TVTropes defines Crystal Dragon Jesus as

QuoteAny fictional religion, such as those found in a Medieval European Fantasy, which possesses attributes stereotypically associated with Christianity (especially Roman Catholicism) — such as priestly vestments, nuns and their habits, confessionals, the designs of houses of worship, and crosses — but which centers on a deity other than the Christian God, like an animistic spirit or pagan-flavored god. Often there will be a Yahweh analog and/or a Satan analog but not a Jesus one.

How does that make you feel, when a fantasy setting, or more to the point a game setting, uses a superficially-Christian religious model?

I have to admit, to me it can feel kind of intellectually lazy if not done extremely carefully. Which causes me a lot of unnecessary anguish when it comes to D&D, because the standard Cleric is pretty much built around it. So much so, that sometimes I resolve to just ditch clerics from my games altogether. But I never seem to follow through. On the other hand I can understand the appeal, particularly if one is seeking a pseudo-medieval feel.

Am I just nuts, or is that a reasonable reaction?

I'm fine with explicit analogues of Christianity: "This is World X's version of medieval Christianity". So, a Monotheist religion that has great political and moral power. I don't like muddled "Christian church with pagan gods at the altar" type affairs, which most D&D settings have. Greyhawk is one of the worst offenders, religion there seems to make no sense at all AFAICT. Forgotten Realms is more pagan and less Christian, but has still had silly ideas of compulsory patron deities and treating the different gods as different religions. Not long ago I had a player reluctant to have her Ranger PC pray to Kelemvor for a dead man's safe journey to the afterlife (Kelemvor being the shepherd of the dead) - she was worried her patron goddess Mielikki would be offended!

Depends on how far it cleaves to the real world stuff. If its just swap some names and otherwise its the same thing. Then that tend to be rather boring and cliche as its been done to death across various media.

If it is just one or two points of simmilarity then that tends to get the wave for me.

I think "intellectually lazy" is perfectly fine for roleplaying games. Look at the context for most roleplaying games, it's the stuff of elves, wizards, space aliens and vampires. Even the games we tend to consider more character driven and psychological tend to be pretty goofy and lurid by the standards of world literature.

As a general principle I would avoid anything that might risk offending the beliefs or sensibilities of your players just to make the above mentioned elves, wizards, space aliens and vampires a little different, unless of you know your players well and where to draw the line with them.

Oh I love it. The Church has this fantastic hierarchy, these elaborate rituals and ornamentation, hidden secrets, voting councils at the higher level and when you delve back into the depths of the middle ages some wild grotesqueries amongst the better known traditions.

I don't support the Church in reality, I'm not even a Christian, but the sheer quantity of plot hooks and adventure possibilities it brings to the table overlaid on even vanilla D&D is exciting, as long as it's not a superficial treatment of this ancient organisation.

Quote from: Soylent Green;714229I think "intellectually lazy" is perfectly fine for roleplaying games. Look at the context for most roleplaying games, it's the stuff of elves, wizards, space aliens and vampires. Even the games we tend to consider more character driven and psychological tend to be pretty goofy and lurid by the standards of world literature.

For roleplaying games, too much worldbuilding makes the setting too alien. (For most people. Obviously, there are exceptions.) Playing such a game becomes an exercise in "let me figure out how this character who shares no common cultural concepts with me would think" rather than "let's have fun exploring this hidden tomb".

That's why RPG's tend to (in most cases) hew pretty close to a set of common tropes (varying by genre), changing only a few of them for a specific setting: "Fantasy, but with Lovecraft Horror." It makes the setting more accessible, which means people don't have to focus on the strangeness, but can focus on the fun.

"Crystal Dragon Jesus" is just a way of making a religion that's accessible to most people.

I don't mind this stuff.

The Christian church, if you look at the myriad of denominations and sects, drew much (perhaps even most, and if you read some scholars, all) of it's ritualism and belief structure from the religions that came before.

The concept of a Messiah figure was not new in Jesus' time - nor even a virgin birth, a death and resurrection, sacrificial atonement for sins.  

You only have to look at the Egyptian cult(s) of Isis to find analogies to the confessional.

Nearly everything in the Christian church can be found in older, deeper roots of other religions.

So, slapping another deity on top of an existing hierarchy doesn't strike me as any more "intellectual laziness" as, oh, say, not inventing a completely different language.

Most of medieval roleplaying is taking a given set of historical references and tossing a few new things into the mix to see what kind of ripples result.

There's a lot to be said for giving the GMs and players interesting twists while providing them with something familiar to grasp.

If it were "intellectual laziness" then it would be a closer replica of Christianity "with the serial numbers filed off" - which has been done before, over and over again.

As a follower of the teachings of Christ and a student of history, I rather enjoy other people's takes on the "what if Christianity was a little different?".

As I said elsewhere, its fine by me. High Valor has the Martyr and the High Lord, and they took more work making work for my game and building the myths in my head (and on paper, for some reason the myths didn't all make it into the game.) Than the fictional ones for my D&D style setting. Or the ones for my dark-fantasy setting. Mostly because I wanted them to feel right, and with purely entirely drawn from fiction I don't have anything to "fit" together.

Quote from: LibraryLass;714210TVTropes defines Crystal Dragon Jesus

How does that make you feel, when a fantasy setting, or more to the point a game setting, uses a superficially-Christian religious model?

Am I just nuts, or is that a reasonable reaction?

Getting rid of, or adding to, the traditional Christian Clerics that were a part of the original D&D was very important in the early days was the goal of many GMs, and not because they were not christians.. It was the opinion of many in the gaming community that attaching just one religion to the game was sending the wrong message about the game to all RPG gamers, and that a more balanced approach should be used.

While no attempt was made to change AD&D, the Rules Cyclopedia did include both mystics and druids. Many folks thought TSR muffed the interpretation for Mystics because they didn't have spells, just special abilities.

Generally what we always did if we were not happy was to create our own character classes... and that included new types of clerics (with new spells).

The Amazon Priestess was one of my personal favorites homebrew character classes from the early 80's. I reworked the original after 3e came out, and still have the writeup for it;

Amazon Priestess PDF download (Yeah!, free)

The Amazon Priestess
Among the clans and tribes of the amazon women, there exist an exceptional few that turn from the art of war. Instead these women serve as leaders, healers, spell casters, negotiators, counselors, and are considered the wise women of amazon society. These women are known as the Amazon Priestess. The Amazon Priestess class is closely related to Sorcerers as class with a bit of a twist. Because of their cultural background amazons learn spells of both wizardry, and religion, and have a few spells that are unique to them as a class because of their  nature.

Adventure;
Most of the Amazon Priestess’ remain with the clans and tribes they are raised in for life. On rare occasion, an amazon priestess may venture forth into the outside world on a quest for some information, magic, or item, that the community may need to survive and prosper. On occasion, for some heinous crime, an amazon priestess may be exiled from the clan or tribe. Even rarer, but not altogether unheard of, an amazon priestess may leave the clan for a time on a “world journey” or sabbatical. Sometimes, the priestess never returns.

Characteristics;
From a young age a priestess is trained in using spears and bows to hunt with, just like any other member of the clan or tribe. They are proficient gatherers as well, and many have extraordinary abilities to find suitable food type plants and to determine if such plants are edible or poisonous. The time of puberty is where the path of the priestess diverge from the warriors, and others in the clan. Often it is a natural skill, or spontaneous ability, with spell craft, or healing, that sets the priestess apart from the rest of the tribe. At other times, it is the diplomatic skills, or the eloquence, that sets a would-be priestess apart from her peers in the eyes of the village elders. Some of the priestess class eschew violence and instead train in defensive combat using a staff, however, this is rare. If they demonstrate any talents at all priestess’ are formally trained in the healing arts, and in spell craft from puberty until they reach adulthood when they take up positions of clan or tribe leadership. As they grow older, they learn diplomacy, negotiation, and statecraft skills as well.

Quote from: LibraryLass;714210Which causes me a lot of unnecessary anguish when it comes to D&D, because the standard Cleric is pretty much built around it.

You're over-thinking D&D.

Quote from: Soylent Green;714229I think "intellectually lazy" is perfectly fine for roleplaying games.

For cases of 'intellectually lazy makes the game-world readily accessible to the players,' most definitely

How would a religion devoted to a Palestinian Jewish rabbi regarded as an incarnation of the God of Abraham and Moses originate in a world that has never had Palestine or Israelites, never had the Roman Empire and its collapse, and so on and on?

The Deryni novels pull off the injection of the Church passably well, IIRC, by being set in a world that is more or less a parallel Earth. Clifford Simak's novels of an alternate history in which monsters kept a basically medieval civilization going into the 1970s are even closer to home.

GURPS Fantasy presented the world of Yrth, to which humans had been brought from Earth by the native Dark Elves' conjuration. Naturally, they brought their Christianity, Islam and Judaism with them. (Some Japanese also turned up, but not very culturally literate ones, and built a society resembling a Monty Python take on Japanese tradition.)

Quote from: Phillip;714286GURPS Fantasy presented the world of Yrth, to which humans had been brought from Earth by the native Dark Elves' conjuration. Naturally, they brought their Christianity, Islam and Judaism with them. (Some Japanese also turned up, but not very culturally literate ones, and built a society resembling a Monty Python take on Japanese tradition.)

I've always wanted to run a game in Yrth. I think it's a pretty fantastic set up.

Quote from: Phillip;714286How would a religion devoted to a Palestinian Jewish rabbi regarded as an incarnation of the God of Abraham and Moses originate in a world that has never had Palestine or Israelites, never had the Roman Empire and its collapse, and so on and on?

It's probably more interesting to focus on the structure and hierarchy of the church rather than the specifics of the theology, which Theravada Buddhism isn't all that far away from, despite being less centralised. It's an ornate edifice of marvellous nutty tradition upon which many great movies and stories have been based. Like The DaVinci code, The Name of the Rose, The Exorcist, The Sin Eater, etc.

To be honest, most religions have similar structures. Different levels of knowledge/belief/rank, holy days, holy places, special rituals and so on.

Christianity in its many forms has the same sort of structure. So do many more religions.

Religions in RPGs are often written up in similar ways. Sure, the spells they get are different and the rituals, holy days, temples and priests are different, but they all boil down to the same basic structures.

I'm a RQ/Glorantha fan, so I like the way they deal with religions. No Crystal Dragon Jesus there, but the cults are very similar on form. Even Alternate Earth versions of Christianity are similar to other religions.