Three games about religion
Ron Edwards:
Ah-ha - now I see it. I fixed the link; all three documents are now available with a single click.
And more! The internal link to the "provocative thoughts" (which are present in this thread already anyway) is now fixed too.
Best, Ron
Erik Weissengruber:
BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
Glorantha appealed to me because myth was front and centre.
I knew about the Runequest RPG around '80 and '81 was enthused to play in a world where religion mattered.
This is after readling lots of childrens' books on mythology and reading a bit about Jung and Freud.
Moreover, I liked the opportunity to imagine what it was like to be one of the Homeric or Germanic heroes who got entangled with the gods themselves.* The chance to be a character in a myth, rather than a worshiper or a mythic pantheon.
My connection with organized Christianity was minimal -- I sang in a Presbyterian church choir because its leader ran the children's theatre program I was in -- but the tropes of Christian eschatology, the imagery of the martyred Christ, the demands of Christian ethics, and the taboos/anxieties/"thou shalt nots" of Christian personal morality ended up in my head without any church attendance being mandated by my parents.
It seems that the games you are proposing have more to do with the legacy of doctrinal Christianity (and the other Abrahamic religions) than it does the kind of pagan/mythopoeic religious experiences pushed to the fore in Runequest.*
In terms of playing or running games, I would vascillate between bloody, nihilistic power fantasies or focusing on characters who had to live out the consequences of chosing to become the incarnations of greater-than human forces.
Janet Morris' treatment of Tempus in the 2nd Thieves World book brought both kinds of story together and I suppose that I got bored of role playing when I couldn't get that kind of drama at the table.
Perhaps dealing with religion in gaming requires thinking about adolescent thoughts about death/mortality/family/sex/power and adult takes on those subjects.
* [Yes there are monotheists and animists in Glorantha. I am talking about what appealed to me in the flavour text, some of the rules, and illustrations of the 1st and 2nd editions. And I really can't say what it's like growing up in a society untouched by the big monotheisims so the desire for the "pagan" is projection and wish fullfilment]
WHAT YOUR POSTS GOT ME THINKING ABOUT
- Did we gamers turn to Call of Cthulhu because we wanted the experience of smashing debased, slavish worshipers into nothingness? A little vicarious atheist/agnostic revenge on those believers who make non-believers feel like outsiders?
- Gnosticism (the flipside of doctrinal Christianity, almost from day one). What's up with this belief that the official interpretations of the sacred books, or those texts themselves, are just cyphers for the REAL cosmological/theological struggles? You can see this trope at work in many games that deal with the occult (the hidden), like Mage. You mentioned both Valis and the Matrix, two imaginary worlds heavy on the gnostic "everything you know is wrong" or "sleeper ... awake from the dream reality that has enslaved the majority and join in with the select few who see things as they are." Perhaps each kind of religion produces its own kind of dissent and a kind of tightly conceived and rigidly taught scriptural religion produces a counter belief -- a counter scripture that demands a certain kind of reading and the practice of envisioning a total or deep reality that the unenlightened cannot see -- without guidance from the [counter]institution..
David Berg:
Hi Ron,
Playing D&D as young teens, my groups (of secular atheist players) totally got into the color of being a cleric. "I wear these colors and perform these little rituals, and speak in such and such a tone when asking my deity for stuff!" It neatly fleshed out a way to roleplay the character beyond their cool powers. Usually one player in a given group did this, and everyone else thought it was cool, and looked on it as "that's who that character is".
But there was no faith to be found -- there was only a belief in that which had been proven. "If I do this stuff, I get healing powers." Each cleric's deity was verifiably real, and the observance made was verifiably the correct way to relate to them (plus flourishes and embellishment to taste, or course).
Later, doing some world-building with this same group of players, trying to emulate high middle ages Europe, we got hung up on religion. "I can't roleplay these people, they're fucking psychotic. This culture supports an entire religious class based on their story that they know the best way to talk to a God who acts quite like us and needs to be bribed, but no one has ever seen? I am not that good a roleplayer; I cannot possibly immerse myself in that mindset." So we endeavored to create a fictional society which looked somewhat like medieval Europe, but whose functional logic was based on stuff we understood from our own lives -- economics, mostly, with some geography and physics. Characters were allowed to sacrifice animals to the Gods for good fortune on a voyage, but no one's getting killed or going broke for something they can't see or touch.
Subsequently, my history-researching friend has found more and more instances where actual economic motives coincided with supposed religious ones. I don't think it's quite as simple as "the Crusades were 100% about money and land", but he brought up some stuff like that. So it isn't that medieval Christians were actually psychotic; certain narratives about the time just make them look that way.
Anyway, cultural practices and institutions of all sorts pop up in the fiction of the games I play, and there's no great distinction made about which of those might be defined as religious. Wedding ring tradition is wedding ring tradition, and we don't need to know or care whether that came from Christianity in order to play it. If in-game religion is just a subset of in-game culture, I'm already comfortable with it, somewhat familiar with it, and would be happy to play more games focused on it, but it ain't no big thang.
It's only when belief is a factor that I get interested in in-game religion for its own sake. Who's a true believer, who's self-deluding, and who's a malicious faker? Who's using belief as positive social pressure (e.g. for charity) versus negative (e.g. fear-mongering)? Who really, truly acts like they believe what they say they believe? How hard is it for believers and non-believers to interact and connect?
These are tricky issues for me in the real world. You seem to dig putting that kind of challenging stuff into your games, Ron, so I'd have to say that vaulting past the belief issue seems like a bad move to me.
In Montsegur 1244, the tension between "if I recant, I won't be burned" and "but what if what I've been told to believe is The Truth?" was probably my favorite part.
Ps,
-Dave
Callan S.:
It probably sounds glib but, if to game is to question, and religion is about unquestioning faith/belief, it strikes me a game about religion wont be? Or it wont be about questioning religion?
JSDiamond:
Quote
Essentially, I want responses straight from the heart. Whether it's your reading of the current write-ups, any attempt at playing them, your thoughts on religion in RPG settings, your personal accounts and admissions regarding religion and role-playing, all I care about is your honesty. As long as that's there, whatever you toss into this thread for those topics will help me a lot, and I hope to be able to provide interesting feedback that shows more about where I'm coming from with these ... well, not games yet, "things."
This is a deep well to plumb.
David Berg hit on it, faith vs. knowing; which makes playing a cleric little different than playing a mage. One prays for "spells" and the other memorizes. But both have a list and they both know it. That's why I don't like RPG clerics as typically presented in games. And I won't even get into how the existence of clerics must logically contradict mages or vice-versa. But those are rules/mechanics quibbles.
I do like fictional religions presented in games because it provides an extention of faith (or desperate hope) that there's something after. I think that's one reason why fantasy games account for half (or more) of those enjoying the greatest popularity: There's usually magic and so (IMO) it's also easy to imagine/accept the existence of a pantheon of gods and happy hunting grounds for my immortal spirit. It seems perfectly reasonable. Or at least, it makes me feel like the odds are better.
On the other hand, in a sci-fi settting religion becomes the quaint practice of noble savages on some backwater planet. Which is still preferrable to something hella lame like a sentient head cold (read: the force). In sci-fi (hard sci-fi, space opera, etc.) technology is the religion. But the end result is the same; through it, I don't have to die. So, I don't have o be afraid of dying.
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