Ok, I'm new to the forums and wanted to write about the new Birthright campaign I have launched and the philosophy behind it and my core problem with the simplicity of D&D pantheons. Who would worship an evil god when they know the god of justice and everything good EXISTS. That the afterlife is a certainty? To this end the first thing i did was revamp the entire D&D outlook on the pantheon. No multiple gods. Anuire worships Haelyn. Period. All other 'gods' are now saints within the church of Haelyn. Their names called on on specific occasions but on the whole forgotten. Eg. Sera is remembered as a martyred merchant who gave her wealth to promote the church during the chaos before the empire and died for her selflessnes. Erik was a holy hermit who aided Haelyn during his days in the wilderness etc. The possible exception is Curiaecen, and this only because war and a martial saint would attract a powerful following in Anuire. Something close to the templars in europe. Along with the ensuing friction with the mother church. The entire church reads like the Catholic church when seen through the eyes of wossisname the guy that wrote the DaVinci Code. Dark, focused only on temporal power and Machiavellan. They alone know the truth of Desimaar. The ascension of multiple dieties etc. The whole reason of this is that D&D style pantheons are simply unworkable for me. Absolute moral values of good and evil remove the challenge of doing the right thing. I thus like moving the gods into the background and having the players interact with the church, a VERY DIFFERENT proposition. This of course has tremendous impact in basic playability of certain classes. The paladin disapears (I personally hate this class... feels like you are playing/storytelling Jesus Christ in full plate mail and a bastard sword most of the time) and the cleric changes completely. They do not channel divine power directly from the gods. They are merely granted access to the divine power of the land (an aftereffect of Desimaar and the massive amounts of energy that were released not all of which was absorbed by the combatants) through a series of rituals granted to them by the church. They are basically channeling the same energy as mages in this case (helps explain the ability of both classes to dispel and notice the others magic that was never successfully explained in 3.5) but through completely different process that gives each class such a distinct feel to its magic. A corollary to this different percieved cosmology is that the gorgon and the other awnsheighlen are percieved to be manifestations of the devil/evil sent to plague mankind for its failings. So far this change has worked out very well in Anuire. The faith is homogenous but the church is fractured. Add to this a few heretical churches that overenphasize the role of a particular saint (Sera, Avani, Neserie etc) and the templars (Curiaecen) and you basically have a much more medieval outlook to the world. Main reason for posting this was to see what the reaction is from other players/storytellers. Whether they have also come accross these problems or ideas before and what pitfalls or traps they can see in introducing such a dark dogma to the churches.