One product of using The Devil's Day as the key point in the past of my setting is it assumes the truth of real world Christianity and then, depending on your POV either turns revelation (upper and lowercase 'r') on its head or supposes it to be much more complicated than any school of Christian thought I'm familiar with understands. I'll admit I intentionally changed from the initial direction (and even name) for The Hierarchy because I was troubled by the theological implications for myself (as in, my soul) of the direction it was going (hewing very close to the close of the novel).
I'm pointing this out as my artistic inspiration feature is going in some new directions. One, it's going beyond visual art into a more general set of inspirations. More to the point, starting today it's going to take as its inspiration a key idea of Western Christian thought (I'm not sure of its status in the east) and art drawing on it. It is mentioned (in reverse) in the novel and I think it is a huge source of inspiration for what dungeons in the World After/City States of the Apocalypse are like. I also think it might provide imagery for the more unnatural areas of the world.
So, I guess this is my version of the "adult content" warning. I take my faith fairly seriously (one does not move from a major branch of Christianity to another on a whim) and understand why this might not be appropriate fodder for a game. I believe I walk inside the line, but I understand you might believe otherwise.
I've found a couple times that I'm uncomfortable using "Christian trade dress" for Clerics and Anti-Clerics for the same reason. It's a tough call in any roleplaying game which prominently features religion - even running an S&S-style game with ancient- and Godling-style deities implies a certain cosmology with which some Christians may be uncomfortable if they stop to consider it.
ReplyDeleteIn the end, I usually fall back on the facts that it's just a game and we're all adults, and try to keep my real world affairs sorted properly.