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SaMoCon
Senior Scribe
USA
403 Posts |
 Posted - 21 Sep 2015 : 10:02:30
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quote:
Originally posted by Cyrinishad
Well, in some ways Bane could be seen as a Christian proxy... he pretty much takes all of the negative characteristics of Dark-Ages/Inquisition style Christianity and plays that tune in a polytheistic environment. The first sentence of his dogma is "Serve no one but Bane", which is about as close as it gets to "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". Bane just decided that more than one commandment would dilute the message.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The practice of worshiping many gods was alive and well during the time when the old testament was being practiced. It did not say "Thou shalt have no other gods." That "before me" means that the god that was favoring the Jews was to be honored first and foremost. The ten commandments predated Christianity and the new testament (which replaced the old testament creating the dividing line between Jews & Christians) as well as the Judeo-Christian practice of monotheism. The "Dreaded Inquisition" (that was so bad that many times people blasphemed in secular courts to be moved to Inquisition courts that were widely hailed in Europe as the most fair and humane courts) is also blown out of proportion in relation to the other religious persecutions and purges carried out around the world. The Inquisition, from benign presence to
malignant abuse of power, was also very much in violation of the tenets of Christianity.
Cyrinishad, if you were trying to create an example of how offensive it would be for a game designer to interject a real world religion into a game and the pratfalls that may happen when asserting overly broad and/or poorly researched points, then "bravo" for nailing this one. Otherwise, "Bane = Inquisition Christianity" is a poorly contrived allegory that is probably meant to bait Christians into an argument instead of doing anything to improve the quality of game play or enrich the storied setting.
Monotheism just doesn't work in the Forgotten Realms. The canon dating back to the early stories of Ed Greenwood prior to D&D even existing has been polytheistic. The powers of the gods are on display for the entire world and are as undeniable as gravity. Trying to get a one-god faith to fit goes against five decades of lore and is such a poor mash-up that it would be better to design a new campaign setting unrelated to the FR that can be built from the ground up just for such a concept. |
Make the best use of the system that's there, then modify the mechanics that don't allow you to have the fun you are looking for. |
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Jeremy Grenemyer
Great Reader
USA
2717 Posts |
Posted - 21 Sep 2015 : 13:48:33
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quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon
[Otherwise, "Bane = Inquisition Christianity" is a poorly contrived allegory that is probably meant to bait Christians into an argument instead of doing anything to improve the quality of game play or enrich the storied setting.
"Probably?"
Look, there is no way for you to know Cyrinishad's intentions. You aren't a mind reader. Don't put words into other people's mouths.
It's obvious you have a problem with the discussion. Instead of slapping other people down when they participate, try leaving them alone so they can do what gamers do best: come up with ideas, suggest possibilities and see where a thread of thought takes them.
Which, by the way, is what the OP is asking for.
If people are afraid to engage in a discussion because they know you will rip into them, then that's censorship. I have played that particular game before. I know it when I see it.
If you disagree, then please show some respect for the OP and PM me your thoughts. Let her have her thread of discussion, OK? |
Look for me and my content at EN World (user name: sanishiver). |
Edited by - Jeremy Grenemyer on 21 Sep 2015 13:50:44 |
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TBeholder
Great Reader
2384 Posts |
Posted - 21 Sep 2015 : 14:50:51
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Al-Qadim is mostly a reconstruction of Arabian Nights setting.
E.g. in a thematically appropriate twist the traditional limit of four wives is explained as "the first sha'ir had four genie wives", one per element.
Calimshan? That would be something like Middle East or maybe (depending on the era) just Turkey (on "general impressions" level), put through a similar spin - it's a mix of completely different elements forged together in wars only to roll into more wars... sometimes it looks like it's about to be shattered, and sometimes gets very strong... for most part it's not pretty, but there were far worse variants, and at least the whole thing kind of works.
quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy Grenemyer
If people are afraid to engage in a discussion because they know you will rip into them, then that's censorship.
No, that's "Princess on a Pea".
"X upsets Our Precious, you cannot mention it" is censorship. |
People never wonder How the world goes round -Helloween
And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense -R.W.Wood
It's not good, Eric. It's a gazebo. -Ed Whitchurch |
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Eltheron
Senior Scribe
740 Posts |
Posted - 21 Sep 2015 : 18:12:06
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quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon
quote:
Originally posted by Cyrinishad
Well, in some ways Bane could be seen as a Christian proxy... he pretty much takes all of the negative characteristics of Dark-Ages/Inquisition style Christianity and plays that tune in a polytheistic environment. The first sentence of his dogma is "Serve no one but Bane", which is about as close as it gets to "Thou shalt have no other gods before me". Bane just decided that more than one commandment would dilute the message.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." The practice of worshiping many gods was alive and well during the time when the old testament was being practiced. It did not say "Thou shalt have no other gods." That "before me" means that the god that was favoring the Jews was to be honored first and foremost. The ten commandments predated Christianity and the new testament (which replaced the old testament creating the dividing line between Jews & Christians) as well as the Judeo-Christian practice of monotheism. The "Dreaded Inquisition" (that was so bad that many times people blasphemed in secular courts to be moved to Inquisition courts that were widely hailed in Europe as the most fair and humane courts) is also blown out of proportion in relation to the other religious persecutions and purges carried out around the world. The Inquisition, from benign presence to
malignant abuse of power, was also very much in violation of the tenets of Christianity.
Cyrinishad, if you were trying to create an example of how offensive it would be for a game designer to interject a real world religion into a game and the pratfalls that may happen when asserting overly broad and/or poorly researched points, then "bravo" for nailing this one. Otherwise, "Bane = Inquisition Christianity" is a poorly contrived allegory that is probably meant to bait Christians into an argument instead of doing anything to improve the quality of game play or enrich the storied setting.
Monotheism just doesn't work in the Forgotten Realms. The canon dating back to the early stories of Ed Greenwood prior to D&D even existing has been polytheistic. The powers of the gods are on display for the entire world and are as undeniable as gravity. Trying to get a one-god faith to fit goes against five decades of lore and is such a poor mash-up that it would be better to design a new campaign setting unrelated to the FR that can be built from the ground up just for such a concept.
I don't know, I didn't really get an intentional anti-Christianity "vibe" from Cyrinishad. It's absolutely true that what you're saying about the secular courts vs the Inquisition courts is true - but it's also reflective of more modern scholarship about the Inquisition. The vast majority of people (including Christians), unless they're a historical scholar, only really know about the Hollywood version of the Inquisition. In that sense, a Bane-led Inquisition isn't totally off-base and arguments could be made that as the god of Tyrants this could be his end-goal. Killing all the gods and assuming a monotheistic stance might've even been his intent behind starting the ToT, really. It just backfired spectacularly, if so.
As for monotheism being incompatible with the Realms, I'd consider that other worlds have been shown in canon novels where Shar rose to prominence and destroyed those worlds in accordance with her end-goal of total entropy and loss.
Also, just as different Realms pantheons are driven by the current mode of worship=power and god-god conflict toward a solitary pantheon, it doesn't seem all that much of a leap to consider that eventually the same setup (competing for souls and power) would eventually lead to at least a dualistic system, or indeed a monotheistic system with a god of many faces.
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"The very best possible post-fourteenth-century Realms lets down those who love the specific, detailed social, political and magical situation, with its thousands of characters, developed over forty years, and want to learn more about it; and those who'd be open to a new one with equal depth, which there just isn't time to re-produce; and those repelled, some past the point of no return, by the bad-taste-and-plausibility gap of things done to the world when its guardianship was less careful."
--Faraer |
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Gurgle Gobblespit
Acolyte
USA
27 Posts |
Posted - 21 Sep 2015 : 22:27:58
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quote:
Originally posted by Gyor
I've read that Calimshan was influenced by Turkey.
Yes, I also read this from some source… not sure if it was the FR Wiki or maybe some older D&D Supplement. From what I remember, the reference was that TSR's Al-Qadim was rolled into FR Zakhara, which is equivalent to the Arabian lands (plus Damascus, Baghdad, some parts of Persia etc) of the Arabian Nights.
Meanwhile, the distant Calimshan in SW Faerun is more the cultural equivalent of Turkey (early Ottoman Empire). Historically, many nobles and military officers of the Ottoman Empire were indeed called Pashas.
My current dilemma is in trying to make sense of Calimshan's recent history (since I am most likely to use Calimshan because of its very close proximity to the Sword Coast). After the Spellplague, Calimshan is a hot mess, as the Djinn-blooded genasi rose up to become the ruling people of the land. So what happened to the "regular humans"? I could only imagine that the humans were enslaved, or possibly exiled into the desert badlands (much like wandering bedouins). Calimshan culture, after all, has a loooong history of institutionalized slavery.
OP: and to the OP, I noticed you mention that your GM uses Calimshan as a Persia equivalent. IMHO that works too. Medieval Persia actually had a lot of cultural ties and closeness to early Ottoman Turkey. I'm a military history fan myself. And I do remember that the medieval Safavid Persia was originally established on top of a crumbling Turkoman nation called the White Sheep Turks. And the first Shah of the Medieval Safavid empire Shah Ismail was neither a Persian or Turk, he was technically a mixed Kurdish-Azerbaijani…. Kurds and Azerbaijanis are actually a "minority people" among Turks and Persians.
And so the early Ottoman Empire had frequent border clashes with Safavid Persia, if only because there was a huge border area between them (mostly the Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian regions) that each empire claimed as "rightly theirs".
So using FR Calimshan as a region of Turko-Persian flavor does work quite well.
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Edited by - Gurgle Gobblespit on 21 Sep 2015 22:51:17 |
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Roseweave
Learned Scribe
Ireland
212 Posts |
Posted - 29 Sep 2015 : 22:08:16
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quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon
Actually, I have a question regarding this thread that is open to anyone to answer, not just the OP. How can anything in the Forgotten Realms have a Muslim proxy? That would be like requesting a Judeo or a Christian proxy. A monotheic religion, and the practices that allow a single-god faith to flourish, cannot withstand the very real presence of a multitude of gods and horrific beings that are stronger than the gods. So how can there be a Muslim equivalent if the very forces and events that propelled Islam in the real world are either absent or run counter to the progress of an equivalent to Islam in the Forgotten Realms?
Most of the Forgotten Realms religions do the things they do because there is a god walking about saying "Listen up, Mortal! This is how you properly worship me." And then these gods have specifically limited powers and stats. How well do you think that would be received by the pious worshippers of the Almighty to have a derivative of their god mocked up in a game and Nerfed in their diminished abilities to what is, for all intents and purposes, a pathetic mockery of their glory? I don't know about anyone else but that sounds patronizing to me and would seem like a PR nightmare for TSR/WotC. Also, wouldn't this unique setting have an equally unique way for the cultures to evolve in accordance with the conditions of the Forgotten Realms as opposed to having to shoe-horn in the real world equivalents?
The difference is that they clearly use a lot of Muslims concepts by different names, and a lot of Muslim terminology outright. "Caliph" is a Muslim term. The Loregiver is obviously a female Muhammad(PBUH).
The one thing that really breaks it is that Al-Qadim is very polytheistic. However, it seems like followers of the religion must hold Fate above all else, which is consistent with Islam and Monotheistic religions holding the monotheistic God above all else. It's quite possible that people in Al-Qadim don't really see Gods as Gods and things like Idol Worship have never been much of an issue in terms of that, when there's the likes of actual Devil worshippers to crack down on.
Again, it's a proxy of Islam, just as many fantasy worlds have proxies of Christianity and the like. Not a copy and paste. |
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Roseweave
Learned Scribe
Ireland
212 Posts |
Posted - 29 Sep 2015 : 22:13:45
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quote:
Originally posted by Gurgle Gobblespit
quote:
Originally posted by Gyor
I've read that Calimshan was influenced by Turkey.
Yes, I also read this from some source… not sure if it was the FR Wiki or maybe some older D&D Supplement. From what I remember, the reference was that TSR's Al-Qadim was rolled into FR Zakhara, which is equivalent to the Arabian lands (plus Damascus, Baghdad, some parts of Persia etc) of the Arabian Nights.
Meanwhile, the distant Calimshan in SW Faerun is more the cultural equivalent of Turkey (early Ottoman Empire). Historically, many nobles and military officers of the Ottoman Empire were indeed called Pashas.
My current dilemma is in trying to make sense of Calimshan's recent history (since I am most likely to use Calimshan because of its very close proximity to the Sword Coast). After the Spellplague, Calimshan is a hot mess, as the Djinn-blooded genasi rose up to become the ruling people of the land. So what happened to the "regular humans"? I could only imagine that the humans were enslaved, or possibly exiled into the desert badlands (much like wandering bedouins). Calimshan culture, after all, has a loooong history of institutionalized slavery.
OP: and to the OP, I noticed you mention that your GM uses Calimshan as a Persia equivalent. IMHO that works too. Medieval Persia actually had a lot of cultural ties and closeness to early Ottoman Turkey. I'm a military history fan myself. And I do remember that the medieval Safavid Persia was originally established on top of a crumbling Turkoman nation called the White Sheep Turks. And the first Shah of the Medieval Safavid empire Shah Ismail was neither a Persian or Turk, he was technically a mixed Kurdish-Azerbaijani…. Kurds and Azerbaijanis are actually a "minority people" among Turks and Persians.
And so the early Ottoman Empire had frequent border clashes with Safavid Persia, if only because there was a huge border area between them (mostly the Kurdish, Azerbaijani, Armenian, and Georgian regions) that each empire claimed as "rightly theirs".
So using FR Calimshan as a region of Turko-Persian flavor does work quite well.
Real life Ottomans had quite a bit of Persian influence, for obvious reasons, and arab territories were a part of it. So that makes about the most sense. Some African too. Probably a decent explanation for why it's a bit of a mash up. |
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combatmedic
Senior Scribe
USA
428 Posts |
Posted - 01 Oct 2015 : 15:44:14
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I'd say check out Durpar as depicted in the Desert of Desolation megamodule.
In that module, the men of Durpar follow a monotheistic (or at least it is a form of monolatry) religion centered on Anu. I've sold my copy of the megamodule, so I can't check, but think the religion also included a prohibition on making images of Anu and a rule against strong drink.
And the Durparis are ruled by a sultan (or was he a caliph? I forget).
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YMMV= Your Mileage May Vary. I'm putting it here so I don't have to type it in every other post. :) |
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Cyrinishad
Learned Scribe
300 Posts |
Posted - 04 Oct 2015 : 16:55:36
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quote:
Originally posted by SaMoCon
Cyrinishad, if you were trying to create an example of how offensive it would be for a game designer to interject a real world religion into a game and the pratfalls that may happen when asserting overly broad and/or poorly researched points, then "bravo" for nailing this one. Otherwise, "Bane = Inquisition Christianity" is a poorly contrived allegory that is probably meant to bait Christians into an argument instead of doing anything to improve the quality of game play or enrich the storied setting.
Regardless of the overall tone of your post... The first sentence of this quote highlights what I was driving at with my Bane comparison. It's not possible to have an exact real-world equivalency, at best you get a caricature or exaggeration of a single aspect. Lathander & Ilmater have parallels to the positive elements of Christianity, I suppose I could have used either of them as my initial example... or I could have just thrown out the "Helm = Spanish Conquistador" comparison about how he functions in Maztica...
Regarding the second sentence of this quote, the only thing my posts are "probably meant" to do is encourage creativity and discussion in our community. |
To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge. -Socrates
Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened. -Dr. Seuss |
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combatmedic
Senior Scribe
USA
428 Posts |
Posted - 04 Oct 2015 : 18:56:22
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The thing about the evil cults of Faerun is that several of them seem to be pretty open about being the baddies.
A Banite is supposed to stir up strife and promote tyranny, right?
So we aren't looking at a religion that is in itself good, but which has in various times and places been abused or twisted by corrupt human beings to serve selfish ends. We are looking at something that was dedicated to the service of an evil power from the start (with Bane, or several of the other unambiguously evil gods).
YMMV
I don't think anything in the real world looks much like Bane's cult, but I suppose certain political pseudo-religions of the 19th and 20th Century could serve as inspiration. Add in some Satanism.
It's not a pretty combination.
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YMMV= Your Mileage May Vary. I'm putting it here so I don't have to type it in every other post. :) |
Edited by - combatmedic on 04 Oct 2015 19:13:47 |
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Middle Eastern & Muslim proxies in the Realms
