Examining The Fantasy Atheist

For a moment, the light dimmed. It was as if a cloud had passed over the sun, leaving the companions in shadow. Then there was an impact in the air, as if the world itself had gasped, and a being stood before them. It glowed with a preternatural light, and it gazed upon them with eyes of fire. It possessed a dozen arms, each bearing items of a strange, alien origin. It turned to the one who had summoned it, nodding its head in acknowledgement. Before it could speak, though, Korrun rolled his eyes.

"Really?" he said. "Don't you think this is taking your make believe a little far?"

The Herald reached out its empty hand, and touched the cleric on the shoulder. "You bear a great burden traveling with this one."

"I do," Invaris replied. "This I know well."

Could I trade him to you? Please? Any bid, I'm listening.

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There Are No Gods!

Chances are good that if you've been playing fantasy RPGs for a while that you've come across the atheist character at some point. Though, for added clarity, The Fantasy Atheist is the name of a trope, and is not meant to be a deeper examination of this form of philosophy... especially since that's not how these characters tend to be played when someone decides to use this archetype. These characters are, in most cases, merely a more specialized version of the Fantasy Flat Earther, which I talked about in Examining The "Doubting Thomas" Character Archetype in Fantasy RPGs a while back. Because just like the sorcerer who claims magic isn't real, the Fantasy Atheist will watch a cleric perform a miracle, or even summon a celestial being from the outer planes, and stubbornly fold their arms, refusing to acknowledge the divine exists at all.

This is not a clever or unique character concept. It's a joke character, and it's a joke that was never funny to begin with.

You Can Make It Work (With The Right Circumstances)

With all of that said, there are certain ways you can play this style of character, and certain circumstances that can make them workable. I would still recommend against it due to the baggage the concept has, but you can do it if you're determined enough.

I provided some circumstances in my Sundara setting.

The first way to make this concept work is to play in a setting where the divine is largely mysterious, unknown, and unknowable. Mortals still have their myths and their legends, and you'll still find clerics, oracles, druids, and others wielding the power of the divine, but the gods aren't fully known or understood. Settings where there's an unknown quantity of gods, or where it's impossible to know if the gods of a certain faith are who their followers believe they are, work as well. In short, you need some kind of doubt that what people believe (even people who have been empowered by the gods) is the truth of what's happening beyond the material world.

This is very much the sort of setup you find in my recent release Gods of Sundara, available both in a Pathfinder version and a DND 5E version. Because in Sundara the gods are truly cosmic, which means that mortals can only ever see and comprehend a small portion of these beings. They are alien in many respects, taking different forms and appearing in different ways to different people. So Grimwald with his black sword worshiped by the hill clans of the far north, and the colossal dragon De'nagi paid homage by the lizard folk tribes of the southern swamps are, in fact, both manifestations of the same god; Charne, god of war. The fluid nature of the divine, where people really do have to take it on faith that the things they believe are even remotely true (and not some shell game played by the beings of the spirit realm) means there actually is plenty of room for doubt and argument as to whether a particular god or a particular faith is what someone thinks it is. And that leaves room for discussions on faith, the trustworthiness of religion, and how much knowledge is lost or misunderstood in translation from the realm of the gods to the mortals.

On that note, wanted to mention my 5 Tips For Playing Better Clerics for those who haven't checked it out yet!

Alternatively, You Need To Change Your Character

Not every fantasy setting has that element of mystery to it regarding the divine. In a lot of settings the gods are set in stone, and the faith taught to people on the mortal plane is true. The myths and legends are real, and these divinities will walk the world and perform great deeds... and when they aren't personally appearing, their servants often will in the form of angels, devils, and other divine/infernal beings.

If you're playing in a setting where there's no need to take things on faith because they've been confirmed multiple times, and there are records that this is how the cosmos is structured, then you don't have the wiggle room of a setting where things are more vague. It's hard to argue that the gods don't exist when their servants can wield divine fire to slay demons, and when avatars manifest to aid in your fight against the army of undeath around level 12.

All right, all right, I get it. They're real, okay!

In a setting that doesn't really require belief (since these creatures and powers are just facts of life), you have a few options to really make the atheist character work. The first is using it as a character arc as they learn more about the universe itself. We saw a version of this in Marvel comics when for years Tony Stark refused to believe that Thor was who he said he was. Until finally, out of patience, Thor grabbed Tony and transported them both to Asgard. So Tony saw with his own two eyes that the rainbow bridge, the city of the gods, and more were real. And he learned that the Thor from the old Norse myths and the being he fought alongside were truly one and the same.

As a character arc, this works pretty well. It's usually meant as a way to take an arrogant aspect of a character, and to humble them by showing there are things they don't know, and entities beyond them in the universe. It's similar, in a way, to how we see Han Solo go from, "The force is just a fairy tale," to simply acknowledging it as a fact of the universe.

However, there's the seed of a second way to play this in the Thor and Iron Man example. Because as folks who read Marvel know, Asgardians are not gods as we typically think of them. They are an alien species whose technology is so advanced that it is in many ways indistinguishable from magic. So while it is not inaccurate to call them gods, it is also accurate to say they are highly advanced beings whose understanding of the universe is inexplicable to humanity. It doesn't change the nature of what they are, but the altered definition can make someone seem far more reasonable. Because they aren't denying that these beings exist, nor are they denying the power they wield. Instead, they are simply saying that calling them "gods" is inaccurate, and that more nuanced language is required to understand them more precisely.

The third option was one popularized by Rahadoum in the Golarion setting for Pathfinder. The so-called Kingdom of Man does not allow divine worship or magic within its borders. Not because the gods aren't real, but because the nation acknowledges that they are real, and they want no part of the gods or their followers within their borders. So in this case the "atheist" character isn't denying that gods exist, and that there's some other explanation for extraplanar manifestations and the power of divine characters; they're just saying they want no part of the divine and the mess it represents.

Of the three of these options, the third is probably the easiest to make work in a high fantasy game. From refusing boosts from the cleric, to using health potions and alchemical tablets for restoring your own hit points, to refusing to participate in any form of religious ceremony (or merely making sure others understand you're just being polite), it can cause some friction and challenge, but it isn't usually enough to make the rest of the table want to grab you by the shoulders and shake you for obstinately proclaiming the sky to be chartreuse when we can all plainly see that it's blue.

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That's all for this installment of Unusual Character Concepts. Hopefully this one gave you something to chew over, whether you're a player, or a game master.

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