Ok, I’m pulling a Jos here and nitpicking apart some quotes. Forgive me for my long windedness.
AoM wrote:Not trying to make anyone mad but, the religions in the real world aren't really based off of natural observances.
I mean... when lightning strikes, people used to say it was Zeus getting angry and throwing lighting bolts around.
When people want to explain how humans were created they say that God molded them out of dirt
Religion is a connection between the natural and the supernatural. It explains what people don’t understand which may be natural occurrences.
AoM wrote:Are these logical interpretations? Perhaps. But they are quite zany to an objective person. So why should we expect Cantr religion to be any less zany?
First of all I don’t think it’s possible to be objective when talking about religion. You either believe it or you don’t . So the ideas would sound zany to somebody who thinks differently, but that doesn’t make them objective.
And secondly I don’t see why Cantr religions need to seem zany to outside observers who don’t believe that religion.
AoM wrote:I have a character who is involved with a religion that has fancy titles for its leaders and has a godly Father figure. Why should you be annoyed by such a religion? The fancy titles give the semblance of order to those who worship the religion, making it seem more legit. The godly father figure fits just as well as anything. Since the religion my character is in tries to create a guidance system much like a parent, it stands to reason that a Father figure would be acceptable.
That may seem like a lame rationalization to you... but then again, any religion seems that way after a lot of thought.
Fancy titles and Father Figures only seem legit from an OOC prespective IC titles usually don't have that much weight and they don't even have fathers to base a father figure on. Why do you need fancy titles and a godly Father figure when you can worship carrots? After all they keep you alive, they grow on their own, you don’t need to eat nearly as much of them as you would need to eat potatoes, you don’t need to cook them in any way. That’s just one example of how you could build a religion in game without using a lot of OOC ideas like fancy titles and prophets, or taking advantage of the changing system. (I’m not saying theses are wrong, just overused.)
I think a religion would work much better in Cantr if it starts simple and builds from there.
AoM wrote:It's a tough thing to get a religion going in cantr, because the players understand the "metaphysics" of the game. They know what happens to a character when it dies. They know who created Cantr and why. They already know the meaning of their character's lives. Religion offers nothing to the players and so they don't see the point of having their characters get into it.
Exactly, If you want a religion to be successful you need to be creative in making it appealing to the players. And a good way of doing this is to make it suppressive. Back on the carrot idea, you could wage war on the spinach eaters two towns over because their food cannot be whole if it heals and feeds, that’s unnatural and can’t be tolerated.
AoM wrote:So you have to make a religion appealing in different ways. You need those fancy titles. You need a zany idea that players can buy into just to see what fun can happen from it. You need a religion that entertains, because after all, this is a game and we're here for the entertainment value. So I applaud all those visionaries out there who are trying to put religion into cantr. Keep trying, and maybe one or two of them will stick.
Your not going to find the solution from doing the same old thing again and again. Try from a new angle. I don’t think importing religions from real life is being visionary at all.
Plus a religion that worships carrots would be pretty entertaining too, especially if it’s taken seriously by the characters.
Torch wrote:Sure, all the players know. But to tie this into yet a third thread, a really good RPer would play his/her character to not know these things, unless I've missed something somewhere. The characters have no clue, only the players know. Possibly this is another decent test for good RP - characters who are seeking the "meaning of life" through science or religion or whatever in spite of the player controlling them knowing all the answers. Very difficult to do without slipping up at some point and bringing in outside knowledge or saying/doing something that the character wouldn't unless they knew the answers.
Agreed, but with the wiki and the forums and all, its leaves it up to the player to define what is going to far, and most don’t even think about it when they slip, they just figure it’s something their character would know, like how to talk and build a bone knife. Or that they should build a claymore instead of a saber if they have everything they need.
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from me, as well as my characters. Now, there are a few that actually build off of concepts that already exist in the game in a halfway believable way that I could see myself going for, but the ones that a character would never come up with and are either obviously invented by the player out of whole cloth or directly imported from real life religions just get on my nerves. "The Great Mother Goddess that watches over us all", etc.
