Pagan vs. Christian LARP

Too controversial? Interesting? Too historically intertwined?

Set in a little village where the christians have arrived, brought missionaries and converted some of the population. Families are split, the Pagans are calling upon their gods to protect them.

Pagans forced to live hidden in the forests and the Christians protected in their church.

Just think of the plot lines!

I like it. Although I’d say make them original religions to avoid pissing people off. Plus with original groups you have more creative control.

I’d keep it as pagan vs christian. That way people actually know something about the religions.

I agree with Derek, keep the rteligions the way they are, that way we have a lot of history to look back and draw from. There is no reson that we have to play up the fundamentalist veiw points of either group to the point of offending anyone really.
Creating relgions would cause confusion for those that have no idea about them. It would make it hard for people arrivng new to the game world, which tends to make people rather standoffish. I think its better to just use wht we know. we wll be roleplaying, and roleplaying either group will be playing the role of a person from that group, how could that be insulting to them really especially if we have done our homework and do it well.
wilst we might wel end up with a witchburning, we might just as easily end up with the wicker man being used.

R

I think it would be best to keep the religions. There is a lot more fun to be had in interacting and acting with what it would have been like. Plus there will be elements of fantasy too it so it’s not fair for anyone to take it too seriously.

Oh oh oh!

I know where I can get a copy of the Malius maleficorum! The witches hammer. Then I can be a inquisitor, and torture. . . I mean PERSUADE people to give up their evil satanic ways, and come into the light of the love of Jesus, and burn at the stake to cleanse their sins. :smiling_imp: No pain, no gain.

See?

The christians can pillage and torture and the Pagans can rain fire down on them/invoke stone golems to smash them/use their intestines to call upon the gods for a mass smiting.

You people are just asking for Bishop Gideon to make some kind of comeback now.

  • claps in anticipation of Gideon *

Thats such a cool idea.

:slight_smile:

I liked Bishop Gideon. I thought he was cool. Pity he fell in with the wrong crowd.

No he can comeback and have his own spin-off LARP!

“The Ghost of Bishop Gideon Presents: The Crusades”

He was actually involved in stuff like this before going to Mordavia. He’d be Father Gideon at that point, though. He’d be struggling with his insanity, but not completely out of it yet. He didn’t break down until see Nostralenia the first time.

RAE Thats a real thing? I have a character called that.

[quote=“Dr Varteron”]Oh oh oh!

I know where I can get a copy of the Malius maleficorum! The witches hammer. Then I can be a inquisitor, and torture. . . I mean PERSUADE people to give up their evil satanic ways, and come into the light of the love of Jesus, and burn at the stake to cleanse their sins. :smiling_imp: No pain, no gain.[/quote]

I wouldn’t mind playing a voice of reason in the Christian camp. Even during the crusades there were lots of Christians who preached peace and love and didn’t believe in conversion by the sword.

Dylan

[quote=“lucyfur”]See?

The christians can pillage and torture and the Pagans can rain fire down on them/invoke stone golems to smash them/use their intestines to call upon the gods for a mass smiting.[/quote]

It’s real, it’s a medieval instruction book for Inquisitors published by the Catholic Church. Very scary reading, the mixed-up logic is staggering. Full text is available here:

malleusmaleficarum.org

In German it was called the Hexenhammer, both translate to “hammer of witches”.

Here is the Pope of the times (Innocent VIII) commenting on witches:

malleusmaleficarum.org/mm00e.html

Lawyers, real estates, and Popes. Can’t trust 'em.

Can’t say I actually know much about any religions beyond Christianity.

Christianity is interesting in that it’s an offspring of other religions and even incorporates motifs from other religions. Treat others as you would like to be treated is actually Buddhist.

I think what is really sad is that Islam and Judaism came from the same man, Abraham. Abraham had a wife, Sarah, who couldn’t have children. So in the tradition of the time he took a slave and had children by her. When Sarah actually did get pregnant, the slave girl and her son were tossed to the wilderness. The slave girl was the first of the Muslims and Abraham and Sarah’s child was the begginning of the Jews.

Then Christianity is a child of Judaism. So they’re closely related religions and I think you will find that you know more about them than you realise

OK let’s talk about making a larp out of this though… sorry, just don’t really want to get into religious debates…!!

Can’t say I actually know much about any religions beyond Christianity.[/quote]

Then play a Christian. I kind of like the idea of switching sides each time I die. If we all did that then soon we’d have a clear winner. Deaths meaning something more than normal.

How about a near future apocalyptic scenario. It’s 2100, 90 years after WWIII. Sick of having their countries invaded by Western/Christian countries the Arab states purchase nukes from North Korea. They ship them by sea to the UK and the USA where they truck them around the countries and detonate them on 1 April 2010. London, Washington DC, the Pentagon, the Hover dam and dozens of other targets are destroyed. The world is horrified and WWIII begins. The war destroys civilisation as we know it, 98% of the population dies and those that are left fall back to that most popular crutch of the human psyche, Religion.

People scrape a subsistence living from the soil. But strangely, along side the axes and spades we must use to farm, many consumer electronics continue to work. Ipods, mobile phones, laptops etc continue to run off wind turbines. Short range communication networks spring up and some of the military satellites miraculously continue to work.

From the settling dust, comes a man many believe to be the Messiah, Gods son has returned to earth to save the worthy…

That sounds quite wrong. Do you mean first of the Arabs? Islam (the faith of Muslims) came about 600 years after Christ, from the teachings of Muhammad. That’s thousands of years after the stuff described in the Old Testiment (or the Torah, which is the jewish holy book and largely identical to the Christian Old Testiment) where Abraham is described.

Are you thinking of this?

The Arab and Jewish peoples are related ethnic groups, and as that quote suggests there is a belief in an ethnic relationship from various religious books.

Apart from that, what you’re saying has some merit. Judaism then Christianity then Islam. Same god, different prophets. Largely different ethnicities too. While Christ was a Hebrew-speaking Jew, Christianity mostly took off among the gentiles (non-Jews). And Islam took off among the Arabs. Underneath, the world’s big three religions are actually the same thing. They do say that competition is more fierce within a species than between species.

I wouldn’t be that keen on a larp based on real-world religion. Not because people would get offended, that part I’d probably enjoy. But because people’s understanding of the history of religion is just so crap. I’d be like a Star Wars fan at a SW larp, always arguing about what is canon. So unless everyone was willing to really study the period and mindsets, I’d just find it frustrating.