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Jessica Price @Delafina777
, 8 tweets, 2 min read Read on Twitter
The portrayal of religion in most games drive me nuts. Either I can't understand why anyone would be a member of a particular religion, or I can't understand why anyone WOULDN'T. Because either it's this awful oppressive force with no obvious benefits, or it's Free Magic.
Like, in a typical TTRPG world with a bunch of different deities, some of whom are super vanilla nice, why on earth WOULDN'T you be a cleric? You can meditate once a day and in return you get MAGIC? Sign me the fuck up.
(Being a wizard is EXPENSIVE, yo.)
On the other hand, games in which Religion Is Problematic generally portray it as having no discernible attraction. When the game does show you religious texts, they're usually shallow and not particularly interesting. The rituals usually seem dull or nonsensical.
Like, I don't care if you're the most devoted atheist ever to atheist--surely you can get that part of the allure of real-world religions is aesthetic. And even if you don't think so, when you're worldbuilding, you gotta sell motivation.
Anyway, it continues to baffle me. Hell, Jedi-ism is half-assed, but even so, people want to practice it in real life. If you want people to believe that affiliation with a religious institution in your fictional world is popular, it should be at least as attractive as Jedi-ism.
And, like, if you're going to write a religious text for your in-world religion, don't just write some shallow shit and then try to make the language sound like the King James Bible. Do some research. Find texts/practices that move you, even if you don't share the beliefs.
Because if the religious texts/rituals/etc. that you create for your in-world religion aren't things that fall in your "I find this moving/fascinating/compelling even if I don't believe in it" category, why should your audience buy that any characters are moved by it?
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