Three games about religion
contracycle:
Alfryd: I don't think the claim was that religion was exclusive in regards its propagation of cultural forms. But rather that we are all affected by the orthodoxies and conventions that are current in our cultural setting. Obviously we're not pre-programmed robots either, but until not very long ago in historical terms the church was an extremely powerful, nearly all-pervasive force. So a lot of the repetition for repetition's sake originates in or was encouraged by religion, even if they aren't strictly speaking actually religious. the general avoidance of religious topics in any depth has resulted in them all being ignored, no matter how strong or weak the case for them being "really" religious might be.
ADGBoss: As far religions prior current ones are concerned, sure, stuff like Greek and Roman societies were misogynistic in their own right. In one sense, then, yes you could say it's a "secular belief" carried along by religion, but by the same token that's just a description of the problem, in that the religious patina gives people the sense that they doing the right and proper, indeed moral, thing by maintaining such discrimination. I used to know someone who claimed he was only a racist in church, citing some biblical story which was being used as justification. So it might not be a direct relationship but I would think that a decline in religious sentiment probably opens a space for people to engage in the discussion without being branded as heretics and immoral disruptors of the divinely ordained social structure. In terms of deeper history, the first that look liike religious objects and sites are usually female oriented, things like the Venus of Willendorf or the womb-shaped temples of Malta. It's probably the case that the earliest "religions" were basically goddess-worship and that women held significant positions in those societies. The development, later, of specifically male monotheisms therefore suggests that there was a distinct change. After all a singular, abstract god doesn't need to actually have a gender at all.
Alfryd:
Quote from: ADGBoss
In my mind this also brings up the idea of cause and effect. Gender roles are important in most religions and with only a surface glance at the phenomena, one might conclude that religion, somewhat dominated by males, created the gender situation we have today around the world. When it could easily be argued that the same gender inequity existed prior to the modern religions (not everywhere but in many places) . So which was the chicken and which the egg? Will that inequality go away with the continued downplay of the importance of religion, at least in America? Gender roles are just one concept where religion may have been the instrument of a more secular belief.
Well, I think- as Ron has pointed out- the actual causal links between the morals and proscriptions ordained by a given religious institution and (A) those contained within it's holy texts and/or (B) implied by it's core metaphysical concepts can be very tenuous. I mean, the basic concepts of a benign, incorporeal, interventionist deity, or reincarnation, or the accumulation of mana, etc. don't inherently make any statements about gender relations, so far as I can tell. To the extent that one identifies religion as 'core metaphysical beliefs' as distinct from dogma, scripture, institutions or observance, it's often hard to assign direct blame to the former for social ills ascribed to the latter.
Quote
I hope I am staying relevant and on-topic here, at least I am trying to. The first thing I will point out is the use of "irrational character".
Apologies- my phrasing here was misleading. My point is simply that it's possible for a player to role-play a character with beliefs, goals or personality traits radically different from their own- that, e.g, a stiff/clumsy puppeteer isn't the same thing as a skilled puppeteer depicting a stiff/clumsy person.
I'm not saying that there aren't situations where some degree of faith-in-the-unproven can't be justified- arguably, even in a scientific context, you need this in order to justify the mental effort and physical labour of making hypotheses and then conducting experiments to prove or disprove a new theory. The concept of trust as a form of experimentation plays a similar role in human relations. Or, A Canticle For Leibowitz basically makes the point that in an era where the rigorous accumulation of scientific insight is slowed or outright reversed, dogma can be most efficient repository of knowledge.
sirogit:
Ron: That's a lot of cool stuff. I've also been giving a lot of thoughts about gamifing religion, as in the actual experience that I see every day as opposed to D&D cleric powers.
I think of 'religion' as ambitious attempt at a 'group belief system', with all of the terribleness and possibility that that includes. I've recently read some popular business books, which are full of religion - straightforward dichotomies that try to explain a wide span of human behavior in a few sentences, promises of salvation, welcoming the reader to a 'golden circle' away from the unwashed without twitter accounts, simplistic stories that most people know aren't true but will parrot them anyway because its nice to have common ground.
I liked the bit about people messiniac thoughts within gamers-who-leave-religion - I think this is part of the design of most systems that oppose free thought but nonetheless want to include free thinkers; Let them be Jesus in their own mind. Let them think of themselves as the person who would save all of these lowly sheep.
Of course, a lot of the times those freethinkers decide to strike out on their own - loudly praising their exodus from the sheep in anticipation of their future leadership position, which is either stalled because no one wants to be their sheep, or successful in light of the people who so desperately don't want to be sheep they will attach themselves vigorously to someone who will promise them they won't be.
Alfryd:
Quote from: sirogit on July 14, 2011, 01:54:28 PM
Of course, a lot of the times those freethinkers decide to strike out on their own - loudly praising their exodus from the sheep in anticipation of their future leadership position, which is either stalled because no one wants to be their sheep, or successful in light of the people who so desperately don't want to be sheep they will attach themselves vigorously to someone who will promise them they won't be.
I'd agree with this. In fact, I'd go on to suggest that the 'behaviour-mod indoctrination' Ron refers to would apply a kind of natural-selection fitness function to the people able to shake it off. The ability to say, "I am right and everyone else I know is wrong" would be arrogance in the great majority of cases, but occasionally it happens to be true. For better or worse, anybody lacking a rock-solid conviction they know better than their peers would still be there, chanting hosannas.
That said, this is mostly guesswork on my part- my own religious obligations as a kid were basically nonexistant, aside from formal occasions once or twice a year- weddings, confirmations, funerals, etc. I do kinda match up with a few of the symptomatic characteristics- strangely enough, I can still recall the Swahili translation of the sign of the cross that was taught to us by a visiting missionary in 3rd or 4th year primary- but my religious warm-fuzzies fizzled out by themselves by the age of 12 or so, and my folks were always agnostic-by-default: not really invested enough in either conviction or atheism to really count as either.
I'd hazard that a possible hiccup here in D&D is that divine intervention is treated as a standard aspect of the fire-and-forget magical arsenal available at will to the characters- In other words, there's no actual faith or element of uncertainty involved, no blurring of the line between the divine and the mundane. I could be getting this completely wrong, though- how does the Glorantha setting handle presentation of a divine presence? I honestly have no idea myself, and I'd be very interested to see it done right.
C Luke Mula:
Wow, these are great!
I especially like the fact that you're focusing on the disconnects between the various aspects of religion (culture, institution, belief, practice):
The focus on the disconnect between personal belief/practice and the immediate culture in the red game.
The focus on the disconnect between personal practice and cultural practice/institution in the ophite game.
The focus on the disconnect between institution and belief in the relic game.
These disconnect points produce some powerful (even when casual) play. Good stuff.
I have a question, though. You mentioned that these games were borne directly out of theory as opposed to previous techniques. What specific theory led to these games?
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