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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6226380" data-attributes="member: 42582"><p>I don't feel I'm communicating very successfully, except perhaps to [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION] who seemed to get what I was talking about in a post or three upthread.</p><p></p><p>But if you look at the sources I mentioned - Arthurian romance, LotR, and even narrative histories like Seward's - they don't really read much like Faiths & Pantheons. They don't give us abstract or decontextualised lists of things that paladins like and don't like and do and don't do. They tell us particular stories, and describe particular personalities, and thereby convey something about an ethos and a certain sort of orientation in life.</p><p></p><p>That's at least part of the "rich sense" that I'm looking for. Making sense of this religion in terms of the values that it sees as important for, and motivating of, human endeavour.</p><p></p><p>For instance, I don't know what would motivate someone to become a priest of Meilikki, as opposed to a guide and tracker. Both might love trees and enjoy the company of animals, but only one takes the wilderness to be an object of reverence. Why?</p><p></p><p>That's just an example, mind you, but it's an attempt to illustrate what I have in mind.</p><p></p><p>I prefer the mechanical approach of HeroWars/Quest, or 4e's skill system: these descriptors are kept deliberately underspecified and open-ended, but they appear on players' sheets with numbers next to them, and players can then leverage them to do stuff.</p><p></p><p>In 4e it's mostly Nature or Religion checks (if we're talking a priest of Meilikki), but the only limit on what you can do with those skills is what the table will agree to. In HeroWars/Quest, on the other hand, "Hears the whispers of the woods" could itself be a trait, used for checks in its own right or as an augment in appopriate circumstances.</p><p></p><p>The advantage, for me, of these open-ended descriptors where the player is intended to take the lead in judging their appropriateness for use in a particular game context, is that they encourage the players (i) to engage the fiction closely with an eye to making their descriptors fit in, and (ii) to generate backstory that supports that fitting in. So, for instance, in my 4e game the invoker and paladin players engage the game looking for opportunities to put their Religion skills to work, which means they naturally - due to these mechanical incentives - look at the game fiction as a site of potentially religiously significant events.</p><p></p><p>That's the sort of thing I'm trying to get at.</p><p></p><p>I guess I feel that I could stick "pech and xorns" in place of "dryads and treants" and nothing much would change except the superficial colour. I can see external objects of concern here, but I'm not getting a sense of the inner life of these people.</p><p></p><p>I don't find the "likes cats" example especially helfpul: unless you're a cat worshipper, you don't take the life that reverence of cats is something - perhaps the <em>only</em> thing - worth devoting a human life too.</p><p></p><p>If I wanted to understand what it means to be a priest of Meilikki in a modern game I might look at the blogs of people who chain themselves to trees and to tree-felling machinery, but the whole context for those people might be a bit to modern to easily transplant into a fantasy RPG.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6226380, member: 42582"] I don't feel I'm communicating very successfully, except perhaps to [MENTION=49017]Bluenose[/MENTION] who seemed to get what I was talking about in a post or three upthread. But if you look at the sources I mentioned - Arthurian romance, LotR, and even narrative histories like Seward's - they don't really read much like Faiths & Pantheons. They don't give us abstract or decontextualised lists of things that paladins like and don't like and do and don't do. They tell us particular stories, and describe particular personalities, and thereby convey something about an ethos and a certain sort of orientation in life. That's at least part of the "rich sense" that I'm looking for. Making sense of this religion in terms of the values that it sees as important for, and motivating of, human endeavour. For instance, I don't know what would motivate someone to become a priest of Meilikki, as opposed to a guide and tracker. Both might love trees and enjoy the company of animals, but only one takes the wilderness to be an object of reverence. Why? That's just an example, mind you, but it's an attempt to illustrate what I have in mind. I prefer the mechanical approach of HeroWars/Quest, or 4e's skill system: these descriptors are kept deliberately underspecified and open-ended, but they appear on players' sheets with numbers next to them, and players can then leverage them to do stuff. In 4e it's mostly Nature or Religion checks (if we're talking a priest of Meilikki), but the only limit on what you can do with those skills is what the table will agree to. In HeroWars/Quest, on the other hand, "Hears the whispers of the woods" could itself be a trait, used for checks in its own right or as an augment in appopriate circumstances. The advantage, for me, of these open-ended descriptors where the player is intended to take the lead in judging their appropriateness for use in a particular game context, is that they encourage the players (i) to engage the fiction closely with an eye to making their descriptors fit in, and (ii) to generate backstory that supports that fitting in. So, for instance, in my 4e game the invoker and paladin players engage the game looking for opportunities to put their Religion skills to work, which means they naturally - due to these mechanical incentives - look at the game fiction as a site of potentially religiously significant events. That's the sort of thing I'm trying to get at. I guess I feel that I could stick "pech and xorns" in place of "dryads and treants" and nothing much would change except the superficial colour. I can see external objects of concern here, but I'm not getting a sense of the inner life of these people. I don't find the "likes cats" example especially helfpul: unless you're a cat worshipper, you don't take the life that reverence of cats is something - perhaps the [I]only[/I] thing - worth devoting a human life too. If I wanted to understand what it means to be a priest of Meilikki in a modern game I might look at the blogs of people who chain themselves to trees and to tree-felling machinery, but the whole context for those people might be a bit to modern to easily transplant into a fantasy RPG. [/QUOTE]
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