The players start a religion idea (comments sought)

[Lothaire]

Here is the outline of the Stargate rpg that John Tynes pitched to WEG. It unfortunately fell through.

http://www.johntynes.com/rl_sg0.html

Its wonderfully designed. I have to say that John Tynes is one of the best developers out there.

Not that he paid me to say that or anything.

 

[WillieW]

Lothair said:

Here is the outline of the Stargate rpg that John Tynes pitched to WEG. It unfortunately fell through.

Hope he didn't have to sign one of those "will not show rejected material to another game company" contracts.. *sigh*

I've added the site to my Favourites. Thanks for the link!

 

[MaxKaladin]

I'm sorry if I offended anyone with the "There is no God..." thing.

For clarification: I don't really intend this to be a "Players deliberately set out to start a religion" thing. It's more or less going to be a side effect. Most of the players don't have much to do with religion, but the player of the cleric will tell the unenlightened about the glory of her god. She has done so in the past. The way I see this playing out is that the cleric will tell people about the glory of Orus (her god) and that will be the seed that will grow into the new faith long after they are gone.

The big payoff for the players will be down the road when they get to see their character remembered (in some fashion anyway) as the equivilent of prophets or disciples. (I've done something like this before and PCs tend to like it. I had the PCs adventuring normally for a few levels and took careful notes on their public exploits. Then I let them blunder into a trap in an abandoned wizard's tomb that was to hold thieves in stasis until the guards came. Given it was abandoned, it held them for about 1500 years before the magic gave out. They emerged to find the were national heros to whom great deeds were attributed (all based on their exploits but magnified tenfold -- at least) and who were said to be much more powerful than the PCs actually were. It was a lot of fun for all.)

A campaign where the PCs are freedom fighters struggling to help free their people might be interesting, too.

 

[Mallus]

Clever idea, but...

...why not make the portal lead to their own worlds distant past? Have them accidentally found their own religion a millenia before its 'actual' start, in another part of the world. It's not unreasonable to assume their cultures knowledge of history is spotty enough to make the past seem like another world entirely.

The PC's could return to their own 'world' only to find

1) A tyrannical, decandent, corrupt church that rules with an iron fist...or

2) A utopia under the auspices of their beloved god, where everyone they knew and loved no longer exists --my fave... or

3) A world where another ethnic group dominates the religion, except for an ancient prophet who bears a stunning resemblance to your cleric...

There's so much you could do with this. Imagine a devout Muslim time traveler who returns from a little time-jaunt only to find no-one knows of Mohammad, but reveres him as the Prophet.

Or maybe the god himself get involved, since the PC's inadvertantly moved up his revelation by 1000 years.

The interdimentional evangelism storyline is nice, wish I thought of it. But a juicy time travel paradox seems to me to be so much more dramatic. By trying to good, the PC's have a direct and possibly catastrophic effect on their homeland/world... Can't beat that in my book