Yeah the Evil Church thing is basically a cliche now. But putting aside the "They give you free everything" setup, what does a church that is actively supporting the PCs provide? Assume like, your grim, dark medieval Europe setting
* Somewhere to stay, food and drink pretty much everywhere. * Peerless local intelligence. Even if the confessional is sacred, priests have a LOT of access and influence* Introductions. If you're in a setting where social class precludes (say) the local lord from meeting random shitkickers like the PCs, a priest is a respectable go-between. * Archives. If you can get messages back and forth to Fantasy Rome you can request information on all sorts of things from one of the world's largest libraries.* Sanctuary from (some) legal entanglements
Lodgings, minor blessings, knowledge, subsidized rates for products
>>98383075Depends on what religion. Which is?
>>98383177You forgot products. As most monasteries at least also were points of some industry. And most more urban Bishoprics were also involved with busness.
>>98383182Generic Catholic church-esque Church of Light, just grimmer and darker.
>>98383075There are religious fanatics in the settings, who want to torture and burn infidels, or are afraid of demons and accuse innocents of it etc...The Church sees them as heretics and wants to repress their activity.
>>98383075An army.You can just send a message to the church that there is a lair of necromancers/orcs/goblins/etc. too close for comfort and you need help with dealing with them and they will organize a mini-crusade to help you.Just dont expect the militia to take on really scary stuff or descend into dungeons, thats YOUR job.
>>98383186Just avoiding OP's stipulation against free goods. You're absolutely right, though.
>>98383075>your grim, dark medieval Europe settingThen the Church is evil and not on your side.
Your priests and clerics being able to literally channel divine magic is probably very helpful for all manners of things.
>>98383313Speak for yourself, peasant.
>>98383177Active support isn't just free shit whenever you want. The church as a political and social power in >>98383217set up has these things but requires your services and influence over the party. The food isn't really free, they're gathering intelligence on you when you eat, when you confess, they're taking alms and donations as required and befits their needs and the needs of the many are great (as well as funding for their great works), acquiring specific saintly relics to increase influence of their potential path to being bishop, cardinal, etc. and honestly the occasional skull drudgery to root out cults, mad men trying to live as saints and other protestant reformative and schismatic threats, and monsters that threaten the flock. Keep up levying crusaders to keep those noble sons out in the world getting killed off in a manageable enough numbers and the peasants fearful. And organizing saintly festivals. And teaching. And keeping the nuns from fucking the anchorites. Its a lot. They're an organized, well funded and internally secretive religion with centuries of rituals and hidden languages. They're an essential and interwoven service for the majority of education, health and the social connectivity that comes with religion. Its got benefits and helps hold things together, but they're not stupid. >cont
>>98383313church of Sigmar/ church of Al-Ulric in Warhammer says otherwise. Or the church of Melitele in The Witcher.
>>98383075>Basically a cliche>nowTry 30 years ago, and it never stopped being a tired cliche since.
>contMechanically I have been using the large physical church as the locus of the starting village of the current campaign. Resources are limited due to the sun being in revolt, crop failure is happening, there's a lot of unrest so I've been adding negative reaction encounters and unrest as the player characters return to town in the night and rolling for items chance of not being available which will increase over time. There's healing of the more serious wounds and miladies, which I have been tracking as the dm, each serious affliction giving 1 unit of 'hold' over the player character, which is exchangeable by the church or a high up member of the church (there are three reps, each a bit different and bias towards the local populace, the larger church and the nobility respectively, which colours their use of hold and the content of their advice a bit). Each rep also acts as a sage and rumour mill. There are three oaths of the church players can take, clerics aren't a specific class in the game I'm running. >Oath of The Honest Unbound, can tell no lies or deceptions. 1/day unlock or disassemble any barrier>Oath of the Loyal Empowered, must obey direct commands from ordained church members. 1/day command any creature as per Charm with one Turn duration (10 minutes) >Oath of the Selfless Palm, must give 1/2 of all treasure to the church, still gains xp. 1/day heal self or target all HP, cure disease.
>>98383392That's honestly shocking.
>>98383075Churches in My games only help the PCs if they are affiliated members. Unless the church is devoted to a particularly good or benevolent deity, and even then, the help will be minimal compared to what they could get if they weren't total fucking heathens.In most cases so far, it's just been information that the church is willing to share.
>>98383788None of the main human cults in Warhammer Fantasy are evil. Sigmar and Ulric are probably the least genial of the major cults and they're still objective forces for good.
>>98383217>Generic Catholic church-esque Church of Light, just grimmer and darker.>Jesus doesn't love you, He just kinda tolerates you>heaven is just meh and full of people you don't like >hell is the painful torment of eternal isolation from God, except there's also a screamo heavy metal band singing about decapitated babies >they're slightly off-key and you can't unhear it
>>98383075Resurrections, level-ups, uncursing/removing cursed equipment, removing persistent status ailmentsThat's what they do in old JRPGs anyway
>>98383313you can have a grimdark setting where the religion is unironically the only thing holding the known world together from utter collapse, it's just that its efforts have to be hopeless in the face of the harsh reality of secular corruption and plague/famine/strife dragging kingdoms into the gutter. Also a few bad apples (priests) spoiling the bunch by betraying the church from within for personal gain
>>98385805Just like in real life!
>>98383391>>98383440Sounds like a cool setting. The sun is in revolt?They seem like a pseudo government, a lot like the catholic church in the middle ages. I'd imagine they'd also be a go between with temporal authorities, so that's a lever you can pull too.
>>98384264I've been willing to extend the offer of help if it's of particular interest for a church, such as sending a hireling/DMPC to "supervise" their efforts scouring the land near the profane lair of the religion's evil cult should they happen to find it. The person is always trying to prod the party in some way towards converting, but since different personalities have different strategies, some are more insufferable than others.For example, Pholtus is a "truth and systems" god, while Heironeous is a "justice and hierarchy" god. Party member following big H doesn't respect systems beyond their ability to make sure justice is served, just like Pholtus NPCs doesn't respect justice beyond enforcing their systems. Some will jab at the idea of justice as a system to itself only leading to witch-hunts, but if they need a witch hunted, then they'll gladly mention wrongs that need righting, and smugly point out the necessity of the truth for justice to be effective.Secretly it all shows that even good pagan deities are fundamentally incomplete. They're either too niche to function alone or too broad and embrace the bad parts as something to put up with.
>>98383075>what does a church that is actively supporting the PCs provide?Legitimacy.
>>98383075watch the Van Helsing movie. They give you the tools to smite, kinda like the Q to your 007.
>>98383075Traditional games?
>>98386109Spell catastrophe failure led to a month long high intensity sun at the end of summer so its even worse. The players and the church don't know its only for a month and the magic user who failed the spell is dead from other things that day so everyone thinks its God being pissed about something. Still could be in a cosmological sense really. >They seem like a pseudo governmentVery much so.
>>98384264That holy princess looks cute.
>>98383075>what does a church that is actively supporting the PCs provide?Translation to/from other languages.Mediation when dealing with third parties (in rare case when party wants to de-escalate the conflict).Money-related services (currency conversion, deposit in one location against withdrawal in another, possibly loans).Counselling / psychological care.Option to join their case and to wear their iconography.Asylum.>>98383368Man literally hated the "mainstream" church so much he made his own church, with blackjack and hookers.
>Yeah the Evil Church thing is basically a cliche now.Name ten examples in tabletop settings.You're taking a JRPG video game trope and applying it to Western TTRPGs for some bizarre reason.
>>98390829You're outing yourself as a nogames by demanding a list of canon evil churches in TRPG lore instead of just being aware that most people who played games definitely had one or two GMs who learned most of their world building tropes from reddit or are/were an edgy atheist to the point where "church is evil" has long crossed the cultural boundary of being primarily a Japanese medieval fantasy trope.
>>98383075Safe, free, and socially acceptable depository for all those orphans we inevitably end up making.
>>98383075Just to be clear, you're saying that the church supporting the PCs is evil, right? Because they'd have to be, knowing what the PCs are up to.
>>98383075>>98383177>>98383178>>98383186And most importantly, a church provides something for one of your players to inevitably rebel against no matter how good or neutral said church has acted towards them.
>>98387878Clerics and heavy religious themes have been in TTRPGs from the very start. It's relevant.
>>98393603Wasn't Gygax a godless liberal? Makes one wonder who brought religious themes to the game.
>>98383075Probably a lot, assuming the church's faith is true. The church's approval is probably stronger than local government's approval, and if it's a country-spanning church it definitely has more resources than the government. As long as the PCs are acting in alignment with the church, they can probably expect greatly increasing support.
>>98394726>a country-spanning church it definitely has more resources than the government.But far less flexibility in using those resources, church is inherently bound by its own history and traditions. Government can turn on a dime with every new king/parliament/whatever leadership figure.
oh boy, another catholic church ripoff in a tabletop game, how original
>>98394747>Government can turn on a dime with every new king/parliament/whatever leadership figure.Not really. Kings are going to be just as bound by history and traditions. Their authority over their vassals isn't absolute, and if the current King turns on a dime and pisses off a bunch of vassals they'll turn on him. Parliaments have history and traditions that hold them back, codified in law. Ye olde medieval parliaments are going to be just as held back by petty and partisan politics as contemporary ones. Good luck getting all of the citizens of your !Athens and !Sparta to suddenly decide that women should totally get to vote and enjoy every possible equality with men, and good luck not getting immediately shanked when you try to force that shit on them.Even if you manage a military coup, good luck doing a complete 180 on historical and traditional precedent with your fucking soldiers having to take over the administration they probably know exactly fucking nothing about, because the quartermasters you have aren't going to be nearly enough to run state apparatus, such as they may be.
>>98393713Wrong on every level. He was very much a Cristian, and at least later in life very Conservative. His time as a cocaine-fueled womanizer was time spent strayed from the path, not who he was at his core.He wrote the Fighting-Man, Cleric, and Magic-User classes himself. The former and later created to represent the common types of hero units from Chainmail, and the Cleric to fill the gap that clearly exists between the two.
>>98383075>Assume like, your grim, dark medieval Europe settingSo an evil church, the PCs are evil so the church supports them?
>>98397475>Not really.Yes, really. Henry "I do whatever the fuck I want" VIII was already mentioned earlier in thread, pulled 180 on catholic church, from being pope's favourite to getting excommunicated, declared himself head of his own church, razed monasteries left and right. Got away with it. Unless you believe in divine justice that terminated his bloodline in retribution.Papa Doc Duvalier is another great example, pulled 180 from philanthrope to ruthless dictator, got away with it just fine.Hell, look at the government of United States, turning 180 every 4 to 8 years.
>>98398674>Hell, look at the government of United States, turning 180 every 4 to 8 years.more like 1.8 degrees
>>98390821And the thing was, in the beginning, it was just an excuse to have a divorce and loot the monasteries, but he loved all the pomp and ceremony of it all; the early CoE was basically Catholicism 2.0, and the main architect of the looting soon fell out of favour and was executed too.
>>98398674He only 'got away with it' because he inherited a strong administration from his father and used it to murder potential rivals. The suppression of the monasteries caused several rebellions. In the actual Middle Ages many kings were murdered for far less, Henry VIII was much stronger than most medieval kings.>US GovernmentIdiot, nearly every western government for decades has agreed on the things that matter. There should be more taxes, more surveillance and fewer rights for the people. These things keep happening whoever you vote for.
>>98398674>1 exception to the norm means I'm not wrong reeeeeeeeee!!!!
>>98398726>These things keep happening whoever you vote for.Because thats state reason. Because you change the politicians but keep the same people.
>>98383391>Active support isn't just free shit whenever you want.Who said any of that shit is free? If the church is supporting you, presumably it has expectations of you as well.
>>98383075Sanctuary? Moral clarity?What do you get out of a church now (without being a cynic)?
>>98383075Healing and mental stress relief (when you follow their religion).Exorcism and anything related to demonic curses.
>>98383075What gooner game is this image from because the answer I'm assuming you actually want is blowjobs in the confession booth.
>>98404300Nikke. She dies
>>98383182Lel
>>98383075>churchWhy is it always abrahamism by another name with you people.
>>98383392>church of SigmarIf you aren't being chased down by witch hunters over the most spurious of rumours, you're doing it wrong.
>>98404954Thx
>>98411978What a Gatche/card slop!
>>98417080
Nikkers? On this board? This time of the year?
>>98417107What dos it have to do with time?
