Religious Characters, Anyone ever run one? Options

[Bira]

There wouldn't be too much of a problem with playing a religious character, I think. If his convictions would get in the way of doing the things shadowrunners normally do in your games, then they're a Negative Quality - a form of Pacifism for characters whose religion prohibits killing, for example.

In GURPS, you would also have several other disadvantages that could help model strict adherence to a religion. There's several types of Vow (say, Chastity, Poverty, vegetarianism, etc.), as well as the aptly named Disciplines of Faith for rituals you must perform without fail. As for advantages, there's Higher Purpose to represent the strength of your conviction granting you small bonuses occasionally. I'm sure you can adapt something like that for SR.

[Yogo Ted]

There wouldn't be too much of a problem with playing a religious character, I think. If his convictions would get in the way of doing the things shadowrunners normally do in your games, then they're a Negative Quality - a form of Pacifism for characters whose religion prohibits killing, for example.

In GURPS, you would also have several other disadvantages that could help model strict adherence to a religion. There's several types of Vow (say, Chastity, Poverty, vegetarianism, etc.), as well as the aptly named Disciplines of Faith for rituals you must perform without fail. As for advantages, there's Higher Purpose to represent the strength of your conviction granting you small bonuses occasionally. I'm sure you can adapt something like that for SR.

For some reason now I want to play a human luckbunny who attributes every lucky break to the big man upstairs.

[Glyph]

One thing to keep in mind, while playing a religious character in Shadowrun, is that religious dogma is not static, but continues to evolve. Yes, the core scriptures remain the same, but how they are interpreted changes. To use a Shadowrun example, the Catholic church is portrayed as reacting poorly to UGE and the return of magic at first, but later on deciding that metahumans have souls, and that magic is a morally neutral force that some people can tap into. A Budhist, Baptist, or Muslim in Shadowrun will likely be different than one from 2010.

Religion is one of the ways that you can bring to life how a character reacts to various developments such as the return of magic and the rise of bodily augmentations. For instance, maybe you are playing a Shinto adept who believes very strongly in the integrity of the body, who is horrified by all of the people he sees walking around with metal arms and multiple datajacks in their heads. Maybe he is a Christian who has a hermetic view of magic, and finds another Christian who claims to do "miracles" and summon "angels" to be a whacko. Or maybe she is a Wiccan who is having a crisis of faith - how would you feel if you were educated and enlightened about your religion, while your friend Debbie is an airheaded poser, but you can't even light a candle, and Debbie can toss fireballs!

[LivingOxymoron]

One thing to keep in mind, while playing a religious character in Shadowrun, is that religious dogma is not static, but continues to evolve. Yes, the core scriptures remain the same, but how they are interpreted changes. To use a Shadowrun example, the Catholic church is portrayed as reacting poorly to UGE and the return of magic at first, but later on deciding that metahumans have souls, and that magic is a morally neutral force that some people can tap into. A Budhist, Baptist, or Muslim in Shadowrun will likely be different than one from 2010.

Religion is one of the ways that you can bring to life how a character reacts to various developments such as the return of magic and the rise of bodily augmentations. For instance, maybe you are playing a Shinto adept who believes very strongly in the integrity of the body, who is horrified by all of the people he sees walking around with metal arms and multiple datajacks in their heads. Maybe he is a Christian who has a hermetic view of magic, and finds another Christian who claims to do "miracles" and summon "angels" to be a whacko. Or maybe she is a Wiccan who is having a crisis of faith - how would you feel if you were educated and enlightened about your religion, while your friend Debbie is an airheaded poser, but you can't even light a candle, and Debbie can toss fireballs!

I agree about how religion is just one of many tools used to bring a character to life. Too often I have seen players caricature a character's personal beliefs or other aspects of their character, based not on actual knowledge or research or thinking, but rather a stereotype that they feel the need to play over-the-top as if to say, "SEE! My character is a CHRISTIAN!!!!" (Or Jew or Muslim or Pastafarian or what have you). It is important to note, however, that I get just as rankled when people play military characters incorrectly too.

In all honesty, what prompted me to start this thread was not about religion, but about my 3 of my players wanting to play characters with backgrounds in the UCAS military. Since they all knew that making shit up or (worse) hollywood-ing it is a pet peeve of mine, having been a Marine for 4 years, they took it upon themselves to ask me for help with their backgrounds. They told me what they wanted as their general history, and I helped them research to fill in the details. It was the little things they wanted to know. Quirks in personality, certain slang and phrases, ways of thinking of things. This got me thinking of religion and characters, and how, when I've seen people integrate it subtly and authentically, how it can really flesh out a character and add a lot to the internal monologue of thinking through a character's choices.

So, this got me

[Neraph]

I've been kicking around the idea for a blood mage Oni Mystic Adept. There are two clauses in Dunkie's Will (I can never spell his name properly from memory, and I don't care enough about him to look up his name) that give 1,000,000 nY bounties to Blood Mages and Toxic Shaman, so I keep a handful built in case my groups want to go high-risk bounty hunting. The oni I have build was originally an NPC, but would totally be awsome to play.

The Oni was a kanmushi, more specifically, a maho tsukai (obviously). Physical Double Image, Manabolt, Shadow, and some adept abilities to mitigate "Blind Firing", so he drops a large amount of Visibility Penalties, then goes into melee (dual wielding katanas [one is a weapon focus, the other a spellcasting focus] with Two Sword Style) using blind firing to not take the visibility penalties he just made. I think I gave him Sacrifice, and he was working towards getting Invoking to Invoke Blood Spirits (evil kami).

Character concept of him being a kanmushi, but when he goblinized (it does occur after birth in some cases), he saw it as a sign from the kami that he was meant to be evil (or at least less than good). It is his duty to do the will of the magatshui-no-kami (dark kami).

[vacrix]

religious characters in SR4 have to be either fanatics that are so into their religion that they will never stray off their path to enlightment or they will become corrupted by SR4's nature.

the second situation will be more common. not a bad idea though. maybe a boondock saints kinda thing?

[AKWeaponsSpecial...]

There are two clauses in Dunkie's Will (I can never spell his name properly from memory, and I don't care enough about him to look up his name) that give 1,000,000 nY bounties to Blood Mages and Toxic Shaman

There is? Interesting....where would one go to collect?

[Emy]

There are two clauses in Dunkie's Will (I can never spell his name properly from memory, and I don't care enough about him to look up his name) that give 1,000,000 nY bounties to Blood Mages and Toxic Shaman

There is? Interesting....where would one go to collect?

I'm pretty sure you'd haul them to a Draco Foundation building.

[Critias]

I think the tricky part is that they're supposed to be alive. Or, rather, the trickiest part. The first tricky part is, well, finding the bastards.

[Tyro]

religious characters in SR4 have to be either fanatics that are so into their religion that they will never stray off their path to enlightment or they will become corrupted by SR4's nature.
<snip>

Why would you say that? Not all religions are incompatible with shadowrunning.

[Megu]

I've actually got two characters in the group I run right now that are dealing with this.

On the one hand, we've got an Islamist gunslinger adept, who doesn't recognize that she's magical. She pretty much thinks everyone around her is a heretic, between the magic users, the metahumans, the cybered (who are trying to improve upon Allah's design of the human body), the harlots and dealers in intoxicants that she meets on the streets, and pretty much anyone else who's not a devout Muslim, and has to work hard to restrain herself and be professional instead of being all "HERESY!" BLAM! So it's not like she has trouble from being too soft for the shadows, but it's more that it makes it hard for her to cooperate with others, especially when those others include the above. Hates technomancers and has been the Clockwork-type reactionary throughout our Emergence campaign.

On the other hand, we've got a Catholic Yucatan Maya shaman who hates Aztechnology. Religion blends pretty heavily with culture for her; that is to say, she does kill people and stuff, preferably AZT employees, and make other breaches of conduct, but in a lot of manners she plays things by the book. For example, on our last run the character was in the third trimester of pregnancy, as she doesn't do birth control with her husband, and she's essentially running so her little kids can have a better life on the money she's saving up. She's been strongly pro-technomancer. So it's interesting that our campaign has seen such conflict between the two religious characters.

The pacifist in our group is a not so religious Welsh troll hacker. That character is much less developed and a hell of a lot harder to write runs for.

[LivingOxymoron]

I've actually got two characters in the group I run right now that are dealing with this.

On the one hand, we've got an Islamist gunslinger adept, who doesn't recognize that she's magical. She pretty much thinks everyone around her is a heretic, between the magic users, the metahumans, the cybered (who are trying to improve upon Allah's design of the human body), the harlots and dealers in intoxicants that she meets on the streets, and pretty much anyone else who's not a devout Muslim, and has to work hard to restrain herself and be professional instead of being all "HERESY!" BLAM! So it's not like she has trouble from being too soft for the shadows, but it's more that it makes it hard for her to cooperate with others, especially when those others include the above. Hates technomancers and has been the Clockwork-type reactionary throughout our Emergence campaign.

Just curious questions

1.) Is the character played by a man or woman?

2.) Does the character wear a hijab?

3.) Did the player research Islam for insight into the character? i.e. Is the character a Shi'a or Sunni? Does the player try to integrate things like the 5 pillars of Islam into gameplay, or is it more of a stereotypical view of Islam?

[Megu]

1) Male. Only male in the group besides me, actually.

2) Yes. Which is actually more helpful than a hindrance for a runner. And we've touched on the irony of a young, independant gunslinging woman being so devoted to a conservative view of religion. The character thinks it's all right that she's going outside and stuff without a male relative only because it's in the name of jihad, much like missing prayer can be excused in the name of jihad.

3) Sunni, Shia also fall into that pesky "heretic" category. The player involved does know his shit to a certain extent, better than I do at least. I mean, I remember a big paper he did towards the beginning of college (he goes to Macalester, they're big on cultural stuff) about the Nation of Islam and Black Muslim movements in the US, so he at least knows basics. Not to mention Minneapolis has the largest Somali population in the US, so it's not like Islam is something we never see or interact with, either. That said, I really couldn't tell you how much external research he's done just for the character. I honestly think he just wanted to play someone who would be at loggerheads with the other characters (that sounds antagonistic, but it's really par for the course for our group; the backstabbing is considered the fun part). I keep asking him half-jokingly if he knows we're not actually playing Dark Heresy, with all of his in-character rhetoric with his fellow ganger-militants about purging the infidels and what all.

[Neraph]

I think the tricky part is that they're supposed to be alive. Or, rather, the trickiest part. The first tricky part is, well, finding the bastards.

1) Slab cures all your problems.

2) I ran it with them having a "Top 10" list, including a "last seen at" place. When they arrive they need to do some legwork to track 'em down.