Quote from: WarthurA tangent, vaguely related to the subject but not specifically about Levi's campaign: wouldn't the presence of physically tangible gods and demons in a gameworld imply that any religion arising there would be fundamentally different from religion in our own world, where both gods and demons tend not to be visible and only visible through such miracles (or whatever the satanic counterpart is) as they cause to happen?

This, I think, would be a whole new thread, not just a part-time threadjack.

Quote from: Warthurthe episode where they had representatives of all the different alien' species religions showing up, and Sheridan solved the problem of "who represents Earth?" by getting representatives of every human religion out there. It was a neat statement, and also cleverly showed the particular strength of the humans in B5 - their high level of cultural diversity compared with the over civilisations.

A good point though JMS went out of his way to depict the alien species as also having diverse religions instead of the typical cookie cutter everyone believes or acts the same. Not quite as successful as the depiction of humans but the effort was made.

Quote from: Levi KornelsenIn the game, the demons were once a living race that learned to subsume the "essential natures" of other things into themselves.  Hence, chicken-legged scorpion-tailed vulture-headed things, and the like.  Mussushu, cockatrice, minotaur, tarrasque.  They ate their world, and fell into the "place between worlds" - and now, they live there, and try to eat other worlds; and what's more, others can really and truly join them and become the same kind of things as they are.

Hence, the cults.  Which serve demons in order to become demons.  And usually get eaten instead...    but only usually.

You could call that a god, I suppose...   but I decided not to.

Nor would I; they don't have any legitimate claim to the loyalty of mortals; nor can they can't claim to be the originators of the universe (or even important principles within the universe). In my own invented cosmologies, where there are actual gods, they have to qualify by at least one of those standards.

It sounds like a cool setting, and it certainly doesn't have the tired old takes on religion which tend to push my buttons; certainly, I wouldn't call your "church" a bad caricature of Christianity - heck, it doesn't even qualify as monotheistic.

Quote from: KoltarIn My TRAVELLER campaign religion does get mentioned - but the characters have never really had a conflict about it ...at least not yet. The ship's main 6 or 7 characters represent at least 5 different faiths or religions from what I can remember.

  The Ship's navigator is a member of the "Church of The Still Waiting".  Its a 57th century descendant of what we nowadays think of as Christianity , but there have been MANY amusing adjustments and changes over the centuries.

Have you seen the 101 Religions supplement from British Isles Traveller Support? It's hella cool.

Quote from: Casey777A good point though JMS went out of his way to depict the alien species as also having diverse religions instead of the typical cookie cutter everyone believes or acts the same. Not quite as successful as the depiction of humans but the effort was made.

My impression was that the aliens were deliberately meant to be not as diverse as the humans: oh, they'd have a few religious differences, but it'd be more like, say, Protestantism vs. Catholicism, or at the most extreme Christianity vs. Islam, as opposed to - say - Christian vs. Hindu. Each alien civilisation tended to have a reasonably universally-accepted baseline: the dispute was in the details.

I wonder how I did on religion in "Tribes of Mother Night", I need to do a rewrite but lack of communication with the person behind the system has left me at a loss as to what to do with it. I could write it to its own system, or clean things up for a system I like. (Seeing about a license.)

I've also tackled it in my "not quite hard" SF game, lightly. (My Space Opera game by its nature also has religion, particularly Catholicism and Front line combat priests, mostly due to humanities enemies)


In the "semi" HARD SF game though I still have religions (fragmented, diverse) but it doesn't have intelligent aliens--sort of, I provide examples, but they are NOT incorporated into the main text or intended for PC's, they're there as examples for aliens that could be introduced by a GM. Since I part of the fun of SF games is "exploration" leaving the aliens and first contact to a particular GM and his players makes the game more suitable for my tastes. (Plus, the GM could insert any aliens he saw fit too.)  Someday I'll finish it.

One of the things for me it addresses as my "X",If I don't see a game that doesn't leave room for  for GM's and players to shape the big things in the game while still providing a start for play.
I created  organizations for example, in game, whose aim was A) Make sense in a star faring culture and B) give the PC's something to do, together, that gets them out there in space.

A lot of SF games I've been exposed to, make up a lot of details, but leave out any specific ideas on how to "go and do" (Transhuman Space was one example--while I can think of dozens of things, its one of the more notable criticisms I've seen, and is a pretty accurate criticism at that for many people want a "start", so I give it to them)



In High Valor, being epic fantasy whose ties are too a specific setting, there is a specific and somewhat fragmented human "Church of the Martyr" (basically Christianity), since Beowulf is a large inspiration, and that Church is largely in the right. However, that doesn't prevent the common people from being superstitious, or from having other religions that the worshipers believe to be "right" from the animal-god worshiping Caen-Cluith, to the Rykarns very "Norse" inspired cults, and so on. Uup to and including quite foolish worship of the former demonic-enemies of mankind, the Fane Lords.  (and yes I have "Elves" and "Dwarves", because I've never once seen them "done right" for me. Having both mystery, strangeness, and yet still being playable PC's)

things I am tired of in games:

Tolkienesque fantasy: Been there. Done that. Got bored. Moved on.

dualistic morality: Destroys any potential for political play.

metaphysics (a.k.a. planes, alternate universes): destroys any kind of focus for the game. Seriously, what happened to the good, old "The gods live on very high mountains or other remote places of the world." or "The Underworld of the Dead is literally underground." -schtick of classical mythology?

Quote from: WarthurMy impression was that the aliens were deliberately meant to be not as diverse as the humans: oh, they'd have a few religious differences, but it'd be more like, say, Protestantism vs. Catholicism, or at the most extreme Christianity vs. Islam, as opposed to - say - Christian vs. Hindu. Each alien civilisation tended to have a reasonably universally-accepted baseline: the dispute was in the details.

Pretty much (it's been a while since I've examined B5 in depth), and that was a major difference and strength of HUmanity, but that treatment of aliens is still more complex than either no mention at all or everyone believing the same thing. And I'm moving anything more to the other thread.

Quote from: walkerpThis is what I'm looking for in a setting.

Animalia, coming up for free on rpgdrivethru tomorrow...

And I'm quite enjoying Squirrel Attack which has these stats.

Then you should pick up Sidewinder:Recoiled, which has at least a half-page stat block for a generic songbird in it.

You'd love it. Want to buy my copy?

Well, on the religion & demons angle, in my current Rolemaster campaign demons are just an aspect of divine servitors as they are seen by those of opposing faiths.  But then, the religions in the campaign are very pragmatic and business like organizations.  More like banks for mana really.  There are real gods but they post huge profits year after year.  (not tapping the pun potential of this paragraph just about killed me)

Anyhow, campaign elements I don't want to see:

Black and White morality.

Races that are purely evil or purely anything else really.

Dark overlord demigods.

Ninjas, monks, samuari, anime, any of that.

Maps.  I don't like maps.  Not because I think there is anything necessarily wrong with them but they force me into rationalizing how something should work instead of just creating what I think could be interesting to me and the rest of the players.  I hate being binded by geography.