Clerical Domains

I really, really hate the way the cleric and druid classes have evolved over the years.

In original D&D, the cleric is very plainly a Judeo-Christian warrior prophet with the serial numbers filed off. The original patron of clerics in Greyhawk was St. Cuthbert, while Blackmoor didn't really bother defining its religion other than to assume that there was some kind of church. The druid started off as a monster, and represented the old pagan ways in D&D's pseudo-European backdrop.

Up to 1st Edition, that distinction held pretty true, but starting with different clerical packs in 2nd Edition, and going through 3rd and 5th editions domains, the fundamental assumption has been that all D&D worlds are polytheistic and that every god has his cleric.

That's patently ridiculous, of course. A worshiper of the god of magic would be a wizard. The "cleric" of the god of thieves would be a master thief. The god of merchants would bless his followers with lots of luck in trade, not the ability to turn undead. And so on . . .

As a result, we now have clerics of the "nature domain," while we're told that Druids worship nature. That basically makes either the cleric or druid superfluous and pointless, and usually relegates the druid to the roll of a tree-hugger--despite the fact that most D&D takes place in pre-industrial worlds where nature does not need anyone's protection. (Elves and somehow rangers get the same bum rap.)

Previous campaigns in Newold mostly avoided the problem due to being mostly set in and around Urlaen. Since Urlaen is basically Gaul, there was a nice demarcation between the druids of the "old faith" there and the clerics who serve the Elder Fane of the Callain Empire. Beyond that, I didn't worry about defining the religion too much. Since D&D 5E gives us the seven domains, and I've decided to commit to letting the rules stand as written, I'm incorporating those as the seven archetypes of the gods, archangels, or faces of The God. Beyond that, and using weird alternate spellings (Vhodan, Tiyr rather than Odin and Tyr, for example) to indicate that I reserve the right to depart from mythology where I see fit, I've not really developed things as yet.

At least one of my players has expressed dissatisfaction with that. Well, let's put it this way: Just as I give my players a lot of free reign in defining their character's cultures and then work to make them fit (often as a smaller ethnic group within an established region, as when one of my players wanted to play a kenku), I give them a lot of free reign to decide how their cultures view the Seven Gods, Dominions, Archangels, or Aspects. The ultimate reality behind all of these cultural conceptions is, of course, mine to design and theirs to discover.