Why D&D Polytheism is Flawed

I finally figured out why. Thanks to the boys at the THACO podcast. In their latest episode, they are talking about religion in game and they talk about "why would their nature-god worshipper care about someone being a thief?" Their discussion of this made me realize how utterly completely wrong this polytheistic model is, compared to real world polytheism.

In the real world, polytheism is more of a cultural belief system than a "religion" in the sense that monotheists think about religion. It is a way of life, a way of approaching the universe. And it carries with it all kinds of cultural motifs. The problem is that looking back at history, we seperate that. We see Roman culture as being different from Roman Polytheism. This is wrong.

Nobody worships Mars exclusively. There are no Martians. Romans believed in all the gods. They all existed. They favored some. They believed that it they favored some, those gods would favor them. And they favored Mars because they wanted him to favor them in war. They have festivals and make sacrifices to please these gods, in the hope that those gods will grant them that favor.

Therefore, there should be no St. Cuthbertians. There should be people who believe in the importance of law and they want to create civilizations ruled by law. They want to stop chaos; raiders, monsters, etc and protect the good townsfolk. And they take the steps to worship St. Cuthbert in the hopes that they will gain an advantage in life because they are pursuing his goals. But they are not St. Curthbertians.

As a human, you have no real concern about conflicts between gods. You have no power over that. You cannot affect that. Whatever happens between gods, you just accept. What you strive for, what you hope for, is the favor of those gods. Not their victory, your victory. They are not a cause.

You don't pick a god to support. You pick a god to beg for help from.

The idea that you are out trying to convert people to St. Cuthbert is bullocks. The idea that you want St. Cuthbert to "win" is bullocks. That is projecting monotheism into polytheism.

The problem is there is no defined culture. There is no Greyhawkian or Faerunian civilization that has a shared cultural basis for worshipping all these gods, that is described as a unified culture, and which operates as a unit. Cormyr and Thay do NOT share the same culture, yet they worship within the same pantheon. It doesn't make sense. It especially doesn't make sense that Elves or Dwarves would have only a few of their own deities built into some larger pantheon, that implies a multi-racial shared culture.

Cormyr (or whatever region) or Elves (or whatever race) would have it's own unique culture, it's own pantheon, it's own civilization. Anything different is just a projection of Christendom into some kind of polytheist wrapper. Mulhorand, however, was actually made right. So kudos to whatever person made that call.

As I have said in the past, all this polytheist stuff is BS anyway. There were very few polytheists in medieval Europe. So if that is the time period we are trying to model, we are failing. This is why I am going with monotheism in Novarium.

I just wish we could get away from this dumb legacy. It is terribly flawed. People really need to rethink how D&D deals with religion.

I know this is my 2nd rant in a week, but I am having a pretty stressful real life this week. My dice are coming up with low results. So I am getting a little bitter. Bear with me.