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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
Wanting players to take in-game religion more seriously
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<blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6901306" data-attributes="member: 12731"><p>You might be misunderstanding me then. </p><p></p><p>I'm definitely not denigrating historical people believing in Zeus or Wodin.</p><p></p><p>I'm talking about how difficult it is to ask contempory people, your players, to treat the uniquely shallow treatment of such religions that is D&D seriously. </p><p></p><p>First and foremost difference: real people have no way of proving the existence of the gods. Hence, they could <strong>believe</strong> in them. It's not only that we know our game is pretend, we also know there can be no actual faith in our game world, since the existence of the gods is not up for debate. They are absolutely concretely there.</p><p></p><p>Second difference: we look at polytheistic religions from the vantage point of monotheistic religions; religions that do not anthropomorphize their god. That's a pretty hard sell all by itself.</p><p></p><p>This discussion isn't about people that actually believe in Zeus or Wodin, neither then nor now. This discussion is about contemporary D&D players having a hard time taking D&D religion seriously. </p><p></p><p>Please do not think I'm trying to bring real-life religion into this. I'm really not crapping on your religion; if you think I do, please think again.</p><p></p><p>I'm merely advancing the argument that perhaps you'd be better served by going with D&Ds strengths and avoiding its weaknesses. Save your wish for players treating religion with reverence for a game that's actually treating religion with reverence. </p><p></p><p>And instead use D&D for what it was meant to do: to kick in doors and bash some dungeons, and just perhaps have a Paladin paying lip service to the <em>notion</em> of faith - mostly to make him stand out compared to the other murderhobos in the gang. Really, that's okay too. After all, it's just a game. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile :)" data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="CapnZapp, post: 6901306, member: 12731"] You might be misunderstanding me then. I'm definitely not denigrating historical people believing in Zeus or Wodin. I'm talking about how difficult it is to ask contempory people, your players, to treat the uniquely shallow treatment of such religions that is D&D seriously. First and foremost difference: real people have no way of proving the existence of the gods. Hence, they could [B]believe[/B] in them. It's not only that we know our game is pretend, we also know there can be no actual faith in our game world, since the existence of the gods is not up for debate. They are absolutely concretely there. Second difference: we look at polytheistic religions from the vantage point of monotheistic religions; religions that do not anthropomorphize their god. That's a pretty hard sell all by itself. This discussion isn't about people that actually believe in Zeus or Wodin, neither then nor now. This discussion is about contemporary D&D players having a hard time taking D&D religion seriously. Please do not think I'm trying to bring real-life religion into this. I'm really not crapping on your religion; if you think I do, please think again. I'm merely advancing the argument that perhaps you'd be better served by going with D&Ds strengths and avoiding its weaknesses. Save your wish for players treating religion with reverence for a game that's actually treating religion with reverence. And instead use D&D for what it was meant to do: to kick in doors and bash some dungeons, and just perhaps have a Paladin paying lip service to the [I]notion[/I] of faith - mostly to make him stand out compared to the other murderhobos in the gang. Really, that's okay too. After all, it's just a game. :) [/QUOTE]
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