Christian fantasy worldbuilding

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Christian fantasy worldbuilding Christanon 05/12/18 (Sat) 20:10:32 789877 No.646840

If you were going to make a fantasy setting, whether for a novel or an RPG, how would you go about handling the question of religion?

Christanon 05/12/18 (Sat) 20:26:32 4aabf9 No.646843

>>646840

God's always the highest. You write the story, God wrote you.

I don't really mind too much; if I'm doing a fantasy setting it's always interesting allowing for the highest of minds to realize "man the actual deities we have are just bits of the creator, which is an image of an even greater creator". It's stupid but I've always had a soft spot for it.

Christanon 05/12/18 (Sat) 20:41:09 4fa619 No.646848

You either do what Tolkien did and incorporate God in an allegory (yes I know Tolkien disliked the term) or you refer to God outright.

I'm actually in this conundrum as I believe that what Tolkien did was smarter (as God in an allegory would lower the guard of an atheist), but I'm trying to find an in-between in finding another name to refer to God as to make secularists think that the story is not referring to him when it actually is, I'm not sure if it's an okay thing to do this however, so if other Christians know that it's okay to give God another name then I would like to know.

But that's the unfortunate thing about this world, for a lot of people referring to God outright in a story will raise their guard and cause a defensive reaction, what Tolkien did was therefor really ingenious. We have to employ metaphor/allegory to the best of our ability to sneak behind a persons defenses towards God.

Christanon 05/12/18 (Sat) 20:43:09 abf200 No.646852

Tolkien's mythos is pretty good in this respect, where the "deities" aren't really gods but more like Archangels, and why Melkor is directly analogous to Satan as a fallen angel who corrupts creation, rather than just ignoring this and making all of the Valar as deities proper.

That or I'd imagine it mirroring actual history, whereby originally most/all peoples are pagan before the beginning of Revelation is made to mankind.

Christanon 05/12/18 (Sat) 21:06:07 98e690 No.646864

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>fictional setting

>people complain about the portrayal of gods/spirits/magic system/whatever not perfectly aligning with our own world

It's like science fiction or that Biblical parable about talking plants: you tweak things as needed to fit the story or setting and give it some consistency.

Christanon 05/12/18 (Sat) 22:27:03 9f1f7d No.646909

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>>646848

Yep, personally in this day, i'd just go with the Tolkien style of portraying;God cause an atheist usually only raises his gaurd once God is spoken outright, or the C.S Lewis method where God isn't directly mentioned, but it kinda is border lined mentioned/ has christian themes world be what i'd, go for. Or could just outright mention God and go big middle finger to the secularist, but that's the devil in me. I prefer, the Tolkien/C.S Lewis style. Especially these days when so much as a peep of God being mentioned the Edgy 14 yr old comes out, and you're branded this secularist heretic. Personally though, i'd just go for a Lewis method where it's borderline well it might as well be god, but if i was an indie dev. Yea im going full god. There's one god, and one god only, and to hell with secularism, and if you have a problem with it you can just spam away in a forum/comment section. That's what these sjw do and nobody seems to give crap.

Christanon 05/13/18 (Sun) 11:21:30 719a98 No.647179

>>646840

Whatever I would do, under no circumstances would I have deities gain power from faith or pop into existence/change their attributes because people believed. That's just about the worst meme appearing in fantasy worldbuilding nowadays, and it hasn't been fresh or edgy in a long time.

An idea I like for a fantasy RPG is that gods are entities that come from somewhere and demand to be worshiped.

For example, the god of a primitive tribe might be huge man-eating giant snake. A small country of farmers might worship a spirit being that casts arcane spells to make crops grow if you flatter her. The PCs might well end up fighting with and killing either or both gods and taking their stuff depending on how things go, and the worshipers might even approve of it.

I wouldn't have D&D's system that divides between arcane and divine magic, or at least I would have the divine category be the domain of the real God and beyond normal rules involving statistics and die rolls. There would be no gods granting spells to their clerics, D&D style. Though, certain gods might teach their followers rare spells, and certain other gods who have the special ability might possess their followers and have them use powers they wouldn't normally have.

In general I wouldn't get too attached to the D&D way of doing things, which is a weird Christian/LARPagan/postmodern/gaming legacy mixture with little real thought put into the overall design and the meaning of it all.

Christanon 05/13/18 (Sun) 15:27:21 a8ff2b No.647249

>>646840

Rather than handing putting in alternative religions, I go for making alternative Christian denominations instead.