Quote from: TimStats for songbirds and house cats.

...which, going by those stats, can kill untrained adult civilians two times out of three.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenHuh.

I kind of like big churches as enemies, me.  Granted, in my current project, the evil superchurch doesn't actually have a god, but it's still a big (corrupt) superchurch.

That's something that kills a setting for me. Since most game designers don't understand religion, they either:

A: Ignore it and hope it will go away.
B: Make it a saturday-morning cartoon.
C: Make it eeeevil and exploitative.
D: Make it a farce, a front for what's really going on in those churches/temples.
E: Make it some pansy milquetoast "be good" ethics lesson.
F: Some combination of the above.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceI shoot your metaplot with my cannon.

-clash

It was already full of holes anyway!

Quote from: One Horse TownIt was already full of holes anyway!

There you go, being all holier-than-thou! :O

-clahs

Quote from: flyingmiceThere you go, being all holier-than-thou! :O

-clahs

OK clahs...*snrrk*

Quote from: One Horse TownOK clahs...*snrrk*

No problemo, Dna!

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceThat's something that kills a setting for me. Since most game designers don't understand religion, they either:

A: Ignore it and hope it will go away.
B: Make it a saturday-morning cartoon.
C: Make it eeeevil and exploitative.
D: Make it a farce, a front for what's really going on in those churches/temples.
E: Make it some pansy milquetoast "be good" ethics lesson.
F: Some combination of the above.

-clash

*Shrug*

I'm not sure I'm quite doing any of those.

In my case, I just wanted to do something...  Well, here:

What I've got is a "church" in a world where there are no deities.  There are, however, demonlike things - and the traditional place of the church is to ward them out of the world, and ensure that they can't "catch" a soul between reincarnations.  There is, though, a faction of the church that believes they ought to punish diabolicals instead of just warding them off.  So, they've started making magical gear out of trapped diabolicals, and human society deeply craves magical gear, so the faction has risen to prominence.  This has the downside of weakening the boundaries between the world and Tartarus (where the diabolicals live)...   and that makes them the bad guys, because they're endangering the whole world.

I didn't want the evil crusade, or the frothing hate-preacher, or a church that wants to "burn the witches".  But, still, evil church.

Quote from: flyingmiceA: Ignore it and hope it will go away.
B: Make it a saturday-morning cartoon.
C: Make it eeeevil and exploitative.
D: Make it a farce, a front for what's really going on in those churches/temples.
E: Make it some pansy milquetoast "be good" ethics lesson.
F: Some combination of the above.

I think that covers how most people treat their real religion.  So designers are showing ecological validity.

Quote from: LeSquideDo you mean classes of people who you'd get in trouble for killing (moreso than a normal person) like, say, nobles in many settings?

Or particular NPCs who have the 'not for killing' label on them?

Definitely the latter.

Bad guys who live in the corner of the map.

-O

Quote from: flyingmiceThat's something that kills a setting for me. Since most game designers don't understand religion, they either:

A: Ignore it and hope it will go away.
B: Make it a saturday-morning cartoon.
C: Make it eeeevil and exploitative.
D: Make it a farce, a front for what's really going on in those churches/temples.
E: Make it some pansy milquetoast "be good" ethics lesson.
F: Some combination of the above.

-clash

Exactly.

It's part of a more general problem in fantasy fiction: the authors who tend to talk the most about gods and religion tend to understand religion the least. On the flipside, the likes of (say) C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were very religious, and were correspondingly careful about what they said about god or gods.

Quote from: WarthurExactly.

It's part of a more general problem in fantasy fiction: the authors who tend to talk the most about gods and religion tend to understand religion the least. On the flipside, the likes of (say) C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were very religious, and were correspondingly careful about what they said about god or gods.

Heh. I wrote a fantasy novel in my twenties that had all of these problems (and oh so many more). Then I actually studied theology and comparative religion for a while; I doubt I'll ever put anything but a passing reference to religion in any of my fiction ever again.

Quote from: NicephorusI think that covers how most people treat their real religion.  So designers are showing ecological validity.

You are far too charitable, Nicephorus.

-clash

Quote from: WarthurExactly.

It's part of a more general problem in fantasy fiction: the authors who tend to talk the most about gods and religion tend to understand religion the least. On the flipside, the likes of (say) C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were very religious, and were correspondingly careful about what they said about god or gods.

Agreed. I think it's even more of a problem with SF, where almost all SF writers are agnostic or atheist, but fantasy talks about gods more, thus it's more blatantly visible.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceAgreed. I think it's even more of a problem with SF, where almost all SF writers are agnostic or atheist, but fantasy talks about gods more, thus it's more blatantly visible.
 
-clash

Actually, a common speedbump in both genre fiction and rpgs is the poorly ground ax - going on at length about something to the point that it detracts from everything else.  It's especially bad if the writer obviously has no clue what they're talking about.  In addition to religion, politics, economics, and gender issues are brought up badly so often that my eyes get into pre-roll mode as soon as one of the topics come up.  
 
Whenever the current political setup is portrayed as if it's ideal and the bad guys are western style govs or big corporations, I can be pretty sure that the game/book is going to be shallow and annoying.