Monday, May 19, 2014

Religion to believe in

I'm not a big fan of Blogger, so I've moved everything over to nagafeathers.com.

Sometimes you don't want to deal with certain aspects of worldbuilding as a GM, due to lack of knowledge, interest, or whatever. If that's the case, I reckon a certain amount of hand waviness is forgivable, and if your players are like-minded, they surely won't mind you steering them around the hole you've left in your setting.

That being the case, I can't comprehend at all how the Priestess icon and her Cathedral got into the game.

Priestess illustration by Aaron McConnell and Lee Moyer.
For anyone who doesn't know 13th Age, the Icons are archetypes that exist in the game world as powerful, usually unseen NPCs, that exert a strong influence on the flow of any story. The Priestess and her Cathedral at 13th Age's nod (albeit a very perfunctory one) to religion. From the core rulebook:
p. 24: The Priestess hears all the Gods of Light and speaks for those who please her. She is part oracle, part mystic, and part metaphysical engineer, since she created the Cathedral, an ever-expanding temple with rooms or entire wings for each of the faiths she favors.

p. 263: The Cathedral represents in stone the Priestess's philosophy of spiritual union. The very shape and layout of the structure channel spiritual energy to generate greater harmony. She has built chapels and sanctuaries devoted to the many "spheres" of the Gods of Light, such as healing, life, truth, childbearing, harvest, strength, and fire. Priests of various gods convene there for shared rituals devoted to one or another of these virtues.
Buh? Really? Maybe I'm just too sensitive to religion and its quirks – I grew up a southern Baptist, was thrown out of religion class in a Catholic boy's school, and have been a practicing Buddhist for the past 16 years – but I'm completely unable to suspend my disbelief here.

Suspension of disbelief means that a fantastic story needs to at least provide a semblance of truth for us to accept the fantastic. Dragons existing isn't believable, but we can suspend our disbelief (temporarily believe) that they exist for the sake of a good story. Dragons flying with huge bat-like wings (a semblance of truth) we can continue to believe. If they fly by means of pulling themselves into the air on ropes hanging from the clouds, well…

Really. Spiritual union… really?

Looking at human history, the truth that fantasy needs to give us a semblance of to keep us believing encompasses three general options for religions:
  • Monotheism: one truth, one God, e.g. Christianity, Islam, etc. More often than not believers follow the kind of convert, control or kill behaviour that has defined a great deal of history.
  • Polytheism: many gods, e.g. Hinduism. Other truths aren't accepted exactly, rather external gods and prophets are absorbed into the pantheon, becoming part of our truth.
  • Not-really-theism: maybe some truths and rituals, but no gods. e.g. Buddhism, Taoism.
Never in the history of humanity have any religions seen each other as equals. You can't believe there's one truth and accept someone else's truth. At best religions have more or less tolerated each other. But subordinating your beliefs to someone outside your religion? Sharing a temple? Performing rituals together? I just failed my save vs. disbelief roll.

by Martin Geupel 

Neither fish, flesh, nor fowl

I'm not saying the world wouldn't be a much better place if we could all just get along, or that it's not extremely desirable. It's just not very believable. And if I can't believe, all I'm left with is a very conscious awareness of the game designers and their desire to just not deal with religion by waving their hands and hoping it goes away. I can't blame them at all for not wanting to deal with messy religion, but I'm confused by them bothering with it at all. No religion? Fine. Religion that's weird as hell, but roughly follows the principles by which religions have always worked. Also fine. But "there's kind of religion but kind of not really, okay?" doesn't fly.

It's your world, so do what you want!

Although it tweaks my laziness – it's nice to be served copious, coherent setting detail on a platter – this is one of my favourite aspects of game: 13th Age's designers Rob and Jonathan repeatedly tell us that the world's a sketch, there are many holes, and we should not only fill them in, but also change whatever we want.

Keeping that in mind, one day when I'm ready to run a campaign, it'll probably start with an attack on the Cathedral by fanatical monotheists who'll slaughter piles of infidels, dramatically execute the Priestess, and take over the Cathedral, establishing their singular, war-like god as an Icon. Watch this space…

Update: +Clark Olson-Smith posted a thoughtful reply to my rant on his blog.

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