Comments on: Howling Tower: Plight of the Demon

By: Allan Grohe

Allan Grohe — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 19:50:53 +0000

Steve—

There have definitely been a few d20 books that covered RL Christianity, IIRC. I haven’t played or run games using these, but I believe these all deal with the topic on some level:

- Testament @ http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr1019e.html
- Eternal Rome @ http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr1410.html
- Hamunaptra @ http://www.greenronin.com/store/product/grr1407-hamunaptra.html

Of them, I remember Testament being pretty well-received (it’s written by Scott Bennie). I thought that there were some other books that more overtly dealt with all three “people of the book” religions, but can’t think of them now.

WRT Ars Magica, I think there were rules in the White Wolf 3rd edition era covering divine PCs, in _Pax Dei_, but I was pretty dissatisfied with that edition of the game, and could be remembering wrongly the scope of play offered by those rules.

Allan.

By: Charles Carrier

Charles Carrier — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 21:16:49 +0000

In my 3.5E game world I’m still using the deities from the old 1E Deities & Demigods. The principal faith of the “civilized” nations is Olympian. Twelve centuries ago the military might and organizational skills of the Pax Aurum (Golden Peace, i.e. the Roman Empire) spread it across the continent and transformed it from a loose set of rural beliefs into a highly structured and codified religious system (equivalent to the Roman Catholic church). Around the edges of the former Pax Aurum can be found the Norse Religion, the Gods of the Keltoi, and of course the Pantheon of the Great River in the desert kingdom of Kemet.

About ten or twelve years ago my players were confronted with a little-known desert deity making a bid to move in on the Olympians. My players were all running epic level characters at the time, and they ended up fighting along-side the gods to defeat the misogynistic upstart. He had already done terrible damage to the Sumerian pantheon, robbing many deities of their god-hood and transforming them into demons. It was a hell of a hard fight, but the good guys finally won.

Yes, we killed Jehovah. (And yes, my players knew exactly who they were fighting, even though he kept his name concealed behind tetragrammaton letter puzzles.)

By: Patrick Ley

Patrick Ley — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 19:50:05 +0000

Most of my games have been set in something that you can see the real world if you squint or if you turn back the clock or something. (World of Darkness Games, Deadlands, whatever) So in most of them the existence of real world religions is assumed. We don’t tend to shy from religious themes at all actually. Although we are just as likely to be suspicious of heaven as to trust it, it seems.

In my Victorian Supers game the Robot who was way more moral than any other member of the team was eventually informed by an angel that he had been granted a soul, and (years before Requiem came out) the origin of Vampires in that world was that Longinus (who pierced the side of Christ) was transformed into the first vampire. He eventually renamed himself as Le Comte de St. Germain.

My dark modern Supers game got cut short, but the upshot was that the world spanning conspiracy had been started by an early mutant, Yeshua bar Miriam, whose healing powers had allowed him to ressurect himself. He was still alive in 2007.

I ran an Angel RPG (as in vampire detective) game where the characters started out as members of the secret demon fighting branch of the Vatican, though they eventually broke off from that.

I ran a lot of Steve Jackson Games’s In Nomine where the players were literally Angels.

My current Dresden Files game is much more centered on Indian and Central Asian religion than on religions originiating in the “Near East” One of the PCs is Tibetan Monk armed with the power of his faith in the Dharma, and the powerful magic of the Buddhist Tantra.

By: Steve Winter

Steve Winter — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:18:58 +0000

I’d be interested in hearing from anyone who’s run a campaign that used the three Abrahamic religions in realistic terms in a campaign. That was the setup on Yrth in the original GURPS Fantasy book from 1986 (the only edition I have). Real religions played a role in Ars Magica and Pendragon, but since no one played clerics AFAIK in those games, it wasn’t as big a deal. We danced around Christianity quite a bit in the AD&D historical sourcebooks from TSR. I’ve always wanted to delve into this in a historically themed game, but the opportunity has never presented itself. There are just too many campaign themes and not enough campaigns to try everything on my list.

By: Allan Grohe

Allan Grohe — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 15:13:45 +0000

Wolfgang: I’ve talked with Peter about republishing the TPO books, and he’s amenable for .pdfs, but not print (when last we talked about it). Theyre are fabulous books that really should be brought back into print….

The game sounds like fun, and about what I’d expect from Peter’s games, given TPO as a baseline

Allan.

By: The Recursion King

The Recursion King — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:55:55 +0000

I was looking through my old second edition players handbook last night on an unrelated topic when I noticed that there are rules there for customising the cleric based upon pantheon. Unlike third edition, where the deities are set in the rule books, it actually says the DM should come up with these for his own world. When I next run a second edition campaign, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Abrahamic elements will be out the window and a set of specialist clerics will be in.

By: Richard Briggs

Richard Briggs — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 04:13:40 +0000

As a DM almost ALL of my groups had a lot of people that had abused by Christianity at a young age. So, I have only had Christian themes where they where appropriate. With 1st ed with Greyhawk, Judges Guild and the like, there was no concept of Christianity beyond that was what Clerics and Paladins acted like. In Living Greyhawk, I ended up in the Theorchy of the Pale where Christianity was the obvious model for the Pelorian faith. The campaign was a revolution against the Pelorians so Christianity was the villian.
In other game worlds – where the Christian mythos is a part of the world – TORG, Ars Magica, d20 Modern, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, World of Darkness, Stalking the Night Fantastic, Star Gate and the like – it was sometime better accepted. However, I still noted that for the most part Christians where either fools, adversaries, the enemy of my enemy, or allies because they where rebellious. Even when I brought Christian allies in with the best of intentions it usually at least concerned people.
Note: I have played with basicly all faiths and only Jews and Muslims seem to have the same issue.

In Planescape, souls, the afterlife, and demons and devils capturing souls where there as elements. Gods got their power from the souls of their worshippers. The became petitioners that inhabited their realms and eventually became a part of their god. (There was the lame aspect of they forgot their previous lives – Boring!!! – so out it went). Souls where the money of the planes. It was not Christian. It was a free for all soul brawl. However, I had some good adventures that focused on the afterlives of characters – including a whole campaign of “Dead” Vikings in Valhalla. The Power at the top of Mount Celestia was pretty close to God-ish. It would be easy to shift the focus on Planescape to a soul collecting focus. But, that was clearly not the main point of the setting.

In 4th Ed, the issue of souls, afterlife and the Devil being after them is a part of the core story. While the Primorial War is the Big Story. The Raven Queen guides the souls of the dead to their final reward. Pharasma and the Raven Queen are basicly the same person in two different game worlds. There was an entire Adventure Arc in 4th Ed on the extremely hostile takeover of the Soul Guiding Market by Orcus. When one of the party died in that campaign and saw just what was going on, before the Raise Dead Ritual – let me tell you – the characters started worrying about their souls! Asmodeus finally really became the Devil in 4th Ed. His whole backstory is his plot to capture souls and rule the planes. Better to rule in Hell… Every teifling that has playing my game has felt the hot breath of Master of his Fate on his neck.
Even Dark Sun, with soul going to the Gray has an afterlife that can be brought into adventures.

3rd Ed had some 3rd party books that had some good world that where literally based on Christianity and one (at least) on the Biblical Period called Testament.
I don’t think that it would be that hard to create a Christian based 4th Ed. But, it would be easier with an earlier edition because there was on one flavor of Cleric and Paladin – the Christianesque version.

By: Wolfgang

Wolfgang — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 23:51:02 +0000

Allan, I was lucky enough to game with Peter not that long ago, as a guest NPC in a sort of one-shot deal.

Demons and devils definitely came up, and Peter definitely gets what makes them interesting in Chaldea. I think grounding them more firmly in real-world traditions gets really good results in terms of evoking player reactions–though I also remember the very real letters of concern that TSR used to get from non-gamers.