What do you get out of your pagans?

[roguerouge]

I'm interested in finding out what people expect from paganism in their games. In your experience, what do you want witches and pagans to be when you build your worlds? Who wants to play the part of a witch and why? Is it played as a faith system as well as a source of power?

David

P.S. I'm an academic interested in fandom and paganism issues. That's why I'm asking. I've also done rpgs for years now, even getting the chance to teach 3.0 at one point. (For money!)

 

[Kesh]

Personally, I don't find the term useful in a fantasy setting. The religions are just too varied.

 

[Urizen]

Part of the title of the post is "modern," so I'm going to assume he was referring to pagans in a modern setting.

Even then, however, the term "pagan" isn't really definitive.

You have a wide variety of practitioners including (but certainly not limited to) Asatru, Wiccans, Druids and many other people who practice "magic" but choose not to label themselves.

The actual "type" of magic is varied as well, and not every "pagan" practices his or her craft in the same manner. In many cases this is because there isn't and hard-fast canon someone can learn in a structured environment, whereas a would-be catholic goes to school to learn how to be a proper catholic before taking their first communion.

Most of what is known about practicing witchcraft and other forms of magic has only become common knowledge - that is to say, made readily available in a bookstore - within the past 20 to 30 years, and that information derives largely from oral tradition. Some of which( in the case of neo-paganism/wicca) is actually an amalgam of different schools of thought to create a new type of belief system altogether.

Some gaming material has surfaced that tackles "pagan" concepts, most notably 93 games Studios' Arcane classes series. I hear this series is very comprehensive, allowing players to create characters who adopt these faith based systems in a way that would translate into a D20 modern/OGL game (I'm not sure if the classes work for fantasy or not).

From a conceptual standpoint, if I were to try and play a modern witch, I would probably check out their products (and do some hefty research for role-playing purposes), to get the full "feel" of playing a modern practitioner of witchcraft.

However, if the class isn't going to be solid and actually work well within my group's concept, then I'd probably look into something else entirely.

I just don't see any good reason to play a realistic class if it doesn't enhance the gaming experience.

 

[Flynn]

Also, Elements of Magic - Mythic Earth, by E.N. Publishing, tackles the issue of statting out wicca and several other real-world religions using its system, and does so quite well, from a game mechanic point of view, and tastefully done with respect to the religions in question. Excellent product, well worth picking up if you don't have it already, and it's designed for D20 Modern.

I'm not sure what you are asking for when you ask what we expect from paganism in our games, though. Paganism represents a diverse range of religions, and I don't expect a real-world religion to do anything for my games. I figure that if I need it, I can bless my dice myself.

Depending on the type of campaign I'm running, I either mirror real-world religions or go with the classic Greyhawk approach to pantheons that marks so many fantasy products today. So, I have a wide range of aspects in which paganism impacts my gaming milieus.

Hope that helps,
Flynn

 

[Pagan priest]

Well, I chose my name for a reason...

I'll be happy to answer any specific questions you might have. Sadly, I don't get much use of magic in Modern, most of the folks that I game with want a "realistic" world.

 

[roguerouge]

What do we want from pagans characters?

I'm writing a paper called “Forging Neo-Folklore through Role-Playing Games." I'm looking for guidance, as much of my gaming experience is in the traditional fantasy settings, not the modern.

The idea behind it is to look at how one way to examine how influential media representation can be is by studying what its most devoted consumers actually do with the material they know so well. This paper will examine how role-playing game players craft their own creative folklore out of the fictional folklore of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. (Other systems than Eden's or series than Whedon's welcome, of course.)

Our creative practices bring up several important questions.

• How do we represent witches, Wicca, pagans, and the occult?
• What does our creative folklore retain and alter from the canonical folklore of the series, itself based in part on actual folklore and fiction narratives based on folklore? How important is the media frame in guiding the imaginative play fostered by this series?
• What do we fan-authors want witches and pagans to be when we build our own worlds?
• Who wants to play the part of a witch and why?
• How faithfully are pagan belief systems represented within this sub-genre of fan fiction?
• What happens to an oral tradition when it’s filtered through a fantasy literature tradition, a TV series’ narrative, and a game system, only to be translated back into an oral tradition and then displayed in a digital medium?

 

[nocanes]

I'm interested in finding out what people expect from paganism in their games. In your experience, what do you want witches and pagans to be when you build your worlds? Who wants to play the part of a witch and why? Is it played as a faith system as well as a source of power?

David

Ultimately, the pagan label becomes a red herring for the real power behind the villain/character because the pagan metaphysics are unclear at best to the player. This means that the GM has to either develop/author a pagan 'system' of 'power' or adopt one which the players are more than likely to be unfamiliar with.

So the GM then has the task of either introducing this system into the campaign fabric or as intro text beforehand. This mostly drives the GM to the decision that the paganism becomes the center of the campaign or a footnote. This is not the best decision for a GM and one that might sour them to focusing on the intensive use you are inquiring about. Faiths, in general are overlooked in most campaigns except as a variant political group.

This can tend to relegate Pagan to another word for Boogeyman[sp?] or 'Chinaman' in the old Deus ex machina sense. This relegates pagan to the outskirts of civilization in the campaign world as it is a familiar idiom in the real world today.

Note: None of this is meant to refer to your campaign. This is the tendency as I see it in gaming today. There will be exceptions to all of the above, but I had to use a broad brush answer to the broad brush questions. Thus, there are hairs left on the canvas.


James

 

[C. Baize]

I'm writing a paper called “Forging Neo-Folklore through Role-Playing Games." I'm looking for guidance, as much of my gaming experience is in the traditional fantasy settings, not the modern.

The idea behind it is to look at how one way to examine how influential media representation can be is by studying what its most devoted consumers actually do with the material they know so well. This paper will examine how role-playing game players craft their own creative folklore out of the fictional folklore of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example. (Other systems than Eden's or series than Whedon's welcome, of course.)

Our creative practices bring up several important questions.

• How do we represent witches, Wicca, pagans, and the occult?
• What does our creative folklore retain and alter from the canonical folklore of the series, itself based in part on actual folklore and fiction narratives based on folklore? How important is the media frame in guiding the imaginative play fostered by this series?
• What do we fan-authors want witches and pagans to be when we build our own worlds?
• Who wants to play the part of a witch and why?
• How faithfully are pagan belief systems represented within this sub-genre of fan fiction?
• What happens to an oral tradition when it’s filtered through a fantasy literature tradition, a TV series’ narrative, and a game system, only to be translated back into an oral tradition and then displayed in a digital medium?

I find this particularly interesting seeing as my wife and I have had similar discussions regarding RPGs as modern mythology in the making.
Larger than life characters battling larger than life villains in larger than life ways in a "real" world setting.
"Neo" folklore at its finest.

 

[Kesh]

Part of the title of the post is "modern," so I'm going to assume he was referring to pagans in a modern setting.

Even so, if the pagans in question have magic powers, it's modern fantasy. If they don't, then I'm not sure what the point of the question is.

 

[Urizen]

Even so, if the pagans in question have magic powers, it's modern fantasy. If they don't, then I'm not sure what the point of the question is.

Would you consider games Like Mage: The Ascension modern fantasy?