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How has real life religion influenced your games?

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Thread replies: 320
Thread images: 75

How has real life religion influenced your games?
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>>53752881
Wellll Muslims make for really good evil cultists. Like almost archetypal templates. And ninjas.
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>>53752881
Not sure if this counts but I actually draw a lot from Armenian paganism in cosmology and setting.
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>>53752881
I try to fully separate real world religion from the games, and anyone that's not looking for a volatile argument - or isn't playing with a group of very close friends - should be well adviced to do the same.
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There's nothing like a 30-years-long-war with endless massacres between reformist and Catholics to spice up settings.
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>>53752881
Yo that looks metal as fuck, is it an actual game?
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>>53752972
What is the Armenian pantheon Like? I imagine a weird cross of Slavic and Mediterranean paganism
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>>53753034
>paganism
They were the first Christians and have the oldest churches in the world.
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>>53753023
It's a game on kickstarter. It's called Blasphemous, it's made by a Spanish dev team and it's heavily inspired by the Inquisition and Catholic bloodlust

It's already met it's funding and the studio has put out quality in the past
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>>53753067
>Reading comprehension
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>>53752881
yep, it's taught me not to teach any cleric, druid or paladin.
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>>53752881
I'm inclined to include a memetic threat like the Cult of Kek in my next Lovecraft-inspired game
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>>53752955
>Not making your Cultists Aztecs but with Gods that actually exist and thirst for blood
Do you even metal Senpai?
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>>53753023
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/828401966/blasphemous-dark-and-brutal-2d-non-linear-platform/description

http://blasphemousgame.com
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>>53752881
I have a Jewish guy in my group who will take off of sessions for Jewish holidays on game night.
>>
Right around the time I started taking a interest in Christianity a friend of mine invited me to a game he was DMing set in a zombie apocalypse. I decided to make a preacher. I wanted to play a diplomatic character anyway but it also allowed me to speak out my current thoughts. Since no one knew of my actual interest in religion they assumed I was simply doing a good job at role-playing.
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>>53753034
Not entirely off, though there's some connection with the other Caucasus peoples. Top god is Aramazd, sky/creator god. Then there's Vahagn, warrior/fire god and dragon slayer god, Nane, basically Athena, Tiur, god of knowledge/culture/science/magic, Spandaramet, underworld/death god, Tsovinar, storm/sea goddess, Mihr, sun/forge god, and Anahit, fertility goddess. Those are the big ones.
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>>53753110
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>>53753067
They still existed before Christianity. Also, like everywhere, some of them converted in name only.
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>>53753141
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>>53753104
Aztecs make for great evil villains too.

Good thing we exterminated them IRL.
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>>53753199
There are 200,000 monolingual Nahuatl speakers in Mexico.
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>>53753160
I'm getting Prince of Persia flashbacks
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>>53753072
>inspired by the Inquisition and Catholic bloodlust
So you're a righteous paladin?
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>>53753636
Yep.

Meet the PC
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>>53753705
>>53752881

Shiiit, this is what 40k was about before it turned into marine porn.
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>>53753755
It really seems more like an average day in the Empire desu
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>>53752881
Well, I avoid christian motifs and notions because there are people who still think D&D is Satan.

Other than that, just as basis for the fluff. To reach the afterlife and rescue the soul of their dead friend so he revives, one needs a pretty good greco-roman sacrifice, "good" depending on you actually losing something of worth to you.
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>>53753104
Aztecs actually believed they were the HEROES in fact. Their beliefs pretty much went that either they sacrificed to their Gods, or the world would be consumed by giant skeletal star demons with rattlesnakes for penises. In their own eyes, they were saving the world.
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>>53753636
>>53753705
>>53753755
He's a fucking Redemptionist from Necromunda. Fuck yes.
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>>53754525
Demons which were, incidentally, also godesses of fertility.

Not so different from real females.
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>>53754525
>giant skeletal star demons with rattlesnakes for penises.

Holy shit that's metal. Crusade?
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>>53754525
>Implying they weren't right.
>Implying the Skeleton War meme isn't the collective unconscious knowing the truth.
Dear god what have we done.
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>>53754618
Real females usually don't have rattlesnakes for penises, and don't drain the life from the world simply by existing.
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>>53754695
I'm not entirely convinced about that second one.
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>>53754689
>>53754694
"Ah yes, my child, I remember the tales of those days. Yes, the beginning of mankind's crusade across the stars in search of giant skeleton star demons with rattlesnake penises so that we might exterminate them. Many species were wiped out along the way, but it was all for the salvation of the universe. Up now child, your shift is beginning."
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>>53752881
Catholic, so more than my players are comfortable with usually.
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>>53752881
I'd hope the answer to this is yes because holy fuck religion can get pretty metal.

Especially the more obscure Christian/Judaic things that aren't exactly considered canon.
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>>53754689
I don't think any Crusader would be capable of fighting those things. They were fuck off huge, and the Gods needed constant sacrifice just to keep them from devouring the world. They would probably be a bit much for the average Crusader
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>>53754867
WE WILL MAKE UP THE DIFFERENCE IN ZEAL

THE FALSE GODS WERE WEAK, HELD NO CONVICTION

SERVANTS OF THE TRUE SHALL NOT BREAK
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>>53753123
Underrated
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>>53753110
That's pretty awesome. It's like if Dark Souls was a 2d platformer and had a lot more religious symbolism.
I'm done with kickstarting games, but I'm looking forward to when it gets done.
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>>53754848
Fucking Af and Hemah are metal as all hell.
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>>53752972
Barev aper
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>>53754997
I would agree, this is my first pledge since years long past, but I played their last game on Kongregate and it was a pixel horror point and click. Dealt with some Lovecraftian themes, and was earnestly kinda spooky.

I spent 500 bucks because I'm thirsty for them stretch goals
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>>53753067
>first Christians
No, those would be the Jews Jesus spoke directly to.
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>>53754997
It's $20. I'd almost pay that much just for the gifs produced so far.
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>>53754546
According to the kickstarter page;
>The Penitent One is the last survivor of a congregation called The Silent Sorrow. The whole group was punished to be thrown to the great Abyss of the Eternal Grief.

>In Blasphemous, you will play as The Penitent One, a rogue nomad tackling the evil of this world alone with only its trusty sword by their side

I can't wait for Lawful Violent
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>>53752881
I want to call you out for being a rat faced Shill, but this game looks pretty cool. I love the edgy 90's violence
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>>53752881
I typically have a large overarching usually monotheistic Church in my games. Much more fun that way. There's so many plots and background stuff you can include if you have that kind of religious backdrop for your game.
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>>53752955
Sauce?
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>>53754997
>It's like if Dark Souls was a 2d platformer

You know, Castlevania is a thing right?
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>>53754912
This is why you're not allowed to play a paladin, faggot-kun.
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>>53754867
WE WILL SNAKE JERUSALEM. DEUS VULT.
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>>53754712
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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>>53755979
This looks more like Ghouls and Goblins than anything else
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>>53753705
looking glass knight + wanderer set
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>>53756751
Yeah the fashion souls is real in this shit
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>>53755490
Yeah, but they didn't venerate him, did they?
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>>53754867
How the fuck do you pronounce that?
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>>53752881

I use Muslims as a shorthand for Evil.
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>>53753137
Sounds dope, I'll definitely be cribbing some names.

What about monsters of note?
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>>53758765
Why, /pol/, why?
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>>53758728
TseeTseeMeetl?
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>>53758728
By having a normal language that pronounces letters the same way no matter the word and pronounces them always as single sounds.
Sorry my Anglo-Saxon/Francophone friend.
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>>53758788
Not him
Even fucking Winston Churchill said Muslims were a huge fucking threat not as individuals, but as a whole, anybody who doesn't realize this is going to be in for a hell of a surprise, and I say this as someone who many might call a liberal.
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>>53758977
>Winston Churchill
The man who made the ottomans join the enemy by stealing their paid-for military equipment and refusing to refund them? He may have been a good demagogue, but the man was a twit
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>>53758956
>Sorry my Anglo-Saxon/Francophone friend.
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>>53758996
He wanted to rid the world of them what better way to start than to make them enemies and put them at a disadvantage? because cultural infiltration doesn't work on Muslims, nor do logic and reason, the only way to stop and destroy the fuckers is outright warfare with no rules.
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Imagine a door. When you pass through that door, you come across a spiral staircase going down.

The door is life. The spiral staircase is suffering x time. You walking down the stairs is the total sum of the weight of your balls.

Are your balls big enough to see what suffering awaits you in the basement?
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>>53758720
No one did; because he never existed- what a tweest
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>>53754525
Well, that didn't happen so maybe they were right?
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>>53758728
>>53758951
>TseeTseeMeetl?

"tl"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiceless_alveolar_lateral_affricate
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>>53753249
Yeah, the Tlaxcalans were Nahuas, and a good deal of the enemies of the aztecs.
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>>53752881
It hasn't; it isn't a good idea to include currently active, major religions in your games, unless you want to ignite some conflict inside the group, even without intending. Sometimes I take elements I find cult from legends associated to abrahamic religions, but with many layers of my own fluff.
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>>53752881
twisted and altered Nietzshe's overman philosophy is a prominent cult around the Midlander kingdoms
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>>53758951
Why not Zit-zi-mitl?
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>>53752881
Twice now I've seen games collapse when two atheists start bickering with each other, because one is an edgelord and the other refuses to become an edgelord. Thankfully, both games where kinda shit.

Also I lost a player of mine because he found out I was a Christian.
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>>53760921
How does his religion change anything?
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>>53759707
Tz sounds similar to just z but Quetzalcoatl, is how I learned to pronounce those sounds in school and I'm just using that experience to extrapolate.
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>>53753705
That's some good shit right there.
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>>53753072
>those pope hat giants in the background

More games need shit like this, gigantic monsters in the background that you can't (or eventually can) interact with. That shit makes my dick hard.
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It's probably more due to being burned out from polytheistic settings, but most of the major religions in the stuff I run are monotheistic or bitheistic. If a game doesn't have any sort of mechanical aspect behind religion (i.e., it doesn't have clerics), the GM is god and decides which in-universe religion gets his approval, if any at all. Also, I never stat out gods. You try to take them on, they either A) let you "win" or B) smite the fuck out of you.
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>>53752975
>anyone that's not looking for a volatile argument - or isn't playing with a group of very close friends - should be well adviced to do the same.
I don't know why so many people are so ragingly autistic about religion in this hobby, but honestly if someone is that cunty and pretentious I'm not interested in playing with them.

If you're not amiable enough to restrain your tard rage about a concept as basic as religion, then I doubt you're amiable enough to restrain your tard rage about other shit and you also lack the charisma to be an engaging player as well.

That's my opinion.
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>>53753249

I seriously hope none worship Tlazolteotl

Zoroastrian Duergar, who occasionally quest across the surface world for one of the sacred flames borne of natural lightening.
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>>53764440
>Are you a bad enough dude to do God's will?
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by using some of them from time to time. To tell the truth i mainly use not-christianity as the big bad evil church, mainly because it's mythology is fucked up and it is one on the few religions to actually have something akin to a evil empire at one point in time(before some people start screaming mudshits, i dont think mudshits were as wacked and at the same time as organized as christianity has been, maybe isis now, but im not all that shure about it). I once did a modern time campaing where there were a few "wiccan" cherecters that got totaly slaughtered by a bunch of real druids, it was a fun campaing though i lost a few freinds because of "not respecting their belifes". One of them threw a curse on me from what i remember, jokes on her im jewish and someone stole all her money like a year later so i think my sheckle magic is stronger
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>>53759517
Huh, I listened to the recording on Wikipedia and it sounds more like a "chuh" sound. Why the hell is it represented in English as "tl"?
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>>53766436
english language is a nonsensical creation of Nyrlathothep made solely to mock mankind and popularised for the same purpose
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>>53755934
>source
Any major "European" city these days. Look in the classified ads.
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>>53766436
>>53767672
Tbf it was romanized by the Spanish, they're the ones who decided to spell it like that.
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>>53753705

>Yours is the helmet that will pierce the Heavens!

But other than that, I guess I'm interested.
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>>53753137
That's literally bizarro zoroastrianism. Not that this is bad or even weird.
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>>53767901
It's supposed to evoke the hoods of processioners
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>>53754525
>Aztecs actually believed they were the HEROES
I know it's hard to believe with now masochistic Western society is, but most thriving cultures don't usually consider themselves villains.
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>>53755490
Armenia was the first christian STATE. The first christian individuals were ovbviously jews living under Rome and after that greeks living under Rome. The other faggot either doesn't know jack shit or is trolling.
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>>53768012

If it were a ceremonial robe, I might take it seriously, but for now I'm just wondering if you can impale someone by running head first into them.
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>>53768062
>first christian state
>what is holy roman empire
>what is fucking rome
>what is most of european medieval countries
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>>53752881
Well, I played a shitload of In Nomine years ago and loved just ripping into religious lore for ideas and context, but my recent game has taken a pretty religious bent since the players in game kind of accidentally started to turn the world into a divine plane, and some kid into the next God.
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>>53768069
anon, in the game you fight a fucking stabat mater dolorosa deamon and what looks like the antychrist being held up by a tree. Stop looking for realizm in a game that is sopse to be "epic" and over the top
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>>53767846
In spanish those names are pronnounced as tl. It's common for foreigners to change a sound they don't have instead of adopting it.
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>>53768145

I'm not looking for realism, and I never said that I was. I'm just pointing out the fact that this ostensibly serious, dark, and gritty game has a silly, comical, and jester-like protagonist that seems to defy the tone of the game.
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>>53768105
The arsacid kingdom of Armenia adopted christianity as it's official religion before those. Mainly because the fucking HRE didn't exist yet.
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>>53768069
It's a penitent and this hat was put on condemned criminals to humiliate them. Wearing it is like a metaphorical self-flagelation.
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>tfw no games based on the teaching of Ahura Mazda and Zoroaster
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>>53768325

Makes sense, in that case.
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>>53768358
While Tolkien was trying to justify having several gods and christianity at the same time, his pantheon works pretty similar to Zoroastrianism. His work shares themes with zoroastrianism too.
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The Orthodox Christians are rather underutilized. I've grown to admire them, and the Coptics.
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>>53768069
God I hope so

>"Mine is the drill that will pierce your heresy!"
>WWWRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYY
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>>53768269
He seems like Spanish Doomguy. With a silly hat
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>>53768814
As is Spanish tradition.
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>>53752881
I'm running a vaguely early 20th century game inspired by Twin Peaks, conspiracy theories, Native American/First Nation folklore, catholicism, Luddism, colonialism and Greek myth.

So yeah.
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>>53752881
Heavily, i base the patheons i've been trying to create for my campaign setting on norse first and eurasian/middle-eastern religons secondly. I only use polytheistic religions tho, i find monotheism the most boring foklore ever conceived from humanity.
I also steal from media, like witcher literature, warhammer fantasy, bit of TES, conan, tolkien of course and i've been trying my hardest to use banner's saga, which is like my second/ favorite fantasy after witcher but it is kinda hard for me since it is such an intmately built world.
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>>53768938
>"Sherif, this is DAMN fine ambrosia!"
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>>53752881
Yes, the world works with a weird combination of Zoroastrian/Iranian and Andean cosmovision. It's a bit complicated since both approach dualism in a very different way, but that's what makes it atttactive.

I'm trying to also introduce the not!christian cult with three gods including the Undead King and the Bird Spirit without making it too obvious and/or edgy.
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>>53754848
pleb here, give me a quick rundown.
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>>53768050
Most thriving cultures also don't have the major belief that unites them stating that the entire fucking world will fucking end via giant skeletal rattlesnake penis demons from the stars if they don't sacrifice some poor schmucks to help their gods in their fight.
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>>53769539
Well...not anymore.
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>>53768105
>what is most of european medieval countries
>Medieval;
Ah, newfags;
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Tbh I try not to let irl religion into my games, especially when it's stuff like Dark Souls. Irl religious definition for stuff like gods will really mess with the concepts of these games and usually cause a whole lot of confusion over something that is easily understandable otherwise.
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>>53768105
>>what is holy roman empire
That came after the Carolingian period
Charles Martel was christian was before that, he actively spent his time converting "ayran" Christians to church orthodoxy.
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>>53770002
And then there were the northern crusades.
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>>53752881
I should really implement saints and especially catacomb saints in a campaign or setting one day

Catholics just know how to into aesthetics
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>>53771519
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>>53771519
>>53771539

What kind of awesome shit do you have to do during life in order to become eligible to be decked out like that when you die?
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>>53771661
Nevermind, I just looked it up. It looks like St. Pancras, among other things, used miracles to help people not accidentally pee themselves.

>What kind of services did Pancratius provide? He was credited with several miraculous healings, most famously involving urinary incontinence. He is normally invoked against cramps, bladder issues + headache. His relic is now used as a sort of conduit for prayer.

http://www.algoabayrotary.org.za/?p=3096
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>>53753249
Aztecs are fucking extinct. More people than just the Aztecs spoke Nahuatl.
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>>53753705
Kinda looks like an Abyss Watcher.

Sounds like he has a similar outlook on life as well.
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>>53753072
This actually looks pretty good. Like Dark Souls if it had been made for the Genesis.
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>>53755979
>Erotic Pachinko.
>2D Dark Souls.

You're just being silly, right anon?
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>>53772665
Right? I can't wait at all
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> Main human religion is based off of twisted vision of Gnostic teachings that turn it into death-worship
> There's a little Islam in there, too
> Early human religion is a cross between Indo-European paganism (main pantheon is reconstructed from proto-Indo-European linguistic clues, with minor edits) and Shinto asceticism
> Orcs are Tengrists, naturally
> Catfolk are generally deists, but instead of an eternal clockmaker they envision a man who left a house full of valuables with the doors and windows unlocked
> Goblinoids are all New Atheists and aggressive about it
> Dragonborn empire across a planar sea believes in a protective mandate of heaven that requires blood sacrifice and expansion, a la Aztecs
> Dwarves are just pre-monotheistic Hebrews, with a little Egyptian sprinkled in
> Elves are either hedonistic nihilists bent on preserving life or stoic ascetics bent on destroying it
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>>53767842
>That pic
Moar?
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>>53768755
What do you like about them?
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>>53775116
For one thing, they don't just roll over and die when muslims start attacking them. They actually fight back.
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>>53753705
Am I the only one who sees the Tin Man?
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>>53752881
I actually made two religions that were basically taking the Lovecraft-esque Cult and Hippie Pagan aspects of Christianity and ramping them up to 11. Yes, they are actually basically praying to the same god with some slight differences. the greatest comedy aspect is that the two sects get along famously and have no quarrel, respecting each other's differences politely.

So, basically, for the lovecraft side of things you have:
>Masses held in huge, elaborate, and ancient cathedrals
>Sermons are done in an ancient, dead language by a clergy dressed in robes
>They view God as an all-knowing-yet-unknowable figure beyond the shape and scope of mortal comprehension
>They consume the ever-regenerating flesh and drink the endless blood of their dead messiah (think like sourdough loaves) as part of communion
>The betentacled preacher wants everyone to take a moment of their time to pray for Agatha who broke her knee playing frisbee and remind everyone of a bake sale next Saturday.
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>>53775158
Man, that is a highly ironic comment for a lot of reasons, considering the history of the Crusades.
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>>53775116
I'm fond of their traditions, they're just familiar enough to not be repulsive but they're exotic enough to be alluring.
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>>53775288
I fail to see how a defensive war is ironic in this situation.
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>>53775288
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>>53775360
>promise a bunch of crusaders and Canal People desperate for money wealth if they help you retake your throne
>don't fucking pay them when they do
>think murdering your emperor will get them to stop raiding the countryside
>they actually liked him and take it personally

Man. It's the very definition of making a series of bad decisions.
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>>53768246
>>53767846

In the 1500s Spanish had that sound. Why they used 'tl' to write it, who knows.
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>>53768358
Any games with armies of angels and demons sorta counts
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>>53775449
>>53768246
It's because it uses the same points of articulation (tongue position) as T and L simultaneously.
The tip of the tongue is on the alveolar ridge (just behind the front teeth) like when your pronounce T.
The middle of the tongue is held high in the mouth, but the sides are drawn away from the sides of the mouth, allowing air to pass through both sides, just as when pronouncing L.
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>>53752881
To answer on track, yes. I have two settings I use frequently, and one has a church largely modeled on the Catholic Church that acts as the state religion of the new budding empire. The other is in the future so it's just real religions. But I try my best to do them Right.
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>>53752881
My friend and I are Jewish and have a little understanding of Hebrew. We are the only two in the group that speaks dwarven so when we do we speak in Hebrew.
>>
>>53775317
The Orthodox sat out the Crusades. The Crusaders were Catholic vs Muslim. That's why it's ironic.
>>
I always make the church evil just to fuck with people who get upset by it. I don't actually hate the church and just think they make for aesthetically pleasing enemies.
>>
In my setting I take a little from Catholicism/Orthodox Christianity and a little from Roman state religion, especially with its emphasis on the apotheosis of the emperor.

The humans' main religion focuses entirely on the worship of saints rather than the Architect itself (creator god), because the Architect is thought to be, literally, dead. They don't believe God is absolute or universal, but rather one being in a vast cosmic ecosystem of gods, who are "mortal" on a time scale orders of magnitude greater than our own. They claim that the Architect created the observable world, and at least humanity, directly. Other life may/may not arise spontaneously but not intentionally from the Architect's designs. It's emphasized that the Architect is unknowable and not anthropomorphic in thought.

Saints come in because they believe that Heaven exists despite the Architect's absence, and is a state of being that can be achieved by mortals who ascend to it. Like Calvinism, etc. it is VERY hard to get in. The immortal afterlife is reserved for very few, and it's pseudo-Sheol for the rest. Unlike Calvinism, it's deeds, rather than belief, that get you there. Because the mind of the Architect is unknowable to mortals, there is are no prophecies or commandments that guide mortals to heaven. However, those who ascended as god-saints have discovered ways to heaven and apotheosis, and their example can be followed.

Thus, there are many diverging sects and cults under this unifying belief system, all following the path of the god-saints they revere. Some feud with each other directly. Because it's fantasy, there's little dispute over who counts as a god-saint or not, because divine magic is real, and they literally, visibly ascend.
>>
>>53775094
>>53755934
Check out Hijabolic
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>>53775812
Thanks. Now I can fap all I want to Islamic sacrilege!
>>
>>53753072
I'm kinda hoping it doesn't go full fedora-tipping euphoria.
>>
I occasionally make characters from not-as-well-heard-of mythologies or monsters (Filipino Aswangs and Gods/Goddesses from the non-Tagalog tribes - one of the tribes is literally a giant mom made of boobs who nourishes babies who've died before they could grow up as they wait to be reincarnated, kumiho, Korean stuff in general, etc)
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>It's yet another "the church is evil" setting
>>
>>53758728
Zats Metal in a thick german accent.
>>
>>53776262
>>53776309
So I backed them and regularly chat with the dev. It seems like it isn't a condemnation of the church, or religion in general, as it is a cautionary tale concerning the zeal of the over religious. The studio is Spanish, so that kinda colors there view on zeal and religious fervour.

But honestly, if you're looking for sociopolitical narrative on the nature of religion and man in a game that uses Catholicism as a back drop for Spanish paganism and ultraviolence, then you may want to look elsewhere.
>>
>>53776309
so? It's a trope. and the church in spain never was really good. I dont see a problem
>>
Christian Deep Ones
>Welcome to this summer edition of our news-letter, which I should like to commence with an passage from the Gospel according to Saint Joad itself, wherein it is written “And his Mother was Mery, who is of the Sea, and he did dwell amongst the fisher-men in Gililee beside the waters there. And men did see his eyes that were like unto two ponds having a wide path set there between them. And then likewise did see his feet that were made like unto the blades of paddles. And the hair upon him, even on the face of him, was as a fine weed. And they said, He hath about him and Oannes look. For of the sign whereby men knew him and knew those who followed after him, it was a fish, and many were the things he did. When was a hungry multitude with nought save loaves of bread then he did bring them fishes in abundance so that they were well fed and men said, Great is his God that gives us fishes when our gods reward us not at all so that we starve. And when he made to walk upon the Sea at Gililee, leviathans did rise from out the deeps beneath his heels and bore him up so that he was not sunken, that all men should know he was his Father’s son. And yet they knew him not, and cursed him, for they said that he was like unto the idol of the Philistines. They stripped him of his garment and the scales were fallen from their eyes for they said, See, he is not of a kind to us. And they said, Let us take him out and hang him upon hooks that he may cure. Yet many tides did not pass before he was risen from his slab and was descended unto Heaven, through black abysses to dwell amidst wonder and glory for ever.”
These are fine words, and as true now as when they were written. They remind us, as we struggle in the nets and pots of this earthy domain, that our Father watches under all his shoal and keeps us safe from all the lures and baits and gaudy insects with which the dry devil seeks to temp us, or else lead us into recklessness and ruin.
>>
>>53777664
It was only later that I read Alan Moore's Providence myself and realized where my DM had copied everything from.
>>
>>53776309
Yeah I get bored with realistic settings too
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Main human pantheon is based off of the Romans and split into three distinct groups, each venerating a singular god as the 'chief'.

One worships the god of the Sun, they're based off of Catholics(Though there's some Protestant influence)

Another worships the goddess of Fate, they're based off of Islam (both actual Islamic branches and Crusader ebil Islam)

The last one worships the gods of nature, venerating the god of forests in particular. They're based off of the Gauls and Britons.

There's also the Nordic panthoen based off of the Germanics and Norse.

Dwarf pantheon is based off of a pseudo Norse pantheon, but specially venerates the "Father Hammer and Mother Stone." It's based off a fucked up mixture of Judaism and Nordic rituals.

The Elven gods (most of them) are dead. Most elves now worship the human equivalents of their old gods.

The gods of the East are innumerable.

Oh, and there's the giant snake god in not!Mexico who demands blood sacrifices or he'll devour the entire planet.
>>
Once I did setting without major gods. In main region only savage pagans worship them; imperial citizens believe in cosmic reason completely devoid of personality, with major schism between rational and revelation-based approach (both grant believers boons in form of insight or gnosis). Followers of old faith fled to steppes and converted locals into some sort of Manichean religion, with huge influential temples hidden in middle of nowhere. Finally, there is several evil not-Buddhist states across nomad land, zealously trying to break cycle of natural order and/or suppress any passions.
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>>53775449
>In the 1500s Spanish had that sound

In what fucking words?!
>>
>>53775590
That's a bit petty, anon.
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>>53777774
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>>53776820
The church in Spain was almost never evil either by itself. It was just omnipresent and very powerful, basically everywhere. Everything good or bad that is spanish had a link to catholicism up until very recent times.
>>
>>53775503
I just spent about 5 minutes trying to do this based on the tongue descriptions you provided. I don't think I got any closer to being able to correctly pronounce "tl", but on the upside, my fellatio skill has increased by 1 point.
>>
>>53775560
Well the Catholics did sack Constantinople.
>>
>>53781084
Start with just trying to make an Lh-sound. Put your tongue in the position to make a regular L sound, and then move the sides of your tongue closer to the roof of your mouth by just a little. Then, *without moving your tongue*, try to make an s or an sh sound. The air will go around your tongue and be constricted between the sides of your tongue and the roof of your mouth and you should make a high pitched hissing sound (sort of). It sounds a little like making an h followed by an l immediately after - if you prefer you can try doing that instead.

If the sides of your tongue are too far away from the roof of your mouth, it'll sound like breathing loudly rather than a high-pitched hissing.

To make the tl-sound once you've gotten that, essentially just put a t right before it. It's kind of like the difference between sh and ch.

My linguistics degree is finally coming in handy!

(If neither of those work, there's another way but it requires explaining voicing. I'm trying to stay away from linguistics terms because unless you already know what they mean they aren't going to help you much.)
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>>53781516
The first description worked surprisingly well. Definitely doesn't feel like a normal tongue position, but I was able to make the sound.
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>>53771728
Ok so its fine for him to fix self-peeing, but when I do it they just yell "Where did my dick go?"
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>>53775317
>defensive war
Come on now
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>>53784273
I speak the truth.
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>>53775158
Ahahah, I can just see you watching RT. You know Putin panders to Muslim extremists in his own country?
>>
>>53752881
I'm a a sephardic jew that converted to christianity, and I have a big interest in Bronze Age middle east so I like to put emphasis on like Canaanite or Mesopotamian culture in my setting to add a bit of flavor
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>>53768755
>Coptics
Yeah boi. I wanna make a game in Bizarro Egypt where the Coptics are the majority, but there's a resurgence of the ancient polytheism, with all the fun mythological things. If the players ever die I'll even have them go through the afterlife journey as a mix of Egyptian afterlife mythology and Dark Souls
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>>53785001
>sephardic
What is that?
>>
>>53786962
Jews originally from Spain who after getting expelled in 1492 went to other Western places like Portugal and Italy as well. They're among the Ashkenazi as the larger of the jewish groups. and of course the Ashkenazi are from Germany and Eastern Europe.
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>>53776309
>The organization that gave its blessing to numerous genocides and controlled every aspect of people's lives for over 1,000 years might turn out to be evil.

Yeah big surprise that.

>>53780696
>HERP DERP EUPHORIC

Why do I even bother?
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>>53780696
>vainly trying to drum up some kind of defense for an organisation that was a literal pedophile ring
If you at least had an argument, rather than just reaction images? Getting a real /pol/ vibe from these grade shool manners...
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>>53775442
See >>53781120 it was the byzantines fault. You need to have an agenda to not see this.
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>>53788635
I like the Catholic aesthetic, but yeah defending creepy old pedos with a stale image macro is pretty derp.
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>>53788820
Bullshit, Crusaders had made up their mind to sack Constantinople before they'd even left Venice.
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>>53753160
>>53753141
Bet there will be no Islamic influences at all.
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>>53769468
Alright, let's talk a little about >>53755005

Af and Hemah are two angels whose names mean "Anger" and "Wrath." They were created at the beginning of the world to enforce the will of God. They giants, being five hundred parasangs in height, and were forged out of chains of black fire and red fire."

They are mentioned and briefly described in a text talking about Samael, whose name means "The Venom of God." Samael's job was severing the souls from corpses. When Moses saw him he prayed to God saying "O may it be Thy will, my God and the God of my fathers, not to let me fall into the hands of this angel." Samael was described as having a height equal to what would take five hundred years to travel, and was either fucking made of or covered in eyes. Samael is noted as tempting men towards evil and sin so that they may be damned, but at the same time he is loyal to and sided with God. He is basically an "evil" angel of the Lord. Some speculate that he is Satan himself, or merely a powerful demon, while others will say he is an angel, and many will say he simply doesn't exist and is non-canon.

In "Christian Demonology" he is a powerful demon. Acording to some such myths he screwed Lilith and like three angels. This is noted as likely being a case of mistaken identity, and many scholars think that "Samael" in this case was actually the demon "Azazel."

In Gnosticism Samael is actually the fucking Demiurge. Yeah, turns out that was just another name he went by, and in this context it means "the Blind God."

In Anthroposophy he is some sort of "Time Spirit" or some shit.

I forgot to mention that the first to paragraphs are about Judaism. Other names for Samael in Judaism are "King of Evil", "King of the Wicked", "Messanger of Evil", "Angel of Iniquity", "Lord of the Wall", "the Elect of Evil", and "the Chosen of Evil." These names are also attributed to a false prophet sent by Belial(Some weird name that came to mean the Devil or somethin').
>>
>>53789048
Shame that all that mysticism has no basis in the rest of the Jewish books. Af and Chemah are genuine asspulls, and I don't remember a Samael being mentioned, maybe in Enoch. If that's the case, or if he's just Azazel, he's unfortunately not a cool demon since he's imprisoned deep under a desert and can't do shit.
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>>53789218
Well I was responding to someone asking to elaborate on the obscure non-canon shit.
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>>53788635
You know the Catholic church has like thousands of priests that don't do anything wrong by anyone? If we're going by percents, it had no more or less in the way of pedophiles.

This isn't so much defending the way the case panned out as I think it's silly to call the Catholic Church a pedophile ring unless you think that universities covering professors taking advantage of their positions or government officials doing the same thing.
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>>53789250
And I was just commenting on it
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>>53789264
Fair enough.
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>>53788986
Because you say so?
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>>53789251
To be fair, after Vatican II the entire church went to shit. John Paul II, for all the good he did, allegedly covered up for pedophile bishops. Because Vatican II doesn't care about doctrine and only cares about image. A bishop who "suddenly moves to an isolated monestary in Switzerland" isn't good for your image, now is it?
>>
So two questions

>How to keep a setting interesting while still having the amount of edge as Blasphemous/stuff like it
>Any other games/systems with that aesthetic?

I watched the trailer and the first thing it reminded me of was Au Sable, an indie horror game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBWht-_vj-0
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>>53789319
I have mixed feelings about Vatican II because I think the church did and still does need to find a way to reinvent the image or at least find a new way to appeal to people in Western Europe and North America, but I think the issue is that its at the point where it's not so much attracting people in those areas as making people in those areas who thought they were so much better off not being part of the church feel as though they were "right". If that makes any sense?

I don't think someone who thought that Catholicism was backwards and needed to "get with the times" before Vatican II is suddenly going to convert because the church a-okay'd some of his opinions.
>>
>>53754525
>Aztecs actually believed they were the HEROES in fact
they were.
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>>53789354
>How to keep a setting interesting while still having the amount of edge as Blasphemous/stuff like it

The edge is what makes it interesting. You literally need people who are in the mood to play an edge game.
>>
>>53789402
Tell that to literally everybody else in Mesoamerica.
>>
>>53789467
You can become the king of the hill without making a few enemies on the way. If it wasn't the Aztecs, one of the other tribes would have been in top and done the exact same things they did.

The Aztecs took it upon themselves to enforce their duty as loyal tribemen of the gods, we should be thankful for their sacrifice. They were brave men.
>>
>>53752881
I really like some of the ideas behind the Christ figure.

So I actually put several in my world. There was a prophesy about a child of the ruler of the sky saving life on earth and humanity. The problem is, people can't agree on which demigod, avatar, or incarnation it was or is. Theological debates have taken place, wars have been fought, and prophets and wizards still try to determine whether it was the sun god, moon goddess, or one of several sky father types it was, and whether the prophesy has really been fufilled yet.
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>>53789579
>a child of the ruler of the sky
Fuck off skyseer.
>>
My group and I are very religious Christians, so I make it a point to avoid certain themes and content in games we run. I also try to understand each person's conscience and adjust accordingly. For example, in our WHFRP 2e campaign, I had planned for the group's overarching mission to be heading into Sylvania to confront the Vampire Counts, but I got to know that one player in particular was offended by vampires and vampirism, so I adjusted it so they were not heading in the same way. It was far enough off in the campaign that they never knew there was a change, and we're having lots of fun.
>>
>>53788410
>The organization that gave its blessing to numerous genocides and controlled every aspect of people's lives for over 1,000 years
Also the organization that preserved Roman and Greek knowledge, founded the first universities, funded some of Europe's greatest artistic and architectural achievements, and is the world's largest charitable organization today.
>>
>>53789664
Shame to hear that. Except for one guy and a handful of semi-regulars that pop back when they're in town, we're a full Christian group too, we even meet at our church's college room to play on weekends.

We've had all sorts of demons in our games, from succubi to demon princes, and plenty of other less holy things to fight against.
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>>53789032
There may be, some of the enemy types look like moors
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>>53789858
Why is it a shame? Just because we consider certain topics off-limits doesn't mean we can't cover other things.
>>
>>53789918
Sorry, I'm a bit retarded and forgot to add "but I'm glad that your group has good dynamics" after that
>>
>>53775550
>My friend and I are Jewish and have a little understanding of Hebrew. We are the only two in the group that speaks dwarven so when we do we speak in Hebrew.
While this is cool, it's really, really hard for me to resist making some /pol/-esque cracks on this
>>
>>53789664
>offended by vampires and vampirism

What the fuck, how? They don't even fucking exist.
>>
>>53790010
Sex, anon. Vampires are about sex.
>>
>>53789032
Mudslimes aren't part of Spanish history as much as Catholicism and the inquisitions have been. Stop having knee jerk reactions just because everyone doesn't take every opportunity to shit on a bunch of backwards sand niggers. Not everything is fucking SJW/PC/EU conspiracy.
>>
>>53790010
That's kind of my stance, that as long as the content isn't claiming to be in our reality and it isn't too over-the-top, I tend to let things slide. But that's not the same for everyone in my group, or at least not to the same extent. For the player in question he is uncomfortable with the disrespect shown to blood, which represents life. You could argue that killing someone is the same, but we're not perfectly logical creatures, are we?

>>53790046
Not in our case. Besides, have you seen Warhammer vampires? They're horrifying monsters.

While we did just visit a brothel in-game last session, we tend not to touch on sex at all. The visit was kept purely comedic, with one of our NPCs turning out to have a dominatrix girlfriend and the whole things was really just a nudge-nudge-wink-wink crack on submissives.
>>
>>53774979
>> Elves are either hedonistic nihilists bent on preserving life or stoic ascetics bent on destroying it

Either this is some lolrandom idiocy or you need to read at least read a single philosophy book before typing this shit.
>>
>>53785001
How does it feel to know you've made an objectively wrong choice? FFS, even Hinduism makes more sense than 3-in-1-ism?
>>53789048
You misunderstand "Satan" in Judaism. Hasatan (the Satan) really means "the adversary", but he's not an adversary to God (angels in Judaism are extensions/manifestations of God's will and thus have no free will of their own with which to oppose Him). He's the adversary to humans - he is a sort of prosecutor and accuser, it being his job to point out all the ways in which people are terrible. Further, that last paragraph about other names for Samael is actually from a Christian book of mostly Christian authorship, so it doesn't do a great job of representing Jewish thought on the matter.

Samael in Judaism is basically just another angel who happens to have a bunch of the jobs that people might find unpleasant - Angel of Death, Angel of Edom, heavenly "prosecutor", etc.
>>
>>53790195
Why do you care that a Jew is following the teachings of a Jew who was from the lineage of David and his many Jewish followers?
>>
>>53789218
Samael crops up in the Talmud and some later works.
>>53790224
If Christians followed Jesus', teachings, I wouldn't. But none of the major groups of Christians do. They believe in Jesus, but they don't follow him. Proper Jesus-ites would be ascetics who devote all their resources to helping the poor and sick. Imagine Mother Teresa, but without the cloud of scandal. Stuff like that.
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>>53790379
I actually follow Jesus and what's written, not pastors and churches. However I disagree with the asceticism. Jesus himself drank, and he never prohibited marriage. He himself said, about what others talked about himself, "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.""
>>
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I dont have any specific ideas yet but Eldritch Horror looking Angels should definetly be a part of some campaign I make.
>>
>>53753249
Yeah, and up until the renaissance of spanish as a common language in south america and a lot of governments enforcing spanish as church culture, the catholic church held everything but the latin bible strictly in the local languages, chief amongst them Nahuatl.

Your point being? Language is not equivalent to religion you dumb fuck. Atztec religion is dead, and a lot of those Nahuatl are not even going to be descendants of the Atztec, Nahuatl speakers was a wide group that included many non-Atztecs with different folk religions.
>>
>>53790099
>>
>>53790588
>Eldritch Horror looking Angels
This shit is getting so played out that I'm actually starting to appreciate generic, winged aryan angels.
>>
>>53791111
Where is this even in? I never actually see this used in any medium.
>>
>>53791132
Evangelion?
>>
>>53774979
>> Elves are either hedonistic nihilists bent on preserving life or stoic ascetics bent on destroying it

Either you mixed up the two or you have no fucking clue what you are talking about. Stoicism it the exact opposite of that, it is about learning to accept that shit happens and stubbornly doing the right thing anyways to find happiness, while edgy teenager nihilism is about how nothing matters and that there is no right and wrong.
>>
>>53791221
So one thing that came out years ago constitutes played out for you?
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>>53791314
it also gets posted in every /tg/ thread about anything angel related
>>
>>53789770
> Also the organization that preserved Roman and Greek knowledge, founded the first universities, funded some of Europe's greatest artistic and architectural achievements

None of which makes you not evil. Are we gonna say the nNazis were great guys because they set up some youth camps and funded the arts?

> and is the world's largest charitable organization today.

Better point, but that's mostly because they collect funds from millions of believers and can throw that kind of dosh around. It's not like the Pope is selling of Vatican Gold to help cure cancer.
>>
>>53791352
So seeing pictures of something kinda often just ruins entire concepts for you?
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>>53766302
>my sheckle magic is stronger
made me laugh
>>
>>53789664
>one player in particular was offended by vampires and vampirism
You'd think he'd enjoy the thought of killing them.
>>
>>53791563
He's autistic. Everything is ruined for him.
>>
>>53791508
Neckbeard detected...
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>>53780696
>>
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>>53791508
>that's mostly because they collect funds from millions of believers and can throw that kind of dosh around
>they only give money because they have money to give

>muh nazis
Literally did nothing no other nation with aspirations of conquest did. Quit using it as a go-to boogeyman.
>>
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>>53790077
>Mudslimes aren't part of Spanish history as much as Catholicism and the inquisitions have been.
>there are Spanish that actually believe this
>>
>>53789319
>>53789396
>I don't think someone who thought that Catholicism was backwards and needed to "get with the times" before Vatican II is suddenly going to convert because the church a-okay'd some of his opinions.

This literally happened.

Liberation theology in Latin America was a socialist, politically active branch of the Catholic church, organized by priests who acted as community organizers. They essentially argued that Jesus, both during his life and by his example, especially in the early church as it was oppressed by Rome, advocated for the empowerment of the poor and downtrodden on a systemic, societal level, rather than just through individual charity.

It quickly got very popular among the poor living under Latin American dictators. Support for liberation theology wasn't just the already-practicing Catholic base being mobilized, it came from non-practicing and people outside the church, young people who had no strong opinion for or against the church, etc., who came to Catholicism through politics first. They were leftists brought in to Catholicism through the furthest-left arm of post-Vatican-II Catholicism.

The church scrambled pretty quickly to collaborate with dictators and shut them down. Mario Bergoglio, then either a bishop or a cardinal (idr) in Argentina, pointed the finger at two liberation theologians who were gaining popular support in opposing Videla. He had them kidnapped, tortured, and probably tossed out of helicopters. Bergoglio is now Pope Francis I. He had the balls to name himself after Francis of Assisi, a pacifist who preached to the poor and founded the Franciscans, who take a vow of poverty.
>>
>>53793128
>advocated for the empowerment of the poor and downtrodden on a systemic, societal level, rather than just through individual charity.

This brings up a point that I make when people argue that advocating for a Hoppes-style libertarian world is cruel and uncompassionate. Just because the poor, sick, or widows aren't taken care of at a societal level doesn't mean that they're being consigned to languish. Pure libertarianism works great if everyone adheres to Christian values. Of course, that includes charity and compassion.

The only real difference is that state-mandated compassion is stripped of its greater theological significance. When the poor are taken care of in a Christian Libertarian society, it represents the virtue of mercy by the giver and the acceptance of grace (an unearned and undeserved blessing) by the receiver. When the same is done by government mandate, it is through the use or threat of force towards the giver and the awarding of a state entitlement to the receiver. The difference between the two is huge.
>>
>>53788986
This is laughable. It wasn't a secret plan but the total failure to plan. It's far closer to what this guy said:
>>53775442
But some blame can be put on the Council of Clermont collectively. Most signs point to the fact that contemporary Christians and crusaders saw the first crusade much more as a pilgrimage than a war. It was framed that way by the Pope after Clermont.

Part of it was probably unforeseeable but pilgrimages were rarely organized. The pilgrims failed to plan past Constantinople because of this and mostly because of this:
>>53775442
>>
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>>53788820
>>53788986
>>53794225

Ok, you've triggered me. History time. Today you're all going to learn. And if you can't see how this is /tg/ related, God help you.

John Julius Norwich, Byzantium, Book III, Chapter 22

When the news of the fall of Jerusalem reached the West, Pope Urban III died of shock; but his successor Gregory VIII lost no time in calling upon Christendom to arms. It soon became plain to Isaac that the coming Crusade would prove a more dangerous threat than either of its predecessors. At its head would be Byzantium's old enemy, Frederick Barbarossa. Scarcely more friendly was William of Sicily, who had also declared his intention of taking the Cross. Fortunately for Byzantium William died in November 1189, leaving no issue; but the marriage of his aunt Constance, to whom his crown now passed, to Barbarossa's eldest son Henry was a clear enough indication that Sicilian foreign policy would remain unchanged. Of the two other Western sovereigns participating, Richard Coeur-de-Lion of England was William's brother-in-law, while Philip Augustus of France, remembering the recent sufferings inflicted on his sister Agnes, was unlikely to be any better disposed.
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>>53794337
Richard and Philip elected to travel to the Holy Land by sea, bypassing the Empire altogether. They consequently play little part in this narrative – though it should be recorded that in May 1191 Richard seized Cyprus from Isaac Comnenus, passing it first to the Templars and then in 1191 to Guy of Lusignan, the deposed King of Jerusalem. Frederick on the other hand preferred the land route, setting out in May 1189 with between a hundred and a hundred and fifty thousand – the largest Crusading army ever seen. He had naturally informed the Emperor of his intentions but Isaac was well aware of his intrigues with the Balkan princes, and his misgivings were only strengthened when it was reported to him that both the Serbs and the Bulgars had offered to swear him allegiance against Byzantium. He next sent Constantine Cantacuzenus and John Ducas to await the great army at the frontier; but instead of greeting Barbarossa as instructed they too actively encouraged him to attack their master. By this time Isaac was close to panic; and when Frederick's envoys arrived to discuss the transport of his army to Asia he flung them into prison. The enraged Emperor immediately ordered his eldest son Henry, who had remained in Germany, to secure papal blessing for a Crusade against the schismatic Greeks, to collect a fleet and to bring it with all speed to Constantinople. Isaac then capitulated, promising to provide the necessary transport in return for an undertaking by Frederick to cross by the Dardanelles rather than the Bosphorus, thereby avoiding Constantinople altogether.

On 10 June 1190, after a long and exhausting journey across Anatolia, Frederick Barbarossa led his troops out on to the flat Cilician coastal plain. The heat was savage, and the little river Calycadnus that ran past Seleucia to the sea must have been a welcome sight.
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>>53794352
Frederick, riding alone a short distance ahead of the army, spurred his horse towards it. Whether he dismounted to drink and was swept off his feet by the current, whether his horse slipped and threw him, whether the shock of the icy mountain water was too much for his tired old body he was nearing seventy we shall never know. His followers reached the river to find their Emperor lying dead on the bank.

Immediately, his army began to disintegrate. His younger son, the Duke of Swabia, assumed command, but he was no substitute for his father. The army, carrying with it the Emperor's body not very successfully preserved in vinegar, marched grimly on, losing many more of its men in an ambush as it entered Syria. The survivors who finally limped into Antioch had no more fight left in them. The Emperor's rapidly decomposing remains were hastily buried in the cathedral, where they remained until in 1268 a Mameluke army burnt the whole building to the ground.

Richard and Philip Augustus arrived, by contrast with their armies essentially intact; and it was thanks to them that the Third Crusade, though it failed to recapture Jerusalem, was marginally less humiliating than the Second. Acre was recovered, to become capital of the Kingdom of Jerusalem for another century until the Mameluke conquest; but that Kingdom, now reduced to the short coastal strip between Tyre and Jaffa, was a pale reflection of what Crusader Palestine had once been.
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>>53794372
On Christmas Day, 1194, by virtue of his marriage to Roger II's daughter Constance, Frederick Barbarossa's son Henry VI had received the royal crown of Sicily in Palermo Cathedral. His wife was not with him. Pregnant for the first time at the age of forty, she was travelling more slowly and in her own time; and she had got no further than Jesi, some twenty miles west of Ancona, when she felt the pains of childbirth upon her. There on the day after her husband's coronation, in a large tent erected in the main square to which free entrance was allowed to any matron of the town, she brought forth her only son whom, a day or two later, she presented in the same square, proudly suckling him at her breast. Of that son, Frederick – later to be known as StuporMundi, the Astonishment of the World – we shall hear more as our story continues.
At the time of Frederick's birth, his father was already contemplating a new Crusade. Barbarossa, had he lived, would surely have recovered Jerusalem; it was plainly his duty to retrieve the family honour. In Easter week of 1195 he took the Cross; and a few days later he wrote a firm letter to the Emperor Isaac, making a number of quite unrealistic demands. The letter was a typical piece of imperial bluster; but it missed its target. On 8 April 1195 Isaac Angelus fell victim to a coup engineered by his elder brother Alexius, who deposed him, blinded him and seized the throne.

If Isaac had been a poor Emperor, it can only be said that Alexius III was a good deal worse, and still more easily manipulated. Thus, when Henry demanded a huge tribute to pay for his mercenary troops, the terrified Emperor immediately instituted a special tax, which he supplemented by stripping the precious ornaments from the imperial tombs in the Church of the Holy Apostles. Two years later he was obliged to stand impotently by while his niece Irene, daughter of the blinded Isaac, was married off by Henry to his younger brother, Philip of Swabia.
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>>53794391
But what became of the great expedition proclaimed by Henry in 1195? Many of the foremost names in Germany had responded to his call. They had sailed from Messina and had immediately advanced against the Saracen foe. By the end of October, however, the news reached them that Henry had died of a fever at Messina. Many of the nobles decided to return at once to protect their interests in the ensuing power struggle, and when civil war broke out in Germany most of the others followed. Thus it was that when in February 1198 the German rank and file were preparing to confront an Egyptian army, they suddenly realized that their leaders had deserted them. There followed a headlong flight to Tyre, where their ships were waiting. The second German expedition had been, if anything, a still greater fiasco than the first.

The end of the twelfth century found Europe in confusion. The Empires of both East and West were rudderless; Norman Sicily was gone; Germany was torn apart by civil war; and both England and France were occupied with inheritance problems following the death of Richard Coeur-de-Lion in 1199. Of the luminaries of Christendom, one only was firmly in control: Pope Innocent III, who had ascended the papal throne in 1198 and had immediately proclaimed yet another Crusade. The lack of crowned heads to lead it did not worry him; they were more trouble than they were worth. A few great nobles would suit his purpose admirably; and he was still seeking suitable candidates when he received a letter from Count Tibald of Champagne. Tibald was the younger brother of Henry of Champagne, who had been effective ruler of the Kingdom of Jerusalem from 1192 until his accidental fall from a window in 1197. As the grandson of Louis VII and the nephew of both Philip Augustus and Coeur-de-Lion, he had the Crusades in his blood. Once he had informed Innocent that he had taken the Cross, there could be no other leader.
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>>53794422
Major problems, however, lay ahead. Coeur-de-Lion had declared that the Achilles' heel of the Muslim East, to which all future expeditions should be directed, was Egypt; it followed that the new Crusade must travel by sea, and would need ships in a quantity that could be obtained from one source only: the Venetian Republic. Thus it was that, early in 1201, a party of six knights led by Geoffrey de Villehardouin, Marshal of Champagne, arrived in Venice, which agreed to provide transport for 4,500 knights with their horses, 9,000 squires and 20,000 foot-soldiers, with food for nine months. The cost would be 84,000 silver marks. In addition the Republic would produce fifty fully-equipped galleys at her own expense, on condition that she received half the territories conquered.

This decision was conveyed to the Crusaders by the Doge, Enrico Dandolo. In all Venetian history there is no more astonishing figure. At this time he was well into his eighties, and stone blind to boot. Villehardouin, who knew him well, assures us that he could not see a hand in front of his face. Fortunately for posterity, Geoffrey has left a superb record not only of the Crusade itself but also of these preliminary negotiations. He notes in passing that the agreement did not mention Egypt as the immediate objective; such news would have appalled the rank and file, for whom Jerusalem was the only legitimate goal. The Venetians would have been happy to cooperate in the deception: at that very moment their ambassadors were in Cairo, discussing a highly profitable trade agreement. Such considerations, however, could not be allowed to affect plans for the Crusade; and it was agreed that the Crusaders should all foregather in Venice a year later, on the feast of St John, 24 June 1202, when the fleet would be ready for them.
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>>53794435
But alas: when that day came, the army that gathered on the Lido numbered less than one-third of what had been expected. For its leaders, the situation was embarrassing in the extreme. Venice had kept her promise: there lay the fleet, war galleys as well as transports, sufficient for an army three times the size of that assembled. In such circumstances the Crusaders could not hope to pay the Venetians the money they had promised. When their commander-in-chief, the Marquis Boniface of Montferrat – Tibald of Champagne having died the previous year – arrived in Venice, he found the whole expedition in jeopardy. The Venetians were refusing to allow a single ship to leave port till their money was forthcoming; they were even talking of cutting off food for the waiting army, which was confined to the Lido and forbidden to set foot in the city itself. Boniface emptied his own coffers, many of his colleagues did likewise, and every man in the army was pressed to give what he could; but the total raised still fell short by 34,000 marks of what was owing.

For as long as the contributions trickled in, old Dandolo kept the Crusaders in suspense. Then, when he knew there was no more to be got, he came forward with an offer. The Venetian city of Zara had recently fallen to Hungary. If the Franks would agree to assist Venice in its recapture, settlement of their debt might perhaps be postponed. There followed another of those ceremonies in St Mark's that Dandolo, despite his years, handled so beautifully. Before a congregation that included all the leading Franks, he addressed his subjects. ‘“Signors, I myself am old and feeble; but if you will allow me to take the Cross while my son remains in my place to guard the Republic, I am ready to live and to die with you.” So he came down from the pulpit and moved up to the altar, and knelt there, weeping; and he had the cross sewn on to his great cotton hat, so determined was he that all men should see it.’
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>>53794454
On 8 November 1202 the army of the Fourth Crusade set sail from Venice. Its 480 ships were however bound neither for Egypt nor for Palestine. A week later, Zara was taken and sacked. The Pope, outraged, excommunicated the entire expedition. The Crusade could hardly be said to have got off to a good start. But worse was to follow. Early in the new year a messenger arrived with a letter from Philip of Swabia – not only the brother of Emperor Henry VI but also the son-in-law of the deposed and blinded Isaac Angelus. In the previous year Isaac's young son, another Alexius, had escaped from prison, and Philip's court had been his obvious place of refuge. If the Crusade would enthrone the young Alexius in place of his usurper uncle, he would finance its subsequent conquest of Egypt, supplying ten thousand soldiers of his own and maintaining five hundred knights in the Holy Land at his own expense. Finally, he would submit the Church of Constantinople to the authority of Rome. The old Doge accepted the idea with enthusiasm. He had little love for Byzantium. Genoese and Pisan competition was becoming ever fiercer; if Venice were to retain her hold on the Eastern markets, decisive action would be required. The Crusading army, too, was happy to accept the change of plan, which would strengthen and enrich the Crusade and restore the unity of Christendom. Thus, on 24 June 1203, a year to the day after the rendezvous in Venice, the fleet dropped anchor off Constantinople.
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>>53794466
Alexius III had characteristically made no preparations for the city's defence; the dockyards had lain idle since his brother had entrusted the whole shipbuilding programme to Venice sixteen years before; his admiral, meanwhile, had sold off the anchors, sails and rigging of the few remaining vessels, now reduced to useless hulks in the harbour. He and his subjects watched, half-stunned, as, soon after sunrise on the morning of 5 July, the Crusading army crossed the Bosphorus and landed below Galata, on the north-eastern side of the Golden Horn. Being a commercial settlement largely occupied by foreign merchants, Galata was unwalled; its only major fortification was a single tower, in which stood the huge windlass for the raising and lowering of the chain that barred the entrance to the Horn.1 Its garrison held out for a full 24 hours; but by the following morning it had to surrender. The Venetian sailors unshackled the windlass, and the great iron chain that had stretched over 500 yards across the mouth of the Golden Horn subsided thunderously into the water. The fleet swept in, destroying such few Byzantine vessels as it found in the inner harbour. The naval victory was complete.

The assault, when it came, was directed against the weakest point in the Byzantine defences: the sea frontage of the Palace of Blachernae, which occupied the angle formed by the Land Walls and those following the line of the Horn, at the extreme north-west corner of the city. It was launched simultaneously from land and sea, with the Venetian ships riding low in the water under the weight of their siege machinery: catapults and mangonels on the forecastles, covered gangplanks and scaling-ladders suspended by rope tackles between the yard-arms. The Frankish army, attacking from land, was initially beaten back by the axe-swinging Englishmen and Danes of the Varangian Guard; it was the Venetians who decided the day – and, to a considerable degree, Enrico Dandolo in person.
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>>53794500
Before long twenty-five towers along the wall were in Venetian hands. By this time too, the Crusaders were pouring into the city, setting fire to the wooden houses until the whole district was ablaze. That evening Alexius III fled.
Byzantium, at this gravest crisis in its history, was left without an Emperor; and old Isaac Angelus was hurriedly retrieved from his prison and replaced on the imperial throne. Though now even blinder than Dandolo he remained the legitimate Emperor, and by restoring him the Byzantines had theoretically removed all grounds for further intervention by the Crusaders, apart from the undertakings made by young Alexius. These Isaac was now obliged to ratify, agreeing at the same time to make his son co-Emperor. Only then did the Crusaders accord him formal recognition, after which they withdrew to Galata to await their promised rewards.

On 1 August 1203, Alexius IV Angelus was crowned alongside his father. Immediately he regretted the offers he had made in the spring. The treasury was empty; the new taxes that he was obliged to introduce were openly resented by his subjects, who knew full well where their money was going. The clergy were scandalized when he seized and melted down their church plate, and furious at his plans to subordinate them to Rome. So his unpopularity steadily grew; and the ubiquitous Franks increased the tension still further. One night a group of them came upon a little mosque in the Saracen quarter behind the Church of St Eirene and burnt it to ashes. The flames spread, and for the next forty-eight hours Constantinople was engulfed in its worst fire since the days of Justinian.
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>>53794529
When, a few days later, a delegation of three Crusaders and three Venetians came to the Emperor to demand immediate payment of the sum owing to them, there was nothing he could do; and so the war began. Neither the Crusaders nor the Greeks wanted it. The people of Constantinople wished only to be rid of these Western thugs who were destroying their city and bleeding them white into the bargain. The Franks resented their enforced stay among an effete and effeminate people when they should have been getting to grips with the infidel. Even if the Greek debt were to be paid in full, they would not benefit materially; it would only enable them to settle their own outstanding account with the Venetians.

The key to it all lay with Enrico Dandolo. He, at any moment, could give his fleet the order to sail: the Crusaders would have been relieved and the Byzantines overjoyed. Formerly, he had refused on the grounds that the Franks would never be able to pay him their debt until they received the money from Alexius. He had now almost forgotten that debt. His mind was now fixed on a far greater objective: the overthrow of the Byzantine Empire. And so his advice took on a different tone. Nothing more could be expected of the Angeli: if the Crusaders were ever to obtain their due, they would have to take Constantinople by force. Once inside the city, with one of their own leaders on the throne, they could settle the debt and finance the Crusade. This was their opportunity; it would not recur.
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>>53794544
Within Constantinople too, it was generally agreed that Alexius IV must go; and in January 1204 the only really effective figure on the Byzantine stage took the law into his own hands. Alexius Ducas nicknamed Murzuphlus on account of his eyebrows, which met in the middle – was a nobleman who now occupied the court position of protovestarius, which carried rights of unrestricted access to the imperial apartments. Late at night he burst into the Emperor's chamber and woke him with the news that his subjects had risen against him; muffling him in along cloak, he led him by a side door out of the palace to where the fellow-conspirators were waiting. The unhappy youth was then clapped into irons and eventually succumbed to the bowstring. His blind father died soon afterwards; Villehardouin suggests a natural death; it does not seem to have struck him that it might have been artificially induced.

His rivals eliminated, Murzuphlus was crowned in St Sophia as Alexius V and immediately began to show the leadership that the Empire had lacked. The walls and towers were properly manned, strengthened and heightened. There were to be no more negotiations, no further payments on a debt for which the new Emperor bore no responsibility. For the Crusaders, one chance only remained: an all-out attempt on the city. It was exactly what Dandolo had been advocating for months, and the old Doge, who was by now recognized by Venetians and Franks alike as the leader of the entire expedition, called a series of council meetings in the camp at Galata. They were concerned less with the plan of attack than with the administration of the Empire after its conquest.
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>>53794560
It was agreed that the Franks and the Venetians should each appoint six delegates to an electoral committee, and that this should choose the new Emperor. If it decided on a Frank, then the Patriarch should be a Venetian; otherwise vice versa. The Emperor would receive a quarter of the city and of the Empire, including the two chief palaces - Blachernae on the Golden Horn and the old palace on the Marmara. The remaining three-quarters should be divided equally, half going to Venice and half in fief to the Crusading knights. For the Venetian portion, the Doge was specifically absolved from the need to do the Emperor homage.
The attack began on Friday morning, 9 April, against that same stretch of sea wall where Dandolo and his men had distinguished themselves nine months before. The new, higher walls and towers were no longer accessible from the Venetian mastheads; but after several initial failures the Venetians lashed their ships together in pairs, thus throwing twice as much weight as before against each tower. Before long, two of these were overwhelmed and occupied. Almost simultaneously, the Franks broke open one of the gates in the wall and surged into the city. Murzuphlus, who had been commanding the defenders with courage and determination, galloped through the streets in a last desperate attempt to rally his subjects; then, seeing that he had failed, he fled with Euphrosyne, wife of Alexius III, and her daughter Eudocia to join Alexius in Thrace. On arrival there, he married Eudocia and began to gather his forces for a counter-offensive.
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>>53794572
Once the walls were breached the carnage was dreadful. Only at nightfall did the conquerors call a truce and withdraw to their camp in one of the great squares of the city. The next morning they awoke to find all resistance at an end. But for the people of Constantinople the tragedy had scarcely begun. Not for nothing had the Franks waited so long outside the world's richest capital. Now that the customary three days' looting was allowed them, they fell on it like locusts. Never since the barbarian invasions had Europe witnessed such an orgy of brutality and vandalism; never in history had so much beauty, so much superb craftsmanship, been wantonly destroyed in so short a space of time. Among the witnesses was Nicetas Choniates:

"They smashed the holy images and hurled the sacred relics of the Martyrs into places I am ashamed to mention, scattering everywhere the body and blood of the Saviour… As for their profanation of the Great Church, they destroyed the high altar and shared out the pieces among themselves… And they brought horses and mules into the Church, the better to carry off the holy vessels, and the pulpit, and the doors, and the furniture wherever it was to be found; and when some of these beasts slipped and fell, they ran them through with their swords, fouling the Church with their blood and ordure. [..] A common harlot was enthroned in the Patriarch's chair, to hurl insults at Jesus Christ; and she sang bawdy songs, and danced immodestly in the holy place… nor was there mercy shown to virtuous matrons, innocent maids or even virgins consecrated to God…"

And these men, he continues, carried the Cross on their shoulders, the Cross upon which they had sworn to abstain from the pleasures of the flesh until their holy task was done.

>2nd to last post
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>>53794604
It was Constantinople's darkest hour – even darker, perhaps, than that which was to see the city's final fall to the Ottoman Sultan. But not all its treasures perished. While the Franks abandoned themselves to a frenzy of destruction, the Venetians kept their heads. They too looted – but they did not destroy. They knew beauty when they saw it. All that they could lay their hands on they sent back to Venice – beginning with the four great bronze horses which, from their high platform above the main door of St Mark's, were to dominate the Piazza for the next eight centuries.

After three days of terror, order was restored. Then all the spoils were gathered together and careful distribution made: a quarter for the Emperor when elected, the remainder to be split equally between the Franks and Venetians. As soon as it was done, the Crusaders paid their debt to Enrico Dandolo. Both parties then applied themselves to the next task: the election of the new Emperor. Dandolo had no difficulty in steering the electors towards the easy-going and tractable Count Baldwin of Flanders, who on 16 May received his coronation in St Sophia – the third Emperor to be crowned there in less than a year. In return, Venice appropriated the best for her own. She was entitled to three-eighths of the city and the Empire, together with free trade throughout the imperial dominions, from which both her principal rivals, Genoa and Pisa were to be rigorously excluded. In Constantinople itself, the Doge demanded the entire district surrounding St Sophia and the Patriarchate, reaching right down to the shore of the Golden Horn; for the rest, he took for Venice all those regions that promised to give her an unbroken chain of colonies and ports from the lagoon to the Black Sea, including the Peloponnese and the all-important island of Crete.

>The END

Now I hope you guys learned something about the 4th crusade. Everyone's a shit, and Enrico Dandolo is a particular shit.
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>>53794650
Thanks anon, was an interesting read
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>>53794650
I for one like history time as much as storytime, thanks for the read anon
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>>53795319
>>53795229
No problem. The ebook is out there if you want to read more. Norwich is a very entertaining writer. I wouldn't use him as a main source but he seems suited to /tg/ somehow.
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>>53793128
>Pope Francis had two theologians he disagreed with thrown out of helicopters
This is way too good. I really need a source for this.
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>>53795362
>running a campaign in which you either are a defender or you just belong to some mystic order sworn to protect the treasures of Constantinople belonging to one of the invading armies, you must rush before the other looters or the baddies to collect specific treasures that if desecrated would unleash an unspeakable evil upon the world or you just don't want it to fall in the hands of the scummy Venetians
I mean, it's just an idea, but I wanted to share it, thanks for the inspiration
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>>53795440
It's be a fun game. I like games with strict time pressure and goals within goals.
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>>53752955
I honestly can't tell is this is supposed to be insulting islam (by comparing them to evil cultists) or insulting authors (for basing their evil cultists off real-life examples).
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>>53795424
It's a pol meme
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>>53753123
Good goy.
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>>53775550
Is one of you a cleric? If so, do all of your invocations start with "Baruch atah Adonai"?
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>>53775308

A E S T H E T I C
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>>53775308
Fucking Slavs
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>>53752881
>How has real life religion influenced your games?

Poorly.

In my games, "religion = bad" pretty much exclusively.

That what getting raped twice a week at church for two years straight - and then being the one blamed for "tempting" the youth pastor away from god by existing - will do to you.

I know I shouldn't do that, because it's not necessarily fair to my players. But dammit I cannot fucking stand religion or religious people in general.

>also glad I can be anon to say this
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I once ran a game set during the Christian apocalypse, though not one that was trying at all to be highly accurate to the Bible: I drew lots and lots on semi/non-canon sources for inspiration, like stuff mentioned by >>53754848 and >>53789048.

In the far future humans complete science, rediscover magic, invade the Garden of Eden, rediscover the Tower of Babel and start rebuilding it into a huge megacity. They complete it and manage to reach Heaven but that triggers armageddon, and the whole Earth is pretty much destroyed. My players were a group of five:
>A fallen angel who'd chosen a human life over Heaven long ago
>A wall of endurance angel who'd deemed God evil and rebelled
>A seraph undergoing a crisis of faith
>A robotic angel built to defend humans
>Literally Doomguy

The entire campaign was pretty much one long dungeon crawl/action sequence where they fought their way up the tower, obliterating groups of mook enemies and fighting slightly tougher bosses. Pic related is all the characters, NPCs, enemies and bosses.

My favourite part of the campaign was probably a driving sequence, during which they fought the Four Horsemen and, afterwards, Jesus and Gabriel who had their own sportscar.
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Mainly Catholic morality with the PC's in due part that literally everyone is Catholic at the table. Also, the fact the internal friction and factionalism that is so readily apparent in it since the beginning.
Things I cut out was the monotheism (more of henotheistic approach to deities),the Trinity(just a goddess),exclusively chaste female clergy, no real sacraments except for the worship service. Mainly aesthetic of everything but, the cross/crucifix and mainly relating to life and fertility.
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>>53804304
Jesus Christ, where the fuck are you from?
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>>53805591

Kentucky.
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>>53805769
Fuck the south, no offense
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>>53806983

Kentucky isn't the south you eurocuck. Alabama, Georgia, Texas, Misissippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Florida. Those are the south. If you weren't willing to fight for your family and state during the War of Northern Aggression, you don't get to call yourself a fucking southerner. Those Kentucky cucks were 'neutral' during the war.
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>>53807525
>the War of Northern Aggression
Bitch you started it.
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>>53807525
>eurocuck
Yank and proud, Confedercuck
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>>53752881
pretty much the church is always evil in my worlds. the people worship what they think created life and magic but really it has a scientific explanation
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>>53758788
They worship a child rapist. Doesn't get more evil than that.
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>People use men with wings as angels instead of the cooler Christian angels
I'll never understand it.
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>>53794650
Enrico Dondalo and the Rise of Venice by Madden paints a different picture than yours, one much harsher on the Byzantines and softer on the Crusaders and venitians. The importance of the Massacre of the Latins and the effect it had on how the Catholic world viewed the Byzantines is incredibly important.

Though the conclusion is still "everyone is a shit", but Dondalo wasn't a particularly greater shit than anyone else.
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>>53808015
>militant atheists
Is there anything more pathetic?
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>>53808128
Christians offended and upset by them.
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>>53808076
True, true, but here's the thing. In an age of fucking idiots, he was the only one with a plan. In an age of blind men, he, blind as a stone, saw clearly. So he truly is a grade A shit, but it's meant as a term of endearment. He's in the same school as Charles of Navarre.
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>>53772699
Why must you remind me this?
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>>53808326
He really was something.
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>>53808187
It is only natural to be offended by something abhorrent, like cannibals and pedophiles.
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>>53808439
And even if Norwich isn't "fair" to him it doesn't matter too much because this is /tg/. Getting some education is nice and useful, but getting story ideas is also good.
>>
>>53808469
>something abhorrent, like cannibals
i'm pretty sure cannibalism and atheism have never gone together

>and pedophiles
like catholics?
>>
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>Tfw weird shit went down during the Age of Apostasy
>>
>>53753135
that's pretty neat actually.
>>
>>53794650
Thanks anon, it was an interesting read. I'm honestly impressed with how Dandolo managed to remain on top of that entire clusterfuck. He seemed to be the only person involved with an actual plan. Dude literally manipulated an entire crusade into doing his dirty work by essentially usurping it's leadership himself, and this was after he had bled them dry of every cent they had. Then he forced them into a war with Constantinople which neither side really wanted to secure Venice riches and a slice of those sweet Byzantine trade routes.

Was Venice the only party to actually benefit from the 4th Crusade?
>>
>>53808801
>i'm pretty sure cannibalism and atheism have never gone together
They're in the same bin as far as I care.
>like catholics?
No, like globalists.
>>
>>53807525
If you can get sweet tea in restaurants someplace, it's the South. And Kentucky is absolutely that.
>>
>>53810921
okay, time to stop shitposting
>>
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>>53810477
> Was Venice the only party to actually benefit from the 4th Crusade?

Arguably, the 4th crusade was ruinous for Venice long-term. The damage done to the remnants of the Byzantine empire, the permanent loss of prestige, and the resulting wars that drained the strength and vitality of nearby states all made it easier for the Turks to advance into Europe. Dandalo pulled off the coup of the century and it caused a lot of problems in the end. There's a lesson there about short-term planning.
>>
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>>53812672
FUCKING VENETIANS, REEEE!
>>
>>53812107

I'm in Vancouver. I can get sweet tea in restaurants. What *isn't* the south if fucking VANCOUVER isn't excepted?
>>
Reminder that the Byzantines were responsible for the sack of their own city during the 4th Crusade and that Venetians were the only allies that showed up to defend the Empire at its end.
>>
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>>53812825
>>53812722
WE JUST DEALT WITH THIS you meme-spouting shitlords.

Go to
>>53794337
Read down, do not pass go, do not collect $200
>>
>>53812628
You know what they say about assuming.
>>
Near eastern quasi-religious myth is amazing to steal from. You barely even need to file the serial numbers off and it'll fit anything, wether a game plot or just an in-world metaphor/prophecy/whatever. Religion involves a bit of reworking, but it's even better than myth for the indepth stuff.
>>
>>53753102
My favorite interpretation of Hastur is that it is nothing but a sentient meme.
>>
>>53812904
and here i was giving you the benefit of the doubt and thinking you weren't a complete moron
>>
>>53794650
Why is Venice the fucking best?
God damn. Makes me want to go back and play more Total War Medieval 2 as Venice.
>>
>>53790379
No offense, but isn't that essentially what led to the desert fathers? People tried being ascetics, went out of their way to die as martyrs. After a while, Rome started recognizing it and stopped playing the game. So people inflicted the pain on themselves. And that's how you get shit like St. Ambrose talking about anti-natalism and how married couples need to sleep in separate rooms and not think of each other.
>>
>>53790501
True, but Christ lived as a wanderer. He even forsook his own family. He did not have a house or a wife (unless your Mormon) or even a steady income. By living in modern society, we have already failed to meet Christ's standards to some degree.
>>
>>53791563
I can see where's he coming from. For however unique and bizarre something may look, even surrealness can get old after a while. How many times can you be awed by Cthulhu before it all starts looking like a man with a squid head, for instance?
>>
>>53812672
So the 4th Crusade was a horrible idea for everyone involved and only served to ultimately help destabilize both the Middle East and Europe? Was there anyone who actually came out of it in a good position? It just seems weird that so many people would participate in such a large effort and end up benefiting literally nobody.
>>
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>>53807525
>Kentucky isn't the south
>State where you can marry your own cousin isn't the South
>>
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>>53813520
>It just seems weird that so many people would participate in such a large effort and end up benefiting literally nobody.
As a historian...

No, no it's not.

A lot of people benefited short-term, Venice especially. Long-term, which nobody planned for, considered, or even had the ability to consider, it was a terrible idea. Just like... quite a lot of things, from leaded gasoline to Vietnam to releasing sparrows into America.
>>
>>53813520
It wasn't the goal, it was just a thing that happened. A series of events started by random chance that a smart guy took advantage of. Though I reject the claim that it had any real effect on the future Turkish invasions. Byzantium had been in decline since before that, it would have been a civil war, or some other conflict if not the 4th Crusade. The Massacre of the Latins, which included the Byzantines selling Catholic women as slaves to Muslims, had ensured that they would never have real friends in Europe again. They where an empire fracturing into rival kingdoms, and without friends. Their downfall was inevitable.

>>53812857
He is right about Venice coming to their aid at the end. They sent ships.
>>
>>53813535
Yes, because the standard of being Southern is having fought for the Confederacy, not fucking your cousin.
>>
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>>53813640
I won't disagree that their downfall was inevitable at that point. I'm not saying that the Venetians screwed over the Byzantines "more than they deserved" (which is a nonsensical statement anyway).

I'm just pointing out that it was a really, really cunning short-term plan and a really terrible, expensive, and troublesome idea long term. Blowing up a buffer state never ends well. Even if that buffer state is pissing you off, keeping it propped up is more valuable than any treasures you loot.

Plus, much like American involvement in Vietnam, it killed more than one national myth and it pissed off the Pope something fierce.

In the end though, it's just one of those things that happen.
>>
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>>53754618
Thank you
>>
>>53807525
If it's below the Mason-Dixon Line, it's the South.
>>
>>53807525
>Northern Aggression
>Fort Sumter
Please continue your justification of treason that obliviously was fueling by the plantation-owning elite's very narrow interests.
>>
>>53804304

Well, hot chicks are pretty tempting anon.
>>
>>53813468

So are we supposed to be Jewish and have long hair like jesus?
>>
>>53804304
I'm sorry anon. Hope the fucker will burn in hell or else.
>>
>>53804304
Why do you blame religion instead of homosexuals? Given the person's behaviour was 100% homosexual and 0% religious?
>>
>>53813656
That's where you're wrong, kiddo.
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