Not a Book-Blog: Being Worthy, a system-neutral mechanic for beseeching the gods for aid

This started off as the September book-blog based on Bihani Sarkar's Heroic Shaktism, then expanded to a two-month book-blog riffing on Banerjee and Wouters' Subaltern Studies 2.0. Then it became neither, because I didn't enjoy either book that much even if the ideas were in theory interesting.

(The whole post will probably be enhanced if you read Bret Devereaux' Practical Polytheism series first)

When was the last time your PCs sacrificed to a god? If you're anything like me, the answer is 'never'. In my experience of playing, watching, running and reading a fair number of games, the interactions with divinity I tend to see are:

• The PC is a 'prophet' class, including D&Dalike Clerics/Priests/whatever, with direct and reliable access to divinity - either for chats or just for powers
• The PC otherwise has a conversation with a sympathetic or antagonistic god which wants them to do something or wants to reward them for having done something (Exalted, where PCs are often on a level with gods, does this a lot, but any D&D game using gods or warlock patrons as NPCs tends to be similar)
• The PC donates something of value to a religious group which does one of the above two things for them in exchange, and then either hoards the money, uses it for components or uses it for material purposes (a lot of OSR games)
• There's some kind of nebulous divinity only alluded to in the setting which is largely ineffable, and which may or may not act but which certainly won't act in straightforwardly comprehensible ways (the only system I  can think of that does this is World of Darkness; I guess arguably a certain take on Call of Cthulhu or Eclipse Phase or something might be similar)
• (Rarely, usually turns into the above option at some late-game point) A PC believes in a god which has no mechanical representation whatsoever, in either the visible or invisible rulebooks of the game. The GM may be agnostic or atheistic about it, but the game proceeds as though the worshipped being does not exist 
• The PC periodically swears in a setting-appropriate manner
• Some combination of the above

All of which feels very transactional! A degree of transactionality is probably inevitable - we're playing a game, so we want bonuses and shiny escalating numbers, and we're telling a story so we want significant beats. But this is misplaced transactionality, because it tends to mean that gods only enter the story at specific moments when they're relevant. They feel less like the forces undergirding the world and more like very powerful wizards. And even if your gods literally are ascended wizards or w/e, you still probably present the world as though, or want to present the world as though, religion fills broadly the same function it did in our own species' history.

I mean, maybe you don't. If you're doing something completely different and just using the term 'god' for convenience, more power to you. Anyway, I would like to write a system for making gods omnipresent - something that people are always thinking about, considering invoking, but that because everyone is always doing this takes quite a lot of investment to attract the attention of. The gods shouldn't be reliable  - genuine faith in and devotion to them should still be necessary - but they should have some tangible effect for those who commit themselves.

The System 

Gaining Faith Points

You can gain Faith Points in three ways. All involve sacrifice:

1. Sacrifice Time: 1 Faith Point per complete, unbroken day dedicated to devotions, or per month of minor daily devotions. These should be described in roleplay.
2. Sacrifice Comfort: 1 Faith Point per day's comfortable living expenses given up to the deity in an appropriate manner (spent on art for their festival or temple, burned in the form of slaughtered animals or other beings your society considers property, given as food to the temple)
3. Sacrifice Immeasurables: Your own blood, the lives of beings your society considers equals, your true love etc. 1 Faith Point per year of remaining life expectancy for mortal sacrifices, divided by fraction of the body or how close you came to death for partial sacrifices (i.e. the loss of an arm might be about 1/8 of your remaining life expectancy). Other immeasurables, like a true love, will have to be arbitrated by the GM along similar lines.

All of these must be sacrificed in ways the god desires. A wild bacchanal will please Dionysius, and wine and time expended in it will qualify as sacrifices, but the same cannot be said of Hera.

Storing Faith Points

Your character may have Faith Points equal to a certain cap, depending on whether their life is of a sort approved of by the god or not. This might mean meeting moral commandments, or might just mean being the sort of person the god sponsors. Loki is not likely to favour a forthright warrior, for example.

Condemnation: 0 points
Disapproval: 5 points
Ambivalence: 15 points
Approval: 30 points
Favour: 50 points 

Favour is rare, and basically means you're one of the god's chosen champions. Approval should be the default for well-behaved priests and stringent lay devotees. Condemnation indicates that you're despised by the god, and it will be going out of its way to inconvenience you where it can (rules for this are not presented here).

At the end of each in-game month, any character who has not gained any Faith Points with a given god in that month halves their Faith Points with that deity.

You could quite simply create a tracker for Faith Points with various deities. 

Spending Faith Points

At any time, you can ask a god to favour you. This might be a quick prayer or a long ceremony, but note that the latter allows you to amass Faith Points immediately before expending them.

Roll a percentile die. If you are, in the current scene, directly working towards a major goal of the deity, roll two. If you're working against any of their goals, still roll, but any effects generated will be targeted at you (possibly though not necessarily as well as the intended target).

 If you roll under your current Faith Points amassed, reduce your total Faith Points to the natural roll (unless due to modifiers this would cause it to increase), but the deity has taken notice of you. How much attention they've granted depends on what you rolled.

• If you rolled under your Faith Points the deity tilts something under their influence in your direction in a minor way. This should be approximately equivalent to a re-roll on one die roll, or a minor step towards success that could potentially have been happenstance in non-probabilistic systems. A rope falls into your hand in time to prevent you being washed overboard your ship; your paramour's jealous wife makes a conversational faux pas; a glint of evening light catches the foe about to behead you in the eye.
• If you rolled under half your Faith Points (round down) you receive a significant, preternatural event linked to the deity's portfolio. Something about the world, the scenario, or you changes in a way that is likely to be temporary but is nevertheless positive. The sea wind suddenly drops off, allowing you to regain your footing on the deck and rally the crew; your paramour's jealous wife suddenly develops a stomach bug and must return home for the evening; a sudden surge of heroic strength drives you to your feet and your weapon straight into your foe's belly.
• If you rolled under a tenth of your Faith Points (round down) then a miracle occurs. This may include any alterations within the deity's portfolio.

In any situation where multiple people invoke one deity to do the same thing, the person with the highest Faith Points rolls. However, everyone else present may sacrifice some of their time in a ritual to give the person with the highest Faith Points more points. In any situation where different groups of people invoke a deity for contradictory tasks, roll once for each group; however, only a group with an equal or higher cap may succeed. If the other group succeeds, simply worsen the group with the higher cap's result by one step.

Note that in all cases, what is 'positive' is assessed from the deity's perspective. Don't pray to Tzeentch, Changer of Ways, if you aren't happy with a few tentacles.

Who'd be an atheist?

Who indeed. For most of human history, 'atheist' has been an insulting term for a reason. It means separating yourself from a particular moral order implicit in the giving of some of your goods to the divine - suggests ungenerosity, a willingness to see your community suffer divine wrath or non-favour for your temporary gain.  Quoting Devereaux in the second Practical Paganism post:

Consequently, ritual is employed as a tool – this problem is solved by a wrench, that problem by a hammer, and this other problem by a ritual. Some rituals are preventative maintenance (say, we regularly observe this ritual so this god is always well disposed to us, so that they do X, Y, and Z on the regular), others are a response to crisis, but they are all tools to shape the world (again, physical and spiritual) around us. If a ritual carries a moral duty, it is only because ... other people in your community are counting on you to do it; it is a moral duty the same way that, as an accountant, not embezzling money is a moral duty. Failure lets other people (not yourself and not even really the gods) down.

(Note that this assumes you are a reasonably normal person. The kings Sarkar presents are absolutely letting themselves down if they fail in their ritual duties, as they sit at the pinnacle of their communities). 

There are benefits to being godless, though. Temporary gain, for one - if you aren't sacrificing any resources, you have more to spend on lovers, on bribes, on mercenaries, or to cast upon the speculative altar of Mammon, Lord of this Earth. Also, you aren't tied to the drives or needs of the gods, you don't have to keep any taboos or respect any modestly-but-not-terrifyingly sacred places. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of people end up trying to cheat the system, making small sacrifices whilst preserving the vast bulk of their wealth in the pre-modern equivalent of billionaire 'philanthropy'.

Alright, that's all she wrote.

Jago