/tg/ — It's weird how so much modern fantasy seems kind of anti-rel

>it's weird how fiction reflects the people that make it

>>98187199 (OP)
Writers had to go to Sunday school as a kid and feel like it was child abuse. The real question is why they'd still give them super cool outfits even as antagonistic forces.

Okay, what systems does this apply to?

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>>98187216
Fpbp

>>98187199 (OP)
It's weird how you thought this thread was more necessary than just making your game how you want it to be, especially since that's the main advantage of TTRPGs. And these sorts of threads are always made by retards who scrape Pinterest, ArtStation, Reddit, etc.

This thread doesnt have enough disingenuous shitposts in it yet

>>98187199 (OP)
>religion that constantly beefs with the natural sciences
>religion that says reality is just a shit-test to avoid eternity in the bad noodle roaster
>why do materialists depict us as out of touch with nature?
Its a mystery. We may just never know.

>>98187199 (OP)
Because in a TTRPG, the gods need to be noninterventionist otherwise when the shit hits the fan hard enough the party has legitimate cause to simply escalate the problem. "Hey Rathnor God of Benevolent Light, this guy has a zombie army that is snowballing in size with every victory and we can't stop his necromancer ass. Please help."

Rathnor going "Oh, shit, good catch on that one. Give me a moment.... and they're gone. Need anything else while I'm at it?" isn't a particularly satisfying end to an adventure. So there needs to be a reason why the gods don't solve the problem. The gods have to be basically useless, unable or unwilling to do anything overtly, and the modern framework for religion that works like that is Christianity.

Abrahamic God works in 'muh mysterious ways' instead of solving problems that we are told he can solve effortlessly. Theological debates as to the nature of god and the problem of evil aside, this functionally is what a modern writer thinks of in terms of a god that doesn't actually do anything. As opposed to pagan religions, which very much believed that their gods were active and interventionist and part of the reason why the world sucked was that the gods WERE doing stuff and they were kind of pricks.

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>>98187199 (OP)
Overuse of subversive imagery got boring but we're still stuck socially pretending its daring criticism.

>>98187199 (OP)
>And it's always the Catholic stand-in
When you play games in a setting based on medieval Europe, then yes, the organized religion is based on Catholicism. Try playing a game based on ancient Greek, and suddenly the evil religion is based on a corrupt pagan cult.

>>98187617
>Abrahamic God works in 'muh mysterious ways' instead of solving problems that we are told he can solve effortlessly.
I think it's less "Abrahamic" and more "any religion in the age of the video camera." God does a whole lot of divine intervention in Abrahamic mythology, after all.
Any and all gods switched from miracles to subtle manipulations the exact moment that people started caring about evidence.

>>98187648
>Try playing a game based on ancient Greek, and suddenly the evil religion is based on a corrupt pagan cult.
Silly anon, no one ever write evil pagan or foreign religions. Only fantasy Christianity or a vague stand in is allowed to be evil.

>>98187621
People have been making excuses for succubi and demons since the Middle Ages, you disingenuous fuck.

>>98187657
>>98187648
>When you play games in a setting based on medieval Europe, then yes, the organized religion is based on Catholicism.
This is a you problem.

>>98187199 (OP)
What I think is interesting is that we are seeing more settings that resolve this problem by just outright making their gods cosmic horrors. You can pray to them, but you're not praying to a guy on mount olympus even if thats what the statue in the church you go to looks like. The gods are all vast, ineffable things or extradimensional forces interfering with lower realities we can't comprehend.
Like how Elden Rings lore is basically just a big game of tug of war between elder gods across history, with their terrestrial proxies rising and falling as the gods score wins and losses. Or sometimes they do something stupid and poke their god into wiping out most of the world. Fucking Fell God...

>>98187199 (OP)
>all the other religions
What other religions? Give examples. Most fantasy media, rarely if ever has more than one actual religion present, and if it does at all then they are all using the generic DND pantheon thing where most of the religions are generic and barely fleshed out.

>>98187199 (OP)
Examples from your own traditional games perhaps? You do play games, right?

>>98187199 (OP)
>It's weird how so much modern fantasy seems kind of anti-religion
Which ones?

>>98187199 (OP)
>why does the religion filled with people who can't fucking mind their own business keep on butting heads with trying to control and kill everyone they don't like?

>>98187773
I dunno, what about your religion that want to control everything and kill everyone? Oh, right, that's 'different' because its not really a religion.

>>98187199 (OP)
Bad writers can't write beyond their own personal experience. Theydon't live in a world wheregods are provably real so they can't conceptualize how things would be different if that were the case. They remain mentally aetheistic in their owm fantasy saying

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>>98187621
Nerdy succubi are the best kind of succubi.

>>98187812
60% of fantasy authors and game designers are practicing Mormons, and they still keep making evil Christian-based churches.

>>98187836
>mormons
>religious
Choose one and only one

A lot of Christians have demonic blood lust, they constantly yell about being punished in hell and the wrath of God more than peace, forgiveness, and love. The entire religion says to "be like Jesus". But the defining characteristic of Jesus is martyrdom. Hence, Christians HAVE to believe they are being persecuted. Except they then forget to be like Jesus.

You're bringing up a trope almost exclusively found in video games on a board about tabletop games.

>>98187199 (OP)
I literally don't think this is true of any modern fantasy I've encountered outside of JRPGs. What are your examples?

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>>98187834
When you think about it, The Brothel for Slaking Intellectual Lusts is just a fancy hostess club with exotic interesting girls you can book time to talk to.

>>98187904
I have no idea how a place like that could stay in business.
Particularly if there was an actual brothel anywhere nearby.

>>98187834
This art needs serious work.

>>98187617
Pretty easy solution is that the PCs ARE the god's intervention, whether they believe it or not.

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>>98187940
You really need to give up already, you weird troll.

>>98187621
>IRL Church literally burned people alive for disagreeing about obscure interpretations of their book of lore
"Guise, no, don't be mean to the Global Pedo Org."

>>98187925
In the context of Planescape it makes sense, because Sigil is full of weird philosophical nerds and shit. Its sort of baked into the setting.

IRL, Asia has had Host clubs and Hostess clubs/caberetes for ages. You basically go in, book a table, maybe request a specific person who works there if they are your 'favorite', and their job is basically to spend time with you, pretend to be interested in what you say, encourage you to drink more, and generally you get an hour or so of being able to pretend that this supermodel looking person is your boyfriend/girlfriend and wants to hear about your day. Its scratches the emotional itch of needing someone who cares about you, but not the physical lust aspect of it (legally, at any rate. There is always some amount of backrooms dealing for off the book stuff going on somewhere).

They stay in business by encouraging patrons to throw their money around on expensive food and drink from the establishment, and cultivating a group of regulars that come back time and time again for specific hosts/hostesses that they are emotionally attached to. Kind of like the parasocial relationship that people who donate to streamers can have, except you have their undivided attention instead of being one among hundreds of faceness screen names.

>>98187966
Which brings us back to 'muh mysterious ways' shit and by default making the religion of the setting not-christianity with a functionally noninterventionist god.

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>>98187621
>>98187834
Succubi who drink hot cocoa are the best and I didn't even know that was a thing.

>>98187986
I mean it's pretty arrogant to say that the god isn't intervening because you can't tell, or that he isn't intervening in the way you would want him to.

>>98187977
Asian hostess clubs do have a heavy sexual angle and basically fill a role of tamer strip clubs, with the same general goals.
I just don't think there's much of a market to talking with a nerd.

>>98187971
>"Guise, no, don't be mean to the Global Pedo Org."
But enough about the American government and media complex

>>98188376
The Catholic=Pedos joke is kind of funny when you look at the statistics and see how vile places like other Christian denominations or public schools are. Demonizing the Catholic church when synagogue and mosque scandals are swept under the rug is also a weird choice.

>>98188461
>a weird choice.
Because it never happened. Only christucks diddle kids

>>98187216
I'm an atheist and I always make the gods real and present in my settings. In my own system, I even ensure that there are no gods that are entirely viewed as evil, their roles are interpreted by mortals how those mortals interpret their teachings.

I even play a highly religious character in a D&D game I'm in, a Paladin of Bahamut. The idea that you have to have things you create reflect your personal ideologies is the reason modern media sucks so much ass, people just project their feelings onto the things they create and it lessens their quality.

>>98188660
Based and truthpilled.

I use Gods as embodying parts of the setting - the good and the bad.

War God; embodies both the glory and the suffering of war.
God of Cities; Both the benefits of civilisation and the corruption of the system.
etc

>>98187971
>banana faggots will always say the books where burned, but not which ones
It’s all so tiresome

>>98187434
>religion that created science as we know it
>religion that gives you a way out of the bad noodle roaster
>religion that glorifies nature as God's Creation

People have such a reddit tier understanding of Christianity.

>>98189321
Nobody truly understands it because it's not meant to be truly understood. It's just a tool that gets warped and reinterpreted to suit one's agenda while appealing to an authority above man.

>>98187199 (OP)
Because in fantasy gods are actual beings that can fuck you over or simply watch while someone else fucks you over. Unless they're big into micro-managing, in which case its a different kind of bad

>>98187617
>Because in a TTRPG, the gods need to be noninterventionist
they could alternatively just be not omnipotent, and/or not able to use their power to influence the material world (except through their priests)
off the top of my head, this could be easily explained as a setting's gods being disparate fragments of a singular "true" divinity

>>98189356
>I don't understand this thing so it must be something nobody can understand

Way to out yourself, dude. Jesus loves you.

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>>98187860
>>mormons
>>religious
>Choose one and only one
Bruh....
Try this on instead:
>Mormons are so fucking organized they make their religion look like a super-cult
>my own opinion aside:
I live in relative contact w the Mollie Mo's, so i offer these three facts to you,
> 1: Overly Organized Religion
Mormon religion is so structured they have things that we call nothing burger that get you marginalized.
Plus, their 'prophets' KEEP adding scriptures, so that the Mormon written doctrine is now a small shelf.
> 2: Kindness that can kill
Mormons have such an attachment to kindness, they can literally use it as a shield to cover more nefarious work.
See Lego Scandal. They will smile and be loving, then the 5th one who does that plans to rape your sister.
Also, have fun rejecting their kindness and friendliness. They take huge insult at that...
> 3: The Art of Debate
I have had enough dealings with those creatures to tell you, they do not take kindly to reverse UNO
Mormons are at base level very high skilled at argument, and at higher levels they are almost UNSTOPPABLE
in any sort of discussion. Not helped by the fact they have nice gentle delusions of future godhood.
I have twice dragged debate with them into wins that they make taste like Vietnam-level quagmire. They just can't.
It is literally in their culture to either try to win every debate, or try to shun and cast out every opponent.

>>98189416
An infallible book, written by God himself, that immediately starts off with two distinct creation stories, has far more than ten commandments, most of which aren't good moral teachings, and that has been edited and reedited so many times over its entire history. Full of plagiarized ideas from cooler regional religions, depicting a slap fight between many different sources trying to keep their particular version of the fanfic propaganda in line.

>>98187199 (OP)
not entirely, all good gods are basically always sidegrades of jesus

>>98187199 (OP)
Play more games
Watch less anime

>>98187199 (OP)
I tire of jews.

>>98187199 (OP)
why do you want your RPGs to be more religious?

>>98187812
if this were true, why not just suck it up and play a secular RPG?
if you want to back up your words, then you shouldnt be bothered by the minor inconvenience of a setting not being defined by a major church

>>98187199 (OP)
It's because organized religion is usually bad and corrupt, independantly of gods being real or not.

>>98187199 (OP)
>>98187216
>>98187225
>>98187226
The real answer is Protestants historically had beef with Catholics.
And for hundreds of years, Protestants dominated the Anglophone media and filled it with anti Catholic propaganda

In the past 50-odd years, Jews and Atheists have shifted to dominating the media, and they don't like Catholics either so they're very happy to propagate the tropes they were raised on

Best of all, Catholics are an easy target since they are minorities in most Western countries and/or don't consume much of the same media

>>98187971
>Global pedo org
Are you referring to schools, which have much higher rates of sexual abuse than churches to this day?
Most of the church abuse cases you hear about are from the 70s and 80s but still get paraded around while school abuse cases largely fly under the media's radar (because it isn't as exciting to report on as church-bashing)

>>98187226
DND

>>98187874
Literally every DND