste Methods of Creation Multi-Cultural Fictional Settings Mentality of Religion Culture Sacred Narrative Divinities Worship Divine Things Religious People Religion and Campaign Creation Contents 1 World Design 2 Introduction to the Sheets 3 Brainstorming 4 Filling In The Religion Character Sheet 4.1 Basics 4.1.1 Religion Name 4.1.2 Physical Distinctions 4.1.3 Cultural Pattern 4.1.3.1 Hunter Gatherer (Habitat) 4.1.3.2 Agricultural (Hostile Nature) 4.1.3.3 Pastoral Nomad (Tribal Patron) 4.1.3.4 City Dweller (Luck) 4.1.4 Symbols 4.2 Sacred Stories 4.2.1 Origin of the World 4.2.2 Origin of the People 4.2.3 Heroic Legend 4.3 Divinity 4.3.1 Theology 4.3.2 Miracles 4.3.3 Game Attributes for Divine Figures 4.4 Ritual 4.4.1 Types of Ritual 4.5 Artifacts 4.5.1 Heroic Relics 4.5.2 Ritual Objects 4.5.3 Icons 4.5.4 Weapons 4.6 Holy Sites 4.6.1 Typical Location of a Place of Worship 4.6.2 Frequency of Places of Worship 4.6.3 Temple Architecture 4.6.4 The Central Temple, the Holy of Holies 4.7 Organizational Details 4.7.1 The Organizational Grid 4.7.2 Divinity 4.7.3 High Leader 4.7.4 High Council 4.7.5 Priesthood 4.7.6 Rows of the Organizational Matrix: Agents and Subgroups 4.8 Random Crap to be Moved Elsewhere 4.8.1 Structure or Hierarchy 4.8.2 The Culture Sheet 4.9 Basics 4.9.1 A Note on Inventing Region Names 4.10 Subsistence, Social Control, and Economics 4.11 Roles 4.12 Kinship 4.12.1 Marriage 4.12.2 Residence 4.13 Cultural Personality 4.14 Belief Systems 4.15 Attitudes 4.16 Organizational Matrix 4.16.1 Band 4.16.2 Tribe 4.16.3 Chieftain 4.16.4 State 5 Regions and Settings 6 Campaign World 6.1 Filling in Campaign Details 6.1.1 Brief Description 6.1.2 Themes 6.1.3 Inspirational Reading 6.1.4 Mood 6.1.5 Continuity 6.1.6 Key Words 6.2 Cosmology 6.2.1 Day Sky 6.2.2 Night Sky 6.2.3 Day Length 6.2.4 Year Length 6.2.5 Cosmic Neighborhood 6.3 Population 6.3.1 Race 6.3.2 Language 6.3.3 Script 6.4 Magic 6.4.1 Magic Frequency 6.4.2 Magic Magnitude 6.5 Technology 6.5.1 Technology Frequency 6.5.2 Technology Magnitude 6.6 Religion 6.6.1 Divine Power Frequency 6.6.2 Divine Power Magnitude 6.7 Psionics 6.7.1 Psionic Power Frequency 6.7.2 Psionic Power Magnitude 6.8 Character Creation Guidelines 6.8.1 Rule System 6.8.2 House Rules 6.8.3 Recommended 6.8.4 Discouraged 6.8.5 Equipment

Introduction to the Sheets

Religion is a communal system of right belief and right action transmitted from a divine presence.

Let's break down that definition and take it in order.

1. "Communal system" Religion requires community, with those of advanced knowledge instructing novices in mythic and ritual knowledge and serving as arbiters in case of disagreement or confusion on religious matters. Individual belief is not religion, though it may have components in common with religion.
2. "Right Belief" The Myths and Legends of a religion constitute a system of right beliefs.
3. "Right Action" The Ritual of a religion contains the system of right actions.
4. "Transmitted from a divine presence" Truth comes from the god or gods, and is the way that believers distinguish right from wrong, good from evil, sacred from mundane, and the world from chaos. Myth and Ritual are both divine in origin and this is why they are "right."

Another way to describe religion is as a combination of Myth, Ritual, and Philosophy. This fits in with our definition above. Myth is the medium by which the gods transmit religion to the community. Ritual is right action. Philosophy is right belief. Together they create something that is greater than its parts, Truth which resonates in the individual heart and in the marrow of the community. Truth, with a capital "T," is the meaning of Religion. Truth is Religion. Religion is Truth. Truth and religion are the glue that binds the individual and the community together. Religion confers a purpose and destiny upon each person. This is a powerful idea, and it is no wonder that religion is so important in the world.

Just a note on terminology. Recall that in this book we use the technical definitions for and legend from storychapter. Mentions of myth and legend should not be taken to mean fictional or fabulous stories, but rather sacred truths.

Mythopoet. A myth maker.

-- Webster's New International Dictionary

The Game Master in the role of Mythopoet weaves together threads from many different sources to produce a campaign from strong fabric. As the players in a campaign borrow ideas from real people, books, and movies to make each character into a lifelike person, so the GM borrows from many sources to roleplay the world. The many pieces of the campaign add up to a mythology, hopefully a coherent one, for which the GM bears the responsibility of creation. In addition most campaigns also include another mythology, tied to the gods, heroes, and other superhuman beings of the campaign world, and the GM is also responsible for them. The GM is the mythopoet who creates mythology on two levels, first creating a mythical setting for the campaign, then in cooperation with the players creating the tale of the campaign itself. The campaign itself is the primary reason why people roleplay

The MythoPoet GM has two difficult, somewhat contradictory tasks.

Plausibility

Cover the religion completely enough that it seems plausible to players in the game. This requires a broad survey of the religion as well as an understanding of how different aspects of religion and culture relate to each other. For instance, in homage to J. R. R. Tolkien many roleplaying GMs set out to write reams of minutiae about their campaign worlds. "Plausibility" is going to be one of our mantras in this book. You're going to see it everywhere. Plausibility is a primary goal of everyone who wants to craft a world, and it is one of our primary goals when we roleplay, right up there with acting silly and getting a lion's share of cheese curls.

Continuity

Describe the religion briefly enough that when the GM uses the religion in a game he doesn't lose track of pertinent information. The GM also has a related need to ensure that the religions and organizations don't continually mutate, changing form because of the inescapable tendency to forget tangential facts. GMs with eidetic memories may not have that problem, but for the rest of us who occasionally forget the name of the star of the Tonight Show, or the actor who played Perry Mason, this is more of a problem. [Footnote: In case this had you stumped, Raymond Burr played Perry Mason. Jay Leno succeeded Johnny Carson who succeeded Jack Parr on the Tonight Show. (sp check on Johnny Carson)]

In case you were wondering, "continuity" will not be one of our mantras. This is because it is a goal, but not a direct one. The easiest way to get continuity is to tax our memories as little as possible. We need to record all the really important information and toss the junk that we wouldn't use anyway. We need to keep it simple. For those reasons, "simplicity" will be a mantra. Simplicity is an important thing to keep in mind a lot of the time, but it's especially important when for fun you play games with more than an incidental resemblance to filling in a tax depreciation worksheet, as we roleplayers do.

[PICTURE: unhappy roleplayer with reams of paper, trying to find her character sheet while the GM, who looks like a nightmare version of an auditor, harangues her for forgetting to fill in the third page of the encumbrance worksheet. Other players look on in terror, pulling old notes out of shoeboxes. Maybe this doesn't translate to pictures very well. Maybe a picture of the GM as satanic accountant at top of sidebar, and set up a small script below it?]

How can we reconcile these two aims? One presses us towards completeness, towards obsessive amounts of detail. The other yanks back on our reins, restraining us in the direction of brevity. In order to find a pleasant middle ground, let's consider for a moment what writers of fiction have done for hundreds of years when faced with similarly conflicting aims.

Somewhere during the process of writing stories, most fiction writers jot down basic characteristics of the characters in their stories. In most cases they record an extremely basic overview of each character, including facts such as age, appearance, sex, and names of a character's family members. While many beginning writers prepare for their stories by writing long essays about characters, experienced writers realize that it is impossible to keep track of all the details in a huge essay. They realize the importance of continuity. Writers of fiction also realize that characters should be shown in action, instead of passively described, and so those long descriptive passages would be wasted. What they need is something that they can keep by their side while they write and reference quickly when they have a question. This reference must fit on a single page, and it must be easy to find what they want in it.

We roleplaying gamers already have something similar to these short character sketches. We call them character sheets. Each player keeps character sheets of his or her game personas and uses them during game sessions. Many GMs also use abbreviated character sheets to describe GM characters and creatures. Since religions and other organizations are as much indivisible entities as are gamemaster characters or monsters, I suggest we put them on character sheets just as we would with individuals.

The use of "character" sheets for various aspects of the roleplaying campaign is the central organizing principle for The MythoPoet's Manual. The MythoPoet's Manual includes four kinds of character sheets and a lot of information to help you fill them out. Not only will this material help you fill out the sheets, but it will also give you ideas for campaign incidents and adventures. The sheets are presented primarily for the GM, for that is the person whom I expect will use this book the most, but I see no reason why other players couldn't also make religions for the campaign world they play in. If you play in a troupe style campaign everybody is a GM anyway. In such a campaign everybody could use The MythoPoet's Manual. Everybody should have their own copy. Everybody should buy two copies and give one to a friend! Sorry, I got a little carried away. Obviously, players of priestly characters and paladins may want to describe their character's religion using these terms. Most characters are influenced by the religious climate. Finally, an understanding of religion, which is de-emphasized in the world of many roleplayers who live in cities in which organized religion has grown increasingly irrelevant, is a valuable tool for roleplayers who wish to roleplay members of traditional, non-urban societies---societies in which most people are religious.

I designed these sheets to help you take control of your campaign. No more will you wonder how much is enough when readying a religion or secret society for your roleplaying game campaign. This sheet, and the other sheets in The MythoPoet's Manual, systemize and simplify several descriptive tasks for you, much as an artfully designed character sheet makes it easier to keep track of individual characters. You can just check off the items in the sheet one by one, and at the end have a complete religious description suitable for live use in a roleplaying campaign.

After one or two practice runs through the sheets and tables you will be ready to cover the key facts about your campaign and its religions in no more than fifteen minutes each.

Brainstorming

Plan a little before you start writing the details of a religion from your campaign world. First you should brainstorm about the religion. Jot down notes, brief phrases and words that evoke the religion for you. Think about the history of the religion, the society which spawned it, the society in which characters will encounter it, its gods, or the magic and miracles that members may use. Write down everything you think of as quickly as you can. Don't go into great detail on any one thing. The idea here is to get all your ideas out in one place, and after you've gotten them into the open decide which ones work and which ones don't. Once you've gotten it all down, go back over it and pick out the three most interesting things you said and choose them as the center of your religion.

Example

I need to make up a religion for my campaign. The campaign is set in a huge, partially abandoned city constructed by aliens. The religion must serve as one of the organizations that player characters might wish to join so they can advance socially in the campaign.

• aliens
• hard to join
• hunter-gatherer
• habitat
• city structures
• undercity
• abyss undercity
• shapechanging aliens
• lycanthropy?
• ancient technology
• buglike aliens
• psionics?
• witch hunters
• anti sorcery
• dirt
• the good earth
• Mantian
• queen
• Charkish

Now that I've brainstormed I'll go back over what I wrote down and pick out the things that I like most. I actually like a lot of ideas from this batch. I'll pick out: "buglike aliens"; "abyss undercity"; "witch hunters"; "dirt"; and "the good earth." I also like the name "Mantian," since it reminds me of a Preying Mantis, which is one of the most alien seeming bugs around. It's also similar to the greek word Mantis, which means prophet or seer. I think I'll keep it. The nonsense word Charkish I will use for the name of the main god. The rest I will discard for the present time though I might pick up on one or two later.

There are other ways to brainstorm. One technique that some GMs might find helpful is to finish off a "because" statement. For instance, "Player characters will want to join this religion because..." and then write down a bunch of numbered reasons why this is true. Or "This is a good enemy religion because..." Write down about a dozen reasons, and develop the three or four ones that arouse your interest the most.

Filling In The Religion Character Sheet

To the visitor from outside, a society is confusion, chaos. People in an alien society appear to make important choices at random. Yet if you ask them, they make their choices based on cultural or religious belief systems, or even base them on ritual and tradition. Use this sheet as a tool so you, the campaign designer, can find the form in this chaos, so you can reveal the plan behind the cultures and religions within your campaign. The rites, the god, the stories, the belief system, this sheet helps you to organize all of them into a plausible religion with a relatively simple format.

An advocate of random everything could use the directions for trls as a set of random tables for mindlessly churning out religions but that isn't the only way to use it. Not that you can't pick and choose randomly if you want to, but things tend to turn out better if you guide the process, ignoring things that don't make sense, and adding details to strengthen your creation. Of course before you can use the tables with a randomizing method you'll have to write numbers next to them. As with any art the artisan who attends to intermediate results, adjusting technique midstream if necessary, and invests the plan with imagination, love, and common sense will create a superior piece. If you throw dice all the way through the process, on the other hand, you may turn out usable religious organizations, but you are more likely to make incoherent and ridiculous ones.

Concentrate your brainstorming on answering two or three key points in your most imaginative way. Really use your noggin and come up with two or three ideas that are bizarre, wild, crazy, butt-kicking three times dope stupid fresh. Fill in the sheet any way you want. Don't feel bound to the order in which it is presented. Pick a few key pieces of your topic, the ones you brainstormed about, and fill them in first. Then repeat our mantra, "plausible," and fill in the rest to match what you already have. Fill in any empty spots that remain. It's okay if they're boring. Finally adorn your creation with any extra bits of decoration that you really really really really really need to add, and you have a brand-new, ready-to-play religion for your campaign.

Basics

First, fill in the basics about your creation. Choose a name for the religion and write your name and your campaign's. Choose the key belief or activity which best characterizes the religion. You may want to wait to fill in the Key Dogma. You may not know what it is until after you've finished the rest of the sheet. If believers wear a distinctive item of clothing or share an unusual feature then record it. This will help set believers apart, so that players can get an accurate feel for the prevalence of religion in the campaign, a feel which the characters would already have but which is often difficult to pick up through play. Also choose the cultural pattern of the religion. Pick from Hunter-Gatherer (Habitat), Agricultural (Hostile Nature), Pastoral Nomad (Tribal Patron), or City Dweller (Luck). Each one of these choices brings with it a typical approach to divinity, expressed by the parenthesized words, which appear below the culture names on your sheet. Finally sketch the primary symbol of the religion.

Religion Name

If you can't think of a name for the religion right now, you can always come back to this later. If you want to think of a name but can't, religions in our past have taken their nature and name from prophets, dynasties, myths, holy books, divine spheres of influence, gods, tribes, regions, states, and other things. Choose the name based on the sort of interaction the player characters will have to the religion. If it is a hostile religion then choose a religion name that its enemies might use. If it is a friendly religion, intended for player characters to join, then give it the name that believers would use. There's nothing more incongruous than finding yourself pitted against the "Loving Church of the Fluffy Bunny Foo Foo," or some religion with a similarly cute name. Minimally choose a name like the "Blood Cult of the Ever Growing Incisor" if you're going to set player characters against it.

If you have any ideas to add to these lists write them down on this page where you can find them. If, like me, you hate to mark books permanently then pencil in your changes and you will have the satisfaction of knowing that you can erase them later.

After selecting the religion's official name, choose a few alternate names for the use of the faithful inner circle, enemies of the faith, mundane authorities, and so on. Alternate names could have little to do with the actual nature of a faith and much to do with the perceived or supposed actions or inclination of its membership and would be affected by xenophobic tendencies in surrounding society.

Physical Distinctions

The GM or players can use physical distinctions as important clues in mystery scenarios, or they can be used to add color to any situation. Some identifying marks, aside from official religious symbols, could include:

• Old Fashioned Clothing
• Head Coverings
• Veils or Facial Coverings
• Odor of Incense
• Continual Chanting
• Familial or Tribal Resemblance
• Tattoos
• Ritual Scars
• Body Modification
• Unusual Accents
• Hairstyle

Cultural Pattern

Consider the setting and the people who are going to participate in the religion which you are outlining. Consider their culture. If the people have farmed the same fertile river valley for twenty generations then they probably won't worship a thief god. If they are desert nomads they won't knowingly worship a god of boating and fishing. A society of frightened mice will not worship a god of bravery and war. Don't force inappropriate religions on some part of the campaign world. This is a mistake that will make your campaign less plausible. Religion should match the roles and personality of the people who practice it. Select a plausible culture for the religion you want to create.

By selecting a cultural pattern for your religion you determine a lot about how it works. A religion nurtured in a Hunter-Gatherer society will emphasize the magical habitat around it, while a religion nurtured by Agriculturists will emphasize numerous inimical spirits of nature, and a religion nurtured in a Nomadic culture will be tightly bound to a god who is the tribal patron. The descriptions of religious patterns based on economic and societal development should be taken as typical examples, not as absolute rules.

Hunter Gatherer (Habitat)

Hunter-gatherers live in small mobile groups of around twenty-five people. They travel from camp to camp in a prescribed order several times every year. The men, who are expendable, hunt for large animals and honey and do other dangerous things, while the women forage for vegetable food, catch fish, raise the children, and tend to the hearth and home. Men's work doesn't take much time, so they have a lot of leisure time. Women work more than the men, but they don't do any backbreaking work either. This sounds like an ideal way of life, but it has one problem and it's a doozy. The main problem with the hunter-gatherer lifestyle is the danger of starvation. Hunter-gatherers don't keep stores. If a bad year comes along, or if they are too crowded, then everybody starves.

Hunter-Gatherer cultures are likely to worship their habitat or world as divine and benign. Their worldview is of a magical world permeated by sacred activities and items. The environment itself is not only holy, it is the manifestation of the most important divinity. The hunter-gatherer's god is their environment, it expresses its personality through the weather and natural phenomena, animals, and everything in the environment. The hunter-gatherer god lives in a paradisal place, the Otherworld, which is not our world but is very much like it except demons and spirits, including dead ancestors, live there. Shamans go to the Otherworld to heal and on other quests, and other mortals may reach the Otherworld during dreams or religious rituals. The Habitat may cause good luck or bad, rain, drought, plenty, or famine. If offended it may drive game animals away, start a forest fire, or make fruits rot on the vine. If appeased it might bring much game, fruit and nuts, or a bumper crop of honey. The power of the divine Habitat is incarnate in every plant and animal, so every part of the surroundings reminds hunter gatherers of the divine presence. Hunter-gatherers tend to celebrate only a few obvious rituals, including initiations and new year celebrations. However they migrate several times per year in prescribed patterns which are ritual in character. Hunter-gatherers dwell in a magical world, for their world has no laws which are not sacred, and by obeying the sacred laws of the world they will survive and prosper. For these reasons Habitat is the key word for Hunter-Gatherers.

Agricultural (Hostile Nature)

The people of an agricultural society will not perceive their surroundings as completely magical or divine, as would hunter gatherers. They believe that by working the earth they have wounded it, and thereby made it hostile. They will have stories of being thrown out of a paradise into a world where people must spill sweat and blood on the earth, where plants and animals are no longer gifts from a friendly creator but are charity given by a god who couldn't bring itself out to destroy mortals for their daring and rashness, though they have wounded it. Because of their relation to nature, Hostile Nature is the key phrase for Agricultural religious belief.

The more food crops produced and the more species of animals domesticated the more theology will differ from the theology of the hunter gatherers and their divine Habitat. As mortals cultivate new crops, they discover new gods, so that instead of worshipping a single habitat they worship the many gods who control the newly discovered facets of the habitat. Each god has its own clearly defined sphere of influence, from specific crops to hunting to childbirth to death to rulership. Agricultural societies with only a few crops acknowledge only a few gods. Agricultural societies with many crops recognize many gods. No matter which god holds the chief position within their pantheon, the more advanced the technology the more a people will differentiate between the gods.

For some societies the most important deity is likely to be the earth mother. Others might place the sky or air god at the head of the gods, the bringer of sun and rain.

[need an example of agricultural pantheon. We really need statements from the mouths of believers for the various types of religion. I think statements should go in the players' section or the cultural section, but not sure which.]

Pastoral Nomad (Tribal Patron)

The primary economic activity of nomadic herders is the herding of animals. The most important animals are the herd animal, the dog which herds the animals, and the horse or other mount which helps mortals to follow their herds. Herder men spend a lot of time working but it is time that they also use to socialize, and they also spend a lot of time practicing with weapons so they can protect their herds from human and animal predators. The women usually tend to the home front, which means they do the gardening, basket-weaving or clay-making, and cure and work leather. As they are often mobile, pastoral nomads gather in groups less than 120 people in size. They follow a single god, the god of their tribe. This god is somewhat like the hunter gatherer's habitat god but is centered around kinship relations rather than around the habitat. This god rules over everything that happens to the tribe, the hunt, war, and the herd, and aids them against their enemies. Tribal gods' motivations are more human than gods of the habitat or wounded nature.

[need example of nomadic herder divinity. a tribal divinity. narrated by a believer]

City Dweller (Luck)

The most important thing to remember about city dwellers is that no matter whether they claim descent from hunter-gatherers, nomadic herders, or agriculturists they lose touch with their ancestral beliefs. If descended from Hunter-Gatherers they lose touch with the Habitat, for the living forest is difficult to find in a city. If descended from agriculturists, the wounded land is likewise missing. In the city the land isn't just wounded; it's dead. If descended from Pastoral Nomads, they lose touch with their tribe, forced to dwell where they can in the city. Divorced from their old ways of life, they also become divorced from their old gods, who seem increasingly irrelevant over time as generations grow up in cities. Moralists from Babylonian and Roman times to now have always complained that city dwellers were not as pious as their country cousins and have blamed this on the younger generations. City dwellers tend to blame bad things on chance, on other mortals, or on hidden conspiracies rather than blaming the gods. On the other hand, when good things happen they are likely to accept good fortune as their due or thank the stars for a lucky break. This is not to say that city dwellers follow no religion, for many are religious. But city-dweller religion is likely to be an elaborated and formalized version of the ancestral religion, and many once meaningful rituals may lose their original importance and immediacy. For instance, city-dwellers descended from hunter gatherers may worship the city itself as the habitat or the founder of the city as a divine ancestor, descendants of agriculturists may adapt their pantheons to city life so that instead of crops the gods rule over architecture or music, and descendants of herders may worship the father of their tribe as the father of everybody.

[need example of city divinity of some kind or another.]

Symbols

Draw one or two of the symbols that worshippers use to identify fellow worshippers, or that priests and temples use for adornment. These symbols are likely to be tools that the gods used, or other items from well-known myths. For example Vikings might represent Odin the lawgiver with a cauldron and a noose, Thor the warrior with a hammer, and the evil trickster Loki with mistletoe.

If you want to develop this further you should concentrate on symbols from everyday life. These symbols are likely to come up in play, and they will make your game world lifelike because Myth and symbol and belief intertwine as they do in the real world, and religion is not just important in the temple on holy days. You may want to decide on symbols for gender roles, good and evil, life and death, nobility and disrepute.

Example: Five male Morsimoi adventurers dressed in dark blue enter the Jindaran village of Hierfol. Unknown to them the locals reserve that particular shade of blue for eligible young men, and the spring fertility dance is only a few hours away. The Morsimois suffer insults from jeering local warrior maids and wonder why everyone is so jolly yet unhelpful in their presence.

[NOTE: The classic example for symbols meaning different things is the color white. In east Asia white is traditionally the color of death, worn during mourning. In European cultures white is the color of virginity and unsullied pureness of heart, and it is worn by brides at weddings. "The bride wore white" has a very different meaning in the two cultures.]

Sacred Stories

When is a story sacred? A story is sacred when it expresses something about the world which is essentially true. A story is sacred when it concerns itself with religion and the divine presence, or with the people's history, in a truthful, serious way. Myths and legends are sacred stories. They are believed and told as true. Fairy tales, jokes, and other forms of narrative are not sacred. Fairy tales may involve the gods. They may involve figures who are also part of legend or myth, possibly in an insulting or embarrassing way. But the key is that they are not believed, fairy tales are told to amuse listeners. The important difference between myth (sacred) and fairy tale (mundane) is belief.

Anthropologists distinguish between two types of sacred story, the Myth and the Legend. The first kind of sacred tale, the {it Myth}, involves creator gods and other divine figures from a setting outside of time and history. The second kind of sacred tale, the {it Legend}, involves heroic mortals who once won a war, founded a city or profession, brought religion from the gods to the people, or who accomplished some other task worthy of acclaim. Both Myth and Legend are sacred stories; both are important parts of religion. All sacred stories are True, though they are generally interpreted metaphorically rather than taken as detailed descriptions of historic events.

The nature of truth is worth a mention here. In most pre-literate societies truth was not judged by letter-perfect fidelity to detail, but by the right spirit: the spirit of the law rather than the letter of the law. Under this definition of truth a sacred story consists of a True kernel, which may not be changed without making the story false, and the rest of the story, elaboration which may be changed or emphasized differently in order to apply the story to a new situation or even to change its moral message.

Players might think that Myths and Legends are side issues to their business of wandering around the world looking for trouble. It's up to every GM to decide the worth of sacred stories in the campaign, but they can be a lot of fun and they supply convenient opportunities for the fiendish GM to create plots based on old prophecies, mistaken identities, holy wars, and all-around confusion. Secret treasures and powers might even be hinted at in old legends or in little known variants of widely told tales. If the GM keeps a balance and doesn't always use sacred stories to presage disaster then players will enjoy some sacred stories in the campaign.

Sacred stories can also serve as territory for exploration. Many people have played through the AD&D modules that took them into the world of Alice in Wonderland. These adventures were high powered and dangerous, the familiar setting emphasized roleplaying instead of hack and slash gaming, and they were a lot of fun. After setting the stage by integrating myth and legend into your campaign how about giving your players an experience they'll never forget and sending their characters directly into the lands of myth, where they can meet the gods before they finished all their adventures and maybe witness a mythic episode that has been long forgotten? Mythic explorers who are intimately acquainted with the Myth they have entered will have a much easier time of things than would strangers. Those unfamiliar with a Myth will not even know who they can trust or whom to run away from, and when the characters are as totally outclassed as they will be by gods on their home ground your players will need every little edge they can get. When PCs fiddle with the mythic landscape it can have any effect that the GM likes. If the GM has grown weary of a campaign, it would be a good time to make big changes in a campaign that has grown stale. People who wander through myth are playing with raw power, and players of such characters should expect to have a large impact on their campaign. Mythic exploration is a very unusual twist for most roleplayers and well worth trying. If your players play especially pious characters you should definitely look into it, as a reward for good play.

[CARTOON: bunch of nerdy kids hanging out in the swamp, watching Thor (not Heracles) fight the Laernean hydra, saying "They'll never believe this in Peoria." Alternate, riding in a dingy watching Jesus walking on his hands on the water, same caption.]

I hope these have given you a few ideas on how to use sacred stories in your campaign. Now that you know why you might want them let's go to the practical problem of how to write them.

Inventing sacred stories is a great way to practice writing, and it's a comfortable one since you are your main audience. You can practice metaphor, pacing, characterization, rhetoric, and other important parts of mythical language. Luckily for those who don't want to do all that much work you don't even need to invent myths and legends from scratch. You can find myths and legends everywhere. You can borrow the basics for sacred stories from collections of mythology, or even from comics, novels, television, or movies. Just change the names and details enough so the players don't catch on to what you're doing, and you're ready to play.

I regret that there is not enough room on the front of the sheet to write down complete Myths or Legends. Write the kernel of the story on the back of the sheet, or use several pages of paper to write the story down at length, and jot down a key word or three from the kernel of the story for the front page.

Origin of the World

Creation or Origin Myths are stories of the beginning times, tales that concern themselves with the creation of the world and its inhabitants, both mortal and immortal, stories that involve superhuman figures in a setting outside of mundane time. The origin story reveals the most important truths and shapes every part of a religion, all sacred stories, beliefs, rituals, and even the organization of the hierarchy ultimately find their source in it.

Each religion has at least one creation story. If it has several then one will be predominant. The major creation story will be used as a template, a model for other myths, legends, and important rituals (which are mythic in structure). If you want to add variation to a single creation myth in order to confuse or mystify things, or for some other purpose, then reinterpret certain things within the origin story so that they mean different things within a private cult than they would in the wider religion. Variations in the creation story are likely to have a major impact on the rest of the religion.

Where Did the World Come From?

1. Cosmic Egg. The world was hatched from a divine egg
2. Earth Diver, carried up from the bottom of the sea by a trickster type of figure in a dare.
3. Consecrated. A god or gods circumscribed the world with a line marking the division between society and outlying chaos.
4. Drawing. The World is created by being drawn in mud by the Artist Creator.
5. Body of a giant killed by gods and dismembered to form the different parts of the world
6. Body of a dragon, treated likewise
7. Body of a serpent, treated likewise
8. Body of a god, treated likewise
9. Body of some other sacrificial victim, treated likewise.
10. Created from the spoken word of the god
11. Created by the eye of the god. By perceiving the world, the god caused it to be.
12. World is a web woven by a cosmic spider
13. Old world destroyed by cataclysm, the new one arises from the ashes
14. Old world destroyed by flood, the new one is uncovered by retreating waters
15. Old world covered with ice and frozen, new one is uncovered when the ice melts
16. Created by a god's spittle
17. Created by a god's vomiting forth all things
18. Born from a female god
19. Born from a male god
20. Born from the sexual union of a hermaphroditic god with itself
21. Born from the sexual union of two gods
22. Created out of the separation by force of the earth and sky, who were lying so close atop one another that none could inhabit the space between.
23. From a cosmic mountain
24. From a cosmic mound of earth or dirt
25. Created out of chaos
26. Created out of the void
27. Created out of night
28. Created out of water
29. Created out of other sorts of elemental matter
30. Created in a welter of elemental cross fertilization, as void begets earth who begets desire and sky then begets sea and air with sky and so on, etc. etc. etc., and on to other gods, giants, spirits, and eventually to animals and the people.
31. Created by warriors as an accidental result of their battle
32. Stolen from a cosmic ruler or king

Origin of the People

1. The pattern here will follow the pattern of the origins of the world. It repeats the same themes.
2. Emerged from another place
3. Created out of Mud
4. Created out of Stones
5. Created out of Dragon's Teeth
6. Created out of other elemental matter
7. Created out of body parts of another being
8. Created from animals
9. Created from plants
10. Descendant of gods and giants through many generations that thin bloodlines and dilute tribal power
11. Hatched from eggs
12. Created by tears of a god
13. Banished from Paradise
14. Tricked into giving up eternal life
15. Find plant or elixir of wisdom or knowledge
16. Born from an original hermaphrodite who divides into the sexes

Us versus Them.

This is for stories about the origin of "the people," the only true tribe of real humans. All other tribes are somehow infected with chaos or wrongness of some sort. Is not the evidence obvious? If they were good why are they not part of our tribe?]

[Need example of creation of the people. Use Aurelia's creation of the Jindar from animals.]

Heroic Legend

The important difference between a Myth and a Legend is that the Myth involves gods and takes place completely outside of time, and a Legend includes some references to people who lived within time, and is placed in a spot in history. Use this spot to summarize the foundation of an important city, invention of a certain skill, or some other important piece of the lifestyle of believers in the religion.

The pattern for Heroic Legends, as with the origins of the people, is likely to repeat or reinforce the pattern set by the myths of universal origin.

1. Ancestor of the tribe
2. Speaker of the laws
3. Discovery of horticulture
4. Discovery of agriculture
5. Discovery of hunting
6. Discovery of chief economic activity, whatever it is
7. Holy war against chaos
8. Rescuing the downtrodden
9. Rebellion against tyranny
10. Trickster stories
11. Master of magic (or of lore-master, smith, rider, charioteer, warrior, hunter, singer, orator, lover)
12. Friend of spirits
13. Friend of forest animals
14. Friend of birds
15. Friend of fish
16. Friend of insects
17. Travels far and wide
18. Travel to otherworld (upper, lower, or habitat)
19. Travel to sky
20. Builder of many things
21. Founder of the city

Divinity

The divinity section is a small space for you to briefly record the divine figures in the game-world religion you are creating. First, pick your theology, whether the divine presence appears as pantheism, polytheism, henotheism, dualism, monotheism, duotheism, or atheism to its worshippers. Next, write the name of the divinity. If divinity has many names write them all down. If there are many divinities list the most important ones here. Finally, for the miracles provided by the religion jot down which mortals get them, and roughly what miracles do. There isn't enough room to write much on miracles here. Use the rules for divine spheres of interest elsewhere in TMM or the official rules of the game you play to decide who gets what miraculous abilities.

Theology

What is the composition of the divine presence? How many and what kind of gods are there? Theology is heavily influenced by culture: Hunter-Gatherers are usually Pantheists; Agriculturists are usually Polytheists or Henotheists; Pastoral Nomads are usually Monotheists; and City Dwellers could believe anything of their gods but lean towards Atheism. Select one of the Isms from the italicized choices that follow Divinity on the sheet.

If you find the thumbnail descriptions of the various "isms" insufficient take a look at the Divinities for more complete descriptions, and a lot more you can do with divinities than the purpose of this chapter allows.

[PICTURE: several arrangements for theology. Group of deities together for pantheon. Perhaps they should be feasting? Have a two-faced god to represent a duotheism. Moses-like figure throwing a horned satan-like figure (female?) out of heaven to represent dualism. Another Moses-like figure (female but beardless?) surrounded by winged babies and angels. A tombstone with "GOD R.I.P." for atheism?]

Pantheism: Typical of hunter-gatherer religion, pantheism sees the world as a magical place filled with spirits. The world itself is divine and worthy of mortal worship. The magical world, or Habitat, is god, and mortals are like god if they live fully in the world. Pantheistic religion involves one god, who created (our part of) the world, and who is the living spirit of the world. Pantheist religion often includes shamans as the primary religious specialists. Shamans are the ones who actually travel to the Otherworld to visit and obtain blessings from the god of the habitat. The god would probably look like a powerful animal in the habitat or a chief or powerful warrior, or even like the habitat itself.

Polytheism: Typical of much agriculturist religion, polytheism sees the world as an inimical place where mortals are forced to work long and hard so they may survive. The gods control the powers of nature, such as rain, storm, and sun, and natural processes such as birth, growth, and death. Polytheistic religion involves many gods, and most worshippers worship all of them. When they have a problem they will beg a blessing of the god most appropriate to their goals. Because each year brings new problems, polytheists think it's a good idea to stay on good terms with all the gods.

Henotheism: When a religion elevates a single god to the position of universal ruler and then brings a number of other deities under the supreme god's wing, then you have a Henotheism. Whether the supreme god is the leader of a vastly inferior pantheon of gods, or the supreme god is the only divine spirit allowed to claim the title of god and all the lesser spirits are called angels and devils and spirits, it is still Henotheist. Henotheism invariably results from conquest when one people conquers another and absorbs their gods into subservient or hostile roles in its religion.

Dualism: Typically a civilized development of polytheistic agricultural religion, dualism perceives the world as an eternal war between the armies of good and evil. We are good; our enemies are evil. The world may have been created by the Good God, in which case the Evil God tries to tempt people away from the right path and into a horrifying otherworld. Alternately, if the creation story says that the world was a creation of the Evil God then the Good God's mission is to purify mortal spirits, to allow them to loosen their divine spark from the dross mortal existence, so they can win their release from the cruel, evil world. Generally the god of good rules the sun, rain, life, healing, love, and birth, while the god of evil reigns over the dark earth, storms, disease, strife, and death.

Monotheism: Typical of the religion of pastoral nomads, and almost always patriarchal in outlook, monotheism sees the world as a competition for scarce resources between the tribe and all others, who are evil and outsiders. The patron god of the tribe is jealous of other gods and does not allow his people to worship them. The origin myths reveal that the patron god also created the world and the tribe, while other people, and the universe outside the boundaries of the world proper, were created by demons or tricksters.

In a nomadic society, the patron god claims only one tribe. But if nomads settle into agriculture or city dwelling they may lose their old religion. If they retain their religion it is because their tribal god is everybody's god, the only god for the whole world. Such a universal monotheism requires evangelical behavior such as missions and crusades from believers, and it is also likely to eventually evolve into Henotheism as the religion takes in converts and absorbs some of the features of Polytheistic and Pantheistic religions.

Duotheism: A mixture of pantheism and dualism, duotheism posits the existence of two opposing gods, who work both together and against one another, and who are also part of one another. Together they rule the entire world: One is male and one female; one is the sun and one the moon; one is multiple and the other, solitary; one is active and one passive; and so on. Duotheist gods might be represented as a two-faced being, or by the moon or another symbol of constant change.

[need picture of yin-yang symbol]

EXAMPLE: Probably the best known example of this kind of mutually dependent relation is the Taoist idea of yin and yang. According to chinese tradition, Yin represents the female portion of creation, passive, dark, evil, and weak, and Yang represents the male portion of creation, active, light, good, and strong. [Can you tell that traditional chinese culture prefers men to women?] The symbol shows that the two "fish" together make up one concept. They are joined, indivisible, not separate. Also, each fish contains a small bit of its opposite, there's a white (yang) eye in the black (yin) fish and a black (yin) eye in the white (yang) fish. This symbolizes that yin and yang are not completely opposed, they encompass each other.

Atheism: The typical result of city dweller religious cynicism, atheism takes the stance that there are no gods to work for or against mortal interests. Everything that happens can be explained by natural forces that mortals can explain and eventually control. Anything that can't be understood is the result of coincidence or luck.

Miracles

Choose the divinity's miraculous abilities so that they are supreme within their sphere of interest, even better than the other gods. A sun god could easily incinerate anything except for something protected by another god, and could see everything that goes on aboveground in daylight. The sun god might also be the only one able to control the movement of the sun across the sky, and thus able to bake the world by having the sun pass too low, or freeze the world by keeping the sun far away, or plunge the world into darkness and chaos by hiding the sun. The god of death might be able to use swords or some other tool of killing better than any other. The god of hearths might be able to calm any madness or remove any pain. The god of hunting might be able to shoot arrows farther than anyone, or to perform outrageous feats of skill such as tracking an eagle that flies across an ocean.

Miraculous abilities from the sphere may be loaned at some lesser level of power to the divinity's most faithful followers.

Though strictly speaking the spell abilities of clerics and priests in various games are miraculous in origin I do not wish to step on the toes of any game systems. I'd like to provide rules to decide which spells can be learned by various priests, to determine which of their miraculous abilities gods can grant as spells, and so on. Unfortunately this would require quite a large book for each game system which the reader might play. It would also contradict the purpose of this book, which is to supplement your game rules, not to replace them. For this reason I recommend that any miraculous abilities granted by the gods to their worshippers should be of limited power and temporary.

The sun goddess Aurelia runs across the sky with her solar wand, rolling the fiery disk of the sun hoop. When she ascends into the sky, the sun before her, the world awakes into daytime. When she descends to her mountain home in the upperworld the world goes to sleep.

She has absolute power over the sun and everything that it brings. Nobody else can control the sun, nobody else can use the wand with which Aurelia steers the sun in its career across the sky.

The miracles that Aurelia grants to her faithful will be connected with her abilities and her myths. She can grant to her faithful the power to resist heat and flames, run vast distances in a day, see a long ways, ascend into the sky, and to prepare holy items to hold these abilities. When she grants an ability to a worshipper it has about a day's duration, from dawn to dusk. When translating the miracles she grants her followers into a game, grant Aurelia's faithful a fire resistance ability, a far traveling ability such as teleport or the ability to travel about seven leagues (21 miles) over any terrain in a day, to see a mouse a league away, fly, and some kind of ability to enchant items. Of course a beginner won't get all these abilities, and the full range will only be available to important believers such as high priests.

Game Attributes for Divine Figures

In some campaigns the game attributes of the gods will be important. In others they will be unnecessary. If you plan to involve the gods directly in your campaign you should record them on standard character sheets and add divine abilities. If you are going to involve the gods themselves or their avatars in your campaign, you may want to follow these guidelines:

• Most gods should be the best in the universe at their specialty, sphere of influence, or profession. The specialty or sphere of a god is the mystery of its existence, the holy truth that it holds for the world. By definition, no-one can be better than a god at its specialty. If someone is better, then something is wrong with the world.
• Most gods should be tougher than the toughest mortal character in your campaign world. Create gods as characters of legendary ability, and then add the advantages they would gain as gods. The gods should be far more than simple combat fodder.
• Gods should have attacks and defenses which totally outclass mortal opponents, wearing down or ignoring the best protection or attacks that mortals might have.
• Gods should have assistants, such as demigods, godlings, lesser gods, and other divine level aid to fight off lesser attackers or to provide diversions against attacks by powerful invaders.
• A god should have a well defended home base, in which the god dwells with any assistants.
• The gods are likely to be under no obligation to reveal their identity to worshippers. Their powers are qualitatively superior to mortal skills. Thus it might be very difficult to discover what a god looks like, or that it exists, let alone the location of its secret hideout.

Ritual

A Ritual is a formal process which transforms everyday life, making it sacred and meaningful. A god or hero defines the form of the ritual in sacred time, in a Myth or Legend, and the ritual's meaning is demonstrated by the way the sacred story is told. Cultures use many different rituals, but most cultures emphasize one type of ritual over others. The dominant ritual will have an effect on the "personality" of a religion or culture. Choose a single type of ritual which is common in your religion and circle its name on the religion sheet. Under Frequency record how often believers perform all the rituals of their faith, and especially the dominant ones. If rituals are only celebrated on rare occasions write it down. On the other hand, if rituals are a part of everyday life write that down.

Types of Ritual

Use the single circled ritual as shorthand, a caricature of believers in the religion. Use it as a quick and dirty way to remember the behavior of believers. A religion for which you circle "funeral" will be very different from a religion for which you circle "feast." Use the descriptions below to get a feel for what the various rituals are and what they behavior is likely from believers.

Initiation: Growth requires a certain series of steps. In many societies when a child becomes an adult, or passes from any stage of life to another, or from one role in society to another, they undergo some sort of initiation ritual. This ritual is a formal notice of progress. The most common initiations tend to mark transitions: (1) when a child reaches puberty and becomes an adult; (2) when two adults marry and become full, responsible members of society; (3) the birth of a new member of society; (4) when an individual joins or advances in a group; and (5) when an individual takes a formal position of leadership in the social environment.

Most people who will read this book have graduated from some school. Graduation is an initiation ceremony. Before you may graduate you must pass final exams, which are an ordeal to prove you have enough of whatever it takes to progress to the next stage of life. After passing you may participate in the graduation ceremony. At its end you receive a piece of paper, a charm with almost magical power which proves you worthy of greater challenges. High School graduation, the college experience, your first date, army basic training, low-status work when you're the new person at the office, these are all initiations. Other initiations common in European society include baptism, military induction, bar and bat mitzvah, marriage, and various oaths of office for elected leaders. (end example)

A religion in which initiations are the dominant ritual will emphasize official positions, ceremony, traditions, and will have a rich set of fraternal and sororal societies.

Ecstasy: Religious ecstasy, the religious experience itself, is a universal feature of a vibrant, living religion. Religious ecstasy is the transformative, timeless moment of joyful union with the divine presence. Christians call it God's Love, or the Holy Spirit. Hindus call it nirvana. Believers in voudoun call it being ridden by the Loa, or spirit possession. Most religions include an ecstatic aspect. However, they do not all encourage normal worshippers to experience it. Many religions reserve Ecstasy for religious specialists.

There are many roads to ecstasy. Some of the roads are meditation, mantras, prayers, solitude, starvation, self-scourging with lashes or thistles, alcohol, psychoactive drugs, dancing and singing to exhaustion, or orgiastic sexuality (that our culture would find repulsive and anti-religious). The point is not that any one of these methods is the only way to reach religious ecstasy, but that whichever ones are legal and acceptable may be used by believers to achieve divine union.

Though most religions include ecstasy, it would be the dominant ritual in few. A religion in which ecstasy dominates will encourage believers to join themselves with the divine presence daily and believers will often have impromptu visionary or hallucinatory experiences.

Sacrifice: To sacrifice something is to make it sacred. The purpose of sacrifice is to make the sacrificed thing available to the divine presence. In order to send something into the otherworld, and thereby make it available to gods and spirits, you must terminate its existence in our world, whether by killing or breaking or burning or submerging or burying or whatever means are available and acceptable. Sacrifice is often used in religion to appease ancestral spirits, hostile nature spirits, tribal spirits, and so on.

A religion that emphasizes sacrificial ritual will be obvious because not only will believers speak in metaphors involving sacrifice ("Let us sacrifice for the common good." "Prepare the fatted calf.") but they will also perform many small sacrifices every day. They may toss coins in a well, give money to beggars, tithe money to a church, burn fat on the fire before cooking, or volunteer for taxation by an impersonal state.

Divination: Divination means a direct pipeline to the divine presence, but it is used for any way of discovering things when direct observation is impossible. The believer receives messages about events from the future, from far away, or from the distant past through various sensory means. Religious specialists, or worshippers who are particularly well attuned to spiritual messages, may discover messages in what seem like everyday events. A black cat, raven, crow, eagle, dog, distant thunder, fallen leaves, anything and everything will be scrutinized for the meaning it conceals.

Religions in which divination is dominant will be obvious because believers will always be looking out for omens and auspicious or inauspicious signs.

Feast: Feasts are a common way of socializing, and they are also often used to celebrate religious occasions. Feasts may be celebrated at any time for any reason, but marriage, funerals, victory at way, and communal holidays are especially good excuses for feasting.

Worshippers of a religion in which feasting is a dominant ritual will be wonderful people to visit, though you find yourself eating far too much at their tables. Many believers will be fat, self-described as "pleasingly plump," and meals will be frequent and filling.

Funeral: Every society has funeral rites, for every society needs to recognize its dead, and no society wants ghosts of the dead to haunt the living. The theory behind funerary rituals is that ghosts do not understand they are dead. The living hold funerals to inform their dead relative or friend that they are dead, to point the proper direction in which to travel, and to appease them, to convince the dead that the living remember them.

A religion in which funerals are a dominant ritual will be gloomy. Believers will often talk about death, the afterlife and ghosts, and spend a lot of time, effort, and money getting ready for their own funerals. Such a religion might also develop a good bit of expertise in the banishment of ghosts, and this expertise could prove to be useful to many adventuring parties, though the company of a gloomy exorcist might be irritating.

Parade: When a lot of people walk through town carrying some kind of sacred object it's a sacred parade. Parades are used to welcome something good or banish something bad. Generally, when the parade is intended to welcome something it starts at the outskirts of the town, circles the outside wall, then enters at a main gate and winds through all the streets before reaching the center of town. Banishment follows the opposite route, though it might take a more direct path along the straightest road out of town.

A religion in which the parade is a dominant ritual will emphasize daily travel. It could be a religion for nomads or hunter-gatherers, or it might be a remnant of a former nomadic lifestyle for a people who have settled down.

Holiday: There are two sorts of holiday, the theofest and the ecofest. A Theofest celebrates a time sacred to a god because of some mythic act. An Ecofest celebrates a time that is sacred because of some change in the cosmos, the seasons, or the yearly rhythm of life.

Theofests commemorate an occasion in the life of a god or hero: birth; death; conquest; creation of the world; or some other important occasion. The celebration at this time is likely to involve a ritual reenactment of the myth. A ritual intended to celebrate the god's creation of the world will include a symbolic creation of the world. The symbolic destruction of the old world may be a major part of such a festival. For example, the Roman Saturnalia, which immediately preceded New Years, was just such a festival in which social bonds were broken to symbolize the chaos before Jupiter became the ruler of the gods. For one day a year Rome dissolved into chaos: Slave-owners and slaves changed roles; marital fidelity was replaced by anonymous orgies in which masks concealed identities; the rich dressed as beggars and fed the poor in huge feasts. By reenacting the myth believers strengthen it and reinforce their way of life.

Ecofests, on the other hand, commemorate a yearly occasion, such as the winter solstice, the full moon, annual flooding, the harvest, planting, first fruits, midsummer, or some other environmental occurrence. For example, the rituals for the harvest will include practical activities such as actually harvesting the grain and storing it, and will also include feasts, sacrifice, and ecstatic rituals (such as dances and drinking bouts). The celebration consists of many ritual activities which involve people in the cycle of the seasons and remind them that they are part of a world imbued with sacred power.

A religion in which the holiday dominates will have a calendar chock full of holy days for cosmic and local events, and for various gods, heroes, saints, spirits, and ancestors. Almost every day will be of religious significance, not only to temple bureaucrats but to the common people. Either every activity becomes sacred in some way, or nothing ever gets done.

Artifacts

If you think of artifacts, whether they are relics, ritual objects, icons, or holy weapons, record them somewhere in this section. If you can't think of any right now, don't worry. Leave it for later. This is of secondary importance, though you will eventually want to fill in something so you know what kind of items PCs are likely to find in and around holy sites.

Heroic Relics

Relics are bodily remnants of heroes, saints, martyrs, and other mortals who became an important pieces of their religion. Relics provide a magical or miraculous link to the hero figure. The fingerbone of a saint, the skull of an ancient hero, the robe of a child martyr of the religion, these things become relics.

Voccius was a powerful warrior who served Aurelia and long ago became an immortal hero. Now that Voccius is dead, or more properly now that he has ascended to immortality, he has no use for his body, but worshippers can use what remains of it to reach him. The teeth, bones, sword, shield, and armor from his mortal remains provide convenient focuses for supplicants who wish to make requests of Voccius or invoke the powers of which he is the patron.

Ritual Objects

Mortals will make ritual use of many things as they practice religion. Any of the following may be used as an altar or an important part of an altar.

• Trees
• Fire
• Animals (Serpent, Horse, Cow, Dog)
• Fetishes (Cake, Shoe, Bread, Fruit, Rattle, Plant, etc)
• Bones
  • Arm or Leg-bone holds strength
  • Skull holds the soul
  • Animal Bones, hold strength and powers Sea
• Stone of Healing or other powers
• Wind
• Hero (memory, relic)
• Sacrament
• Vestments
• Holy Water
• Candle, Torch
• Sacred Well
• Shepherd's Staff
• Ring
• Grail, Holy
• Writing, Sacred
• Bell
• Altar
• Pulpit

Icons

Icons are drawings, paintings, or statuary of Gods and Heroes. As with relics, icons allow mortals who are unable to directly perceive the divine presence to focus worship at it.

Weapons

Sacramental weapons, used in sacrifice and in Otherworld journeys, and for protection against creatures from the Otherworld. Often these are copies of the weapons born by the gods.

Holy weapons may be the objects of epic quests or they may be minor items, but they should not be treated as generic items. Restrict their availability to PCs. Also, whether stored in a temple or in the home of a religious elder, the guard on a holy weapon would be effective, more than meaningless curses it would be something to shrivel the courage of the world's greatest thief.

Holy Sites

Briefly describe the holy sites of the religion. This is like an appearance description for a player character, a brief summary of salient features. The purpose of this section is not to describe a temple in excruciating detail but to remind the GM and the Players of likely locations and looks for holy sites.

[This section on the religion sheet needs major work. I think that Sites, Frequency, Look, and Central Temple are decent categories, but don't know how widely transferable they are to other campaigns. --LJM]

Typical Location of a Place of Worship

Where are shrines and temples located? Below are a few likely locales. All of them have been used as sites for worship historically and in roleplaying campaigns.

• cave
• crossroads
• forest glade
• grave mound
• graveyard or mausoleum
• island
• lakeside
• marketplace
• mountain pass
• mountaintop
• normal home
• pyramid
• springside
• swamp
• town square
• wilderness

Sites for religious activity are chosen for two reasons, divine choice and convenience. Some, such as forest glades and islands, are chosen because they are set apart within nature, a division approved by the divinity. Other sites, such as graveyards and town squares, are chosen because they are convenient for believers, usually because they are close to their homes or a place of importance to the religion.

Frequency of Places of Worship

How frequently are formal sites of worship to this religion found? Are they local and convenient for worshippers? Are they distant from settlements? How far is each one from the next one? If the religion is a religion of nomadic people does a typical holy site move with them or stay in one spot?

Temple Architecture

What does the shrine or temple look like? Are there any distinguishing features that would let the visitor instantly spot it?

Temples are often modeled after the natural surroundings or designed to include elemental affiliations. The temple of a sun god might be open to the sky so the sun can shine on worship services. The temple of a god who lives in the forest might be built of oak rather than stone, ringed with columns like a circle of ancient trees, and illuminated with dappled green light.

Shrines are usually simple affairs, simple altars with a roof to protect them from the rain. The material used to construct them may be special to a religion. If the religion normally has a unifying style to temples but shrines are distant then it may be difficult for the hierarchy to enforce its architectural standards, so remote shrines may have eccentric styles.

The Central Temple, the Holy of Holies

Where is the most holy site of the religion? Is it far away? Is it nearby? Is it located in the middle of a city or other center of trade? How many people can make pilgrimages? Think about these questions and answer them as well as you can. Then jot down just enough so that when you refer to the religion sheet you can remember what you decided.

Organizational Details

The organizational details section of the religion sheet is where you record the personality and hierarchy of religious groups.

[This would be where you would find the adjective pairs for group personality. I'm going to take them out. I think they're clumsy. --LJM]

The Organizational Grid

The Organization Grid has four columns for the most important layers which a formal religious hierarchy might have and six rows for the various orders at each layer. The most powerful members of the religious organization are in the upper left corner and the least powerful members are in the lower right corner. I'll start with the upper left corner then go on from there.

From left to right, the top (Name) row goes Divinity, High Leader, High Council, and Priesthood. The Divinity is the god or pantheon at the head of the religion. Mortal believers may not know the name or identity of the divine source of their religion, but every religion has a god. The High Leader is the mortal head of the religion, with special access to the Divinity and ultimately is responsible for every decision made within the mortal part of the religion. The High Council is an advisory council to the High Leader, and may be little more than jealous puppets of a leader who tightly grips the reins of power, or they may wield the real power and order the Leader around. In any case, they oversee the Priesthood and are responsible for day to day decisions that involve more than one priest. The Priesthood is the organization of religious specialists who tend to the ordinary believers of a religion. They may actually be called priests, or shamans, monks, clerics, doctors, or what have you.

Aside from the Divinity the other positions are optional, especially for small religions. Some religions have powerful and highly structured hierarchies, but as many do not. Religions centered in cities and other hotbeds of political intrigue are likely to have powerful hierarchies. Religions followed by nomadic peoples are equally unlikely to have something you would call a hierarchy. Some religions, especially those within small-scale societies, do not even have formal priests. In such a religion every believer reaches the divinity presence directly. Other religions, especially those which have not grown to the critical mass at which bureaucracy starts to expand, will not have a council to command the priesthood. Other religions may not have a High Leader, the mortal head of the religion who has special access to the religion's divine head. This begs the question of how large a religion needs to be before it will start to build an extensive bureaucracy including a High Leader and a High Council. The religion of a small-scale society such as foragers, with from 25 to 50 members in a band, may or may not justify a single religious specialist such as a shaman. It certainly would not justify any more than that. Even a homogenous society with one religion with 1000 believers living in a valley might have ten or twenty religious specialists. Ten to twenty priests is a borderline size, almost enough to justify an elaborate bureaucracy, but not enough to guarantee it. However, if the religion grows past 1000 believers to 2000 or more, it will develop some kind of bureaucracy and High Council. If a charismatic priest gains a big reputation and lots of power then the High Leader spot gets filled. You can see that any religion of a large size will have a bureaucracy with a High Council, and after a period of time is likely to gain a High Leader as well. [Anyone care to fact-check my rules of thumb for bureaucracy and organization size? --LJM]

Divinity

Write down the name of the god or pantheon of gods at the head of the religion. Examples: Joey; Aurelia; Olympian Pantheon. Some gods may conceal their names from their worshippers, preferring to operate under pseudonyms or under the name of the Sphere of Influence. Examples: Basket-weaving; Science; The Way. The divinity in this section should be the same divine figure you already dealt with in the Divinity section of the religion sheet, above.

High Leader

If the religion has someone in this position, write down the leader's title. If the leader is an important individual, then include his or her name. At some time you may need to fill in a character sheet, at which point you should figure out a background and everything else you need to fill in the leader as a NPC. What is the Leader's name? Family? From where did he or she come? Did the leader inherit the mantle of leadership through family or political lines, or did he/she reach a leadership position by merit and accomplishment alone? Once you've filled all this out keep the leader's character sheet somewhere near the religion, for instance by stapling the sheets together.

High Council

Write down the name of the high council, whether it be "The Council," "The Gang of Nine," or "The Hierarchs of Gaith." Record the names of individuals on the council as you think of them, and if you fill out character sheets for any of them keep the character sheets with the religion sheet.

Priesthood

Decide on the title taken by the formally recognized religious specialists of your invented religion. Are they Priests, Shamans, Clerics, Mystics, Sisters, Brothers, or do they go by some other title? As you complete character sheets for religious specialists remember to keep them with the religion sheet.

Rows of the Organizational Matrix: Agents and Subgroups

After you have written the name of the divine figure at the top of the first column, look at the boxes beneath it. Below the divinity's name you will find spots for agents, groups, or orders that owe their obedience directly to the divine figure but do not participate in the rest of the religious hierarchy.

The Divinity's agents might include prophets, avatars, saints, a long-lived hero, or carefully selected emissaries. Officially these agents are likely to be secret, and most will probably be very well hidden secrets. Why they are well hidden is self-apparent by whom is doing the hiding. Gods have well-earned reputations for being able to keep secrets when they want to. Why the Divinity's agents are secrets is almost as easy to understand. Any agents of the Divinity will be independent. They don't answer to the high leader of the religion, and certainly not to the high council. Obviously the leader and the council won't appreciate agents that bypass their power, so most religious groups are likely to ignore or persecute those who claim direct inspiration from the divinity. Any divine agent that openly claims divine sanction and who fails to play the game of the hierarchy or threatens to disrupt the hierarchy will be suppressed by any means possible. In circumstances such as this, where political power is at stake, "by any means possible" is a code-word for violence and extreme actions. The lawful, legitimate hierarchy will fight to keep what it sees as its own. For example, Saint Joan of Arc, who received her mission in a vision from God and led the French army to victory over the English, was burned by the church for witchcraft.

The High Leader's agents might include a private guard such as an imperial guard, a palace guard, or the like. The existence of one such agent is public knowledge. But after the first agent, further agents are likely to be secrets, as the council and priesthood, not to mention the ordinary believers who may outnumber the priesthood by a hundred-fold, are likely to resent those with special privilege. If they catch wind of any agents they are likely to make the leader's life difficult. The leader might keep a secret police force, a spy network, or even a secret group of assassins. The choice of special agents is up to the leader. They do not go with the position, but are a matter of personal choice. Note that the High Leader of a religion has one spot for a publicly known agent, and four spots for secret agents.

The High Council's agents might include a private guard, a cloistered or fighting order sponsored by a member, or any of the agents that the High Leader might have. Several of these will be public knowledge, but some, especially spy networks or assassins, are likely to be secrets. If the High Council openly sponsors too many of its own agents then the general priesthood will resent it. Even though in theory the High Council orders the priesthood around it is recruited from the priesthood, and the priesthood can influence the council. The priesthood and their allies the everyday believers, who vastly outnumber their so-called superiors, may even overthrow an abusive council and leadership.

The Priesthood doesn't have agents per se, but it tends directly to believers, and the love of believers for their priesthood is as intense as their love for the Divine figure or figures who are the source of the religion. Priests, whether known as shaman, priest, mystic, bard, judge, prophet, seer, healer, doctor, or by any other name, are living examples of their religion, and are expected to openly display the values of their religion. It is hard for worshippers to perceive or comprehend divine acts and edicts, but it is simple to see how priests act. In addition to ordinary believers the priesthood tends to all the other subgroups of the religion, initiates, hermits, cloistered monks, members of fighting orders, etceteras.

Random Crap to be Moved Elsewhere

Structure or Hierarchy

The structure or hierarchy of a religion includes all the organizational details about it, as well as the roles that are understood as a part of the religion.

Some of the possible roles include:

• Laity---the lay member of an organization is a casual member, whose primary interests lie outside, perhaps with family, perhaps with profession, perhaps with another organization.
• Initiates---the initiate of an organization has fully joined and thereby receives some benefits such as material support in case of tragedy, access to inner secrets including magical ones, and in return has part-time or total responsibilities to the organization.
• Priest---A religious specialist in rituals, in correct sacrifices, the priest serves the community as an official at seasonal festivals and rites of passage. In civilized religions priests can become little more than scribes and bureaucrats, and in less structured surroundings they may take on lots of different roles.
• Missionary---lay member or priest, a missionary is anyone who actively recruits for a religion. There is no requirement for full initiate status, the missionary who converts you to a religion may know as little of the inner secrets as you do, or less if you are a scholarly sort. Missionary work often requires travel.
• Mystic---A mystic is one who understands how to attain union with the divine, to internally restore the way things were when the world began, before the downfall that brought people to their present wretched state, and gains many sacred powers as a result of this saintly, near-divine status. A mystic is almost always also an initiate of some religion, as in the absence of direct divine inspiration inner secrets are necessary in order to reach such exalted places of the spirit. Sacred powers available to the mystic may include any of the following, and more.
  • Animal speech
  • Bird speech
  • Firewalk
  • Spirit healing
  • Visions
  • Spirit escort
  • Spirit walk
  • Far seeing
  • Spiritual heat
  • Buoyant flesh
  • Emotion sense Shaman---A specialist in religious ecstasy, the shaman serves a community as priest and mystic, receiving powers from the gods or ancestors. Unlike most civilized priests for whom "powers" are unnecessary or even unwanted, shamans are required to display mystical powers and many are also accomplished warriors. Sacred powers available to the shaman may include any of those available to a mystic.

The Culture Sheet

Culture is a communal system for living.

This is similar to our definition for religion, which you will recall we defined as "a communal system of right action and right belief transmitted from the gods." Religion is a subset of culture, as is obvious from our definition. As with religion, culture is a communal system. Culture exists only in a community of people who have a shared understanding of life. It is transmitted along traditional lines, from parents to children, from adults to youths. Culture deals with life and living. It encompasses action, belief, habit, and everything else. It includes religion, economics, politics, ecology, language, ethnicity, and other areas. People may inherit culture, as with WASP or Puerto-Rican culture, or chose it, as with U.S. Marine Corps culture or the culture of a political party, or they may come to a culture by mixed choice and inheritance, as with religious cultures such as Islam or Christian fundamentalism.

The second sheet in The MythoPoet's Manual is The Culture Sheet. It will help you design cultures so that your campaign world can be even richer than a campaign that has plenty of different religious groups.

The culture sheet enhances the method, increasing the plausibility of several facets of your campaign world, and at the same time, it stays simple, true to our ideals.

[Notes:

I'd like to include a horizontal hi-lo chart that has population values along the top, from 10 on the left on up to thousands or millions on the right side, and subsistence patterns down the left side, from HG to Ind society. The chart should show population ranges for societies of the various types. Have any anthropologists done research that we could use to find out this information?

]

Basics

As with the other sheets, fill in the culture name, the campaign name, your name, the settings or regions in the campaign world which this culture is likely to populate, and any physical or behavioral details which might set the folk in the culture apart from their neighbors.

Culture names might be confusing or difficult. Usually a culture's name will be identical to the word for "the people" in its own language. But if you intend a culture for non-player characters only, you may want to use an outsider's name for it. It's a judgment call that can go either way.

For instance, Tolkien's dwarfs call themselves the Khazad, but his humans call them Dwarfs. If you were running a campaign in Middle Earth, either "Khazad" or "Dwarf" would be an acceptable name for their culture, but "Dwarf" should be better understood by the players, who may not be steeped in Dwarfish lore. But on the other hand "Khazad" conveys more atmosphere than does "Dwarf" and you may find it preferable for that reason. Whichever, it's your choice.

Just make sure that whatever you use as the common name for a culture is not a tongue twister. It's easy to get too fancy and end up with a ludicrous name like Llaeiowydhfanpfeorhlingg, Krto'ki'koo'keshwytzy, or Bubbalahummina that only a professional linguist can pronounce without laughing. Don't overcomplicate.

A Note on Inventing Region Names

[We may wish to place this in a sidebar as optional information.]

If you must decide on a name for a region or setting in your campaign but have writer's block and can't think of a good name, try these ideas. Usually a region is named after its biggest city, the tribe which inhabits the land, a founding or ancestral figure, or the predominant religion. Often the name for a region mentions the government of that region, such as the County of Summerwane, or the Kingdom of Blasted Heath. Sometimes the source of the name is mysterious, perhaps an insulting name for the region from an archaic language, or maybe the first official explorer to find the region named it for the trail mix she had for lunch. Discovering the source of a mysterious regional name could be an interesting quest for a party of adventurous scholars.

• City
• Tribe
• Ancestor
• Founding Hero
• Dominant Religion
• Government
• Geographical Features
• Color of Soil or Vegetation
• Joke

Subsistence, Social Control, and Economics

Subsistence Patterns are the ways that people have tackled the primal issue in any society, how to feed themselves. These strategies range from those of hunter-gatherers to horticulture, or gardening, to agriculture, herding, and the city dweller's extreme specialization. The way that a society gets food for itself will have a big effect on its lifestyle and belief systems. Herders and farmers have different views of the world, and their viewpoints may lead them into conflict, and often have in human history. Even today in the great plains of the united states herders of sheep (nomadic) and ranchers of cattle (settled) have culturally based conflicts that frequently boil over into violence, for instance when a shepherd cuts a rancher's brand new fence so that his sheep can get to the next pasture on their yearly circuit.

[The preceding should probably be moved to the sourcebook section.]

Select a subsistence pattern, a control system, and an economic system from the appropriate section. Each choice will have its effect on other choices you may make. For more discussion and explanation of these choices and how they affect other components of culture and religion read Culture.

Roles

A Viking and a Bee Keeper will believe and do very different things, as with a Midwife and a Doctor, a Prince and a Pauper, or a Professor and Eliza Doolittle. Their roles are a large part of what makes these people different. Roles dictate the individual's place in society and how society will treat him. Each culture includes in itself the description of a number of roles and how they are useful or not within that culture. These are known as role models. The most common role models are gods and heroes. A good person will emulate a god or hero, an approved role model, to act and believe the right way. A bad person will emulate the gods' foes or the enemies of a legendary hero. The god a person most closely emulates also allows others to find mythic or legendary guidelines on what to expect.

Example: The Olympian pantheon of the ancient Greeks included many gods who defined the range of roles and personalities that were acceptable to religious Greeks. Men had one set of gods to serve as their examples, and women had another set. [This example is also in the Introduction. I think this should just point back to that example, or use something else, such as Thomas the exemplar of doubt and Peter the example of steadfastness.]

Kinship

Kinship is a technical word used by anthropologists to describe how families operate, the rules that bring families together. It has two important parts, the rules about marriage and the rules about residence.

Marriage

All cultures include the concept of marriage as a way of binding people together as families. Marriage is a formal way to to combine bloodlines so that people can live and reproduce and pass on family property. Each culture has rituals to celebrate marriage, and each culture also decides who is the best marriage partner. In one society the ideal marriage partner might be a neighbor with no blood ties to the family. In another culture the preferred marriage partner for a young boy might be his mother's brother's daughter. You can make the preferred marriage partner for your culture either of these or something entirely different. Some cultures encourage polygamy, or multiple wives for one husband, and other cultures encourage polyandry, or multiple husbands for one wife. Other cultures allow for monogamous marriage only, and yet other cultures include group marriages where a number of women and a number of men share sex partners and child-raising duties. The possibilities are endless, and you have only to pick one.

Residence

Decide if the culture is matrilocal or patrilocal, or if newlyweds can live anywhere they like. When people get married where do they live? Assuming that we only deal with the first marriage for both partners, does the husband go to live with his wife's family or does the wife go to live with her husband's family? Can the newlyweds pick and choose? Can they live anywhere they like? Are children considered to be part of the husband's bloodline or the wife's? The birth mother is almost always the most important female relative for children, but the most important male relative might differ. For one thing, many people don't understand the male part in reproduction. There's a lag between the sexual act and the first appearance of pregnancy. They may think that babies are born from a wind that enters the womb, or from the river god quickening a child in a woman while she washes clothes. Even if they do understand the male part in reproduction they may not value it. A culture is called matrilocal if the husband goes to live with the wife's family. In such a situation the wife's brother is often the most important male relative for her children. In a patrilocal culture the wife goes to live with her husband's family after marriage. In such a society the wife and children may all become the property of the husband, or the wife may retain her own freedom, but most of the time the most important male relative for the children is the mother's husband, not her brother or another relative. I hope this have given you an idea of how people have dealt with the knotty question of residence, and who joins whose family line when two people marry.

Cultural Personality

There is a modal, or typical, personality for every culture. For example, many English people could fairly be characterized as "reserved," and many Italian people could fairly be characterized as "excitable." Certainly if someone said the opposite it would sound ridiculous. English people tend to be excitable? Italians tend to be reserved? The assertion that there are such things as cultural personalities seems obvious, but we don't want to typecast people based on the culture of their origin. Luckily, the modal personality theory doesn't force us to typecast. It doesn't prove that everyone in a culture will be like everyone else. In fact, people with the modal personality are a minority within the culture. But, they are a fairly large minority, and together with closely related personality types the modal personality explains the observation that often people who share a culture are very similar.

The modal personality faithfully describes about 35% of the people in a culture. Another 25% will have a personality that's pretty close to the mode, and the other 40% will be spread among the remaining possibilities. Write the name of the modal personality in the first line of the Cultural Personality section. If you are using alignments, write down the modal alignment of the culture. If you use some other system for personality that's fine too. Write down the modal personality whatever it is, whether you write "reserved," "excitable," "anything goes," "talkative," "gloomy," "pyromaniac," "batty," or something else. The other lines are to record clustered personalities. Clustered personalities are similar to the modal personality. Look in a thesaurus for clustered personalities. If you use alignments then you can probably ignore the clustered personalities and just say that the modal and clustered alignment are the same. The modal and clustered personalities are similar enough that they would probably fall into the same alignment. For example, if we were to describe the modal personality of a culture as reserved, then we might list a few of the clustered personalities as aloof, inhibited, controlling, humorless, pompous, and miserly. All of these, modal and clustered, fall into Lawful Neutral in an alignment system. The cultural personality section will help you roleplay members of various cultures in a consistent, plausible way, and it isn't too hard to use. If you want to randomly generate someone from a culture you can roll percentile dice against the culture's personality table to see whether they express the modal personality, a clustered personality, or something else entirely.

Personalities are demonstrated by the actions of gods and heroes in myth and legend, and each personality is identified with a god or hero of myth and legend. The Greek god Apollo, for example, demonstrated the right actions and personality traits for young men who wanted to succeed in Greek society.

Belief Systems

There's a little space here for you to describe cultural belief systems, which could be characterized as religion, ideology, magic, or science, or whatever. Circle one of those choices, or add a new one and circle it, then describe the belief system you chose. A culture has its own myths and legends. It may have its own tradition about the creation of the world, which may contradict the official religious explanation. There might be a legend about cultural beginnings, or perhaps a dominant philosophy such as the scientific method. Write it down when you think about it.

How did the culture get here? Every culture has a story of how it began, how it got here, and where it's going. This story may be long or short, it may depend on historical proof or fly into fanciful speculation. It may answer a question: What isolated valley or lost city spawned the culture? Which ancient precursor cursed the people to be slaves or blessed them with dominion over their enemies? These are the kinds of secrets that spawn great quests and intense roleplaying campaigns. We may not know this about real cultures, but since you are the creator of a world you can know all about it. You just need to make it up and write it down. Boom. It's official.

Attitudes

Take a few seconds to think about cultural attitudes towards a few ideas that may have an impact on adventurers. Many cultures are hostile towards outsiders and magic. Here you can record what a culture thinks of its own belief system, outsiders, science, magic, and war, so when player characters encounter it you'll have some indication of how to play things.

Organizational Matrix

The organizational matrix works the same way here that it works in the religion sheet. Fill in the status and role names for the various parts of society. The control system that you choose at the top of this sheet and the belief system you circled in the middle indicate which columns you should use here.

Band

A culture which is organized in band fashion will have no place for a single leader or a permanent council. It may include a divine entity or it may not depending on whether the dominant belief system acknowledges one. Leaders are chosen for each task, so that a good hunter will lead the hunt, a good weaver will lead that task, and someone deemed to be wise in tradition will lead religious functions. But the society lacks people whose primary role is to lead. Everybody's role is directed towards the immediate goals of society. Cross out the Leader and Council columns.

Tribe

A culture organized in tribal fashion will have a permanent council who leads the tribe. The council may be selected by any means, though it is most common to place elders, whose ability to perform useful labor has diminished, on the tribal council. The council may go by any of many names, assembly, cabinet, brethren, college, chamber, council, elders, or the party. The council will appoint temporary leaders to organize the tribe and accomplish specific tasks, but after the task is over the leader goes back to everyday life and the council oversees tribal life. Cross out the Leader column.

Chieftain

If a society has a permanent leader then it is a chiefdom. This leader may be known as the chief, warlord, shogun, king, sheik, dictator, father, pope, mother, mater, big brother, tyrant, commander, general, boss, prince, or any other title of respect or honor. Such cultures will also have a council which may be much weaker than the leader or more powerful, with the individual council members rivaling the chieftain. Use the Leader, Council, and Adults columns.

State

If society is led by a permanent government that exists apart from the person or persons who fill it, as a corporate entity, then it is a State. A State tends to be treated as if it were divine in itself. Often this comes from divine intervention, as with the godkings of the Egypt of the Pharaohs, the divine right of English Kings, or the United States of America, one nation under God. The state itself is believed to be divine, something on the level of gods worthy of worship, ritual, its own mythology, and unquestioning obedience. If you circled State in the Control Systems then think carefully about whether the state itself is the dominant divine figure in the culture you are describing.

Regions and Settings

Check it out!

Campaign World

You can develop all the regions, cultures, and religions you want, but if you haven't made your most basic assumptions explicit then consistency may still escape you. And with it goes plausibility. Last of the worksheets in The MythoPoet's Manual is The Campaign Sheet, which is designed to help roleplaying game-masters describe campaigns and keep them consistent. GMs can lend it to players who need to create characters to give them guidance. It is a good place to reference house rules and important things about the campaign world that players should know. Harried GMs can give a copy to players so they can help keep the campaign on track. The information on this sheet should be known by players as well as by the GM. It affects players' expectations. It is also nice to have a brief, informative handout like The Campaign Sheet to give to people who want to know what your campaign is like. Finally, this sheet can be used to survey player interest in various campaigns, either by filling it out and asking players if they would want to play in such a campaign or by asking them to use it to describe their ideal campaign.

Filling in Campaign Details

Every campaign should have a name, if for no other reason that it makes it a lot easier to chat about it with chums years later when recalling your wasted youth. The name of the campaign can also tell prospective players a lot about the theme or the style of your campaign. If you haven't already named your campaign try these methods: (1) Pick a prominent geographical spot in the world; (2) or the name of the campaign world; (3) or the name of a prominent non-player character; (4) or wait until you've written up the rest of the campaign description and pick a choice phrase from it. If you think up another method write it down.

Brief Description

Briefly describe your campaign. Tell the reader what to expect from it. Advertise!

Example: You might describe a campaign in which the characters are Knights of the Round Table like this.

Sir Tain of Sandwich dropped his visor into place and set his lance for the charge. "Your time of terrorizing Tarrytown Moor is through, Tanor of the Tainted Heart," he shouted out, and spurred his charger forward.

Yes, brave wanderer. You too may experience the grandeur and pageantry of Camelot, live the life of one of the Knights of the Round Table! Tarry with beautiful damsels in Camelot's hedge-row mazes! Wander the untamed hills of Celtic Albion! Ride into battle against fierce, tattooed Picts! Search for the Holy Grail and discover true peace, or suffer as a direct result of your failure. You've read the books. You've seen the movies. Now you can be one of the brave knights of yore!

Themes

Describe whatever it is the campaign involves, whether that be moral dilemmas, exploring dark dungeons and hacking monsters into little bits, economic machinations against megacorps, political conspiracies and intrigue, crawling through hundreds of twisty little passages all alike, surfing the ultimate tube wave, taming the Martian frontier, hanging out at the mall, exploring trackless wastes, searching for your lost other half, raiding nearby tribes for cattle, or whatever makes your campaign unique. Make the theme unite the characters: A goal the characters share, a shared background, or an experience that threw them together. In other words, if the campaign emphasizes one facet of the world then that's your theme. If it has no theme then this could be acknowledge that, and explain why the adventurers associate with each other, or suggest a goal or two they might like to accomplish together. The theme is important. It will unite disparate adventures into a campaign. It gives meaning and power to the campaign.

Inspirational Reading

Mention books or movies that share themes with your campaign. You may have consciously based your campaign on those sources or the similarity may come from unconscious inspiration or coincidence. If players ask for something to read so they can understand the campaign they can read this. Even if the campaign doesn't directly reflect the reading the reading will be useful to players who want to get into the game.

Mood

Describe the mood, whether it is light-hearted or deadly serious, whether characters' abilities are realistic or heroic in scale, etc.

Continuity

How tightly bound will the story line be? If each session is a separate adventure united only by the presence of the same player characters, then the campaign is episodic. If each session blends into the next forming a seamless epic saga, then the campaign is continuous. If the campaign is in the middle tell your reader where in the middle it is.

Key Words

Write down some words that you would use to describe the mood of the campaign world. You can add to the list later, in a sort of continuous brainstorming session.

Cosmology

In this section describe the surrounding universe. Describe the look and workings of the sun, moon, stars, planets, and the rest of the space around the world. This is one of the first things people notice about the world around them, and many game-masters forget to deal with it.

Day Sky

What does the day sky look like? Is there a sun? What color is it and how bright is it? Can you look directly at it? What about clouds? What color is the sky?

Night Sky

As with the day sky, what does the night sky look like? Describe the stars, moons and other satellites, planets, and any other phenomena that affect the appearance of the sky. Mention common navigational stars and major constellations.

Day Length

How many "earth hours" to a day? How do the natives break it up? What are the standard work and sleep patterns? If work and sleep patterns vary by culture, then mention it here and follow up when you get to the cultural descriptions.

Year Length

How many "earth days" in a year? How many days as the natives measure them? Is the calendar year a lunar year determined by phases of the moon, a solar one determined by the changing seasons, or is the length of the year fixed at some important number so that the festival days and even the months slowly drift across the seasons as time passes? If you want to explain the calendar system and list the names of the months this would be a good place to do so.

Cosmic Neighborhood

Where is the campaign world located in the entirety of the cosmos? Where is it in time? Is it possible to reach the campaign world from other campaigns or from our own earth? Is it located in a dimensional nexus, where the myriad planes meet? If it is a flat world, what surrounds it? If it is in a solar system, how many other planets inhabit it. If it is a world shaped like a tulip flower what is in the rest of the garden? It's much better to decide these things before the campaign begins than to be forced to make a decision with world-shaking consequences at midnight, in the middle of a game.

Population

This is the approximate population of the known campaign world.

Subsistence Pattern	Population per 100 Sq. Miles	Population per 100 Sq. Kilometers
Foraging
Horticulture
Herding
Agriculture
City Life

Race

List the common sentient races or species, with the most common first, second most common second, and so on. For instance, human, orc, halfling, elf, goblin, dwarf, and shapeshifter could be the most common races in a particular gameworld.

Language

What is the Lingua Franca, the language of commerce, the common tongue, that language which is most frequently used within the campaign? This would be the spoken language that most educated travelers use to communicate; it would be studied by diplomats, wandering merchants, and traveling adventurers of all sorts. If there are several common tongues, then list them in order of frequency, from most common to least.

In a near-future cyberpunk campaign based on Earth the common tongues might be, in order, English, Japanese, and Arabic.

Script

What is the most commonly used phonetic script for spoken languages? This is probably the script for the Lingua Franca. If there are several, rank them as to popularity. If one or more settings use ideographic or pictographic characters to write things down, then include them in their proper rank and make sure to note that they are ideographic or pictographic forms of writing.

In the same near-future cyberpunk campaign the common scripts might be Latin, Kanji, and Arabic.

Magic

Describe any special effects of magic including substances that conduct it or insulate against it, and whether magic is subject to any special laws or social restrictions. Conversely, is magic encouraged by something or other?

Magic Frequency

How frequently is magic encountered?

None	There is no magic at all. It is completely unknown.
Hidden	There is no publicly known magic. Occasionally strange coincidences happen but nobody believes any of that results from magic. Only magical adepts know differently.
Rare	Ordinary people know that magic exists. They may personally witness the effects of magic from once every couple of years to a handful of times in a year.
Unusual	Ordinary people may personally witness the effect of magic monthly up to a few times a month.
Common	Ordinary people will witness or use magic or magical artifacts between once a week and once a day
Ubiquitous	Practically every home has some magical artifact in it. Powerful people use magic all the time. Less powerful people have it used on them. Everybody knows a few magical spells to help them through the day.
Industrialized	People use artifacts created by magic, every day, for every ordinary purpose from cooking to cleaning to travel to grooming.

Magic Magnitude

How powerful is magic? This would include the average power level of professional mages, the power of magic items, whether magic is generally superior or inferior to mundane tools, and basically the overall effectiveness of magic.

None	Magic absolutely does not work. Mighty wizards from other places will be rendered completely mundane.
Tiny	One Person's Magic has very minor effects, enough to affect something up to the size of a large house cat.
Personal	One Person's Magic can affect something up to the size of an ordinary human.
Domestic	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people in a household.
Corporate	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people who can gather together, in one place, all holding hands together or otherwise ritually joined
National	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people in a nation, or to distances of roughly continental magnitude.
Unlimited	One Person's Magic effects are unlimited, can do anything.

Technology

Describe any special effects of technology including chemical reactions that work or fail to work, changed laws of conservation, and whether or not technology is subject to any special laws or social restrictions, or whether it is encouraged by some ethical bias.

Technology Frequency

How frequently is technology encountered?

No Technology	No technology other than found objects such as sticks and stones. Even flaked flint cutters and arrowheads are beyond the capabilities of this culture. Fire is not yet domesticated.
Rare	Technology is rarely found, on the order of once a year.
Unusual	Technology is unusual but not unheard of, on the order of one or two times a month.
Common	Technology is common. Technological artifacts are encountered daily.
Everywhere	Practically every home has a manufactured artifact in it. Powerful people use the products of factories all the time. Less powerful people work in the factories. The worth of a skill or a human is measured by how well it can be used for production.
Industrialized	People use manufactured items every day for every imaginable purpose. Everyone works in factories, selling the products of factories, repairing the products, or using the products. A person's worth is measured by how big a wheel he or she is in the industrial machine.

Technology Magnitude

How powerful is technology? This includes the capabilities of professional engineers or scientists, the prevalence of technological items, whether technology is generally inferior or superior to other kinds of tools, and basically the overall effectiveness of technology.

None	Technology does not work. You will have to find an explanation for why it doesn't work. Expect disbelief and loud arguments. Good luck!
Tiny	One Person's Technology has very minor effects, much less than amount necessary to affect an ordinary human being (barring ill luck and foolishness). (sharpened rocks, domestication of fire, pottery)
Personal	One Person's Technology can affect something up to the size of an ordinary human. (weapons, guns, brick, smelting, canoe, masonry, domesticated plants and animals)
Domestic	One Person's Technology effects are limited to the number of people in a household. (small bomb, automobile, sail-craft)
Corporate	One Person's Technology effects are limited to the number of people who can gather together, in one place, and all see each other or hear each other's voice (napalm, atomic bomb, train, ships, heavy construction equipment)
National	One Person's Technology effects are limited to the number of people in a nation, or to distances of roughly continental magnitude. (MIRVs or ICBMs with atomic or hydrogen bomb warheads, airplane, spacecraft, automated ocean liners, robotics, computers)
Unlimited	One Person's Technology effects are unlimited, can do anything. (free energy)

Religion

Describe any special effects of religion including rituals that always work or fail to work, changed principles of mythology, and whether or not religion is subject to any special laws or social restrictions, or whether it is encouraged by some ethical bias.

Divine Power Frequency

How frequently is sacred power encountered?

Never	People do not believe in an Otherworld, in any gods, spirits, or any other sacred phenomena.
Rare
Unusual
Common
Everywhere
Ubiquitous and Inescapable	People use religious relics every day for every imaginable purpose. The gods not only speak, but daily existence itself would not be possible without their actions. Divine entities make it possible to speak, to have sex, to be born, eat, live, work, die, and everything else. A person's worth is measured by how close he or she is to his or her god.

Divine Power Magnitude

How much Power is wielded by the Divine? This includes the capabilities of professional priests and shamans, the prevalence of sacred items, whether sacred tools are generally inferior or superior to other kinds of tools, and basically the overall effectiveness of religion.

None	Magic absolutely does not work. Mighty wizards from other places will be rendered completely mundane.
Tiny	One Person's Magic has very minor effects, enough to affect something up to the size of a large house cat.
Personal	One Person's Magic can affect something up to the size of an ordinary human.
Domestic	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people in a household.
Corporate	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people who can gather together, in one place, all holding hands together or otherwise ritually joined
National	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people in a nation, or to distances of roughly continental magnitude.
Unlimited	One Person's Divine Magic effects are unlimited, can do anything.

Psionics

Describe any special effects of psionics including disciplines or foci that always work or fail and whether or not psionics are subject to any special laws or social restrictions, or are encouraged by some ethical bias. Also mention the most common explanation for psionics. Note that {it psychic} is a synonym for {it psionic,} and will be treated as such elsewhere in this book.

Psionic Power Frequency

How frequently will player characters encounter psionic powers in the game? Are psionic abilities used so frequently that their effects are commonplace?

None	There is no magic at all. It is completely unknown.
Hidden	There is no publicly known magic. Occasionally strange coincidences happen but nobody believes any of that results from magic. Only magical adepts know differently.
Rare	Ordinary people know that magic exists. They may personally witness the effects of magic from once every couple of years to a handful of times in a year.
Unusual	Ordinary people may personally witness the effect of magic monthly up to a few times a month.
Common	Ordinary people will witness or use magic or magical artifacts between once a week and once a day
Ubiquitous	Practically every home has some magical artifact in it. Powerful people use magic all the time. Less powerful people have it used on them. Everybody knows a few magical spells to help them through the day.
Industrialized	People use artifacts created by magic, every day, for every ordinary purpose from cooking to cleaning to travel to grooming.

In a world in which psionics are very common the psychic discipline of teleportation, for instance, may be common enough that many fortresses exist that may only be reached by teleporters. Perhaps psychic teleportation is so common that a psychic teleportation shield, large enough to protect the home, may be purchased in public markets at a moderate cost. Something like this would have a major effect on the campaign world, and should be presented up front so that prospective players may take it into account, and so the gamemaster is frequently reminded of it when writing scenarios for the campaign.

Psionic Power Magnitude

How powerful are psionic abilities? This includes the powers of professional psychics, the availability of psionic foci, whether psionics is generally inferior or superior to other kinds of tools, and basically the overall effectiveness of psionics.

None	Magic absolutely does not work. Mighty wizards from other places will be rendered completely mundane.
Tiny	One Person's Magic has very minor effects, enough to affect something up to the size of a large house cat.
Personal	One Person's Magic can affect something up to the size of an ordinary human.
Domestic	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people in a household.
Corporate	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people who can gather together, in one place, all holding hands together or otherwise ritually joined
National	One Person's Magic effects are limited to the number of people in a nation, or to distances of roughly continental magnitude.
Unlimited	One Person's Magic effects are unlimited, can do anything.

Character Creation Guidelines

Rule System

What rules system are you using? If it is a published rules system, give its name, edition or publication date, and the company that produces it. Your players may want to procure a copy of the rules for use in the game.

House Rules

List any house rules you use. If your house rules are particularly extensive, you should write them down in a separate place and be ready to show them to someone who asks.

Recommended

Describe the recommended procedure for the development of new characters, including appropriate character classes or skills, levels or point totals, age, race, setting of origin, and so on.

Discouraged

List the things that you don't want to deal with, including character classes, personality features, skills, levels or point totals, age, race, homeland, and so on, that might seriously disrupt play balance or the enjoyment of the gamemaster or the players.

Equipment

List the equipment that you will allow beginning characters to have, and the equipment you won't let them have. You may want to put a simple monetary limit on equipment; that's up to you.