Religion in Larp

Templar Aldric wrote: Continuing then the original topic, sans PvP, I would ask others for thoughts on what kind of roleplay appeals to them within the Religious theme? Or if the idea of religion is something you feel is not your thing and why?

Religious roleplay is right up there with one of the nice quick ways, in my opinion, you can add a challenge to your roleplay and a depth to your character (or in a very religious society like you said being atheist or agnostic!)

The enjoyable part for me is a few things.
-the ritual: acting of the prayer, creating a look and feel for the followers creates a ton of visual depth, and I sort of wish I saw a bit more of it
-the compulsion: tenants of a goddess can greatly scatter the expected reaction to the wind and creates unique situations. Not being too afraid of the odd choices in course of action have created some of my favorite rp scenes, light, dark, neutral, atheist, or whatever! But keeping it mind helps

-it's not god related, but it can relate to class roleplay. Being a druid and ritualizing the roleplay often feels very religious (for those who remember the winter of throwing blood heh) and can be a blast!

Cyndra Stagsblood wrote:
The enjoyable part for me is a few things.
-the ritual: acting of the prayer, creating a look and feel for the followers creates a ton of visual depth, and I sort of wish I saw a bit more of it
-the compulsion: tenants of a goddess can greatly scatter the expected reaction to the wind and creates unique situations. Not being too afraid of the odd choices in course of action have created some of my favorite rp scenes, light, dark, neutral, atheist, or whatever! But keeping it mind helps

Such wonderful points - I enjoy doing Mass so much because of the ritual and rp of it.
And yeah, getting to make the 'religious' choice instead of the choice that makes the most sense to me OOG is often the means to great RP with others.

On the addition of ritual, I would like to see more of it, but feel that you need a receptive audience for that. I can envision Latin phrases and use of ceremonial props but wonder if that might
lose people?

Among a ritual group I see that more useful. When doing divine rites, among Clergy, we can pull out the stops on the scene.

I'm going to use the term "Ceremony" instead of "Ritual".

Ceremony comes in two forms. Big C Ceremony and little c ceremony.

ceremony can be anything from how you set up the altar to repeated phrases or having those in attendance repeat phrases or take deep breaths. ceremony is something that you do out of habit To use some modern religion examples: making the sign of the cross, wearing a yarmulke, kneeling on a prayer mat facing mecca, lighting incense or candles, spritzing holy water, handling prayer beads, singing or playing music.

These little things can add so much depth to a character or a mass or a scene. They can convey in very small ways a HUGE amount of religious RP in a very short period of time.

Ceremony is like a Saint Astrid's Day auction for example or a high holy day scripted event. These are larger and harder to pull off but when used sparingly can also lend a huge amount of RP.

Don't worry about Ceremony for every mass, but put ceremony into every day, and your religion RP will go through the roof.

Please recall little c ceremony is required to use the skill mass.

The priest must dedicate half of the time of the mass delivering a sermon, and the remaining time performing religious ceremonies.

I do it at Midnight mass with the candle and the breathing and the 4 calls to life, etc.

You do it at Bar mass with the cookies, and the Q&A process and the various things you do.

My main issue with religion is this...

Atheism: Belief there is/are no god(s).
Agnosticsm: Does not know if there is/are god(s).

Our KR world, no one can doubt Gods exist. Why? We see their mediums (Priests & Clerics) perform miraculous, metaphysical things. Heal wounds, cure diseases, call forth light & other energy. Things that normal people cannot perform.

So what does this mean for our world or for a character growing up & living in our world?

If from birth you are told that there are beings out there with great power, who can channel that power to their faithful, & that when you die, you will go before them & get judged/sent to whatever afterlife you are supposed to get... what will that do to you? How will that affect your outlook on life?

I would think there would be tons of people who are baptized & be very fervent followers of whatever religion.

Frankly, I would think religion in our game would be playing a huge part of the plot all the time. Hence why we face "cultists" a lot or had many mods/plot points involving stopping "evil" deities from accomplishing something.

I would be interested to see something like the D&D FR Time of Troubles event in KR. FR has a huge pantheon of deities. So much so, it made sense that eventually all the deities would be going to war with each other over followers.

Time of Troubles