I’m sure at least one person made one of those hissing inhales in preparation of a conversation on religion.  I can go into it, but I’m sure religion and politics are the reasons people stop being friends and the phrase ‘mortal enemies’ appears.  Yet, religion is an important factor when creating worlds of fantasy, so I can’t avoid the topic.  For every race, there is a pantheon with overlapping gods, in-fighting, histories, and other details that make the gods of fantasy almost as interesting as the main characters.  I’m still going to apologize if I offend anyone.

There are many ways that a new author can go, so I’m going to list the most common ones (and one baffling one) before I reveal what I’ve done.  I’m sure I’ll miss a few though.

1. Jesus . . . I’m not kidding here.  I’ve seen fantasy movies and read fantasy books where the entire world is Christianity with no sign of any other Earth religion.  I find this to be lazy and a little insulting to other religions that didn’t cross over.  I can’t figure out how a person can rationalize having a world of magic and the only religion is one that comes off sometimes as anti-magic.  I guess if you want it to be religion versus magic, but that’s still rather insulting to the Christians.  My advice on this one is to not do this without a lot of thought and work to make sure it fits.  This goes for if you pick any of the other monotheistic religions, but I’ve yet to see a fantasy book with Judaism in it.  If there is one, let me know because I’d be curious
2. Greeks/Norse/Roman/etc. gods acting like they own the place.  It can work if the author puts in a lot of work to make sure they don’t take the gods exactly from their myths.  I’ve seen books with these gods where they’re made more human and others where they’re the bad guys.  This one could work if you want influential gods, but you simply can’t come up with your own.  Though, like the first one, it can be perceived as being lazy.  Oddly enough, you can get away with this to some extent when people aren’t up on their mythology.  I’ve met people who think Thor was created by Marvel Comics or Ares is nothing more than a zodiac sign.
3. Two god system with one good and one evil.  This is a simple system for those who don’t want to delve too far into the religious aspect of the world.  Any character that follows a religious path tends to be either a villain or an obnoxious supporting cast member.  I’m not saying this is a bad system and it’s great if you don’t want to bother with religious subplots.  It also makes it a lot easier to design temples, religious symbols, and everything else that goes with a detailed pantheon.
4. Gods that are worshiped, but are never seen.  This is another easy one, but it allows a fantasy author to be more detailed.  The priests worship the gods for holy magic or try to convert, but their gods are never seen or heard.  You can throw atheists into this world too, which is always fun.  The trick to this one is to have phrases from the characters that incorporates the gods’ names, so the reader gets the feeling that the gods are important to the world.  Otherwise, they may come off as lackluster.
5. Warring gods to push the plot.  This one is simple.  Every god hates each other according to their priests, so every war and event has something to do with them.  Not much else to explain on this one.
6. Gods that are present.  This is probably the most difficult because you have to give personalities and details to your gods instead of them only being a name, a symbol, and a group of followers.  You have to decide on their histories, their relations, how they interact with mortals, and so many other details to make them be a factor in your stories without taking over everything.

This brings me to Windemere and what I’ve learned about making religion in a fantasy world.  I have learned that it’s a lot of work.  I have a file that is a 3-4 page pantheon with the gods, what they’re in charge of, and their symbol.  This can be helpful if you want a lot of gods to choose from, but you have to accept that some of them might not ever appear in the books.  I found that making pantheons are difficult because you have to make multiple gods for each category.  You can cheat to some extent, but typically every pantheon needs a chief (Odin, Zeus, etc.), war, love, wisdom, and death god.  Dwarves always need an alcohol god and elves always need a forest god.  Orcs get fury, gnomes get invention, etc.  I decided to go another route and make an event that forced the pantheons to merge in order to survive after many of the gods died.

Another challenge here is the influence that your gods will have.  If you go for the Greek method then they’re going to be causing trouble everywhere and you better be ready for it.  In fact, you might find yourself writing a story where mortals head out to kill or battle the gods just to get them off your back.  There are various ways to solve this influence problem.  One is giving the gods a simply apathy toward mortals and they’re only interested in the attention.  Another is that the gods act rather human, which means most of them won’t get thoroughly involved in the lives of mortals.  A third option is that there is a self-imposed law on the gods that prevents them from getting physically involved.  I did a little of the first two ideas, but I created the Law of Influence to keep the gods at bay.  Personally, I think this law brings a sense of caution and fear to the gods that allows a reader to be more interested in them.

Now, you can do a fictional religion any way you want.  You can make sure every character has a god to follow even if they never mention it in the story.  You can make religion only for the priests and those who need guidance.  The great part about designing religion in a fantasy world is that you can do almost anything. You can even leave religion out entirely and never mention a god or use a priest.  This option might be the easiest because I will admit that keeping track of all the gods of Windemere gets a little confusing.