Religion Construction

1

Each holy man or woman is the autonomous leader of their own branch of the sect, with however many followers they can gather.

2

There are multiple pontiffs, friendly or otherwise, with subordinate clergy obedient to their own pontiff and perhaps cooperative with others.

3

There is a single pontiff with a layer of upper clergy and temple heads beneath them, who have a layer of minor clergy serving them.

4

Individual congregations are independent, with their clergy subject to the consensus will of their parishioners.

5

Powerful lay believers fund temples that are subject to their family’s wishes, staffed by clergy supported by their funding.

6

There is no official clergy; some believers may take up special roles or provide teaching, but they are not qualitatively different from others.

7

The church is entirely part of the secular structure of the land, its clergy no more than officials appointed by the government to their roles.

8

Roll twice; the faith has different structures in different places or contexts.

1

It’s a deified ancestor-king or progenitor

2

It’s a legendary historical hero or teacher

3

It’s an abstract principle reified as an entity

4

It simply always existed since creation

5

It was an apotheosized sorcerer

6

It’s the genius of a particular land or location

7

It was an Outsider or alien from beyond

8

It was a personified natural phenomenon

9

It was another faith’s saint turned into a god

10

It was a tamed or placated supernatural entity

11

It was an artificial construct built by humans

12

Roll twice and blend the two

1

It’s the main purveyor of healing blessings

2

It provides magical favors to the faithful

3

It’s locked in conflict with a major local power

4

It supports something the PCs love or hate

5

It’s the state faith or otherwise legally important

6

It regularly hires people to do work for it

7

It’s trying to expand and needs help

8

It’s a huge economic player in the area

9

It plots secret sinister evils against the land

10

It has influence over important locals

1

Crush its religious rivals in the area

2

Destroy a heretical but powerful sub-sect

3

Expand the faith to a foreign land or people

4

Recover holy land or a sacred site

5

Obtain vast material wealth for the faith

6

Depose a hostile royal house or government

7

Smash a specific enemy faith or group

8

Embody their god with a mighty ritual

9

Erect a huge and imposing temple complex

10

Perform a tremendously expensive rite

11

Strengthen or protect its devout believers

12

Roll again; stop a rival from doing that

1

Just ritual technicians trained in complex rites, with no special moral qualities.

2

Chosen from specific bloodlines or groups and trained to serve the faithful.

3

Experts in some sphere related to the god’s portfolio or nature, though trained in ritual.

4

Sorcerers who serve the god as part of their magical studies or efforts.

5

Common believers chosen by their peers for their technical skill and good moral qualities.

6

Isolated ascetics or ritually-separated persons expected to keep a distance from the world.

7

Individuals who step forward and are accepted for their qualities or technical skills as priests.

8

The wealthier believers who can afford to keep up the expensive or demanding ritual practice.

1

It’s the war god or patron of those who fight

2

It’s the favorite god of the ruling class

3

It’s the patron of an important profession

4

It’s a devil-figure that must be placated

5

It provides healing or protection from danger

6

It’s a patron of an illegal but inevitable trade

7

It hallows the law and consecrates oaths

8

It’s flatly illegal and hated by most

9

It’s the protector of an ethnic minority

10

It provides good harvests or human fertility

11

It’s the patron of the former rulers of the land

12

It guards particular places within the land

13

It provides wisdom and insight at need

14

It gives good luck to its petitioners

15

It’s a protector of the weak and humble

16

It empowers those seeking revenge for wrongs

17

It bestows material wealth upon petitioners

18

It protects the soul in the afterlife

19

It explains the creation and order of the world

20

It prevents some type of common disaster

1

A Human Vice

2

A Kind of Demihuman

3

Agriculture

4

Cities

5

Commerce

6

Crafting

7

Deception

8

Healing

9

Justice

10

Luck

11

Marriage or Family

12

Music

13

Prophecy

14

Protection

15

Revenge

16

Ruling

17

Theft or Crime

18

Travel or Roads

19

War

20

Wisdom

1

A Local Terrain Type

2

Beasts

3

Beauty or Sex

4

Cosmic Law

5

Creation

6

Death

7

Fertility

8

Forests

9

Magic

10

Mountains

11

Night

12

One or More Seasons

13

Pain

14

Sea or Rivers

15

Sky

16

Storms or Rain

17

Sun, Moon, or Stars

18

The Underworld

19

Time

20

Untamed Nature

1

Never/always associate with certain types

2

Never eat a particular common food type

3

Give a significant tithe regularly

4

Make particular sacrifices at certain times

5

Revere/hate a class or group of people

6

Forbid a certain common profession or role

7

Forbid an activity common to society

8

Give secular obedience to the clergy

9

Pray at certain fixed places or times

10

Never/always trade with certain sorts

11

Never/always live in certain places

12

Marry exclusively within the faith

13

Do something society finds repugnant

14

Hold certain places to be taboo

15

Hide the inner faith’s teachings from outsiders

16

Make sacrifices that society finds hateful

17

Never/always make war on certain types

18

Honor/degrade a particular profession

19

Make certain pilgrimages to holy places

20

Never/always cooperate with a certain faith

1

It’s held in contempt for its flaws and failings

2

Something about it is bothering the locals

3

The locals accept it as a tolerable shrine

4

It has a good and trustworthy reputation

5

It did something recently that gave it glory

6

It’s held in utmost esteem by the locals

1

A venal time-server of desultory piety

2

A harried and inexperienced new leader

3

A dutiful minion of the local secular power

4

An incompetent shunted off to the post

5

A local prodigy of remarkable abilities

6

A grizzled and pragmatic leader

7

A charismatic but near-schismatic iconoclast

8

A practical and reasonably pious cleric

1

They have considerable magical resources

2

They’re unusually flush with cash

3

They own a lot of valuable goods or land

4

They have the ear of important locals

5

The local lord relies on them considerably

6

They have useful secular servants

7

They know a lot of useful secrets

8

They can get crimes or offenses forgiven

9

They are owed favors by other temples

10

They have a lot of well-armed followers

1

Much smaller than most in a similar place

2

Shrunken from its former size

3

Normal for a temple of its importance

4

Unusually large or grand for its site

1

A rival faith is doing the temple real harm

2

The locals expect a miracle it can’t provide

3

The leader is fighting with their superiors

4

A priest recently did something awful

5

The temple got into serious debt lately

6

Some disaster physically damaged the place

7

Some armed men have a grudge against it

8

The elite refuse to patronize it for some reason

9

It suffers signs of real divine displeasure

10

A sorcerer-priest is meddling with dark forces

11

A schismatic is drawing off its believers

12

Roll twice; one because of the other

1

It’s built into a once-secular building

2

It’s remarkably well-fortified

3

It’s connected to a secular business

4

The clergy are largely related to each other

5

It’s in an unusually dangerous location

6

It shares space with a friendly faith

7

It follows unusual prohibitions or rites

8

It has access to some ancient artifact

9

The library is remarkably extensive

10

It attracts prophets and religious merchants

11

It provides some illicit or scandalous service

12

It’s more a merchant enterprise than a shrine

13

It’s unusually beautifully-built

14

It’s a shadow of a once-glorious past

15

It’s unusually recent in its founding

16

The clergy generally hate each other there

17

Its leadership is foreign or demihuman

18

It deals only with the proven faithful

19

It displaced a former faith, perhaps violently

20

It actually is another faith, merely concealed

1

It savagely defends an otherwise oppressed or powerless group, requiring service as a price for this aid

2

The chosen among the believers are granted magical powers or occult gifts

3

The faith can bestow wealth and material prosperity on those who serve it

4

It allows an undead or undying state of eternal life for devout servitors

5

It gives practical protection against a plague, disaster, constant environmental hazard, or other threat against its believers

6

It provides political power through blackmail, bribery, vile favors, and other works in favor of its followers

7

Its principles are the comfortably established morals and beliefs of its hereditary believers, as much as they hide them from outsiders

8

It provides intense physical pleasures or sensory delights that its believers normally would never get to taste

9

It provides muscle to its faithful followers, letting them murder, beat, or terrorize those who stand against them

10

It justifies their worst impulses and gives a divine rationale to a vicious, depraved subculture the believers belong to

11

It promises salvation from an impending catastrophe that will be unleashed on all unbelievers.

12

It gives its outcast adherents a sense of meaning, importance, and power with its terrible majesty and awful splendor

1

Glorify their dark god and its vile ways

2

Expand the cult in an adjacent community

3

Destroy a powerful enemy of the cult

4

Extinguish a rival faith and their clergy

5

Perform a terrible magical ritual

6

Obtain secular control over an area

1

Unbelievers are to be killed on principle

2

Hideous appetites of the flesh are sacred

3

Unholy entities from beyond must be called

4

Unbelievers are cattle to be used as desired

5

The world must die to make room for the god

6

Secular civilization must be destroyed

7

All law but the cult’s must be overthrown

8

The god demands a terrible nourishment

1

Magical curses scourge the disobedient

2

Blackmail and threats of social ruin

3

Murder by cult enforcers and monsters

4

Mental compulsions implanted by rituals

5

Kidnapping before a hideous ritual death

6

Traitors are betrayed to cult enemies

7

Violence against a traitor’s loved ones

8

The dark god’s divine wrath smites them

9

Control of an addictive thing they need

10

Lay believers gain glory by purging traitors

1

Completely united behind its leadership

2

Obedient to leaders who sometimes quarrel

3

Tenuously balanced factions cooperate

4

Badly fractious under many rival priests

1

The leadership is insane in unhelpful ways

2

It caught the eye of a dangerous enemy

3

One of its servitor monsters is out of control

4

It’s running low on sacrifices and slaves

5

It’s been impoverished by a recent trouble

6

There’s a dangerous schism in its ranks

7

Its god is making unreasonable demands

8

The laity is demanding much from the priests

9

The enforcers are muscling their clerical lords

10

The god’s influence has become distant

11

An important member has turned traitor

12

Another dark faith is warring with it

1

It favors monstrous body alterations

2

It’s a remnant of a now-dead culture

3

It has a variety of potent ancient artifacts

4

It’s a sect of a better-known public faith

5

It cuts secret deals with the ruling class

6

It has a totemic beast or monster type

7

They live where normal people couldn’t

8

They’re cannibals or other gustatory deviants

9

They have agents in other religious groups

10

They were thought to be wiped out in the past

11

A subculture of the land is friendly to it

12

It employs technology-like magics

13

It has a lot of servitor monsters obedient to it

14

An area is tacitly understood to belong to it

15

It was once a public and powerful faith

16

It has open sympathizers among the great

17

It’s thought to hold back some awful doom

18

They only look like humans

19

The visible part of the cult is but a fraction of it

20

They serve a purpose that no longer obtains