Clerics and deities

[Jarl Wilm]

I've also thought a lot about the socio-economic implications of this magic system. Most people are practical; if 99% of the population are farmers, they're going to want someone around doing druid magic (Animal and Plant college spells). But they also have babies, and the DFRPG spells for clerics are a lot more helpful to midwives: healing, curing, reducing pain and so on. So any village that can manage to have both sorts of magic available, will want both a shrine run by a healer/midwife cleric, and a sacred grove that houses a druid to bless the fields and placate the spirits and faeries who live either in the fields and meadows or right next to them.

I imagine there would be some regions where the local lord was Intolerant and tried to suppress all religion but his/her preferred magic system, others where the lord allowed both. What happens to the adventurers if they unknowingly enter the realm of Prince Brian the Pious, and find that anyone who uses the wrong sort of Esoteric Medicine is liable to be burned at the stake?

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Jarl Wilm

But Socrates was executed for "introducing foreign deities" among other things, presumably because of his tendency to exclaim, "By the Dog, god of the Egyptians!"

Originally Posted by Jarl Wilm

I imagine there would be some regions where the local lord was Intolerant and tried to suppress all religion but his/her preferred magic system, others where the lord allowed both. What happens to the adventurers if they unknowingly enter the realm of Prince Brian the Pious, and find that anyone who uses the wrong sort of Esoteric Medicine is liable to be burned at the stake?

The thing is these depend on the gods not being real, or hating each other. If the gods did exist, cooperate with each other and communicate with their followers, Prince Brian gets an angelic visitation explaining that we on the side of Good don't burn our allies for wearing the wrong color hat and he can desist or face divine punishment.

Many of the kinds of religious disputes that happen in reality simply do not make sense in a setting where the gods are accessible to answer questions and rule on disputes. Serious internal religious disputes are right out - you can [ask] God if he prefers to be called YHWH, Jesus or Allah and wants you to murder the heretics who get it wrong, and get an answer that depends on His preferences rather than yours - and while interreligious disputes are still possible, gods that are on the same side have a motive to take actions to keep them from becoming bad enough to damage their shared causes.

[pawsplay]

In the Middle Ages, the question was posed, how could tell if you received an angelic visitation, and received the Word of God, or if you were visited by the Devil, and given bad information to lead you into sin? The generally accepted answer was that humans have a conscience, and that through the exercise of reason and the power of the Holy spirit, you could discern a divine message from an evil one by whether it seemed like it was good. The problem here is that this is not helpful at all if you had a visitation along the lines of, "Name your firstborn Kevin," or something, which doesn't have a clear good or bad outcome; you would have to know the ultimate divine plan to judge whether this was being suggested for divine or infernal reasons. In between, there are plenty of areas where one viewpoint predominates, but other people still come to different conclusions, even looking at the same divine commands, because they ascribe different purposes to them.

Training your followers to look for regular bulletins and direct divine communications about how to resolve various issues is a recipe for disaster. You won't teach them what you intend for them. Instead, you'll teach them reliance on external authorities. Your worshippers will be ripe for poaching, corruption, and misdirection by rivals and hostile entities. The priests of your religion won't be particularly spiritually perceptive, but simply obedient. Ideally, if you are a wise and powerful deity, you'll instruct them in a general way such that they can fend for themselves, and fulfill your agenda without much direct guidance. Then, when you do turn into a goose or something and appear in a vision, the instructions you offer will clearly further your ends.

Deities who simply speak in a booming voice whenever they want something are purely ineffectual. They are vulnerable not only to the deception of demons and hostile gods, but their worshippers are vulnerable to simplistic charlatans.

[Jarl Wilm]

Originally Posted by malloyd

The thing is these depend on the gods not being real, or hating each other. If the gods did exist, cooperate with each other and communicate with their followers, Prince Brian gets an angelic visitation explaining that we on the side of Good don't burn our allies for wearing the wrong color hat and he can desist or face divine punishment.

Many of the kinds of religious disputes that happen in reality simply do not make sense in a setting where the gods are accessible to answer questions and rule on disputes. Serious internal religious disputes are right out - you can [ask] God if he prefers to be called YHWH, Jesus or Allah and wants you to murder the heretics who get it wrong, and get an answer that depends on His preferences rather than yours - and while interreligious disputes are still possible, gods that are on the same side have a motive to take actions to keep them from becoming bad enough to damage their shared causes.

DFRPG does have the option of good clerics and holy warriors who are Intolerant of all religions but their own. I've wondered whether or not to even allow separate "good" religions; again, it has that "difference without a distinction" problem. But there definitely are at least three forms of spirituality, since there are three forms of Esoteric Medicine. I was assuming that a cleric who was Intolerant of Any Religion but Own was intolerant of druids and martial artists. But if that cleric is not only intolerant of people who have a spirituality that doesn't use Sanctity, but also of other "good" religions, then Intolerant could wind up being rude to literally everyone outside their own community. That should affect the point value, which would really complicate things, so I personally would try to avoid it. But clearly there aren't any angels going to King Brian the Pious (aka "that intolerant prick") and telling him "God loves druids, so be nice to them."

I'm also assuming that wizards are not another "religion" unless they've been Excommunicated. There are some historical examples of Christian monks and believers who practiced alchemy, for example, as well as good wizards and witches in various fairy stories new and old.

[Balor Patch]

Most members of a religion are not clerics or holy warriors and being a druid, martial artist, or wizard does not preclude a character from being a member of most religions.

[Jarl Wilm]

Originally Posted by Balor Patch

Most members of a religion are not clerics or holy warriors and being a druid, martial artist, or wizard does not preclude a character from being a member of most religions.

That very much depends on the religion. It might even depend on the Disadvantages of a key person making that call. For example, in the reign of King Charles I of England, Archbishop William Laud decided to enforce church uniformity on the Puritans and religious nonconformists; in our terms, it seems he was Intolerant not only of other religions but even of variants in his own religion (Puritanism was a reform movement within the Church of England, not a separate faith or even a denomination). His Intolerance helped trigger the English Civil War.

If Druids are not a different religion in DFRPG terms, then I don't know what is, or how "Intolerant of other religions" could possibly work. It seems to me that Sanctity and Nature represent two different spiritualities, since both get their spells from Power Investiture (i.e. as gifts, not as proto-science). Chi is a little more debatable, but I think three different sorts of Esoteric Medicine implies three different "religions," with the possibility of more.

ON THE OTHER HAND, here in Roundworld we see religions (particularly Chinese and Japanese) where the idea of opposing religions seems absurd to most people. In China, traditional religion blends Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, even to the point of traditional paintings of the "Three Friends" of Lao Tzu, Confucius and the Buddha all depicted together. In Japan Buddhism and Shinto are one faith to most people. The only people who seem to distinguish are the priests and monks of the different groups, who have professional reasons to specify their particular "faith." So it wouldn't be unthinkable for a single religion (say, Illuvatar, or Unitarian Universalism, or Mahayana Buddhism) that embraces chi practicing martial artists and Nature-channeling Druids. But then, when we see PCs who chose the Disad "Intolerant of All Other Religions" (not just the "evil" ones), who are they not tolerating? Some other officially "good" religion that is distinguished from theirs for some totally arbitrary (i.e. non-game related) reason, like geography?

As to wizards, since a lot of them are Excommunicated but not all, I assume the Good Religion accepts the practice of wizardry just as most faiths accept philosophy and science, but that some (notable) number develop heterodox views and get themselves labeled "heretics." Example: Descartes remained accepted as a good Roman Catholic while Spinoza got Excommunicated by his synagogue. Gotta run.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Jarl Wilm

That very much depends on the religion. It might even depend on the Disadvantages of a key person making that call.

One of the points I've been trying to make here is that in a dungeon fantasy type setting where gods obviously and detectably Bless, Curse or Excommunicate people, answer prayers, and occasionally work miracles, is that "person" is the god. You can't really extrapolate too much from how real world religions behave to how they would in a universe the gods were more obviously active.

That said, yeah the idea that other religions are bad and in opposition to ours is somewhat unusual in any polytheistic culture, and may even be nonexistent outside of places where the religion has been captured by the state (i.e. where the condemnation is less about the actual religious differences than it is about lack of loyalty to the government)

But then, when we see PCs who chose the Disad "Intolerant of All Other Religions" (not just the "evil" ones), who are they not tolerating? Some other officially "good" religion that is distinguished from theirs for some totally arbitrary (i.e. non-game related) reason, like geography?

Both. Plus people most of us would classify as in their own religion who worship the wrong god, or worship their favorite god in the wrong way, or who worship exactly like they do but favor a different High Priest candidate.... Intolerance is really good at finding distinctions most people barely even notice.

[RyanW]

I've long said that the stereotypical dungeon fantasy setting doesn't have any religions. It has a collection of alternate magicians' guilds that have a side gig selling undead killing acid and specialty magic items. The fact that they are aligned with one or another powerful entity is window dressing.

[Jarl Wilm]

Originally Posted by malloyd

One of the points I've been trying to make here is that in a dungeon fantasy type setting where gods obviously and detectably Bless, Curse or Excommunicate people, answer prayers, and occasionally work miracles, is that "person" is the god. You can't really extrapolate too much from how real world religions behave to how they would in a universe the gods were more obviously active.

That said, yeah the idea that other religions are bad and in opposition to ours is somewhat unusual in any polytheistic culture, and may even be nonexistent outside of places where the religion has been captured by the state (i.e. where the condemnation is less about the actual religious differences than it is about lack of loyalty to the government)

I'm interested in this question of how much we can/should "extrapolate." I see that the first principle has to be what is fun; I see the "maximum fun principle" invoked in the DFRPG rules several times. On the other hand, what's "fun" for me as a philosopher and religionist is musing on the implications of the rules as written. The rules as written have all clerics gaining identical powers and spells from whatever deity they claim to represent, which suggests to me that there is only one God (or maybe two, the God with powers of Light and Healing versus the Devil with powers of corruption and harm). So far I've had limited experience running DFRPG but a lot of GM experience overall with several systems. Some consciously consider their "theology" and some just assume something. AD&D and its predecessors just assumed; most sci-fi settings ignore religion or assume atheism, and so on.

And of course, a lot depends on what interests the players (including GM). I've read Jung, Freud, Joseph Campbell, Tolkien's essays on Beowulf and fairy stories, and other theories of the roles of mythic archetypes and their social and psychological implications, so I gravitate towards questions of what stories we might be telling ourselves through our popular culture (perhaps unconsciously). I'm also interested in the ethical stories we tell ourselves, or tell about ourselves. (For example, ever think about the fact that Ukrainians refer to the Russian invaders as "orcs"? What does that say about their enemy--or for that matter, what does it say about orcs?)

To me, extrapolating from real-world religious views in my RPG is only slightly less natural than extrapolating from real-world combat. If I care enough about the religious part of the society to want it to be consistent and believable, I have to start somewhere and follow established principles. But an RPG probably needs to be simpler and more reasonable than reality. There are a lot of ways to do that.

I might also add that I only own the DFRPG and some of the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy books on religion etc. I don't have the Gaming Ballistic's stuff such as Hand of Asgard, as my last MIB points purchases have not been processed. Thus, I don't have the official expansions for how to introduce Viking polytheism into DFRPG without moving outside those limits and into a fuller GURPS system. I'm just looking at the assumptions and implications in the original box, and playing around with those ideas.

[Dammann]

Originally Posted by Jarl Wilm

I don't have the Palladium stuff such as Hand of Asgard

Palladium is a whole other thing; you’re talking about Gaming Ballistic’s Hand of Asgard, I think. That’s a licensed DFRPG supplement.