In Ron's new article, he raises a fascinating historical issue. I'll quote at length, because I'd like to take it as the starting point for discussion.

My biggest criticism concerns some thematic content. I'm really starting to wonder about the god-lists and religion in general in Fantasy Heartbreakers. It's a unique phenomenon; I don't think it's possible to imagine anything less like religion in any sense. It includes a lot of highly-imitative or downright dumb names, direct correspondence with player-character options (as opposed to societies or organizations), and lots of un-fun strictures. The best of the bunch is Forge: out of Chaos, probably (as I read it) because this material was taken the least seriously and written for fun imaginative-background rather than as a personal fantasy opus.

What's odd is that most Fantasy Heartbreakers take great pride in their world-settings: maps, elaborate histories, wars, borders, economies, cataclysms, wilderness areas, and more. I'd think that religion, as such a major feature of culture, would get a bit more intellectual consideration beyond "what must a cleric avoid doing in order to get his healing spells back" or when a character gets a minor bonus.

Hi.

You've nailed it for me, as far as I'm concerned. While I'm not trying to get into a discussion of what religion "ought" to be in your examples, the "negative space" of most RPG religions is, to a great extent, what I'm trying to introduce on the other threads.

Thanks,
Christopher

Excellent observations, clehrich. I think you're right on target. Remembering my own attempts at writing this sort of game long ago, I think that these games generally start with a map and some lists. It's rather like designing a software program: here's the system architecture, here's the list of features.

Myth and culture don't really lend themselves to that sort of quantification.

I have a theory about this, and like all good theories it is unlikely to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt nor likewise disproven.

I think that when Gygax was writing the original D&D, he really had no idea what he was doing. This makes sense because it was never done before. He didn't know what it needed or not.

Now he probably decided to add deities to D&D for two reasons.
1) he himself at least has some kind of interest in them. I believe he's credited with adding Clerics to the game and holy men imply rather strongly deities, especially if you give them powers that imply that such deities are real.
2) Fantasy from the time had gods in them. Conan was always saying "by Crom" and things like that. Not to mention Mythology which is also a source of inspiration.

The problem was how to represent these gods in game terms. I'll bet he had no idea, really but he looked at the monster list and it seemed to make sense. This became one of the assumptions that D&D fantasy heartbreakers are built upon. Supreme beings are just like any other monster.

I had a rather interesting discussion once, I forget who about gods in RPG and I was of a mind that you really didn't need stats for gods because, well, they're gods. Cthulhu is a huge being. He rolls over in his sleep and whole races are wiped out. How can you rate that on 3d6 or whatever? ANd the guy says, well, yeah, but I still like to see his stats. I still like to see what he's capable of.

You know there's thinking inside the box and there's sealing it shut and covering it with cement and then dumping it in the lake.

clehrich wrote: So how come religion gets such short shrift?

1. ...I associate this sort of fantasy world with science-engineering types....

2. These games tend to be mechanistic in one sense or another...

3. ...a dislike of things like theology, liturgy, and so forth.

4. ...an unwillingness or inability to deal with culture more broadly.

Hi there,

John, that's a damned interesting point. One of the issues I raised in Sorcerer & Sword was to identify that the source material (a much narrower range than you're pegging) is essentially existential, with the Void as a real and awful element of insight, and with churches or religion only being defined in terms of societal and political entities.

My take on this discussion so far is to agree with Clehrich about the general issue, but to ask, let's please avoid the use of the term "scientific mind-set," as the attitude that it's usually applied to is rabidly nonscientific. Contrast Scully and Mulder in the first season of the X-Files - one of them is a classic scientist, and it ain't Scully.

Any discussion about that should probably go off-forum, though. Let's stick with RPGs, religion, source literature, and so on.

Best,
Ron

Ron wrote:

let's please avoid the use of the term "scientific mind-set," as the attitude that it's usually applied to is rabidly nonscientific.

In reference to John's comment, I think you're dead on. The problem for us, though, is that either we shift over to a discussion of why fantasy literature is like that, or the whole thread sort of collapses.

As a solution, I think that RPGs have been out there long enough that they have had a significant impact on fantasy literature. One only has to look at the various RPG-based (usually AD&D-based, I think) fantasy novels that have been bestsellers, and that's just the really obvious stuff. I read somewhere that Raymond Feist started his fantasy-world as an RPG, for example. Further, I suspect that the designers, consumers, and primary audience of these fantasy RPGs are fairly avid consumers of fantasy literature, and that entails that such literature caters to their interests -- that's how genre-publishing consumerism works. In short, while these RPG fantasies certainly imitate the vast genre-fantasy literature, the reverse is also true.

So the question returns: why does this audience have such trouble with, lack of interest in, dislike of, or confusion about religion?

Perhaps because, in their real lives, they have trouble with, a lack of interest in, a dislike of, or confusion about religion.

I say that not to be facetious, but becuase it's probably true. As you've said, there's a large overlap between consumers and producers of fantasy literature and roleplayers.

What parts of religion are they most likely to be familiar with?
What parts of their hobby is religion most likely to be familiar with?

For many, religion is an alien thing [in that it is not part of their everyday life], and treating them as monsters makes them make sense. Ron's point about The Void and religion as a social club reflects many peoples views from that era, when people started to question the existence of gods where other people could see them. The horrors of the Great and Second World Wars did a lot to turn people against the idea of earthly paradises, and this grittiness is reflected in fantastic literature. Throw in years of lazy thematic plagiarism and the rise of the 'new age' movement [who plundered early fantasy work and were plundered in return] and bob's your proverbial half-elf.

- drew

I partially agree and partially disagree with some of the theories being presented so far. here's my take on it: I think the "scientific mindset" theory, although flawed, may be truer than we think. fantasy RPGs, as we know, are heavily influenced by '40s-'60s fantasy, much of which was written by science fiction writers rather than folklorists and mythologists. people like poul anderson and l. sprague de camp influenced fantasy by simply writing more of it than tolkein or lord dunsany.

and these guy were engineers and scientists. dunno if they really had a "scientific mindset" or not (I take it you mean scientific positivism,) but a survey of some of their writing suggest that most of the writers were agnostics, atheists, or humanists that didn't feel strongly about religion or actively disliked it. poul anderson's "operation chaos" has a big long rant against gnosticism ... was there a gnostic revival back then that the history books overlooked? l sprague de camp and fletcher pratt wrote about the norse and finnish gods in the "incompleat enchanter" series as if they were just guys in fur coats. zelazney's dilvish series has him killing petty gods, although there is a detailed description of his ancestor killing a major deity.

and other than the engineers, we have a few fantasists who weren't sci-fi writers at all -- tolkein, dunsany, c. s. lewis, and so on -- who were inspired by literature rather than the pulps. these people seem to be mostly devout christians of one kind or another, which you would think would have a good effect on their portrayal of religion, but it doesn't look that way at all. instead, their devoutness seems to have prompted them to hide all religious details (tolkein) or to practically proselytize for christianity (lewis).

when it came time to make fantasy rpgs, most of the solutions seem to revolve around avoiding getting into the religion issue:



• don't have "working" gods at all (the fantasy trip);
• have distant gods who only act indirectly through their priests (gygax's D&D);
• assume the gods aren't "the real god", just souped up monsters you can stat out (post-eldritch wizardry D&D);



a couple games -- Harn and EPT, for example -- attempted to flesh out religions more without turning it into another monster manual, but I dunno if they really succeeded.

and, frankly, maybe they shouldn't try. I think games should suggest a religion and a culture, rather than simulate it, and it's probably best to leave the fleshing-out to the players, unless a writer is going to create a coherent religion and culture that fit into a setting derived from a personal vision.

clehrich wrote: So the question returns: why does this audience have such trouble with, lack of interest in, dislike of, or confusion about religion?

Jack Spencer wrote:

I think that for a decent chunk of them it is this way because that's how D&D did it and it's as etched in stone as rolling 3d6 for your stats.

That's what a religion is in these games. It's like an alignment which is just a way to limit or inhibit the spiraling ever upwards character power.

clehrich wrote: To end this rant, I did think of one other possibility. Since many of these games still adhere to what Ron calls the Myth of RPG publishing, i.e. they have grand dreams of writing the new AD&D which will sell like hotcakes and whatnot, I wonder whether some designers avoid religion because they think it will make their products controversial. After all, a lot of the really vicious and paranoid attacks on D&D and other fantasy RPGs came from the religious right-wing.

I noticed yesterday that John Kim was the newest member of the forums, and wanted to welcome him; but I was otherwise occupied, so overlooked it. Welcome to the Forge, John. I look forward to your comments.

John Kim wrote: I think that this is actually somewhat unfair to RPGs. Now, I'm not that widely read in fantasy literature, but it seems to me that religion is given short shrift in modern fantasy literature in general. Certainly it is largely overlooked in seminal works like Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Ursula Le Guin, and others.

Hi,

I wrote this, and then read M.J.'s post, so it covers some of the same ground.

****

Just some thoughts about context here.

When I hear someone say Tolkien's work wasn't religious my ears prick up, cause it seems to me something's been lost in the translation.

A work does not have to mention religious institutions to be religious. I need only point to the book of Genesis to make this clear. No praying, no temple, no hierarchy of religious folk. But clearly a religious tale.

I suggest that The Lord of the Rings was written in this kind of context: a world so shot-through with religion that we don't need even worry about having a Sunday Sabbath.

The point here (once again) is that one does not need to "model" human standards and conditions of the "real" world to make a religious tale. Tolkien may not have anything mapping Christianity in the world of Middle Earth in a one to one ratio. But Gandalf does die and rises, a "heavenly" creature with a mission on earth; the enemy is one who hardens hearts and engenders selfishness; the heroes are characters who submit to missions that are beyond their understanding but follow through anyway. The world he created is so religious it does not need religious institutions.

As for the supposed post-modern criticism of religious institutions in 20th century fiction, I need only refer anyone willing to actually read the texts to the four gospels of the Christian Testament. There you will find the Son of God working without a religious institution and constantly criticizing the current leaders of the religious institutions.

(I've noticed that every generation seems to think it's discovered sex for the first time; I'm beginning to think that every generation thinks they've discovered cynicism for the first time, too.)

In the tale of the Gospels, Jesus is led to his death by religious leaders out of fear and jealousy.

The point here is that suspicion of religious institutions can be found in the most religious of texts.

Remember I am still dealing with stories here, not the recreation of how humans operate in societies.

In Homer, the gods are obviously present, as are priests. But, for example, what is the most significant act of a priest in The Illiad? Simply this: because of his love for his daughter he asks for her safety. His desire to get her back sets in motion the rest of the story. He is a priest, but his function in the tale is all about love, vengeance and keeping the story going.

In AD&D religions are treated with a certain contempt: the contempt of those who know they are better than faith. Bureaucracies of faith are built to offer bennies to the PCs who behave a certain way. There is a kind of dispassionate capitalism to the whole process, like Babbits showing up to nine-to-five jobs to their steady salary and perhaps a gold watch at the end.

Truly religious tales, like the Iliad, where the passion of the characters are reflected in the gods, and the gods reflect the joy and pain of mortals, all spun into situations beyond any characters true comprehension, are in direct contrast to such thinking.

The point of all of this: First, let's be sure when we're speaking of religion, we're making a distinction between religious institutions and a religious sensibility. Jesus did just fine without one, but definitely had the other.

Let's make sure not to look at religions with what amounts to the AD&D religious mindset: religion is religious institutions; religion is found in the begging of gifts from powerful creatures; religion is found in the utterly mundane and surface manifestation of buildings, symbols and holy orders.

That last one is the really important one. Those are clues pointing toward a religious sensibility. Typical RPGs religion typically has all the clues, but none of the sensibity.

Take care,
Christopher

PS Yes, I know the Homer's tales are different than the Christian gospels. I'm trying to make a point that what these stories have in common is very interesting, especially when compared against the typtical RPG religious set up. I am also, explicitely, using the texts as tales, not as source materials for religion.

M. J. Young wrote: I noticed yesterday that John Kim was the newest member of the forums, and wanted to welcome him; but I was otherwise occupied, so overlooked it. Welcome to the Forge, John. I look forward to your comments.

M. J. Young wrote:

John Kim wrote: It seems to me that religion is given short shrift in modern fantasy literature in general. Certainly it is largely overlooked in seminal works like Edgar Rice Burroughs, J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Ursula Le Guin, and others.

I'm not convinced that Tolkien really belongs on this list.

...

It seems that Sauron and the wizards (Gandalf, Saruman, and Radagast are identified as part of a larger group) are minor deities themselves, supernatural beings some have likened to angels, involved in the affairs of mortals. The others, particularly Aragorn, would be mythic heroes, akin in some ways to the likes of Peracles and Heracles. Lord of the Rings also includes religious references, such as the mention periodically of the greater deity Elbereth ...

Christopher Kubasik wrote: In AD&D religions are treated with a certain contempt: the contempt of those who know they are better than faith. Bureaucracies of faith are built to offer bennies to the PCs who behave a certain way. There is a kind of dispassionate capitalism to the whole process, like Babbits showing up to nine-to-five jobs to their steady salary and perhaps a gold watch at the end.

Truly religious tales, like the Iliad, where the passion of the characters are reflected in the gods, and the gods reflect the joy and pain of mortals, all spun into situations beyond any characters true comprehension, are in direct contrast to such thinking.

Hi John (and welcome!),

That's a fair cop: comparing D&D to Homer is, of course, ridiculous -- and you're right to point that out.

However, what's at stake for me is how do we raise the quality of group storytelling? That is, how do we end up comparing an evening's storytelling to Homer's storytelling, instead of game mechanics to storytelling? Since I prefer Narrativist play, this is a priority for me.

In fact, I'd say that this thread, as so many running rampant across The Forge right now, might well tangle themselves up as different priorities of how to use gods get all confused with different desires on the parts of players. For some folks, using gods to get favors and magic items, issues of faith be damned, are the whole point. For folks like me, using gods as anything short of stirring emotion and narrative are a waste of time.

Since religion is even more slippery an issue than RPG mechanics (imagine such a thing!), the assumptions of what makes a good use of religion in an RPG is probably more difficult to nail down than how crunchy a comabat system should be. Like GNS, a lot of it comes down to priorities -- which are different for different people.

As for ancient mythology being about worshipping from a list of gods and getting benefits from that god... Yes, but... And that "but" includes: the raw coldness of the gods and their own agendas; the torment they rain down unwitting mortals who, despite their best efforts, can't get pez candies out of them by pushing the right buttons; and the terror, mystery and true cosmological implicatations the Greek, say, pantheon can inspire as compared to the "I've signed on for you buddy, we're in this together" recruiting energy of D&D games.

On another thread on religion someone pointed out its the "Why" of the behavoir of mortals and gods that are really going to distinguish the "feel" of something really mythological. And that being said, some of us at the Forge feel that certain rules will engender "passion" from "stories and characters" better than other rules -- and certain rules will hobble such endevors. In this view, the rules are at the stake of a lot of this. But, as stated above, this only matters if that kind of storytelling is something you're after.

Take care,
Christopher

I apologize if I'm out of phase with the topic at all. I've not yet read the article (I fully intend to do so, but it's been a crazy week started with a son breaking an ankle and ending with a wife sick home from work complaining about every second I spend trying to get to things online--and I figure that the article will still be there when I have time, but the forum threads will move away from me so fast I'll never catch up).

If the problem is that games do not engender an appropriate attitude toward the gods they incorporate, I have in fact recognized that problem. My monthly series at the Christian Gamers Guild site talked about why that problem existed and what could be done about it in Faith and Gaming: Awe, posted at the beginning of this month. I suggest that a lot of it has to do with the rather casual way we toss around gods in our games, and that the answer lies really in trying to portray a sort of awe for the supernatural that is to some degree lacking in modern life.

But as I say I'm working from what's been said in the thread. (I really do want to read the article, but already people are trying to drag me away to be part of everything they're doing.)

--M. J. Young

Christopher Kubasik wrote: That's a fair cop: comparing D&D to Homer is, of course, ridiculous -- and you're right to point that out.

However, what's at stake for me is how do we raise the quality of group storytelling? That is, how do we end up comparing an evening's storytelling to Homer's storytelling, instead of game mechanics to storytelling?

I was looking at an old D&D book the other day -- the D&D Adventure Game from the early 90s, I believe -- and was struck by how completely absent religion seemed to be. The cleric class was there, of course, but was described as someone who "gains special powers because of the strength of their belief in some cause or principle", or something like that. Gods didn't really come up at all.

Just thought I should mention.

Hi John,

I think that first of all we need to drop discussing the source literature because A) it seems that some people dispute whether or not, say, Tolkien has any religion in it and B) It's really a side-issue we do need to address, really. We're talking about the games, not the inspirational literature, right? Bringing it up is bringing up a useless (to this topic IMO) side debate. That's all I'm saying.

Second your comment about D&D being a "pale imitation of Tolkien" is wrong to me. D&D is not Tolkien or Moorcock or Vance or Anderson or high fantasy or heroic fantasy. It's "D&D Fantasy" a version of fantasy that has been identified and discussed here. (Feel free to read, but please start a new thread if you have something to add since that thread is pretty old)

Let me throw out an idea here.

Religion is hard to create.

These games - Fantasy Heartbreakers - were made as a reaction to d&d. D&d, originally, may have had its reasons for presenting religion as it did. That's not an issue.
I present the idea that Heartbreakers put their energy into "correcting problems" that they saw as correctable. I argue that The Religion Problem lies far in uncorrectability territory.

Why?

Real religion has many aspects, including but not limited to: rituals, belief systems, mythologies, specific customs, attitudes, architecture, and maybe even manifestations (this depends on how you feel about your religion). Religions create ripples in the cultures around them, influencing art, cuisine, manners of speech and dress. Religion is everywhere. Just the mythologies of real religions fill large, heavy books. Who has time to write that kind of thing for a game?

So, the pervasiveness of religion makes it difficult to present, compactly and respectfully, in an RPG. I can imagine three reactions to this - stereotyping and game-statting out religion, making the cultural elements implicit or absent (what most games did), or make a religious game (which was apparently not among the goals of Heartbreaker designers), or simply crib real-world religions, leaving it to the players to fill in the details that makes that work. It's part of the larger Culture Problem. Deep, convincing, complex game cultures are rare because it takes uncommon knowledge and time to even concieve of one, let alone several, and still rarer skill to communicate those cultures to the game, making them into equally complex entities in the minds of the players as they are in the writer's.

In reply to Jack Spencer Jr --

Well, the topic was why do D&D and the "heartbreaking" fantasy RPGs neglect religion? If you want to probe why they are the way they are, I think you need to look at their influences. I certainly agree that D&D is quite distinct from Tolkien, but I don't think you can deny that it had a major influence on D&D.

Ultimately, I think it might be more productive to start a different topic: asking "How should religion be done right in RPGs?" In fact, I'm going to do that myself.

Henry Fitch wrote: I was looking at an old D&D book the other day -- the D&D Adventure Game from the early 90s, I believe -- and was struck by how completely absent religion seemed to be. The cleric class was there, of course, but was described as someone who "gains special powers because of the strength of their belief in some cause or principle", or something like that. Gods didn't really come up at all.

This is the mertest of outlines [of various Mythologies], presented in D&D terms

This volume is something else, also: our last attempt to reach the "Monty Hall" DM's

Hi folks:

My first thought on reading this thread was: by definition, the Fantasy Heartbreakers are apples that do not fall far from the tree. That is, they reproduce most of D&D’s core systems and assumptions, each one making only a handful of changes—and those changes they do make are pretty obvious outcomes of drift (like new skill systems) or just the creative process that a long-running campaign inevitably produces (like elaborate settings).

So why should we expect the Heartbreakers to change the religious system when they change so few of the other basic aspects and concerns of D&D? In other words, is there a answer to the question: “why so little innovation in Heartbreaker religions?” that is any different than the answer to the question “why so little innovation in Heartbreaker race and class systems, in combat, in levels and skills?” My guess is no, and searching, say, the religious content of Tolkien or other fantasy literature is probably a red herring. (Especially considering the points made elsewhere about how little the Heartbreakers seem to be influenced by anything outside of a) D&D as written and b) the experiences people have playing D&D.)

I’m struck by Ron’s observation in the first Heartbreakers essay that one area where the Heartbreakers show a lot of effort and originality is their magic systems. They don’t resemble D&D’s traditional magic system at all. The conclusion we can draw from this is that D&D’s magic system is very, very bad. Bad not only from the point of view of a Forge-reading Sorceror player who gave up on D&D ten years ago and is all about heavy Premise Narrativism, but also from the point of view of a Heartbreaker author, a guy who has kept playing D&D for years and years and years, who clearly loves D&D, and obviously finds something in it that scratches (almost) all his GNS itches.

But since the Heartbreakers almost never alter the presentation of gods and religions in D&D, doesn’t it stand to reason that the people who are writing Heartbreakers, the people who pretty much like D&D as written and aren’t driven to seek out other games, simply like the way gods and religions work in D&D?

(This happens to coincide with my memories of playing D&D as a twelve-year old. It never occurred to me to design my own version of D&D, but I know I could never get the magic system right -- memorizing spells, praying for spells, spells in spell books but not memorized, spells on scrolls... But I never had any problem with Deities & Demigods.)

My understanding of the GNS system is that no way of playing is intrinsically better than any other. The only great failing is GNS incoherence – to express one goal and have rules push another, or to have parts of the system at odds with other parts (and D&D seems a great offender in this regard).

Now, they may not be to your taste or to mine, but from the point of view of the Heartbreaker authors, religion must have been one of the things that D&D really did very well! From the laboratory of years of devoted D&D play that coughed up these Fantasy Heartbreakers, the evidence seems to be that the D&D religious system works; it is ideal for the style of play that D&D promotes (whatever that is). Unlike the magic system which everybody feels the need to tinker with, D&D’s deities – dumb names, colorless lists, un-fun strictures and all – appear to be a strikingly successful part of the game’s design.

Rob

Several important points have been made recently, and I’d like to highlight and respond to them.

four willows weeping wrote:

D&d...had its reasons for presenting religion as it did. That's not an issue....Heartbreakers put their energy into "correcting problems" that they saw as correctable. I argue that The Religion Problem lies far in uncorrectability territory.

Real religion has many aspects, including but not limited to: rituals, belief systems, mythologies, specific customs, attitudes, architecture, and maybe even manifestations (this depends on how you feel about your religion). Religions create ripples in the cultures around them, influencing art, cuisine, manners of speech and dress. Religion is everywhere. Just the mythologies of real religions fill large, heavy books. Who has time to write that kind of thing for a game?

the people who pretty much like D&D as written and aren’t driven to seek out other games, simply like the way gods and religions work in D&D

Hi John,

Good point on the topic's focus. I look forward to your new thread. (It seems to be where the many threads have been heading.)

However, I think the last few posts have come up with what I consider to be the valid answer: religious is neglected in these games because the people who wrote and played them just don't care about religion.

I think that's just it. For if we were to assume that the source material was the cause, we'd have to assume they'd look deeper into the source material. But instead, we find Tolkien reproduced with the depth of Colorform set. So that's not it. What it is, hauling out Ockman's razor, must plainly be a lack of interest on the parts of the players.

As others have pointed out, that's fine. It's their game, and they're clearly happy with it.

But some of us haven't been. We've got the questions brewing. Now, for those who want to give it a whirl, let's see what happens.

Take care,
Christopher

clehrich wrote: .


Since my professional career is devoted to studying the ins-and-outs of the history of religions, I have a few suggestions here, but I don't think they do more than scratch the surface.

1. It may be an unfair stereotype, but I associate this sort of fantasy world with science-engineering types. I know that when I first started playing AD&D (just after it appeared, actually), I considered myself part of this group. (Funny old thing, life.) And my experience as a teacher is that many people who align themselves very strongly to a scientific mindset are uncomfortable with religion in the real world, sometimes going so far as to see it all as idiotic superstition and whatnot. (Lately, Penn and Teller would be excellent examples of this perspective.) So I wonder whether part of the failure of such games to deal with any of the more interesting possibilities of fantasy religions have to do with this fundamental discomfort..

4. Finally, I think Ron picks up something interesting when he uses the word "culture." As a rule, these games describe culture in a few terms: economics, military and political history, and some material culture (at least implicitly). But just about all of what I would focus on as primary for "culture" --- art, literature, music, stories (not big-ass myths, but just plain old stories), family life, social structures, and of course religion --- gets hand-waved away. So I sort of wonder whether the total failure with respect to religion isn't really part and parcel of an unwillingness or inability to deal with culture more broadly.

Hi,

I have come up with some possible explanations of the poor representation of religion in D&D and its wannabes. First is realted directly the games themselves and the other is related to the backrground of the designers.

1. The game focus is on teamwork and monster bashing. Religion is treated only as far as it helps these goals. Ethics (alignement etc.) tell who you can bash. Ethics is a list of do nots, not a philosophical system for assessing right or wrong. If PCs started questioning things it would be threat to the game. Players don’t want to think if its right to go into a dungeon and kill and rob its inhabitants. Moral reasoning would kill most dungeon crawls at the beginning. Deeper consideration of moral issues could also lead to undesirable quarrels between team memebers which is another threat to the goals.

Cleric spells are an important part of D&D-style religion because they add firepower and a medic to the team. The matter of cleric‘s faith is dangerous because its too introvert and personal. Introversion is not good for teamwork. Hell if a cleric was too religious he could even give up adventuring and start prosetylizing! The game focus is on extrovert action and not introvert contemplation.

2. Why is political history presented so much better than religion or the arts for example? Heartbreaker history is mainly a story about things that have happened. There are usually no structural historical approaches. My theory is that all people have some skill as story tellers – it comes to us naturally. Treatment of religion and other culture is about writing the mythology (stories) but it is also about interpreting the mythology in the terms of the believers and describing their religious setting systematically.

Interpretation and systematic description are somtheing that is – unlike the telling of stories – not easy and natural to us. They are learned over time. As a high school teacher I know how poorly most of the students interpret literary texts or understand culuture even after I have tried to teach them something for three years so I’m not surprised by engineers’ generally poor text skills. High school is likely to be their only training for the interpretation of texts. They just don’t know how to do religion. People are also often hostile to things they don’t understand – like academic treatement of matter they consider simple and every day. This is of course an unfair generalization: I know engineers who are brilliant interpreters of texts, but it gives some insight to the problem.

Let's make sure not to look at religions with what amounts to the AD&D religious mindset: religion is religious institutions; religion is found in the begging of gifts from powerful creatures; religion is found in the utterly mundane and surface manifestation of buildings, symbols and holy orders.

And yet, certainly something like the theory of the Four Humours would be more appropriate for most fantasy settings, and the "healing magic" or whatrever is implemented (even theories of rest-healing) should be articulated in terms of the Four Humours.

Indeed, and I kicked myself when reminded.
Point is tho, despite the frequencty with which we have healing as a part of character functionality, becuase of the common presence of violence, its seldom tackled as anything more than resource-management.

I think that this, again, is a symptom stemming from a much larger source - the separation of color from mechanics. Very ancestral issue, and seemingly limited wholly to the D&D family of games (where I use family in Ron's sense of "games descended from" rather than "products associated with"); Everway, L5R, nearly every game I see coming out of the Forge, none of them share this trait.

This could have something to do with the Religion issue, too: religion is color. "Color does not belong" in the Fantasy Heartbreaker school of design (except in the special category of magic, which seems to break every observation that applies to the whole.) So, it can't be written about or incorporated in the game directly; it would violate a firm guiding principle.

clehrich wrote: But the logic here is problematic. Real political and military histories are also long and detailed, yet Heartbreakers go on and on about these. Why do they consider that reasonable, but not the construction of plausible religions? Four willows weeping in fact makes an excellent case for doing so: religions affect every other aspect of the culture, so if you create a plausible religion, your cultures will seem more “realistic.”

Okay.

You postulated that fantasy RPGs are intended to create characters whose actions are "epic"; they are the mythology, in more than just a maner of speaking. This makes religious considerations metaphysical or personal, rather than societal: we want to know how to interact with the Divine, and how it will act with relation to us, rather than how the whole (unimportant, mundane, non-epic) mortal world interacts with it. I agree that this answers why societal religious issues were not dealt with, but it still leaves a different question unanswered for me:

Why aren't we given a portrait of divinity that allows us to interact with it meaningfully, in the mythic way that we intend?

I'm tempted to guess that this is an outgrowth of the design; how do you Simulate that?? The model of the Fantasy Heartbreaker makes certain assumptions about the world, I believe, that make it nigh-impossible to present a way to interact with things mythically:
1. The universe is controlled by immutable, scientific laws having to do with such things as the behaviors of matter and energy. These laws may not be the same as those of our world - they often include "magic", which can be analyzed scientifically (scientistically?) if desired, and constitutes the manipulation of some "exotic force" to produce non-exotic effects.
2. Emergent qualities of complex things - mental states, spiritual attributes, etc., are only relevant in their reduction to their matter-and-energy effects.

Once we have to look at mythic beings in terms of m-e causality (because the system does not look outside of that), they lose their main thrust of effectiveness - the emotional elements that make them mythic.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere.

Shreyas wrote: This makes religious considerations metaphysical or personal, rather than societal: we want to know how to interact with the Divine, and how it will act with relation to us, rather than how the whole (unimportant, mundane, non-epic) mortal world interacts with it. I agree that this answers why societal religious issues were not dealt with, but it still leaves a different question unanswered for me:

Why aren't we given a portrait of divinity that allows us to interact with it meaningfully, in the mythic way that we intend?

four willows weeping wrote:
This could have something to do with the Religion issue, too: religion is color. "Color does not belong" in the Fantasy Heartbreaker school of design (except in the special category of magic, which seems to break every observation that applies to the whole.) So, it can't be written about or incorporated in the game directly; it would violate a firm guiding principle.

John Kim wrote: The original topic proposed by Chris was: why is religion seemingly neglected by traditional RPG designs -- along with other aspects of culture like art, literature, and music?

Walt Freitag wrote: [T]here are no systems I'm aware of that cover the invention of new monsters (or even the selection of existing monsters) using the purpose the monster is intented to serve in the story as the starting point.

I'd be interested to know if it is possible to produce a disussion of the use of monsters; and construct play mechanics based on the narrative purposes of a beasty or NPC or whatever.

Mostnplayers are not, and will not become, familiar with literary theory. No three act play structure, etc etc. So, how then are players to produce dramatically valuable motion in play? I think this is a large part of the problem.

Best idea I've found oin these lines so far is to sort through the 36 daramtic situations finding NPC's to fill the roles of the dramatis personnae. But, a caveat was the interesting Dramatica discussion on character which pointed out that siometimes character functional roles do not have 1:1 identities with actual characters.

I think it should be possible to build a mechanical system which explicitly generates story components, rather than by generating world facts.