2E an 3E Runequest are frankly incredible at both integrating religion into game play and describing religion in a way that really captures the diversity of historical religious beliefs and practices. This is best represented in the 2E source books, Cults of Prax and Cults of Terror, and in the 3E core boxed set and Gods of Glorantha. I have an awful lot of games, and off hand I can't think of one that comes close to RQ in this respect. Do any of you think I've missed one?

No. :cool:

Puts candle on D&D.
Holds D&D next to Runequest.
"Yep"
:cool:

The only other that comes to mind is King Arthur Pendragon. No coincidence that both have massive input from Greg Stafford, and one of his huge interests is religion and how it works.

I really liked the background (Including Religion) for Hârn.
I didn't like the RPG they made, but I played in a Rolemaster (2nd ed) campaign many years ago and I really loved the detail.

Could ypu give us a short summary of religion in Harn? Haven't heard anyone praise it before.

Quote from: Voros;985503Could you give us a short summary of religion in Harn? Haven't heard anyone praise it before.

Sure, this will be a very Anecdotal view though, as it was a long time ago (Early 90s).

The religion is very embedded into society and was put together with strong cultural flavours.
The gods themselves (from memory, I'm avoiding googling it to keep perspective) were associated with war, love, nature, death etc.
There really were advantages to be associated with the various religions and what you allayed yourself to really made a difference with your character, whether it was resources, contacts, spells, Lore, political favours etc..

However the political views/conflicts between the gods, churches, religions were fleshed out very well.

There was a rich/detailed Calendar for Hârn and this included religious events and how they were observed by each culture, which was very immersive.

The art itself, which had a very "Realistic" look to it helped with setting the mood too. So you'd see pictures of temples, churches, priests etc as examples.  In general the art for Hârn really resonated with me. It just "Felt" more "Real" to me.

After saying all this, the detail of Gods/religion etc wasn't so complicated that it became unapproachable, which for Glorantha it felt SO detailed, it became too difficult to get my head around and appreciate. For me it was like in Hârn, it hit the sweetspot between approachable and detail.

I have Harn and think its treatment of religion goes only a little deeper than most games, where religion means a pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and that's about it. This is a very narrow view that misses much that is interesting about world religions. Any good system of religions should provide descriptions of people resembling vedic yogis, daoist scholars, siberian shamen, greek stoics, and buddhist renouncers (etc., etc.). Runequest delivers (albeit with gloranthan titles); I can't think of any other games that do.

Horror games, like Kult? It's basically a psychological blueprint of a religious (very dark) world view.

Quote from: Voros;985503Could ypu give us a short summary of religion in Harn? Haven't heard anyone praise it before.

There are ten deities that manifest in different ways in different cultures. Although in the "modern" period it generally recognized in Venarive (Harn's equivalent of Europe) that certain deities were actually the same and there some of the religions have adopted the trappings of a universal church. The deities are Agrik, Halea, Ilvir, Larani, Morgath, Naveh, Peoni, Sarajin, Save K'nor, and Siem. Generally most of the material centers on how the each religions operate on Harn, the main variation come from the beliefs system of the different barbarian tribes.

Agrik is a war god of fire, Halea is a goddess of pleasure, Ilvir is a weird god of creations who create monsters, Larani is a war goddess of honor, Morgoth is the God of the Undead, Naveh is a dark god who has assassin following him. Sarajin is the viking god of war, Save K'nor is the god of knowledge, and Siem is a odd combination of nature, and dreams as well as being the god of the elves and dwarves.

Each of these deities have a variety of sect and orders as well plenty of fan made extensions. The Venarive material from kelestia.com is based on the stuff from Harn's original author N. Robin Crossby notes that didn't get published.

What sets the Harn's presentation of religion apart from Runequest and other RPGs is the wealth of details of how it works in practice through the numerous temple and location writeups. You don't just get the high level overview but the view from the "ground" so to speak.

Quote from: estar;985526What sets the Harn's presentation of religion apart from Runequest and other RPGs is the wealth of details of how it works in practice through the numerous temple and location writeups. You don't just get the high level overview but the view from the "ground" so to speak.

Yes, this is what I noticed the most when playing in the Hârn setting.
In relation to Religion anyway.

What sets Runequest apart for me is not so much religion, but myth. The way each particular aspect of reality is explained through mythical events that happened in old ages of gods, and how you can tap into those stories to enact small changes in the world yourself, totally mimics actual pre-modern religious thought and practices. And the fact the game managed to do this through a fictional body of mythology that's pretty coherent for the most part is what's really amazing.

Empire of the Petal Throne and the world of Tekumel deserve a mention too. Barker went deeply into it.

Quote from: DavetheLost;985604Empire of the Petal Throne and the world of Tekumel deserve a mention too. Barker went deeply into it.

I'll second that. The book of Ebon Bindings is a magnificent addition to Barker's culturally pertinent religions.

One excellent way to learn how Runequest religion works at the "ground" level is to play the King of Dragon Pass on Steam or Apple Store.