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The religion-based campaign
I know, I know.. Doug's back on his peculiar obsession about religion in FRPGS. I can't help it, because the more history you read the more you see the religion and religious organizations are some of the prime movers of big events. And a good RPG campaign should take place in a time of big, world-shaking events when a band of scruffy tomb robbers can rise to change the course of history (or rob bigger and better tombs. Your mileage may vary.)
As I've said before I've never been fully satisfied with clerics in most RPGs. Aside from picking some deity to follow, there was nothing really "religious" about them. There was some implied church structure, and D&D3/Pathfinder made things much better with the addition of clerical domains, so priests of different gods and different advantages, but there was still nothing to make a cleric much more than a fighter/mage with a lot of healing spells.
Why this drives me nuts is that, done right, a religion could be the focus of the campaign. Medieval churches were constantly meddling in national affairs, traveling to barbarous lands to convert the heathen, and engaging in feverish races to retrieve holy artifacts and relics from pagan lands and rival churches/cities. So why not in a FRPG? This works exceptionally well if you make the assumption that a deity's temporal power is linked to his worshipers and churches. The Sun God needs converts and new churches built! Go out there and smite the unclean, convert the innocent, and build me a cathedral! Add in purely mortal bickering over petty points of interpretation of holy writ, minor heresies, and the occasional cabal of demon-worshipers, and you have years of material waiting to be gamed out.
This is also a boon for party design. Let's start with a paladin. He's been charged with finding and recovering the remain of St. Fred. Traveling with him are his confessor from the Ordo Militant (a cleric) two lay fighters of the Order (fighters), an arcane mage who has sworn to the order (sorcerer or wizard) and finally a young ne'er-do-well who pledged to aid the paladin in exchange for not having his hands chopped off for thievery (a rogue). The party has a long-term goal that can lead to innumerable adventures along the way.
This would really well in my campaign setting where the Islamic expansion of the 8-10th centuries is replaced by waves of humanoids boiling out of Arabia. In our world the Arabs and Turkomen were more than willing to trade, exchange ideas, and coexist in peace between the numerous wars. In this setting, the Holy Lands are crawling with monsters, and Constantinople itself may be threatened.
For this to work, you'd need a good basic idea of how the church in question functions and what the rules are for those in its service. Subject of the next post.
As I've said before I've never been fully satisfied with clerics in most RPGs. Aside from picking some deity to follow, there was nothing really "religious" about them. There was some implied church structure, and D&D3/Pathfinder made things much better with the addition of clerical domains, so priests of different gods and different advantages, but there was still nothing to make a cleric much more than a fighter/mage with a lot of healing spells.
Why this drives me nuts is that, done right, a religion could be the focus of the campaign. Medieval churches were constantly meddling in national affairs, traveling to barbarous lands to convert the heathen, and engaging in feverish races to retrieve holy artifacts and relics from pagan lands and rival churches/cities. So why not in a FRPG? This works exceptionally well if you make the assumption that a deity's temporal power is linked to his worshipers and churches. The Sun God needs converts and new churches built! Go out there and smite the unclean, convert the innocent, and build me a cathedral! Add in purely mortal bickering over petty points of interpretation of holy writ, minor heresies, and the occasional cabal of demon-worshipers, and you have years of material waiting to be gamed out.
This is also a boon for party design. Let's start with a paladin. He's been charged with finding and recovering the remain of St. Fred. Traveling with him are his confessor from the Ordo Militant (a cleric) two lay fighters of the Order (fighters), an arcane mage who has sworn to the order (sorcerer or wizard) and finally a young ne'er-do-well who pledged to aid the paladin in exchange for not having his hands chopped off for thievery (a rogue). The party has a long-term goal that can lead to innumerable adventures along the way.
This would really well in my campaign setting where the Islamic expansion of the 8-10th centuries is replaced by waves of humanoids boiling out of Arabia. In our world the Arabs and Turkomen were more than willing to trade, exchange ideas, and coexist in peace between the numerous wars. In this setting, the Holy Lands are crawling with monsters, and Constantinople itself may be threatened.
For this to work, you'd need a good basic idea of how the church in question functions and what the rules are for those in its service. Subject of the next post.