On Feb 7, 2:06 pm, mkkuh...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Mary K. Kuhner)
wrote:
> In article <1170862834.555001.5...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> Will in New Haven <bill.re...@[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.
I guess I take a mixed approach then. The Dwarven gods, the Deep Eight
and their lesser companions, are a mixed lot but Duster is the only
one who isn't fairly serious. One or two are so distant in aspect that
no one directly wor****ps them and the rest cover the spectrum of Dwarf
interests and activities. Of course, Dwarven gods are not going to
cause much player discomfort.
The Church of the Faceless God is the major religious path for most of
the areas where my player-characters operate. The idea of religious
tolerance is just a non-starter with the Church, so the players do
have some problems with it. At the same time, most of the virtues
found in real-world religions are reflected in the Church. A great may
of my player-characters, certainly many more than the demographics of
their homelands would make likely, are secretly wor****ppers of the old
pantheon that was wor****pped prior to the spread of the Church. Still
others, openly when they can, wor****p the Norse pantheon of the
neighboring nations. Still, a majority of PCs have been members of the
Church.
>
> 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.
It is clear to veteran players of my game, but not to many of their
characters, that the Faceless God himself is not as bigoted as certain
recent developments in his Church would indicate. Overzealous and
simply corrupt followers have taken the Church out of the path of
virtue but there are others who struggle to move it back on track.
>
> 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.
It's easier for me. I'm not religious at all.
>
> 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.
I played a couple of campaigns in Glorianthan settings. Aside from
liking RuneQuest a lot, I found the setting brilliant. The way my
first DM, a mideavalist grad student at Yale, set up the religious
situation in that first D&D campaign has influenced me a lot as well.
Will in New Haven
>
> Mary Kuhner mkkuh...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
|
