What does this guy believe?
Troy recently started a Story Games thread about awesome-o-fying polytheism in RPGs, and its well worth checking out. One of the things this thread got me thinking was about the structuralistic model that RPGs usually use to model religions, and the way that makes RPG religions have very little resemblance to real life religions or belief structures.
To decode that: what I’m saying is that in most RPG religions we get these shell-like structures of belief that are very codified and specific, treating the religion, its gods and beliefs as a structural thing rather than a collection of doctrines, beliefs, cultural mores, and most importantly of all — individuals. There are ever so many reasons for this, from the Victorian and early modern structuralist and world religion models of religious studies, to the scientific and semi-rationalist viewpoint used to explain religion in most RPGs. However, I think the biggest reason for it in our field is that this structuralist view point makes it easy to understand the world in large-scale terms from a top-down, outside perspective. It’s easy to make a world where there are guys A and they believe 1, and guys B who believe 2. It’s easy to read about and see the overall structure of such a world as well. And since we often approach RPGs through a created setting (because even historical games have a created setting) we think of religion in the terms of that large-scale creation.
There are, however, a few games that have done things in a different way. HeroQuest/Glorantha leaps immediately to mind as a game in which, while there are “shell layers” on top, once you get into the setting all the rationalistic external structures turn out to be far more complex, contradictory, and relativistic than they do in most RPG settings. There are two clear reasons for this: one, that’s what Greg wanted the world to be, and two, lots of the world was created through play or the focus of a few characters rather than top down as one unified monolith of setting. Because of that Glorantha has a far murkier relationship to pantheons and polytheism — even a Lunar might have a spirit bracelet that isn’t part of the Lunar religion, and who knows whose gods are going to be on top of the spirit world today?
The problem that a lot of folks have with this kind of world is that it feels messy and hard to quantify. If people are believing this and that, when the other folks believe that and thus, and the gods are beings that you can go visit, but your perceptions of them may or may not be subjective — how the hell do you get a grip on what the world looks and feels like? Glorantha at least has its different worlds of magic to give some order to it, but if you’re trying to build a game based on the ancient Mediterranean and Middle East, how the hell are you going to quantify and structuralize those beliefs without choking them? And if you don’t structuralize, how do you get the world across to players in a way usable in game?
The answer that came to mind today, and I’m sure its just one possible answer, is that you don’t really try to understand the whole world as one big monolith from an exterior POV. You approach it from inside, in terms of “what does this guy want and believe.” This guy can be your PC, an important NPC that you’re building a plot or R-Map around, or even the charismatic prophet of the religion. You take it as a world that no one knows the truth about, and in which the various agendas of cultural background, wealth and poverty, personal need and ambition, tradition and reverence, all influence each and every person on what they personally believe.
Thus rather than saying, “Zoroastrians believe in Ahura Mazda, and he is Zoroastrian therefore he worships Ahura Mazda and none other” you say, “This guy is a born Magi, and wants to get a place in court. His arch rival is a Babylonian priest, and so he wants to demonize other gods in order to secure his own position.” Give everyone else in the court reasons to believe one, both, or neither of the priests, and let the action start.
Even if you’re at a higher level, of really interacting with the gods, all you have to do is assume a little subjecitivism and you can still make this kind of thing work. Moses may have spoken to God directly, but every religion, group of belief, and many individuals all believe different things about Moses, have different recordings of his words, and so on. Hell, even Moses himself occasionally had problems figuring out exactly what God wanted. Through a glass darkly and all that. And thats in a paradigm with one God. Sometimes, except when it isn’t.
The short of it: focusing on what individuals in the game want rather than trying to make the world as a whole make sense from an external POV is a good way to build an awesome, personally relevant, and awesome polytheistic world. And that should work even when “this guys” happens to be one of the gods.
What I was trying to say. Thanks, Brand.
I was having similar thoughts about the Exalted Hack recently. There’s all this big picture cosmology in White Wolf stuff (hello, splats!) that is not very interesting or complex when you get down to it. I kinda want Castes to be more like castes in real life, socially determined things, not based on some natural or supernatual abilities that members share. That seems to follow the racial/class model from D&D, which is poo. Anyway…
Jonathan,
Hmm. Now you have me all thinking about the fact that structuralism doesn’t just apply to worlds, but to characters themselves. Exalted certainly views the character (in that way) from the outside first, doesn’t it? As a splat that then becomes a person by either playing to or against the archetype.
Funny enough, I also started working on an Exalted hack. Nothing like yours though, just a fast little thing based around making stunts and virtues the center of the game. I should post it next week.
Amusingly Brand, another game that attacks this is Tribe 8 — it presents that structuralist, top-down view of the fatimas and the tribes, but then turns it around and tells the players, “Yeah, okay, that’s how it supposedly works, except something went wrong and you got kicked out of your tribe. Figure out why.” By putting the onus of defining the malfunction on the players, it focuses play into the characters’ interactions with the world and how the great big neat categories don’t actually work on some fundamental level.
Actually, I think one of the big problems with Tribe 8 is that it was a metaplot game in which you had to take personal responsibility for the meaning and import of large numbers of things in the world. So you have the game as authority in constant conflict with players as authority, and most people just wanting to side with the easy answer.
Not to mention that people wanted to turn the Tribes into a shell structure at every junction, making them as linear, literal, and as much like modern Western modes of government as possible.
Heya,
That, actually, is a really good way to create a religion for a game. It really would facilitate exploration of religion or a person’s relationship to divinity. Starting w/ one person (say a prophet maybe) and building religions around them and their relationships would give characters an awesome tie-in to something much larger than themselves.
In my origonal post I was looking for something much more tactical and mechanical, but I’m glad this discussion (both here and at SG) was spawned instead. There’s a lot to learn from all of this for game designers.
Peace,
-Troy
Word. Witness the legions who wanted to play Tribals and not Fallen. If that’s not a refusal to redefine religion on a personal level, I don’t know what is.
I agree that it’s a good technique. To be fair, a lot of fantasy stories have a unified view rather than contradictory beliefs. And sometimes simple can be good, especially if it’s not something you want to focus on.
I should give a mention here to the Harn Religion Team, who added a lot of subjective stuff to the gods of Harn. Jim Chokey (whom I play with) did a bunch of good stuff for this.