Quote from: Shipyard Locked;856275I know what you mean about WoW, but what happened to Guild Wars 2? I'm not familiar with that game or its community.

GW1 had very strong art direction, and Nightfall had a wonderful pseudo-Ptolemaic Egypt flavor.

GW2 is World of Warcraft with better art direction.  100% generic fantasy sludge.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;856316It's not hard to find ... but doesn't it also assume that God is a pretender to the position and dependent on mortal worship for power?

No, that's Kult

Actually it was a medieval heresy and might be in Fantasy Wargaming, I haven't read my copy in years.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;856261The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of players out there don't give a shit.  Tried that 30 years ago, about two people noticed and nobody else cared.

90% of all American Christians are utterly ignorant on the influence of Christianity on the Middle Ages, why should a random sampling of gamers be any different?  Any discussion on this board already is a result of massive selfselection bias.

The vast majority of gamers want their fantasy medieval game to be about as medieval as Sleeping Beauty's Castle at Disneyland.  If you don't believe me look at World of Warcraft, or what happened to Guild Wars 2.

No argument there.

The main reason people care about religion in my campaign is that I make it matter.  Want anyone to give you the time of day in a monotheistic community? Then you'd better be an observant adherent to that faith ... and those who try to fake it better not slip on details any genuine parishioner would know as a matter of course.  Want clerical healing?  Then you'd better be a genuine adherent of that faith ... else it just doesn't work on you.

Of course, this approach doesn't happen in the vast majority of campaigns, and given how unpopular even enforceable alignment is among the gamers who claim that alignment is an integral, essential part of their game systems, most wouldn't put up with it.

Quote from: DavetheLost;856255In Pendragon the opposite was true. In that game the differences between Roman and British Christians, and any Christians and Pagans often came to the fore. Holy men, chapels, and religious hermits were frequent encounters.

In Vampire there was always a sense that "God is not really real" in Pendragon God was very much real.

That despite Arthur being some five or six hundred years before Vampire and the Crusades.

Yes, in my own Pendragon campaign one of the characters has ended up building a cathedral in Oxford (which, in keeping with the masses of anachronisms that can be found in most of the Arthurian source material, I've decided is the original Christ Church Cathedral in the town) and putting masses of money into constructing an elaborate tomb for himself and ensuring that lots and lots of masses will be said for him after his death and otherwise looking to his spiritual future (going so far as to ask Arthur himself to watch over his body after he died when Arthur was giving out boons), all because he's a) extremely pious and b) terrified that his dead former master will come after his soul after he's dead.

Point b) is more likely than it sounds, because the evil former master - the player in question's previous PC - made a pact with the Devil whilst alive and has ended up as a Knight of Hell, occasionally being sent forth in order to do mischief whenever an evil wizard's summonings or other activities give Satan a chance to send this knight to Earth for a while.

It isn't very theologically or canonically exact Christianity, but then again neither is the source material.

Responding to the original questions, I agree with the basic thrust, and disagree with the details.

That is, yes it seems pretty weird to set something in 14th Century Europe and include knights fighting infidels, and Papal States, and not including Christianity... how do you have anything papal or infidel without some religion to lead or not follow? More generally, since the way things were in 14th Century got that way from a history very much influenced by Christianity, removing the Christianity seems weird or ignorant or willfully um... forced handwavy, or something.

And ya I agree that the "to not offend anyone" excuse doesn't really work for me, though I can sort of sympathise with them not wanting to include it. It's a bit of a cop out that will leave major consistency questions for people who know anything about the actual Europe. I would hope it would at least have a section outlining various options for what to do instead, such as invent replacement religions, or not care, or use actual religions but decide on the tone you want and agree with your players.

What I don't agree with are:

* I don't agree that "every fantasy setting is just mirror universe Europe". There are many fantastic historical settings that aren't European - e.g.  Japan, Egypt, Arabia, China, Aztec. And non-historical ones, including almost every game I've ever run. The stock game universe setting of my first FRPG system, The Fantasy Trip, was Cidri, which is actually science fiction mostly devolved to Fantasy, but the backstory is a magical/technological future involving many planets, to allow people to make up whatever they want, but it's pretty much not Europe.

* Not for everyone is the entire point of playing in medieval Europe to kick ass for the lord. In fact, even the popes were often oriented towards worldly goals. Also Vikings, Huns, Fey, wizards, and many others may be Christian-apathetic even in a Europe with Christianity.

One can always do the usual Hyborean Age kind of thing and lay on whatever medieval-ish (and other!) stuff is actually desired while leaving out the rest. The difference is, you're talking about 'Aquilonia' and such instead of Lombardy or Burgundy.