From: [M--O] at [infoboard.be] (mathew lowry) Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.advocacy Subject: FE IIC. God, Church and PC Behaviour (LONG) Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 13:48:19 Summary: magic in fantasy Europe Fantasy Europe: IIC. God, the Church, and Christian (and PC) Behaviour PREFACE This posting follows on from previous ones (Fantasy Europe IIA and IIB), and explores in more detail how to 'introduce' magic into the Church to create a potentially limitless series of 'Fantasy Europe' campaigns. As always, I'm hanging out for comments, criticisms and helpful suggestions. Note that these ideas stem from the interpretation of magic in Fantasy Europe that I arrived at in posting IIB - Magic Forms. Thus this won't make a lot of sense without reading this posting. And even the fundamental assumptions behind this posting can be played with. So what is the relationship between the Church and the Believer in a world where magic really exists? There are two main problems: 1) "How come Christians were burnt at the stake? If they had magic, why didn't they save themselves?" One answer, as well as being the closest to historical truth, is obvious. Jesus chose to stay on the Cross, and He was the Son of God. Therefore the martyrs *chose* to stay put. They were right to do so - the evidence of this Faith helped advance the Church, so their agonising Death carried out God's will. The Romans were so awestruck at this Faith that they abandoned sorcery and/or their pagan gods - i.e., magic that worked - for a God that did, apparently, nothing for them in this world. Therefore Christians receive magical help if *two* requirements are met: 1) they are Faithful enough; 2) it suits God's plans for them to live/succeed. Thus Jesus died on the Cross and the martyrs died on the flaming stake because God wished it so - it furthered his Mysterious Plans. In these cases these Plans became obvious - Jesus began the Church and the martyrs advanced it. In other cases the benefits to God of a truly pious Christian failing and/or dying horribly are not so obvious, but then God, and His Ways, are Mysterious! The Plague, for instance (although this and many other major setbacks for the Church, like the Crusades, can also be explained as either evidence of God's displeasure or the Work of the Devil). So PCs can only expect magical aid both if they are pious and if it furthers God's plans. Being pious, they will gladly die if that is in God's plan, of course. Don't forget Jesus on the night before he was taken to Pontious Pilate - he asked God to spare him the Cross, but accepted it if He didn't. An example to all your PCs! But this limits PCs enormously - they have to be Truly Christian. This strictly limits what they could do, what sort of company they could keep, etc. Most GMs and players, I suspect, would find this too limiting - Christians are supposed to turn the other cheek, but PCs unsheath their swords. And in the real world, for example, ostensibly Christian priests, kings, monks, soldiers (eg Templars and Knights) and all the rest did very un-Christian things without any loss of temporal power. This brings us to the second Big Problem: 2) If God really wants Christians to follow the New Testament - i.e., to act as Jesus said they should - how come he apparently does nothing when Christians and the Church stray from the path? Let's face it - the wealth and splendour of the Church, as well as little asides like the Crusades, witch-burning and the like, don't exactly conform with Jesus' sayings, at least as I understand them. In the real world, the pious and powerless poor were comforted by the knowledge that they would go to heaven and that the evil king would burn in hell. But if a pious peasant really had God-given magical power there would surely have been Christian revolutions against brutal kings and/or corrupt priests. I've developed two possible solutions to the above questions. I'll illustrate both with the 'Fraudelent priest' problem. I want fraudelent priests in positions of power in my campaign because they're an excellent plot device and they existed. But fraudulent priests would be easily unmasked as they couldn't have divine magic, right? a) All non-Christian activity within the Church is due to Devil worship or Sorcery. The corrupt priest uses Diabolic magic or sorcery in place of Christian magic. You'd have to postulate whole Satanist cults and/or sorcery schools, all developed to make this subterfuge work. This is a world where the battle between God and the Devil is unceasing. God 'lets it all happen' because its up to the believers to root out the Evil and find the True Faith - however, occasionally he gives signs, visions etc. You could also have priests that do not *think* they are Diabolic, but in fact are supplied with magic by the devil. These priests would admit privately that they have succumbed to good old fashioned human weakness, but they do *not* consider themeselves Diabolic. However human weaknesses *are* inspired by the Devil in this world, so these priests use Diabolic magic unwittingly - the Devil is cunning, after all. Followers of such a priest are in trouble. Lastly, if a truly Diabolic priest or sorcerer rose through the Church heirachy, then he would encourage active Diabolism/sorcery and the 'lesser' type of faithless priest in every area under his authority. If you placed a few influential diabolists or sorcerers in key positions, then a whole region could lose the benefit of a truly Chritian church, save for a few brave priests battling against the corruption ... Advantages: - This explains the energy the Church spent keeping itself orthodox and pleasing to God. Unorthodox belief is perverted by the Devil, neatly explaining religious wars, schisms and other conflicts, because the stakes are very high. This chimes in well with actual European belief. - This allows priests to channel the congregation's Faith and create magic in Church Masses and other rituals. This power would depend on the congregation's size and piety, the priest's piety and ability with the rituals, the presence of holy relics etc etc. Disadvantages - PCs can wield Faith magic by themselves if they are pious and God truly approves, as before. They can still do nasty things and will be Forgiven the following Sunday at Mass, but they cannot expect much help from God if their motives and/or means are not Truly Christian. Very limiting. - The GM would have to detail which part(s) of the church is orthodox, and which part(s) are corrupted by the Devil. b) REWRITING THE BIBLE This is a more radical solution, but it allows for more variety than the previous one. Here, we change the nature of the Christianity of this Fantasy Europe. "Fantasy Christianity" condones more of the sort of things that adventurers usually get up to. It also might grant more magic to its followers. But it still must be sifficiently close to real Christianity to keep European history on path. This means that the God of Fantasy Europe would actually approve of many of the things that the European Church got up to. This will be a tough circle to square! Anyone prepared to help? This is where I leave it for a moment. I want feedback on all of these postings before I tackle the questions raised so far. If there's no real feedback I'll cease posting.