Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6224892" data-attributes="member: 42582">Personally, I think this sort of approach to religions - essentialy encyclopedia entries on rituals and dogma - is one of the less engaging ways to bring religion into a fantasy game.Firstly, it tends to impose a type of "fixedness" on religous belief and practice that is out of line with the reality of human religious experience. New cults and new practices become a focus of play in terms of "How does this differ from orthodoxy" which in turn leads to the question "Who made them do it?", at which point religion just becomes another device for setting up power politics and either investigations or McGuffins. The fact that it's religion rather than, say, dress codes does no particular work.What is distinctive about religion in a fantasy game, I think, is the way it changes meaning and purpose for the protagonists and antagonists. I think the game becomes more interesting when these distinctive features of religious conviction are able to emerge in play.There are a lot of other - and better - mechanical ways to model religous conviction than the classic D&D model of GM arbitration and power-stripping.The game should be set up so that players who are playing religious characters, and who want to impact the ingame situation, have a reason to adopt approaches that express their convictions. So a paladin should serve better as a vehicle for having such impact when played as valiant, than when played as sneaky. 4e goes some way towards this via its class and power design. But there's plenty of scope for going further.</blockquote>

Verification