Nearly invariably real world religions end up being a sham and its just a matter of belief. Sometimes the power came from within. Sometimes from forces outside that had nothing to do with the religion in question.

TORG played with this heavily too. The Living Land being a prime example. Then there was the Nile Empire, Ooorsh and the Cyberpapacy with more twists.

Or what happens when suddenly praying starts getting... results.

Quote from: jeff37923;716403I use real religions in Traveller, but I am careful to present them in a neutral light or to modify them to represent ways in which doctrine may evolve with time and technology. The Catholic Church has funded exploration and colonization missions (as a nod to The Sacred and the Profane, one of my favorite graphic novels). I had a long discussion with my editor when writing articles for Stellar Reaches about how Islam would evolve to survive into the far future (radicalised fundamentalist Islam would not survive into the future like radicalised fundamental Christianity would not for similar reasons). The Reformed Church of Elvis recognizes Elvis Presly to be the Second Coming of Christ, which I threw in as a joke until I found out that there are people who believe this now.

No matter what I personally can come up with will usually be outdone by something that already exists which is far weirder.

This reminds me of the last Trav game I ran.  It was in a  homebrew setting where China and India had become the great space-colonizers and thus became the dominant human cultures for the next several hundred years.  So I looked at how Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism evolved in light of that, and these were the dominant religions of the setting.

Catholicism still persevered; and featured a 250-year old "Cyberpope" who was being kept alive to the point he was more man than machine, a decrepid husk that was being venerated by believers over generations to the status of a living saint, though he was actually pretty much a vegetable at that point, and it was the administrators of the Curia who really ran the church. A situation that was, of course, much to their liking.
I ran this during the final years of JPII's papacy, so it seemed pretty true-to-life at the time.

I could see it being a very fertile playground, but I think you need to be very upfront about it, as it could cause issues that may unbeknownst to you fester and then blow up.  Everyone has their own bias and sensitivity level to religion and these are never the same between two or even moreso a group of people.  Even two Christians, Muslims, Buddhist who go to the same Church/Mosque/Temple don't necessarily agree on religious matters.  

Statements such as "this is not the real world, it is a game world" or "human interpretation of the Truth is imperfect as humans are imperfect," etc could help smooth things out.  

All religions true?  One religion true?  A more obscure religion such as Zoroastrianism being the Truth? Southern Baptism doctrines being the only way to Heaven?  Go deep on Mormonism and yes in fact, there is magic underwear!

Heaven's Shadow was written with the express position that the Abrahamic religions are basically true, and all serve the same deity as the one in Genesis. It even hinges on some specific theological concepts and interpretations, and on the canonicity of some of the Apocrypha.

Arcana Rising allows for real world religion, but is deliberately rather vague on the matter in the interests of flexibility, essentially taking the tack that ALL religions are essentially true enough to work. Obviously this raises some interesting theological questions, which I naturally avoided entirely, because really the only reason I did it was so that you could make a cleric of whatever religion you like.

It is absolutely true that one should speak openly about such potentially controversial things before play. I forgot to mention it in my post, but at this point it feels like such an obvious truism that I'm getting sloppy. Anyway, once again let's remember The Talk discussion and slap on a warning label:

"Playing with passionate concepts without informed consent may be controversial."

Because expecting people to be mature and respectful of others without being asked often leads to disappointment. So might as well ask already.

I can't imagine running a modern game without real world religion and politics.

Quote from: Tetsubo;717866I can't imagine running a modern game without real world religion and politics.

I run lot's of modern games and agree. Though I sometimes create alternate realities with this. I had a Boston based mafia campaign, and the players became involved in the casino issue. I used real life state legislators but changed many of their positions. So one of the women who was strongly in favor of opening casinos became a staunch opponent. I also created new reps here and there. But it was a real political issue, and provided fodder for several sessions of play.

I cannot honestly conceive of running a modern day setting with religion not existing. Its relevance depends on its relevance to the PCs. If none of them are religious than its largely irrelevant.

Now, as for any of the religions being true, in my experience that's an easy thing to solve if all of your players happen to belong to the same religion. Most games I have run, all the players are Christian, and typically a mixture of Catholic and Eastern Orthodox with few to no Protestants.

That makes it easy, but even then I still would rather the truths of religious dogmas be kept a mystery rather than jumping the shark on those things. NPCs with clerical professions are treated as human, typically religious but no more apt to be virtuous than anyone else. The main thing is if a PC is religious it's more than a philosophy but also part of the routine. If they are Jewish than I will mention them going to Synagogue on a Friday night, or observing koshur meals. If they are Catholic it's easy to note that they go to confession and Mass (which is more than a sermon, but actually a holy ritual. Both are essential the Christian versions of 'divine spellcasting" to someone with a Catholic mindset).

In a nWoD setting I wrote up, religion was mostly a way of identifying communities for the city. The Russians in the city were Eastern Orthodox where the majority of the rest were Catholic. The impact of this is that if the local Catholic bishop says something it shows up in the newspapers the next day. It's a simple reality of religion in society. Religion is influential. There are some of us who are not thrilled about that fact but it's still a fact.

Just like in the real world: none of the institutional religions are true, all of them are based on some long-ago and badly-warped version of the perennial formula that IS true.

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