Over on his blog Blackrazer JB has a post called Killing Gods, Part 4. It's an interesting series and even more so because he links to older things he's written on Clerics which I hadn't seen before. I don't think Clerics, and their position in the game, have been discussed enough to be honest. I've stated before I think TSR blew it in the way they built Dieties & Demigods (and Gods, Demigods, & Heroes before it) around the Gods and not around the religions and how they relate to Clerics and Druids (and now Warlocks I suppose).
In that vein their was a comment on the post and JB's response that just lit off the creativity in my head.
Fair enough, but my point is more about one divine being pretending to be another, or even a false one. Since clerics receive their spells from divine beings, would it fit for one god to start granting cleric spell to someone as something akin to a divine false flag operation?
Hmm. I have to say I don’t find it very sensible given the parameters of the rules. Doing so, even for a trickster type god (think Loki) would undermine the faith of both the devout and the deluded.
In the end, I have to think ALL the gods have a vested interest in “playing by the (divine) rules;” the consequences of doing otherwise would be a widespread loss of followers.
I think McGrogen is onto something and JB misses his point. I think this false-flag idea could make for an amazing campaign. Imagine a God of Law has a church that dominates a continent, crushing other religions whenever they can. Like the Catholics in Europe back in the medieval period. Then imagine one of those other, weaker Pantheons, facing extinction works to divide that God of Law's church. They could support false prophets and grant spells to prove it. They might convince an Emperor in the East that they are the direct conduit to the God and the Pope is being controlled by demons. They might convince leaders outside the sphere of the God of Law to start a Holy War. They might go for regional religious leaders forcing the main god to play whack a mole trying to stop the faith from fracturing. These false flag ops might simply be distractions, a delaying action to give that Pantheon more time to do something, they might be an attempt to weaken, divide, or destroy that God of Laws church.
I think it could be interesting if a character was a Cleric of the God of Law or if they were aligned with that Pantheon (possibly unaware of the grand scheme). I think one could write up dozens of adventures along these lines and roll things out over years.
Anyway I think that would be a good way to really put the religion into the Divine classes and make them front and center from time to time.
Buildings are People had a short post in 2018 called Modular OSR Rulebook.
The post links to a G+ discussion which is naturally gone since Google crapped on everyone by cancelling G+ as well as a link to a GitHub site that also has a broken link, but appears to have unrelated (at least the design goals are nothing similar) stuff linked on the right side of the page.
So this appears a dead project, so why link it? Because the concept is brilliant and something the OSR should have done long ago.
The Idea
We are making a modular BX document that includes multiple versions of every mechanic for you to pick and choose.This makes choosing house rules and creating the best game for your own table easier, particularly for new GMs. Browsing endless blogs for endless hours to gather ideas is fun for me, but it's not appealing to everyone, nor is it an option that everyone is aware of. Think of this as a library of BX rules and procedures.
Someone should create a wiki. Start with an outline of BX using mil spec, that is every chapter is numbered, every subsection, and sub-subsection has a number as well. Then folks submit house rules under the appropriate number. We'd get a dozen different ways to generate attributes, Roll Initiative and angle Encumbrance slot ideas right off the bat.
If the site encouraged people too submit their own ideas, and noted Fonts and a few other things to promote some consistency it could make designing a home brew trivially easy. It would also create a lingua franca to assist in communication. "I use Inititative 7.3.3, thats the 1d6 for each side, highest goes first." That sort of thing.
