Greetings!
It is always interesting to read about various Mystery Cults and different religious cults, usually in an ancient or medieval European context. However, have you considered boning up on Asian flavoured cults for using in your campaigns?
For example, the "Red Turban" cult. A social and religious cult that arose in northern China during the reign of the Yuan Dynasty. More than a few such Chinese cults were very powerful, having many warlords, fortresses, and even armies following under their banners. There were strong bandit groups, river-going pirate ships, secret, mountain strongholds, and more.
The Asian-flavoured historical cults are distinctly different from the European traditions--while also often being religious, and initially secretive, the Asian cults often become far more organized and powerful, and even pose ongoing threats to the survival of empires and kingdoms alike.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Having potentially thousands in your group instead of a handful, makes a difference right from the start.
Yep; given that half my homebrew setting is based on Asian cultures, we have plenty of Asian-based cults, not to mention assorted martial arts orders that essentially function like cults. These include The Order of the Hidden Dagger, The Union of the Snake, The Green Viper Kumi, and the Nine Trigrams Sect. Since one of my academic specialties is the study of secret society uprisings in China, I incorporate actual ritual practices into the game (for the PCs, not the players).
There are tons of good books in English out there on secret societies in Asia, especially China, and they make for great inspiration for RPGs.
Color me interested.
I think Pundit is writing a Silk Road game which might have some of this. I hope it does.
It's kinda one of thise weird semantic terms. Religion in Asia is treated a bit differently than what we see in Most rpgs. It seems, to me at least, that D&D and most of its descendants mostly treat religious organizations as top down, monolithic organizations. Whether or not this historical is of course a point of contention. We also tend to separate religion and politics as most western sensibilities are derived from the Enlightenment.
In Asian religions there often really isn't that much different from established religions. What was the difference between Taoism and the Yellow Turbans, the guys who destabilized the later Han dynasty? There were certainly doctrinal differences, but overall, the real difference was one was new and radically activistic and the other already entrenched within the system. Yet the Yellow Turbans are considered a cult and Taoism a religion here in the West.
Cults and religious factions in Asia were far more fractious than what we see in rpgs. We don't normally see two temples of Tyr go to war with one another. But in Japan or China? Buddhists going to war with one another was called Tuesday. Also, cults and religions were completely interwoven with the political structure. Oda Nobunaga is known as either a villain or visionary, based on your perspective. One of the big events that shaped this image was when he burned down and massacred the monks in a powerful Buddhist temple. He did that because the monks politically and militarily opposed him.
For an Asian setting, i find it difficult to separate cults from religions since they meaningfully are not that far off from one another.
Quote from: SHARK on April 27, 2022, 07:12:37 PM
Asian Flavoured Cults
I am thinking Umami flavour.
A couple years I started writing a setting based on a fictionalized version of the Muramachi/Ashikaga Period of Japan, when the empire was split into two courts. My research into religions and spiritual beliefs was a huge rabbit hole that ultimately consumed all of my time in how fascinating it was. There were literally dozens of sects of Buddism, influenced by anything from Shinto, Confucism, Mongolian culture, or just local legends. I never did finish the setting, but it was obvious I would have needed to "simplify" the religion aspects a bit.
Quote from: Hzilong on May 02, 2022, 07:39:17 PM
For an Asian setting, i find it difficult to separate cults from religions since they meaningfully are not that far off from one another.
Same conclusion I came to. Spirituality was infused into their everyday lives in a way not often seen in Western societies. When it is seen, we typically coin such people "zealots," a rather perjorative title. The 'Restoration' of the Edo Period and Mao's Great Leap Forward have erased much of traditional asian culture. For Japan, arguably for the better, for China... not so much.
Quote from: Hzilong on May 02, 2022, 07:39:17 PM
Cults and religious factions in Asia were far more fractious than what we see in rpgs.
That's true of religious factions everywhere. I don't if various factions of Buddhists killing each-other is weirder than Catholics/Protestants doing the same.
And it's true of almost anything in fiction generally for that matter. Unless it's the focus on the game/story, authors will use various shorthand for simplicity.
One thing is that in a wide-open polytheistic religion, there's less reason for a sneaky cult to worship something new/different/weird. Especially a more nature/location based one like Shinto. Just throw up a shrine and say it's to a local god of the forest/mountain/whatever.
It does seem like eastern religions often kept the directly divine royalty idea which fell away in the west when Christianity rose. (Though many royals/nobles still claimed to be divinely appointed to try making rebellion blasphemous.) I think that the leader of the Yellow Turbans claimed to be Jesus's little brother.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 02, 2022, 11:12:31 PM
Quote from: Hzilong on May 02, 2022, 07:39:17 PM
Cults and religious factions in Asia were far more fractious than what we see in rpgs.
That's true of religious factions everywhere. I don't if various factions of Buddhists killing each-other is weirder than Catholics/Protestants doing the same.
And it's true of almost anything in fiction generally for that matter. Unless it's the focus on the game/story, authors will use various shorthand for simplicity.
One thing is that in a wide-open polytheistic religion, there's less reason for a sneaky cult to worship something new/different/weird. Especially a more nature/location based one like Shinto. Just throw up a shrine and say it's to a local god of the forest/mountain/whatever.
It does seem like eastern religions often kept the directly divine royalty idea which fell away in the west when Christianity rose. (Though many royals/nobles still claimed to be divinely appointed to try making rebellion blasphemous.) I think that the leader of the Yellow Turbans claimed to be Jesus's little brother.
No; the guy who claimed to be Jesus' little brother was Hong Xiuquan. He led the Taiping Rebellion (1851-66), whereby he and his followers tried to rid China of the Manchu "demons." They captured the city of Nanjing and made it their "Heavenly Capital" from 1853-64, but were eventually put down by the Qing dynasty. All told, around 30 million people died, making it the bloodiest civil war in history. But he claimed to be preaching a new form of Christianity; it had nothing to do with earlier color-based "Turban" revolts, which were usually associated with Daoist sects. There were a few attempts to link up with the Triads (Heaven & Earth Society), but they couldn't stand all the Taiping rules.
Moreover, there were simultaneously other massive rebellions taking place in China, including Muslim revolts and an ongoing rebellion by a group known as the Nian, who were partly a secret society with ties to the nefarious White Lotus Sect. And the Qing army was infiltrated by the Elder Brother Society (Gelaohui), yet another secret society, though not necessarily religious.
So yeah, lots of gaming potential there.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 02, 2022, 11:12:31 PM
It does seem like eastern religions often kept the directly divine royalty idea which fell away in the west when Christianity rose. (Though many royals/nobles still claimed to be divinely appointed to try making rebellion blasphemous.) I think that the leader of the Yellow Turbans claimed to be Jesus's little brother.
Amusing and possibly relevant: A friend once showed me his family tree on an online genealogy service. His line went back to the early kings of Denmark, the first of which was Odin. According to legend, yes, _that_ Odin.
Quote from: Charon's Little Helper on May 02, 2022, 11:12:31 PM
That's true of religious factions everywhere. I don't if various factions of Buddhists killing each-other is weirder than Catholics/Protestants doing the same.
Oh yeah, I think western history has also been sanitized over the years. No arguments there. The point I am more focused on is how we play out RPGs. I suspect it's because most mainstream settings are written from the perspective of this neater version of history, but religions are rarely given much nuance in games. It's either religion is meh, but tries to help and/or serve their gods and worshipers, or, much more commonly in modern media, organized are the real baddies. HUGE PLOT TWIST. Cults, funny enough, probably do a better job at showing the divisions and disagreements within beliefs as writers don't seem to feel the need to paint them in such broad strokes.
Quote from: Hzilong on May 03, 2022, 01:05:39 AM
much more commonly in modern media, organized are the real baddies. HUGE PLOT TWIST.
Indeed - it's gotten to the point where if someone from a "church" is introduced, I immediately assume that they'll be incompetent and/or villainous.
D&D "paganism" is basically American-style denominationalism, but with each church having it's own separate god. It's nothing at all like real ancient paganism. Although it's certainly convenient from a game point of view, I never liked it.
Thugee cult from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would be a good cult to base one on.
Quote from: THE_Leopold on May 04, 2022, 11:06:41 AM
Thugee cult from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would be a good cult to base one on.
And based on an actual cult, or at least one real enough that the British government in India took measures to eradicate it. I have Indian friends who claim it still exists today. Check out the novel
Song of Kali by Dan Simmons.
Quote from: Rhymer88 on May 04, 2022, 06:14:20 AM
D&D "paganism" is basically American-style denominationalism, but with each church having it's own separate god. It's nothing at all like real ancient paganism. Although it's certainly convenient from a game point of view, I never liked it.
First rule of fiction is write what you know and in the 1970's American Midwest Christian denominationalism was pretty much the only example of religion they had to go on.
These days you can get something like GoogleTranslate to get rough translations of almost anything, but back then anything not in your native tongue had to be manually translated by someone able to read/speak both languages. The "magic Asian" didn't justify happen by accident... it was because before the days of being able to liveplay tabletop games with players physically spread from Boston to Beijing anything from outside your region was actually exotic and likely rare.
I remember back in the 1980's reading the "Japanimation" notes in the back of Palladium's Robotech books (and how inaccurate it all was) because all they had to go on were fan translations of the source material and guesswork from observation of episodes back then... not the vastly more accessible and reliable translations we have now.
The big issue is; what happens when something based on the mistranslations and misunderstandings takes on a life of its own in terms of a fictional world? Is it worth actually going back to fix it (ex. making how religion works in established settings match historical polytheism) or do you just run with it as is?
While I'm sympathetic to and even encourage the presentation of genuine polytheism in new settings, I think a lot of times it's used as a sledgehammer by some of the SJW's as a means of accusing settings of being "culturally insensitive" because it's not based on a 21st Century internet compiled understanding of the topic.
Yeah, religion is different in many D&D worlds than it was in real life. Those same settings also include gods who just show up and do stuff in the mortal world and spells that let you go visit godly realms at the caster's whim too... no kidding it's going to work differently there.
If you want realistic religions you need the gods to be enigmatic and unseen and divine power to be either vanishingly rare or explainable by other means (one of my personal favorite options is to make spellcasting an entirely "scientific" element that some priests happen to study... just as Catholic priests and bishops studied the natural magics that went on to become the natural sciences back in the day... faith is completely independent from the use of magic).
Expecting religion to work like it really does in a world where Thor could be having a drinking contest with a giant down by the local pub is silly.