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Old 01-07-2014, 04:44 PM   #31
Brandy
 
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Default Re: Religion in Gaming

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
At an emotional level, I tend to feel that people who can't have their ideas questioned, or confront ideas different from theirs, aren't really quite adults—and they're not my preferred audience.
I tend to tread lightly here, because while I am an Atheist, none of my players are (depending on how I score the Buddhist, I suppose), and I am wary of presenting religion and religious themes in a way that makes it seem that I am not respectful of their views (which isn't true).

I remember a specific case: In one of the brief interludes where I had the opportunity to run a character in a game with the same people, the character concept that I came up made me want to talk to the Buddhist beforehand to make sure he was okay with it. In brief, the character (supers game) was a melding of two people: an Asian male working his way through law school, and an while female flower-child type. Now the flower-child thought she understood "you know, like Zen and stuff", but I was clear in my mind that she wasn't a serious student of the practices of Buddhism; she was a dabbler who had read a couple of bad books on the subject. I talked with my player before we started the game because I wanted to make sure he understood that she wasn't intended to be a caricature of a Buddhist -- she wasn't really a Buddhist at all (I was hoping that during the course of the game, as the character matured, she might come to a deeper understanding of the practices and that I would be able to use that as a way of showing the character's emotional and spiritual growth).

Still, I wasn't comfortable with a portrayal that my friend might mistake as making fun of his belief system without talking about it directly.
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Old 01-07-2014, 05:15 PM   #32
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Default Re: Religion in Gaming

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But in the second place, I expect my players to cope with challenging subjects. For example, unless the theme of the campaign makes it inappropriate, I'm prepared to run quite explicit sex scenes for players who want their characters to be involved in such scenes, and I expect the other players to cope. At an emotional level, I tend to feel that people who can't have their ideas questioned, or confront ideas different from theirs, aren't really quite adults—and they're not my preferred audience.
Sex is another touchy subject. I'm quite willing to tackle it explicitly and maturely, but I don't believe the gaming table is the correct venue for doing so. And while I can't attest for anyone else, my personal beliefs are that I should not roleplay sexually explicit content with anyone other than my spouse, nor should I expose myself willingly to such roleplays from others. These beliefs on sex stem naturally from my religion.

From the sounds of things on the forums I'm apparently in a lucky minority in that I've only ever seen a single Sex-Appeal roll, and that by an NPC trying to use it in a complementary way with her Merchant roll against a low-Willpower dwarf we left guarding our wares in the market.
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Old 01-07-2014, 06:10 PM   #33
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Religion frequently plays a big part in the games I run. Divine magic much less so. I run a lot of modern and near modern horror games, but even in settings where "Holy" powers exist, I tend to remove them (All Flesh Must Be Eaten and Witchcraft's Inspired, for example, or True Faith in Vampire the Masquerade. I make an exception for Inquisitor theurgists, but only because I am assuming they are fooling themselves about their magic not being basically like everyone else's.) In the Vampire game, one of the main characters' arc of development was defined by her dealing with massive religious guilt. (She was raised in a Medieval convent and was made a vampire political manipulator, courtesan, and wizard by a Tremere.) Likewise, my Witchcraft game centered on a group of Rosicrucians, who were all different kinds of Christian and saw magic as fundamentally sacramental, but they still used the same spells as everyone else.

I also really enjoy coming up with alternate religious histories for my Infinite Worlds games. Obviously most of the alternate historical religions are real, but some of them are very strange versions. Specifically a much longer lived Ancient Egyptian religion that has evolved into a something like a cross between Hinduism and Zoroastrianism, and a world where the Orthodox Church is competing with magic-using Ophite Gnostics and Chi-powered Montanists.

The only settings where I have had religious spell users were D&D inspired or dungeon fantasy settings. In one, a group centered around a cleric of the official Imperial Pantheon discovered that while the magics of the gods were the only thing keeping the setting's Devil figure bound, they were themselves really terrible, amoral beings. The other was GURPS DF and included a very laid back Holy Priest who worships a god called Ysmar, who is so far defined by healing, fire, and being surprisingly okay with most of the diturbing things our party of Dark Ones, Half-Infernals, and Coleopterans get up to. (Specifically, when the Dark One Wizard was discovered to be dissecting magical creatures, Thom just smiled his dazed stoner smile and said "Ysmar commends your spirit of inquiry.")

Just for full disclosure, I'm (Syrian) Orthodox, as is my wife, who also plays. Other players include a former Baptist agnostic, a couple of near totally religious disiniterested atheists and a person who is leaning toward Buddhism but isn't a member of any group yet (married to one of the atheists). I also have a couple of Wiccan friends who have mentioned being interested, but we haven't actually had a chance to play together yet.
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Old 01-07-2014, 07:17 PM   #34
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I'll give examples of how I've represented religions in my three campaign settings.

Fantasy: The dominant view of the gods of good is that they are an allied polytheism, with each deity representing a particular virtue. Most hold sway over a domain of the physical world, but varying cultures might see different physical domains (the dwarves don't really have a sun god). Some people can invoke those powers for magic, and beings that claim to represent those powers exist (angels and such). It's not the only magic in the world. There are a few major theological debates in the game world currently as to the nature of the divine. Are there really multiple gods, allied together? Is there in fact one divine force, perceived by mortals in multiple forms? Does magical power flow from an individual being, or from the power exerted by moral strength and virtue itself? Are the gods simply virtue incarnate? How would you know the difference? Most of the rest of the sorts of questions you'd find IRL are also asked. IMC the gods themselves don't directly interact, beyond the waxing and waning of access to their magic, so these, and other questions, remain mysteries and subject to the interpretations of mortals.

Modern Supers: As IRL, there aren't a lot of adventures in Sunday School. Some of my PC's and NPC's are actively religious, others aren't. When supers first appeared there were the requisite claims that they were angels, demons, cursed, blessed, and at least one healer set up a cult that went Jonestown. The Pope issued a statement that declared super-powers a blessing that came with the same responsibilities as any other extraordinary blessing or talent. In some places, people suspected of being supers were stoned. Much as in IRL, it was a mixed bag, but generally religious people rolled with it on the grounds of "so...kinda like Sampson?" One of the supers IMC attributed his miraculous recovery from cancer and gaining TK as part of God's plan. God Himself, has not appeared IMC to affirm or contradict any of the views proposed by humanity.

Space Lost Colonial Marines: Ships have chaplains, in the form of volunteers from among the crew. Religion is diverse. The Corps gives opportunity for religious observance, if possible, prior to combat. Sentient life exists on other worlds than Earth. Belief systems able to accommodate the growth in scientific knowledge have survived or been created, others have faded. There aren't any Amish in the colony, nor Gaians, but there are various flavors of Christian, Muslims, Buddhist, Church of The Singularity (they're building god...The Singularity is coming...any day now!) and probably some other things assumed as part of an open society. History is assumed to include numerous reformations, reclamations and other religious movements. Oddly, God Himself hasn't appeared to declare anyone the one true religion.

My group has a reasonable span of religious belief. Three Christians (of which I am one), a former pagan who isn't particularly concerned with such matters, an atheist, and one who's angry at God regardless of His nature or existence. If I were to be asked if God Almighty exists in any of my settings, I'd say yes, but He's not likely to make a personal appearance. When Christ returns IRL, we can assume the same has occurred in game.
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Old 01-07-2014, 07:41 PM   #35
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Default Re: Religion in Gaming

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There seem to be a number of approaches to religion in gaming:
  1. It has ceased to be relevant to the setting: Common in modern and science fiction settings; almost compulsory if they lack "divine magic".

Eh?


If you are referring to using 'modern Earth' as a setting, religion would obviously be a major part of the larger world setting. It might not play an important role in a given scenario. Setting and scenario are not the same thing.

SF games vary in how religion is handled, but several SF game settings feature it as a prominent part of the world. Notes of some sort on religion are quite common, though not always well-developed (many aspects of cultures may be left spotty in such game settings, particularly so with very large settings).



Faded Suns and Dark Heresy :
These two games have a lot of religious material in their settings. A lot!


Traveller : There's a fair amount of religious material on several of the cultures and worlds in the OTU.

Serenity game setting (The Verse): Religion is clearly part of life in the Verse. Shepherd Book


Star Wars. May the Force be with you, kid.

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Old 01-07-2014, 08:39 PM   #36
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I'd like to test your statement, (I consider my self very religious), but need to be able to look at the setting. Is it public?
Not yet, but once it is, be sure I'll post about it over in Roleplaying.
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Old 01-07-2014, 09:10 PM   #37
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Default Re: Religion in Gaming

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Sex is another touchy subject. I'm quite willing to tackle it explicitly and maturely, but I don't believe the gaming table is the correct venue for doing so.
I haven't found it to be a problem. Or, at any rate, no more so than any other aspect of roleplaying. The sexual content in my campaigns, whether sharp focused or diffuse, has given me any number of great scenes—comedy, romance, conflict, horror—and some good characterization. I'm sure it depends on your players.

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And while I can't attest for anyone else, my personal beliefs are that I should not roleplay sexually explicit content with anyone other than my spouse, nor should I expose myself willingly to such roleplays from others. These beliefs on sex stem naturally from my religion.
Of course you must judge such things for myself, but that seems to me an odd distinction to make. Do you refuse to read fiction that has explicit sexual scenes? Would you refuse to write such a scene?

A key to good gaming, in my view, is player/character separation. But that very fact means that what you are describing your character as doing is the action of your character, and not your own action. It may not even be possible for it to be! I remember running sexually explicit scenes between two male PCs, whose players were both heterosexual women, for example. What is going in is not "I am fantasizing about doing this," but "I am fantasizing about this character doing this with this other character."

My current players include four who are married, one who is in an exclusive nonmarital relationship, and one who is widowed. None of them seems to experience a conflict. So it doesn't seem inherent in the concept of marriage (or exclusive relationship) as such, though it seemingly is in your particular concept of it.

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Old 01-07-2014, 09:11 PM   #38
Peter Knutsen
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Snipping a bit off, to pinpoint what I'm addressing:

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Originally Posted by whswhs View Post
In the first place, I'm a strong atheist, and my players, so far as I know, are various flavors of atheist, agnostic, and simple secularist; I don't know any of them who practices a religion. A couple of them were formerly practicing pagans, but aren't active any long. So I'm not faced with anyone with offendable religious sensibilities. I don't seem to have anyone so strongly atheistic that they are unable to tolerate religious content in their games, on the other hand. I've run campaigns where it was either required or strongly suggested that all of the PCs be adherents of a religion—Muslim in one campaign, Roman Catholic in another. Of course, those were mostly historical.
Well, one problem with my Ärth setting is that religion is pervasive. It defines the setting, that everyone has a religion, and almost everyone inherits the religion of their parents. I do not mean this as an attack on him, but I imagine that someone like poster Flyndaran would have serious problems roleplaying in such a setting.

As stated earlier, though, I did go out of my way, when initially creating the setting, to make sure that there's a variety of religious options available (depending on what part of Europe the character is born in), rather than just a menu of variations over the theme of Abrahamic monotheism.

Individual characters can care greatly or very little about religion (depending on whether they have the Religious psychological Flaw, and if so how many Elements it contains[1]), but no one doubts that any religion that they have ever been exposed to, or head tales about, is in some way real, even though it is common to doubt the moral validity of foreign religions. E.g. Christians and Moslems think of Odin and Thor as devils or as aspects of Satan, rather than as potentially wholesome gods that one can reasonably make sacrifices to. But no well-informed Moslem or Christian, in Ärth, would ever make a claim about any pagan god being a figment of the worshiper's imaginations. That'd be bizarre. Of course there's something there. Obviously.

One difference from Ars Magica's Mythic Europe, and almost certainly also GURPS' Yrth, is that Ärth has vigorous missionary activity, with Christians (and further south, Moslems) trying to spread their faith, engaged in acts of memetic conquest in pagan lands. And - at least to a much greater extent than in our timeline - there is counter-missionary activity, groups of people (often somewhat adventurer-like) trying to thwart those efforts, possibly even reverse them. That alone makes religion take on a larger role than in those two other settings, although it depends on where you are. In Italy or southern France, where Christianity has been stable for many centuries, not so much, whereas it's huge in Scandinavia.

At the same time, while magic is rare it does exist, and sometimes manifests powerfully, so pagans would not have serious problems believing the tales from the Christian "New Testament", about dead people coming back to life. On continent-wide terms, that probably happens something like once per 2 or 3 centuries, as far as most people know (in reality it's a bit more common than that).

There are multiple kinds of magic (those many of you familiar with GURPS Powers will largely understand how that can work), including religious magic, although most kinds, excepting learnable spell magic (which is profoundly secular) are rare. Most magic is also subtle, likely to produce effects that are in the nature of bonuses or penalties to dice rolls, rather than anything that can be seen, heard or felt.



[1] E.g. a Christian character who takes the R Element tripled would be profoundly concerned about particiting in or enacting the ritualistic aspects of Christianity. He'd want to attend Mass daily, if possible, and would try to take Communion often, which of course requires him to confess his sins first, and potentially to a stranger priest if he's a travelling adventurer. A Christian or Moslem who takes the E element tripled would be extremely worried about inappropriate sexuality, and someone with more or less X would be careful not to engage in idolatry or otherwise pay respect to other gods, and might also worry about his friends doing such things.
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Old 01-07-2014, 09:22 PM   #39
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[1] E.g. a Christian character who takes the R Element tripled would be profoundly concerned about particiting in or enacting the ritualistic aspects of Christianity. He'd want to attend Mass daily, if possible, and would try to take Communion often, which of course requires him to confess his sins first, and potentially to a stranger priest if he's a travelling adventurer. A Christian or Moslem who takes the E element tripled would be extremely worried about inappropriate sexuality, and someone with more or less X would be careful not to engage in idolatry or otherwise pay respect to other gods, and might also worry about his friends doing such things.
Most characters who have the Religious Flaw have a mixture of Elements. A simple one like single- or double-R is common for pagans (Norse, Keltic, Slavic, et cetera), representing a basic (or more profound, for RR) desire to participate in the typical community rituals of sacrifices (and mead circles too, for the Norse), whereas a typical (activley religious) medieval Christian would be A, B, D and T, with a doubled EE, doubled MM, doubled OO, doubled RR and doubled XX, for a total of 14 Elements. Individuals can then vary around that centerpoint, e.g. triple up on T for massive theological angst ("if the belief I hold inside my head is not exactly correct, then I will spend an eternity in Hell!") or drop the B to represent not taking relics seriously at all ("Saint Peter once washed himself with this cloth? So what? He's in Heaven now, seated near the Lord, and I will try to speak to him directly, not kneel for a silly rag!!").
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Old 01-07-2014, 10:12 PM   #40
simply Nathan
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Default Re: Religion in Gaming

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Of course you must judge such things for myself, but that seems to me an odd distinction to make. Do you refuse to read fiction that has explicit sexual scenes? Would you refuse to write such a scene?
As a matter of fact, it always makes me at least a little uncomfortable when I run into it (which only seems to be more frequent as I mature) and there are many series I simply gave up on in spite of their overall quality because they became too sexually explicit for me. I consider GURPS Basic Set's inclusion of the Erotic Art skill, bonuses to the same from Flexibility, and its two-sentence description to be dangerously close to the border of good taste. (Indeed, as a teenager I believed these to have crossed over it, once I added "erotic" to my vocabulary the same way I did "eidetic". GURPS has been quite the vocabulary expander.)

And on the other hand, I'm also the sort of person interested in looking for gameable stats like the recent thread on sphincter ST of giant creatures. And while I would never allow the conception to be played out at the game table, I do keep track of all possible interracial relations and why they could or couldn't work in my head if not in my notes.
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