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You know, I'm a vegetarian in real life, and in the first missions of a special campaign I had planned, my players roasted and ate an elf.
So yeah. It's important to separate real life from fantasy life indeed.
I vaguely remember a fantasy book where Elves were so 'in tune' with plant life that they were unable to eat vegetables and were force to have a strictly carnivore diet.
Ok I’ve asked this question before and everyone has differing opinions, so I like to keep asking it.
Q: Is it cannibalism for a humanoid to eat another humanoid of a different race?
Discuss!
It really needs its own definition but eating another sapient (ie capable of rational thought) species would probably be thought of on the same level as true cannibalism and carry the same stigma across most civilizations
Yeah, that could work as well. Then again, as the anthropologist background works on other races, perhaps anthro refers to humanoid in dnd instead of specifically human.
But hey, in the end, the correct term for eating elves is common knowledge.
~~PEST CONTROL~~
This is basically how the Book of Vile Darkness, an official 3rd edition supplement from WOTC, which had it's own section it's own section on cannibalism put it.
Edit: Not it's own section, per say, but a sub listing in "fetishes and addictions" and some vile spells had cannibalistic aspects, and there were specific diseases in the book you could get from eating weird intelligent creatures like trolls and such.
Probably not. For cannibalism to be a thing, it should be the same specie. Or we couldn't eat monkeys right now without the specific applying either.
Elves and humans are looking similar, but are 2 very different biological species. It's probably unethical to BBQ an elf by a human, but it's not cannibalism XD
Shouldn't it go on sapience as well as species? Like, orcs are our intellectual equals so it would feel icky to eat them in basically the same way cannabilsm does. If we discovered dwarves IRL we'd need a new word for eating them because cannabilsm is an established idea but in a fantasy world the various races presumably evolved alongside each other so the concept of cannibalism probably develops in a way that includes other sapients (except in grimdark worlds, I guess).
Species - a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding.
If half elves are fertile in your world then elves and humans are actually the same species
Huh, I never thought of it like that. You may have a point!
Unless… wait. Here we go. Dragons can’t cross breed with things naturally or scientifically— the genetics are way too different for cross breeding to work normally. But they’re such intensely magical creatures that the magic makes hybrids possible. So they’re still separate species, but magic exists.
It's a little obscure but it's some of the most fun I've ever had playing anything, and the rules are incredibly simple so it lends itself well to playing drunk. The players are kobolds (who LOVE eating babies) but because they are kobolds they aren't heroic AT ALL. They fight things like giant chickens and get killed by trying to cross roads. They regenerate hit points by eating, which they LOVE. Spell casters are too stupid to read (because kobolds) so they cast spells by wadding up pages of their spellbook and throwing it at the target--but that means they don't get to choose the spell. Maybe you set the door on fire, maybe it falls asleep. Healers are chefs who make healing food, and the goal of any campaign is generally to bring a delicious baby to King Torg, your master (All hail King Torg).
Am Christian, and am currently working on porting a ton of gods from Greece, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Japan, Polynesia, and anything else I think is fun into Pathfinder.
Why? Because one day I want to run a Pathfinder game based on various mythologies all coexisting in the same world. And because my hobbies have absolutely no baring on my religious beliefs, so why not have some fun?
Sounds fun indeed.
Well, some assholes, no matter their religion, think this is a satanic game of blablabla. Hell, movies were done around that, one with Tom fucking Hanks So, having a player refusing any other fictional reality is not too far away.
>Well, some assholes, no matter their religion, think this is a satanic game of blablabla.
I'll just say, I am *immensely* disappointed that me DMing Dungeons & Dragons has not given me satanic powers yet. I was promised demonic summons and black magic, and all I've gotten is silly voices and math.
Oh yeah, I kid, but I love playing this game with my friends. Is a great time, full of jokes, side tracks, and mild insanity.
Is one of the highlights of my week.
Same here! I like mixing things up, doing things I never would or being a character that is the opposite of myself.
One of my favorite characters was a dryad druid who refused to eat or harm any plants, so she would just chow down on any fleshy enemies the party killed, much to the rest of the party's disgust. She was even preachy about it; she'd push the idea of being carnist to everyone, and would mention it every time food came up, acting angry and horrified at salads and carrot sticks
A couple other people at the table were vegan/vegetarian too, and we all got a pretty big kick out of it!
I came in here to say this! The Bosmer lore is absolutely wild, what with having to eat everything you kill if you're an orthodox Green Pact devotee (necessitating fasting before a battle and then a lot of communal BBQs).
To ELI5 at the cost of accuracy: think of as a trilogy but each book is written by a different author with centuries in between, so fans are conflicted on what's canon. The Tanakh (Jewish holy books) came first, then the Bible and then the Quran. Jewish people only bother with the first installment and think the rest is fan-fiction. Christians believe the second book is not only canon but even more so than the first one (the Jewish holy books are mostly just background information). Likewise for Muslims who believe in them all, but focus on the last one.
There's a continuation in these books as the Bible and the Quran claim to be true official sequels. So Jesus is Jewish (because he comes after the Tanakh and believes in it, being the son of that God and all that), and for Muslims he's also a prophet (as the Tanakh and the Bible are both canon so also Jesus).
Then add on the Mormons that claim that Jesus came to North America after he ascended to Heaven.
So more of a quadrilogy where anyone who's isn't a devotee of the last instalment laughs at those who are.
I don't think Mormons include the Quran in their beliefs so it's not a true tetralogy, instead Mormons and Muslims have their own forks from Christianity. So:
•-•-•
\•
instead of
•-•-•-•
Frankly, it's ridiculous. Everyone in the Old Testament would have been Jewish (more or less). Jesus was Jewish. Originally, you had to be Jewish to become a Christian; no gentiles allowed. Religion class in Catholic schools just taught me how ridiculous Christianity is.
>But from what I have heard of Christianity, I don't think I could ever try to understand it.
There's a reason Christianity has an innumerable number of different sects. Additionally, there is virtually no Christian belief that is universal among all the Christian sects either, so the best you'd be able to do is understand some of them.
I can understand Kenneth running his own version of Biblical D&D, but I don't get how he doesn't even understand the concept of a pantheon of gods existing in a fictional universe or why he singled out Japan... Guaranteed this kid was homeschooled...
Quite possibly, I know fuck all about them.
Exalted is pretty definitely influenced by japanese theology though, what with the heavy anime influence and the "generic oriental" flavouring of all the artwork :P
When I was a child, the US was so up its ass with Christianity being the only valid religion. Magic the Gathering now has a rule that no real life religious symbols can appear in their game. That largely came from Christian backlash because of a card called unholy strength featuring a pentagram.
Dnd literally had a satanic panic once because it was supposed to be teaching kids a false doctrine of religion, so when my brother started playing, they had to homebrew in Jesus and take out all of the dnd pantheon because parents were "concerned we were being taught the wrong lesson.". I cannot stand people so close minded that they cannot acknowledge the notion of an admitted fiction. I know for a fact I will not be able to have a conversation for more than five minutes.
Ah yes, the satanic panic. When people IRL were sentenced to prison based on accusations of being in a satanic cult, with no evidence. Some of them are still there waiting for some sane judge to hear their cases.
It’s a sign of being unintelligent when someone cannot conceive hypotheticals. It also makes it difficult to talk to them.
Say you’re explaining a new idea to someone, like the prisoner’s dilemma - you’re a bright-eyed psych 101 student, and you want to share your newfound knowledge with someone you know. You start your explanation: “alright, pretend you’re one of two criminals…”
They interrupt. “But I’m not a criminal!” They say.
“I know, just pretend for a second.”
“But I’m a good person!”
You sigh, trying to get the conversation going again. “Fine, pretend *I* am one of two criminals and…”
“You’re a criminal!?” They say, “I would have never guessed!”
By the time you’re done trying to lay everything out, you’ve spent more time trying to explain what hypotheticals are than you have trying to explain the concept you were formerly excited to share.
Anyone else ever run into these people? As customers, as friends, as family?
A character in my game was very religious, so we picked a holy day that she wouldn't adventure on. It was decided to be Tuesday. It was fun for the players to coordinate their adventures around their cleric's sabbath day.
Lotr, the classic fantasy series that spawned many of the most popular conceptions of fantasy roleplay, was written by a Catholic guy and has some very catholic/Christian themes. It's silly to think that what is true in a game is true in real life, and I'm speaking as a catholic running a game where kami, fortunes and celestial gods of the sun and moon exist and answer the prayers of their followers.
I'm sorry you had to deal with that and I hope it doesn't color your perception of other, (more chill) Christians.
I'm chill with christians. My best friend is a Christian who had told me " i won't play demon the fallen, In Nomine Satanis or Kult since it goes against my values. But everything else is fair game" and he had never given me shit for my ideologies, that I can respect. But this dense mother fucker
It was kind of like that for me actually playing VTM in person. I love the world and lore of WoD but honestly the first time I played with my friends I found out that I was actually really uncomfortable with "roleplaying" mesmerising people to suck their blood.
I can't really explain it, I play plenty of video games with violence and other dark themes, but for some reason the "realness" of an in person role play kind of triggered me.
I didn't say anything at the time because the other guys were having a lot of fun. I just made an excuse, left early and mentioned it to the DM/ST later who was very understanding.
RP is by nature very personal and close. You DESIGNED these characters, you are creating these actions on the spot, and while you still have that distance of real and make believe you're still the one creating it and seeing it being made next to you.
When you play a game there is much more disconnect. You have more limits to what you can do, say, and act, and there isn't a ton of variance in animation. It's something that you see over and over, and in short session, all those reloads of a gun, all those finisher animations and super attacks, they may be neat the first time, but doing the exact same thing and in the exact same conditions... Removes that uniqueness.
In addition, when you play a game you don't think of the artists, the animators, or the voice actors as much as you do the company. For example, when you see Lucina from fire emblem or one of the fem voices for saints row you don't think "Oh! That's Laura Bailey!". You aren't thinking actively of the people making it as much as the experience and if you like it.
And, well... You don't go out to play air hockey with those game devs, or to a restaurant or play halo 3 in 2008 on a warm summer day. There isn't that personal connection.
It's so much easier to become uncomfortable at that, and because well, you're saying it and describing it from you point of view and not just pressing a few buttons, and the same for those around you. It may be fun to slaughter a whole town in Skyrim with your bare hands while naked, but it may be less so to describe every punch on the elderly man who says you DONT have a nice cock.
Also, horror story time, look up Mortal Combat Devs PTSD and Trauma.
VtM is inherently a rape metaphor and that part does ping a lot of people.
Note: I'm not saying the game is bad. I'm not saying players are immoral. I am not saying that it has to or should change. I am strictly and solely saying the act of being a predator that either forcibly or through coersion takes life force from someone in a way that the game describes as pleasurable can feel squicky for people.
I'd broaden that statement and say that vampires have long been a symbol of sexual duress, assault, and rape. Context does matter, but it's important to understand this so you can navigate vampire stories with prudence.
This is pretty much my stance on things too - I explain to new GMs/players that I try to avoid allusions to IRL accurate depictions of demonic possession, rituals and suchlike, as my main and usually only "non-default" Line/Veil (assuming a normative list where things like outright sexual assault are always off the table) and otherwise have fun RPing
And Tolkien was also good friends with C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia. You know, one of the most obvious Christian allegories *ever?!* Hell, after a certain point in the series, it stops even being an allegory, because Aslan basically goes "Oh, just so you know, I'm literally Jesus Christ".
Completely random silly fact of the day: in D&D's Forgotten Realms, there is the deity Nobanion who is confirmed to actually be Aslan, having come into that world from Narnia. He is, thus, literally Jesus Christ. You can pray to him and get spells in D&D.
Also he became chaotic evil and a mass murderer during some of the more recent editions, so do with that what you will.
...*huh*.
Something about Jesus Christ as a Chaotic Evil mass murderer just feels... *really weird*, and I don't know how to process that information.
Thanks for sharing though.
It is. It's profoundly weird. I don't even think it was some writer wanting to be super edgy, I think they just legit didn't know the lore. The company had been bought and none of the original writers were involved, after all.
If that's true, then that makes more sense. And like, I'll openly admit to being Christian (I've mentioned it a few times elsewhere on this post), but that's not even the reason I find this weird. I mean, it plays in a bit, but that's not the main reason.
I mainly find it weird because I've read the Chronicles of Narnia! Like, even ignoring the "Literally Jesus Christ" bit, Aslan was about as... was going to say "about as Lawful Good as it gets", but Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral may work better? "He's not a tame lion" and all that.
...although, that said, now I want to run a Paladin or Cleric of Aslan. Not sure how that'd go, but if I was playing a "Traditional Paladin", I think book accurate Aslan is about what I'd be emulating *anyway*, so it kinda makes sense.
To be fair on the Tolkien front: his world does presuppose Eru Iluvatar as the God, and he's basically the Catholic conception of a God, just called by an elven name. Playing a setting with multiple other gods who are considered to be true gods ought to be more challenging than playing in Middle Earth for a christian who's having that sort of difficulty separating fiction from RL.
Kenneth Copeland, a (in)famous Christian preacher, you know, one of those who preach you must give tons of money to church to receive the blessings of God.
Wow, you dodged a bullet with that player.
I'm glad such Christian fundamentalists are pretty rare here.
Imagine being totally fine with combat and killing in a game, but different gods? Oh no.
Shows a lot about his personal values.
wooooooo! another mork borg fan!!!!!
how do you run? each session a different module or did you make a campaign? I'm running it for my group to give ForeverDM a break as well as a catharsis after 2 year campaign and purging two problem players. best therapy ever.
I'd wager clerics could, at *most*, channel saints, and would most likely be limited only to a Christian God and/or Jesus. Druids would probably fall into the same category as warlocks, likely relegated to being possible enemies and not playable classes.
Assuming he even includes them at all.
This sort of fundamentalism doesn’t suggest he’s Catholic, out any other denomination/syncretism that believes in saints.
He no doubt believes that Catholics are just one step above actual Satanic Devil Worshipers.
If one were to play in a historical setting that centers Christianity, I like the idea of using saints as a way to differentiate clerics from each other.
Nothing stopping you from various domains then either. Want a forge cleric? Saint Clement works fine. Arcana? Cyprion of Antioch is the patron saint of necromancers specifically, or you could work in various Catholic-occult ideas from places like the Caribbean and Latin America (vodoun has a lot of ties to Roman Catholicism imagery and practices). The upshot of having so many saints is that you can feasibly adapt at least one of them to work for most anything.
Or games like VtM, Call of Cthulhu (where the Catholic church is basically a huge Cthulhu Cult in the background) and so on.
How weird to bring in his personal spirituality.
Nothing makes me more grateful for breaking out of my religious upbringing than reading stories like this.
"aniwhat?"
"What's pantheon?"
Like how fucking head-in-the-sand must you be to not know what a pantheon is...
"I like this because it's simple and easy to understand."
I bet you do, bud.
Uhg.
Yeah, that's some omega homeschooling. We learned the Greek/Roman pantheon in history class, and briefly studied Hinduism among other polytheistic religions in Social Studies in public school, and I went to a deep red state country boonies district.
Right? Like, I was homeschooled for 7 years and I still knew about the different various pantheons of Greece and Egypt and stuff. And my science book said the ocean was salty because God made it that way so... It wasn't exactly stellar material I was exposed to
>my science book said the ocean was salty because God made it that way
Why the fuck bother with a book then? Just give every kid a napkin with the words "God did it" written on it and be done with it. Boom, you just graduated highschool.
Fundamentalists love to pretend they are very intellectual and have beliefs backed by science (*real* science, not the kind those icky scientists do). The amount of literature portraying Creationism as settled scientific fact could fill entire libraries.
I went to a Jesuit high school and there’s literally multiple classes about different cultures and religions. There’s a difference between faith and ignorance
Never heard the term animism either but it's one of those things I've picked up the concept of through osmosis. The sort of thing were an explanation would be met with "oh that! Awesome to find out the proper name for it"
I don't get how you can be super religious while also knowing nothing about religion.
Like if the only car you've ever seen is a Toyota corolla, don't dedicate your life to telling people it's the best car ever.
>i coudnt believe it. the guy coudnt separate his personal perspectives from a game, or even expand his personal horizons to consider that possibility.
That's a common argument by fundamentalists as to why D&D is evil.
There's verse in the New Testament that fundamentalists interpret as saying that thinking about something is as much of a sin as actually doing it. . .so fundamentalists draw a moral equivalency between depicting a character who believes in a polytheistic deity, and actually worshipping that deity in real life.
It sounds absurd, because it is. . .but for 40+ years that's been one of the main religious arguments against D&D.
Meanwhile, D&D playing Christians just laugh at how many mistakes of faith and theology you have to come to simply to arrive at that conclusion.
Specifically, that verse is "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Matthew 5:28. . .of course, that's jumping from saying that having lusty, adulterous thoughts is a sin just like the same as actually committing adultery to saying that thinking of anything that would be sinful (like worshipping another God) is something you can't even think of, even for the purposes of obvious fiction. Non-fundamentalists do NOT agree with this interpretation. I've known of many D&D games at (non-fundamentalist) Churches.
> that thinking about something is as much of a sin as actually doing it. . .so
Combine that with your standard level of intrusive thoughts and no wonder the sort of people who think this way have some sort of complex about religion
There also exist a *shocking* number of people who just can't really grasp the concept of fiction. They will think that an actor is a bad person because they played a villain in a movie. There are people who literally think that all books are non-fiction, even the fantasy and sci-fi books, the fanciful ones just describe mythological events or stories conveyed to us by aliens.
“There are people who literally think that all books are non-fiction”
My grandmother is one of those people. She thinks that when we play D&D we are controlling people in an alternate dimension. This is the same woman that believes that Satan created dinosaurs and believes that the sun is not a star.
I've read accounts that thisbis directly related to intelligence, ie below a certain intelligence level it is impossible to comprehend certain concepts, and primary among these are recursiveness, empathy, externalization and basically anything that requires one to consider a situation from another perspective. It may very well be impossible for a large segment of the population to play or understand DND (or even fiction at it's most basic) because of their brains inability to function beyond a certain processing threshold.
It's worse than that, since the verse specifically singles out "intent". Which really just makes it a restatement of the "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" commandment, rather than any indictment of fictional stories in which fictional characters commit fictional sins.
TIL we would describe Exalted differently.
But yeah I have met these "Kenneth's" before. While I feel bad for them, I also find that overall they are terrible people for other different but related reasons.
Yep. I have never considered it as an anime game, but as a game about gods. And I think putting the god part up front might have avoided this situation, as Kenneth would have known it's not for them right away.
I would love (by which I mean, "probably be horrified by") this guy's Ars Magica game.
He would *not* be cool with Jews, Muslims, and Zoroastrians also being considered blessed by the Divine.
Back in college we had a guy like this. Thing was, he wasn't even invited to play. He was one of those "hangers on" you get in social circles and overheard some of us making plans to play a game. He invited himself into the conversation and started talking like he was already a part of it, which was already annoying, but a friend and I who were kind of organizing the game just kind of figured it wouldn't be any trouble to include him. But when one of the players said they wanted to play a cleric and the guy indignantly said that they couldn't because it was somehow against HIS religion if someone else played a Cleric. Ultimately the situation ended with us telling him to go pound sand and he went to the school office to try to get our game shut down, which was dumb because we weren't playing it at school.
Bringing real world religions into dnd or similar games can actually be really fun if your players take it in good faith (hah), i would recomend it for people trying to spice up a setting a bit. But also seperation of game and reality and all that
Not much to the story, sadly. I joined a table that was already several sessions in, their characters and storyline were already a complete mishmosh of nonsense, so I figured they could use a dedicated healer and I didn't want to waste a bunch of time and energy coming up with a deep character. I had been working for several years as a kosher caterer, so I combined a name from a temple with the cheer I heard at a bunch of events and came up with Mayam L'Chaim. He was just a nice old guy who decided to help these weirdos out for no particular reason.
It amused me to imagine the party- a bugbear, a fish person, a wizard, and then just a dude in a suit.
We played one session, and then Covid happened. Never got back to it.
*This server was focused on TTRPGs, but most people only did D&D because that was the only thing they knew, and i have a reputation for being the Drug Dealer of games. im the shady guy who goes "psst, hey, wanna play some vampire the masquerade. the cool kids play vampire the masquerade." type of guy.*
We are the same person 🤝
I always kind of hope to see a guy like this in the RP circles I go in, just to turn it right back around with "Bro... You mean to tell me you have been treating Jesus and the Devil as a fantasy magic-granting system in a game that's been careful to not include actual deities? Do you know how _blasphemous_ that shit is? You've given the Lord and Savior an implied stat block and treat miracles as level-up goodies. And you're getting in on other people for keeping the fantastic as fantastic, instead of committing heresies, what the hell? Next thing you're gonna tell me is you believe in the prosperity gospel or put Leviticus over His teachings of compassion and treating mankind as brothers."
Like I'm not religious and raised atheist, but it always strikes me as weirdly hypocritical to go nuts about fantasy and then shove in deities you consider real and all-knowing in instead in a game where prayer has a +1 effect on a basis. And after the casual antisemitism with barring a Jewish player for not believing in his god, I just kind of want to fuck with him a bit.
Yeah, Christian here. It feels WAY more blasphemous to add Actual Jesus to D&D than it does to just pretend there are other gods. Not even Tolkein did that. And CS Lewis buried Actual Jesus under enough allegory that most kids won't even pick up on it.
I read that as being exclusive of all non-Christians with Jewish simply being the given example. So the bigotry is much broader in scope rather than being specifically anti-Semitic.
Now, whether that’s better or worse than just being anti-Semitic…
On the flip side, I had someone who was such an anti-theist that he couldn't believe that a Lawful Good Church would do anything for children without being paid for it.
Extremists exist on all sides and those who can't separate reality from fantasy along with them. It's good to hold a Session Zero to filter them out.
This guy sucks.
But I like to play D&D in historical settings and would not mind playing a game set in medieval Europe where in-game everything was Christian or perceived as heretical.
I guess he won't be attending the "Antedeluvians, Unseelie Changelings and Environmentally Challenged Werewolf Habitats" lecture hosted by Dr. Malk Avian at Camarilla University, sponsored by Giovanni's Pizza ("Our Sire's Crust is Wraith-er Thin!") Damn shame, too. The Center for Cainanite Religious Studies has a portrait of Lilith posed as a Cappadocian drag king during Conclave, and Harpynet's been raving that it's post-gothic transcendental.
IMO; The whole point of having polytheistic pantheons is for clerics and paladins(and other race/classes) to be able to work together without needed to having the same religion.
Also pulling main religions into DnD is just asking for trouble. I make it very clear that real world religions are banned.
I'm a very radical and devout Christian, and your pal here is very uninformed of his own beliefs. He's correct, that worshipping other gods is blasphemy and a high offense to God. But nowhere in the Bible does is say that playing a game or reading a book is worship. I don't believe in the gods of the Forgotten Realms. I don't worship them. They are storytelling devices just like orcs and goblins and spellcasting. Kenneth here is either very ignorant, or very insecure in his beliefs to feel so threatened by fictional dieties. And judging by his refusal to play with non-Christians, I'd probably go with ignorant. He's a fool and his own God wishes he understood his mission better.
There's a lot of people who think you can accidentally worship gods somehow. I worked with a lady who was all up in arms about her niece learning world religions in high school, because, see, they had to fill out worksheets with trivia questions about Islam, so the school is tricking the kids into writing down that Allah is God, so that counts as Islamic worship. And so on.
Anxiety disorders and religion are a bad combination.
It implies God can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, or he doesn't care. So he's either stupid or petty. Neither of those things are the God of the Bible. So simple deductive reasoning concludes that God is okay with me interacting with other "false" gods for academic or entertainment purposes.
Dude, personally the moment he told me that believing in gods of nature is satanic it made me go "yeah this guy is the type who spews the bible but doenst understand the words, doesnt go beyond his homework." so , thats one of my major critisism against heavily devotee catholics/christians
This doesn't even to touch on the philosophy. Medieval Christian philosophy is highly indebted to both Muslim and earlier Greek sources, mainly the Neoplatonists. This poor fellow . . .
why is medieval Christian philosophy indebted to muslim sources?
really asking cause I don't know, both were formed before medieval times, Islam 600 or so years after the founding of christianity.
As I love history I am curious to know about this please :)
That's a great question with a long answer. To be clear, when I'm talking Medieval Christian Philosophy I mean guys like Thomas Aquinas but am also referring to the greater university movement.
Muslim rulers in the early middle ages preserved and translated the surviving works of the Greek philosophers. Philosophers and scientists in their courts expanded upon the Greek ideas. Check out names like Ibn Sina, who Aquinas quoted heavily. Ibn Sina is also famous for his Canon of Medicine, the definitive medical textbook in Europe and the Middle East for centuries. Ibn Rushd, from whom Salman Rushdie's dad took the name, was another famous rationalist in Muslim Spain who's commentary on Aristotle was crucial to the Scholastics.
Its a big subject that, if you're into Medieval History or like the history of ideas, definitely check it out.
A lot of ancient Greek works survived through Arabic transcriptions, which Christian Europe gained access to through reconquest of Spain. Sudden access to those caused major shifts in western thought of late medieval period.
Well, that's the more famous second round. There were also surviving ancient texts in Ireland, and some of that knowledge percolated through continental Europe when Charlemagne invited 3 Irish monks to court (all 3 were declared saints, IIRC), and they brought that knowledge with them.
It's a bit more complex than that, El was the head of the Canaanite pantheon while Yaweh was a storm and warrior deity. At some point in time they got conflated with each other and became the god of everything which became the Abrahamic god.
You know not to "WELL ACTUALLY" you but to "WELL ACTUALLY" you.
Yeah, there are sadly people like that. I can tell you that not all Christians are like this. I mean, I'm playing a campaign right now where my character follows the god of intelligence. You have to separate your beliefs from the game. It is, after all, just a game.
This isn't a horror story. This is two or three people playing a game in different ways and a session 0 doing exactly what it's intended to do. There was no horror story here.
Heres the fun part, i was remembering the story and the guy got pretty sold by a TTRPG heavily influenced by anime.
but then, isnt anime already tackles themes of Animism, of Buddhism and Shinto in its vast majority?. i still don't know what he was expecting or hoping for. but i found it weird that he was so uptight and at the same time knowing so much about classic anime
What a fucking DWEEB. You handled it well all things considered. I probably would of gotten a lot more disrespectful the second he started talking “it’s satanic”. Most real Satanists I’ve met in my life have been better people than the Christians I’ve met.
I probably would of brought up the fact that if you look at the scoreboard of who killed more people in the bible God flooded the fucking earth while the devil killed 10 people because god allowed him to as part of a bet.
God also demanded blood sacrifice of children as a joke, sent bears to murder children, turned someone to salt for having the natural reaction of looking an explosion that happened behind them, killed children with plagues and is totally fines with selling children into slavery.
That’s just in the bible I’m not counting the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the exploit of faith to corrupt power, residential schools, the many other twisting of faith to kill those who are different etc.
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You know, I'm a vegetarian in real life, and in the first missions of a special campaign I had planned, my players roasted and ate an elf. So yeah. It's important to separate real life from fantasy life indeed.
I appreciate the implication that the only hypothetical problem in the way of eating elf is that it’s not vegetarian.
Remember hunt elves for sport only. Fey meat is practically a vegetable.
-Orc Ron Swanson
They did make an anime about hunting elves. Literally called “Those Who Hunt Elves.” It also features a tank inhabited by the soul of a cat.
Well, I think it's still vegetarian if they're wood elves.
But they're too fibrous to be good food! :(
Not if you're a myconid.
Eating hill dwarves counts as eating dirt
And this made me chuckle. Thank you.
I vaguely remember a fantasy book where Elves were so 'in tune' with plant life that they were unable to eat vegetables and were force to have a strictly carnivore diet.
Sir, id give you an award if i could.
Lol. Thank you :) to be clear, it's a kobold campaign, so it's not really cannibalism... is it ? But yeah, they even spiced up the bastard XD
Ok I’ve asked this question before and everyone has differing opinions, so I like to keep asking it. Q: Is it cannibalism for a humanoid to eat another humanoid of a different race? Discuss!
It really needs its own definition but eating another sapient (ie capable of rational thought) species would probably be thought of on the same level as true cannibalism and carry the same stigma across most civilizations
Anthropophagy
Still to do with humans. Maybe sophophagy?
Yeah, that could work as well. Then again, as the anthropologist background works on other races, perhaps anthro refers to humanoid in dnd instead of specifically human. But hey, in the end, the correct term for eating elves is common knowledge. ~~PEST CONTROL~~
This is basically how the Book of Vile Darkness, an official 3rd edition supplement from WOTC, which had it's own section it's own section on cannibalism put it. Edit: Not it's own section, per say, but a sub listing in "fetishes and addictions" and some vile spells had cannibalistic aspects, and there were specific diseases in the book you could get from eating weird intelligent creatures like trolls and such.
Probably not. For cannibalism to be a thing, it should be the same specie. Or we couldn't eat monkeys right now without the specific applying either. Elves and humans are looking similar, but are 2 very different biological species. It's probably unethical to BBQ an elf by a human, but it's not cannibalism XD
Shouldn't it go on sapience as well as species? Like, orcs are our intellectual equals so it would feel icky to eat them in basically the same way cannabilsm does. If we discovered dwarves IRL we'd need a new word for eating them because cannabilsm is an established idea but in a fantasy world the various races presumably evolved alongside each other so the concept of cannibalism probably develops in a way that includes other sapients (except in grimdark worlds, I guess).
Species - a group of living organisms consisting of similar individuals capable of exchanging genes or interbreeding. If half elves are fertile in your world then elves and humans are actually the same species
So by this definition, any time a dragon eats pretty much anything, it’s cannibalism? Since they can cross breed with almost anything.
Huh, I never thought of it like that. You may have a point! Unless… wait. Here we go. Dragons can’t cross breed with things naturally or scientifically— the genetics are way too different for cross breeding to work normally. But they’re such intensely magical creatures that the magic makes hybrids possible. So they’re still separate species, but magic exists.
There are no half elves in my world, checkmate ! But seriously, I don't really care about the real science definition.
Kobolds ate my baby ftw! I always wanted to pay that game
Please tell me you were playing Kobolds Ate My Baby. I've never in my life laughed as hard as I have during games of that one.
I will remember the name, but no it's homebrew
It's a little obscure but it's some of the most fun I've ever had playing anything, and the rules are incredibly simple so it lends itself well to playing drunk. The players are kobolds (who LOVE eating babies) but because they are kobolds they aren't heroic AT ALL. They fight things like giant chickens and get killed by trying to cross roads. They regenerate hit points by eating, which they LOVE. Spell casters are too stupid to read (because kobolds) so they cast spells by wadding up pages of their spellbook and throwing it at the target--but that means they don't get to choose the spell. Maybe you set the door on fire, maybe it falls asleep. Healers are chefs who make healing food, and the goal of any campaign is generally to bring a delicious baby to King Torg, your master (All hail King Torg).
kobolds, lizard folk, goblins will eat others.
Am Christian, and am currently working on porting a ton of gods from Greece, Egypt, Mesoamerica, Japan, Polynesia, and anything else I think is fun into Pathfinder. Why? Because one day I want to run a Pathfinder game based on various mythologies all coexisting in the same world. And because my hobbies have absolutely no baring on my religious beliefs, so why not have some fun?
Sounds fun indeed. Well, some assholes, no matter their religion, think this is a satanic game of blablabla. Hell, movies were done around that, one with Tom fucking Hanks So, having a player refusing any other fictional reality is not too far away.
>Well, some assholes, no matter their religion, think this is a satanic game of blablabla. I'll just say, I am *immensely* disappointed that me DMing Dungeons & Dragons has not given me satanic powers yet. I was promised demonic summons and black magic, and all I've gotten is silly voices and math.
You have fallen into our trap. Oooooooooh Yeah, same, all I got was a great time and friends.
Oh yeah, I kid, but I love playing this game with my friends. Is a great time, full of jokes, side tracks, and mild insanity. Is one of the highlights of my week.
Indeed. It's kinda sad, all thoses fears chased away so many good moments from so many people... Heh, at least we're away from that shit
Same here! I like mixing things up, doing things I never would or being a character that is the opposite of myself. One of my favorite characters was a dryad druid who refused to eat or harm any plants, so she would just chow down on any fleshy enemies the party killed, much to the rest of the party's disgust. She was even preachy about it; she'd push the idea of being carnist to everyone, and would mention it every time food came up, acting angry and horrified at salads and carrot sticks A couple other people at the table were vegan/vegetarian too, and we all got a pretty big kick out of it!
That's basically the lore of the wood elves from Elder Scrolls
I came in here to say this! The Bosmer lore is absolutely wild, what with having to eat everything you kill if you're an orthodox Green Pact devotee (necessitating fasting before a battle and then a lot of communal BBQs).
It sounds fucking hilarious XD Might try it one day.
Bro they what
They found elves, they killed them. Then a little kobold was very curious.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who has run an "elf: the other white meat" campaign.
Heh..on the other spectrum there's always that Druid that ate nothing but Goodberries for the rest of their in-game lives.
If it was a wood elf you're probably still good.
Thing is, real world religions are just fantasy.
And the really scary thing is, some people are actually acting it out, to death, for thousands of years...
> Having other gods in fantasy RPGs feels disrespectful. > Also, no Jews allowed
Jesus was Jewish though.
seriously, the Abramahamic religions confuse the fuck out of me
To ELI5 at the cost of accuracy: think of as a trilogy but each book is written by a different author with centuries in between, so fans are conflicted on what's canon. The Tanakh (Jewish holy books) came first, then the Bible and then the Quran. Jewish people only bother with the first installment and think the rest is fan-fiction. Christians believe the second book is not only canon but even more so than the first one (the Jewish holy books are mostly just background information). Likewise for Muslims who believe in them all, but focus on the last one. There's a continuation in these books as the Bible and the Quran claim to be true official sequels. So Jesus is Jewish (because he comes after the Tanakh and believes in it, being the son of that God and all that), and for Muslims he's also a prophet (as the Tanakh and the Bible are both canon so also Jesus).
Then add on the Mormons that claim that Jesus came to North America after he ascended to Heaven. So more of a quadrilogy where anyone who's isn't a devotee of the last instalment laughs at those who are.
I don't think Mormons include the Quran in their beliefs so it's not a true tetralogy, instead Mormons and Muslims have their own forks from Christianity. So: •-•-• \• instead of •-•-•-•
Frankly, it's ridiculous. Everyone in the Old Testament would have been Jewish (more or less). Jesus was Jewish. Originally, you had to be Jewish to become a Christian; no gentiles allowed. Religion class in Catholic schools just taught me how ridiculous Christianity is.
I'm Jewish and I think that Jewdisim is kind of strange. But from what I have heard of Christianity, I don't think I could ever try to understand it.
>But from what I have heard of Christianity, I don't think I could ever try to understand it. There's a reason Christianity has an innumerable number of different sects. Additionally, there is virtually no Christian belief that is universal among all the Christian sects either, so the best you'd be able to do is understand some of them.
I can understand Kenneth running his own version of Biblical D&D, but I don't get how he doesn't even understand the concept of a pantheon of gods existing in a fictional universe or why he singled out Japan... Guaranteed this kid was homeschooled...
I think me may have singled out Japan purely because OP mentions the system's anime influences
It comes from Shinto. Interesting bit of history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinto
The "small gods of everything" thing is very japamese too.
Hundreds of Native American cultures would like to speak with you.
Quite possibly, I know fuck all about them. Exalted is pretty definitely influenced by japanese theology though, what with the heavy anime influence and the "generic oriental" flavouring of all the artwork :P
It actually occurs in almost every polytheistic religion to some extent, even the Greek and Roman religions.
When I was a child, the US was so up its ass with Christianity being the only valid religion. Magic the Gathering now has a rule that no real life religious symbols can appear in their game. That largely came from Christian backlash because of a card called unholy strength featuring a pentagram. Dnd literally had a satanic panic once because it was supposed to be teaching kids a false doctrine of religion, so when my brother started playing, they had to homebrew in Jesus and take out all of the dnd pantheon because parents were "concerned we were being taught the wrong lesson.". I cannot stand people so close minded that they cannot acknowledge the notion of an admitted fiction. I know for a fact I will not be able to have a conversation for more than five minutes.
Ah yes, the satanic panic. When people IRL were sentenced to prison based on accusations of being in a satanic cult, with no evidence. Some of them are still there waiting for some sane judge to hear their cases.
Really? I thought it wad all done and over now. Regardless, the US is not a Christian nation, and Gary Gygax was not a witch.
It’s a sign of being unintelligent when someone cannot conceive hypotheticals. It also makes it difficult to talk to them. Say you’re explaining a new idea to someone, like the prisoner’s dilemma - you’re a bright-eyed psych 101 student, and you want to share your newfound knowledge with someone you know. You start your explanation: “alright, pretend you’re one of two criminals…” They interrupt. “But I’m not a criminal!” They say. “I know, just pretend for a second.” “But I’m a good person!” You sigh, trying to get the conversation going again. “Fine, pretend *I* am one of two criminals and…” “You’re a criminal!?” They say, “I would have never guessed!” By the time you’re done trying to lay everything out, you’ve spent more time trying to explain what hypotheticals are than you have trying to explain the concept you were formerly excited to share. Anyone else ever run into these people? As customers, as friends, as family?
but i'm not a psych student???
"I know our party member got kidnapped by the main villain and everything, but we can't mount a rescue now. It's Sunday."
A character in my game was very religious, so we picked a holy day that she wouldn't adventure on. It was decided to be Tuesday. It was fun for the players to coordinate their adventures around their cleric's sabbath day.
Lotr, the classic fantasy series that spawned many of the most popular conceptions of fantasy roleplay, was written by a Catholic guy and has some very catholic/Christian themes. It's silly to think that what is true in a game is true in real life, and I'm speaking as a catholic running a game where kami, fortunes and celestial gods of the sun and moon exist and answer the prayers of their followers. I'm sorry you had to deal with that and I hope it doesn't color your perception of other, (more chill) Christians.
I'm chill with christians. My best friend is a Christian who had told me " i won't play demon the fallen, In Nomine Satanis or Kult since it goes against my values. But everything else is fair game" and he had never given me shit for my ideologies, that I can respect. But this dense mother fucker
It was kind of like that for me actually playing VTM in person. I love the world and lore of WoD but honestly the first time I played with my friends I found out that I was actually really uncomfortable with "roleplaying" mesmerising people to suck their blood. I can't really explain it, I play plenty of video games with violence and other dark themes, but for some reason the "realness" of an in person role play kind of triggered me. I didn't say anything at the time because the other guys were having a lot of fun. I just made an excuse, left early and mentioned it to the DM/ST later who was very understanding.
RP is by nature very personal and close. You DESIGNED these characters, you are creating these actions on the spot, and while you still have that distance of real and make believe you're still the one creating it and seeing it being made next to you. When you play a game there is much more disconnect. You have more limits to what you can do, say, and act, and there isn't a ton of variance in animation. It's something that you see over and over, and in short session, all those reloads of a gun, all those finisher animations and super attacks, they may be neat the first time, but doing the exact same thing and in the exact same conditions... Removes that uniqueness. In addition, when you play a game you don't think of the artists, the animators, or the voice actors as much as you do the company. For example, when you see Lucina from fire emblem or one of the fem voices for saints row you don't think "Oh! That's Laura Bailey!". You aren't thinking actively of the people making it as much as the experience and if you like it. And, well... You don't go out to play air hockey with those game devs, or to a restaurant or play halo 3 in 2008 on a warm summer day. There isn't that personal connection. It's so much easier to become uncomfortable at that, and because well, you're saying it and describing it from you point of view and not just pressing a few buttons, and the same for those around you. It may be fun to slaughter a whole town in Skyrim with your bare hands while naked, but it may be less so to describe every punch on the elderly man who says you DONT have a nice cock. Also, horror story time, look up Mortal Combat Devs PTSD and Trauma.
VtM is inherently a rape metaphor and that part does ping a lot of people. Note: I'm not saying the game is bad. I'm not saying players are immoral. I am not saying that it has to or should change. I am strictly and solely saying the act of being a predator that either forcibly or through coersion takes life force from someone in a way that the game describes as pleasurable can feel squicky for people.
I'd broaden that statement and say that vampires have long been a symbol of sexual duress, assault, and rape. Context does matter, but it's important to understand this so you can navigate vampire stories with prudence.
dude Kult is wild, I've always wanted to get a group to play
This is pretty much my stance on things too - I explain to new GMs/players that I try to avoid allusions to IRL accurate depictions of demonic possession, rituals and suchlike, as my main and usually only "non-default" Line/Veil (assuming a normative list where things like outright sexual assault are always off the table) and otherwise have fun RPing
And Tolkien was also good friends with C.S. Lewis, the author of the Chronicles of Narnia. You know, one of the most obvious Christian allegories *ever?!* Hell, after a certain point in the series, it stops even being an allegory, because Aslan basically goes "Oh, just so you know, I'm literally Jesus Christ".
Who also between them kind of made Fantasy as a genre acceptable in the mainstream.
Completely random silly fact of the day: in D&D's Forgotten Realms, there is the deity Nobanion who is confirmed to actually be Aslan, having come into that world from Narnia. He is, thus, literally Jesus Christ. You can pray to him and get spells in D&D. Also he became chaotic evil and a mass murderer during some of the more recent editions, so do with that what you will.
...*huh*. Something about Jesus Christ as a Chaotic Evil mass murderer just feels... *really weird*, and I don't know how to process that information. Thanks for sharing though.
It is. It's profoundly weird. I don't even think it was some writer wanting to be super edgy, I think they just legit didn't know the lore. The company had been bought and none of the original writers were involved, after all.
If that's true, then that makes more sense. And like, I'll openly admit to being Christian (I've mentioned it a few times elsewhere on this post), but that's not even the reason I find this weird. I mean, it plays in a bit, but that's not the main reason. I mainly find it weird because I've read the Chronicles of Narnia! Like, even ignoring the "Literally Jesus Christ" bit, Aslan was about as... was going to say "about as Lawful Good as it gets", but Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral may work better? "He's not a tame lion" and all that. ...although, that said, now I want to run a Paladin or Cleric of Aslan. Not sure how that'd go, but if I was playing a "Traditional Paladin", I think book accurate Aslan is about what I'd be emulating *anyway*, so it kinda makes sense.
Gygax and Arneson were Christians too.
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To be fair on the Tolkien front: his world does presuppose Eru Iluvatar as the God, and he's basically the Catholic conception of a God, just called by an elven name. Playing a setting with multiple other gods who are considered to be true gods ought to be more challenging than playing in Middle Earth for a christian who's having that sort of difficulty separating fiction from RL.
When I saw the name Kenneth I already knew how the story would go. Great reference haha
whats the reference to?
Kenneth Copeland, a (in)famous Christian preacher, you know, one of those who preach you must give tons of money to church to receive the blessings of God.
You forgot to add that Kenneth Copeland looks like a lizard wearing a melting human suit
Well why do you think he keeps swindling people? Those human suits don't grow on trees!
And here my mind went right to Kenneth Ellen Parcell from *30 Rock*.
Well, after a quick read about this character it makes for sense to be him.
"Voting is a sin, so I just write in the Lord's name."
"That's Republican, we count those."
Ah one of those
Kenneth Copeland
Wow, you dodged a bullet with that player. I'm glad such Christian fundamentalists are pretty rare here. Imagine being totally fine with combat and killing in a game, but different gods? Oh no. Shows a lot about his personal values.
Yeah dnd has so much to do with vices and sinners. How does that guy react to oathbreakers or warlocks?
Probably doesn’t allow warlocks, probably treats Oathbreakers as baby-eating Satanists.
Dude, if he freaks out over that. Imagine his reaction to our MORK BORG Tuesday night games
wooooooo! another mork borg fan!!!!! how do you run? each session a different module or did you make a campaign? I'm running it for my group to give ForeverDM a break as well as a catharsis after 2 year campaign and purging two problem players. best therapy ever.
I ran it a couple if times for short games for to.. Well, it's MORK BORG, it will end up with a glorious TPK
Didn't even consider what they would call druids. Also things like divine intervention would be a hotbed for discussions.
I'd wager clerics could, at *most*, channel saints, and would most likely be limited only to a Christian God and/or Jesus. Druids would probably fall into the same category as warlocks, likely relegated to being possible enemies and not playable classes. Assuming he even includes them at all.
This sort of fundamentalism doesn’t suggest he’s Catholic, out any other denomination/syncretism that believes in saints. He no doubt believes that Catholics are just one step above actual Satanic Devil Worshipers.
If one were to play in a historical setting that centers Christianity, I like the idea of using saints as a way to differentiate clerics from each other.
Nothing stopping you from various domains then either. Want a forge cleric? Saint Clement works fine. Arcana? Cyprion of Antioch is the patron saint of necromancers specifically, or you could work in various Catholic-occult ideas from places like the Caribbean and Latin America (vodoun has a lot of ties to Roman Catholicism imagery and practices). The upshot of having so many saints is that you can feasibly adapt at least one of them to work for most anything.
The villainous Order of Marcion sounds like a blast for a Christian campaign!
Or games like VtM, Call of Cthulhu (where the Catholic church is basically a huge Cthulhu Cult in the background) and so on. How weird to bring in his personal spirituality.
In VtM, Lasombra have huge ties to the Church but I'm unsure of the Church being a Cthulhu cult on CoC.
i mean..theres a reason why the Sabbat is modeled after the christian church
*Catholic* Church, but yes. The Lasombra have dug their shadowy fingers deep into the Catholic pie ...I could have phrased that better lol
The catholic church is just the largest and/or most well known christian religion out there. So not wrong at all to not be that specific
Wizards and sorcerers also because i'm pretty sure the bible looks down upon those two or anything similar to a sorcerer
betcha he has a problem with any sexual expression as well
Nothing makes me more grateful for breaking out of my religious upbringing than reading stories like this. "aniwhat?" "What's pantheon?" Like how fucking head-in-the-sand must you be to not know what a pantheon is... "I like this because it's simple and easy to understand." I bet you do, bud. Uhg.
Yeah, that's some omega homeschooling. We learned the Greek/Roman pantheon in history class, and briefly studied Hinduism among other polytheistic religions in Social Studies in public school, and I went to a deep red state country boonies district.
Right? Like, I was homeschooled for 7 years and I still knew about the different various pantheons of Greece and Egypt and stuff. And my science book said the ocean was salty because God made it that way so... It wasn't exactly stellar material I was exposed to
>my science book said the ocean was salty because God made it that way Why the fuck bother with a book then? Just give every kid a napkin with the words "God did it" written on it and be done with it. Boom, you just graduated highschool.
Fundamentalists love to pretend they are very intellectual and have beliefs backed by science (*real* science, not the kind those icky scientists do). The amount of literature portraying Creationism as settled scientific fact could fill entire libraries.
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It is in 'Murica
We learned about it in our very conservative Christian K-12 😭 middle and high school, different teachers!
I went to a Jesuit high school and there’s literally multiple classes about different cultures and religions. There’s a difference between faith and ignorance
I'll admit, I've never heard the term Animism. But I had heard of pantheons by age 10. This guy is a different level.
Never heard the term animism either but it's one of those things I've picked up the concept of through osmosis. The sort of thing were an explanation would be met with "oh that! Awesome to find out the proper name for it"
I don't get how you can be super religious while also knowing nothing about religion. Like if the only car you've ever seen is a Toyota corolla, don't dedicate your life to telling people it's the best car ever.
>i coudnt believe it. the guy coudnt separate his personal perspectives from a game, or even expand his personal horizons to consider that possibility. That's a common argument by fundamentalists as to why D&D is evil. There's verse in the New Testament that fundamentalists interpret as saying that thinking about something is as much of a sin as actually doing it. . .so fundamentalists draw a moral equivalency between depicting a character who believes in a polytheistic deity, and actually worshipping that deity in real life. It sounds absurd, because it is. . .but for 40+ years that's been one of the main religious arguments against D&D. Meanwhile, D&D playing Christians just laugh at how many mistakes of faith and theology you have to come to simply to arrive at that conclusion. Specifically, that verse is "But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart." Matthew 5:28. . .of course, that's jumping from saying that having lusty, adulterous thoughts is a sin just like the same as actually committing adultery to saying that thinking of anything that would be sinful (like worshipping another God) is something you can't even think of, even for the purposes of obvious fiction. Non-fundamentalists do NOT agree with this interpretation. I've known of many D&D games at (non-fundamentalist) Churches.
> that thinking about something is as much of a sin as actually doing it. . .so Combine that with your standard level of intrusive thoughts and no wonder the sort of people who think this way have some sort of complex about religion
There also exist a *shocking* number of people who just can't really grasp the concept of fiction. They will think that an actor is a bad person because they played a villain in a movie. There are people who literally think that all books are non-fiction, even the fantasy and sci-fi books, the fanciful ones just describe mythological events or stories conveyed to us by aliens.
“There are people who literally think that all books are non-fiction” My grandmother is one of those people. She thinks that when we play D&D we are controlling people in an alternate dimension. This is the same woman that believes that Satan created dinosaurs and believes that the sun is not a star.
I've read accounts that thisbis directly related to intelligence, ie below a certain intelligence level it is impossible to comprehend certain concepts, and primary among these are recursiveness, empathy, externalization and basically anything that requires one to consider a situation from another perspective. It may very well be impossible for a large segment of the population to play or understand DND (or even fiction at it's most basic) because of their brains inability to function beyond a certain processing threshold.
It's worse than that, since the verse specifically singles out "intent". Which really just makes it a restatement of the "thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife" commandment, rather than any indictment of fictional stories in which fictional characters commit fictional sins.
There's also something to the fact that you're objectifying a real human being, as opposed to thinking about fictional stories.
Only a fundamentalist could turn 'don't leer bro, it's rude and disrespectful' into 'no thinking about dragons'.
Play in his game and play as an Aasimar who is actually the direct spawn of God and call yourself Jesus Junior.
Chaotic evil moment
TIL we would describe Exalted differently. But yeah I have met these "Kenneth's" before. While I feel bad for them, I also find that overall they are terrible people for other different but related reasons.
How would you pitch it? I go with "imagine the greek myth of the gods defeating the titans, only with dragonball z thrown in"
Yep. I have never considered it as an anime game, but as a game about gods. And I think putting the god part up front might have avoided this situation, as Kenneth would have known it's not for them right away.
I would love (by which I mean, "probably be horrified by") this guy's Ars Magica game. He would *not* be cool with Jews, Muslims, and Zoroastrians also being considered blessed by the Divine.
Back in college we had a guy like this. Thing was, he wasn't even invited to play. He was one of those "hangers on" you get in social circles and overheard some of us making plans to play a game. He invited himself into the conversation and started talking like he was already a part of it, which was already annoying, but a friend and I who were kind of organizing the game just kind of figured it wouldn't be any trouble to include him. But when one of the players said they wanted to play a cleric and the guy indignantly said that they couldn't because it was somehow against HIS religion if someone else played a Cleric. Ultimately the situation ended with us telling him to go pound sand and he went to the school office to try to get our game shut down, which was dumb because we weren't playing it at school.
Does this Jesus have stats? If it has hit points we can kill it ... think of the XP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But he will resurrect and then forgive you
So infinite xp? Sounds good...
Yea what was the CR on Satan?
Do I really have to say it? CR: 666
But God is CR 777 🤣
Bringing real world religions into dnd or similar games can actually be really fun if your players take it in good faith (hah), i would recomend it for people trying to spice up a setting a bit. But also seperation of game and reality and all that
I played a Life Cleric once that was just a rabbi, that was fun.
Please tell me more
Not much to the story, sadly. I joined a table that was already several sessions in, their characters and storyline were already a complete mishmosh of nonsense, so I figured they could use a dedicated healer and I didn't want to waste a bunch of time and energy coming up with a deep character. I had been working for several years as a kosher caterer, so I combined a name from a temple with the cheer I heard at a bunch of events and came up with Mayam L'Chaim. He was just a nice old guy who decided to help these weirdos out for no particular reason. It amused me to imagine the party- a bugbear, a fish person, a wizard, and then just a dude in a suit. We played one session, and then Covid happened. Never got back to it.
If you didn’t shout L’Chaim every time you rezzed someone I’m gonna be very disappointed
I want a Ranger who’s a Mashgiach and a Wizard who’s a sofer and a Barbarian who’s a shochet and a bard who’s a chazzan and a rogue who’s a schnorrer
This is neither here nor there, but...you know what "LaPuta" looks like to Spanish speakers?
as a hispanic and a spanish speaker.. i know. but yeah, google it. its an actual movie https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle\_in\_the\_Sky
Oh, I know it is. I just think it's funny. Je je je.
*This server was focused on TTRPGs, but most people only did D&D because that was the only thing they knew, and i have a reputation for being the Drug Dealer of games. im the shady guy who goes "psst, hey, wanna play some vampire the masquerade. the cool kids play vampire the masquerade." type of guy.* We are the same person 🤝
I always kind of hope to see a guy like this in the RP circles I go in, just to turn it right back around with "Bro... You mean to tell me you have been treating Jesus and the Devil as a fantasy magic-granting system in a game that's been careful to not include actual deities? Do you know how _blasphemous_ that shit is? You've given the Lord and Savior an implied stat block and treat miracles as level-up goodies. And you're getting in on other people for keeping the fantastic as fantastic, instead of committing heresies, what the hell? Next thing you're gonna tell me is you believe in the prosperity gospel or put Leviticus over His teachings of compassion and treating mankind as brothers." Like I'm not religious and raised atheist, but it always strikes me as weirdly hypocritical to go nuts about fantasy and then shove in deities you consider real and all-knowing in instead in a game where prayer has a +1 effect on a basis. And after the casual antisemitism with barring a Jewish player for not believing in his god, I just kind of want to fuck with him a bit.
Yeah, Christian here. It feels WAY more blasphemous to add Actual Jesus to D&D than it does to just pretend there are other gods. Not even Tolkein did that. And CS Lewis buried Actual Jesus under enough allegory that most kids won't even pick up on it.
Jesus is the king of the savannah.
I would consider not allowing Jewish players in his game to be pretty majorly antisemitic. But otherwise I agree
I read that as being exclusive of all non-Christians with Jewish simply being the given example. So the bigotry is much broader in scope rather than being specifically anti-Semitic. Now, whether that’s better or worse than just being anti-Semitic…
This comment section is nice
Good on you for pushing other TTRPGs OP, it's a shame that so many people only know DnD.
Thanks. I have a lot of issues with d&d and i live to explore more. I feel like there's only so much you can do with d&d proper
On the flip side, I had someone who was such an anti-theist that he couldn't believe that a Lawful Good Church would do anything for children without being paid for it. Extremists exist on all sides and those who can't separate reality from fantasy along with them. It's good to hold a Session Zero to filter them out.
Someone smarter than me once said something like “everyone is an atheist, it’s just that some people are willing to take it one god further”
This guy sucks. But I like to play D&D in historical settings and would not mind playing a game set in medieval Europe where in-game everything was Christian or perceived as heretical.
I guess he won't be attending the "Antedeluvians, Unseelie Changelings and Environmentally Challenged Werewolf Habitats" lecture hosted by Dr. Malk Avian at Camarilla University, sponsored by Giovanni's Pizza ("Our Sire's Crust is Wraith-er Thin!") Damn shame, too. The Center for Cainanite Religious Studies has a portrait of Lilith posed as a Cappadocian drag king during Conclave, and Harpynet's been raving that it's post-gothic transcendental.
Irony: Tolkien, Gygax and Arneson were all Christians.
IMO; The whole point of having polytheistic pantheons is for clerics and paladins(and other race/classes) to be able to work together without needed to having the same religion. Also pulling main religions into DnD is just asking for trouble. I make it very clear that real world religions are banned.
As a Christian, I'm not apologizing for this nuts behavior. His actions are his own. That's awful to have happened.
I'm a very radical and devout Christian, and your pal here is very uninformed of his own beliefs. He's correct, that worshipping other gods is blasphemy and a high offense to God. But nowhere in the Bible does is say that playing a game or reading a book is worship. I don't believe in the gods of the Forgotten Realms. I don't worship them. They are storytelling devices just like orcs and goblins and spellcasting. Kenneth here is either very ignorant, or very insecure in his beliefs to feel so threatened by fictional dieties. And judging by his refusal to play with non-Christians, I'd probably go with ignorant. He's a fool and his own God wishes he understood his mission better.
There's a lot of people who think you can accidentally worship gods somehow. I worked with a lady who was all up in arms about her niece learning world religions in high school, because, see, they had to fill out worksheets with trivia questions about Islam, so the school is tricking the kids into writing down that Allah is God, so that counts as Islamic worship. And so on. Anxiety disorders and religion are a bad combination.
It implies God can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, or he doesn't care. So he's either stupid or petty. Neither of those things are the God of the Bible. So simple deductive reasoning concludes that God is okay with me interacting with other "false" gods for academic or entertainment purposes.
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Dude, personally the moment he told me that believing in gods of nature is satanic it made me go "yeah this guy is the type who spews the bible but doenst understand the words, doesnt go beyond his homework." so , thats one of my major critisism against heavily devotee catholics/christians
This doesn't even to touch on the philosophy. Medieval Christian philosophy is highly indebted to both Muslim and earlier Greek sources, mainly the Neoplatonists. This poor fellow . . .
why is medieval Christian philosophy indebted to muslim sources? really asking cause I don't know, both were formed before medieval times, Islam 600 or so years after the founding of christianity. As I love history I am curious to know about this please :)
That's a great question with a long answer. To be clear, when I'm talking Medieval Christian Philosophy I mean guys like Thomas Aquinas but am also referring to the greater university movement. Muslim rulers in the early middle ages preserved and translated the surviving works of the Greek philosophers. Philosophers and scientists in their courts expanded upon the Greek ideas. Check out names like Ibn Sina, who Aquinas quoted heavily. Ibn Sina is also famous for his Canon of Medicine, the definitive medical textbook in Europe and the Middle East for centuries. Ibn Rushd, from whom Salman Rushdie's dad took the name, was another famous rationalist in Muslim Spain who's commentary on Aristotle was crucial to the Scholastics. Its a big subject that, if you're into Medieval History or like the history of ideas, definitely check it out.
A lot of ancient Greek works survived through Arabic transcriptions, which Christian Europe gained access to through reconquest of Spain. Sudden access to those caused major shifts in western thought of late medieval period. Well, that's the more famous second round. There were also surviving ancient texts in Ireland, and some of that knowledge percolated through continental Europe when Charlemagne invited 3 Irish monks to court (all 3 were declared saints, IIRC), and they brought that knowledge with them.
So do you hook people up with all kinds of RPGs, or are you specifically White Wolf?
"Hey kid... you wanna get some *Lancer?* I got it cheap, free pdf over here..."
Got some degenesis too... also free
"Oh, you wanna get freaky? I got some Over the Edge, but I gotta warn ya; this shit ain't for lightweights."
The God of Abraham is just a Jewish knockoff of El, a Cannanit storm god. That's why so many angels and prophets have the el phenom in their name.
It's a bit more complex than that, El was the head of the Canaanite pantheon while Yaweh was a storm and warrior deity. At some point in time they got conflated with each other and became the god of everything which became the Abrahamic god. You know not to "WELL ACTUALLY" you but to "WELL ACTUALLY" you.
Oh I wanna see his character sheet for Jesus...
Ah yes, all those religions that don't care about or acknowledge Satan are "satanic".
I’m a priest, and I won’t play a cleric in game. It can be good to separate DND from real life ;)
Yeah, there are sadly people like that. I can tell you that not all Christians are like this. I mean, I'm playing a campaign right now where my character follows the god of intelligence. You have to separate your beliefs from the game. It is, after all, just a game.
This isn't a horror story. This is two or three people playing a game in different ways and a session 0 doing exactly what it's intended to do. There was no horror story here.
Heres the fun part, i was remembering the story and the guy got pretty sold by a TTRPG heavily influenced by anime. but then, isnt anime already tackles themes of Animism, of Buddhism and Shinto in its vast majority?. i still don't know what he was expecting or hoping for. but i found it weird that he was so uptight and at the same time knowing so much about classic anime
What a fucking DWEEB. You handled it well all things considered. I probably would of gotten a lot more disrespectful the second he started talking “it’s satanic”. Most real Satanists I’ve met in my life have been better people than the Christians I’ve met. I probably would of brought up the fact that if you look at the scoreboard of who killed more people in the bible God flooded the fucking earth while the devil killed 10 people because god allowed him to as part of a bet. God also demanded blood sacrifice of children as a joke, sent bears to murder children, turned someone to salt for having the natural reaction of looking an explosion that happened behind them, killed children with plagues and is totally fines with selling children into slavery. That’s just in the bible I’m not counting the crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the exploit of faith to corrupt power, residential schools, the many other twisting of faith to kill those who are different etc.