Making Cults & Religions for TTRPGs 

"How to make a cult" probably not the worst thing in my search history ...

After your “ideas cannot be killed” line reminded me of V for Vendetta, I realized a lot of this information makes sense for factions too. Nice work, Anto!

Working on a culty religion for a fantasy novel I'm currently writing. This came up via RU-vid recommendation, and I'm so glad it did. Very informative!

Great video! You really touched a lot of great points. If I may add one point you didn't really get too deeply into but I think is something one should heavily consider, especially when making a religion, is who the worshippers actually are. It's completly possible for people from the same society to worship entirely different pantheons/religions, since their beliefs should be somehow important to their day-to-day life and different people/groups/castes/etc can lead completely different life. For example, in an empire that conquered many people groups you may have the upper class (mostly the emperor and people in his royal court, as well as generals and their armies) worship some sort of a war/conquest deity, while the peasents couldn't care less about the waging wars at the borders, as all they care about is whether their fields/nets will yield a good enough harvest to feed their family and pay their taxes, so they'll worship deities of agriculture, the weather, the seasons, etc. Another example may be a cult that worships a deity of knowledge - it's unlikely they will try to recruit peasents who can't read into their ranks; Instead they will try to get the attention of scholars and aristocrats (and maybe going to the peasents if their worship requires a human sacrifice.) Generally speaking, people from lower parts of society will usually worship deities related to specific "real" things that will benefit their day-to-day survivall needs, while aristocrats, royalty, army men and other upper-class people will usually worship deities related to more abstract "ideas" like war, purity or magic. In some cases, especially if there is enough social mobility in society, the two religions may merge over time, especially if they are separate pantheons that can accept the idea that there are other gods out there. If not, then various deities from the different pantheons may start to "fuse", which can lead to different groups worshipping the same deities in completely different ways for completely different reasons (for example, the god of war the army prays to for victory may also become the god of thunder and storms the farmers pray to for rain). For a real life example of such co-existance of religions (and you all probably saw this coming) you can look at Japan during the Heian period (9th to 12th centuries CE, more or less), where the aristocracy mostly practiced buddhism, which involved a lot of reading of sacred texsts and/or participating in grand ceremonies that the common men would either not be interested in or couldn't afford being interested in while the peasents mostly practiced Shinto, which revolves a lot more around worship of nature. The elites never tried to convert the masses to Buddhism (or at least most of them didn't try to do it), partially since the Emperor's right to rule was drawn from the belief that the first Emperor was a descendant of the Kami of the sun (a Shinto deity), and other elite clans were usually branches of the royal family so they also enjoyed some privilages thanks to that. Instead, they sort-of incorperated parts of Shinto into Buddhism as an excuse to explain why these two completely distinct religions are actually one and the same (they even made a number of large buddhist temples that were also Shinto shrines to solidify this merger), and thus each side continued to worship practically different religion for centuries.

Wondeful video! It inspired me to think about a really cool burial rite for a god of earth/stone. The dead are poised to stand heroically and are then covered in some form of thin cement or clay (magically or otherwise). Any missing parts are sculpted by the priests and then you have a statue garden filled with the encased bodies of the dead.

Great vid. Would love to see something akin to "Genestealer Cults" from Warhammer 40k adapted into the DND world. Good thing about cults and religions is the flexibility and ton of options available.

This is actually just what I needed. I just started working on developing a large cult for my new campaign, and I was a little bit stuck until I watched this

I didn't really look too into making detailed religions before. I like the examples of worship for the different gods you gave. Now I feel inspired to make a cult whose main goal is to erase all of their civilazions history.

Thank you for the resources, they will be a godsend when planning my new campaign.

The idea of saints n aspects is great can’t believe I haven’t used it before ❤

Very useful info. And thanks for the template!

Awesome, one more tool to add to the arsenal of making this new campaign! Especially with the new gods and how some followers are hated or secret.

Hello Icarus Games, really deep campaign ideas. I was looking for is building that unique cult stats. The most typical gift is Advantage vs charmed & Frighten. Each group of cultist is going to have their own unique abilities and stat block. I have looked at Fiendish Options, its good and all but its only for evil cults. Really wish 5e would give more information on cultist & priest. Thanks for the video & have a great day.

Using this advice I made a God of Tribalism/The Old Ways. Grull Keeper of the Old Ways. His tenants and followers shun large cities and towns in favor of the Primal Ways that ruled them during the dawn ages. He doesn't have saints but champions, who's stories are passed down through oral tradition. Grull demands that the civilized and the weak be sacrificed in grand hunts where the sacrifice flees for their lives and the Hunters of the tribe hunt them down. He is worshipped by the Orcs, goblins, and werewolf tribes that inhabit the Stepp Lands of my homebrew world.

Video idea: Would be cool to see you expand on an idea and talk it through, while showing say.. Using map-creation software. Can open the video with you talking fullscreen, swap to smaller box talking over it. Eg: This video you could've used dungeondraft to create an interesting cult-ish lair while talking it over. This could even be part of the vid itself, bringing in examples of how a different environment, culture, etc could lead to different cults, ideologies and organisations forming.

Anyone have a link to the vid where he talks about using saints?

So... whats the functional difference between a religion and a cult? Great video, btw

Me looking to worldbuild a religion for the god of secrets: 1:16