thoughts for a christian-inspired setting

[SDragon]

i'm trying to come up with a fantasy setting that, like Narnia, has many christian parallels, so that i can use it to keep my dad's interest as i teach him how to play d&d. high fantasy/mid-to-high magic is what i'm thinking of using, but i'm not too sure where  want to go from there. while i have a few ideas, i think ultimately, this setting will mostly be built bottom-up as i teach my dad to play.

my ideas so far are usig elves as a sort of exodus era egyptian race ("yes, we are better then you, whelp. you will listen to what we say."), and also including a phillestine-inspired race of giants. the gods (i'm thinking of using the greyhawk pantheon presented in PHB) aren't actually gods, but Demons, Angels, and even exalted saints, who ultimately serve an omnipotent overdiety.

any more ideas to throw out?

[Elven Doritos]

Some threads to riff inspiration from:

"As it is in Heaven"

The Sword of Destiny

[Wensleydale]

I've been having ideas about this for a while now. Why not make many fairies and things servants of god OR, alternatively, heretics? Could make for some interesting conflicts - yes, the fairies are good, but they're also heretics! Heretics!

[So-Keher]

Hey this is a good idea
I would make sure that the religion of your hoice is as monotheistic as possible and VERY involved in the era's politics and economy, as the christian church was in ~1100 through ~ 1400
some good source material (in novel form) is the archer's tale trilogy by Bernard Cornwell, set in the hundred years war it deals with a lot of the christian church in medieval europe. excellent read too.

[SDragon]

the biggest problem i'm finding with monotheism is, by all technicalities, [spoiler=may offend some christians]christianity is't really all that monotheistic. first, while it's under one godhead, the trinity by itself represents two dieties and a demigod. ontop of that, even if the trinity was to fall under a single deity, there's still the issue of Satan; while christians don't worship him, Satan is, from my understandings, technically an evil deity. ontop of all of that, there's still the issue of angels and demons: do they count as lesser dieties? if not, then what do they count as? as you can see, the issue of monotheism- even in christianity- is a very sticky subject.[/spoiler]

that said, the idea of a patron deity in d&d seems very similar to the catholic idea of patron saints. in turn, the idea of patron saints seems similar to the idea of personal guardian angels, to me. making a pantheon into a selection of patron angels feels like a decent way to sidestep alot of that issue.

edit- the idea of mistaking angels as GOD itself isn't new to christianity; in one story, Jacob wrestled what is accepted to be an angel, but is accounted as GOD. my idea is simply to make the angels godlike, but still well established that they are not GOD.

[brainface]

ontop of that, even if the trinity was to fall under a single deity, there's still the issue of Satan; while christians don't worship him, Satan is, from my understandings, technically an evil deity

barely[/i] mentioned in the bible. Most of the evil in the bible is simply attributed to people--you could probably easily set up a christian-themed campaign without a devil-anology whatsoever.

[Matt Larkin (author)]

Some threads to riff inspiration from:

"As it is in Heaven"

The Sword of Destiny

You know, I had given up work on Sword of Destiny, as other projects took over.  Ironically, I had only this morning thought about it again, and planned to add it to the recycle bin.  I got so few of my ideas typed up, I don't know how much help it would be.

It's an interesting idea, but I would say many of the parallels you may see in Narnia have more to do with the plot than the world (though I have not read all the books).

Having an oppressive "ancient Egytpian" race sounds like a good idea to me.

Maybe you should use goliaths (Races of Stone) for your giant race.

[Polycarp]

the biggest problem i'm finding with monotheism is, by all technicalities, christianity is't really all that monotheistic.

There are several ways to approach this.  The classic "catholic" way (small c) is the idea of aspects, something which you can utilize as well - perhaps certain powers are not actually individual and separate beings, but rather aspects of a greater diety.  After all, something with godlike powers might be as free from our concept of individuality as it is free from our concept of mortality.  There's no reason to think that a supreme being couldn't take the notion of split personalities to the extreme and have split identities and avatars, despite being the same essential entity.

Another way to approach it would be the circa 4th century "Arian" way; Arianism taught something like "God (the father) is the only true deity, while the Son and Holy Spirit are 'created' powers that are subservient to him."  That was declared a heresy and stamped out pretty effectively in the western world, but it is another way to approach Christian monotheism from an equally Christian, if not orthodox, perspective.  The nature of exactly what Jesus was was a very complicated internal debate in the church for much of its early history; the Trinitarian doctrine that is common belief now is not the only way the Christian God has been imagined and is certainly not the only way you can approach it in your campaign.

For example - I'm brainstorming here - what if God transcends sentience, too?  In my campaign, I have an over-deity often called "the None" because it doesn't have any form or substance recognizable by humans; it isn't even able to communicate with them, because it is simply so far removed from mortal existence.  It had to create a creature (called "the Arbiter") from its own essence and physical material in order to establish any kind of communication with its creations.  What if the major deity is an inscrutable essence?  You could have a whole host of gods who appear separate in form, but who are all composed from the same divine "stuff" that is the singular essence of one being.  If God isn't required to be present in a material body, it might be that he doesn't have to be present in one mind, either, and could be present as a greater force (like "Nature") that is manifested to mortal-kind through various powers and deities who are all vessels of a singular divine entity.

Really, the difficulty lies in the way you define monotheism.  If you use to to mean only one non-mortal entity, sure, there are problems with that for a classical Christian world view.  If you take it to mean only one God, however, it is possible to imagine any number of entities classified above mortals in terms of power and divinity but below the status of godhood.  Satan, after all, is traditionally described as a fallen angel, not an opposing deity.

[Lmns Crn]

ontop of that, even if the trinity was to fall under a single deity, there's still the issue of Satan; while christians don't worship him, Satan is, from my understandings, technically an evil deity

barely[/i] mentioned in the bible. Most of the evil in the bible is simply attributed to people--you could probably easily set up a christian-themed campaign without a devil-anology whatsoever.

This is quite correct, and bears repeating.

Beyond that, trying to shoehorn Christianity-based ideas into the language and practices you're accustomed to from the PHB is fraught with difficulties. (For example, the word "demigod," which is adopted by D&D from greco-roman mythology, and has no real parallel in Christianity.) Trying too hard to translate Christianity into that kind of language distorts it a bit.

[Captain Obvious]

Some threads to riff inspiration from:

"As it is in Heaven"

The Sword of Destiny

You know, I had given up work on Sword of Destiny, as other projects took over.  Ironically, I had only this morning thought about it again, and planned to add it to the recycle bin.  I got so few of my ideas typed up, I don't know how much help it would be.

It's an interesting idea, but I would say many of the parallels you may see in Narnia have more to do with the plot than the world (though I have not read all the books).

Having an oppressive "ancient Egytpian" race sounds like a good idea to me.

Maybe you should use goliaths (Races of Stone) for your giant race.

I also have notdone any work on As it is in heaven for quite a while. I do want to get back into it eventually, but...

It is actually not just chritian stuff but was menat to include all real world religions/folklore/myths in a similar way to how the Sandman, Lucifer and other serieses work. It seems christian-focused since that was just the starting point i decided to work from.

[DeeL]

C. S. Lewis' Space Trilogy is worth a read; his eldil were often mistaken for gods, (Glund having been Jupiter, Malacandra Mars, etc) but were more precisely to be understood as the spirits of planets.  The 'guardian angels' of entire worlds.  The spirit of our own world, Thulcandra, was directly understood to be Satan.

But it's hard to encapsulate the spirit of those works into one post.  Trust me, they are worth the read.

As for me, I went with a monotheistic cosmology, though obviously not an explicitly christian one.  In Ferakoss, God the Creator is the fountainhead of all divinity.  The other gods are the ones who directly provide their worshippers with spells and other clerical effects and otherwise intercede with humanity for a fairly straightforward reason - God the Creator would annihilate any mortal sentience with whom he had a direct contact.  The Creator might sustain all creation from the Throne of the Elysial Dawn (yes, I use the Great Wheel too) but the gods of the Higher Planes get things done.  

In essense, the gods are more like brethren or colleagues to the mortals to whom they administer.  Powerful, potent, vastly knowledgeable and wise and thus worthy of veneration, but always knowing their ultimate task is to help the progress of all souls towards the Light of Elysium.

Of course, there are some who forget that task, or revolt against it.  The tales mortals tell of such rebels are usually metaphors for much more complex realities, but these matter little.  It's enough to know that there are dark gods at work in the house of Asmodeus, and in the ruinous tumult of the Abyss.  And further, infinities removed from Elysium, behind the starved gloom of the Gray Waste, the original rebel and craftsman of the Far Realm, the Wyrm, plots and waits.

Sorry, got a little carried away there.  

My point is that within that context, it is possible to run a game of strikingly direct corollary to christianity.  

[SDragon]

brainface: i probably should have been a tad more clear. i'm going with the common perception of the devil, which i feel falls much closer to the exaggerated level of power.

pk: yes, most of the parallels are plot-based. from my understanding, this is because the series wasn't intended to be allegory; instead of Aslan being a figurative representation of Jesus, he was literally Jesus (albiet, in a form more appropriate for the parallel universe Narnia exists in).

i don't have Races of Stone, but even if i did, i think that the name would make the race a little too direct for my taste. i think i should be able to find an appropriate species of giant in one of the books i have. and thanks for the comment on the egyptians!

mithridates: well, there's a lot to work with, here. first- and probably least importantly- the idea of the devil as a fallen angel is from a commonly misunderstood verse in Isiah, in which the only latin word in the entire new testaments was taken to be a reference to the devil (in fact, it was originally a mocking reference to the planet Venus, and how, despite all it's beauty and glory, the planet still "falls" in the sky).

the idea of the None is very similar to where i was trying to go with the overdeity mentioned in the first post. the idea is, the deities in the pantheon are simultaneously individual entities as well as aspects of a singular "entity", the overdeity itself. angels and demons (lowercase "a" and "d"), represented in the monster manuals, are considerabley closer to our concept of existance, not only for being more material, but being more along the lines of representative servants of the will of the overdeity. as i right this, however, i'm still not sure whether i want a single overdeity, or more of a duotheistic conflict between Good and Evil.

LC: to be honest, i was more shoehorning the terminology to fit the christian concepts. i guess it comes out the same, either way, though.

deel: i'll have to take a look at that. Lewis is obviously going to be a big influence in nearly any high fantasy christian-toned world, so i might as well check out as much of his stuff as i can. as it is, it's been years since i've read any of the chronicles of narnia, and i think i've lost all but one or two of the books.

as for the rest of the post... i'm not too entirely sure where you were going with it. if it was simply to make the point that context can allow games to have parallels to christianity, then i agree. that's the whole point on this setting. if it was to provide an approach to deities, then thanks, but it feels just a little too much like patron saints for my liking.



once again, i would like to point out that this setting will mostly be built bottom-up, and primarily for personal use. that said, i do appreciate all the feedback so far. if there's enough interest, i'll try to post more as it becomes more coherent.

[Lmns Crn]

LC: to be honest, i was more shoehorning the terminology to fit the christian concepts. i guess it comes out the same, either way, though.

My point is that I think you have the Christian concepts (specifically, monotheism and the trinity) incorrect. I think the use of incompatible terminology may be contributing to your confusion on those issues.

[SDragon]

see, that's just it: monotheism is an incredibly difficult concept to pin down. while it does a good job at saying that there's only one divine being allowed, it doesn't do a good job at defining what does and does not qualify as a "divine being". at what point, exactly, does an aspect of a being develop enough individuality to be a seperate being? exactly what level of "godliness" (for lack of a better term) qualifies a being for divinity?

anyways, this is all irrelevant in the context of this thread. i've established that, at this point, i would like to go with a more aspect-oriented view towards deity.

[DeeL]

Re:  My approach to deities, sorry about that impression.  I was actually going for a Tolkeinian approach, with the pantheon representing mighty spirits whose role is to enact creation - not just in the past, but in the present.  That they do so through overt interaction with mortalkind by the subtler power of the Creator leads to a more or less inevitable deification of the spirits in question.

This approach also borrows heavily from a more obscure book by Lewis, 'Til We Have Faces.  The principle characters there worshipped and venerated the greek pantheon virtually wholecloth, but came to understand that there was a central divinity behind all such depictions from whom all goodness flowed.  

Okay, at this point I'd be happy if anything I had to say helped, but I think it's clear that my main goal has become to explain what I mean in comprehensible terms.  (As food for thought, I'm lucky if I can manage spam...)