Designing Faiths (CPrH)

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This chapter is for DMs who want to design detailed faiths and cults for their campaign worlds. It's not prohibited for the campaign's players to read this... but not all of them will find it useful. Players may wish to skip on to the next chapter, "Sample Priesthoods." 
As the Player's Handbook points out (page 34, first column), "In the simplest version of the AD&D®game, clerics serve religions that can be generally described as 'good' or 'evil.' Nothing more needs to be said about it; the game will play perfectly well at this point." 
That's true enough. But DMs who work to make their campaign settings into interesting, detailed backgrounds for the campaign, won't be satisfied with that simple approach. A big part of the color of any fiction setting, including campaign settings, is the relationship of the supernatural world to the "real" world... and gods, with priests as ambassadors to the human world, form a big part of that supernatural element.
So, eventually, most DMs will want to work up at least the basic details of who the gods are in his campaign world, how they relate to one another, and what their goals are (especially those pertaining to the mortal world). This, in turn, will let them enhance the role of cleric, druid and other priest player-characters in the campaign... and that's what this chapter is all about.
In this chapter, you'll learn how to create specific faiths (related to specific gods, natural forces, and philosophies); how to create the priests of these specific mythoi; and how to relate the gods together into a full-sized pantheon for your game world. In the next chapter, you'll find many examples of this priesthood creation process.