Quote from: CRKrueger;729705and then Zeus will rape her.

and then shall spring forth the Demi-Duck.

Quote from: estar;728107Basically you are Captain Kirk and there are computer gods all around you. Some benign, some indifferent, and some malevolent.

What do you do?

See how many he can make out with of course.

Come on! You know Kirk wanted to boink V'ger! :cool:

Quote from: Omega;729723Come on! You know Kirk wanted to boink V'ger! :cool:

I'm confused. Was this ever a point of contention?

Quote from: LordVreeg;729716and then shall spring forth the Demi-Duck.

or Howard the Duck.

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.

Do you have some kind of credible reference for that?  We know almost nothing about the actual pre-colonial practices and beliefs of the Easter Islanders.

If OP doesn't like religion in gaming then he doesn't like it, there's nothing to do about it. Perhaps he could try some alternative fantasy games or just play different genres.

Quote from: The Butcher;729535Let us not forget evocatio, which consisted of kidnapping a foreign god and/or bribing him/her/it with a temple in Rome.

This is some serious Runequest (specifically, God Learner) shit right there.

This used to happen amongst many ancient cultures. I think the Hittites and Babylonians both took idols from their enemies and set up shrines in their own major cities, the rationale being that they could then control the deities, or absorb them into their own pantheons. What it actually meant was a deal of cross-pantheonic transfer, changing both pantheons.

Something similar happened in Christianity, where some pagan deities were made Saints. St Brigid is one example, but there are more.

It's the old "You have a Storm God, we have a Storm God, your god fathered the goddess of wheat on the Earth Goddess, ours gathered the goddess of barley on the Earth Goddess, so they must be the same god" thing. Some said that each god shared an Aspect, but that's a slightly lesser joining.

Quote from: RPGPundit;729976Do you have some kind of credible reference for that?  We know almost nothing about the actual pre-colonial practices and beliefs of the Easter Islanders.

I thought that we didn't have any evidence of the pre-Polynesian religions and people, but do have evidence of the Polynesians who followed.

Quote from: soltakss;730023I thought that we didn't have any evidence of the pre-Polynesian religions and people, but do have evidence of the Polynesians who followed.

There were no "pre-polynesian" people on Easter Island; or at least there's no evidence or history indicating that at all. As far as we know, the very first humans on Easter Island were the "Rapa Nui" polynesians.  And we know very, very little about their original religion; almost everything about their religion is speculation, some of it fairly sound (the giant heads were almost certainly for 'ancestor worship' of some kind or another), and some of it not very sound at all (recent scholarship has indicated that the whole 'ecodestruction' theory of how the island's environment and the rapa nui society collapsed was in fact almost completely wrong).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;729976Do you have some kind of credible reference for that?  We know almost nothing about the actual pre-colonial practices and beliefs of the Easter Islanders.

I read it years ago in a text at university maybe? Been a while since my degree though.

I'd suggest only that if you're not roleplaying religious faith, or not featuring it in your world, you're not roleplaying humans.

Nothing wrong with that, and I'm often uncomfortable with a class of NPCs by definition orders of magnitude beyond my characters' power...but an awful lot of people do have faith, or at least profess it.  Most game worlds should make room for it, or for an alternative that scratches the same itch so common in humanity.  Or tear it down, and make that a focus of an awesome campaign.

Or just ignore it completely, if that's what the group is most comfortable with.

Quote from: dragoner;730487I read it years ago in a text at university maybe? Been a while since my degree though.

:banghead:

Yep, the classic "I'm presenting as a fact Something I Read Somewhere Once Back In College" trope.  If it's not on tvtropes.com, it probably should be.

Oh well. It actually dovetailed though, funnily enough.

Quote from: RPGPundit;730474There were no "pre-polynesian" people on Easter Island; or at least there's no evidence or history indicating that at all. As far as we know, the very first humans on Easter Island were the "Rapa Nui" polynesians.  And we know very, very little about their original religion; almost everything about their religion is speculation, some of it fairly sound (the giant heads were almost certainly for 'ancestor worship' of some kind or another), and some of it not very sound at all (recent scholarship has indicated that the whole 'ecodestruction' theory of how the island's environment and the rapa nui society collapsed was in fact almost completely wrong).

I thought I'd read that Easter Island was settled by one population, then resettled by another not long before westerners arrived. I stand corrected.

You could always play BECMI D&D.

  "The D&D game does not deal with the ethical or theological beliefs of the characters in the game"--both Mentzer Basic and the Rules Cyclopedia, in the description of the cleric class.

  Admittedly, I'm coming at the issue from a personal position almost completely opposite of the OP--deeply Catholic--but I understand the desire to bracket off this stuff or not deal with it in gaming. The AD&D/3E/4E cleric makes that difficult to do; the premises of the class pretty much require interventionist, often polytheistic religion. The Basic approach to a cleric--dedicated to a cause or philosophy--allows the class to model any number of different things, such as priests, vampire hunters, sohei, warrior-poets, Jedi Knights, or even fairy-tale princes or princesses or magical girls who are empowered by purity of heart.