Has anyone tried doing a religious-type run? I've an idea for my group, but I'm not sure how feasable it'll be.

The PCs will be priests and nuns (right now Society of Jesus comes to mind) that do runs for the RCC. What do you guys think? Is it doable?

If you remember that the RCC in shadowrun is different in quite a few ways from the real RCC, and if none of your players would be offended by the shadowrun version, then it could be a viable campaign. The SR RCC would certainly employ deniable assets. Not sure if they would be priests and nuns, though. Religiously trained, yes, but priests and nuns, I have a slightly harder time seeing as runners, unless you're going for an anime-style nuns-with-guns and priests with bigass swords type of thing.

Be sure to sound your players out about it, though. Religion can be a prickly subject for lots of people.

I've started a small campaign in witch the players will have to break into the Vatican's archives.
I'm planning at least 5 different runs to "open" the opportunity.
So far they've managed to recover a clone of the pope in a Doc Wagon facility (they dont know that the corpse is the pope's one).

A religious campain would be a great way to introduce some of the 'artifacts' mentioned on another thread.





http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...5&hl=dreams

In a world where evil spirits and such are quite real, and people actually have to exocise(banish) them, it makes sense something would exist.

Maybe even something with some Knights Templar flavor if you'd like to go that route.

It could be a solid campaign. Runners would have to deal with issues of morality vs "getting the job done" and dealing with others. And there are plenty of threats out there to deal with.

Could also be a good campaign to work Earthdawnish stuff into after some time.

like the Order of the Temple, a.k.a reborn Templars, a sectret group that only answers to the Pope and mostly act like runners for the chursh.

I've done it and it works well as long as people remember its a game and the differences between their RL religion and the religion in the game don't mean that the game, the GM, or the other players disrespect their RL religion. Hell, one of the best times I had gaming was playing Dogs in the Vineyard (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogs_in_the_Vineyard) with a group of Mormons but they all understood that it was a game and we were there to have fun.

As long as you think your players can handle that, go for it.

Incidentally, the campaign I ran was a plot by the RCC to reunify the old Holy Roman Empire.

For artifacts and stuff the church could hire runners. Or for informatino or smear tactics. Looking for proof of the Holy Grail, Templars, Arc of the Covennant, Saint's relics and anciant documents.

We have done runs for and against the Church.

Have them be Asatru. Being mercenaries and runners suddenly becomes honourable. Plus, blood spilled during the run is seen as a sacrifice to Odin. And then, afterwards, you go home, crack a beer, do blot, and get wasted.

I've run several of them and even been a player on a couple myself. It is fun and a real earth without religion in it is strangely lacking in my opinion. Religions always make both great villians and heroes.

Just be careful of your players. It is very easy to greatly offend someone by poking fun at the beliefs they hold most dear. Real world wars have been started over such things.

Or an Asatru-following biker gang of vampire mystic adepts! Sorry, going back to the early days feel SR had for me...

Thanks for the replies. I was thinking more of a secret society (probably a sub-sect) that was formed by the Jesuits and Benedictine Monks together with the Dominican Sisterhood to counter the threats that they believe to be a threat to the RCC. The PCs would all have to be priests, monks, or nuns, and yes, they literally are runner types though more closely akin to special forces, with the RCC (or parts of it) as their patron. All the magic types have to fall within the "Christian" priest types ... ergo no shamans or hermetics. Unfortunately, I'm not so sure about the example given in Street Magic.

They primarily eradicate the "minions of satan" as well as getting assigned missions to recover various artifacts and to "spread the word of God".

And remember that the RCC is a political hierarchy with many different Factions. Perhaps a cardinal wants to smear another one. Maybe you will be running to stop or curve a certain sect that is making waves. Perhaps its a figure in the church that is preaching for change or you are part of the group of change. Also running against the FCC (the french), protestants, Muslims, ect. Perhaps not for wetwork but to make the group look bad in the public eye or maybe even working with another religion in a common good (some pan religious group trying to stop secularism or a demon). Hell, maybe a priest has gone down the twisted path and is eating the body and blood of christ by eating the body and blood of others. Plus there is ton of religious mythos that fits right into shadowrun (dragons, speaking serpents, demons, possession, and heaven or hell (the metaplanes).

If you want to stay "Canonical" then you could use the New Jesuits (defenders of the Church) or the New Templars (The... offensive team for lack of a better word).

The New Templars are detailed very well in Threats 2, but are certainly playable by PCs. Shadows of Europe will also give you a lot of background on Roman Catholic politics, particularly the sections on France, Italy, Spain and Poland. I'm not sure where the New Jesuits are covered in detail (if they are).

Unfortunately I can't find my Threats 2 so I'm limited to just creating my own orders.

I had a LONG campaign (around 12 different runs, if I recall correctly) that ran with a few strong religious themes. The group started out with a run of the mill deal to whack with a few vampires, and ended up encountering an awakened priest who took a very proactive approach to guarding his followers. The group ended up liking the fellow so much that they took a few jobs from him, and ended up being sent all over the world to investigate potential miracles for the church. All in all, it the campaign went very well, so its quite possible to do a game with religious overtones if your players are up for it.

We've had one of those with a strong theme and, as DLN said, several lesser runs where the target or Johnson was the church.

The big campaign ened up with a handful of us breaking into the chruch catacombs under the island just off the coats of France (I forget the name just now. St Michelle I think) to find out what was really hidden there and what of the urmors of it's 'creation'were true- that Satan passed through there when cast out of heavan.

Turned out our Johson was also RC but felt he was bieng cut out of secrets. As the GM well knew, I was in no way happy about being hunted down by agents from the church office of doctrinal purity.

RC? Drawing a blank on that acronym, pal.

RCC= Roman Catholic Church.

Who, oddly enough, I could see as likely to embrace the influx of "magic" under the right circumstances. Seeing as how they're getting more and more progressive.

I ran a few with a player who liked to play the Paladin types. Unfortunately it managed to get in the way of any jobs that could offer quick cred.

Of course you can do religious campaigns. The 6th World should be overrun with religions. Historically, in real life, people become more fervently religious in times of danger and disorder, and the 6th World is dangerously disordered. Also, poor, poorly educated people tend to favor religion, and the 6th World has no shortage of the poor and poorly educated. And in the 6th World, miracles are real. Feeling gay? Go to your Roman Catholic priest, who casts Influence on you to make it stop. Child sick? Take him to your rabbi, who gets out his Torah and cures him. Allah knows all because your imam has Mind Probe. That kind of thing goes a long way to convincing people.

Religions have endured for millenia. They're not going away just because of the Awakening. In fact, just the opposite.

I ran a successful campaign in 3rd ed. where the PCs were Catholic, and deniable assets for a Catholic cardinal in Europe, primarily involved in battling Muslim shadow networks for influence. I ran another one in the UCAS where the PCs didn't know that they were working for the Catholic Church, trying to get the Church's preferred candidate re-elected mayor of Boston.

By the way, Christianity and shamanism are perfectly compatible. Just substitute the names of Saints for various totems. Michael is the Dragonslayer, etc.

Tried it out with a few of the players, they liked the concept very much.

@ZenShooter01: Shamanism converted to Priesthood? I'm sorry, I'm afraid I didn't get it. Are you talking about ArchAngel Michael as Dragonslayer?
Nice idea, so if I go for the top 4 Archangels ... Michael (Warrior), Gabriel (Healer), Uriel (Death), and Rafael (Messenger). Thanks for the tip.

Currently the players are using 2 Jesuits (Infiltrator/Face types), 3 Benedictines (Physical Adepts: 2 gun-fu, 1 blade), and the Carmelite nun (Mage).

Yes, Saint Michael the Archangel as the Dragonslayer totem, or even Wise Warrior. You can probably find other saints to match existed totems, just swap the names out. Saint Christopher might use Legba's stats, for example.

and this ladies and gentlemen is pretty much how the religion of voudoun was started.

I'd also allow secular magical traditions, like hermeticism or probably even chaos magic or wuxia, as the RCC has no qualms about magic use for the right ends and has always been portrayed as very liberal in that regard in SR.
The RCC in SR also has a magical group of its own, called the order of St. Sylvester.
I'm not certain wether they are open to various traditions, though.
I could very well imagine a hermetic initiatory group within the RCC, as it is such an extremely common tradition.

For arcanophobes such as the GCC in Westphalia or various snake oil salesmen in the CAS, though, only christian theurgy (now 100% magic free...yeah, right) would be acceptable and i generally view it as the preferred tradition for sects who regard magic as sinful and therefore have to come up with a "pure" way to sling their mojo.

If you read the description for theurgy, you will find it is a quasi-hermetic tradition. It's about right for the RCC - magic isn't considered miraculous, but it is still carefully regulated, especially conjuring. The "this isn't magic, it's a miracle!" types fall under magical oddities, not theurgy.

Just reread it again and well...you're right.
Got that mixed up with 1st ed fluff about Westphalian theurges (who are now also summed up under the same tradition).

Also, it seems as if priests -in contrast to the average RC spellcaster- indeed have to be theurges if they're magically active...i would have expected a more liberal approach, considering what i had read before about the Imago Dei encyclica.

just stay away from invoking Uriel. that's one angle you do not want to take an interest in you. he doesn't get as much press as osme of the others but you know his work.

You wouldn't know any wizards in Chi-town would you?

I wrote a game resource about religions in SR3 in french only : http://www.archaos-jdr.fr/zip/religions.zip

In a game I played years and years ago I played one of the seven trumpeters of the End of Days. We played angels come down to do the Lord's work in a dystopian world. Based on the War of God series of movies we were, either Michael's angels, Lucifer's fallen angels, or Gabriel.

God having become silent in the Holy Choir caused Michael to consider himself as the necessary savior of humanity, considering that humanity must be protected from itself. Gabriel breaks off from this path considering that humanity should be allowed to grow without angelic supervision. Lucifer or rather those angels fallen with him have chosen earth to enact their own private area of hell or paradise.

We had an interesting twist in this all and that was we also played our mirror fallen brothers/sisters. So the more angelic we became the more foul did our mirror images become. There was a lot of interesting conversations between ourselves as well as the fallen who are as strong as we the PCs, but do not have the remorse of angels. Both heaven and hell had its reluctant combatants and in the case of Michael its zealots.

well, there's only one in the yellow pages.