An older woman who lived across the street from us in the 1950s had a saint's statue on her wall. Maybe she didn't pray to the saint, maybe she prayed through the saint to God. However, when she got upset at events in her life, she would turn the stature upside-down! A young priest who played chess and talked with my (Jewish) grandfather referred to her as a pagan. And this wasn't even medieval.

Quote from: Brendan;1116851Ah, kind of you my friend. In reviewing the conversation, the two statements I made which Pundit took exception to are:
*snip*

... no! All of this is wrong! You are wrong! Wrong! You hear me?! :mad:

In all seriousness though, interesting post.

From my perspective, my favorite medieval authentic setting is Harn. Now, Harn is not monotheistic -- it is polytheist. However, I would argue that it's polytheist religions are closer to medieval reality -- especially early medieval -- than most fantasy religion. In early Europe, even if people were technically monotheistic, it often wasn't a big change from being polytheist, with many of the old gods simply becoming saints or similar. cf. the older work of the Harn Religion Team, which has a lot of articles on Harn religion.

https://www.lythia.com/hrt/general/index.html

Within Harn, different gods are worshipped, but there are also different religious orders within worship -- so there can be differences and heresies. Mostly this is because it's clear that gods are not very communicative. Priests have power, but it is vested power -- so they can be personally flawed and act contrary to their religion, and the god won't necessarily catch it and take away their powers.

From a role-playing perspective, this is important. In many fantasy RPGs, if a player character cleric acts contrary to his religion -- then the GM will declare that his clerical powers are taken away. However, this means that the god is indeed taking an active role and removes power from heretical priests. But that makes it impossible for there to be a major schism within a church, because the heretical priests would lose their supernatural powers.

Quote from: rawma;1116566Even more, with a spell like Commune you either can know authoritatively whether some doctrine is correct or not; if different clerics get different answers, then the universe is clearly polytheistic (different powers are answering) or else the spell does not do what it says.

Use the version of Commune from basic D&D (BECMI or B/X, doesn't really matter which). It's a lot more ambiguous about where the answers are coming from and doesn't even specify that the answers received will be correct, or that answers will necessarily be received at all.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1116825The cleric is getting spells through some conduit between Mortal and Divine.

Why is the Divine only sending Spells and not Information or Orders through that conduit?

Also, have you met an Evangelical Christian? Its common for them to hear from their God, at least according to them, and many claim God speaks plainly to them. Non-evangelicals may question their belief, but we certainly have real world historical religions where rank and file believers believe they hear directly from their God.

And D&D clerics have spells involving that conduit, like Augury and Commune. If there is a Detect Evil spell, would a Monotheistic God offer the spell Detect Heresy?

Fair enough on the Evangelicals. Honestly my exposure to Evangelical beliefs are the TV Evangelists and it is hard for me to take them seriously, so I tend not to think of them when I'm thinking about religion in a game.
I've never agreed with D&Ds clerical light switch (doing gods will, you have spells, going against spells stop), which implies the full support of the god. I lean more towards the idea of granted access to powers, and malfeasance of that trust will eventually come back to get you (either the order sends people to collect you for punishment, or you get your comeuppance when you show up in the afterlife), not an immediate bolt of blue. I fall more into the idea that with few exceptions a god places people in the universe, gives them a play book and lets the chips fall where they may. Those exceptions would be great heroes / saints, and leaders of an order (pope etc) and even they don't literally have a direct voice line to god, more of a divine magic 8 ball.    

The Futurama episode Godfellas, really sums up my beliefs in a higher power (as much as I even have one, which mostly I don't). The line from that that I think really fits my views is when "god" in the episode says "When you do things right, people won't be sure you have done anything at all". That is basically how I see gods operating, even those like Greek and Norse myth where the gods do occasionally take direct action, most often they like to leave the mortals wondering. Sometimes it seems they have abandoned their champions, and sometimes they have, but more often that abandonment was actually furthering a long term goal. If the heroes can just go "What'z up God, explain yourself" it doesn't work, plus a supreme being doesn't need to explain itself to anybody and it is kind of presumptuous for a mortal to think it does.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1116911If the heroes can just go "What'z up God, explain yourself" it doesn't work, plus a supreme being doesn't need to explain itself to anybody and it is kind of presumptuous for a mortal to think it does.

If you want to go medieval authentic then you should be able to not only question God but also to argue him into changing his mind.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116754Wasn't Christianity's conversion of the Western World heavily aided by the Roman Empire--having already conquered the entire Western World--suddenly deciding to declare it the official religion, largely for political expediency?

That didn't happen as some kind of random event. There was a lot of stuff that led up to it.

QuoteIf all it took for ancient paganism to die out was for monotheism to show up, then how did the ancient Egyptian gods survive Judaism and their own monotheistic Sun-Disk worshiping cult

Because Judaism was an ethnic religion, and the Cult of Aten was led by a despised madman. The latter was also basically just a paganism with a single god; it was still following the pagan model of gods being for the benefit of kings (and sometimes heroes). In fact, it was less universal and less compassionate than Egyptian paganism.

QuoteDon't necessarily disagree with your characterization of militant atheists and fluff bunny neo-pagans, but it seems to me like you're overstating things on the opposite end in favor of "monotheism", or more precisely Christianity, which is one of only two monotheistic religions (the other being Islam) in history (that I'm aware) that vaguely resembles your characterization of monotheism here. And both of these religions have certain characteristics in common that I think aided in that regard:

• Hard Political Power
• Heavy Proselytizing Practices
• Hard Rejection of Completing Believes--even within their own faith (which is the source of all the schisms and heresies both religions experienced) by declaring them sinful and (due to political power) even illegal

You also missed the three vastly more important points:

-the god of those religions wasn't the god of "our tribe" or the god of a certain mountain, or the god of the storm. It was the god of all the universe.
-Salvation as a concept, and that salvation was accessible to everyone. You didn't have to be a King, a hero, or a great mystic or high priest to have access to a paradisaical afterlife, while everyone else wandered around like a ghost having drunk from the waters of lethe.
-A deeply personal god that cared about every human being.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1116911That is basically how I see gods operating, even those like Greek and Norse myth where the gods do occasionally take direct action, most often they like to leave the mortals wondering. Sometimes it seems they have abandoned their champions, and sometimes they have, but more often that abandonment was actually furthering a long term goal. If the heroes can just go "What'z up God, explain yourself" it doesn't work, plus a supreme being doesn't need to explain itself to anybody and it is kind of presumptuous for a mortal to think it does.

That idea is a big part of C. S. Lewis's "Till We Have Faces"--a Christian retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche.  Probably his finest work.  An excellent thing to read if someone wants to bring in some of the other ideas being discussed in this topic, into a game.  Don't think I'd call it "Medieval Authentic".  But it hits some of the same points in a rather nuanced fashion.  

Also, and I know I'm tilting at windmills, but for the record, you guys don't understand Evangelicals nearly as much as you think you do.

Quote from: Toadmaster;1116911Fair enough on the Evangelicals. Honestly my exposure to Evangelical beliefs are the TV Evangelists and it is hard for me to take them seriously, so I tend not to think of them when I'm thinking about religion in a game.

Televangelists are to Evangelicals as the Sequel Trilogy is to Star Wars... Over the top hype and vague references to terms, but completely divorced from the real thing.

It's also not confined to a group of religions either. Even the Catholic Church has recognized evangelical organizations in it (essentially defined as being in communion with the Holy See and possessing the four characteristics of evangelicalism; devotional emphasis on the Scriptures, stress that the resurrection of Jesus is the reason for our salvation, the need for interior conversion and a commitment to spreading God's word.

In point of fact, I'd actually look at Evangelicals (and Evangelical Catholics in particular) as a guidepost for what Medieval Christian thought was like. Continual prayer, even by the laity was very much a thing. The Rosary came about largely as a means of having rote prayers you could perform while engaging in daily labors (before the beads, they counted on their fingers/knuckles... something I routinely do while driving, just lift one finger off the wheel/plow to indicate your current count).

Another factor to consider was that one of the reasons for the ornate depictions on the walls, ceilings and windows of the Catholic churches was that most of the populace was functionally illiterate (most people could count and read words related to their trades, but that's not the same as literacy) so the artwork served as religious lessons via. illustrated bible stories (one of the things that kinda got lost in translation by the Protestants because their frame of reference was post-printing press).

Part of portraying Medieval religion is the icons, relics and rote prayers that were everywhere. If you're going on a journey you're probably reciting prayers (audibly or silently) nearly every step of the way (or listening to someone recite prayers) and keep some type of devotional item on your person at all times.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1116923That didn't happen as some kind of random event. There was a lot of stuff that led up to it.

True. It was a lot more complicated than the Empire deciding to make Christianity the official religion at the drop of a hand without reason, but it still gave it a significant advantage over being just a clandestine cult competing against a bunch of other faiths.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1116923You also missed the three vastly more important points:

-the god of those religions wasn't the god of "our tribe" or the god of a certain mountain, or the god of the storm. It was the god of all the universe.
-Salvation as a concept, and that salvation was accessible to everyone. You didn't have to be a King, a hero, or a great mystic or high priest to have access to a paradisaical afterlife, while everyone else wandered around like a ghost having drunk from the waters of lethe.
-A deeply personal god that cared about every human being.

Yeah, but a lot of that pretty much applies to Zoroastrianism as well, yet it never displaced paganism either and their numbers are small now compared to other monotheistic religions despite predating most of them. The difference is Zoroastrianism didn't exactly have those three characteristics I mentioned, except maybe political power, which they lost when Muslims conquered Persia and replaced the official religion with one that did meet those three criteria.

Though, I suppose a case could be made that having elements of universality and other things that you mention give religions more lasting power and appeal, which would explain why Hinduism is 3rd, after Islam among the most followed world religions, despite having elements of polytheism. Since Hinduism has some semblance of a universal "god" (if you can call Brahman a "god" in the strictest sense) and some notion of "salvation". Though, Brahman isn't exactly a personal god, and Hindu personal gods are kinda culture specific, which loses it points for universal appeal.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1116997True. It was a lot more complicated than the Empire deciding to make Christianity the official religion at the drop of a hand without reason, but it still gave it a significant advantage over being just a clandestine cult competing against a bunch of other faiths.

Well, my point was that before the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, it had already made tremendous inroads, and that it's success and some of its appealing elements were part of the reason why Christianity, and not some other clandestine religion, ended up being adopted.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1117019Well, my point was that before the adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Empire, it had already made tremendous inroads, and that it's success and some of its appealing elements were part of the reason why Christianity, and not some other clandestine religion, ended up being adopted.

Yeah, I forgot that by that point in history Christianity had already been legalized for more than half a century, so it wasn't exactly a clandestine cult by that point. My bad.

It's interesting that the Greco-Roman world, from around the time of the early Roman Empire, had an escalating crisis of religious meaning. There were literally hundreds of religious movements, mystery schools, and new spiritual philosophies emerging over that period.

There's a tendency among people today to essentially imply that it was just random chance that led Christianity to be the eventual winner of that marketplace-of-ideas, instead of Mithraism, the Mater Magna cult, gnosticism, sol invictus, or other movements. But that's not true; it won because it had some of the best broad-based appeal, because it appealed to certain thinkers who turned to be very good advocates, and because it had a tremendously appealing and very progressive sort of message.

It's one of the things I had to work at emphasizing when I ran Pendragon, for example, where you can theoretically play Pagan or Christian characters. I had to emphasize to my players that in the context of the times, paganism was the "conservative" religion, with less emphasis on things like compassion or the value of human life. People are so used to thinking of Christian religion as a reactionary and repressive force (and to some degree in paganism as being some kind of hippie spirituality) that this is sometimes hard for them to process.

To many of us Christianity was never this hip new thing teaching love and the value of life in a brutal world with a low life expectancy, but this constant threat of eternal damnation that taught hate of other religions and spiritual paths (or even Christian denominations) and anyone who did not submit to them, with a message of blind obedience and belief in a book. While paganism was this hip new Nature worshiping magico-spiritual thing that became trendy with the rise of Wicca and neo-pagan revivalism in the 90s, during a time when environmentalism was on the rise, that taught us that mysticism and religion were entwined and that spirituality had to be experienced directly through altered states of consciousness, rather than taken on blind faith. But also that ancient religions followed by warrior cultures like the Celts and the Vikings were a bunch of tree hugging feminists (cuz they had warrior goddesses and shit) at one with the land and somehow deeply concerned about not harming others, least that harm came back to you threefold, and other fluff-bunny shit.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1117339To many of us Christianity was never this hip new thing teaching love and the value of life in a brutal world with a low life expectancy, but this constant threat of eternal damnation that taught hate of other religions and spiritual paths (or even Christian denominations) and anyone who did not submit to them, with a message of blind obedience and belief in a book. While paganism was this hip new Nature worshiping magico-spiritual thing that became trendy with the rise of Wicca and neo-pagan revivalism in the 90s, during a time when environmentalism was on the rise, that taught us that mysticism and religion were entwined and that spirituality had to be experienced directly through altered states of consciousness, rather than taken on blind faith. But also that ancient religions followed by warrior cultures like the Celts and the Vikings were a bunch of tree hugging feminists (cuz they had warrior goddesses and shit) at one with the land and somehow deeply concerned about not harming others, least that harm came back to you threefold, and other fluff-bunny shit.

Yes. That's a very typical experience of a 20th century person with those religions. Which is why it's so hard for a lot of gamers to understand that it's almost totally backward from what it would have been in the time of early Christianity. Which is not to say that institutionally the church didn't start getting corrupt from a very early period. But on the whole, it would have seemed like an absolutely unimaginable force for social good in the medieval world.