This is part of a series of posts on about an old D&D campaign world called Malbeth.
Go to the original Ruins of Malbeth post.
As I mentioned in the first Ruins of Malbeth post, one of the things I wanted to do with Malbeth was create a comprehensive world that included a diversity of options. One way this design goal played out is the complex, overlapping system of religion.
As I wrote in the player’s guide:
Religion on Malbeth is both complex and fluid, made up of a mixture of animistic, dualistic, and pantheistic systems. For intelligent and semi-intelligent species of Malbeth, religious practice may incorporate any or all of the three systems. For instance, a devout worshiper of the pantheon god Motsognir the Storm may also honor the spirits that inhabit the world around her. Likewise, a devout animist might call upon various deities of the pantheon from time to time, possibly regarding them as powerful named spirits. Even clerics, druids, and paladins may honor more than one system or deity, but their primary devotion will be to the force that grants them their divine powers.
In describing each of the three overlapping systems: Animism, dualism, and the pantheon, I included descriptions of how all this played out with character classes.
Animism
Animism, simply put, is a system of belief which believes spirits or souls inhabit all things living and non-living, or that there is a supernatural power whose existence permeates and animates the material world. Working with that concept, I thought about how animism might play out within the standard D&D cosmology, and wrote this:
The animists of Malbeth believe that spirits inhabit all natural existence, with “natural existence” broadly defined so as to include everything of the material plane natural or constructed, including magic. Likewise, to the extent that they are known, the Astral, Ethereal, Feywild, Shadowfell, and Inner Planes are also inhabited by spirits. While the nature of the Outer Planes are up for debate, strict animists believe that the Outer Planes are no different than the rest of existence.
Some animists believe that the deities of the pantheon are spirits of the Outer Planes so powerful that they can reach out to the Material Plane, while others believe that the pantheon deities are powerful named spirits who govern conceptual realms rather than physical locations and objects.
Monstrous aberrations and the undead are seen as unnatural and, therefore, outside the animistic system.
In practice, this means that animists might greet and thank their tools before and after using them, or touch a doorframe in recognition of the spirit within before walking through a door or entering a building. It might mean not just thanking the spirit of a spring before drinking of its waters but uttering a short pray that recognizes a bottle, cup, and liquid before one drinks.
One that that appealed to me about this was that towns and cities would be as deeply rich in nature spirits as the wilderness. The street one lives on in a city has its own spirit, as does each building on that street, and all the objects and distinct parts of things one wants to count. Ordinary practice developed ways to acknowledge broad swaths of spirits at one time just so people could go about their day, but what all this means is druids can be as much at home in a large city as they traditionally imagined to be deep in the wilderness.
Working with the original 5e subclasses, I designed divine magic classes and animism as such:
- Clerics: Animist clerics may be of any alignment and choose from any of the following divine domains: knowledge, life, light, nature, tempest, trickery, and war.
- Druids: Circle of the Land druids are animists who gain their powers from the spirits around them.
- Paladins: Oath of Devotion paladins may be animists.