You ever wonder why there's so much 'church bad' stuff? Like you'd think that given how fantasy deities demonstrably exist and do indeed grant supernatural powers, there would be less basic-ass iconoclasm.
>>96755849idk idc ask the worldbuilding general
>>96755849Even in settings where gods are demonstrably real, it doesn't mean that they're constantly communicating directly with their followers all the time. And faith =/= a church. A church is a human construct, a hierarchy made by fallible, corruptible people.And a lot of the times a setting has "church bad" as a setting point, it's usually that the worship of that specific church has been coopted by a different group or entity.
>>96755849Social engineering, mostly. Explaining further than that would invite a complicated discussion.
>>96755849>This thread once moreNo, I didn't
>>96755849Because the vast majority of people writing fantasy RPGs in English are atheists perpetually seething at the historically Christian countries they reside in.
Isn't it usually "Church Good" in fantasy?
>>96755888Checked and correct.Most JRPGs with a Christian-styled church make them adorably good to the point of naivety.
>>96755908Most? One of the big jrpg tropes is "we have to kill God!"
>>96755902usually the institution of the church is flawed but individual members are good (and often chafe under the restrictive church leadership/have special divine guidance/some other fucking thing)
>>96755902I wish moot was still here.
>>96755917No it isn't lmfao.
>AlignmentsThink man, gods can be evil or good. In a good setting, you'll find both sides of the spectrum.
>>96755902yep, and when the church is 'bad' usually its just been corrupted by a couple of assholes rather than it being inherently evil.there are a couple of exceptions but they're far from the norm.
Because mortals are corrupt, and in many settings with real demonstratable gods the writers are retards who want to have their cake and eat it too by keeping said god distant like how we see in real life because they think it makes it more "deep". You'd think for example, a real deity would literally have its equivalent of angels and such hiding/running around to keep mortals in check so they aren't ruining the god's rep, or outright blaspheming and committing evil in their name.
>>96755902begone cuckee
>>96755849Cultural paradigm shift. Church used to be the good guys of the old world order until its enemies (Freemasonry, Democracy, Judaism, Socialism) took power and occupied all institutions and rewrote history.Christian morality was replaced with cultural relativism, progress and antinomianism.
>>96756239That's true in some very recent fiction, but not in the printed material of any tabletops. Hell, even D&D's not gone down that path. The Church Bad thing, especially in stuff older than 2022 is weeb infection more than anything else.
>>96755849Medieval fantasy is based on medieval times when the church really was the biggest force of evil in the western world and near east
>>96756020>I'm just going to expound on a genre I know nothing about!You do you, bud.
>>96755849It really boils down to individual clergymenBishop Myriel or Friar Tuck were genuinely pursuing good even if that meant bending the rules here and there.Vs likes of Cardinal Richelieu or Claude Frollo who were undeniably selfish and used hierarchy of church as a cover.Unruly but fundamentally good novice vs evil that corrupred high ranking clergy makes for great narrative.
>>96756063>>96755920These to responses contradict.
in 40k church good.
>>96756258There's a pretty wide body of historical occasions where the church was subverted by politics, greed or hubris, a good half of the splits in any sect were likely caused by such incidents.
>>96756688ironic, considering The Emperor was a fierce atheist
>>96755849Like any LARGE and POWERFUL organization. It'll have some bad people in it. It will also have some good people. But mostly it'll have normal people who will be able to do both good or bad depending on what's going on. Soon, the Church will be good again for counter-cultural reasons because everyone is getting sick of "Church Bad" Nonsense.
In my game it's going to be good.
>>96756742How good?
>>96756797So good, it's bad.
>>96756721In BG3 the church is good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9cCcGIstCwAre religious people shown to be wrong here?
>>96755993Hiro is a fucking paperweight and I hate it.
>>96756839
>>96755849Nah, other way around. IRL religious doctrine can be shaped by human sentiment, if the gods were active forces they would be seen as benevolent dictators at best. Which would not be often.
because the church is bad, what don't you get?
>>96756928which one?
because people still remember the time when the Church owned like 70% of the land, taxed the people living there and still felt the need of scamming them out of their money with Indulgence
>>96756942Perfect answer. In fantasy some churches are evil while some are good.
>>96756943https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaTn3oRPtzgIr was Based
>>96755849It's impossible for someone to "deserve" obsessive scraping and bowing just because they exist and are powerful. Why would you put up with anything from a god you wouldn't put up with from a king, other than out of fear which proves they aren't worthy of respect if they use it to compel worship?Transactional religion where you make payment for services rendered, or the slightly more abstracted version where you look out for a god as if they're a member of the community and receive passive benefits as you would from any community member in good standing is fine, but if the deity asks people to grovel on their knees you need to bust out the torches and pitchforks and chase their clergy out of town to send a message as you would with any other tyrant. If that fails, sending a plucky band of teenagers to kill god has a pretty good track record in fictional worlds.
I mostly wonder where you're seeing all this "church bad" media, because I haven't. Even in Warhammer all the established churches are solidly good even if plenty of the priests are corrupt or mental.
>>96755849Why would there be?The church in real life can pawn off issues on the fact that God is ineffable and the mysteries of god are inherently beyond our understanding etc.But in, for example, Forgotten Realms you can directly see the "Good" gods participate in the horrifying scheme that is the wall of the faithless., you can see them take the side of the divine order over humanity, you can be screwed by a decision they made even if they were well intentioned.In real life purgatory and hell are presuppositions we made about the nature of life and the universe. Here theyre real and the gods are telling you to your face "Yeah what the fuck are you gonna do about it?"
Does your setting have a holy empire?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJSFLS9A3GM
>>96755849It's all by design because God and the church challenges the power of those who want to undermine it.
>>96756928Why is the church bad?
>>96755888Trips of truth
>>96756435Typically the godlike entity you kill is very much NOT God, which is usually why it needs to be put down. Even in SMT it's an arrogant demiurg rather than capital-G God. You might argue that's splitting hairs but it's an important distinction to make, especially if you're trying to lazily liken an animist, polytheistic cultural foundation with an abrahamic, monotheistic one.
>>96756942>>96756944Obviously the evil church is good (but misunderstood) while the good church is evil. Because basic bitch subversion drenched in daddy/authority issues makes me an enlightened intellectual.
Easy twist because they are an authority figure you are supposed to trust.You can make it work but it's like "the butler did it" of world building, you have to put in a lot of work for it to not suck and to present it in an interesting way
>>96757024>the church of our holy lady of mercy is actually trying to bring about the unraveling of reality by freeing the demon king from his infernal prison>only the church of st. Bastard the baby rapist stands in their way
Western mass culture is produced by the Jews in United States of America.(Catholic) Church had been a boogeyman for Americans even before they got conquered by God's Chosen.And then there's Japanese, for whom Christianity (represented mostly by Catholic missionaries) is a hostile idea attempting to take over their traditional society.Hiroshima and Nagasaki were biggest strongholds of Japanese Catholics, by the way. In case you wondered why these two were chosen as targets.
>>96755849Because historically large churches used to and continue to shit it up for the common folk. From hypocrisy through moral decay and slowing down progress and up to meddling in national politics to the point of becoming a political power. While good at preserving knowledge and consolidating national identity big religions fuck it up in the end.
The most amazing thing about this thread is that there hasn't been a single 'nun porno' picture posted yet.
>>96757251this site is mostly gays and schizo incels that both hate women for different reasons
>>96755849Because stupid atheists and the common trope that the Catholic Church only did horrible things in the Middle Ages and had no redeeming qualities (which of course isn’t true) or that Christianity led to some dark age and book burning (also wrong) and that the crusades were some horrific crime (they were just)I for one teased church bad for genre convention because my players expected it and then pivoted to church good
>>96756825Wait. That's just bad.
>>96757251don't worry anon, I got you.
>>96755888>>96757280TBF it's also largely down to protestantism in English speaking countries depicting the Catholic one as evil (let's be honest, all Church bad stories have said Church based off of the Catholic one and not the Protestant ones that are arguably far more corrupt nowadays). You never see criticism of Protestant Evangelicals despite them being far more intrusive in the modern United States.>>96757209Meds.
>>96757199>is actually trying to bring about the unraveling of reality by freeing the demon king from his infernal prisonNo no, you've got it all backwards still. God is the evil one and the demon king was trapped in his infernal prison for protecting humanity
>>96757312Let me do you one better:>The demon king and God are both evil>Because the demon king is actually just God putting on a mask>Just because he thinks it's really funny when humans fight and kill each other
>>96757209So it was Japanese mole, who targeted Japanese Catholics with nukes? Got it, thanks for info.
>>96757280>did horrible things in the Middle Ages and had no redeeming qualities The bad highly outweighed the good. Preservation of knowledge and limited scope of research that Church enabled did not balance itself out with moral decay, fear-mongering, political corruption and stifling of societal progress. >that Christianity led to some dark age and book burningFor certain societal groups it did. Philosophical hegemonies never worked out well. Of course the Church preserved a lot of information as well. And the idea of Dark Ages is mostly pop cultural bs. >that the crusades were some horrific crime (they were just)lol. Lmao even.
>>96757280>>96757345Crusades were an aimless mess, but they were in response to the islamic world coming at Spain and the Byzantines - if Europe hadn't responded with a pushback they would have kept going, though the pushback was absolutely completely uncoordinated and chaotic
>>96756959Are you really such an ungrateful little bitch you can't imagine someone so supreme they deserve your worship?
>>96757359Strategically sound is better word than just, in that case. And that I would concede. >>96757365Not everyone is a little submissive bitch like yourself anon.
If "church bad" is coming up in your games then blame your GM. I can't think of any mass media where it's remotely true.
>>96757321Now you're trying too hard and dipping into warhams grimderp
>>96757345>lol. Lmao even.Brown hands typed that post.
>>96757365there is no amount of supremacy that means something deserves worship
>>96757447Not even close, mongrel. But keep licking those priestly boots.
>>96757015That’s based on a misunderstanding by western fans about the monad and YHWH. YHWH is explicitly meant to be the judeo-Christian god.
>>96757460You can't fool me, gypsy pajeet. I can smell you from here.
>>96757469Then take a shower shitskin.
>>96757465More specifically to expand on this, SMT is one of the few JRPGs out there where you’re explicitly killing the Christian god. According to my Japanese friends the other instances of god being the final boss in JRPGs is based on some Shinto myth thing but in SMT it’s killing capital G-Jehovah.
>>96755917>game about killing god>look inside>demon/corrupted deity/man who gained supreme power/an alien
>>96757365Imagine being the kind of slave that thinks anyone or anything inherently deserves anything just by existing without earning it in return.
>>96755917That's a Japanese trope.
>>96757456>>96757495We are taught that we deserve hell unless we worship. Hell is an infinite punishment. This can only mean that not worshipping must be an infinite crime, regardless of whether our limited minds understand why.
I am a fan of the way Eberron handles religion. The Eberron method is more "realistic," for lack of a better term: different competing models of the divine, some of which are compatible with one another, some of which boil down to faith in gods whose existence can never be truly verified.A religion is more akin to a real-world religion in that it presents its own "rules of the divine," which may or may not be compatible with other religions. There is no one universal pantheon in Eberron that all gods get filed into.Do you like it when a fantasy setting uses this method for distinguishing its religions?
>>96757534>hell in Buddhism>you just go there to suffer for a few thousand years before you reincarnate>punishment is not infinite>punishment diff depending on your transgressions>hell in Christianity>if you don’t worship sky daddy you go to hell forever for the crime of being created and forced to inhabit a painful existence and not being okay with that>punishment is foreverMakes one think.
>>96757564>Calvinism>Free will is a lie, god creates most people specifically to go through their pre planned lives and then to hell>Still all loving tho
>>96757534The bible was written by man and even per the bible man is flawed. The whole it being "word of god" literally is a newer concept. The Bible has also been edited, censored, had entire sections removed and added in that it's a jumble of different cultures, time periods and views.An "infallible book", that immediately starts off with two distinct creation stories, has far more than ten commandments, most of which aren't good moral teachings, and that has been edited and reedited so many times over its entire history. Full of plagiarized ideas from cooler regional religions, depicting a slap fight between many different sources trying to keep their particular version of the fanfic propaganda in line.
God, the worst part about tradcath larpers coming into vogue is how they brought back 00s reddit atheists with them
>>96757303Protestants were(still are) the discount atheists anyway.At this point Prots and Evans are basically state, not church.
Rhetoric isn't education.
>>96756943The church tax was 10%, or the diezmo where I lived. The majority of this kind of terrain was used asa comon of sorts, just the church had the right of 10 of everything you produced in there, but alos you got the protection and to not to pay lots of the taxes than non church lands had, so they were generally a lot better to work for than nobles and mercantile people, especially of you had the local laws(than in my country were called fueros) than gave people lots of protection, tough it changed a lot around the territory. Outside of europe, I see a lot of people thinking the medieval age/laws were some kind of universal, but they were extremely local and changed a lot, even from village to village. There was a village in Guipozkua I think, basque country, where if a woman has his baby born in a rock, it was considered Hidalgo/lowest level of nobility, just for that.
>>96756702The Emperor created the church by the way.Since the fucker saw his empire was going to crumble as soon as he was sat on the golden throne he started to influence people into the Imperial cult to keep unity.Something nuGW hacks forget because they do not know their own ip
>>96755849Because it makes for more interesting stories.
>>96756239>Freemasonrylol this faggot's still mad about a boys club for architects in 2025
>>96755849Can you give specific examples?
>>96756239>Freemasonry>enemy of Christianity>who's Jacques de MolayFucking burgers are fucking retarded. You absolute mongoloid.
religiosity correlates with low iq. just saying.
>>96757199>Our Saviour of the Bountiful Sacrifice of the Ugly Bastard is actually dedicated to a Martyr who violated a woman that was due to give birth to the Demon Lord if she remained so and was killed by cultists for fucking up their plansTruly the hero we never asked for and don't want.
>>96755849>You ever wonder why there's so much 'church bad' stuff?Name ONE example from tabletop games, please.
>>96758247Was it a high IQ move to replace White population of Europe with Negroes, Arabs and Indians?
>>96758499The NGOs bringing nonwhites into Europe are overwhelmingly Christian so I don't know what point you think you're making with this.
>>96758533>The NGOs bringing nonwhites into Europe are overwhelmingly JewishFTFY
>>96755849I genuinely can't remember a single time a module or campaign I played had an explicit "church bad" plotline unless you count cults of evil gods of murder or undead or some shit
>>96756942All of them. Read God & The State.
>>96758489He won't answer, he won't even return to this thread he shat out.
>>96756694That is very real, and often a plot point dealing with the church. But that isn't the narrative trope I'm talking about, kiddo.Church Bad is more about The Church as being presented as a systemically rotten to the core, which is exceedingly rare in fantasy fiction outside of anime let alone the worldbuidling of tabletop RPGs.>>96756943That is a hella post-modern revision of history that doesn't hold up to scrutiny, and it still hasn't really gotten any traction in the worldbuilding of fantasy games.
