Roleplaying Religious Traditions, When game mechanics make us heritics Options

[Buster]

I agree with Synner, in a nutshell the answers to life, the universe, and everything voodoo are all right there on page 42 of Street Magic:

[MadDogMaddux]

This brings up something I've been chewing on as well. I'm new to SR, so I'm just assuming that SR has always treated magic and faith/religion as being the same - i.e. that what was once religion has now been understood as magic in different packages. This presents the exact problems as listed above - that RPing a magical "religion" necessarily violates the concepts of many religious traditions.

There's also the awkwardness, in my opinion, of people encountering (or RPing) their own faith/religion in the gameworld yet in a package or form that conflicts with their own experience or expectations in reality. To me, this has a lot of potential to be uncomfortable. (i.e. a person of a certain religious system encounters a person in the game world of that same system, but due to the magic vs. reality issue is handling said religion totally differently - or even the message of "oh, your faith is really just an expression of mana flow")

Personally, I prefer to have real world religion stripped out of my RPing for these reasons, because some real world religions do have a "magical" perspective on things, but others do not.

I would prefer to see in SR that not all religious systems have embraced magic as part of their faith system. I realize that's an OPTION - but the source material paints it that the majority of all religions and of all adherents have embraced magic as the "answer" to their religion. (i.e. using magic to summon spirits from their tradition) I'd much rather see that many religions embrace magic as a part of reality, but as SEPARATE from their religion/faith. I think this would be a much more accurate representation of how many modern day religions and faiths would respond to such an awakening - seeing the magical world as another aspect of the natural world, but still submitted to their deity. This would also allow for them to more fully and freely embrace the magical practices without conflicting with their faith or religion as written today.

In the end, this would produce a more generic (probably hermetic) approach to magic for these characters, but it would resolve a lot of the conflict between reality and game that I see.

[FrankTrollman]

It's more that many magicians treat their religion as THE ANSWER to what their spirits are and where their magic comes from. Islam is as a whole openly skeptical of magic and magicians. That they allow the faithful to consort with the Ifrit at all is kind of a probationary thing.

Obviously in more shamanistic sects, where the priests were always supposed to talk to spirits and have personal secret magical powers - the transition to a system where Priests == Magicians was pretty easy. In sects like Christianity and Islam where priests are overtly not supposed to do magical things, that's a much tougher sell.

-Frank

[Whipstitch]

[MadDogMaddux]

Agreed. There's a lot of religions for which there are rules or suggestions - but the religion itself would be opposed to the concepts behind shadowrunning. :P

[Whipstitch]

At least with the other major religions I could at least maybe buy into the idea of a crazy person talking themselves into being some sort of instrument of vengeance or something without having a crisis of confidence. With Buddhists I imagine scenarios like a practitioner getting upset and swearing at someone and then immediately taking the Geas: Oath Of Silence just to cast again. :P

[Demonseed Elite]

[Mercer]

[Penta]

There's also the fact that there are some religions which aren't all that, well, mystical about the world around us.

I'm not sure one needs to be agnostic (or atheistic) in regards to the mix of magic and religion. It's possible for (most of!) the magical traditions to mix with most relgions...Sometimes with a better or worse fit, I grant.

Where it looks odd, it's helpful to me to remember the view (I've heard this -somewhere-, damn if I recall where!) that science (including magic in that for now) explains that which is within the ken of human reason. Religion picks up where things go beyond reason.

[Mercer]

I'll clarify. I think its important to be agnostic from a GM perspective, in that its not important from a game perspective that there be an objective truth, as opposed to a game like D&D where a Priest of Thor (of the sufficient level) can just go ask Thor what he thinks about stuff. There's no ambiguity there, there's a guy named Thor and if you piss him off, there's consequences.

In Shadowrun, a mage can call upon the power of Thor, but its much more a personal representation than a guy with a planar street address. Even if someone comes across a Force 200 Great Form that goes by the name of Thor, does it really matter if it's the actual spirit someone worshipped a thousand years ago, or a spirit recently created out of the collective unconscious of people who believe in the things people made up a thousand years ago? (And even if it was the actual spirit that Norse god was named for, having people for the past thousand years editorialize-- for lack of a better word-- the concept of Thor would mean that the modern idea of the Norse god probably wouldn't have that much in common with the actual spirit, unless the actual spirit was modified by the modern conception.)

Or, to put another way, there should always be mystery.

[FrankTrollman]

Interesting note: after Christians, Buddhists have killed more people in religiously motivated campaigns than any other religion. Islam is catching up today, but it still has quite a way to go.

Even in 2007, Buddhist militias clash fairly regularly with the LTTE and perform attrocities on hindu civilians from time to time. The philosophy makes about the most coherant case for non-violence that any has ever made, but that ha never stopped anyone from going all warrior with it.

Hell, the Samurai Code is as much a Buddhist construction as it is Shinto. Street Samurai are supposed to read Buddhist philosophy. Every last one of them. Of course there are going to be Buddhist Shadowrunners, the surprising thing is how many Shadowrunners are anything except Buddhists.

-Frank

[fistandantilus4....]

[Mercer]

[Simon May]

The best way to enforce nonviolence is to kill the violent.

[hyzmarca]

[kzt]