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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gamerprinter" data-source="post: 5821847" data-attributes="member: 50895">Honestly, while I love history, and love a good historical game, I avoid real world religion and RPGs, at all costs. Consider your premise of 3rd Crusade. I assume, you didn't have any Muslims in your player group, it didn't cause a problem, but really could have. You obviously discovered that what an honest depiction of Catholicism in the 12th century, compared to modern beliefs (and current Catholic values) are apples and oranges. In my Kaidan: a Japanese Ghost Story setting, I borrow concepts from Taoism, Buddhism and Shinto, however, in every case, I've renamed the religions of my setting, and while having borrowed some aspects of those religions, in other areas I completely made up as a fiction. Because I do not want what happens in game to conflict with personal religious values. While it probably wouldn't affect my immediate playing group, my setting is a published product and could be played by a Buddhist here, or in Japan or elsewhere and I don't want them to consider what I created as an attack on their religion. As an aside, from Buddhism, I borrow the concept of the Wheel of Life or the cycle of reincarnation through the Buddhist Hells, which in modern Buddhist thought are states of mind, not literal reincarnation. However, in my setting reincarnation is real, and the setting itself is an actuation of the Wheel of Life converted into the Japanese social caste system. The latter part being my invention. I even call the religion 'Zao' - kind of an amalgamation of Zen and Tao/Dao. That's as close to real religion as I want to get. Anything deeper could be insulting to someone. In my daytime graphic design studio, I have several local customers that are Buddhist priests. One of them, kind of a bishop, I showed what I was doing with my game setting, and she was actually pleased with the way I depicted the Wheel of Life, as she herself wants a greater appreciation of the Wheel of Life, among her laity. This doesn't equate to religious acceptance of my fiction, but it makes me feel somewhat safer in my approach.</blockquote>

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