Rites & Roleplaying
In a lot of campaigns, it's easy to ignore one of the priest's foremost functions: He's also the officiator at lots of rites, rituals, celebrations and ceremonies.
Every faith will have its own rituals and other special events; careful, judicious use of these will add a lot of detail and flavor to a campaign.
The DM shouldn't sit down and work up a lot of rituals for each priesthood in his campaign, and then keep them juggling around in his mind until they emerge, one by one, during adventures. But what he should do is bring individual ceremonies and priestly events into his campaign as adventure and story hooks.
For example:
"Jeriash, your party arrives in the city on October 30th. Now, you could head on from there the next day, but November 1st is Vine Day, which commemorates your goddess stopping her work for the year, winter setting in, wine-making ceremonies, and so forth; it sort of behooves you to volunteer your help at the local temple for that event . . . "
The Vine Day celebration, a Mardi Gras-like costumed parade featuring wine-drinking excesses, is a good opportunity to inject some color into the current storyline, but that isn't all it has to be. The DM could wrap an entire story around it; for example, imagine trying to capture a group of ghouls as they roam these streets strewn with drunken, costumed celebrants.
Though the DM shouldn't work up all a priesthood's usual ceremonies in advance, whenever he does create one, he should make note of it. If he doesn't, and the right time of year rolls around again, the players will inevitably remember it and wonder why Vine Day isn't being celebrated this year . . .
Following are descriptions of a number of different types of rituals. Each of these can be adapted to the characteristics of different faiths and different gods. Not all cultures and not all gods will feature each of these types of rituals; the DM should decide which apply to which gods and to which societies.
Atonement
When the flock sins, or acts against the wishes of the god, the faith usually has a way for the sinner to reenter the god's good graces. This is an act of atonement. Usually, the bigger the sin, the more extravagant the act of atonement must be.
The first part of this process is usually the confession, a formal meeting of sinner and priest where the sinner confesses his deed. This puts the priest in the position of having to evaluate that sin and then charge the sinner with a course of action which will remove the stain of sin.
Remember that each different god will have different ideas of what constitutes sin. To the god of Love, for instance, the greatest sin is denial of love (particularly, growing old without having loved) or interfering in love (messing up someone else's romance).
Too, you must remember that in a pantheistic society (one which worships many gods), it is not usually a sin to do one god's will at the expense of another. If one culture worships both a god of Peace and a god of War, fomenting a war is not a sin directed at the God of Peace; it's a boon to the God of War.
To just about any god, an insult to the god (including verbal insults or desecration of a temple) is considered a sin.
Typical ceremonies of atonement include fasts and meditations where the sinner asks forgiveness of the god. More extensive sins require some sort of sacrifice (such as donation of a cherished object to the god's temple) or an act of expiation (the sinner doing his best to straighten out the bad situation he caused).
Calendar Ceremonies
Lots of gods have ceremonies based around the calendar, especially agricultural gods. Communities may have celebrations for:
The day that marks the start of spring;
The day when planting begins;
The day when harvesting starts;
The beginning of the grape-stomping season;
The official start of winter;
The day that the first trade-ship of the year is launched;
The day that some heroic figure, a worshipper of the god, is commemorated;
The day of thanks for the god's bounty;
The day commemorating some ancient tragedy;
The day of the dead (just before or after the night that the ghosts walk the streets
The day commemorating some great battle in which the god participated;
And so on.
Communion
This is a ceremony where the participants try to commune with the god, to invoke a little of his spirit, to briefly become more like the god.
Here, too, each god will have a very different ceremony. Communion with the god of Competition will take the form of athletic games. Communion with the god of Prosperity will be a great, enormous feast. Communion with the god of Kingship will be a private little coronation where each household leader is acknowledged as the head of the household. Communion with the god of Peace will be a quiet meditation. Communion with the god of Love or Fertility is left as an exercise for your imagination.
Confirmation of Adulthood
The DM needs to decide when youths are considered to reach adulthood in the culture, and then it's possible to have Confirmations of Adulthood. In a culture, this will be handled one of two ways.
Each youth could have a private ceremony on his birthday. Alternatively, all youths born in the same year could be confirmed on one specific day of the calendar.
Either way, in the ceremony, the priest will acknowledge the youth as an adult, and this will be marked by allowing the youth some activity which only adults can perform in the culture (for example, carrying weapons in public, wearing some garment reserved for adults, receiving a sword, etc.).
Confirmation of Birth
With this ceremony, the priest visits the newborn child and, in a simple ceremony, asks the god's blessings upon the child. This is always done in the presence of witnesses, because it's important in the culture for others to witness that the child has been born and that specific people (the parents) acknowledge the child as theirs. This becomes important regarding questions of inheritance or the succession of the titles of leadership.
Fast
This is a quiet sort of ceremony; the participants do not eat, usually for the period of a day, as a sacrifice to the god or a commemoration of some historical time of want.
Feast
The feast can be as small or great a feast as the DM cares to allow, and can celebrate just about anything within the faith. Feasts should be one of the most common sorts of celebrations within the faith, and a great feast is a convenient place to introduce all sorts of adventure elements (challenges from enemies, assassination attempts, mysterious clues left in the soup, etc.).
Funeral
Interment of the dead is also a common ceremony. Note that funerals don't have to be solemn affairs; all this depends on what the culture thinks happens to the departed spirit and how the culture feels about it. The funeral could be a time of mourning, a cheerful celebration of the departed person's life, a drinking-binge so that the mourners can forget their grief, and so on. In any case, the ceremony can have several parts.
There is the Wake, which takes place before the funeral, where participants sit overnight with the body, exchange stories of the dead person's deeds, and (in some settings) protect the body from violation at the hands of evil spirits, who might try to inhabit and reanimate it, or to steal the not-yet-departed soul.
There is the Farewell, where the participants speak to the corpse of the departed and wish him well on his voyage; often, they present him with small gifts and tokens of their friendship.
There is the Interment, where the body is laid to rest, usually with the presents and a variety of the person's belongings. In some cultures of a type we consider cruel, the person's slaves and perhaps even his wife will also be laid to rest, even if they aren't dead yet. (Alternatively, the body may be burned, again depending on the culture's views.)
There is the Commemoration, where the mourners exchange stories of the dead person; this could be a very solemn or a very merry event. In any case, it's likely to accompany a feast for the weary, hungry mourners and participants.
Libation
Libation is the dedication of a little of one's drink to the gods. Every time a glass is refilled, the character pours a little to his god, either onto the ground or into a basin dedicated to the god.
Meditation
This consists of sitting, in private or with other participants, and trying to achieve a peaceful state of exalted awareness.
Mysteries
These are involved ceremonies which usually celebrate gods of nature or rebirth. Celebrated annually or semi-annually, they tend to have several elements and can go on for a full day or more, not counting the rituals which precede the actual celebration of the mysteries. Usually, the pattern is something like this:
In the days before the actual celebration, the participants go through purification. These rituals of purification involve fasting, ritual baths, and abstinence from physical pleasures.
On the day of the celebration, the participants dress in clothing appropriate to the ceremony, usually in featureless clothing of white (or a color preferred by the god), usually barefoot. They assemble at the temple of the god, and perform the oath-taking. A high priest administers the oath, where every participant swears that he will keep what he has seen a secret, and never discuss it with one who is not also an initiate into the mysteries. The participant swears in the god's name, and could suffer the god's punishment if he breaks his oath.
Next, there is the procession. All the priests and participants proceed in a parade to a site that is holy to the god. This is often a cavern or a very secluded glade, because there it is possible to keep the celebration hidden from the eyes of non-initiates. The procession is led by ranking priests, followed by lesser priests in charge of sacrifices, followed by musicians who play during the procession. Then come priestesses, who carry small caskets (or draw carts bearing those caskets the caskets contain artifacts sacred to the god. (These artifacts aren't necessarily, or even usually, powerful magical items desired by greedy adventurers. They're more ordinary items: The rock sacred to the god, the fossilized stone showing the god's footprint, the bone from the feast in which the god participated, the statue the god himself blessed, the cast-off weapon used by the god in some famous event, and so on.) Then, there are more functionary priests: Priests in charge of the upcoming feast, priests who lead sacrificial animals (if sacrifice is a part of this culture's worship), and priests who act as sergeants-at-arms (they carry non-lethal weapons such as staffs and use them to keep the disorderly orderly). Finally, the faithful (non-priest) followers come.
Once the procession reaches the sacred site, there may be a sacred meal. Sacrificial animals will be sacrificed and cooked, and then the feast eaten. The character of the meal depends on the character of the god: It could be stern and somber for a severe god, wild and orgiastic for a more free-spirited god. The sacred meal ends after nightfall.
Then, the three most important elements of the mysteries begin. They all take place at night. First is the recitation , a series of songs or chants concerning the god, his deeds, his promises to the faithful, his demands on the faithful. The recitation sets the mood for the rest of the ceremonies; the listening followers are supposed to be reverential, at least, and the priests with the staves are still around to keep order and quell (or get rid of) troublemakers. Troublemakers tend to be rare.
Second, there is the display. The sacred objects carried in those caskets are displayed for the faithful. Since they actually are magical objects sacred to the god, they tend to inspire the faithful with the essence of the god.
Third, there is the performance. Priests trained as actors perform a play which commemorates the most famous of the god's stories, especially the one which most closely deals with the god's demands on and relations with his worshippers. Regardless of the quality of this play, it is performed at the end of a lengthy process of worship where the followers are exposed to many powerful forces of the faith, and the onlookers are all elevated to a state of rapture during the performance.
At the end, there is the rebirth. Once the performance has ceased, the lights are doused and the faithful are led in pitch darkness from the area where the play was performed. Once they arrive at the point of departure, where the procession home will begin, the torches or lamps are again lit, and among the faithful this journey in darkness is much like being born again.
Mysteries are an experience for the spirit, not the mind; this is not an educational event, but one which is intended to bring the followers closer to the nature of their god. Even in a culture which worships many gods, only a very few will have mysteries as part of their worship.
For the DM, the mysteries are an opportunity to introduce dramatic events into the story. During the mysteries, it is appropriate for the god to appear to one of his PC followers and charge that character with an important mission, for instance. Or it could be that during the celebration of the mysteries, one character will receive some sudden insight (a gift from the god) into some event which has been puzzling or confounding the player-characters for some time.
Naming
This ceremony is often a part of the Confirmation of Birth event: The child is given his name before witnesses. In some cultures, though, the child might be given a use-name when he is born, and won't be given his true name (or will choose his true name) years later, when he is old enough to understand its significance. It may be that in this culture the character's true name is supposed to be kept a secret, and the child tells it only to one priest, so that the god might know it.
Prayer
Prayer is one of the most common of rituals; it involves asking the blessing of the god, often through the recital of an ancient or famous prayer or part of a holy text.
Note that not all cultures demand that prayer be performed from a kneeling position or a pose of obsequience. Vigorous warrior cultures might perform their prayers standing erect and facing the skies, for example.
Purification
When a person comes in contact with some contamination (a taboo substance), he must be purified. In some cultures, whenever a person has killed another honorably, though he is not considered to have sinned, he must be purified of the killing. This ceremony involves a ritual bathing or washing of the hands (or other contaminated part) under the supervision of a priest, who invokes the god's blessing during the washing.
Sacrifice
In some cultures, animals are sacrificed to the glory of the god. One god may demand that the whole animal be destroyed; another will demand that the animal be killed for it and some part of it destroyed for him, but that the rest of the beast can be used as the worshippers see fit. Obviously, human sacrifice is something demanded only by the most evil or unsympathetic of gods.
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