How do you make religion in a fantasy setting good, interesting, and something players are excited to interact with? So many times it feels lifeless, and then the lore spends pages explaining why none of it matters because the gods will never help the players in any way whatsoever.

>>96160219 (OP)
>and something players are excited to interact with
That's ultimately the important part.
Make it matter MECHANICALLY. Nobody cares about the lore of your gods unless there is an actual interaction with the game world happening, and the player characters gain something out of it. Having tenants that spiritual characters need to uphold is step one, step two is rewarding that with some kind of powers, benefits, abilities.

>>96160219 (OP)
>How do I make players care about my failed novel?

You don't. Players don't care about shit that isn't part of their backstory. They are authentic table to fight monsters and conquer dungeons, not help you jerk off over your self-masturbatory "world-building".

>>96160219 (OP)
>setting
there's your problem, settings are never interesting. systematize the religion within the game's mechanics

>>96160236
*They are at the table to

>>96160236
Bad news, anon, I run ERP so they're definitely here to help me jerk off.

>>96160219 (OP)
>How do I make my players excited to interact with a lore-dump?

You hope one of them wants to play a Cleric or non-atheist Paladin, then let them help you write the lore and tenants of their character's religion/god(s).
If none of your players are playing a religious character, they probably don't care about this part of your setting and will probably be bored to tears as you try to force it on them.

>>96160219 (OP)
What aspect of the religion are you trying to make interesting? The mechanical benefits of joining it? Or the effects its worshipers have upon the world and the player characters? Cause thhat's what makes stuff interestinng to the players, that some group in the game's backstory isn't just a name floating in the void but has actual representatives inside your campaign to interact with and learn more from, as well as see them put their money where their mouth is in terms of living by their creeds and beliefs.

>>96160219 (OP)
Look at how Runequest and Glorantha do it.

>it feels lifeless
Ultimately it's up to the players if they want to roleplay their characters going to pilgrimages, undergoing spiritual developments, conversions, prayer, giving and receiving sermons and so on.
But most players aren't going to treat your game as a religion simulator or roleplay their characters' faiths as well as the average religious studies major.
Religion is as lively or lifeless as your players make it, just like any other aspect of the worldbuilding and story.

>>96160219 (OP)
idk ask the worldbuilding general and stop killing threads.

>>96160539
this isn't /tgg/, we don't have to put every single discussion in a general

>>96160219 (OP)
>How do you make religion in a fantasy setting good, interesting, and something players are excited to interact with?
Run adventures or have NPCs that/who get the players interested in your lore. If you are a GM who makes the lore compelling, your players will be interested in asking more. Do not try to force it on them or they will find you annoying.

You simply cannot force player interest in your amateur writing. It won't work. Stop trying. It's tedious. You write the lore for you, because you find it interesting.

Drip-feed it through descriptions of places, people and things, and through the dialogue of your NPCs. If your players get interested and ask, then drip-feed them tidbits as well. Then if they want to read your lore, offer it.

I write massive lore documents. My most recent homebrew world is about 100 pages long. What I asked my players to read, before the game started, was under 250 words. One of them played a Warlock and eventually got super-interested in the demonic power he chose as his patron from a list I gave him. Another was a half-orc priestess and she decided she wanted her character to be super-pious after a couple of the adventures had touched on religion, and she read like 5 pages of my lore because she wanted to.

You cannot force your players to care about your lore. Trying will have the opposite effect. Write it for you. Drip feed it. Make it available if your stories and characters are compelling enough that your players wanna read more about it.

>>96160539
Talk about the things you're interested in and stop trying to police the conversations other people have, you fucking douche bag. If you didn't want a thread to die then you shoulda fucking posted in it.

>>96160219 (OP)
I've thought about this a fair amount.
Most of the time players do not want to be heavily limited in what they can and cannot do for reasons that don't make immediate sense, and players want to be able to internalise the list of unusual things about the world fairly easily.

Making a fantasy religion or fantasy pantheon good for an RPG is like many other aspects of worldbuilding. You need to have things players can use as shorthand and comparisons for our world, and you shouldn't change everything just for the sake of it.
There is a sliding scale of immersion, and it is not the same for everyone.

I like to use measurements and calendars as an example.
>Calling your months august and october implies the existence of a man namd Augustus and the use of roman numbers (but the moving of those numbers around by the insertion of new months)
>having a solar calendar that matches our real one implies things about the planet and the culture
>having measurements match real ones, be it metric or imperial, also implies things

BUT if you demand your players memorise and use a fake calendar of fourteen spanduls each divided into three brepita, a brepit being nine glotha long... your players will be stonewalled by the sheer amount of digesting they need to do of your lore before they start playing.
When a novel presents its lore, it does so as part of a linear story that, ideally, has been calculated to not overwhelm the reader and to introduce things at a reasonable pace. It can also not explain things, let the reader assume or wonder, because the book does not answer questions. A player at your table can put his hand up and say "hey GM, why IS the fourth Spandul called Bogdabriet?"

If you reinvent everything and tell your players the price of entry to your games is digesting a massive loredump, they are gonna be scared off. Everything >>96160630
says is good, drip feed it. You can't pre-prepare it in an ideal order like a novel can, so react to your players instead.

>>96160739
and to loop this back around to religion, you need to have a one paragraph or otherwise very short description of each faith, because that is all most players will see.

MOST players don't care about the in depth lore of each god or faith. They pick one for their character, based on that simple description, and maybe remember to say "great Grob" rather than "jesus fuckin' christ"

If there are faiths that are highly restrictive, players will mostly not play them and players will hate playing alongside them. For a player to play a very restrictive religion, they need to either constantly be reminded by the GM what's forbidden (or required) and may accidentally snooker themselves by getting into a shit situation the character wouldn't have done if they'd remembered all the commandments - which is unrealisic for a character who has been living and breathing that religion all their life.

This is why most of the time your D&D religions can be boiled down to like
>Grobites worship Grob, obviously
>Grob is the God of the eastern not!mongolian steppe warriors, they venerate the horse as a powerful partner and what makes life possible
>Grob has the War and Travel domains
>It is forbidden to mistreat your horse, but it is permissible to kill the enemy's horse if you also kill him in battle at the same time
>Grobites culturally shun heavy armour, heavy burdens, and staying in one place, as a result of their nomadic lifestyle.
>They say "What a man and his horse may carry, Grob blesses, but nothing more"
even that is probably too long.

You can have more detail, but it needs to be optional.
You can also have gaps where the detail goes, and fill it in as players ask questions - or let players help fill it in - but there needs to be enough of a skeleton to hang world design off, and there needs to be enough of a skeleton to help indecisive players make up their minds. Limitations breed creativity, but they also force decisions.

>>96160557
If 40gay thread get told to stay in their general, then so should you guys.

>good
It has to function as a religion, portrayed with aspects of religions that have had success (or at least prominence), and has to have a considerable following as past religions have.
>interesting
It has to meet the interests of your target audience, because there's no way to make anything's objective state of being "interesting".
>exciting
It has to excite your target audience, because there's no way to make anything's objective state of being "exciting".

>feels
I'm sorry you feel that way.
Some people find that kind of lore interesting and exciting.
Personally, I could give two shits about lore in a game, but I at least have the understanding that different people want different things, and that you have to know your audience in order to play to their tastes.

Your thread sucks.

>>96161144
>>96161744
:0

>>96160219 (OP)
Like what >>96160234 said. If it doesn't fit in mechanically with gameplay. (Via powers, hooks, etc.) It's just pointless fluff.

In the Broken Empires those that are "Clerics" or "Warlocks" and get their powers via others like gods/demons/fae/etc. casting spells/miracles cost favor. So you need to do things to keep your favor up from prayers and offerings. Though miracles that help your god and all might not cost as much as they would if it just for you and all. So I would recommand something like that for your "devote classes."

>>96164705
Is that RPG even out yet? I can't tell if it's actually doing something new or if it's just a kitchen sink of derivative mechanics.

>>96160219 (OP)
I liked how Fading Suns handled religion. There's doctrine and very strong evidence that the spiritual realm exists, but most of the focus is placed on the institutions that spring up around all that. The exact nature of God, gods, and/or spirits is kept mysterious.

>>96160219 (OP)
Unironically - commandments.
Make a bunch of rules a god demands from their followers. The more of them they fulfill the higher the favor of the god, and in case of clerics the more powers they can access.

>>96160219 (OP)

If it doesn't affect the day to day life of the setting in a way that makes sense, leave it out.

It's okay for a god to be evil, or crazy, as long as people act like they live under an evil or crazy god, and so forth.

i.e. in my setting CE is a massive, world ending threat if they ever get a foothold. If LG had enough resources to take on CE by themselves, they wouldn't have a word to say to anyone else but the risk is so dire and CE's potential power so great that they have no choice but to ally with LE, L, G, and CG, resulting in the powers that be celestial and terrestrial pretty much forcing policy that those factions *have* to get along as much as possible, awkward though that may be sometimes, with E and C being fair game but also in position to play kingmaker as it suits them.

Thus LE gets to have their temples even if everyone else thinks they're assholes, which sets off the other factions doing everything they can to get some cultural distance in case LE decides to try to sneak some legitimacy for themselves.

Once it's on the level of "you're not allowed to kill her, but you are allowed to call her names. He, you can kill" having some knowledge of the powers at play becomes a bona-fide job requirement.

*If* you hold them to it. If you chinch out and "fix it" in the name of keeping the game going, you've just wasted everyone's time.

Does anyone else like the Eberron method of religions? The Eberron method is more "realistic," for lack of a better term: different competing models of the divine, some of which are compatible with one another, some of which boil down to faith in gods whose existence can never be truly verified.

A religion is more akin to a real-world religion in that it presents its own "rules of the divine," which may or may not be compatible with other religions. There is no one universal pantheon in Eberron that all gods get filed into.

Do you like it when a fantasy setting uses this method for distinguishing its religions?

>>96169598
Eberron is broadly the best I've seen religion done in D&D. Only real problem is that the individual components of the Sovereign Host aren't very interesting.

Have you considered trying to add the occasional shrine to your adventures, placed in odd locations and dedicated to the gods in question? Small altars and things, places to make offerings or conduct little rituals.

Hell, let the players develop their own rites. A couple of coppers placed in a bowl can be worth a few hours of blessing. A silver might keep the rain off of them and clean their clothes. A specific prayer, revealed by a Religion check, could do something strange or helpful.

Experimentation is key, my man.

>>96160219 (OP)
Settings that get people interested in the religion require two things. The most important, give them a mystery. How do the gods work, what is their actual history, what are their actual identity. This shit will have people talking about them for years. The second, give them actual cults. Not just clerics with their powers. Religion is a practice, so your religion needs ceremonies, cult objects, priests, followers.