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Author Topic: Asian Flavoured Cults  (Read 1871 times)

Persimmon

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Re: Asian Flavoured Cults
« Reply #15 on: May 04, 2022, 11:32:27 AM »
Thugee cult from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom would be a good cult to base one on.

And based on an actual cult, or at least one real enough that the British government in India took measures to eradicate it.  I have Indian friends who claim it still exists today.  Check out the novel Song of Kali by Dan Simmons.

Chris24601

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Re: Asian Flavoured Cults
« Reply #16 on: May 04, 2022, 11:52:30 AM »
D&D "paganism" is basically American-style denominationalism, but with each church having it's own separate god. It's nothing at all like real ancient paganism. Although it's certainly convenient from a game point of view, I never liked it.
First rule of fiction is write what you know and in the 1970’s American Midwest Christian denominationalism was pretty much the only example of religion they had to go on.

These days you can get something like GoogleTranslate to get rough translations of almost anything, but back then anything not in your native tongue had to be manually translated by someone able to read/speak both languages. The “magic Asian” didn’t justify happen by accident… it was because before the days of being able to liveplay tabletop games with players physically spread from Boston to Beijing anything from outside your region was actually exotic and likely rare.

I remember back in the 1980’s reading the “Japanimation” notes in the back of Palladium’s Robotech books (and how inaccurate it all was) because all they had to go on were fan translations of the source material and guesswork from observation of episodes back then… not the vastly more accessible and reliable translations we have now.

The big issue is; what happens when something based on the mistranslations and misunderstandings takes on a life of its own in terms of a fictional world? Is it worth actually going back to fix it (ex. making how religion works in established settings match historical polytheism) or do you just run with it as is?

While I’m sympathetic to and even encourage the presentation of genuine polytheism in new settings, I think a lot of times it’s used as a sledgehammer by some of the SJW’s as a means of accusing settings of being “culturally insensitive” because it’s not based on a 21st Century internet compiled understanding of the topic.

Yeah, religion is different in many D&D worlds than it was in real life. Those same settings also include gods who just show up and do stuff in the mortal world and spells that let you go visit godly realms at the caster’s whim too… no kidding it’s going to work differently there.

If you want realistic religions you need the gods to be enigmatic and unseen and divine power to be either vanishingly rare or explainable by other means (one of my personal favorite options is to make spellcasting an entirely “scientific” element that some priests happen to study… just as Catholic priests and bishops studied the natural magics that went on to become the natural sciences back in the day… faith is completely independent from the use of magic).

Expecting religion to work like it really does in a world where Thor could be having a drinking contest with a giant down by the local pub is silly.