I want to start by saying I enjoy the reference and source materials for Dungeons and Dragons. I don't have time to make my campaign materials, so I rely heavily on the authors to do my work. I also know that for many years, books, video games, etc., have used and misused words that are often misunderstood. This includes mental health terms such as schizoid, schizo, and even anxiety. Today, I'm taking a stance against the use of "cult."
Masterclass.com "What is a cult?" article (https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-a-cult) does a great summary of the term cult. It has been connected with fantasy and fiction through similar words such as "occult", "culture", and "becoming a cult." I have not done research into the first uses of the term "cult", though I do know that modern use of the term in reference to a group with similar beliefs and values is generally derogatory. Of course, people are going to say, "But not always!" and even go so far as to reference my own cited source. "For example, a movie might have a “cult following,” meaning it appeals to a niche group of people. This doesn’t imply anything nefarious about the film itself."
Historical groups that we view as cults never referenced themselves by the term. You would never hear about the Cult of Manson, or the Cult of Jesus (Historically, Christianity was considered a cult, and many Christian sects are still identified as such by non-followers). "Cults" are not always bad, and many groups that have been (or still are) viewed as cults have great core values. In many ways, I view the martial arts community as cult-like and in some ways meets the "4 characteristics".
How on earth does this apply to D&D? What are you even talking about?
I am preparing to run Eve of Ruin. In the book, the Cult of Vecna is referenced several times. I can't do a count right now, but I know it's a lot!!! I can't imagine them running around calling themselves the "Cult of Vecna" in real life. And yet, in games, we allow this. WarCraft III had the Cult of the Damned. And I believe Blizzard still uses that term (it may be copywritten, so I'm sorry if it is...). Potterverse had the Deatheaters (I know this is copywritten and I'll take it down if Rowling asks...). While a clever name, did they really call themselves the death eaters? What message were they trying to send with that? Not all cults are bad!!! But when you tie them with "death eaters" and "cult of the damned"...umm yeah. Why not "purists" or "Heirs of Slytherin" since they all stemmed from his house?
There are also references to other "cults" that were less obvious. If you read the Star Wars High Republic series, you hear about the Path of the Open Hand/Closed Fist, which predates the Nihil (a play on nihilism...and Darth Nihilis from KOTOR 2). The Path (referring to all three) even viewed the Jedi as cult-like. The Jedi fit the bill: exclusivity, strict control, isolative, and extreme beliefs. In Gotham Knights (and DC lore), you have the Court of Owls, which as an elite group of people with extreme values controlling the politics of Gotham. You also have the League of Shadows with their own set of principals coming into Gotham and trying to tear it apart.
So, yeah. The Cult of Vecna. An underground group trying to infiltrate Vecna and his followers into Neverwinter. I am working on finding a clever way to introduce the group and not call them the Cult of Vecna. It will be hard considering how many times Cult of Vecna is mentioned. But A LOT of D&D source material is like this... The Cult of Dragons permeates any Forgotten Realms campaign materials. And yet, they have a number of "factions" that have cool and clever names with similar lofty, and sometimes extreme, ideals (The Lord's Alliance, Zhentarim, Harper's Guild, etc.). You also have religious groups and followers of Pelor, Selune... etc. The bigger challenge is that there are many dragon cults...there are those who follow specific dragons and those who worship dragons as a whole. Are metallic dragon followers also called cults?
I recently ran Storm King's Thunder...
when the Cult of the Dragon appear, I did a poor job introducing them and one of the players, familiar with the lore said, "Hey, aren't you the bad guys?" Uhhh... not in this campaign. Sort of...maybe an enemy of my friend is my friend. Later I thought of calling them the "Red Dragon Guard" because they followed a specific Red Dragon and did his bidding, even so much as sacrificing themselves for his goals.
I just flipped open Quests from the Infinite Staircase and again, the term Cult permeated the literature. This does encourage me to get a little creative in how I introduce the groups. I don't want the party to immediately jump to ... oh, these are the bad guys. Because that's not always the case. And, I want some mystery to it. I want my players to think they might be on the good side.
One of my stories (that was going to be set before the destruction of the sun in Dark Sun...but then I read more into the lore of that and realized it would not fit...so it's going to lead to some other apocalypse that may or may not have a follow up) has multiple "bad" guys doing "good things" in ways they believe to be right. I have Lawful Good paladins upholding laws that are significantly exclusive and not nice in the politically correct sense...chasing the heroes because they are breaking these laws, creating civil unrest. One of the "good" NPCs they meet turns out to have maline intentions and is using the heroes to obtain a weapon that will not only defeat his foes (the Emperor) but also end up destroying the world.
In a long-winded, and circuitous manner, I encourage you to rephrase the term "cult of..." into something else. I've been toying with ideas with Vecna and am not sure where I will land come Wednesday. Path of the Open Hand seemed pretty cool... especially since they have tattoos of a hand and eye. Path of the Watchers... Path of Secrets, Followers of the Whispering One. Something that incorporates his lore, but doesn't outright give him away, at first.
Some Historical "Cults" (there are some groups that I would deem cults, but have never seen them referenced as such... they are highly politicized...and I won't mention them).
Heaven's Gate--a religious group that believed the world was doomed and wanted to find a way to welcome extraterrestrials to help them escape.
Branch Davidians--a group that was preparing for the apocalypse and was going to stem the tide of demons in the world.
People's Temple--a group that eschewed the burgeoning technology that was ruining the lives of our children.
Your entire premise is based on a modern understanding of a far older term. While you are correct cult holds a modern negative connotation, historically “cult” has been defined as: The action or an act of paying reverential homage to a divine being; religious worship. Now rare. (The Oxford English Dictionary - the preeminent source of information on English language and etymology). Looking at some of the citations from the 1600s and beyond, “cult” was regularly used by Christian authors to refer to Christianity. Even going back much, much further than English, the root Latin word was used to describe the worship of deified Roman emperors - hardly a derogatory usage in the original Latin.
Ultimately, in the real world eras that primarily informed D&D, “cult” would have been a perfectly acceptable word to use in this context. This is less a problem with D&D, and more an issue of you trying to ascribe an anachronistic definition to a properly-applied term.
You can have references to the Cult of Vecna (or whatever) without anyone actually calling themselves that. It just means someone that the PCs might be getting information from call them that. That said, good and evil in D&D (like pretty much all heroic fiction) is deliberately unsubtle; in the real world all but the most fringe lunatics call themselves good, no matter what atrocities they commit, and almost everyone is some mixture of good and evil, but that's not the type of uncertainty people generally want in their heroic fiction.
cultus = cultivate care and honour. It could be used for parents for example.
Its not directly linked to the notion of divinity. Its more like an acknowledgement. At best greco-roman gods were considered problematic at worst feared, because they reflected human psyche flaws. There is no notion of perfection and/or pretention to superiority for cultists. For the kind of cult where those notions are like central, prefer the term 'sect' from sequi to follow. And this is still not linked to the notion of divinity.
So which term do you think apply more ? Care and honour could at least be taken with irony.
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Is the perceived problem that the use of the word cult is seen as insufficiently creative or that it's offensive at some level or that it's an incorrect usage of the word?
I apologize, but I did get a bit lost in the original post.
The word "cult" is neither "bad" nor "good" .it's just a group following something outside the usual - whether it's ultimately "good" or "bad" would depend on who is making that determination and their ideas of what defines "good" and "bad".
As for a cult referring to it's self as a cult - sounds like bad marketing and unlikely
As for some one outside the cult calling it a cult - it's pretty common place
So just depends what side of the fence your on and how you view things
2: great devotion to a person, idea, object, movement, or work (such as a film or book) criticizing how the media promotes the cult of celebrity especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b: the object of such devotion c: a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion the singer's cult of fans The film has a cult following.
3: a system of religious beliefs and ritual also : its body of adherents the cult of Apollo
4: formal religious veneration : worship
5: a system for the cure of disease based on dogma set forth by its promulgator
Every example you gave is covered by at least one of the definitions in the dictionary, and in some cases more than one.
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Every Religion in the Real world, and in D&D can count as a cult. So are any religions good?
I also use the Cult of the Dragon by name in a few of my games. Nothing wrong with it and when I refer to them I don't have to rethink, Oh yeah, they are called the Followers of Scales, not the Cult of the Dragon.
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"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Every Religion in the Real world, and in D&D can count as a cult. So are any religions good?
As Frank Zappa put it, the only difference between a religion and a cult is the amount of real estate it owns.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Yes, a cult in D&D can be good - the word tends to not be used that way due to the negative connotation it developed over the past hundred and fifty years or so, but nothing stops you from having a good cult.
In fact, in earlier editions, this was made a bit more clear - and it was even made clear you could have “good” cults worshiping evil gods. To use Vecna, since that is the example OP provided, 4e has two different types of “good” Vecna cult. The first was more generic - anyone who wanted to overthrow a tyrant might need secrecy on their side, so they might form a cult of Vecna to take solace in the God of Secrets, worshiping him to keep their good plans secret from evil. The other was a specific cult - the Keepers of Forbidden Lore. These also relied on the secrets component - they believed some knowledge was too evil to be in mortal hands, so they entrusted it to the God of Secrets as a sort of bank vault for really bad things.
D&D is whatever you make of it, so feel free to let your cultish imagination run wild!
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Yes, a cult in D&D can be good - the word tends to not be used that way due to the negative connotation it developed over the past hundred and fifty years or so, but nothing stops you from having a good cult.
In fact, in earlier editions, this was made a bit more clear - and it was even made clear you could have “good” cults worshiping evil gods. To use Vecna, since that is the example OP provided, 4e has two different types of “good” Vecna cult. The first was more generic - anyone who wanted to overthrow a tyrant might need secrecy on their side, so they might form a cult of Vecna to take solace in the God of Secrets, worshiping him to keep their good plans secret from evil. The other was a specific cult - the Keepers of Forbidden Lore. These also relied on the secrets component - they believed some knowledge was too evil to be in mortal hands, so they entrusted it to the God of Secrets as a sort of bank vault for really bad things.
D&D is whatever you make of it, so feel free to let your cultish imagination run wild!
Most good-aligned gods of thievery or trickery tend to have highly secretive worship, as well.
Personally, I think The Cult peaked in 89 with Sonic Temple.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
My understanding of it is that the difference between a cult and a religion is whether the object of worship is an actual deity (religion) or not (cult). The worship of a political or spiritual leader (independent of whom they may believe in, if anyone) would be a cult, for example.
This does not automatically mean the term is being correctly applied when used on others. Especially in a fantasy setting, where Gods definitely do exist (not necessarily any giving campaign you are in or run, individual DM mileage may vary), worshipers being dismissed as a mere cult may well be an actual religion. Also, the object of the worship can still be very powerful without being an actual deity. For example, worship of a Dragon, or very powerful hero. Whether worship of some nigh deity entity counts as 'close enough' to count as actual deity worship or not would be up to your DM, for example, worship of a devil, demon or on the positive side, angelic being. Whether the Faelords count or not would also be up to your DM.
And as with all organized thought, though, whether it is actually good or not will vary by the details and best not to get into that level of discussion here.
My understanding of it is that the difference between a cult and a religion is whether the object of worship is an actual deity (religion) or not (cult).
Nah. It's really just a measure of respect -- you call it a religion if you respect it, a cult if you don't. Mostly, this comes down to size and longevity.
Yeah, how I have viewed the difference between a cult and religion is the level of acceptance said group of worship has in a given region. If you have a country where Bahamut is the primary deity that is revered, then the people would consider the church of Bahamut to be the accepted religion of the region. Meanwhile, a smaller group worshiping a different deity in the region could be viewed as a cult since they worship something outside the norm. Now a cult of Selune or Illmater would most likely not be malevolent due to the deities in question while a cult of Bane or Tiamat would more likely be very malevolent, but all of them are still following religious teachings outside of the most established religious order.
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Yes, a cult in D&D can be good - the word tends to not be used that way due to the negative connotation it developed over the past hundred and fifty years or so, but nothing stops you from having a good cult.
In fact, in earlier editions, this was made a bit more clear - and it was even made clear you could have “good” cults worshiping evil gods. To use Vecna, since that is the example OP provided, 4e has two different types of “good” Vecna cult. The first was more generic - anyone who wanted to overthrow a tyrant might need secrecy on their side, so they might form a cult of Vecna to take solace in the God of Secrets, worshiping him to keep their good plans secret from evil. The other was a specific cult - the Keepers of Forbidden Lore. These also relied on the secrets component - they believed some knowledge was too evil to be in mortal hands, so they entrusted it to the God of Secrets as a sort of bank vault for really bad things.
D&D is whatever you make of it, so feel free to let your cultish imagination run wild!
Most good-aligned gods of thievery or trickery tend to have highly secretive worship, as well.
In a society dominated by evil gods, the good ones might all be secretive cults. I ran a game where the neutral death god was suppressed, because the Lich King wanted corpses for his armies
Personally, I think The Cult peaked in 89 with Sonic Temple.
I want to start by saying I enjoy the reference and source materials for Dungeons and Dragons. I don't have time to make my campaign materials, so I rely heavily on the authors to do my work. I also know that for many years, books, video games, etc., have used and misused words that are often misunderstood. This includes mental health terms such as schizoid, schizo, and even anxiety. Today, I'm taking a stance against the use of "cult."
Masterclass.com "What is a cult?" article (https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-a-cult) does a great summary of the term cult. It has been connected with fantasy and fiction through similar words such as "occult", "culture", and "becoming a cult." I have not done research into the first uses of the term "cult", though I do know that modern use of the term in reference to a group with similar beliefs and values is generally derogatory. Of course, people are going to say, "But not always!" and even go so far as to reference my own cited source. "For example, a movie might have a “cult following,” meaning it appeals to a niche group of people. This doesn’t imply anything nefarious about the film itself."
Historical groups that we view as cults never referenced themselves by the term. You would never hear about the Cult of Manson, or the Cult of Jesus (Historically, Christianity was considered a cult, and many Christian sects are still identified as such by non-followers). "Cults" are not always bad, and many groups that have been (or still are) viewed as cults have great core values. In many ways, I view the martial arts community as cult-like and in some ways meets the "4 characteristics".
How on earth does this apply to D&D? What are you even talking about?
I am preparing to run Eve of Ruin. In the book, the Cult of Vecna is referenced several times. I can't do a count right now, but I know it's a lot!!! I can't imagine them running around calling themselves the "Cult of Vecna" in real life. And yet, in games, we allow this. WarCraft III had the Cult of the Damned. And I believe Blizzard still uses that term (it may be copywritten, so I'm sorry if it is...). Potterverse had the Deatheaters (I know this is copywritten and I'll take it down if Rowling asks...). While a clever name, did they really call themselves the death eaters? What message were they trying to send with that? Not all cults are bad!!! But when you tie them with "death eaters" and "cult of the damned"...umm yeah. Why not "purists" or "Heirs of Slytherin" since they all stemmed from his house?
There are also references to other "cults" that were less obvious. If you read the Star Wars High Republic series, you hear about the Path of the Open Hand/Closed Fist, which predates the Nihil (a play on nihilism...and Darth Nihilis from KOTOR 2). The Path (referring to all three) even viewed the Jedi as cult-like. The Jedi fit the bill: exclusivity, strict control, isolative, and extreme beliefs. In Gotham Knights (and DC lore), you have the Court of Owls, which as an elite group of people with extreme values controlling the politics of Gotham. You also have the League of Shadows with their own set of principals coming into Gotham and trying to tear it apart.
So, yeah. The Cult of Vecna. An underground group trying to infiltrate Vecna and his followers into Neverwinter. I am working on finding a clever way to introduce the group and not call them the Cult of Vecna. It will be hard considering how many times Cult of Vecna is mentioned. But A LOT of D&D source material is like this... The Cult of Dragons permeates any Forgotten Realms campaign materials. And yet, they have a number of "factions" that have cool and clever names with similar lofty, and sometimes extreme, ideals (The Lord's Alliance, Zhentarim, Harper's Guild, etc.). You also have religious groups and followers of Pelor, Selune... etc. The bigger challenge is that there are many dragon cults...there are those who follow specific dragons and those who worship dragons as a whole. Are metallic dragon followers also called cults?
I recently ran Storm King's Thunder...
when the Cult of the Dragon appear, I did a poor job introducing them and one of the players, familiar with the lore said, "Hey, aren't you the bad guys?" Uhhh... not in this campaign. Sort of...maybe an enemy of my friend is my friend. Later I thought of calling them the "Red Dragon Guard" because they followed a specific Red Dragon and did his bidding, even so much as sacrificing themselves for his goals.
I just flipped open Quests from the Infinite Staircase and again, the term Cult permeated the literature. This does encourage me to get a little creative in how I introduce the groups. I don't want the party to immediately jump to ... oh, these are the bad guys. Because that's not always the case. And, I want some mystery to it. I want my players to think they might be on the good side.
One of my stories (that was going to be set before the destruction of the sun in Dark Sun...but then I read more into the lore of that and realized it would not fit...so it's going to lead to some other apocalypse that may or may not have a follow up) has multiple "bad" guys doing "good things" in ways they believe to be right. I have Lawful Good paladins upholding laws that are significantly exclusive and not nice in the politically correct sense...chasing the heroes because they are breaking these laws, creating civil unrest. One of the "good" NPCs they meet turns out to have maline intentions and is using the heroes to obtain a weapon that will not only defeat his foes (the Emperor) but also end up destroying the world.
In a long-winded, and circuitous manner, I encourage you to rephrase the term "cult of..." into something else. I've been toying with ideas with Vecna and am not sure where I will land come Wednesday. Path of the Open Hand seemed pretty cool... especially since they have tattoos of a hand and eye. Path of the Watchers... Path of Secrets, Followers of the Whispering One. Something that incorporates his lore, but doesn't outright give him away, at first.
Some Historical "Cults" (there are some groups that I would deem cults, but have never seen them referenced as such... they are highly politicized...and I won't mention them).
Your entire premise is based on a modern understanding of a far older term. While you are correct cult holds a modern negative connotation, historically “cult” has been defined as: The action or an act of paying reverential homage to a divine being; religious worship. Now rare. (The Oxford English Dictionary - the preeminent source of information on English language and etymology). Looking at some of the citations from the 1600s and beyond, “cult” was regularly used by Christian authors to refer to Christianity. Even going back much, much further than English, the root Latin word was used to describe the worship of deified Roman emperors - hardly a derogatory usage in the original Latin.
Ultimately, in the real world eras that primarily informed D&D, “cult” would have been a perfectly acceptable word to use in this context. This is less a problem with D&D, and more an issue of you trying to ascribe an anachronistic definition to a properly-applied term.
You can have references to the Cult of Vecna (or whatever) without anyone actually calling themselves that. It just means someone that the PCs might be getting information from call them that. That said, good and evil in D&D (like pretty much all heroic fiction) is deliberately unsubtle; in the real world all but the most fringe lunatics call themselves good, no matter what atrocities they commit, and almost everyone is some mixture of good and evil, but that's not the type of uncertainty people generally want in their heroic fiction.
cultus = cultivate care and honour.
It could be used for parents for example.
Its not directly linked to the notion of divinity. Its more like an acknowledgement.
At best greco-roman gods were considered problematic at worst feared, because they reflected human psyche flaws.
There is no notion of perfection and/or pretention to superiority for cultists.
For the kind of cult where those notions are like central, prefer the term 'sect' from sequi to follow.
And this is still not linked to the notion of divinity.
So which term do you think apply more ?
Care and honour could at least be taken with irony.
Can a cult be good? Genuine question. Like, I know some of them are evil(Cult of Vecna, any demonic Cults, ect) but what if a bunch of NPC's made a religious group worshiping some folk-hero or the like. They make sacrifices to him, get people to join in on it, make weird and somewhat disturbing rituals but, all in all, please this hero and the other worshipers. They would still be a cult, but would it be a good cult?
Is the perceived problem that the use of the word cult is seen as insufficiently creative or that it's offensive at some level or that it's an incorrect usage of the word?
I apologize, but I did get a bit lost in the original post.
The word "cult" is neither "bad" nor "good" .it's just a group following something outside the usual - whether it's ultimately "good" or "bad" would depend on who is making that determination and their ideas of what defines "good" and "bad".
As for a cult referring to it's self as a cult - sounds like bad marketing and unlikely
As for some one outside the cult calling it a cult - it's pretty common place
So just depends what side of the fence your on and how you view things
/lesigh
Ok first:
Webster Dictionary:
especially : such devotion regarded as a literary or intellectual fad b: the object of such devotion c: a usually small group of people characterized by such devotion the singer's cult of fans The film has a cult following.
Every example you gave is covered by at least one of the definitions in the dictionary, and in some cases more than one.
Every Religion in the Real world, and in D&D can count as a cult. So are any religions good?
I'm a fan of The Blue Oyster Cult.
I also use the Cult of the Dragon by name in a few of my games. Nothing wrong with it and when I refer to them I don't have to rethink, Oh yeah, they are called the Followers of Scales, not the Cult of the Dragon.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
As Frank Zappa put it, the only difference between a religion and a cult is the amount of real estate it owns.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Yes, a cult in D&D can be good - the word tends to not be used that way due to the negative connotation it developed over the past hundred and fifty years or so, but nothing stops you from having a good cult.
In fact, in earlier editions, this was made a bit more clear - and it was even made clear you could have “good” cults worshiping evil gods. To use Vecna, since that is the example OP provided, 4e has two different types of “good” Vecna cult. The first was more generic - anyone who wanted to overthrow a tyrant might need secrecy on their side, so they might form a cult of Vecna to take solace in the God of Secrets, worshiping him to keep their good plans secret from evil. The other was a specific cult - the Keepers of Forbidden Lore. These also relied on the secrets component - they believed some knowledge was too evil to be in mortal hands, so they entrusted it to the God of Secrets as a sort of bank vault for really bad things.
D&D is whatever you make of it, so feel free to let your cultish imagination run wild!
I'm a veteran of the psychic wars. \m/
Most good-aligned gods of thievery or trickery tend to have highly secretive worship, as well.
Personally, I think The Cult peaked in 89 with Sonic Temple.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
My understanding of it is that the difference between a cult and a religion is whether the object of worship is an actual deity (religion) or not (cult). The worship of a political or spiritual leader (independent of whom they may believe in, if anyone) would be a cult, for example.
This does not automatically mean the term is being correctly applied when used on others. Especially in a fantasy setting, where Gods definitely do exist (not necessarily any giving campaign you are in or run, individual DM mileage may vary), worshipers being dismissed as a mere cult may well be an actual religion. Also, the object of the worship can still be very powerful without being an actual deity. For example, worship of a Dragon, or very powerful hero. Whether worship of some nigh deity entity counts as 'close enough' to count as actual deity worship or not would be up to your DM, for example, worship of a devil, demon or on the positive side, angelic being. Whether the Faelords count or not would also be up to your DM.
And as with all organized thought, though, whether it is actually good or not will vary by the details and best not to get into that level of discussion here.
Nah. It's really just a measure of respect -- you call it a religion if you respect it, a cult if you don't. Mostly, this comes down to size and longevity.
Yeah, how I have viewed the difference between a cult and religion is the level of acceptance said group of worship has in a given region. If you have a country where Bahamut is the primary deity that is revered, then the people would consider the church of Bahamut to be the accepted religion of the region. Meanwhile, a smaller group worshiping a different deity in the region could be viewed as a cult since they worship something outside the norm. Now a cult of Selune or Illmater would most likely not be malevolent due to the deities in question while a cult of Bane or Tiamat would more likely be very malevolent, but all of them are still following religious teachings outside of the most established religious order.
In a society dominated by evil gods, the good ones might all be secretive cults. I ran a game where the neutral death god was suppressed, because the Lich King wanted corpses for his armies
I quite liked Born Into This