/tg/ - Traditional Games

We're running a low-fantasy setting, so religion and politics are fairly involved. Be prepared for autism.

The game is set in a small duchy, which used to be an independent kingdom a couple years earlier. The old King and his family decided to convert to a major religion in order to gain some prestige and butter up to their far more powerful neighbors. Before that, they were pagans similar to the old Slavs mixed heavily with Irish folklore. So, while the aristocracy (in order to butter up to their recently-converted King) followed suit converting, the peasants still follow their old beliefs mixed with some teachings from the new Church.

At the time, the new Church is mostly composed of foreigners. All of them are somewhat involved in the matters of the court - some act as advisers, others as teachers, while some are all about converting the peasants and destroying any trace of the old faith. To do this, they hired scribes, bards and others to go out and make stories that will blend the old beliefs with the Church' teachings.

The members of the new Church are also constantly fighting among themselves - since they came from different neighboring kingdoms, they have different political allegiances. So right now they want to infiltrate the Court appearing as one group, while each priest is trying to get the King to ally with his home-kingdom. That way, in case some shit happens, they'll have a backdoor to their enemy territory through the recently converted Kingdom.

Anyway, after a Holy War was declared on the infidels far south (part because they were infidels, part because the two neighboring kingdoms were on the verge of bankruptcy because of their constant infighting), the neighboring kingdoms basically occupied the recently converted Kingdom and annexed it as a duchy. They left their priest-puppets in charge of the Duchy (more about that later) and forced the old knights into exile. The priests are now still fighting among themselves over who gets to be the head-priest, since the guy currently in charge is slowly going insane.

Meanwhile, the exiled knights are trying to organize a resistance and take back the throne, but even they aren't united in their cause - on one hand, you have the converted knights who want to stay loyal to the new Church, and on the other hand you have the guys who were punished for daring to remain loyal to their roots and not convert. And both sides are hated equally by the peasants.

Anyway, the Duchy "officially" belongs to one of the two neighboring kingdoms. The other kingdom gave it up after it went bankrupt, and realized that it wouldn't be economically feasible to continue the war. They have since started trading with everyone - including the infidels - in order to fill up their coffins. Of course, since the Duchy is in the middle of their trade route, the infidel traders are passing through it. They tend to be more welcome in the parts of the Duchy that's aligned with the merchant-kingdom. They are also slowly trying to spread their influence there, teaching people about their exotic lands and offering them spices and shit for future favors. The other parts of the Duchy are kicking them out on sight.

>>211107 (continued, body was too long)

The "winning" kingdom is by far the strongest and largest at the moment. They too almost went bankrupt in the war, but due to the help from the Church managed to pull through. Of course, this means that the Church is now in control of the entire country. Their armies were mostly drafted peasants, who were led by a saintly-figure (yes, a Joan d'Arc expy). Because she claimed to hear the voice from God himself, and because she claimed that the Church should focus more on the spiritual parts than the material, she became a political enemy of the Church. She got declared a heretic and was burned, while the Church started consolidating their power. Their King was already in their hands, so he obliged with whatever they demanded of him.

The Joan-expy's trusted generals were slowly removed from position of power, and stationed as marshals in the recently annexed Duchy. Most of them are pissed off about this (since they've been delegated to an unimportant backwater), others enjoy the power this gives them (since they're far away from the Church and the King, and are able to do whatever). The guy in charge of the Duchy, however, went mad from sorrow. He drinks himself into a stupor every night, hosts lavish feasts in her honor (which is basically spitting in the Church's face), punishes unbelievers and criminals in most gruesome ways, all for his "beloved". And his right-hand man is an infidel drug lord who keeps him drugged so he can take over the criminal underworld of the duchy and eradicate any threats to his power - which includes other priests and clergymen.

So that's where the players jump in. They're hired as guards for a traveling merchant, and have to go through this clusterfuck of politics, religion, armies and shit while trying to eke a living. Then they get involved, and shit just spirals out of there.

Oh yeah, and magic is slowly coming back. And it's not the usual "shoot fireballs" stuff, but insane Lovecraftian horrors that may be related to God (who itself might be an insane Lovecraftian horror).

>>211108

Those last two sentences. I wanna hear more, and how it tangles with the religions.

Also, if possible, what the "infidels'" faith is.

>>211171

The "infidels" and the main religion share many similarities, considering how they originate from the same ancient religion. Basically, where the teachings of the main religion end, the infidels claim that there's more that was revealed to their prophets. According to them, the main religion is an incomplete version of their religion. The "main" religion believes its all hogwash, and that what they accept as the holy scripture is all there is.

The two churches also have a different political importance. The main Church is like an institution, which became involved in all matters educational, philosophical, religious, medical, juridical and so on. After a huge plague (which might be magical in origin) wiped out the old empire (resulting in it collapsing, then being overtaken by barbarians, then divided into the modern kingdoms and duchies) they were the guys in charge of keeping things working. You needed a doctor? The Church has an entire branch devoted to studying and performing holy medicine. You need a teacher? They're the guys that kept all the old knowledge safe. Their word is Law. That's why they exist alongside the nobility (and the slowly rising merchants) as a caste of their own. The nobility is more focused on personal glories and warfare, while the clergy handles the bureaucracy.

Meanwhile, the infidels weren't as well established as the main branch. They sprung up in a land that was constantly torn up by warfare, with many warring clans always fighting among each other for resources and dominance. So their beliefs are more focused on keeping everything under control through military strength and having a common enemy to fight against. For them, the guy in charge of the army should also be the guy in charge of the church. And because the religion was partially invented to keep the many clans in check, it's a hodgepodge mess of various ideas and beliefs. Each clan had a "prophet" which decided to bow down to their King (who is the highest prophet of them all). Each prophet brought with him some rules and rituals from his clan. They're slowly undergoing reorganizing their beliefs into a coherent set of rules, instead of the current situation where you have paradoxical rules like "you shouldn't hurt innocents" and "nonbelievers are never innocent".

There's also the differences between how God is perceived: while the main church believes that the collapse of the empire and God being silent is because they sinned (and are using that to remain in power by guilt-tripping everyone into obeying them), the heretics believe that God is simply an uncaring asshole and that they were made to serve Him, so obedience is a virtue.

>>211227 (continued)

As for the whole magic part, this is where shit gets weird.

Basically, according to the ancient religion from which both the main church and the infidels evolved, the "powers that be" are split into two camps: those who decided to make the world, and those who decided to have nothing to do with the whole Genesis thing. When the first group started making the world, they had to set down some basic rules as to how stuff works - in the beginning, all they had is pure Chaos. So they started by separating it into manageable parts, and they took upon themselves to keep these parts working. As they worked, they slowly shed parts of their beings that weren't important to their job - so the guy in charge of Earth had nothing to do with Water, or the guy in charge of Fire couldn't affect Time. Things like that. Basically, the old gods became specialized programs in charge of certain aspects of creation.

The main religion and the infidels say that these beings were part of a greater whole, God, and that they were actually his angels. The things that remained behind are the demons. The other religions (the pagans, if you will) still consider them gods unto their own.

So, when the gods made the world, they also decided what can happen and what can't happen. They laid down all the rules. They became the rules. And, in the process, became boring automatons. Meanwhile, the things that remained behind were endless. They could do whatever the fuck they want. For them, time, death or space mean jack shit. And they saw what happened to their long-lost relatives, and decided to help them in any way they can - which means breaking the world apart and having them slowly wake up from performing their duties.

Magic is what happens when the Outside gods try to wake up their cousins. Something that should not be happens. A glitch in the program that is reality. Every monster, every wizard, every magical catastrophe that happened is because the Outside gods decided to mess with the real world. And it's usually on the rise before a major catastrophe happens - like a huge war or a plague that wipes out half the civilized world.

So shit's about to get real.

>>211239 (continued, for the last time)

Forgot to mention one part. Reality doesn't have a "defense" mechanism against magical incursions. So every time magic starts happening, it's there to stay. The gods that were in charge of fixing reality are too busy trying to keep it running in order to remedy the bugs.

Monsters that weren't there before will start spontaneously spawning. The dead will rise if they don't undergo proper burial rituals. Stuff like that.

bumping for more

>>211241

Anon you kidnapped from the other thread here, this is some good shit.

The whole politics thing is a colossal clusterfuck, and I had to read it twice, to understand it.

That's a good thing.

I'll steal some of it, but just in case my players do something really stupid. I plan on doing a campaign that is smaller in scope, at least for the first parts.

Don't worry, I'll tell my players I was inspired by vidya. Kinda like how you snuck some TES in, with the gods and the anti-gods.

My way of handling it is pretty shit, but here we go.

In a lowish urban (kind of) fantasy setting I'm running, I just have some generic Monotheistic faith called "Altoism". Named after the prophet Alto, who converted the lands of the Old World to his new monotheistic religion with the help of three disciples: David, Magnus, and James. At first they were nothing but four wandering mad men, until they started to do miracles that enchanted the common folk, eventually catching the eye of King Charles Carol of Franconia.

Charles converted after subjugating the Kings of Reikland and Carcassone (East Germany and France, basically), attributing his victories to God. Now a few hundred years later, Altoism is the dominant faith in the world. Having overtaken both the old Terran Imperial Cult and the Warrior cults of the Barbarians.

However there's a split in the Church. In the south, in the Octavian Imperium, the Imperator disputes the Grand Theologian's proclamation the Holy Empire of Alto is the true sucessor to the Terran Empire and has set up the high priest as a "anti-Pope" of sorts. The Altoists loyal to the Imperium declare the Grand Theologian to be a fraud, gathering around the new Patriarch.

This angers the current Emperor, Siegfried von Heissen, who views the Imperium as the dying remnant of a long gone time period. To make matters worse, it's said the Grand Theologian himself might announce a holy war against the Imperium. With the Kingdom of Lyon, the Confederacy of Savoi, and the city of Drakul caught in the middle.

All the while Nord pirates pillage, loot, and burn to their hearts content. Still worshiping their Frozen Gods who sleep in the north pole.

There is a spirit world. Mostly just Nature Spirits, wandering Ghosts, and servants of the so called "God of Humor". All of whom taunt any Monk unlucky enough to be visiting the planes with fleshly desires. Shaman don't mind it though.

Well, I'm running a high fantasy setting where all the gods have all gone Cthulhu–they're buried in the underworld, dead yet dreaming.

This hasn't done much to weaken the grip of a fairly large theocratic state, who now just does the whole catholic thing to cover for the fact that no real prophet-kings have been born for centuries.

It also hasn't stopped the practice of thaumaturgy, although thaumaturges these days are basically all mad scientists, as exposing yourself to what's left of the minds of the gods drives people a very special brand of crazy.

>>215197

There's a bit more, if you're interested.

Most weapons in the setting are the regular, non-magic kind. However, there are some magical weapons, stuff of legend, that are capable of pulling off some insane shit.

Basically, for a weapon (or anything man-made, really) to become magical, it needs to be imbued with a Black Shard. The shards are weird, tiny crystalline things that will bind themselves to an item, and give it strange powers. The imbued item will slowly turn hardier, lighter, stronger than its non-magical counterparts. And as time goes on, the shard will start changing the imbued item - making it burning to the touch, capable of cutting through rocks and stuff like that. The most legendary of these items can't even be recognized as being of this world: covered in crystalline spikes, glowing with an unnatural fire, capable of warping flesh just by touching it or driving people insane.

The side effect of wielding a magic item are twofold: One, the magic will slowly warp its user, making him stronger, tougher, and more and more inhumane. Just as the user's preferences and characteristics make the shard mutate, so does the shard in turn make the user mutate into something else. Vicious cunning, inhuman toughness, ability to take insane amount of damage and still stand (and heal) up to turning them immortal. Two, the Black Shards resonate with each other, and drive their wielders to find more of the Black Shards. So all those wars in the ancient times? Yeah, Black Shard wielders fighting each other over their mystical weapons and artifacts. The Black Shards make everyone go Highlander.

The Church is aware of the Black Shards, and has been collecting them for ages. Part because they want to use them for their own cause, part because they're terrified of what would happen if the Black Shards started imbuing people left and right. Since magic went dead, however, the magic weapons (and the Black Shards) now only appear as incredibly ornate swords, armor, cups and stuff like that - which is why everyone gives the Church shit for collecting incredibly expensive stuff instead of living an ascetic life. Of course, most priests don't even remember the original purpose of collecting the gaudy stuff, so they became greedy assholes.

This leads to a rather fucked up situation. Since nobody really knows how a Black Shard item looks like (because magic is dead) the priests began giving some of that ornate shit they had lying around as gifts to the Lords and Kings. And once magic comes back, all those items will activate - and the mentioned Lords and Kings will start killing each other off until there's only one remaining. A huge war is looming on the horizon.

I wanted the Church to have a reasoning behind the shit they do. So, why are they collecting expensive items and living like kings? Because you don't know which one of those expensive items is magic. And since magic makes you insane or turns you into a monster, it's better to be with someone who knows how to and has the resources to deal with such shit. Why are they in charge of education and everything bureaucratic? Because they know that when the magic apocalypse begins (and it will) you need to be prepared - good weapons, lots of food, supplies, medicine and so on. Why are they so interested in spreading out? Because they feel they're the only ones who know how to deal with magical shit. Why are they so buddy-buddy with the Kings? Because you need someone to fight your battles for you. And so on. Of course, they fucked up and became greedy assholes who don't even remember the reason their order was found in the first place.

Oh yeah, and in the case someone gets all the shards together in one place? He'll resurrect / become the Divine Ram, a primordial war god destined to break the world and wake up the slumbering gods. Have fun.

>>215370

I don't like the whole MacGuffin Run with those Shards, but it's still a neat concept.

And for curiosity's sake, what caused the Black Shards? The Ungods?

>>215657

The whole Black Shards thing won't happen for quite a while (in the setting's timeline, anyway). For now, the shards mostly just give the imbued weapon some bonus or, if you find an artifact-level item (think Excalibur), a spell-like ability. When magic does make a serious comeback, the shards will also start affecting their wielders more.

Now it gets meta. This is because, a) I wanted to mess around with the idea of a weapon that grows along with the character wielding it, and b) because I wanted to give fighters and other non-magic classes a leg up when shit starts happening (wizards and clerics don't exist in the setting and aren't playable). So when dragons start showing up, your fighter dude will have to wield a shard-imbued weapon to even be able to even scratch the fucker. It's either that or bring an entire army along with you.

This also ends up with everyone being on the lookout for the shard-imbued items, because they can give you a leg up when shit hits the fan (and it will). So there'll be all sorts of fighting, intrigue and blackmailing over powerful items, which in turn will drive their owners insane and paranoid, forcing them to collect even more shard-infused items. So when the apocalypse hits, it won't be because an evil god came back or whatever - no, the apocalypse is going to be a bunch of epic-level murderhobos rampaging across the land. Just players being players.

So when you run into a guy that describes himself as "just another human fighter", you know you're fucked. The guy probably has all traces of his personality washed away by the magic items he's carrying around, and is now only a tool in service of an eldritch abomination. This means that, everyone has to have at least some backstory, a family tree, some hobbies or some depth behind them or they'll be considered suspicious in-setting. This is mostly to make the players actually put some fucking effort into their characters and roleplay for fucking once.

>>216191 (continued)

As for what the Black Shards are, they're quite literally parts of an Ungod.

As said before, all magic manifestation is the Ungods trying to break apart creation by introducing things that should not be into the world. So when they find a weak spot in reality (usually after some horrible calamity, or some place that's remote as fuck), they start seeping through.

Those parts of them that come through start infecting reality, and make chickens give birth to snakes that grow up to be dragons. Or make the drowned come back to life. Or make beasts intelligent and cannibalistic. All of those things have something from beyond in them, some Ungod trying to force his way into the world.

However, this corruption works both ways - so once the Ungod makes contact with the real world, the real world makes contact with the Ungod as well. As he introduces some unknown horror into the world, so does the real world make the Ungod more defined. More real. He leaves a part of himself behind. A certain pattern emerges: one guy will become obsessed with creating monsters, one guy will start fucking around with weather, stuff like that. This also means that all monsters made by the same Ungod share their memories and thoughts, since they're part of the same entity. This also includes all freak weather having a hive mind, or why the undead all act the same way - they're all part of a greater whole.

The Black Shards are all part of the "Divine Ram" entity. Ram, as in battering ram. One Ungod did the impossible and managed to slip through in its entirety - but only after breaking himself into countless tiny pieces. And once all the pieces come together, the Ungod will reform on the other side of reality, break down the wall that separates this world from the other side, and end it all.

>>215657

I (maybe?) think I understand what this anon is feeling. Or maybe I am projecting?

I once played the Onimusha video game, and went into it completely blind. The first ten minutes or so were fucking awesome.

>fuck yeah! I'm a samurai dude, and zombies are here! Of fuck this is awesome!

Then the game took away my sword and gave me some hypermagic souledge animoo bullshit. I finished the game, because I'm a stubborn bastard. But the 99% of the game where I was supersamurai dude with the ubercool souledge shonen magic shit was garbage compared to those first couple of minutes where I was just a mundane guy with a sword fighting zombies.

Empire of the Petal Throne had a really good suppliment on religions and cults

unfortunately that setting is such distilled off-the-walls autism that it is almost impossible to export into anything else

>>216199

Nah, you're still going to use normal weapons. In fact, if you care about your character, they're the best way to keep them sane and still kicking. Shard-imbued weapons are incredibly rare, and all of them end up turning your character into a horrible, ram-headed monstrosity devoted to murder. They're still extremely powerful, and are the best bet against some more powerful entities (when they show up, which isn't going to be anytime soon). So it's much better to trust cold hard steel.

Basically, if you decide to wield one such item, it's a death sentence for your character. Either they'll end up hunted down by the other wielders, or they'll turn into one monstrosity (and become unplayable). The idea is that you either sacrifice what you are for power, or you actively roleplay and build relationships with other characters in hopes of forming your own warband (with the players as the leaders and key figures) and go out to reshape the kingdom according to your ideas. Murderhoboing and being a munchkin leads to demonic possession.

That's also the reason why the Church is behind promoting various artists and scientists to work for them. And why they're so big on educating people. Sure, it's part because they're vainglorious asses, but also because those artists and scientists come up with various new weapons (or improve already existing ones). So when the apocalypse hits, humanity will be prepared, with gunpowder, cannons, solid steel and so on. Magic must be defeated by technology. Or else everyone's fucked.

So I was gonna run a Fantasy Craft game but we ended up not playing anything for about 2 months and I got impatient (currently preparing for a pirate campaign wish me luck on that) but I had to make a religion *below* in order to properly account for the world and the alignments I never got to fully flesh it out but it's their if you wanna try and make it something.

{the email I sent to my GM to hear his opinion}

Okay so it's called "Personal Religion" the Idea being that their is no one god instead their are 4 universal beings who cannot directly effect the world but they can create gods for individual people. The beings are Good,Evil,Order and Chaos. They will create a god based on a persons Ideal but in their own image. For example: Justice.

Good would create a god who would focus on helping the individual man one crime at a time. So say you the god were to find a man in the streets getting mugged, He would intervene immediately in order to help that one man.

Evil would create a god who focused on personal justice dealing with the "eye for an eye" philosophy. So the god finds a man being mugged, he walks past without intervening because the mugger has done nothing to him.

Order would create a god who focused on helping the whole as opposed to the few. So he finds a man being mugged, he intervenes in order to gain information on the mugging ring that has plagued this village and stop it at it's core.

Chaos would create a god based on the idea that society is to blame for crime and the only way to truly stop it is by changing societies views. So the god finds a man being mugged, he doesn't intervene instead calls people to watch and see as the society they have created has summoned the scum of the earth and uses this crime as an example and starts political social change essentially becoming a radical activist.

I wrote religion as a very strong force in the history of my current game setting, and it also has significant relevance to international and interracial dynamics. For example, just to shake things up, it was religious leaders who stopped the last big continental war. Both side's representatives talked it out on their own and realized that their religions were actually pretty much compatible and had the same ultimate benevolent goal. Thus, the much more religious side didn't have to repel the other guys in every single way on sheer moral principle like the thought, and the moderately religious guys got the chance to do what they needed to on the super religious side's land. At that point, since neither side really had any other reason to fight, and by all reasoning their gods gave each other the thumbs up, peace broke out and both sides benefited from each other.

Then, so thoroughly unified, completely steamrolled the other two major races who's religions and social orders simply would not play ball at all. Not genocide though, just armies so vastly superior that it was a "march straight to the capital and demand a quick surrender" situation. Thus the content reached total peace without things being nearly as ugly as they might have been because two religions were so compatible they made an alliance so strong it ended things nice and quick. Plus, the same religious teaching that helped the winners unify also held that killing off entire races and such wasn't cool, even if conquest is necessary for the greater good. So they won as gently as one can reasonably subdue an entire nation.

Suffice it to say, this fairly recent history really affects how different societies regard each other. Basically ranging from "brothers who look different" to "I would murder you all if I could only get away with it." However, every time a player rolls a PC, they always make theirs non-religious. "My character never really cared what the priests say," etc. As such, the religious history has hardly come up at all so far in actual practice. Though PCs are starting to learn it anyway because matters of faith and the various religion's closely guarded arcane knowledge may not be necessary to buying a sword or getting directions to the local haunted cave, but are super important when it comes to saving the world.