* * * Wizards Community Thread * * * -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Thread : Piety in Society Started at 12-12-03 08:21 AM by ironfang Visit at http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=147096 -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 1] Author : ironfang Date : 12-12-03 08:21 AM Thread Title : Piety in Society One often over looked aspect of FRP is the fact that many people during the medieval period were very pious people. The reason being is that scientific practice was virtually non existant, and the common people looked to the clergy for the answers to the every day happenings that could not be explained. They also looked to the clergy for the favor of the gods, in order to survive the harsh realities of life. In D&D the rules can be bent a little bit further than in real life. For example, the average peasant in medieval society not only paid taxes to the local fief holder, but also paid 10% of his yearly income in tithes. In exchange, the local commoner expected the gods to smile down upon him or her for faithful service to the church. This would usually manifest itself in good crops, larger families, and being passed over by plauges and other such pestilences. While those who tithed more may be looked more favorably, but those who did not give their share (through hiding profits) would be looked upon disfavorably, or would be given no favor at all, forced to survive on their own ability. To this end, priests in a D&D campaign could send acolytes to cast a bless spell on the crops of faithful partitioners (giving a + 5-10% yield to their crops) or the priest could visit a particularly faithful partitioner and cast a "prayer" upon the crops (and increase the yield by 15-25%). While whole sale cure disease would be too costly to use on every partitioner, the priests may use his power to cure the "plauge" on the very faithful, giving partitioners as to stir the others in the villiage to give more and be more faithful. This would elevate the status of a priest from a simple healer and local wise man, to a political force to be reckoned with. For example, the local lord relies on taxes derived from the sale of crops from local yoemen farmers, and to deal with plauges (that can even affect himself and his family). If the local fief would anger or alienate himself from the church by actions frowned upon by the priests faith, that priest can punish him simply by not performing these blessing rituals on his serfs and freemen, allowing the plauge to spread unchecked, and if worse came to worse, damning the crops to fail (reducing the yield of crops... of course, this would not occur with a lesser faith unless they wanted to end up dead on a pike). So the next time you throw even a mid level priest into a town or villiage, look at the impact he could potentially have on the local region, and what type of influence he could have (he certainly would have unrestricted access to the local fief... attention the party may certainly desire), therefore tything by party members can go even further than simple healing or a meager bless spell. Ironfang -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 2] Author : Thailfi Date : 12-12-03 09:44 AM You are ignoring that D&D is a polytheistic world where the gods have a specifically designated sphere of influence and not all of them are benevolent. I don't impagine a mid level priest of a god of war would be too much help with the crops. Find a cleric of a god or goddess of harvest or something like that and that would be helpful. Imagine the following community: The town has a church of an agriculture goddess and the peasants donate to the church to increase their crop production. The town also has a church of a god of storms and the priests there force the community to pay tribute or the god will destroy their crops. The town also has a church of a healing goddess and the citizens donate to the church to ensure the health of the community. Finally the town has a temple to a god of pestilence and the priests force the community to pay tribute or the god will bring a plague down on the town. Doesn't sound like a recipe for a healthy community. It is like the town that didn't know it had a problem with its legal system until two lawyers moved in. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 3] Author : ironfang Date : 12-12-03 10:05 AM Actually, I am not ignoring the fact that the AD&D world is polytheistic. If you sit down and read the PHB, you'll notice that there are distinctions between priests and clerics. Priests are devoted to specific powers, while clerics draw their power from the entire pantheon. So a "cleric" would be a devotee of a particular pantheon (such as Greek, Norse, Babalonian, etc.). Of course their are priests as you mentioned, and they have limited spheres of access based on their dieties portfolio. In polytheistic times, clerics often would conduct worshiping rituals to many different dieties in order to appease them and gain their favor. My mistake if I used the word priest instead of cleric (unless your running a monotheistic campaign). Tyranus -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 4] Author : imayb1 Date : 12-12-03 02:15 PM Priests are devoted to specific powers, while clerics draw their power from the entire pantheon. Ano, What PHB are you getting that from?? :confused: ...This would elevate the status of a priest from a simple healer and local wise man, to a political force to be reckoned with. I agree that most fantasy role-play does not emphasize the important role of the clergy in the same way that medieval society did. Is this bad? I agree that clergy should be very important to RPG society. I believe that the way to bring this out is through role-play. I don't think it would do any good to force tithes on PCs, for example. Your hypothetical situation with clergyman and blessing the crops works well for a po-dunk one-church or no-church village, but most religions (in RPGs) will have competition. Most clergy won't be able to push around the local government to the extent of monopoly. They must also realize that if they upset the locals/local economy, the locals themselves will go looking for the competition... Oh, our god/dess doesn't love us anymore? We are having a plaGUe because our worship of (agriculture diety) wasn't good enough? Let's go find a devotee of (healing diety)! -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 5] Author : Hiryu Date : 12-12-03 03:28 PM I think you make some intresting points, however, I think I am going to agree with the other replies. Mind you, the way you are doing it keeps a bigger midieval flavor, but you have to remember that the medieval world was influenced, manipulated and governed exclusively by the catholic church. This doesn't apply to a polytheistic setting. In this respect, fantasy worlds work closer to the models of ancient rome or greece. Granted, their priests had some political pull, but this was irrelevant outside of their own community or one that shared their belief system. For instance, in the pre-christian rome the jewish patriarchs had an enourmous political influence in their communities, and ruled all matters for their region. In the rest of rome, however, jews were seen like a plague, and so, all their polititical power was worth crap outside of the small jewish sector of the roman empire. I think there are many societal and cultural subtleties you are missing, there. Oh, yeah. In AD&D, the classes are divided in four groups: Warriors, Rogues, Wizards and Priests. Cleric is a class belonging to the Priest group. If you want to make them separate classes, by all means go right ahead. The game has room for plenty of house rules, but that is not what the PHB says. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 6] Author : ironfang Date : 12-13-03 01:15 PM The most common type of priest is the cleric. The cleric may be an adherent of any religion (though if the DM designs a specific mythos, the cleric's abilities and spells may be changed--see following). Copyright 1999 TSR Inc. (And you are asking me if I wanna make this into its own class... huh???) Also, I was wrong about clerics. They are not mythos specific (accounting for why they have Major Sphere access to almost every sphere (plant, animal, weather, and elemental spheres (he has minor access to the elemental sphere and cannot cast spells of the other three spheres). If I am missing societal and cultural subtleties, please elaborate. Dont school me without finishing the lesson. I realise that many people play polythesitic dieties in a monothiestic aspect (which is contradictory to actual polytheistic practice). A town or city may have been devoted to a particular diety (such as Hercules), but the local "priests" also prayed to other dieties for the divine intervention on aspects of life that fell into their portfolio. If you were a naval soldier, you would worship and sacrifice to Posieden more frequently than you would to Mars, yet, you would respect their followers equally. Since you used pre-christian jews as an example of a religious society (which I was talking primarily about dominant religions, not secular ones), then I guess you can answer why the Romans had such a hard time with the Jews as opposed to other cultures which they dominated. The answer is pretty clear, the jews were monotheistic, the Romans were polytheistic and decreed that their subjects may worship any religion they wished AS LONG as they also sacrificed to Jupiter/Zues. The persecution of the jews was primarily because they refused to do so. This is an example of a religious establishment flexing its muscle on the subjects of the Roman empire. Simple "shopping around" may be a simple route to do things, but then again, that is acting like the internet and mass transit exists. Maybe ancient peoples just turned on thier computers or hopped on air planes to learn about other gods. Ya know, since the local priest says, "Aphrodite says your gonna go without love for a long time" the peasant says, "FU, I'll go find another goddess of love. Let me hop on a plane and go to Egypt and see what they have to offer...." LOL. Pretty ridiculius. And dont fool yourself to believe that ancient cultures tolerated religious proliferation in the ancient times. Tolerance to local beliefs was tolerated at best, prostetalization was often rewarded with execution. Also, the dieties of any given mythos generally respects their portfolio and keeps out of the other dieties of the same mythos portfolios. They will also jealously guard their followers from the followers of dieties of a different mythos (for fear of losing followers from that mythos, because the subjects of a polythesitic mythos often worship all the dieties because of their specific influences in the world). A priest of Vulcan is not going to tolerate a priest of Thor starting to preach in his area, even though they are not in direct conflict on a portfolio basis, but their basic concepts of reality are different (basic beliefs and teachings in reality are different, a priest of Thor wont acknowledge Vulcan, but will speak of the Norse diety that fullfills that function). Anyway, It would seem to be a mute point to argue with you about the influence of religion in ancient cultures is a mute point because you seem to know sooooo much about ancient cultures....LOL.... hehe... Check your facts and come back. Ironfang -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- [Post 7] Author : Hiryu Date : 12-14-03 12:10 AM You know what? I have no idea how I think you have some good points, but here are some suggestions/observations results in a reply insulting my inteligence. I could ellaborate further and talk about all the subtleties that you are missing, such as polytheistic worship in a fantasy world where the gods depend on said worship for their power, about how a god may curse one of their believers because he recieved a blessing from another god, and how local politics and their religious intrests may influence all that. But I am going to skip all of that. I already got involved in another pointless argument this week, and to be honest, I've had my fill of "my daddy can beat up your daddy" for the week. As for the rules, we obviously read them differently, so I won't even go there. And by the by, I never argued the religious influence in the old OR the modern world, just how that influence would act in a fantasy world, where religion has a very different dynamic. Read what I said in my previous post, slowly, and then come back. (yes, that was childish, but I felt the urge to return the gesture) -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Downloaded from Wizards Community (http://forums.gleemax.com) at 05-10-08 08:19 AM.