[JackVII]

...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).

[Silence]

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.

[TheWanderingJewels]

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

[Eremitic Fool]

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.

[The Wyrm Ouroboros]

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.

[Archaos]

Shadow's of Europa (SR3) contains religion's infos.
I wrote a doc about religions in Sixth World (in French).
English and mostly French wiki have pages dedicated to religion.

[Eldritch]

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.     

[grid_roamer]

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.....

[Mirikon]

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.

[Silence]

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.

[SpyroD]

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

[Mirikon]

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.

[SpyroD]

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

[Silence]

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.

[SpyroD]

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)