The Problem of Religion

So, I was re-reading the current thread on "Christian gaming," when I slowly realized that there are very few, if any, roleplaying games that really treat religion in a way that is both mature and respectful.

Think about it. How do you normally see religion depicted in roleplaying?

-- a priest of the Old Ones kidnaps a PC to sacrifice to his dark masters
-- the Priest of Light raises his staff and calls on the gods to drive back the undead
-- your Angel rolls d666 to try to get the attention of her Archangel
-- the Buddhist monk talks about compassion before whipping out the kung fu
-- the corrupt and hypocritical Cardinal tries to destroy the virtuous musketeers
-- etc.

Is there anyone who thinks this is an accurate depiction of religion? I certainly hope not. Sure, there are certainly some people who practice their faith in a superficial or even perverse manner, but I would imagine that most believers feel that they have a more personal and hard-to-describe relationship with their God/gods or beliefs.

So what is it that keeps roleplaying from dealing with religion realistically?

1. Quantifying or describing dieties/cosmologies in precise terms

When you know how many hit points Zeus has, it's hard to revere him in the same way. Likewise, if the book describes all the various layers of Hell in detail, or maps out the transmigration of the soul, a great deal of the mystery is lost. Some beliefs become clearly defined as "correct," which, in effect, destroys the whole idea of faith, the very foundation of religion itself.

2. Metagame surpasses even the gods

Sure, Zeus is great and all, but can he go toe-to-toe with the GM? If even the greatest spirits and cosmic forces operate according to the will of one of the Players, they seem less significant. If, in a game of In Nomine, the GM takes on the role of Michael the Archangel, honoring Michael would seem to require worshiping the GM. What is that? It's ridiculous.

In comparison with the metagame powers of players, the in-game powers of the gods seem very small and insignificant. From the characters perspective, maybe their pantheon should be the Players, with the GM as "king of the gods." Why worship anything less?

3. PC faith

Honestly, many in-game religions seem ridiculous, and so the players just ignore them for the most part, dealing with them just like they deal with the absurd cultures that exist in many roleplaying games.

"Okay, I'm an Ork who worships the twin Orkish gods of war, Gork and Mork."

Sure, it would be possible to deal with that in a mature fashion, but why would you want to? It's so frickin' absurd anyway that it would be more rewarding to play it for laughs instead of trying to realistic depict what Orkish religious beliefs might actually be like. Do Orks wonder why Gork and Mork occasionally abandon them to death and destruction? Come on now, who cares?! Just go out and kill things.

The Solution?

So how can we solve these problems and deal with religious issues in a mature and realistic fashion?

Please note that I'm not insisting that all games need to be serious about religion. Obviously, you're not supposed to think to much about the theology behind Gork and Mork. Still, for games that wanted to have religion be more than superficial, more than yet another way to motivate characters, there should be ways around these issues.

To a certain extent your points are correct but the real reason is simply lack of interest on the part of the players.

Few fantasy games add much detail to the nuances of religious customs (Glorantha being an exception) because most players don't care. In many games the priest/cleric/paladin is present only because they can heal and deal with undead.

Another reason is varying levels of spirituality amongst players. Some might not be into religion in real life and not want to bother with it in their games. Others might be very into religion in their life and feel uncomfortable portraying an elaborate "fake" religion.

I have found that religion, even moreso than sex or politics, is the one subject where it's best left to the individual. If Bob wants to elaborate more on the customs and beliefs of Argos the Wise their patron diety then no one will stop him and it will add nicely to the game (so long as it is within reason).

Oh, and some of the examples you've listed below are taken from historical or literary sources so they can't really be attributed to roleplaying games.

Jonathan Walton wrote: Think about it. How do you normally see religion depicted in role-playing?

• A priest of the Old Ones kidnaps a PC to sacrifice to his dark masters
• The Priest of Light raises his staff and calls on the gods to drive back the undead
• Your Angel rolls d666 to try to get the attention of her Archangel
• The Buddhist monk talks about compassion before whipping out the kung fu
• The corrupt and hypocritical Cardinal tries to destroy the virtuous musketeers
• Etc.

Is there anyone who thinks this is an accurate depiction of religion?

Is #3 even there? Isn't it a result of how religion is handled?

Also, when you say handle religions realistically do you mean; as if the religion were real and 'correct' or as they truly are in the real world?

The reason I ask is because from one view the best way to handle religion might be to completely ignore the gods. Dealing only with the human level of religion since we really have no perception of the divine level, only human vision and ideas about it.

thoth wrote: Also, when you say handle religions realistically do you mean; as if the religion were real and 'correct' or as they truly are in the real world?

Jonathan Walton wrote:

Is there anyone who thinks this is an accurate depiction of religi[on? I certainly hope not. Sure, there are certainly some people who practice their faith in a superficial or even perverse manner, but I would imagine that most believers feel that they have a more personal and hard-to-describe relationship with their God/gods or beliefs.

Jonathan,

Thanks for starting this thread. I was going to do it, but I think you set it up better than I would have.

As a GM, I almost always spend some time thinking about the complexities of a game-world's religion. About it's history, the evolution of its various sects and/or subcults, how it knows what it knows about the world of the spirit.

It's been my experience that most players are only passingly interested in this sort of thing. Sure, if I'm playing with anthropologists or spiritual people, they're curious about it in an intellectual way. On rare occasions, someone will base some aspect of a character on some minor point or another.

Really, though, in the time that Actual Play happens, they're mostly concerned with what spheres of spells thier god(s) can give them.

The reason for this is, I think, tied to the reason why we see so many "corrupt cardinals" and the like in games. Games revovle around conflict and drama, and having people going about just living their lives in accord with their beliefs is rarely dramatic (at least on a spiritual level). Play (and players) focus on what is dramatic, and on what is mechanical (since that is what allows them to do dramatic things).

So what we see are characters like the corrupt priest, the bigoted inquisitor, and the zealot, because their actions are dramatic. We see focus on spheres of spells and special abilities, because such mechanical things are what allow action in the world.

So, if we want players to care about a game's religions (in the same way they care about their characters), then we need to build mechanics that treat religion the way we want it treated.

One example is Stormbringer, which had an attribute called elan. Players could spend elan to elicit divine intervention. Characters earned elan by doing things of which their god(s) would approve.

Another is Hero Wars (you knew someone was going to bring it up), where a character's religious affiliations are useful attributes, and often represent ways in which a character interacts with his or her community, and ways in which the player can gain mechanical advantage.

The other side of it lies not in what characters do or how they do it, but in why. I'm talking about motivation. In one (2nd ed) AD&D game I ran, one of the players was a priest caught up in church politics as his father was working on becoming High Priest of the kingdom. Niether of them was a "corrupt cardinal" type. Dad's desire was to be a good High Priest, he simply thought he could do a better job than the guy who had it. Still, he had to prove that he was a better priest, and his son's actions reflected on him, so he had to encourage his son to be a better priest.

Another example was a priest I played, who was on the outs with his church because he found out that the High Priestess was altering the Holy Texts to her own political advantage, and spoke out.

Lon

Jonathan Walton wrote:
When you know how many hit points Zeus has, it's hard to revere him in the same way. Likewise, if the book describes all the various layers of Hell in detail, or maps out the transmigration of the soul, a great deal of the mystery is lost. Some beliefs become clearly defined as "correct," which, in effect, destroys the whole idea of faith, the very foundation of religion itself.

contracycle wrote: I'm concerned that this projects a modern conception of religion back in time innaprorpriately. Firstly becuase I don't think the practitioners of ancient religion were at all interested in faith, but in explaining the weirdness around them. Secondly, I feel a lot of these made, or were intended to make, hard factual statements about the world, i.e. that mountain IS god X, we know that firmly. Of course all this comes back to how you conceptualise religion in the real world, both today and historically.

Tackling all the comments that have been made...

wyrdlyng wrote: ...the real reason is simply lack of interest on the part of the players.

Le Joueur wrote: Of course not. Every example given is exactly how role-playing games treat any organization.

C. Edwards wrote: Basically, I think RPGs do just fine with religion. If I want to deal with the intricacies and details I'll join a seminary.

Uncle Dark wrote: So, if we want players to care about a game's religions (in the same way they care about their characters), then we need to build mechanics that treat religion the way we want it treated.

contracycle wrote: I'm concerned that this projects a modern conception of religion back in time inappropriately.

Jonathan Walton wrote:

Le Joueur wrote: Of course not. Every example given is exactly how role-playing games treat any organization.

Very true, and a nice point. But that's not really what I'm talking about. It's not how role-playing depicts the Church or organized religion that bugs me....

What I'm getting at is how role-playing depicts personal religious beliefs. We tend to always get zealots and non-believers, with no real middle ground. Surely it's not because personal faiths are uninteresting.

Maybe this is too simplistic an answer to your question, but: Personality Mechanics (humanity, sanity, alignment, etc).

I have kind of a love/hate relationship with them, but they can go a long way towards presenting a focused direction for character exploration and reinforcing it with mechanics.

For example:
For a Christian religion you can easily use the traditional western virtues and vices. They even map nicely to opposing scales (if your Zeal is 7, your Sloth must be 3 - if the scale is 1-10). You can roll these for resistances: being tortured, roll your Fortitude; don't want to run screaming from the monster, roll Wrath. Or you could spend them for roll bonus that matched in purpose with the virtue/vice. If it suited your purposes you could balance the advantage between being all virtuey and all vicey, so the players simply picked their place on the scale and dealt with the pros/cons of their positions (which could easily change sans-xp during play).

If you wanted to keep it religious, keep the virtues and vices religious: Sloth is religious apathy, not laziness.

If you wanted more religions in the game you could even provide different personality mechanics for each.

How about some player vs character talk?

A game for Christian players is a different bug from a game featuring Christian characters. As is a game that assumes that Christianity is actually true from a game in whose setting Christianity is true.

Like, in kill puppies for satan's game world, Christianity is true, and the PCs are Christian, in a very loose sense of the word -- they serve Satan, a Christian diety. But my goodness gracious on a stick, puppies isn't a Christian RPG.

So I think what you're looking for, Jonathan, are games that confront their players with religion, not their characters. You're interested in the players using their characters to address interesting, meaty moral questions, particularly questions having to do with God, Faith, Redemption, stuff like that. Right?

Cuz that's just Narrativism, focused where you want it. There's no reason at all not to write that kind of game; your probs 1-3 apply pretty much only to Sim religious games.

Does Christ's atonement free me from guilt? We could write a game with that premise, set in a game world with no Christ and no atonement, if we wanted to. Same with What is Free Will when God is almighty? Same with you name it, I'd say.

Riddle of Steel, Sorcerer, Paladin -- there are a bunch already. But I'd love to see some that were bold and upfront about it: Slave Kings of Iltor! an RPG about Free Will when God is almighty!

-Vincent

Cruciel,

Take a look at Pendragon. I don't have the main rulebook, but a subgame just for playing knights. There is a distinct system for dealing with religion and a knight's standing with that religion though.

RPGs are a narrative form, and therfore about conflict. Religions tend to not be, themselves about conflict (most preach peace, etc). As such, you don't see too many movies, for instance about people peacefully practicing their religion. I'm not saying that religion is boring, on the contrary it can be a powerful experience. But that's personal. Soories exist externally and therefore religion makes bad stories.

Conflict and religion, however, go fabulously together. So, what do you get? Stories about War and Religion, Heretics, supernatural manifestations as harbingers, good vs. evil, and internal politics.

All of which can be handled in a mature and decent fashion, actually. I fail to see how any of your examples is, a priori, an immature handling of the subjects of faith. I've played In Nomine, and had it be about deeply philosophical themes. Without drifting it much. I'm not sure why you'd point to the d666 as somehow disrespectful. IN/MV, the French version, is intended only as satire, and is, therefore intentionally disrespectful. The most common criticism of SJG's In Nomine is that it did too good a job of sanitizing the text against that. It allows all sorts of play, and encourages them in the text. Including deep reflection on religious issues.

Point 1.
Are depictions too surface? Well, I'd add to Fang's comments by poinbting out that every depiction of anything complex is neccessarily less complex in an RPG. No game has developed an entire complete religion because it takes potenitally millions of people, over possibly thousands of years to develop such detail in real life.

So, just as you will never see extremely detailed rules for computer programming in an RPG, you aren't likely to see complete religions, either. People who want that level of detail actually participate in some faith, or program computers themselves. RPGs are neccessarily abbreviated in their presentation.

Now, are there RPGs that are disrespectful of religions, or do an exceptionally poor job of portraying them? Certainly. There is lot's of room for improvement. Always is, in any part of design. So, as Fang says, if you percieve a problem then fix it. I can totally see RPGs being designed around the respectful, and more detailed examination of religious subjects.

Why, lookey there, there's one being developed in this very forum! ;-)

Point 2.
I also don't understand your point about neccessarily worshiping the dieties of the religion in question to make portrayal acccurate or respectful (seems like quite the non sequitur). I personally grew up with a belief in the Archangel Michael, but the Catholic faith does not condone the worship of angels. One can admire even venerate such an entity, but worship is for God alone.

The point is that, even if I do believe in such an entity, I don't have to worship it to portray it effectively, and repectfully. I don't believe in any of he religions in my games, but that doesn't mean that I don't try to give them a heavyweight impact.

Worship the DM? An entity that the character presumably does not know exists? Really not getting this line of reasoning. Your points about PC knowledge are more compelling, but I think all you are simply saying is that it's important to realize the division between player knowledge and character knowledge. Even in In Nomine, one of the most interesting ideas is that god is conspiculously absent. And, as such, even the angels question their faith. They don't know for certain where their power comes from, they can only assume, and believe. So, while the GM can say to himself, yes, objectively God exists in this game, as long as he doesn't say that to the players, even they do not know for sure. Much less the characters.

(Gads I love playing In Nomine; system blows, but the subject matter is great)

Point 3.
The extent that a player might want to look closely at a religion is the exent to which he's interested. Yes, few RPGs are actually about religion. As such, it's no surprise that they are not focused upon in play. Do players respond with comedy? Well, I've seen the same happen with their response to governments. "Hey, that guy's the Prince, but I can't see how he derives any power. Think I'll go kill him."

This seems to me to be a matter of player preference. Make a system that is about religion, and the players will respond. Simple. Or, if you want a less in-depth review, but want religion to be treated with respect, anyhow, then enforce it mechanically. As Hero Wars does, for example. I recently started using those rules for a D&D Fantasy style world, and lo, how the players did suddenly respect their religions, and those of others.

I agree with you that "modern" religious thought provides more interesting themes, and considering our modernity that's not surprising. Still, it's fun to also look at themes of medieval thought, and ancient belief at times.

One thing that I like to play with is the idea of Superstition in games that have magic. This is hard to deal with. I mean, if Bob assumes that black cats are bad luck, isn't it likely that this is true in a game where magic seems to work objectively? Essentially superstition becomes magical disinformation. The old wives tale about cats isn't true, but the one about breaking a mirror is true, in fact. Or whatever. In this way you can still look one pertinent theme, that of ignorance. And even belief in things that aren't real.

Careful design and play can overcome all these potential problems, IMO.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: Stories exist externally and therefore religion makes bad stories.

I've played In Nomine, and had it be about deeply philosophical themes. Without drifting it much. I'm not sure why you'd point to the d666 as somehow disrespectful.

The point is that, even if I do believe in such an entity, I don't have to worship it to portray it effectively, and repectfully.

Worship the DM? An entity that the character presumably does not know exists?

Careful design and play can overcome all these potential problems, IMO.

Jonathan Walton wrote:

Mike Holmes wrote: Stories exist externally and therefore religion makes bad stories.

Just like the internal conflicts of Sorceror make bad stories? I don't think so. Internal conflicts can be interesting because they drive outside actions and because the players can be aware of them even if many in-game characters are not.

Which is why I created this thread: to discuss ideas for HOW that might be done. People seem to be getting defensive about my criticism of religion in traditional RPGs (which was not really the point) and ignoring what I was asking. Hopefully we can get back on topic...

Jonathan,

...having a random dice mechanic for intereacting with an Archangel is a little disrespectful. Do the gods simply operate randomly? Does Gabriel care about modifiers or more about the purity of your faith and need? I'm not saying this doesn't work for In Nomine, but that it wouldn't work for a game that wanted a realistic depiction of how religion is thought to actually operate.

Quite some time ago a guy named Kalev posted a resolution mechanic to the forums at Gaming Outpost. I was going to direct you to the thread where I pursued discussion of that mechanic, because I think it's interesting relative to the disrespect issue you've raised, but it seems that Gaming Outpost has archived their older threads offline. Can you imagine how geeked I was to discover that I'd saved some excerpts from that discussion for personal reference?

Kalev wrote:

The player doesn't roll for success of an action, but instead to see if that action is within their personality. At first this seems a bit odd and not too fun, but I think it could be workable.
In a potential combat situation you (the player) know that your character will lose (you know his score, and you know the enemy's score, and it's a Karma based resolution sytem). So you decide that he shouldn't attack. Then you roll against one of his personalities to find out if he does attack.

In essence the player becomes the guiding hand behind the character, influencing but not controling their actions.

At the time, I'd just recently read Ron's "System Does Matter" essay, and throughout the section on Fortune, I couldn't think of it without wondering "what about Providence?" Maybe me noticing that absence comes from too many college lit courses. At the time I was just used to seeing Fortune and Providence mentioned in the same breath.

And that's why I liked Kalev's idea so much. Fortune is a happening resulting from material/physical causes and effects (perhaps incompletely perceived by those involved), and seemed well represented to me in traditional game resolution mechanics. Providence is a happening resulting from interaction between the material world and spiritual/psychic influences, and seemed to be nicely rendered by Kalev's mechanic. A great calm actually descended on me with the realization that there was nothing about game mechanics that was inherently precluding Providence. This is what I wrote, sentence fragments and all:

When I think of Fortune (as we've been using it in the forums), I think of it as a "looking from the bottom up" method of conflict resolution. The situation in question is unpredictable from the point of view of the character. At that point in Everway you turn over a card from the Fortune deck. In another system you roll the dice. And with that the outcome is determined...all the minute forces in the universe that you couldn't possibly account for as a mere mortal are represented by a randomizing game mechanic. With causality, there is no *chance*. At the atomic level, it's all toppling dominoes. The roll of the dice is just shorthand for more calculus than you can possibly do. That's Fortune (with a capital "F").

Kalev's mechanic is so interesting to me because it's a "looking from the top down" method of conflict resolution. From the point of view of the guiding hand, all conflicts are completely predictable. Everything looks like Karma from the top down. So when conflict is resolved through actions of the guiding hand, through synchronicity with spiritual/psychic influences, that's Providence (with a capital "P"). It still seems to the mortal like the situation in question was unpredictable. It's just the outcome was influenced by something other than atomic-level causality.

What do you think of that respect?

Paul

Going back to the very start of the discussion, Jonathan, the examples you gave struck me as repesenting the bias in role playing towards fantasy indulgence. Fantasy as in daydream, not medieveloid. Ie how in most games you (vicariously through your character) are given massive powers unavailable to you in your daily life. Religion just becomes another resource to be drawn on to give the individual that power.

The funny thing is that there is actually precedent for this--ever read Journey to the West/Monkey? It is a buddhist super-hero adventure epic that long pre-dates rpg, no joke. Norse myth and greek myth also "read" like super-hero fiction if you look at them right. The miracles of Christ are along the same lines.

The game Mike mentioned, Enlightenment, doesn't have any super-natural elements to it. I didn't see why that should be so at first, but looking back at it, it this probably supports its goal of exploring internal and moral conflict rather than the more common tact of making it "just" another magical system. It's also a narrativist oriented game, as the mechanics show--as opposed to the sim/gamist D&D type games that were probably alluded to in the original post. That could be telling.

--Emily Care

Actually, Paul, my exact view of In Nomine is that the D666 is the exact representative of "God's Ineffable Plan". Why did that happen that way? Because it's part of God's plan. To quote Einstein, "God does not play dice with the universe." Since we cannot know his plan in real life, and the game does not suppose that anyone knows his plans (except perhaps for Yves, and he's not talking), this is best represented as a random roll. What better way to get the players thinking that, perhaps there is no God than to make it all seem random?

Clever, IMO.

Mike

Hey Mike,

the D666 is the exact representative of "God's Ineffable Plan"....Since we cannot know his plan in real life...this is best represented as a random roll.

And I think that's exactly what Jonathan means by "disrespect." The mechanic you've described is based on small, bitter thinking. No matter how big a sampling you take, randomized rewards and punishment doesn't add up to a plan. Devote your whole life to spirituality and you're never going to catch even a glimpse of the beauty of the plan, because there isn't one.

Kalev's mechanic presupposes a guiding hand that the character could perhaps or may never glimpse. The d666 mechanic insures that there will be no glimpse, ever. They are both inscrutable. It's just that the d666 mechanic brutalizes that which faith knows to be benevolent, and renders the expression of faith pathetic.

Paul

How is that disrespectful? I really don't get it. It's not the 666 thing, is it? That's perfectly respectful. First off that numerology isn't actually part of many churches doctrines in any way. But where it is, as the "number of the beast" this totally makes sense. What is the most incongruous part of God's ineffable plan? The hardest part to understand? The Problem of Evil. Lucifer. The whole question of sin. If 666 is the devil's number, it, too, is part of the plan. And as that's the entire subject of the game, the mechanic works fine.

And that's a long way to go for a mechanic that was, in fact, designed to be part of a game that did poke fun with a RL religion. Oddly, however, I detect very much the spirit of the Jesuits in this game, and the wisdom of the Jewish sages. In that unquestioning faith is no faith at all.

God's plan, according to the game canon, is absolutely unknowable. This is both reasonable, and follows the dogma of many religions in real life. In fact, in these religions Faith implies that there can never be any proof as such. That, in fact, faith has to come from within, despite what appears to be a random world.

In fact, that's how I was raised, the truth be told, so maybe that's why it attracts me so much (and perhaps why the line editor is named McCoy; just a guess).

Further, it makes for great drama in the game. I daresay it's more balanced in it's pulls than Sorcerer. Now, the rest of the mechanics...

If you want to attack In Nomine as disrespectful on other grounds, there's certainly room. But the dice mechanic isn't one of them, IMO.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: ...perhaps why the line editor is named McCoy;

Mike Holmes wrote: Now, the rest of the mechanics...