DESIGNING A RELIGION (part 1)
Development of a religion (or religions) for a story or rpg world can often be a daunting task. In the past I have used a simple template to start things off. You might find it helpful for organizing your world building. Basically its a series of directed questions that I ask myself, building the religion one layer at a time.
This process is not so much focused initially on philosophy or belief system (those I usually have an idea of in advance). This process is more about the nuts-and-bolts of the religion, the "technology" that will most often be experienced/viewed by a rpg player or reader.
Its important to remember that religion and culture/society have a synergistic relationship (cult and cult-ure). Many theologians, particularly Huston Smith, assert that the source of the first cultures was the religion. The king was the priest, the religion organized the state (Sumer, Egypt, etc.) and was used to promote agriculture, population growth and its compliance/servitude, technology, and also war. The people of your city/culture/religion were good.
And thus, foreigners were ungodly and evil.
As stated by the previous posters, look at the cultures specific to your world/story. The history of your world will should say something about what religions are in current vogue. And a religion will have something to say about the history of a culture. A conquering culture will nearly always impose its own gods on the conquered, even if they are actually only renaming the foreign deities and absorbing them into the cultural pantheon.
It might be helpful to start from a preconceived pantheon of gods, if the religion you are building is for a particular culture. Or you might have only one god(dess) in mind, either one of many in a polytheistic setting, or the only deity in a monotheistic one.
But you don't need to start with a deity or pantheon. You can fill archetypes or spheres of influence as the religion/cult becomes more detailed.
Don't hesitate to steal from real-world religions. This doesn't mean necessarily using Christianity, or Buddhism, or Islam, etc. (unless your game is set in the recent world, or an analog of it), but don't overlook the more obscure off-shoots of current modern religions either (Cathars, Gnostics, Manicheans, Nestorians, Church of Elvis, etc.). An excellent book on the historical pagan religions of the Western world is Nigel Pennick's "A History of Pagan Europe." The chapter on Rome is particularly useful as it describes how the "state" religion of a city developed from peasant superstitions about crossroad-spirits (Janus) to the wholesale appropriation and absorption of the beliefs of its neighbors/clients. And even though Rome absorbed the Olympians into their pantheon, the Roman gods and goddesses were quite unique and special to Rome alone. The early cults of Mars, Janus, Vesta, Juno and Saturn are of paramount importance when studying old pagan religions in the Western mindset. And these gods are nothing like the later "Greekified" (is that a word?) pantheon familiar to readers of Bulfinch. Other good references for the roots of religion: Frazier's "Golden Bough"; and the now out-of-print Funk & Wagnall's "Standard Dictionary of Folklore, Mythology & Legend."
GODS & GODDESSES: - Are the gods of your world real? (This may seem obvious. But what if they aren't?) - Do they have an existence independent of their worshipers (i.e., most D&D pantheons)? - Or are they projections fueled by belief (Terry Pratchett's "Small Gods")? - Or is there only one real God, and all the others are lesser celestial powers/demons/angels/impostors that for all intent might as well be treated as gods as far as mortals are concerned? Or are they just psychological archetypes manifesting in the collective unconscious? - Or is there no such thing as a higher supernatural power at all? - Where then is a cleric's channeled power actually coming from?
BURIAL PRACTICES: - What are the burial practices for adherents to the religion? - Cremation? - Internment? - With grave goods, or without? - Do important people get special grave goods (animals or humans sacrificed with their master) or special monuments (barrows, cenotaphs, ships)? - Do burial practices differ within a cult depending upon which god or goddess was worshiped? - Which way is the body facing? (Early Christian burials are easily identifiable by archaeologists studying burials from the 2nd century onward, since all have their feet facing east and have no artifacts at all in the grave) - Are bones recovered after decomposition and re-interred elsewhere? - Are parts of the body kept with family members (either as ashes or bones or mummified)? - Where are bodies buried (or burned)? - In the temple, in a sacred grove or henge or mountain? - Does the means of internment differ with cause of death? (Burial for "bed-death"; bonfire for "battle") - Do burial practices include measures to ensure that undead don't result? - Who officiates at a funeral? - Are spells or magical ceremonies involved? - And what happens if someone isn't buried according to the dictates of their religion, if anything? (Do they rise as undead?)
PLACES OF WORSHIP: - Where are the dieties of the religion worshipped? - Temple? - Sacred grove or wood? - Holy island? - Lake? - Mountain? - Henge? (Stonehenge) - Cave? - If a building, is it stone or wood or bone or fabric? - Is it attended all the time, or used only periodically? - Is it dedicated to one god(dess) in a pantheon, or to several? - What sort of offerings are made? - What happens to them? - Is there an order of initiates (clerics or monks or lay people) associated with the site? - What constitutes desecration or defilement of the place of worship? - How can such "damage" be cleansed/repaired?
Examples of willing defilement of a holy site by a mortal could include the following: (a) physical destruction of all or part of site, (b) defacement of cult images, (c) theft of "Regalia" (see below), (d) prohibited behavior performed on sacred ground. Prohibited behavior should include any act classified as a "major bale/sin" (see Virtue/Bale below).
REGALIA: Temples and shrines may often contain objects of value, ritual tools, relics, and offerings to the gods. These may often be objects that are of value only to the god, and have no marketable value outside the cult (like a smooth, naturally occurring rock, or sacred bit of wood). In larger religious shrines/temples, however, these may include objects covered in precious stones and metals.
As noted before, more often than not with an RPG religion, these first sections are often all I really need to flesh out a religion that is just "part of the scenery"—i.e., when your robbing the temple, or digging up the warlord's barrow, are you gonna come away with any loot, and are the priests/clerics/wizards of the religion, or its gods, gonna kick your ass for it?