Real Religion in Adventure Design

[Bedrockgames]

I'm not as familiar with other traditions, but - to echo @Bedrockgames upthread - when I watch wuxia films religious characters and ideas seem to figure pretty prominently. Just to give one example, Tai Chi Master is all about Jet Li's character changing from an establishment-oriented Buddhist outlook to a more idiosyncratic Daoist outlook, which enables him to be victorious at the end. Just as I would expect Christianity to figure in some fashion in an Arthurian game, so I would expect Buddhism and Daoism to figure in some fashion in a wuxia game.

Tha is a perfect example. One, Tai Chi Master is an amazing movie with stunning martial arts choreography. But two, it is based on Zhang Sanfeng. It is about the invention of Tai Chi.

 

[Bedrockgames]

Sure, but if peace in the Middle East was the pre-requisite for fiction involving Old Testament tradition we’d be waiting a long time.

The old testament has been a source of material for fiction for ages. Taking that and other religious texts off the table, really guts the cultural well we can draw from. I mean surely there is room for stuff like Paradise Lost. And surely we can handle multiple points of view emerging when this stuff comes up (people mentioned historicity of Exodus: you can have historically realistic campaigns based on religion, but you can also have campaigns where the assumptions of the religious text are treated as 100% true....and I am sure there are plenty of other approaches). One of my favorite movies set against a religious backdrop was Agora. It certainly takes its liberties, and it is critical of Christianity at times, but it is also incredibly compelling and offers a vision of what the rise of Christianity may have looked like to Romans. I feel like I can handle both games that are sympathetic to the perspective of believers and ones that are critical (even if it is critical of my own beliefs). Not that most games would include that kind of commentary, but just in the establishment of cosmology a point of view, and an opinion, could emerge.

 

[Umbran]

Sure, but if peace in the Middle East was the pre-requisite for fiction involving Old Testament tradition we’d be waiting a long time.

So, it would be great to know why you thought a comment about how touching warring nations in that area would be difficult at this very specific moment implied that folks could not touch any element of Biblical tradition until there's peace in the Middle East.

One of the things that makes these discussions difficult is the implied expansion of people's comments. I said something very limited, but you responded to it as if it were broad, which has the appearance of putting words in my mouth that I did not say or intend. This is a dynamic that tends to drive internet discussions to irreconcilable poles, when the individuals did not begin there.

 

[MGibster]

Not to mention that, given current real-world events in that part of the world, however you position the confict is going to be seen as an allegory for today, and thus pretty insensitive.

I remember Iranians were quite irate about the depiction of Persians in 300. I'd wager that most Americans didn't view the movie as an allegory for conflicts between Iran and the United States but a lot of Iranians did.

 

[TheSword]

So, it would be great to know why you thought a comment about how touching warring nations in that area would be difficult at this very specific moment implied that folks could not touch any element of Biblical tradition until there's peace in the Middle East.

One of the things that makes these discussions difficult is the implied expansion of people's comments. I said something very limited, but you responded to it as if it were broad, which has the appearance of putting words in my mouth that I did not say or intend. This is a dynamic that tends to drive internet discussions to irreconcilable poles, when the individuals did not begin there.

That’s fair. Though in my defense you made a vague allusion to problem with Middle Eastern biblical history as a result of current troubles in the Middle East which are by no means unique or limited to one area. It’s hard to appreciate a narrow criticism if it’s not described in a specific way. Though I appreciate the rules on politics may preclude that.

I certainly am not of a school that any thing goes and a writer shouldn’t choose carefully what they say. Or that everything that can be published should be published. Work should be well researched, consider multiple sides and at least attempt not to portray opinions or inspirations as facts.

In that regard I’m fairly moderate and not really polar opposites of anybody. You should be able to print quality work with a religious inspiration if it’s done well.

 

[pemerton]

I think it’s problematic unless you consciously narrow the perspective and make that narrow perspective an explicit feature of the game you are trying to create. In the real world, religion is embedded in culture and cannot be meaningfully distinguished from it. The best you can hope for in a game is caricature.

When you talk about “Christianity” in an Arthurian RPG like Pendragon, it is idealized in the context of medieval romance envisaged through a modern lens; in Kult you have a kind of “Gnostic” world-view with a very dark cast etc. But in neither case do these religious systems faithfully represent anything beyond a literary re-imagining (in the case of Pendragon a modern re-imagining of a medieval re-imagining). I mean, how close is “Christianity” in Pendragon to what was happening on the ground in Sub-Roman Britain in the 5th Century – not very.

While I think it is theoretically possible to put together a table-specific game that is simultaneously textured enough and broad enough to actually use real-world religions and their content without it being bad....I find it very difficult to believe that people can do that with something published and not have it come across very badly. It's a simple problem of compactness. A game--be it a system, a module, an adventure path, whatever--necessarily must be smaller than the body of text and tradition it references. This means you are, of necessity, presenting only a narrow perspective on the topic.

To use one of the repeatedly-cited examples above, Arthurian myth (as far as its religious elements are concerned) is the product of a doubled re-imagining of Christianity in the Medieval Period, first by the people who lived then, second by more recent authors. It's going to be nearly impossible to not present a highly elided, simplified view of Christian theology, practice, and values, and the enormous set of cultural elements that went into making "courtly love" (which is critical to the Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot tragedy arc) are almost certainly going to be either forgotten, unmentioned, or severely simplified. But as with any system purporting to transmit value-judgments across time and geography, the devil is (sometimes literally) in the details here, and the kinds of elision and simplification that would be required to communicate the core ideas efficiently are exactly the kinds of elision and simplification used to dismiss or deride religions in real life.

I don't think that there is any reason why Christianity in an Arthurian RPG would look anything like 5th century Britain - that's not the cultural milieu of Arthurian romances! But it might evoke or relate to some high mediaeval ideas; or it might present those through a contemporary lens; or a bit of both. The film Excalibur features a wedding presided over by a prelate; Arthur is knighted in the name of God, St Michael and St George; a monk overseas the drawing of the sword from the stone; the Holy Grail is - notionally - the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. Those are all Christian ideas, and they play important roles in the film both as tropes and as expressions of thematic content. I don't see why a RPG can't be similar in this respect.

One of Graham Greene's best novels is The End of the Affair. It is a Catholic existentialist presentation of Christian belief. I don't see why a RPG - whether something lighter like Wuthering Heights, or something more serious (maybe PbtA inspired) - couldn't engage with similar ideas. When my group played a Wuthering Heights one-shot one of the PCs was a protestant clergyman, and while it was politics rather than religion that figured prominently in the game (because the other PC was a socialist) it could have easily been otherwise.

The film Pitch Black includes overtly religious (Muslim) characters, who engage in and lead prayer. Why couldn't a Traveller game include such things?

Part of the point of using real religions in a RPG is just like any other cultural product - you don't have to provide an encyclopaedic explanation of what you're doing, precisely because you are locating your work within a larger tradition that audiences/participants are already familiar with and themselves located within.

 

[Sepulchrave II]

I don't think that there is any reason why Christianity in an Arthurian RPG would look anything like 5th century Britain - that's not the cultural milieu of Arthurian romances! But it might evoke or relate to some high mediaeval ideas; or it might present those through a contemporary lens; or a bit of both. The film Excalibur features a wedding presided over by a prelate; Arthur is knighted in the name of God, St Michael and St George; a monk overseas the drawing of the sword from the stone; the Holy Grail is - notionally - the cup used by Christ at the Last Supper. Those are all Christian ideas, and they play important roles in the film both as tropes and as expressions of thematic content. I don't see why a RPG can't be similar in this respect.

Well, yes. That's my point. That the "Christianity" of Arthurian myth is part of a literary conceit which has been accreting and reworking material since the Middle Ages, and emphasizes certain motifs and values. I'm not suggesting that it is inappropriate to base an RPG on it - quite the contrary (Pendragon is one of my favorite games). Merely that it doesn't represent "real religion" - the subject of the thread's original inquiry.

Apparently I did not communicate very well in my previous post.

We could talk about the extent to which purposely fictive/literary constructs have, in fact, influenced "real religion" but probably shouldn't, as we'd end up in all kinds of trouble.

 

[pemerton]

Well, yes. That's my point. That the "Christianity" of Arthurian myth is part of a literary conceit which has been accreting and reworking material since the Middle Ages, and emphasizes certain motifs and values. I'm not suggesting that it is inappropriate to base an RPG on it - quite the contrary (Pendragon is one of my favorite games). Merely that it doesn't represent "real religion" - the subject of the thread's original inquiry.

It's hard to be sure about modern presentations - eg is John Boorman Christian? - but I think what the mediaeval and early modern authors wrote probably did bear upon real religion ie theirs.

Just as The End of the Affair bears upon real religion - Greene really is a devout Catholic. The fact that someone else might regard it as a misleading or inapposite depiction of religious or theological ideas doesn't change that.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's hard to be sure about modern presentations - eg is John Boorman Christian? - but I think what the mediaeval and early modern authors wrote probably did bear upon real religion ie theirs.

Just as The End of the Affair bears upon real religion - Greene really is a devout Catholic. The fact that someone else might regard it as a misleading or inapposite depiction of religious or theological ideas doesn't change that.

I think this gets at something else, which is the drive to get at the root (the literal and 'accurate' experience of Medieval Christianity, while laudable for a historian, and people seeking that authentic answer for some reason, misses that culture and religion doesn't work that way (as you said earlier). Not only is the Author legend a product of later periods, exploring the Christian elements through their own lens, but stuff like Boorman is examining it from a modern point of view looking back (which is entirely valid on its own as a form of artistic expression). I think the danger of narrowing things down, so that only the authentic, accurate, and, presumably, orthodox, view of the religion is considered appropriate, is it is effectively left only to the priesthood, to historians, etc (and even among them it is fraught). I think you want as many perspectives a possible to flourish: the insider view, the orthodox view, the unorthodox view, the outsiders view, since these are things that exist in the real world and they are encountered from all perspectives. Boxing it away will just make it an artifact

 

[MGibster]

It's hard to be sure about modern presentations - eg is John Boorman Christian? - but I think what the mediaeval and early modern authors wrote probably did bear upon real religion ie theirs.

I don't know if it matters if Boorman is a Christian today or back in the 80s when he directed Excalibur. Boorman was born and raised in England, which has it's own state religion in the form of the Church of England, went to a Roman Catholic private school, and you really can't avoid Christian semiotics and references in literature, history, or even watching the BBC. Even if Boorman isn't a Christian he was raised in an environment where Christianity was very much a part of his cultural milieu.

Well, yes. That's my point. That the "Christianity" of Arthurian myth is part of a literary conceit which has been accreting and reworking material since the Middle Ages, and emphasizes certain motifs and values. I'm not suggesting that it is inappropriate to base an RPG on it - quite the contrary (Pendragon is one of my favorite games). Merely that it doesn't represent "real religion" - the subject of the thread's original inquiry.

Nothing representative is real. Take a gander at the picture below, is it a pipe? You can't put tobacco in it and you can't use it to smoke anything so the answer is no. Does Pendragon represent real religion? Of course it does. It's a very narrow representation of an idealized version of paganism and Christianity but it's still representing something real even if it's not real itself.