celtic mytholgy in RPGs

[contracycle]

I think the question "what is your religion to do in your game" is exactly right.  Unfortunately I think a lot of games have been designed to make it do nothing, and to effectively obviate its own existance.

I've been trying to articulate more clearly the kind of thing I would like to see.

I would love someone to do a piece on Roman Catholicism for RPG-type feudal historical period.  As someone with zero exposure to the symbolism and ritual, it is not something I can portray in any meaningful sense.  There is not a great deal I can call upon either as GM or player to really convey or understand the questions of the day.  I think it should be possible to write a non-polemical work that sort of resembled a bluffers guide to catholicism - knowing what to say when and what the (extensive) jargon was about.  If I had such a thing as a game aid such that players and I could call upon it at the table, then a huge number of *meaningful* character roles would open up, as would a whole shedload of situations and settings (at the scene level).  Such a work would be even more useful if it covered the various heresys to the extent that we could adopt stances for characters that are more than tokenistic.

It does not even have to be a real religion.  Just doing a complex set of philosophies and perspectives would be worthwhile.  Hence I do not think that, for a putative Celtic game, we would need concern ourselves too much with trying to reconstruct celtic beliefs - all that would be needed would be A model that hit all the known points like the head cult and sacrificial deposits.  The objective is fun that doesn't slap you in the face with silliness (like druids being treehuggers), IMO.  It doesn't have to be profound or particularly insightful so long as it is developed, and on stage rather than off stage.

[Windthin]

One thing I've left out, I think, is that not all religions ARE based on the worship of gods.  That is, religion can be quite culturally varied, and center around ancestor veneration, upon nebulous forces, or upon the supposed divinity of the ruling class.  Reducing everything to the relationship between peoples and their god(s) and not exploring wider possibilities as well as the philosophies and rote and rules and taboos mentioned above leaves a religion unrealistic, empty.  How much does religion effect a culture?  Is it perpetually there in every aspect of their lives, a powerful presence but only at certain times and in certain things, or for most a far-away acknowledgement only truly important to a small cadre?  Religion is something that is difficult to develop fully, and you may find that it has to unfold over time, like any truly complex aspect of a world.

[Windthin]

A clarification: when I spoke of communism, I did not assert that communism in any fashion was ever a religion.  Rather, I meant to point out the way many of the cultures it has effected had prior to its introduction been poly- or monotheistic, or both, and that the new government often shifted them toward a more humanistic perspective (at least officially, sometimes actively), away from organized religion.  This was in relation to the question on whether or not poly- and pantheistic societies would inevitably shift toward monotheism in the course of their advancement.  One could make the argument (I've seen it done) for some worlds possessing societies which are religious communists, versus secular ones.  This sort of mixing and matching and reconsidering how different policies and ideas can mesh or separate can be a helpful and intriguing process for roleplay.

[James Holloway]

I think the question "what is your religion to do in your game" is exactly right.  Unfortunately I think a lot of games have been designed to make it do nothing, and to effectively obviate its own existance.

Yes. I think this is intentional. The base setting of D&D, for example, (and most of its successors) steers clear of anything like economics because the world isn't really a world as such. It's just a sort of backdrop, a set of stage properties. And that's OK; it does what it's needed to do.

I've been trying to articulate more clearly the kind of thing I would like to see.

I would love someone to do a piece on Roman Catholicism for RPG-type feudal historical period.  As someone with zero exposure to the symbolism and ritual, it is not something I can portray in any meaningful sense.  There is not a great deal I can call upon either as GM or player to really convey or understand the questions of the day.  I think it should be possible to write a non-polemical work that sort of resembled a bluffers guide to catholicism - knowing what to say when and what the (extensive) jargon was about.  If I had such a thing as a game aid such that players and I could call upon it at the table, then a huge number of *meaningful* character roles would open up, as would a whole shedload of situations and settings (at the scene level).  Such a work would be even more useful if it covered the various heresys to the extent that we could adopt stances for characters that are more than tokenistic.

You sound like me here. A passable bluffing knowledge of an area is what I want as a GM, and usually not what a setting delivers -- because listing the kings and queens of Wessex is easy, but giving the reader a feeling of what life was like in 886 is difficult. This is hampered by the fact that, when it comes to religion, everyone's got an agenda. The actual religion of Iron Age Britain is a lot less clear than we'd like to think, so people tend to project whatever they'd like it to be onto it. Any guide to that is inevitably going to be polemical-- or it's going to wind up saying "I don't know."

I guess my desire for historical and geographical knowledge to back up my games makes me a Pyramid subscriber, huh?