Some may remember a while back I had a thread going where some debate cropped up about pagan religions, their inherent morality/amorality, and the impact of religion on society.
I think the dust has settled enough that I'd like to bring it up again, without the extra baggage of a fixed game setting.

So this time let's keep it hypothetical and theoretical.
Let's also, for the sake of keeping this anywhere near controllable, concentrate on celtic religion/mythology, rather than on pagan religions in general (and keeping in mind its applicability to role-playing games).

I'd like to explore the mythology and the religion (if there is a substantial difference as was suggested previously), it's impact on day to day life, and what such a religion might have developed into if Christianity hadn't come along to squash it. This can also include discussion of a fantastic nature (ie: magic is real, the gods really are the divine ancestors of the mortal people, etc).

Since it was a big factor last time, I'd like to bring up morality first. I had maintained that morality (in the current, christian sense) was not a big issue in the myths of the celts. Having done some further research I still believe this is true. The celtic myths and legends are full (though no moreso than many) of gods who seem to think little or nothing about performing acts of theft, murder, incest, rape, and any number of (by modern christian standards) immoral acts.
Given this, what can we define as a celtic morality imposed by the religion, as contrasted to a social morality imposed by the necessity of living together in something resembling harmony?

Any takers?

Oh boy, you've opened a can of worms! Let me open another... ;)

Depending on who you talk to, there is no such thing as a difference between religious morality and social morality. This is particularly relevant to the revealed religions, where social morality originally depended on religious beliefs.

Turning to Pagan traditions, there is still a religious morality (again, depending on who you talk to), but that morality differs significantly from revealed religions' morality, and hence doesn't seem like morality to people who grew up with the revealed variety, which depends on sin and redemption.

The Celts, as a particular case, do indeed have a morality. It's just based on a different set of principles than the Abrahamic system. Celtic myths and legends reflect a focus on hospitality, bravery, and honor - very distinct from the ideas of love and obedience common in the Abrahamic traditions - and even in such distinct religious traditions as Confucianism.

My personal thought, contested by many other Pagans I know, is that the Celtic system is entirely a social system, and the myths reflect this. Like several other Pagan traditions throughout history, the myths and practice of the tradition didn't have rules about what was necessary to attain spiritual bliss, or any other goal. Rather, the myths support the social rules, the behaviors that allow one to be a respected and functional part of the society. This is part of why it becomes difficult to see""morality" in the myths - they represent social mores and structures, not mores and ethics based on some spiritual goal. Pagan traditions focus on how to live this life better/properly, for it's own sake, as opposed to modern predominant moralities which focus on living this life properly for the sake of a future in a spiritual realm of some sort.

With this understanding, it's clear there is no spiritual morality to Pagan mythology - they all resort to social structures. Modern Pagans, to a large degree, have missed this, and do depend on a spiritual morality. This is part of where your previous thread was sidetracked.

When it comes to fantasy game religions, I personally find only one thing done wrong, consistently. Pagan pantheons in fantasy games almost always have gods of evil. Evil is not a Pagan idea - at least, not one that becomes deified. Instead, forces of nature, perhaps deadly or scary forces, such as disease, take over. In every case, these deities of death or disease, also have the power of healing. Pagan religions regularly invoke paradox this way.

So pantheons with evil gods of disease or madness would never exist in any pagan religion. The god of disease would also be the god of healing, the god of madness covering sanity as well. The darker aspect would be invoked when a follower of the religion did something the god didn't like - this could vary from certain actions contrary to social morality to entirely unique and non-codified misbehavior.

In these cases, the follower resorts to the priesthood to discover the "sin" and how to "repent" or make amends. This sounds amazingly like standard spiritual morality - it's not, because these "sins" are not codified in terms of afterlife issues. The only exception I'm aware of is Egyptian religion, focused heavily on the afterlife and an understandably powerful influence on Judaic religious development.

So, summing up, I feel that the only differences between fantasy religions as presented in games and what would actually happen, would be the lack of evil or evil gods. Your other observations - on the freeform nature of society and inclusionary tactics of pagan proselytising - seem spot on to me. The warring nations/religions idea - that would depend entirely on the social mores of the culture in which the religion grew. Holy wars, within a Pagan tradition, would be exceedingly rare.

I know I didn't talk about the Celts much. This because the issues you raised apply to almost all Pagan traditions.

Aidan

Turning to Pagan traditions, there is still a religious morality (again, depending on who you talk to), but that morality differs significantly from revealed religions' morality, and hence doesn't seem like morality to people who grew up with the revealed variety, which depends on sin and redemption.

Pagan traditions focus on how to live this life better/properly, for it's own sake, as opposed to modern predominant moralities which focus on living this life properly for the sake of a future in a spiritual realm of some sort.

When it comes to fantasy game religions, I personally find only one thing done wrong, consistently. Pagan pantheons in fantasy games almost always have gods of evil. Evil is not a Pagan idea - at least, not one that becomes deified. Instead, forces of nature, perhaps deadly or scary forces, such as disease, take over. In every case, these deities of death or disease, also have the power of healing. Pagan religions regularly invoke paradox this way.

Holy wars, within a Pagan tradition, would be exceedingly rare.

Pagan traditions focus on how to live this life better/properly, for it's own sake, as opposed to modern predominant moralities which focus on living this life properly for the sake of a future in a spiritual realm of some sort.

This makes a great deal of sense. Especially since (if I recall correctly) the celts were strong believers in reincarnation. The otherworld was more a place for the soul to rest before going back into the world, rather than a final destination.

I've always liked the idea that the gods embody both light and dark aspects and it is the people who follow them who make the light or the darkness stronger, possibly even to the point of influencing the god entity. I don't know how well that meshes with actual celtic beliefs, but it seems like an idea with some interesting possibilities for a fantasy setting.

And an important thing to keep in mind when developing the history of a game world with a pagan pantheon as well.

Thanks Aidan. I think we're off to a good start.

I agree with much of what has been said about the relationship between pantheistic 'pagan' religons and morality. I think the best developed and most informative place to look for examples of this is in greek religion and greek philosophical thought. Socrates was no monotheist, but his moral philosophy is highly sophisticated and he was not alone in the greek world. Indeed there seems to have been a continuous two-way flow of ideas between greek philosophy and Judaism throughout much of their histories, which is one reason why christianity so easily spread through the greek world in it's early history.

taalyn wrote:

I've always liked the idea that the gods embody both light and dark aspects and it is the people who follow them who make the light or the darkness stronger, possibly even to the point of influencing the god entity. I don't know how well that meshes with actual celtic beliefs, but it seems like an idea with some interesting possibilities for a fantasy setting.

Couple of points:

- belief does change deity. Look at Athena, who was once a goddess of Sex and Battle (like the Celts' Morrígan) but changed into Wisdom.

Yes indeed. Holy wars only develop out of an idea of "the one true religion". It's so much easier and realistic to follow history and have pagan people get into wars based on territory or ancestral opposition. Cliché, yes, but realistic.

Even the Egyptians, who basically created the idea of monotheism (with the enforced worship of the god Aten by Akhenaten), didn't have holy wars.

simon_hibbs wrote: I agree with much of what has been said about the relationship between pantheistic 'pagan' religons and morality. I think the best developed and most informative place to look for examples of this is in greek religion and greek philosophical thought. Socrates was no monotheist, but his moral philosophy is highly sophisticated and he was not alone in the greek world. Indeed there seems to have been a continuous two-way flow of ideas between greek philosophy and Judaism throughout much of their histories, which is one reason why christianity so easily spread through the greek world in it's early history.

- belief does change deity. Look at Athena, who was once a goddess of Sex and Battle (like the Celts' Morrígan) but changed into Wisdom.

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

The Egyptian's view of the god Set certainly changed. Orriginaly he was revered in upper egypt, but after some sort of civil strife the cult was deprecated and Set came to be seen as being a sinister force, and the myth of the betrayal or Ossiris became current. I realy can't believe that the egyptians ever believed that they had changed the nature of their god towards evil. Rather they discovered that the god of the defeated faction, in who's name that faction fought, was a corrupting infleunce, and that this simply hadn't been realised before. Set had always been a god of the desert storms, and so potentialy destructive.

While I would agree that historicaly pantheistic religions are very tolerant of foreign religons, I think you go too far. The Romans were very tolerant of foreign religions and indeed their empire would have been impossible to controll if the hadn't. Nevertheless they ruthlessly tragetted and suppressed the religion of the druids, and I'd have no problem characterising their root-and-branch military expeditions against the faith through Gaul and the british isles as a crusade.

The ancient Egyptians were generaly tolerant too, but their history is full of inter-temple rivalries, and even naked power struggles which had a decidedly religious flavour. As with the example of Set above, the gods of those cults which lost out were at least severely deprecated if not effectively banned. All is not roses in the pantheistic world brotherhood of faiths, I'm afraid.

Akhenaten's reforms bore similarity to monotheism, but it realy wasn't that at all. The other gods were still worshiped, and their sacred rites were not interrupted. Instead Aten became the new supreme deity, supplanting the previous contenders to this title, such as Atum and Ra. Furthermore there is strong evidence that the worship of Aten was exclusive to the royal family and priestly class, and that commoners were instructed to worship Akhenaten himself as the son of Aten - hardly strict monotheism although similarities with christianity can be certainly be drawn. The worship of Aten under Akhenaten certainly bears some fo the hallmarks of monotheism and may well have been a precursor to it (although some recent timelines make Akhenaten a contemporary of Saul and David!), but it wan't the real deal.

Simon wrote:

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

I don't know where you get this civil strife stuff - do you have a reference I could read, to see where you're coming from?

This is also entirely incorrect. Yes, the Romans did campaign against the Druids, but not because of religion. If Roma had done so, it would be very strange to find Roman soldiers worshipping the Celtic horse-goddess Epona, as inscriptions and texts clearly show.

Given this, what can we define as a celtic morality imposed by the religion, as contrasted to a social morality imposed by the necessity of living together in something resembling harmony?

contracycle wrote: Simon wrote:

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

Hmm, OK, but why do you believe this? I have not come across a discussion of "aspects" of gods used in this manner. It sounds to me very much like Rome's very deliberate attempt to co-opt other religious systems. So I'm curious to know where this idea is laid out.

I don't know where you get this civil strife stuff - do you have a reference I could read, to see where you're coming from?

Well, as I understand it they stand as symbols for the unification of Egypt into a single state; and I don't think this is accidental either, in that in Mesopotamia just this sort of thing happened all the time. Gods came and went with the fortunes of cities.

This is also entirely incorrect. Yes, the Romans did campaign against the Druids, but not because of religion. If Roma had done so, it would be very strange to find Roman soldiers worshipping the Celtic horse-goddess Epona, as inscriptions and texts clearly show.

Not exactly; Rome made a great deal of the barbarism of the celts practice of human sacrifice, and ostentatiously claimed to be bringing Truth, Justice and the Roman Way to the barbarians. Parallel but NOT contradictory with this process is another to re-interpret the local gods into a meta-pantheon quite literally managed from Rome.

In all these I don't think we are looking at any sort of unified cosmology. We are looking at a synthetic system establsihed for essentially political goals. They are not coherent systems, and many of them are accreted from successive rewritings and post-facto rationalisation drive by realpolitik.

However if we were to assert that the religion is true, Athene does exist and is a real goddess and grants real magical power (as a fantasy game with working magic suggests), asserting that the worshipers still determine the nature of the goddess seems a bit weird IMHO

I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

Hello,

The thread Calvin is referring to is Help with magic?

I also recommend reviewing the Is religion so much of a problem? thread, which in some ways become sort of humpbacked, but also contained some useful posts for this discussion.

You know what I'm not seeing in this thread? Role-playing. The hobby the Forge is about. And without a post from Calvin explaining how the topic directly applies to role-playing as an activity, this thread will be closed. There are plenty of venues on the internet for discussing paganism, morality, religion, and whatnot as topics in their own right, and this isn't one of them.

Best,
Ron

(Edit: many apologies. Didn't read Ron's post closely before posting. I'll just leave this link as a useful resource on the topic of real ancient pagans wrestling with these issues, and edit out the commentary I'd posted. http://www.fas.nus.edu.sg/philo/writings/dialogues/euthyphro/euthmain.html )

Hmm, well, I'll plead guilty with mitigating circumstances.

Firstly, we keep hitting this issue and I think thats significant. It has never, IMO, been done well in an RPG and that is both an interesting ommission and a frustrating problem.

Secondly, I feel it relates to the sharks with lasers on their heads thread. Even I, mundanity fan that I am, find myself drawn toward the significance/drama of supra-normal events and environments.

I saw an interesting review of Dumb & Dumberer the other day, and this mentioend that both sequels and prequels suffer a major problem: by default, a story operates on the conceit that the story is the Most Important Thing that happened to these characters; it is therefore hard to accept that a sequel shows something even mre important that happened later, or a prequel showing an even more profound event that occurred earlier.

I'd not encountered that sort of analysis but it makes a certain sense to me. I'd extend it a bit further and say: another alternative, perhaps something like the Passion Plays or stories about, say, Napoleon, operate on the alternate conceit that this is a highly important event to the audience. Either way, the point is that the story rests on a presumption of Importance: from "this was how Bob and Janet met and fell in love" to "this was how the mighty evil was averted".

Star Wars without the Force would have lost some of its impact. The heroism of the heroes would not be established, and Solo could not have been meaningfully redeemed. I feel the tendency toward laser sharks or alien abduction of whatever occurs to locate the conflict in a sphere that is bigger than just the person. And for most RPG, those occurring in pseudo-historical settings, that thing is going to be magic/religion. Furthermore, there may be many places to discuss the nature of religion, but not that many that can do so in the context of RPG.

Less movies, more role-playing.

Gareth, when you say "it," what do you mean? Religion? Paganism? Morality? Or what?

Best,
Ron

I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this. Rather, they would say that the worshipers discovered heretofore unrevealed aspects of the goddess.

And I'm just looking for the reason you think thats how ancient peoples would have thought of it.

Hey!

Are people not reading? This is a moderator post.

Unless the topic of this thread shifts significantly in the direction of role-playing, it will be closed and locked. There isn't any more wiggle room.

Best,
Ron

Sorry to no get back and try to steer this on course, Ron.
I posted in the middle of the night (my time) and didn't expect such as response so quickly.

My intent with this thread is to try and define (or at least guide) the way a pagan (celtic as an example) religion might be portrayed in a role-playing game (or at least the setting for such).
This would certainly require (I think)a good deal of preliminary discussion to pin down what constitutes a celtic/pagan religious "template" and it's potential effects on the society of the setting, before much of substance can be directed toward making that work in a role-playing form.

The discussions of whether it is appropriate to utilize a system where the worshippers influence the gods (whether or not they realize they do), whether or not pagan societies should have holy wars included in the game setting history, and similar discussion is spot on for what I had in mind. All of this can be applied directly to the development of a "realistic" religion for use in a fantasy game.

I can't really address individual comments yet as I've only skimmed through (and I'm supposed to be working), but I will look through these posts and I'm sure I can apply much of this discussion to the topic of roleplaying. Just give me a little time.

So, please don't close this down yet. I think this is a valuable thread, and may be more pertinate to the topic than you realize. Just try to bear with us a bit, it's difficult to discuss pagan religions in role-playing without discussing pagan religion and mythology.

Ron Edwards wrote: Gareth, when you say "it," what do you mean? Religion? Paganism? Morality? Or what?

I seem to remember a book called _Stolen Lightning_ which was a sociological study of magic. It explained (I don't know if this was unique to that book or a commonplace of sociology) that while religion, in a sociological context, articulates the nature and power of the society in supernatural terms, magic articulates the nature and power of the individual in supernatural terms.

This was a view that postulated magic and religion as opposing forces: magic supports the individual against the claims of the group, and religion supports the claims of the group against the individual.

From this point of view, the classic "give me power!" role-playing-game magic would be perfectly in character for magic. And indeed, if one looks into historical magical texts, magical goals tend to be amazingly pratical and even selfish: love spells, thief-catching spells, spells to help you win a contest or win favor at court, and so on...

belief does change deity. Look at Athena, who was once a goddess of Sex and Battle (like the Celts' Morrígan) but changed into Wisdom.

That is an external analysis you have imposed. I don't believe anyone in the ancient world has ever believed this

While I would agree that historicaly pantheistic religions are very tolerant of foreign religons, I think you go too far. The Romans were very tolerant of foreign religions and indeed their empire would have been impossible to controll if the hadn't. Nevertheless they ruthlessly tragetted and suppressed the religion of the druids, and I'd have no problem characterising their root-and-branch military expeditions against the faith through Gaul and the british isles as a crusade.

In these places, philosophy and morality began to develop as part of an "atheistic" impulse

Certainly that's true. But we're not talking about how worshippers perceived the Gods way back when - we're talking about the here and now, and particularly as it relates to fantasy religions.

it was purely political opposition that spurred the Romans to target them.

Gods came and went with the fortunes of cities.

Not a great deal, IMO. Theres not much info available about the Druidic organisation, if in fact there even really was such a thing (I think so, but some have doubts). But a question: why would we even expect a religion to provide moral instruction? I don't think thats what they are really there for; although they may pass on instruction which contains moral value incidentally. Celtic society was not marked so much by adherence to law in the first place as a regulated sequence of responses and reprisals after the law was broken. So I tend to see the Druidic function as more interested in Fair and True and Correct rather than in moral terms such as good and bad.

However if we were to assert that the religion is true, Athene does exist and is a real goddess and grants real magical power (as a fantasy game with working magic suggests), asserting that the worshipers still determine the nature of the goddess seems a bit weird IMHO. If it were true, why do the worshipers need gods at all?

Indeed, they also highlited the barbaric and depraved religion of the Carthaginians and used it as a pretext for annihilating their only real rivals in the mediterranean at the time.

The thread Calvin is referring to is Help with magic?

It has never, IMO, been done well in an RPG and that is both an interesting ommission and a frustrating problem.

What is missing is discussion of the content of belief systems and the dialogues within them - without that religion is necessarily stale and flat and unimportant.

This was a view that postulated magic and religion as opposing forces: magic supports the individual against the claims of the group, and religion supports the claims of the group against the individual.

From this point of view, the classic "give me power!" role-playing-game magic would be perfectly in character for magic. And indeed, if one looks into historical magical texts, magical goals tend to be amazingly pratical and even selfish: love spells, thief-catching spells, spells to help you win a contest or win favor at court, and so on...

Hmmm... okay, a subject near and dear to my heart. First off... I feel that certain cultures/religions are overdone in RP: Celtic and Egyptian are two of these. That said...

One of the first things you need to do in any pantheistic setting is actually look at it from a pantheistic view. Confused? A great many worlds present cultures with supposedly pantheistic views. Now, whether or not these gods exist in these worlds, or their true natures if they do, is irrelevant for the moment, so leave that aside. In truly pantheistic cultures, people at least acknowledge the existence of most or all gods, and likely pay homage to a good collection of them, even if some choose one or two or three as personally representing them. Some gods do develop clergies devoted specifically to them, while there are others who act as the mouthpieces for all the pantheon, or groups of gods. But most games approach pantheism very monotheistically: there is a strong drive to separate out the gods, to place them constantly at odds, to make these gods more goals than thinking beings with foibles and flaws, as the gods of most myths possessed. These gods are converted often into single-minded entities pursuing the goals layed out for them by their positions, each aloof and demanding utter and undying loyalty of their followers. Now, this isn't true all around, I know... but if you really want to make any pantheistic setting, you need to see things more as a web, a network, interconnected, and less as rival hierarchies constantly vying with each other. Case in point would be the Olympian gods, also often overdone, who often warred and intrigued amongst themselves but stood together still against other threats. They split right on down the middle practically in the Trojan War, but was either side truly good or evil? Hardly.

A thing to remember, incidentally, is that in almost no culture did the gods come to exist in a void. Frequently mythos changes radically as time passes, in fact, as different groups conquer each other and war; their gods also conquer their foes gods, or sometimes they find they prefer these new gods better and they subsume their own old ones, or even join them in a combined pantheon. Sometimes similar gods will be melded together, creating some truly strange entities. You cannot speak of any ancient pantheistic religion as a system that always was a certain way, unchanging from start to finish. Many of the demons in the Bible were originally gods, worshipped before the change to monotheism and relegated to new roles to explain them away. Likewise, when Christianity moved into the norselands, they found the similarity between Thor's Hammer and the Christian Cross made for an easier transition. We shall not even go into the wildly varied version of Christianity that existed before the Roman Empire accepted it as the official religion and stamped out all versions but the one they endorsed.

What I am trying to say here is, do not think of religion as a static event. It flows, is as malleable as all of history. If you wish to investigate what would have occured with the many different Celtic panthestic beliefs, from the Gaul to Ireland, perhaps you need to extrapolate how all of these would have changed in the course of history on their own, and with influence from invasions and other major events (perhaps, for example, a strong nordic influence in the isles, a strong germanic one for the gauls?). Are we speaking, though, of an alternate earth here, or another world altogether? For in another world altogether, you have different influences, different histories... different peoples, cultures, and we're not even going into different cultural and species mindsets and perspectives. Religion holds so many factors... it's not something that can be done simply, no more than politics or culture can, else you create a charicature, a hollow stereotype, a shadow of a moment in history, usually Earth's, let's face it, that has somehow been transposed to an alien world.

Just a note to the above, which I mostly agree with:

Pantheistic and polytheistic mean different things, and their implications on a game world would be significantly different. Pantheism - where God(s) is everywhere and in everything, would be less likely to have pantheons of "class gods" (like D&D's ranger god, or mage god, or...) or conceptual gods (like wisdom, etc.). Rather, concepts would be derive from symbolic meanings of natural phenomena. Pantheistic religions would be less prone to religious wars as well - everybody's god(s) are truly gods.

This could develop into polytheism, where conceptual gods are much more likely, and religious wars (as a function of social mores) would be possible.

Very different effects on the game world, I think.

Aidan

(Massive amounts of semi-informed commentary about ancient world religion almost completely unrelated to RPGs deleted)

madelf wrote:
Hmm… now that’s interesting too.
But from what I understand, magic often was tied up in religion. Spells often involved prayers and such. So I have trouble resolving that.
Plus, if religion and magic were opposed, how would the priests (or the gods for that matter) have power?
Unless the meaning is that there were two powers. One of a religious nature, drawing power from the gods by prayer. The other (magic) being of an non-religious nature, drawing power from some other source.
But when you put in the opposition, that starts to sound an awful lot like Christian justification of witch hunts to me. “They have powers not granted by God, so they must be heathens in league with the Devil”.
Might make an interesting game as well, with the non-religious (or at least not following the “proper” religion) spell casters hunted and persecuted by the church, fighting for their lives and their magical freedom.

madelf wrote:

it was purely political opposition that spurred the Romans to target them.

I’ve often wondered how many of the holy wars were primarily political rather than religious in nature anyway. I suspect most, and probably all. After all organized religious entities have quite often been a powerful political force.

madelf wrote: Also see the rant in my old thread about magic not being necessarily tied into religion. Certainly it can be, if that’s the direction the game creator chooses to go. But I maintain that it doesn’t have to be. Especially if one were to go with the premise that the gods are actually other-worldly creatures (aliens, inter-dimensional travelers, whatever) that are simply vastly more powerful than the “mortals”.

liberal Puritan

Separation of church and state is a very modern invention.

In my mind, the interesting part of religion is precisely how it influences politics, philosophy, war, and everyday life.

Well, this calls into question what a religion is. If the "gods" are simply powerful aliens, then I would say that obeying the gods is probably a political organization, not a religion.

One could have a religion, say, which denies the divinity of the aliens and says that they should be resisted rather than obeyed.

For me, religion in RPGs has generally been a part of my character rather than a part of the plot per se.

I would tend to approach religion not directly (i.e. what is right, what happens after we die), but rather through politics, cultures, and other parts of human life where religion has an influence.

Um... I'm going to just have to recommend the book to you. I don't think this is the place for a "sociology of religion and magic 101" course, and I don't want to waste a lot of time trying to deconstruct all the assumptions you're bringing to the table here. Besides, it's been several years since I read it.

Pantheistic and polytheistic mean different things, and their implications on a game world would be significantly different. Pantheism - where God(s) is everywhere and in everything, would be less likely to have pantheons of "class gods" (like D&D's ranger god, or mage god, or...) or conceptual gods (like wisdom, etc.). Rather, concepts would be derive from symbolic meanings of natural phenomena. Pantheistic religions would be less prone to religious wars as well - everybody's god(s) are truly gods.

This could develop into polytheism, where conceptual gods are much more likely, and religious wars (as a function of social mores) would be possible.

Very different effects on the game world, I think.

overdone in RP: Celtic and Egyptian are two of these

These gods are converted often into single-minded entities pursuing the goals layed out for them by their positions, each aloof and demanding utter and undying loyalty of their followers. Now, this isn't true all around, I know... but if you really want to make any pantheistic setting, you need to see things more as a web, a network, interconnected, and less as rival hierarchies constantly vying with each other. Case in point would be the Olympian gods, also often overdone, who often warred and intrigued amongst themselves but stood together still against other threats. They split right on down the middle practically in the Trojan War, but was either side truly good or evil? Hardly.

A thing to remember, incidentally, is that in almost no culture did the gods come to exist in a void. Frequently mythos changes radically as time passes

Are we speaking, though, of an alternate earth here, or another world altogether? For in another world altogether, you have different influences, different histories... different peoples, cultures, and we're not even going into different cultural and species mindsets and perspectives. Religion holds so many factors... it's not something that can be done simply, no more than politics or culture can, else you create a charicature, a hollow stereotype, a shadow of a moment in history, usually Earth's, let's face it, that has somehow been transposed to an alien world.

Taking the scholarly knowledge here (that without a doubt blows my passing aquaintance with mythology away) can anyone hypothesize about how a polytheistic religion might evolve over time?
(and please don't just point me at historical examples of what religion has actually become. I'm looking for game setting ideas based on the concept that a polytheistic religion developed around "real" gods, and then evolved with those gods still a palpable force)

Something some here are forgetting in arguments of religious reasons for war versus political ones: for some, indeed many, societies, there IS no separation of politics and religion. Take the ancient Hebrews, for whom the church was the government and the gobernment was the church (and incidentally, there is some evidence that some laws/scriptures/stories may have been introduced specifically to change aspects of government at different times). Some times you do have a government and a religion or religions, many and varied or few and vying. And sometimes you the government IS the religion, and vice-versa. That does not, of course, mean that this entity denies the possiiblity of all other religions, beliefs, so on. That depends on the particular culture. But don't let separation of church and state slip in where perhaps the concept is utterly unheard of. How this can reflect in and influence an RP setting I don't feel I have to tell you.

Is this what you wanted?

I aim to oblige.

RPGs don't deal with religion well, as far as I can tell, because:

- real-world religion attempts to address questions (what is "good," how should I behave toward my neighbors, who invented the horse) that are more or less irrelevant to the way most RPG characters behave. Fake religions correspond to this fake society and fake way of life much better.

- understanding real religions is difficult. The only game setting I know that has created mythology/religion that's as complex and vibrant as the real world is Glorantha. And it could be argued, I should think, that in its current incarnation Glorantha is very much *about* the issues of its mythology and religion -- the questions that religion poses and answers are likely to be at the heart of the stories of the PCs.

So I think that the question "how do RPGs/ should RPGs model religion" is not as important as "what is the role you want religion to play in your game?" Because if it's just there to add a little local color, that's one thing, but if the characters are going to be struggling with their relationships with faith that's another. And I suspect that answers to the question "why do RPGs model religion the way they do" can be found by examining the role designers intended religion to play in their games. Or, alternately, that the designers are dumbheads. Or both.

Addendum to my last post: I think FVLMINATA deals well with a historical religion, although it doesn't really have time to go into it. It accurately portrays Roman religion as the kind of goofy, baroque syncretic mess it was at the height of the empire. It also ties it directly, fundamentally into the system. I think this is part of the game's never-quite-clearly-articulated goal of shoehorning the players into some kind of understanding of Romanitas. Which is, I think, a good goal.

Animism tends to not be so much replaced... as evolve. Mind you, animism is still practiced by some modern cultures, so do not write it off entirely. However, it goes through a metamorphosis over time, as its followers imbue their gods with more and more might and personality, sort of consolidating them into greater beings, while the myriad of gods formerly found now become spirits and fae and so on, a part of the world but different at the same time.

Polytheism and pantheism are both alive and well, in many cultures. We forget that many with pan- or polytheistic beliefs did not willingly depart with them, but were rather forcefully torn from them. This accounts for a large portion of the New World and a fair amount of the Old as well. Under different circumstances, you could well have an entirely different scenario. Asia and Africa are the main homes of pan- and polytheistic religions these days, en masse, the least effected by the spread of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam (and I say least, not un-). These beliefs can still be found worldwide, however, and many are seeking to rediscover them, aided by more liberal times and greater amounts of communication and research material available. So no, I would not say that a culture must inevitably go from many gods to one god. Heck, look at communism, that went from many or one god to none! And that is no new movement: as somebody pointed out earlier, Sophocles was an early humanist, concerned more with the motives and will of man than the whims of the gods (for a fascinating look into this and how the Greeks thought, read Antigone, all three versions by Sophocles, Euripides, and Aeschylus. You will find an interesting scenario wherein one focuses on the people, one rails against the meddling of the gods and the inability of men to escape them, and one upholds the status quo pretty darn effectively).

I'd have to agree, sadly... that most religions in roleplay are hollow cardboard cutouts of the true thing, whether the gods they follow exist or not. They are cliches, layed down to follow a specific course, often lacking the full depth and breadth and impact and feeling of true religions, beliefs, ideas. Religion is a... sloppy thing, really, constantly branching out and splitting and evolving. What can you expect of something that so accutely reflects the desires of man (not to mention other races)?

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.

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.

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.

contracycle wrote: 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.

contracycle wrote:
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.