Tossing christianity and islam out of an historical medieval rpg is like ordering a T-bone and then throwing it on the floor and eating your napkin.

There are quite a few games that include the church, its just that most of them are relatively old (or at least have old roots). Chivalry and Sorcery. Pendragon. Flashing Blades (~150 year later setting, but whatever). A couple others named above. Perhaps not coincidentally, all of these are pretty cool games.

Magic becomes a serious sticking point when you have two types of magic that are mechanically the same, Arcane magic vs Divine magic in typical D&D where the biggest mechanical difference is in the available spell lists.

What really makes religious sects, schisms, and conflicts difficult in a fantasy world is not the existence of "real" god(s) per se, but the common direct and visible interference of the divine in the mundane world. It is very easy to argue about the nature of God, or what God's will is when God is a distant figure. When God can appear in the market square and directly say "This is what I command" it becomes a lot harder to sustain a differing opinion.

My current campaign features distant and rather uninvolved gods. A priest may pray for and recieve a miracle, but that will be more a function of the priest's strength of faith than the direct action of a deity. Magic is it's own force. Religious believers can learn magic and focus it through their faith, but non-believers can also learn the same magic and focus it through other beliefs, the magic doesn't care.

When the gods start becoming actively involved in the world the cosmology of the universe becomes much more important to define. How do rival gods interact with each other?  Games lie RuneQuest delve into this a lot.

I suppose i am drifting a bit off topic. But to bring it back on topic, the Christian church shaped so much of medieval Europe that I don't see how you can really do a medieval European game without including either the Christian church or a very close analog. A world that is *like* medival Europe but not Europe could be done without the Church, but it would lack Crusades, religious orders of knighthood, the Holy Roman Empire, etc.  Middle Earth is a world like medieval Europe in many ways, but not Europe, as is Prydain or Narnia. Earthsea or the Land is a world very much unlike medieval Europe. The Hyborean Age is a pre-historic Europe, certainly pre-Christian.

For me, medieval Europe needs to have a treatment of Christianity and Islam.

Sure, you can get around it by de-emphasising the role of religion in the setting, or cutting it out completely, but that loses a lot of the flavour of the setting and a lot of the reasons for the history.

Quote from: soltakss;853064For me, medieval Europe needs to have a treatment of Christianity and Islam.

I don't think it's just you. Plausibility demands as much.

I am anxiously awaiting someone to take a genuine stab at a mythical Biblical RPG during the rise of Christianity.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;853083I am anxiously awaiting someone to take a genuine stab at a mythical Biblical RPG during the rise of Christianity.

Too much rape, murder, and genocide. It would never pass muster today.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;853083I am anxiously awaiting someone to take a genuine stab at a mythical Biblical RPG during the rise of Christianity.

Check out Testament - a d20 release from roughly the middle of the 3E era.

I can understand it. It is not exactly an act of great bravery to ommit one of the major forces in the setting the authors tried to recreate, but there are two good reasons for it. One of those is quite simply, that Pathfinder/D&D style divine magic fits horribly to a Christian system of faith and miracles. "Oh, so your son of god can walk over water. So can my 7th level cleric. About a dozen times per week." I genuinely don't know enough  about miracles and the like in Jewish or Islamic traditions of this time, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there weren't any sources describing how rabbis or imams summoned celestial badgers.

The other reason  is that by dealing with real world religions, you have to deal with real world religious people, a group that also partially due to its sheer size produces a large quantity of intolerable, self-righteous assholes. Considering that the pre-reformatory Catholic church of that era was close to the very nadir of its existence with its massive loss of authority due to the catastrophe of the plague years, the Great Schism, a series of antipopes, open corruption, simony and so on AND you have to deal with the era's antijudaism with its pogroms, deportations, forced baptism and so on AND you have to deal with the reconquista in the west and the Turkish expansion on the Balkan (including the eventual conquest of Constantinople) AND you have to address the idiotic D&D alignment system in there as well, you have a vast potential to piss off a lot of people.

Now, the early 15th century is an awesome, awesome era to run a campaign. It is literally one of my favorites, and I am going to start a new campaign set in the early 15th century Balticum next week. But, in my games, there is no actual difference between clerically approved "theurgy" and ordinary "witchcraft" (well, of course there is a philosophical difference: if I use it against my enemies, it is a power granted by god; if my enemies use it against me, it is maleficium and utterly despicable), pretty much all factions have their sympathetic and villainous representatives, and the game is more concerned with survival and personal power than with theological questions.

Quote from: Beagle;853288I can understand it. It is not exactly an act of great bravery to ommit one of the major forces in the setting the authors tried to recreate, but there are two good reasons for it. One of those is quite simply, that Pathfinder/D&D style divine magic fits horribly to a Christian system of faith and miracles. "Oh, so your son of god can walk over water. So can my 7th level cleric. About a dozen times per week." I genuinely don't know enough  about miracles and the like in Jewish or Islamic traditions of this time, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there weren't any sources describing how rabbis or imams summoned celestial badgers.

This is why I prefer the RuneQuest/Legend/NRP/D100 approach to magic - Each cult/sect/religion/whatever has its own magic that is probably different from others. You define the religious organisation and specify which spells it gives to its followers.

So, no generic abilities given to every cleric, no matter who the cleric follows.

Quote from: Beagle;853288The other reason  is that by dealing with real world religions, you have to deal with real world religious people, a group that also partially due to its sheer size produces a large quantity of intolerable, self-righteous assholes.

That can be a problem. However, the religion of earlier times is often far removed from the religion of today, so could be treated as a completely separate entity. At least that's how I do it - Medieval Christianity/Islam/Judaism is modelled by rules in a game system and are very different from the religions followed today.

Quote from: Beagle;853288Considering that the pre-reformatory Catholic church of that era was close to the very nadir of its existence with its massive loss of authority due to the catastrophe of the plague years, the Great Schism, a series of antipopes, open corruption, simony and so on AND you have to deal with the era's antijudaism with its pogroms, deportations, forced baptism and so on AND you have to deal with the reconquista in the west and the Turkish expansion on the Balkan (including the eventual conquest of Constantinople) AND you have to address the idiotic D&D alignment system in there as well, you have a vast potential to piss off a lot of people.

Historical events can still inflame, unfortunately.

The Turks in the Balkans is very much a hot topic now - Look at the problems in Kosovo, for example. A game set in that era and area could well provoke a backlash in certain places.

However, so could any other setting. A game set in the Jacobite Rebellion would inflame the Orange Order, a game set in the early period of Islam could well enrage Shias/Sunnis depending how it was written, the taking of Constantinople still rankles amongst many Orthodox Christians. You just have to accept that this is history and that some people don't like what happened.

If you treat it in a sensitive, balanced and fair way then that is probably good enough.

Quote from: soltakss;853527If you treat it in a sensitive, balanced and fair way then that is probably good enough.

Good enough for reasonable men and women certainly.

Quote from: Beagle;853288I can understand it. It is not exactly an act of great bravery to ommit one of the major forces in the setting the authors tried to recreate, but there are two good reasons for it. One of those is quite simply, that Pathfinder/D&D style divine magic fits horribly to a Christian system of faith and miracles. "Oh, so your son of god can walk over water. So can my 7th level cleric. About a dozen times per week." I genuinely don't know enough  about miracles and the like in Jewish or Islamic traditions of this time, but I wouldn't be too surprised if there weren't any sources describing how rabbis or imams summoned celestial badgers.

Well, the Bible itself features Moses going to the Egyptians and going "look, I can prove that my god is real because he allows me to do miracles!" and then he does some miracles, only to have the Pharaoh go "Okay, but I have court mages who can do that too," and then the egyptian mages do everything Moses just did.

I mean, Moses wins in the end by being BETTER at miracles because his god is cooler, but it isn't like he's the only one capable of transforming a stick into a snake.

The Arthurian romances, as well as other medieval legends and tales contain quite a few holy men, hermits, giants, wizards, fairies and other magic users, some of whom get their powers from faith. It didn't seem to particularly shake anyone's faith that a hermit could perform miraculous healing. Nor that there were sorcerers, and fairies that could do much the same.

I don't think a high level Cleric casting a "Walk on Water" spell would be seen as anything other than a holy man performing a miracle of faith. An evil Cleric doing the same would obviously be drawing his power from a Satanic source.

In the setting I would assume that most (if not all) members of the Cleric class would be Jewish, Christian or Muslim. In large measure because these were far and away the dominant faiths of the period and place. Druids might be Christian (St Francis) or pagan.

It should be noted that the medieval versions of none of those religions were exactly the same as any of their present day incarnations. They have changed just as every other aspect of society has changed.

Quote from: ZWEIHÄNDER;853083I am anxiously awaiting someone to take a genuine stab at a mythical Biblical RPG during the rise of Christianity.

I am pretty sure someone has tried. There is hints of that in the TSR Rome campaign book I believe. Been decades so not sure.

I mentioned earlier that we'd had a thread a while back dealing with multiple religions & sects in a monotheistic campaign. I just did a little digging and I think this is the one:

Why Polytheism?

Chivalry & Sorcery, King Arthur Pendragon, Ars Magica, GURPS Fantasy (Yrth): These are examples of games that actually do the setting, and religion is part of it.

Shinto and Buddhism are part of Samurai Japan, the Olympians of Mythic Greece, Ksarul and Avanthe et al of Tekumel, and so on.

Why call it that then drop what was most important to the people?

It would be better to make up a world like Dalarna or Zimiamvia or Florin and Guilder.