9 thoughts on “Here’s a blog post on religion in RPGs.”

  1. Always a dangerous topic. 🙂 I like dangerous topics :). So I posted my new infant Dungeon World “Gygax” ‘s religious reality on the blog. Warning: It is stolen shamelessly from Leiber and Lovecraft with no real higher agenda than I think it works well for Dungeon World play. Pretty close to my former world Ares. It’s still a new world and still pretty undefined and based on a couple of sessions of recycled dungeons; so I tap danced in my comfort zone.

    I would like to do a Moorcock Law versus Chaos world someday, I think that has some fun aspects.

  3. Rainforest Giant He works pretty well if you remember that Law is not always good or Chaos always evil. Its a ying-yang balance. This was sorta the default setting for basic D&D except Law= good, Chaos seems to be almost always evil in that system.

  4. The problem with having “balance” as the best solution, at least in my experience, is that it creates this interesting conflict (whether that be Law/Chaos, Good/Evil, Water/Earth/Fire/Air, or something else) that will probably color the entire story, and then basically tells the players that if they pick a side in this conflict, they’re automatically part of the problem, which leads to the PCs being neutral and generally less proactive. The only way I’ve found to avoid this is to have one side threatening the balance, at which it becomes good-vs-evil except for the technicalities.

  5. Sebastian Baker Or the characters job could be to keep the balance. Think of it in terms of the Cold War; constantly preventing both sides from nuclear destruction.

  6. Yes the names “Law” and “Chaos” do not correspond to the same things in Moorcock’s writings as D&D. I do believe that system was from ‘Three Hearts and Three Lions’ which also produced the Paladin class.

  7. Mark Tygart That’s definitely an option, and for some campaigns/gaming groups that could work great, but it also means the PCs will largely be reacting to what other people do rather than taking action on their own initiative, which is a style of play that I try to avoid if possible.

  8. Sebastian Baker I like an open ended game. I have found as a player and DM that sometimes the best laid plans get scrambled like dropped eggs. My players recently started what I thought was a standard dungeon crawl. However, they found essentially an Easter egg I left. Not only found it but instantly understood what it meant and decided to act on the small little throw-away detail and hi-hoed off on a new sandbox direction. Completely unexpected and great fun.

    If the players have a job, well and good. I’ve found it fine for plot hooks. I just don’t make it necessary for them to always follow them. In many cases they come up with something more interesting.

  9. I hate to break up an interesting debate, but for the record religion for me has always been 100,000 random gods and spirits and demons that only impact the world as much as any King or dragon or other powerful thing does. In fact, for me it’s totally okay to slay one, if you can manage it.

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