Roleplaying chaos as a religion

July 18, 2018 10:03 AM

What rules, traditions, and beliefs would a religion that worships a god of chaos follow, and how might one role play this as a player? I have developed a character for a Dungeons & Dragons 5E game, a pirate monk who follows a chaotic god of the sea and storms. I'm having a bit of trouble mentally reconciling what an organized religious order that lives by the tenets of chaos would look like. Clarifying details and back story inside.

Character is a wood elf who was a juvenile delinquent teenager sent to a coastal reform school. While there, she was captured by a band of sea-god worshipping pirates and decided to join them. My gut feeling is that this religious order demands absolute loyalty, has a strongly hierarchical structure, and likely follows a strict code, despite worshipping the forces of chaos as represented by the unforgiving ocean. But I am totally open to other ideas and interpretations.

So, what would that look like as a religion? And, as a bonus question, how to play this role when all my other party members are not from the same cult?

posted by lieber hair to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (14 answers total)

I"m thinking there would be a lot of use of divination - use a random throw of dice or sticks or entrails to predict the future. Logic doesn't work in the face of chaos so you use randomness to tell you what to do. Maybe insist on doing a throw of her dice to decide what to do a key points in play?

Strict attention to small details that must be just so since even small changes can make large difference in outcomes - based on a awareness of the butterfly effect.

You could combine the two, making obsessive strict attention to detail in performing the divination as an effort to tap into the chaos of the world.
posted by metahawk at 10:23 AM on July 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

Best answer: A neat way to handle this mechanically might be to multi-class your monk with a level of wild magic sorcerer. Then your character would be potentially subject to the Wild Magic Surge effect whenever she cast a sorcerer spell (or your DM might let you apply it to other types of spells as well). There's your chaos.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:55 AM on July 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

Have you read Lois McMaster Bujold's Five Gods/Chalion series? There are four orderly gods (Father = winter, Mother = spring, Daughter = summer, Son = autumn) and then the Bastard of the unseason, the god of disaster, bastards, orphans and things out of season.

What I like about this in the context of D&D chaos religion is that the Bastard works as an aspect of chaos in an otherwise orderly system, a place/god for things that otherwise have no place among order or that don't fit nearly into other boxes. This often manifests in interesting and ironic ways within the books.

So coming back to your religion, could it encompass the chaos that order has no room for, and be a home for things out of season? You could play around with compassion and acceptance of things that aren't inherently morally wrong but also aren't likely to be met with moral approval from characters with unexamined lawful alignment or more mainstream beliefs - I'm imagining that there's room for disease and disfigurement, misery and histories of oppression, things like sex work and people who live outside of the normal moral bounds of society within your chaos religion, and this would fit nicely with piracy (another profession that welcomes the people who don't fit neatly elsewhere).

(I like the idea of a non-logic-based system for decision-making suggested above, and the unforgiving sea aspect, by the way!)
posted by terretu at 10:57 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

RP-wise, come up with an ever expanding list of aphorisms/sayings that your character can spout off. These sayings can be directly contradictory (ie, "Any port in a storm." vs "A ship is not built to hide away in port!"). These can attributed to a religious text ("The Driftwood Codex") or a person ("Captain-Prophet M'hona") - each telling could include some context to how your character first came across it which would help with rp/backstory.

Chaotic characters don't have to be all zany or Charlie "Wildcard, bitches!" Day, but they should be good about dealing with change. They can roll with the portents as suggested above or the sudden reversals of fortune so common to the standard adventuring party.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 10:57 AM on July 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

My gut feeling is that this religious order demands absolute loyalty, has a strongly hierarchical structure, and likely follows a strict code, despite worshipping the forces of chaos as represented by the unforgiving ocean.

One of the refreshing things about Chaos is that it doesn't demand internal consistency!

But you could play up this disconnect between faith and conduct for drama or comedy. Maybe the Ocean occasionally grows frustrated with the order's inflexibility and drowns an Elder in some grotesque and unlikely fashion. The surviving monks always interpret this as a sign of divine favor and double down on their conformity.
posted by Iridic at 11:13 AM on July 18, 2018

I don't think "worships a god of chaos" necessarily needs to imply "lives by the tenets of chaos" - not that there's anything wrong with that interpretation, but I think that if you go too far in the direction of actually emulating chaos, it could get frustrating for everyone. That's why I really like the "pirates with a strict code" angle. I'm imagining a belief system where their demands for loyalty and hierarchy are presented as necessary perversions, contrary to the holy nature of chaos yet required for their survival in his element. “Forgive your worthless worshippers for our inherently sinful nature,” that kind of thing. They could do regular penance for this, where they apologize to the god for following their own rules, including the very rule that says they have to do penance. And you could get super creative with the nature of the penance.

I would also imagine that chaos-worshippers wouldn’t necessarily expect their worship to result in boons from their god – it would either be random events or absolute indifference.
posted by showbiz_liz at 11:14 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

The game sunless sea involves worship of chaotic/vengeful sea gods (Salt, Storm, and another?). The wiki might be a source of ideas. You can do things or things can happen to you to earn their favor or disfavor, this could be incorporated in your gameplay pretty easily.

I think the religious tenets would be more about respecting and accepting the role of chaos rather than being super chaotic (with exceptions on feast days / holidays).
posted by momus_window at 11:36 AM on July 18, 2018

Sea-god worshipping pirates would have a healthy respect for chaos as embodied by the weather/sea conditions etc, but their hierarchy would likely be meritocratic -- if you blindly follow a shitty captain, you're gonna die. So the intense loyalty makes sense, but only if it's based on an appreciation for the pirate in charge's ability to deliver safety and profit out of the inherently chaotic nature of seafaring piracy. In a D&D religio-alignmental framework, a chaotic character/belief system wouldn't follow the rules just because they're the rules, there would need to be some reason for it -- either you're getting something out of it, or you're afraid of the consequences of breaking them.

Rituals and superstitions would probably be a big part of this IMO. Chaotic sea gods get the good sacrifices -- Poseidon got horses, right? So maybe your character is insistent on throwing some portion of the high-value party loot into the nearest sea or river, because the god has to have its share. But chaos is change -- it's not likely that this religion would have been passed down unaltered from generation to generation. Any decent chaos religion that's existed for a while has surely been through a bunch of reforms and schisms.

That old saw about such and such a language having the same word for "crisis" and "opportunity" would fit pretty good as a guiding principle for a chaos religion.
posted by prize bull octorok at 11:37 AM on July 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

A chaos order might believe that codes are made to be broken and rules are best proven by their exceptions. It may be founded on a strong respect for chaos, without needing to emulate it. For example, being well prepared helps a sea voyage succeed, so there may be extensive guidelines about the proper preparations. At the same time, as a chaotic order it doesn't need internal logical consistency, so it may also see setting off on a voyage on the spur of a moment as a great and blessed undertaking. Also, as a specifically sea-faring religion it may have different expectations on ships than on land. While on a ship you act according the captains direction at all times! This is a hard and fast rule (except when you need to prove it by being the exception). But, when you arrive in port, you are the force of the ocean personified sweeping into the city; helping you - and those who love out of control partying - have a great time carousing at a highly questionable pub near the docks.
posted by meinvt at 11:43 AM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

Ursula Vernon's twitter thread about crapsack paladins might be worth reading for its discussion of mechanisms for forgiveness and repentance.
posted by Lexica at 12:29 PM on July 18, 2018 [2 favorites]

I like the idea of your character having a productive relationship with the chaos that already exists in the world, rather than seeking to increase chaos. Someone who rides the storm, so to speak. I guess I'm thinking of Daoism and the idea of yielding to the universe rather than seeking to control it, although what you're describing is somewhat more extreme.

It's likely that other characters will have a more rationalist approach to the universe, so it could be fun for your character to poke holes in their implicit belief that control and logic are the correct responses to a chaotic universe. Think the conflict between the Enlightenment worldview (beauty is a garden) and the Romantic worldview (beauty is the wilderness).
posted by toastedcheese at 1:27 PM on July 18, 2018 [1 favorite]

The Tao talks about impermanence and letting go of expectations. This aligns nicely with a religion of chaos. It means accepting and embracing the fact that life is full of contradictions and unpredictability. A religion based on lawful alignment would emphasize loyalty - it might require a higher loyalty to principles over loyalty to persons, but would tend towards making divisions between Us and The Other. A lawful religion would not embrace the fact that people are morally ambiguous, or have contradictory drives, where a chaotic religion would work with those things.

I am both wise and I am a fool. I am both selfish and evil, and generous and good.

Since good and bad behaviour is within all of us, and unpredictable, it would not be a religion that worked with the idea of consequences or punishment, or repentance or guilt. Chaotic good would do random good things impulsively to strangers and friends; chaotic evil would do random bad things. But in neither case would an individual be obliged to do good, or to do evil. With chaos you could simply walk past opportunity.

A chaotic religion would not believe in good luck, remembering that bad luck is just as constant and as likely a thing. A chaotic religion would not assume that things will get better, or that the righteous will prevail, or work to support such things as tradition, or hierarchies, or ultimate goals. Impulsive behaviour would not be discouraged. Being distracted from a goal, or changing goals would go with the sense of impermanence that comes with chaos.

This is my weird: To be wiser before the fact, than after; to be safer among strangers than among kinsmen...

Curiosity would probably be something this religion understood, and cheating, and gambling, and not caring about consequences. A practitioner of chaos who lost a fortune gambling, would be expected to either laugh or to shrug. A practitioner of chaos who won a fortune gambling might cry, or simply give the winnings away.

Chaos lives in the moment. Creativity for chaos is of things that are ephemeral. Its arts would be song and speech and dance and cooking - things that you might remember but would have nothing tangible to remember them by. Chaos might not value drunkenness - a drunk goes through the predictable stages of jocose, lachrymose, bellicose, comatose - but it might value pretense and play acting, ad libbing, and lying.

Chaos asks difficult questions. Chaos makes up answers. Chaos answers the questions differently each day.

I loved her more than I loved my own life. I loved her so much that I could not bear to lose her, so I left her, so that I might never see any misfortune befall her. In my dreams I hold her, and in my songs I celebrate her. Always I know where I am in the world; She is behind me and I am on the road that takes me farther from her. I have been lost for so, so long.
posted by Jane the Brown at 1:45 PM on July 18, 2018 [7 favorites]

As a DM, I drew inspiration for my chaos worshippers from surrealists, discordians, libertarians, and shitlords -- the kind of people who reject authority and celebrate transgression.

My chaos authorities were personality cults. Do what thou wilt (and tithe to / sex up Beloved Leader) shall be the whole of the law.
posted by Sauce Trough at 2:29 PM on July 18, 2018 [4 favorites]

My gut feeling is that this religious order demands absolute loyalty, has a strongly hierarchical structure, and likely follows a strict code, despite worshipping the forces of chaos as represented by the unforgiving ocean.

It seems to me that even the most "organized" organization can have room for exceptions. Perhaps theirs just kind of expects exceptions.

Chaotic characters don't have to be all zany or Charlie "Wildcard, bitches!" Day

I'd go a step further and argue they shouldn't be, especially in light of your bonus question, OP. In my campaign world I expanded alignments in order to accommodate "Wild Card, Bitches!"-style characters and, subtly, to discourage them; our extreme alignments are Rigid and Anarchic, and on the moral spectrum, Exalted and Vile (per the 3.5 supplements that never came out and said "these are new, extreme alignments" but might as well have).

I"m thinking there would be a lot of use of divination - use a random throw of dice or sticks or entrails to predict the future.

Or to make decisions, if you want to drift a little further in the extreme direction. Like Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face in the Val Kilmer Batman movie. "The flip of a coin is the ultimate justice." I always liked that line, in spite of the film it appears in.
posted by CheesesOfBrazil at 8:44 AM on July 19, 2018