Religion in Larp

I see religion as an important part of any game for me. For several reasons:
- It creates both community and conflict:
If they have the same religion as you, people are probably good people, but if they don't - maybe you mistrust or even fear them.
- It is something that gives your character some interesting limitations:
(I'm not saying "and advantages", because those are subtle at best - any kinds of clerical magic, from healing to turning undead od things like that are rare.)
Limitations challenge your character, and can put them in internal conflicts. For example: One of the most wide-spread in-game religions over here shuns all forms of magic, among other things. So on multiple occassions when I was wounded, I was conflicted to either accept magical healing or potentially die and/or being in pain. Or, once, before a large battle against cultists and demons, I feared dying, or being tortured by them, or losing my soul, so I ashamedly went to a mage to make me a protecting amulet. Surprisingly, we won the battle, I survived, and I decided to donate a lot of coin to the church and go on a pilgrimage afterwards. (Funnily enough, the amulet prop broke apart just after the battle, as if it had done the job and lost it's powers.)
- It helps with world-building:
Having deities in your world usually means that your world has both a creating myth that somehow, somewhat ties into in-game affairs, as well as an answer to what happens after death. Names of places and people will be inspired by them, as does the culture itself of those who follow those deities. One asceot of this is that it can establish a certain order in societies - it can determine how subservient or free-spirited people from there might be.
- It gives you something to do (generates play):
You might have a prayer for all sorts of occasions, you might have certain praying times you follow, you can go to mass and listen to sermons, or you can try to convert the heathens or burn witches (the latter, for OOG reasons, might not be a good idea, though). It's also a good money sink for characters that happen to earn a lot of money, by giving tithes and alms.


Oh, and I'm not exactly sure about the claim in the study about religious players tending to play with religion, and atheistic ones avoiding it. If anything, I found the opposite to be true. As an OOG atheist, it's great fun to play characters of varying degrees of religious fervor, and I think most of my characters follow some religion.

Religions over here are varied, often pantheistic, but sometimes monotheistic, with the example mentioned above being the latter and - only at a glance - similar to christianity, complete with precursor religion (judaism), orthodox and reformed variations (catholicism vs. protestantism), and an offshoot that denies some fundamental "truths" of this religion (islam). What I've rarely or never seen are deities that have a defined position on the good-evil-scale. The reason being, I guess, the question of why would you ever worship an openyl evil god.

Well, you can look at Hinduism for a real example of that last part, IRL. Or Norse Paganism. Or Zoroastrianism - Ahura Mazda has a good spirit and an evil spirit, both of which demanded the same amount of respect.

Oh, sure, as part of a pantheon/concept that is worshipped as a whole, it's not unusual to have the odd prankster/thieving/death/destroyer god or aspect - and it becomes more common with increasing number of deities in it. Because if you have a god dedicated to peace and healing, you got to have gods of mischief and murder as well. You could even argue that Christianity has its own evil "god" in it's "pantheon" - who, as we all know, you start worshipping if you play too much D&D. Or listen to rock music. Or read Harry Potter.

What I meant was worshipping a clearly evil deity exclusively that just "happens" to share the same cosmology with others. In that case I think most or all people would rather turn to those gods that don't require your offspring offered in sacrifice or torturing innocents all day to mayyyybe make the wheat grow better.

Take Llolth in the Forgotten Realms, for example. This sort of thing is very common in worlds in which good and evil are not so much just words used to evaluate our deeds, but rather something almost like a physical attribute or party membership that guides and defines all your actions.

Well, at least in KR, I feel that the Dark Pantheon facilitates Aspects of the world that are necessary, but not necessarily classically idealized. Like Destruction. One normally thinks destruction to be wasteful, until you take a closer look: Destruction of a living plant is necessary in order to harvest. When you look at it that way, and embrace the Good that comes from the perceived Evil, it is easy to respect, and even worship, deities dealing with Dark concepts. But even that may be argued as not worshipping an inherently Evil God.

Speaking as a player only (and not a staff member) I would love to see the Pantheon at KR morph into a more Roman / Greek pantheon style where any character can worship of any of the gods ... some of them may be "darker" or "lighter" and there might be stigma associated with making offerings to a "darker" god but it wouldn't be considered illegal by the state and you wouldn't be hunted down for it.

OOG I was raised Roman Catholic and did the whole confirmation thing. But since college I have met and made friends with many Pagan friends, several Jewish friends and a few Muslim friends and I have read or researched many religions. For my current PC, Gunnar, I have been studying concepts of Shamanism as well as Pagan concepts to try to play his philosophies more in that direction. So far I think it is working and I am enjoying the difference in thought process that engenders conversations between people. If you read the recent "Good versus Evil" thread that I started you will (I hope) notice a lot of that difference coming out between Gunnar and Aldric -- it is entirely a philosophical argument (with a bit of linguistics thrown in) and I think it was amazing.

I mean -- I was excited while I was writing each response and excited to read each counter post. How cool is that?

I would love to see a situation in which a terrible plague befalls the land and the towns people put together offerings to one of the "darker" gods to try to appease them and nobody flips out and tries to murder them.

Sorry if this was long winded. Again, this is just my opinion as a player of KR.

Gunnar Gunnarson wrote: Speaking as a player only (and not a staff member) I would love to see the Pantheon at KR morph into a more Roman / Greek pantheon style where any character can worship of any of the gods ... some of them may be "darker" or "lighter" and there might be stigma associated with making offerings to a "darker" god but it wouldn't be considered illegal by the state and you wouldn't be hunted down for it.

Speaking as a player, and in particular one who plays clergy, I would also love to see this.