Shadowrun
Shadowrun General => General Discussion => Topic started by: Fedifensor on <09-17-13/0140:14>
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Can anyone point me to source material that talks about religion in Shadowrun? I'm working on a street preacher character, and searching the SR5 PDF came up with a single mention of the word "religion"...and that was in a short story.
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As far as I'm aware, all the religions existing in modern day exist in the SR setting, so any research you can do on the internet should help you out.
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Can anyone point me to source material that talks about religion in Shadowrun? I'm working on a street preacher character, and searching the SR5 PDF came up with a single mention of the word "religion"...and that was in a short story.
You'd want to check "Sixth World Almanac" as it briefly covers some pivotal changes in religions, like Vatican "legalizing" Magic.
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As far as I'm aware, all the religions existing in modern day exist in the SR setting, so any research you can do on the internet should help you out.
That helps with roleplaying the character, but I also need to know how common religious belief is in the 2070s. By its omission, religion seems to be less of a concern to the typical wageslave. How secular has the world become.
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I suspect the degree of secularization or religiosity varies from place to place, just as it does today. I don't recall any in-depth discussions going across the world, but some commentary about regional situations has come up. For example, the Tír na nÓg sourcebook covers the widespread disaffection with Catholicism in former Ireland, largely driven by the conflict between the Catholic Church's rejection of dwarves and elves versus the incredibly high proportion of elven children born in Ireland, and their parent's rejection of a church that declared their children evil.
FWIW, game writers have almost always been very hesitant to tackle questions of religion here in the US since it can be such a polarizing issue here.
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I think the main difference is there so many more religions. Pagan religions resurfaced and new ones formed with the awakening. From fluff and posts on JackPoint, it looks like a lot of people believe in something or other, even if it is only vaguely defined (I recall quite a few posts saying stuff like "Spirits!" as an exclamation like we'd say "God!")
Also, the Street Magic and a couple other SR4 books do have a small bit more info on religion, like the New Islamic Jihad and such.
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It says in several books that the religions which always incorporated magic got a big boost. That means shamanic traditions like Native American Shamanism and neopagan religions like Wicca, Asatru or celtic Drudism. These religions now have a big following in the western world. The eastern religions like Taoism, Buddhism or Hinduism are also on the winning side of the Awakening and are in good shape. Shinto is of course going strong in Japan. After all, this is a cyberpunk setting ;) On a more serious note: Shinto fared well and this makes sense, since it's a shamanic religion focused on spirits.
For the Abrahamitic religions:
Islam still dominates the arab world and most (but not all) muslim schools declared magic a dangerous art. There is also the Islamic Renaissance Movement, which aims to reform Islam just like Luther did with Christianity. The Movement is pretty strong and could even become a new major school of Islam.
Catholicism lost many followers because it didn't adapt well to the sixth world (it banned magic and metahumans were seen as lost causes). After a while, a new pope (the old one died under suspicious circumstances) accepted magic as a gift from god and allowed it's use as long as it is used for good. He also classified metahumans as equal to humans. The church has since consolidated, but is still not as strong as before the awakening.
Protestant churches are very varied (as always), but most adapted pretty well. Many of them were more magic friendly than the catholic church.
Don't remember how Judaism and the orthodox christian churches developed exactly, but both are still around.
Atheism is also strong. While nobody can deny magic and spirits in Shadowrun, you can still deny that these beings have any moral superiority and deserve veneration. Many see magic as just another, although as of yet unexplained, part of the universe which can be understood by science. The scientific hermetic mages subscribe to this belief.
Bonus: It is VERY strongly implied that Scientology evolved into the Universal Brotherhood. This group evolved into a big insect spirit cabal and was utterly destroyed after this was discovered.
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The Catholic Church did undergo a major shift in it's attitude about magic for sure. There is new religious order, the Order of St. Sylvester, fully supported by the Vatican, which has collected many of the Awakened within the church hierarchy. It also houses a number of non-Awakened academic magic scholars within the church.
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Many see magic as just another, although as of yet unexplained, part of the universe which can be understood by science. The scientific hermetic mages subscribe to this belief.
That is also pretty much the stance held by (roman) Catholicism, and according to the magic books most other Christian denominations follow suit: Magic is a force of nature, and therefore neither a sign of divine miracle nor deals with the guy downstairs.
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Wasn't there a BIG DEAL going on in Iran related to Islam around the SURGE period? Like a return of the Prophet or something to that effect?
I may be confusing my dystopian future timelines though...
Edit: I was thinking of a) Tehran being destroyed for declaring Jihad on metahumans (which happened much earlier in the timeline) and b) the shedim possessing the leader of the New Islamic Jihad. So, not really a lot on how normal followers of Islam behave.
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Most RPG's keep a loose definition of religion. I guess it's asking a bit much to define an empire and a state religion...
Plenty of cults to pick from though... :o
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Also, Wicca and various other pagan religions are going strong. Of course, good Wiccans don't lob fireballs at angry mobs, but the Druids and Asatru have no such compunction. Zoroastrianism has had a major resurgence, and the Jews find themselves a lot less persecuted now that they can send in the golems. See conservative Islam's reaction to magic.
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Also, Wicca and various other pagan religions are going strong. Of course, good Wiccans don't lob fireballs at angry mobs, but the Druids and Asatru have no such compunction. Zoroastrianism has had a major resurgence, and the Jews find themselves a lot less persecuted now that they can send in the golems. See conservative Islam's reaction to magic.
They dont define their roles at all though.
In SR4 there were the various traditions but it was impossibe to tell one from another just by reading the descriptions....
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Also, Wicca and various other pagan religions are going strong. Of course, good Wiccans don't lob fireballs at angry mobs, but the Druids and Asatru have no such compunction. Zoroastrianism has had a major resurgence, and the Jews find themselves a lot less persecuted now that they can send in the golems. See conservative Islam's reaction to magic.
They dont define their roles at all though.
In SR4 there were the various traditions but it was impossibe to tell one from another just by reading the descriptions....
If you say so. Unless you are referring to geopolitics and how they affect it, I have no real idea what you mean.
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Thanks for the replies! It gives me a much better handle on options for a religious character.
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...the Jews find themselves a lot less persecuted now that they can send in the golems. See conservative Islam's reaction to magic.
Funny, I completed a character build about a week ago in my vain attempt to make a playable spellcaster focused on rituals. That's what I ended coming up with, Israeli Golemancer (Ritual Spell Homunculus).
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Honestly, I'd say wait until the 5th edition version of Street Magic comes out. Possession traditions are even meaner with that ritual, I suspect.
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I think it was in one of Threats books that addressed Islam and magick. as in a relatively peaceful major islamic speaker got geeked, had a funeral at the Rock of the Quaba, then came back three days later Ressurected. And it turned out possessed by one very nasty Shadow spirt (*cough* Spectre from Earth Dawn *cough*) and caused a lot of problems.
Ironically gave the anti-and pro magic factions in Islam a healthy boost
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The Sprawl Survival Guide (3E, p. 53) Has a brief chunk on religions. It's broad strokes, but it does talk about major religions and their place in the world.
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IMNSHO, the relative dearth of information about religions, especially Real ones, in the Sixth World is a matter of twenty-five years worth of writers and line developers very wisely 'not lighting a sparkler in the powder room'. Religion is a very, very hot-button topic; approaching it in anything like decent detail would take major books for the top five or six 'types' of religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and maybe something else ...), and here's the kicker - people would be upset no matter how you handled it, and in fact there's a good chance of pissing off people who don't even play the game.
Staying away from that particular Great Dragon, talking only about 'new since the Awakening' and/or fringe member groups of the RL-established religions (e.g. the New Templars, Sylvestrines, etc.), or getting in-depth with brand-spanking-new religions (Church of the Dragon), may not be a matter of conscious policy, or of policy at all, but it's IMO a very wise thing. "There were problems, there was some splintering, some Balkanization was caused, etc. etc." And then you step away, and let the GMs handle it in their games however they want.
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Shadow's of Europa (SR3) contains religion's infos.
I wrote a doc about religions in Sixth World (http://www.archaos-jdr.fr/zip/religions.zip) (in French).
English (http://shadowrun.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Religious_Groups)and mostly French wiki (http://shadowrun.fr/wiki/Religion) have pages dedicated to religion.
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If I recall correctly, my Seattle 2072 Book goes a fair amount into this. It seems to imply that most Abrahamic faiths (Jesusians, Dirka Dirkas and the Deli People) suffer a serious death blow during the time of the Awakening and the great Ghost Dance. What remains was largely united into a more generic operation usually referred to as, "The People of the Book." It gives you a lot of room to play around with misc. Preacher sterotypes in designing your character, so you can go for a RC Exorcist look, but work in a Halal diest and some Kabbalah numerical witchery if you want to.
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If I recall correctly, my Seattle 2072 Book goes a fair amount into this. It seems to imply that most Abrahamic faiths (Jesusians, Dirka Dirkas and the Deli People) suffer a serious death blow during the time of the Awakening and the great Ghost Dance. What remains was largely united into a more generic operation usually referred to as, "The People of the Book." It gives you a lot of room to play around with misc. Preacher sterotypes in designing your character, so you can go for a RC Exorcist look, but work in a Halal diest and some Kabbalah numerical witchery if you want to.
That's a good point. I can imagine the awakening and the matrix having a terrible effect on most religions.
Look what it did for world government..... :o
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Well, in universe there were some very old creatures who came to an agreement that trying to weaken religions in general would be a 'good thing', and help the process of the Awakening happen smoother. It makes an oblique reference to that in the Aztlan book.
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If I recall correctly, my Seattle 2072 Book goes a fair amount into this. It seems to imply that most Abrahamic faiths (Jesusians, Dirka Dirkas and the Deli People) suffer a serious death blow during the time of the Awakening and the great Ghost Dance. What remains was largely united into a more generic operation usually referred to as, "The People of the Book." It gives you a lot of room to play around with misc. Preacher sterotypes in designing your character, so you can go for a RC Exorcist look, but work in a Halal diest and some Kabbalah numerical witchery if you want to.
Actually, the People of the Book is the Muslim name for Christians, Jews and Moslems. Which is funny, because Muhammed said to respect their fellow People of the Book, and all three have spent a good portion of time trying to kill each other. The organization that they refer to in Seattle 2072 is a pan-religious group of the three major monotheistic religions that are trying to cope with the fact that the most vocal members of their religions tend to be ultraconservative reactionaries who were alienating magically active members of their faiths and the other metahuman races beyond human.
The group does have the support of the Catholic church, or at least the non-Templars in the church, some limited support from the Islamic Renaissance, and many rabbinical Jews. Think of it as being more street-level than their nominal superiors, and more aware of the fact that their duty is to help people, not vilify them. Sometimes that help comes in the form of hiring runners to take out dangers to their flocks. If there's ant shadow spirits in the area, or a nest of insect spirits, they will hire runners to remove the danger. From the sounds of things, they don't hire runners to do anything but go after non-human threats.
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Well somewhere I remember a Great Dragon (probably Big D) said something about the lessened importance the religion have in the Sixth World against what was in the Fourth and something they (the GDs) did in the past to be that way
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Well somewhere I remember a Great Dragon (probably Big D) said something about the lessened importance the religion have in the Sixth World against what was in the Fourth and something they (the GDs) did in the past to be that way
It was Big D. And it was the dragons and immortal elves that were working to make it so. It is in the Aztlan sourcebook.
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Well somewhere I remember a Great Dragon (probably Big D) said something about the lessened importance the religion have in the Sixth World against what was in the Fourth and something they (the GDs) did in the past to be that way
It was Big D. And it was the dragons and immortal elves that were working to make it so. It is in the Aztlan sourcebook.
My point is the authors used an "in world" trick to ditch most of the sensitive matter and I like this approach than a "total ignore" on this issue. More than other ways and ignoring the issue althogether would be bad because will not resemble the real world sufficiently
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Spyro, I guess what most of us are saying is that the source info for religion is fairly sparse on the ground. It comes in bits and drabs. The Catholic Church actually rules most of Italy, and that hasn't changed since 1st. The actual info about the Vigilia Evangelica is new, and only came out with the Dawn of the Artifacts. It's the shadowrunners of Christ, really. They also seem to counterbalance the New Templars, who are trying to get more secular power for the Church. There's the Islamic Jihad, counterbalanced by the Islamic Renaissance. The info they drop about most organized religions has more to do with the politics of an organized religion than the beliefs of the religion.
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Spyro, I guess what most of us are saying is that the source info for religion is fairly sparse on the ground. It comes in bits and drabs. The Catholic Church actually rules most of Italy, and that hasn't changed since 1st. The actual info about the Vigilia Evangelica is new, and only came out with the Dawn of the Artifacts. It's the shadowrunners of Christ, really. They also seem to counterbalance the New Templars, who are trying to get more secular power for the Church. There's the Islamic Jihad, counterbalanced by the Islamic Renaissance. The info they drop about most organized religions has more to do with the politics of an organized religion than the beliefs of the religion.
And that is more or less my point, I like that way, must be there but without belief emphasis AND the latter point justified in game (As per Big D argument)
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Yeah. It's generally an unacknowledged point that Shadowrun books don't discuss the merits of any particular ideology, religion, or certain political issues. Which is kind of weird because it's a cyberpunk game, and the cyberpunk genre was created around some pretty bright ideological lines. Though this may be why the books have let shadowrunners get depicted more as amoral mercenaries than those with agendas who slipped through the cracks, were dropped into the cracks, or were born in the cracks and shadows of society.
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Neo-anarchist / anti-establishment themes were stronger in earlier editions. It was only later that these themes tended to get more toned down. Shadowrunners are rarely portrayed as struggling to break free of poverty or ex-corpers breaking free of the restraints of conformity. Now that are high paid freelancers operating on a global scale, able to mow down common security and obtain the mcguffin. More Mission Impossible for hire than robin hood.
But gaming groups can go with whatever theme they like at their own tables and thats cool.
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All hail God the Merciful, and his Savior On Earth: Elvis!
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We did forget that church, didn't we?
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Nope. It's described in Artifacts Unbound.
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All hail God the Merciful, and his Savior On Earth: Elvis!
All Hail To The King on The Rock! (yeah because, you know is that way it will be end in a century or two) ;D