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Champion
 
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(In which Tom attempts the crazy idea of using LARP mechanics as an inspiration for tabletop mechanics)
The idea of Gods and religion being a major source of power and roleplaying in a RPG is very old, as the Cleric class in the original D&D rules demonstrates.
However as much as I enjoy roleplaying religious zealots/heretics of one brand or another, I've always found the Cleric class (and it's derivatives in other systems) strangely unappealing. There just seems to be a fundamental gap between what religious types are meant to do (spread the faith and minister to the faithful), and what Cleric/Paladin types with their “divine superpowers” enable and encourage them to do.
Generally the “Holy Superpowers” fall into five categories, the more commonly used first:
1) Divine Healing. Perhaps my biggest gripe, which I'll explain later.
2) Slapping and smiting unholy demonic and undead types.
3) Get various levels of divine ming from their gods, often based around becoming stronger, tougher etc in a fight.
4) Specific powers depending upon what your god does (Summoning thunder and lighting for Thor-wannabes for example)
5) Divinations, asking your God for guidance.
This is all very well and good, however I often felt that the actual religious aspect seemed to be somewhat lacking. Esp since with many of the Divine powers; similar, if not actually identical effects can be achieved through arcane, sorcererous magic and similar sources of power that aren't meant to be that of the Gods. In my eyes it relegates the Gods really as unique entities and turns miracles into yet another tool for characters to use, rather than something that characters should devote themselves to.
My biggest problem is with Divine healing. The idea of holy men miraculously curing hideous wounds and afflictions at a mere touch is very old, it's central to Christianity (most of Jesus' miracles revolve around healing of some kind) and many other religions. Unfortunately D&D and it's successors turned the miracle into something that is not only a commonplace occurrence, but pretty much an essential act for the game to function. Using “cure serious wounds” to get ready for the next encounter is one of the must monotonous rather than miraculous acts possible in a RPG.
There seems no mechanical impetuous for a religious character to go out and spread their faith, all their Piety gives them are powers that bearded, bookish types with pointy hats can often pretty much replicate flawlessly.
Two of my favorite games I think has done Divine powers well are the Divine Inspiration rules for Eden Studio's Witchcraft/Armageddon (Unisystem) and White Wolf's Dark Ages Inquisitor. Witchcraft sums up all the traditional holy powers into a mere 3 pages, whilst DA Inquisitor has a range which include genuinely imaginative power and I really like the Conviction/piety/virtues system. However in both cases it does essentially seem a rehash of the above concepts, just done particular with particular simplicity or style.
Now of course you could argue that it's upto the player to roleplay their character's faith and devotion, not the mechanics to force the roleplaying. Perhaps refusing to heal those who had not shown appropriate respect to their god, or demand they make penance or service to the God after being saved by them. However I could imagine this mostly just pissing of the rest of the party rather than adding that much to the game.
Similarly in pretty much everything there are rules and guidelines so the GM can slap the character should they violate the tenets of the Faith. In DA Inquisitor the balance between humble piety and frothing conviction is a focal point of the game.... Still I think there is a tendency for the mechanics to be more about the stick of what happens when you screw up with being mediocre being somewhat unpunished, rather than the carrot of how the gods reward the truly pious. I'd like a system more geared to rewarding the exceptionally pious.
This sort of approach to Gods and Religion manifesting as D&Desc Divine magic has also generally seeped into LARP.
Then I came across Maelstrom LARP.
Perhaps the first things that really impressed me about the system when I first read through the rulebook was the Faith rules (here if you're one of the few rule7ite not to know them http://www.profounddecisions.co.uk/rules/rules.asp?NavID=17 )
Here was a system where priests care for the souls of the faithful of their god, not act as mobile healing batteries behind the front lines.
The basic priestly skills involved initiating individuals into the Faith, leading services of the faithful, tending to the souls of the dead and casting out blasphemers, traitors and heretics from the Faith. I think the system really works at providing a system mechanics for meaningful and powerful Faith and Religion in play, however other people's millage may vary.
Basically Priests in Maelstrom had skills and powers to do the kinda stuff I actually associate with religion, not as mobile band-aid. There where still lots of room for funky divine superpowers, miraculous healing and similar in the form of Blessings, however these occurred after you had become devoted (essentially swearing your soul into service to the deity) and after you had requested aid from your deity. In this way, the priests are those responsible for bringing people into the Faith, and then calling upon the Gods for their aid. It's not necessarily the priests themselves whom receive the aid (if another pious character could benefit/use it better), however there is a strong correlation with it. The priests act as a link bettween the the Gods and their faithful.
This is the sort of thing I'd like to experiment with for religious characters in a tabletop game (for the purposes of this thought exercise imagine a D&Desc fantasy game)
I envisage a system working something along these lines:
1) Initiation/Piety – You first gain power and your Gods attention by dedicating yourself to them and performing acts in accordance to their tenets and spreading the Faith to others.
2) Praying/Supplication – Having gotten the eye of your god, you can then call down aid, this can either be instantaneously in the heat of battle, or perhaps as a more long term thing by leading services and supplications to your God.
3) Blessings - Receiving the Superpowers. Receiving aid appropriate to the circumstances and the God you follow. The duration of the powers can range from instinatious effects, to permanent blessings
4) Exocisms Perhaps slipping back to the old, but granting Holy Rites to destroy the Undead (by saving their souls) and exorcising demons from a person/place.
5) Excommunication - Rites of Excomunication to cast out tratiorous devotees of the same God/Panteon.
What do people think about the idea, practical or not something that'd work outside of a large LARP system? Is there already a tabletop system that does something similar?
(For those interested, you can download the Witchcraft Corerule book as a PDF for free (and legally!) from eden's site http://www.edenstudios.net/witchcraft/WitchcraftCorebook.zip I really like Unisystem myself.
Maelstrom: Khaniel, Liberated Angel of Enlightenment
RL: Tom
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Knight
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I think the central question you need to ask about any such rules for tabletop games (or LRP for that matter) is:
Does a character specialising in this area have anything meaningful to do in a typical game context?
Maelstrom is largely about social interaction. The only people who seem to have a heavily combat focussed game are those playing eidolons and undead and those who hunt them.
Most tabletop games however are largely about "adventuring" - explore the dungeon, kill everything vaguely orc-shaped, loot the treasury, rescure the beautiful dragon from a ravening princess etc.
Obviously, there are exceptions to both of the above sweeping generalisations.
A typical D+D style cleric would find very little to do with their clerical abilities at Maelstrom because most of those abilities are designed around being part of an adventuring party. On the other hand, most of a Maelstrom-style priest's abilities would be next to useless on a dungeon crawl. Neither character would get much meaningful use out of their abilities in the wrong setting.
Now, the presence of a particular set of abilities is likely to encourage more of the sort of activity that makes use of them. But then you have to ask if the other characters now have anything to do in the periods when the game is centered on the new activity. With 800 players in a field, you can usually find something else to do when the game around you enters an area you can't (or won't) contribute to. With a handful of players and (more critically) only one GM around a table, your options are a lot less limited.
In summary: I don't think it'll work unless you restructure other aspects of the game to encourage non-cleric characters to get involved in activities that would appeal to the M-style priest.
I may be at the same event as you, but that does not mean I am playing the same game.
LT: Aries (Vipers)
PD: Dorian Bowchard (Sacuza)
I am hereby placing all original, unquoted text in the above post in the public domain.
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Knight
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Afterthought:
In my opinion, the best thing about Maelstrom religions is that they are based on how you behave, rather than what you do.
So M doesn't have a god of smiths and a god of merchants. It has the Smith and the Merchant. One says work for your community, the other says work for yourself. Either course can be followed by a smith or a merchant (or a weaver or teacher or hunter).
Conversely, a lot of tabletop RPG settings seem to have religions that are presented as more "ABC, the god of bad weather" and "XYZ, god of dwarven miners". Which doesn't actually give them much to say to anybody who isn't a meteorologist or a dwarven miner.
I may be at the same event as you, but that does not mean I am playing the same game.
LT: Aries (Vipers)
PD: Dorian Bowchard (Sacuza)
I am hereby placing all original, unquoted text in the above post in the public domain.
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Wag
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Niggle (4/27/2007)
Conversely, a lot of tabletop RPG settings seem to have religions that are presented as more "ABC, the god of bad weather" and "XYZ, god of dwarven miners". Which doesn't actually give them much to say to anybody who isn't a meteorologist or a dwarven miner.
Actually you don't have a right lot to say to someone who is a dwarven miner...
"Hi Bob, mining good is it?"
"Oh yes Dave, thanks be to our god of dwarven miners"
"I wonder how we could serve our god better Dave?"
"Well we could do more mining Bob."
"Or be more dwarven Dave."
"Good point Bob, I think I'll grow my beard some more."
I blame historians, history is full of gods of "things" which is all well and good but they're just rubbish for LRPing with. They should rewrite history to make it more useful for LRP if you ask me...
History is an important source for LRP. Along with other works of fiction.
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Wag
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Matt Pennington (4/27/2007)
I blame historians, history is full of gods of "things" which is all well and good but they're just rubbish for LRPing with. They should rewrite history to make it more useful for LRP if you ask me...
I think that might be more an artefact of distance and brevity (all hail the God of Beards and Suffering!).
Marios
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Champion
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A very good point and one of the reasons I was questioning whether my idea would really be practical. With a game like D&D (which at it's most basic is about kicking down subterranean doors and mugging goblins of their chests of treasure), then it shouldn't be surprising that the religion and divine magic system mechanics aren't geared towards social interaction and spreading the faith. Saying that, all the RPG's (even those using D&D rules) I've been in recently have all focused around social conflict (from a local to international scale) rather than kicking in monsters for loot and xp.
Certainly Maelstrom's religion system seems quite dependent upon convincing other Player characters that your God is A) The right one, B) what you're doing/planning to do is in the interests of them and their God, and getting them to help you, and help get your Gods attention.
In such a way, if I translated it into tabletop (which is very much focused on the player characters and their actions), the focus should shift into more performing acts that please your God (and perhaps directing the party towards goals that benefit your Faith).
I also very much agree that the Maelstrom Faiths being systems of ethics makes the “religion game” so interesting (as opposed to having the Welsh goddess of spiders and coal pixies), however really the majority of fantasy gods should have some tenets of Faith encouraging certain behaviour (thou shalt not shave, nor shalt thou shalt thou dig without the wearing of the sacred helmets of safety or rocks shalt fall and rend your head asunder.) Many games make a big point about the tenets of the faith and violating them, however others (like D&D) seem to care about this less.
One system some of my friends have started using for Clerics is replacing the D&Des divine spell list and spells/day with a simple faith point system, where basically you spend faith points to perform miracles (appropriate for your God), and you gain them by performing an act that somehow pleases your god be it smiting his enemies, spreading his faiths, or generally just obeying the tenants of the God/embodying the ideals of the God. This is really a simpler method of the system I proposed in my first post.
Maelstrom: Khaniel, Liberated Angel of Enlightenment
RL: Tom
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Wag
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If you want to break away from standard D&D why not simply have faiths which represent ... faith. You increase the power of your faith by converting large numbers of people/small numbers of powerful people.
Anyone can believe or be a priest - doesn't take any classes/skill points (perhaps Perform: Sermon?). Religion is desirable because it gives you goals and a philosophy which suggests how those goals might be accomplished, as well as allies and enemies.
Marios
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Knight
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| As I see it the problem with D&D style religions is that they are monotheistic religions plonked down in a pantheistic setting with no attempt to blend them together. If you have a god of mining then yes you pray to him when you are mining, but when it comes to harvest time you pray to the god of harvest, and when you do so you aren't betraying "your god" you are just using common sense. D&D never manages to get this feel.
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