GM: Did you finish buying equipment for your cleric?
Player: I think so. What religious stuff do I need to buy?
GM: Religious stuff? Holy water and a holy symbol. Silver if you want to get fancy. Oh, there's also an altar kit. You can get that.
Player: What do I need an altar for? Am I supposed to be doing something with my altar?
GM: Um, you need an altar to...preach from.
Player: Wait, I'm supposed to preach? About what?
GM: Church stuff.

Hello, my name is Thomas Kolar, and I would like to welcome you to the first edition of Clerical Error, a column on religion in gaming. The goal of this column is to discuss ways to make religion in role-playing more realistic.

When I was in college, I divided most of my time between studying comparative religion and gaming. And I noticed what most role players notice if they look closely at the place of religion in game source material- it's very shallow. The average game religion is described almost entirely on the surface level. You get deities, symbols, alignments, and domains. You don't get anything about ethics, mythology, ritual, or hierarchy. There is no material for the average player to use as a cleric except throwing holy water around and quoting Boondock Saints.

And that is frustrating because religion plays such a fundamentally important role in both the lives of believers and the organization of societies, that shallow depictions of religion are missing out on an amazing chance to add depth to gaming.

First, religion is a great potential source for character hooks. Religion is, at heart, a way of seeing the world. It is a collection of stories, symbols, and beliefs that give meaning to the experiences of life. A character's religion should be more then shouting about righteous divine fury in battle and scolding the rogue. A character's religious background should influence their ethics, behavior, daily life, eating habits--the way they understand and live every part of their life. That's one of the things I want to do with this column. I want to look at general, real-world religious belief and practice and how to apply that to a religious character.

Second, religion is an essential part of culture. One of the things that bothers me most about the average gaming setting is that religion is generally a footnote in the world. There will be geography, government, cities, culture, philosophy, and oh yeah they worship a giant neutral good snake-bird. It's left to the GM to try to come up with any kind of coherent, playable religion.

The truth is, you cannot depict a realistic culture or civilization without understanding the role religion plays in that society. The way a society believes and organizes its religions defines and reflects that society's worldview. Another main topic of the column will be looking at world religions and the way they are a part of their society. A good understanding of religion will make for more realistic running or building of a world.

A note on terminology. I am trying to make these columns as understandable as possible. So the default gaming background is going to be fantasy d20. Also, I am going to be using modern Western Judeo-Christian vocabulary as the primary religious background, simply because I think that these are the most familiar context for the average gamer. However, everything I talk about is applicable to all settings and all religions. My overall goal is to look at common features of world religions from the point of view of players and GM's.

Comments? Questions?