roguerouge wrote:
> So... do people regard paganism (in its various incarnations) as facts
> to be woven into the campaign, as established belief systems to be
> woven into the campaign, as shared stories to be woven into the
> campaign, as myths to be woven into the campaign, as window-dressing,
> or as something else?
I'm not sure I understand the question, but the historical
fantasy/alternate history-setting that I've created (that is, I've
stolen huge amounts of stuff from real history, then introduced a few
"nova", explicit changes in what is and isn't possible, which has then
caused events to follow a difference course than in our timeline), Ärth,
features the struggle between paganism and the "Abrahamic" religions
as one of the major sources of conflict. In particular, the conversion
of Denmark (which on Ärth was only partial, resulting in a split nation
with an Eastern part that's still pagan under Sven Forkbeard) is a huge
issue, with some very powerful characters trying to find a way to
successfully un-convert Denmark and then teach the Christians a lesson
(so that they'll never dare send any new missionaries), and other very
powerful characters wi****ng to convert all of Scandinavia, either as a
vehicle for personal power (Olav Tryggveson is, in the Ärth timeline,
the king of West-Denmark and quite intent on winning more land), or out
of a pious desire to spread the faith.
Just to increase the variety in the setting (and because I, and
presumably also many players, like Druids), I've also had Ireland be
only partially converted, and Britain not converted at all (starting all
the way back with Arthur pu****ng the Germanic invaders back into te sea,
in the middle of the first millenium, and becoming a much celebrated
High King of the Britons), which means that there's plenty of Celtic
paganism.
My choice of going with real-world religions, in a fantasy genre
campaign, was inspired by an old freeware RPG rules system, called Quest
FRP v2.1. Newer versions have removed the real-world religions (due to
criticism from some people who have not used the system and probably
never intended to use it, including Brian Gleichman), so you'll have to
use the archive.org WayBack-Machine:
< http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://admin.engr.wisc.edu
>
This page seems to still have the HTML versions of the rule books
(I've got PDF, RTF and HTML versions on my harddrive, as well as
hyperlinked HTML versions for offline usage which I could not get
permission to distribute, back in 1999 when I had made them):
<
http://web.archive.org/web/19990502050624/admin.engr.wisc.edu/quest/online.htm
>
< http://tinyurl.com/2bwm72
>
In particular, you'll want to look at the Handbook (i.e. the Player's
Book) chapter on the Cleric skill class, to see how Quest FRP tries to
simulate the supernatural effects of real-world religions, both
Abrahamic, pagan and Eastern:
<
http://web.archive.org/web/20020115031117/admin.engr.wisc.edu/quest/CLERIC/Cleric_c.htm
>
< http://tinyurl.com/yv23sb
>
Once I had become sufficiently fascinated with the idea of using
real-world religions in a fantasy genre RPG campaign, the decision of
making it alternate history was an easy one, since it makes much more
sense than trying to arbitrarily have real-world religions in a world
that is a different planet with a different history (although see the
recently published GURPS Banestorm for one way to do that).
Increasingly, during the Ärth campaign I ran in 2000, I became
dissatisfied with Quest FRP v2.1. I had only minor issues with the magic
system (many of which I fixed, e.g. the lack of any op****tunities for
characters to become particularly good at specific types of magic), what
annoyed me were the many clear "type 1"-elements in the system, which
conflicted rather noisily with my strong preference for "type 2" RPG
rules systems.
The solution I ended up deciding on, was to create a rules system of my
own, stealing all the good stuff from Quest FRP v2.1 (including much of
the the real-world religion material), and building everything else
myself.
Does this answer your question?
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
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