sociology question - how long to instil an idea in a culture?

[Henry]

Christianity became legal in the Roman Empire in the year 313. It then became the state religion in 380. This shows you a period of rather slow growth (three centuries), followed by a major leap in under one.

Oops! Got my dates crossed. Thanks for the correction.

It is also plausible for it to take a very long time, indeed. It depends upon the forces and distances involved.

Agreed - but for the purposes of a fantasy campaign, I'd say it's plausible enough. Unless you really want to, Gilladian, or your players are just really hardcore into in-world scholarship, I personally wouldn't feel the need to justify it tremendously; in my experience most players quite frankly don't care to that extent to try and "call you out" on it. If they're that far into it, they sound like players who are well worth recruiting into the world-building effort.

 

[Umbran]

Agreed - but for the purposes of a fantasy campaign, I'd say it's plausible enough.

Certainly. Especially if you're talking about the area of, say, one European country. Rome went from it beign just barely legal to it being the official religion in just 70 years. 150 should not be much of a problem.

If the party doesn't have anyone with maxed out ranks in Knowledge: History, you don't even need to explain it. It just happened, and how is irrelevant, as the party probably doesn't know the details

 

[Gilladian]

Thanks everyone! this has been incredibly helpful... I think, since I DO want the snake culture to be FAIRLY prevalent, and accepted as a normal part of religious life, I will do three things; 1) establish that the "good" snake worshippers helped to find and eliminate the evil ones. 2) have at least one king or queen take up the snake worshipping cult as their own. 3) create at least one other significant historical event (maybe a widely witnessed holy miracle) that favors the snake cult. Maybe some sort of prophecy or there could be a popular snake oracle, something to that effect...

(and no, my players won't notice or care, most likely - but I do the world building for ME and I like things to have SOME basis in rationality!)