Essay talk:RPG Religions, No Faith Required

I like this!
I thought pretty much the exact same thing when I started playing D&D a few years ago. I rolled a Paladin, mostly because I wanted to tank and looked through the Fighter abilities (Powers, or whatever. I hate their naming conventions) and found them to be pretty dry. I don't really RP that much, so the strange bit of hypocrisy of picking a Paladin when I'm an atheist didn't really occur to me until I actually started playing. I kept thinking "damn it. I should have just rolled a Fighter or something. I don't want to play someone religious guy". But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that atheists really can't exist in that universe. You'd have to be out of your mind to deny the power of deities, since you can see it happening all the time. I ended up kinda splitting the difference by basically using my God (who is Neutral) as a means to an end rather than someone to please or obey.

Anyway, long story short: I enjoyed reading this! Cow...Hammertime! 22:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * I was the asshole DM who enforced Christianity for one campaign. Too hard to do, gave up. Тy Serious Business Guy 22:55, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * This sort of thing is something I've noticed too. People often bitch and moan about how religion gets depicted fictionally - but when you portray it in your work of fiction as having a real effect then it becomes much as part of the "natural" (albeit fictional) world no matter how much you try to label it as "supernatural". A good case would be the "God" character in Battlestar Galactica, which is apparently against the naturalistic ethos, but is still depicted as real, genuine and with an effect - really it was no more "supernatural" than the FTL drive and mile-long aircraft carriers in space were. Scarlet A.pnggnostic 23:23, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * When I don't play paladins and clerics, I have to resist making scientist wizards. In the fictional universe, 'magic' is observable, has rules, occurs in nature, and presumably is studied. It would be as real as physics, and they'd need another word for 'unexplained phenomenon that we don't know how it works or even if it exists at all.' If the study of magic is all mysterious like alchemy, it(and possibly society) obviously isn't advanced to the point where they have a scientific method yet. Sort of like pre-biology naturalists. So no scientist wizards, unfortunately. ±[[File:knightoftldrsig.png]]KnightOfTL;DR longissimus non legeri 23:32, 26 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Which is a shame, because if they didn't have the foggiest about how it actually worked in terms of cause and effect, then you wouldn't expect them to be very good wizards, would you? Scarlet A.pngtheist 00:03, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * It's possible that they've figured out some cause/effect mechanisms, not unlike early civilizations using physics and even what would be called chemistry in the modern day. I am not sure if ancient china had a version of the scientific method, but they definitely figured out gunpowder. This matches up with the idea of various 'schools' of magic: they may not have figured out exactly why and how various invocations produce repeatable effects, but they are already passing down what they have figured out as secretive master/apprentice traditions. For all we know, a good portion of their methods is mumbo-jumbo; not unlike how both bunk treatments and active ingredients arise from previous forms of medicine. Hopefully as time passes and more is discovered, the extra stuff will be dropped in favor of the things that produce actual effects. Until those bunk incantations and other stuff get picked up and become... alternative magic?
 * ... I am not sure how I got from point A to point B in this post.±[[File:knightoftldrsig.png]]KnightOfTL;DR walls of text while-u-wait 01:11, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, the Chinese were not looking for Gunpowder, or anything gunpowder could do. It was trying to find an immorality potion. It was more a really lucky hit. --Revolverman (talk) 01:18, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Huh, you learn a new thing every day. Then again, that's how it always goes, right? People looked for the philosopher's stone, too.±[[File:knightoftldrsig.png]]KnightOfTL;DR walls of text while-u-wait 01:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
 * Huh, you learn a new thing every day. Then again, that's how it always goes, right? People looked for the philosopher's stone, too.±[[File:knightoftldrsig.png]]KnightOfTL;DR walls of text while-u-wait 01:33, 27 April 2012 (UTC)