In article <1170862834.555001.5460@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
Will in New Haven <bill.reich@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>I think many moderns, including deists, strike the atheistic attitude
>in game settings because they are uncomfortable with being wor****ppers
>or followers of a game-world god. It doesn't help that many game-world
>pantheons have very unnatractive or silly gods. I speak as the creator
>of Duster, the Dwarven god of beer, who looks llike a Hobbit disguised
>as a Dwarf, so I know silly gods when I see them. Duster, on the other
>hand, has many player-character wor****ppers, so maybe this is all
>wrong.
You can go at least two ways with game-world gods. You can make them
silly, so there is no way that the player's religious (or non-religious)
real-world attitudes will be engaged. But it may be hard to take a PC
or NPC seriously if s/he wor****ps a goofy god. Or you can make them
worthy of being taken seriously, and run the risk of getting into a fight
about player-world religions, or just plain making the players
uncomfortable.
Also, if such-and-such god is really the exemplar of Heroic Virtue, a
lot is being asked of the GM's depiction--it only takes a few
less-than-Heroic
decisions on the GM's part to make the god look like a cheat. It's a
subset
of the whole problem of playing characters who are extremely smart, or
virtuous, or wise. Of course, if the god stays offstage this doesn't
arise
directly, but you may still have to show holy books/teachings/traditions
which live up to the god, and that can be awfully hard.
I try to go the second way anyway, because I find religion one of the most
interesting things in a gameworld, and would feel cheated if it had to be
trivialized. And luckily my own religious beliefs aren't very sensitive
about
this. But it's a tough act to manage.
Glorantha stands head and shoulders above anything I've seen published
in terms of providing "real" game-world religions, even though it also
descends into silliness in spots. Most other published work that deals
in religion in any detail goes for the "religion is a power-grabbing
scheme run for the benefit of either priests or gods", as in _The Primal
Order_, which I don't find interesting at all. Playing a sincerely
religious character in such a setting is an invitation to disappointment
and disillusionment, which is interesting to see once in a while, but
not as an inevitability.
Mary Kuhner mkkuhner@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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