I have never really liked the religious aspect of RPGs, probably because I'm not a religious person in real life. When I was younger I do admit to perusing the Deities & Demigods book and marveling at the uber stats, wondering how high a level one must be to kill a god? That became one of my problems with religion in games; if a god could be killed by a mortal, was it really a god? In my mind, the answer was "no" because gods create mortals. No, gods create life. No, that's still not right; gods create EVERYTHING! So how could a puny mortal kill a god?
Well, that is one of my hangups with religion in RPGs, but beyond that the problem goes deeper. I've never been a fan of playing clerics/healers. In fact, in all of my years of gaming, most people that end up playing clerics in my games do so because the party needs a healer and not because that the class they really wanted to play. Now, I know there are tons of people that like playing clerics/healers out there, I've just encountered very few of them myself. Clerics seem boring to me, mostly because there are very few heroic examples of clerics in pop culture. So that's another hangup I have with religion.
Yet another is that most games have pantheon of gods that include dozens of deities and I can never keep track of them all. Who was the god of festivals again? Wait, how can two gods be the God of War? There's a God of Magic? Don't all gods use magic? If so, is the God of Magic more powerful than the other gods? There are more issues that have entered my mind in trying to reconcile pantheons in RPGs, but you get my point.
One more hangup is the separation of "divine" magic from all other forms of magic. Why can't a wizard cast cure wounds? Why can't a cleric cast magic missile? The answer is usually that those spells aren't on the respective spell lists for those characters, but then why are there restrictions to the kinds of spells that can be learned? More nonsensical issues that, in my mind, are byproducts of the game system rather than logical reasons why things work the way they do in the world.
Despite my reservations, religions are a necessary part of a fantasy campaign world. So when building my world I needed to set some rules down on how religion would work so that these hangup of mine would be satisfied and I could do a better job of representing religion in my world.
Rule #1: Magic is magic. The only way magic is segmented is via schools or traditions (depending on which game system I end up running).
Rule #2: Gods can't be killed by mortals. If a god shows up in the world, it is merely a projected image or an avatar. Gods don't visit worlds unless a threat on par with their divine nature requires their direct involvement. Even then, the gods would be planet-sized or larger. Only gods, or god-like entities, can kill a god.
Rule #3: Small Pantheon. I need to keep the number of gods down to a manageable number for my own sanity.
Rule # 4: Keep the God's unique roles/domains/spheres of influence small and clearly defined. The gods are concerned with keeping the universe running, not with the puny concerns of mortals. Spheres of influence or domains are largely mortal ideals that are associated to certain gods by mortals.
Rule #5: Religion is a Mortal concept. The gods couldn't care less how many mortal worshippers they have or what they do to honor them. The gods don't care about morality. The gods are cosmic beings and are concerned with cosmic matters, not which day of the week you stop working to worship them, how many people you sleep with or what gender you prefer. These are mortal concepts, created by mortals and enforced through religion.
So these are the rules I used to define the way religion will work in my campaign world.
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