Quote from: jeff37923;728182No offense, but this sounds like a personal problem you have.

Indeed it is!

It is more to do with the framing of the issue than "mystical all powerful deities in general".

Quote from: smiorgan;728148What it really sounds like is the game jumped the shark at the point the curses began, which is a totally different reason not to engage with that game. So I'd (a) check you really mean uncomfortable about faith and (b) check you're not pinning the "blame" on the ouvert display of divine power, when you've actually got a different and more fundamental reason why you didn't like that game.

That particular game was awesome. The thing I am experiencing now is probably different from the thing back then.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;728128Get over it, it's just pretend.

Word. Working on it.

Quote from: Benoist;728108Sounds to me like there's a part of your feelings coming from being irked about the "chosen one" trope, or the idea that some entirely DM-controlled force outside the campaign would basically orchestrate things without your character having any impact on these elements, than the actual idea of religion. Hence, Cthulhu's cool, because he's a big alien, and at least if you take a ship to its flank, or a nuclear weapon for that matter, it MIGHT work, temporarily at least.

Would that be correct, BarefootGaijin?

It is possibly the lack of control as to why the character is where he is. Also the assumption that "there are gods therefore all the characters believe in them". This is something quite new. In all my years I have never really given it any thought. Now its a case of "you are believers, deal with it".

Just as you are now vampires, wizards, barbarians, monks, undead, slaves, victims, persecutors, murderhobos, whatever. Some shoes fit better than others.

Quote from: estar;728107Just think of fantasy deities as ultra powerful "aliens"/beings with their own agenda and treat accordingly.

Basically you are Captain Kirk and there are computer gods all around you. Some benign, some indifferent, and some malevolent.

What do you do?

I like this (and to answer your question: kill it and take its stuff!).

I do myth, legend, sci-fi, mystery etc. This is why this campaign seems so strange to me. Or rather, my feelings toward it seem strange.

Anyway, I have emailed the GM about the character with a few ideas and how I can get on board without worrying about all this too much. Not that it is causing sleepless nights, but it'd be interesting to see what other directions this can go.

TL;DR - probably the lack of player agency deciding stuff.

Quote from: dragoner;728404Supernatural being beyond the natural world, which people in the past did recognize a division, and did use terms such as unnatural for it.

On Easter Island, the Polynesian religion did seek to gain "mana" from the Gods.

Well, since I have seen sources that say no such thing--rather that in Polynesian beliefs mana was a kind of power you got from your actions in life or from places, I'd like to know where you get your counterclaim. I'm not holding Wikipedia out as the final authority but it's where I'm starting and I'd appreciate a pointer to something better.

Similarly, qi in the Chinese cultural portrayals that I've seen bears no relationship to gods, certainly not personal gods. I haven't done any formal study of that aspect of Chinese culture though, so I wouldn't be surprised if I were mistaken. But I'd appreciate if anyone who knows better would tell me where I can find an authoritative source.

EDIT: The idea of qi reminds me that we have an example of a strictly fictional but well-accepted setting that has magical powers but no apparent gods: Star Wars. (Well, iirc the Ewoks thought C3PO was a god but the story itself seems to portray this as a primitive belief without any "real" support.)

Quote from: Arminius;728412Well, since I have seen sources that say no such thing--rather that in Polynesian beliefs mana was a kind of power you got from your actions in life or from places ...

No, even wiki says: In Polynesian culture, mana is a spiritual quality considered to have supernatural origin ...

Context is important to how people were thinking, the modern mechanistic worldview is largely a product of the west; eg like "magic points".

Losing the old reference and context, loses the flavor.

You do realize, if there was no God, The Blues Brothers never would have happened.

JG

A) 'Gods' are just a subset of 'supernatural.'

B) Siberian shamans (for instance) are normally not, I think, contractually obligated to use English words or English conceptual boxes. If a man has power over spirits, why say he gets his power from them? And if a man has power over them, wherefore call them gods?

There are some rather interesting examples in anthropology about cultures that have (as far as we know) lost their religion. We know of at least some groups in the Amazonas that have rituals without a religious context, and the best guess the anthropologists have is that they used to have religion but for some reason the knowledge of the ritual's context disappeared.

Which reflects pretty well on how secularization goes. People in Nothern Europe are among the most irreligious of the world, still people do celebrate Christian holidays without giving the religious side of things a single thought.

I'd argue that gods are necessarily not a subset of the supernatural, but a completely different thing. Folklore at least shows that the issue of God was dealt with differently than the existence of the supernatural trolls, huldras, aufhockers, mylings and whatever.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;728143I'm an athiest, yet I like spending time thinking about and roleplaying religion and religious characters, largely because it is so removed from my own experience. I can understand why it might not appeal to others.

That's pretty much my experience as well. Same thing with magic and the occult. As much as I don't believe in that stuff, I find it all very, very interesting. Roleplaying games allow me to explore those themes without joining a new age crystal worshipping coven or whatever.

I like how the Dragon Age setting handles gods.

You never see one, or have any actual proof they exist.

Most of the humans worship 'The Maker'; similar to the christian god.

Elves have a pantheon of deities somewhat like greek or norse.

People in the setting think Dragons are corrupted elder gods.

But there is not one shred of proof that any of these gods are real.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;728409I like this (and to answer your question: kill it and take its stuff!).

Excellent answer, it will probably be very difficult with a high probability of character death. Either way it will be hell of an adventure.

Chiming in late, but just wanted to make the point that, as a pretty hardcore believer in monotheism (my actual faith is irrelevant here), I've never had one issue playing in games with rampant polytheism, atheism, whatever. I don't really understand the OP's gripe...it's just a game, right? Religion exists in the real world, and in fact, is one of the most prevalent, pervasive things we encounter everywhere on the planet. If you create a world where religion doesn't exist at all, the verisimilitude seems a bit lacking. My personal belief in something doesn't extend to suspending disbelief to enjoy a game, or a work of fiction, or whatever.

Quote from: Brad;728499Chiming in late, but just wanted to make the point that, as a pretty hardcore believer in monotheism (my actual faith is irrelevant here), I've never had one issue playing in games with rampant polytheism, atheism, whatever. .

When i was a kid, i have to admit, gaming in settings that had multiple gods and not the God i worshipped, was quite difficult for me. It didn't make me mad, or offend me, i just had trouble understanding a world with no God. But that softened pretty quickly and i was able to see the distinction between what I believed personally and the fictional cosmology of the setting.

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;728089The thing is, I have no faith. I don't even play pretend when my wife runs off to the temple at new year, or whenever she feels it necessary. I don't DO organised religion. I have no faith or belief in higher powers, and I just cannot disconnect the little extra bit for it to all sit comfortably. I am about as spiritual as a used nappy (diaper for American readers).

Do you believe that magic exists?

How about dragons, giants, giant spiders, orcs, elves, dwarves, minotaurs and so on? What about aliens, jump drives or psionics?

If you are happy to accept them then why not accept that deities of some kind can have their place in games?

Quote from: BarefootGaijin;728089So yeah. No gods please. I don't want to play games with gods in (maybe Lords of Olympus is different? ). The same way I don't want to play games with vampires or werewolves, but for different reasons.

Fair enough. You should make that point clear when you start playing in a game. If the GM says that deities or religions play a part in the game then you have a choice to make - to play or not to play. But it is then your choice.

I am as anti-religion as they come and I love playing pious, evangelical clerics of all flavors.

As a GM though, I prefer my gods to be more Greek. I like them more as demi-gods who actually live somewhere on the game world and who can be slain.

Quote from: Simlasa;728392I'm another who doesn't see 'magic' as requiring 'gods'.

RuneQuest/Legend has the concept of Divine Magic that originates from deities, Common/Folk Magic which are cantrips or low-level magic and Sorcery which is the manipulation of magic to make powerful spells. If people don't like Divine Magic then don't use it and don't have cults. The other magic will still be available.

Honestly, I think that the exploration of different and clashing mythologies in the game world is one of the most interesting things about roleplaying. Different theories as to where magic comes from, different cosmologies. I play RuneQuest too, and as someone mentioned upthread, its different magic systems not only provide different flavours of magic, but also completely different worldviews, and each of them has ways of explaining how the others work (usually in a pejorative fashion). I think this might be somewhat missing in D&D, in its default mode. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's rarely any material in the Cleric character class telling you how you might view a wizard's version of magic ...

Without going full-Glorantha on it, the campaign I'm working on at the moment is a lot about the interactions of different types of magic and gods, but I think the key is that Divine (and other types of) magic is going to be vanishingly rare, particularly in one authoritarian religion which is vigorously anti-magic, and sets up an inquisition and witch hunts. The folk religion in the region where this is now being imposed from the top down includes many superstitions, but those who could invoke the power of the gods, the Chosen, are now mostly a thing of children's stories.

The way I handle magic is to have Divine spellcasters of the heavenly, inquisitorial religion mostly given access to 'invisible' magic. They can pray for Sathar the Lightbringer to bless their blade, or invoke Hallor the Judge of the Dead to protect them from evil spirits, and these have in-game effects, but no visible "flash-bang". The tiny few of this religion who can achieve effects like healing by laying on hands are hailed as miracle-workers, and begin to be the centre of a cult like medieval saints.

In the more earthy, Old Religion of the natives, druids deal with nature spirits and elementals, but the order of druids has been broken and scattered, and the Chosen of the Gods, who are once more on the rise, can invoke blessings and curses which have visible magical effects, but as far as the inquisitors are concerned, ALL magic (unlike the miracles of saints) which is performed by religions other than theirs, which worship 'demons and demigods', is sorcery and witchcraft.

So the whole idea of who your gods are, how they provide magic, if they do, if magic is moral or blasphemous, whether there's a line between a demon, a spirit, and a god, depending on where you're standing .... it all becomes a central part of the campaign. I think it would be lots less fun without it ...