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Sunday, August 23, 2020

Felltower, Religion, and Intolerance

I probably blogged about this a while back, but ever since Google switched to the "improved" blogger interface my in-blog search results have been total garbage. So, now Google does search poorly? I may have to DuckDuckGo a solution to my problem.

Religion in Felltower

In my DF Felltower game, religion is basically a monotheistic pseudo-Christian religion centered around the "Good God" and his many saints.

A good part of why I chose a monotheistic religion is because a lot of Western history is centered around monotheistic religions. You can have fights between believers, too, because worshipping the same god doesn't mean you all agree on how to do it.

I also chose it because the lack of experience with polytheistic religions means players don't quite know how it works. This is why you end up with a guy whose PC worships Ares going around attacking NPCs who worship Athena or Poseidon, or the priest of Tyr trying to convert heathens who worship Thor or Hel. I don't know a whole lot about polytheistic religions myself, but it doesn't seem like you generally chose a specific, single god and then treated that god as if it was the only one. It's not a collection of mutually-exclusive monotheistic religions all with the credo of "accept no other god as a god."

Plus, people have a very, very mixed bag of knowledge about non-Christian gods. I didn't want to make up a bunch of my own gods, and I didn't want to deal with the usual D&D party of one worshipper of Thor, one of Nuada, one cleric of Athena who otherwise acts like a Christian priest, a Dwarf who worshipps Clandeggin, and an atheist (we always have at least one.)

To avoid that kind of issue, I went with a simple, vaguely defined, humorously named "Good God" and moved on. Clerics are clerics of that religion. Undead fear its power. Demons hate it. And done!

Other Religions in Felltower

That said, though, I never said that the Good God was the only God. Or that worshippers automatically reject the existence of other gods. Just that PCs didn't have the option of worshipping other guys and most "pagan" religions were old belief systems largely fading away.

What I figured as the world and game expanded, was that I could start sticking in "Old Beliefs" and the religions of different cultures. The Good God might not have sway in those areas, but still have reach in those areas (in other words, Normal Sanctity.)

All in all, I could have a simplified religion that wouldn't get in the way and be able to have some unique cultures that NPCs belonged to or ancient gods people could stumble across.

Actual Play Ensues

But something different happened in play, though - the players and their PCs have defined a strong subset of Good God worshippers as being very strongly No God But God oriented. That is, there is worshipping the Good God, and there is demon-worshipping evil, and that's that. We've had one Arab-themed PC that I can recall, but he wasn't around long enough for his beliefs to come up. Presumably he worshipped the Good God but just belonged to a different approach to worshipping him.

We've had vaguely-defined heresies, too, like when two characters decided they worshipped the Ebony Death Goddess, a magically animated statue* for a while. One of them eventually renounced his beliefs. The other just has a tattoo and doesn't say anything about it.

We've had a number of different priestly orders, from the fanatically evil-hunting but earthly Holy Inquisitors that Inquisitor Marco belonged to, to several unnamed demon-hunting and undead-hunting orders, to a generic priest or two. We've had one PC who insists there is an Inquisition that acts as Internal Affairs for the priesthood, watching and judging all clerics on their behavior. It's mostly a joke, but I'd bet money that someone will eventually make a character who is part of that Inquisition.

In general the line of play has become this:

- Worship of the Good God, in increasingly fanatical and intolerant versions;
- Mild acceptance of casual worship of the Good God, which gets you grudging acceptance by the Clerics and Holy Warriors;
- non-worship of the Good God, which makes you unworthy of help (unless you're a PC);
- heretics, who worship any god but the Good God, who must be destroyed (or reasoned with, but not too strongly, if they're a PC);
- Evil, which consists of everything else (and any other kind of worship.)

Even druids, who respect and interact with nature and take that as the basis of their power, are at best suspect. Elves, who all have Sense of Duty (Nature) and hold that above all else, are considered non-believers in the Good God and therefore bad** and suspect.

NPCs who don't worship the Good God but have the Cleric template - well, I'm not sure anyone knows what to make of that. Evil Cleric, sure. But getting power from a supernatural non-Good God source? Ehh . . .

Intolerance

What we've ended up with in my campaign are:

Sense of Duty (Co-religionists) [-10] = a very broad disadvantage that applies to many, many NPCs. Potentially everyone you meet.

Intolerance ("Evil" religions) [-5] = you have a specific and intense hatred for specifically evil beings and their worshippers. Demons, intelligent undead, etc. and anything marked with Truly Evil. Some overly broad play of it is making it very similar to the next disadvantage.

Intolerance (Other religions) [-10] = you have a specific and intense hatred for anything that isn't part of your religion. This does mean you hate druids and the beliefs of elves, too. Don't take this if you ever intend to negotiate with NPCs who aren't also worshippers of your god in the same way you are.


Sense of Duty (Good Entities) is meaningless because Good Entities are also your co-religionists. Or are part of your actual religion's structure of beliefs.


Conclusions

I think it's far too late to put the genie back in the bottle. I know some of my players will read this, and will want to make a non-Good God worshipping polytheistic "Old Believer" but allowing that was never my intention. Allowing it now won't help, except to cause more issues as all of the hard-core believers to have to dance around the wording and spirit of their disadvantages to adventure with your guy.

So here we are - in a Good-but-intolerant vs. Evil worldview dominating the game space.

Interesting, isn't it?




* That totally cleaned up in a fight, because it's a powerful combatant. But also because the player running it didn't read the description, I didn't notice, and the EBG was run as a player-loyal, tactically-deft, analytical fighter leveraging its many attacks and high skill instead of being an IQ 8 construct that basically coin-flips between two tactics and just kills the next nearest foe. I guess that was a special EDG, after all.

** Witness Rangol Grot, who the PCs were looking for excuses to kill besides "he has something we want and we don't want him around." Not a Good God worshipper? Okay, the cleric is on board with killing him because of that.

6 comments:

  1. Coincidentally (or not?) you wrote on that a day after the International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief. Appropriate.
    I think I totally get your point on players not understanding polytheism. I have yet to meet a cleric who wouldn't be super competitive about which god is the best.

    Also, sad to see that the search is failing you, considering you post somee stuff just to be able to find it easily later.

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    1. That was coincidence. I write about Felltower on Sundays unless it's a non-Felltower gaming day (then it's AD&D, Gamma Terra, whatever.) This had just been on my mind as I was reading a book series turning the Norse myths into science fiction. Well, one of a series of books that does that, anyway.

      "I think I totally get your point on players not understanding polytheism. I have yet to meet a cleric who wouldn't be super competitive about which god is the best."

      Yes. And I don't think that's how polytheism works . . . but it's how it works in play.

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    2. I can't be the only person who groks polytheism and runs a Polytheistic caster/power-user appropriately. I'm betting that it's just down to the "competitive" spirit in Players, and sometimes jokingly and sometimes earnest god-bothering promotionalism on the part of the PCs.

      Like, the two polytheistic PCs I have right now treat their 'personal god' more like a "Jealous Spouse" than as "The Only Person In The World". So for instance when they need a divine/elder favor, they go to their respective personal deity 𝙛𝙞𝙧𝙨𝙩 (and not just because that's who they get their powers from, but on a philosophical level as well).

      But if Hermes can't do what Benny Morales (Dungeon Saint of Hermes) needs done, Benny will definitely try to (with great penalty comes great... err... crit-fishing?) ask Zeus, or Athena, or whichever Olympian/Khthonic* seems most inclined to respond and accept the fallout if Hermes gets twitchy about it (but being a pantheon, that's only likely if Benny is going against Hermes' wishes, which is likewise unlikely). Hermes has no problems with followers of Hades, despite them being chthonics, because they are still part of the family. Followers of gods outside the Olympian/Khthonic pantheon though? Those guys are okay, whether or not they need to fought or converted is up to whether they are the good guys or not.

      .* I'm using the greek spelling (khthonic versus chthonic) to differentiate from other "underworld" cults from other cultures/religions.

      Jareth (Cultist of the Elder Gods) on the other hand, would only invoke a different Elder Power if it was truly serious, not that YOG-SOTHOTH, The Gate and The Key, That Which Was And Ever Shall Be Again, is likely to get 'jelly'*, but because that shit is dangerous and Jareth is only occasionally forgetful of where he is and what the consequences are. Occasionally. Look mistakes happen, let's just move on okay. But other Cultists? Those guys are evil and dangerous and need to be exterminated... not because YOG is the "one and only", or is "good" or any other self-delusional nonsense, but because Jareth is in a weird place in his life** and cultists (besides himself of course***) are evil and dangerous.


      .* Whether an Elder Power evens cares or not is beyond even Jareth's Sage paygrade to argue. His opinion though is that YOG doesn't care, but that "everything is going according to YOG's plan", and that's probably not a good thing in the long run.

      .** Like Adam Jensen, he didn't ask for this. But he'll use the c̶y̶b̶e̶r̶n̶e̶t̶i̶c̶s powers if the M̶e̶g̶a̶-̶C̶o̶r̶p̶s Elder Things want to empower him to fight Elder Things and cultists...

      .*** No one has brought up that he's Excommunicated yet, the Cleric in the party knows (and is actually the only one who does know, but I mean no one else seems upset by his usage of Elder Thing powers - it's a remarkably open-minded group), but is treating it as "his personal redemption project". Sigh...

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    3. I honestly don't know enough about polytheism to know how to run a priest. I assume they respect the other gods in the pantheon but their main work is for an on the behalf of their god. And I expect non-clerics appease any and all of the gods - including the "evil" ones - to avoid upsetting them. Athena might not be able to kill Ares, and vice-versa, but they're both capable of smashing you for not respecting them appropriately. I figure that's the way to play it . . . but what I've learned about polytheism from non-gaming sources is very limited.

      "it's a remarkably open-minded group." They all are, if you have powers that benefit them. "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard" is the default case. My attempts to enforce the actual wording and spirit of disadvantages people take and claim to be playing are largely centered around this behavior.

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    4. "I assume they respect the other gods in the pantheon but their main work is for an on the behalf of their god. And I expect non-clerics appease any and all of the gods - including the "evil" ones - to avoid upsetting them. Athena might not be able to kill Ares, and vice-versa, but they're both capable of smashing you for not respecting them appropriately."

      Greeks and Romans, that's probably pretty apt. Their gods were petty squabbling 'people' that occasionally had to be set straight by Zeus, but even when he made declarations, those were often secretly ignored (or so Homer would have us believe).

      From my research into religions, Romans for example were //extremely// polytheistic. They had the local deity one might pray to for good luck, then the house, family, and workplace lares ('spirit' guardian?) that they'd treat much like celts treated house kobolds/elves/brownies. If there were something important they'd go to a temple to see a priest and get some specific rituals done (buttering up or getting the right and wrong gods to turn a blind eye to your endeavors), and on the 'Old' Holy Days they'd slip out to the woods and perform 'illegal' rituals to the older ways (if that was what they were into). To say the Romans had a lot of cults would be an understatement, and the more important you were, the more you likely you engaged with a bunch, even all at once (depending on station, etc, you might pay someone to your god-bothering for you).

      And that's not to say there weren't schisms and skirmishes between the different factions in the temples and cults. For instance the 'Dance-Dance Counter-Revolution' was real... Julius Caesar (or one of the Caesars anyway) moved to abolish the ritual dancing at the start of the Senate, to trim down how long the interminable Senate sessions lasted (and rumor had it was paid by a coalition of temples who weren't involved with the temple dances). He faced very stiff opposition from not just several Senators, but the temples (who were paid to supply nubile young dancers) and the populus who saw it as a move against the very gods! "It's one thing to be Emperor, it's another to declare yourself above the gods..."

      .

      And then that's not even looking at weird stuff like the time when 130% of Chinese people were religious... so many Chinese had multiple religions that the percentages added up to 130%. ;) There were Chinese who were Buddhist, Christian, Confuscist, and folk spiritualists, all at once! How they reconciled that is beyond me.

      Heck, at some points even Catholicism was 'polytheistic', if you want to count the worship of Saints as 'lesser gods'.

      So however you run it is probably fine. I like to play it different with different groups, just to inject different flavor into different cultures, but then I've never run a "back to the dungeon" megadungeon, so, which is an entirely different flavor of beast. For you, simpler is betterer (and it's generated its own flavor in your campaign).

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    5. "They all are, if you have powers that benefit them. "He's a bastard, but he's our bastard" is the default case."

      Well, yes. There is that. And the one time he convinced them to befriend an Elder Thing did end up being very profitable, if also very weird and occasionally terrifying for most of the party (except Jareth, he's got a lot of bonuses for Fear Checks. Oddly enough).

      "My attempts to enforce the actual wording and spirit of disadvantages people take and claim to be playing are largely centered around this behavior."

      Jareth's group doesn't have any Intolerances or particular "hates certain group" disads, except the two Elves with their SoD (Nature). It's a very charitable group over all... like twice we've turned combat encounters into diplomacy encounters and once went to great lengths not to kill a crazy immortal guy and actually cured him. This group (despite the Callousness, Bloodlust, and Bad Temper of certain people) is almost all about "the real treasure is the friends we make along the way"... but that's what happens when the de facto leader's highest three skill are Diplomacy, Occultism, and Hidden Lore (Elder Things)... and he speaks almost every language... and people keep letting him decide the shape of encounters...


      Contrast the group my Holy Slayer (Warrior) is a part of, one Priest with Intolerance ('Evil' religions), an HW with Higher Purpose (Slay Demons) and Intolerance ('Evil' religions), a warrior type (not sure if he's a Barb or an under armored Knight) with extreme dislike for Undead and Evil, another Cleric (who seems very chill if not occasionally confused), and then Stenet, my Holy Slayer with Higher Purpose (Slay Demons, Undead, and 'Evil' Mages*) and Intolerance ('Evil' religions). There's a good chunk of potential folks we're not going to be at all friendly with.. and even then Stenet watches all Spellcasters like a hawk waiting for them to reveal that they're really 'Evil' in disguise...

      .* I want to add 'Elder Things' and 'Evil' Clerics to the list... to really further chop down the list of who he'll work with peacefully.

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