Could a Deist Christian setting work?
>All demons are fallen angels
>Darkness and Evil has made monsters unintended by God
>Pagan Gods are just angels gone rogue
>Hell is very well established to exist, but no one comes back from Heaven to confirm
>Angels keep falling as their reasos for existing cease mattering
(ie harvest angels are obsolete due to irrigation and crop rotation becoming wide spread)
>God hasn't enacted his will since the dawn of time but angels insist he's still around
>Everyone is in a constant search for the second coming of God as a mortal man
And of course, the angels are all custom built eldritch horrors. I'm talking, body of fire, seven wolves for limbs with wings of black spears, it can sink into the ground and be indistinguishable from a shadow until it consumes the monsters it hunts, using their bodies to regenerate itself endlessly.
Sure, if you run it well. Same goes for almost anything.
What do your players do in this world?
>>44458846
Search for God of course.
Cut down all the demons that thought to usurp his throne.
Discover hidden hamlets of strange folk, people half a man tall and stout of build who say they have lived for five hundred winters or more. Heresy for sure, but their weaponcrafts are beyond anything else.
Cut down subaquatic giants with blades made of blood that dissolve in sunlight, but their gold is as good as any's.
Sell your bodys to seductresses in dark caves in exchange for forbidden knowledge on how to save your people.
>>44458922
Sounds like it'd be a neat setting
>>44458826
>Darkness and Evil has made monsters unintended by God
>Hell is very well established to exist
>God hasn't enacted his will since the dawn of time but angels insist he's still around
>Everyone is in a constant search for the second coming of God
Sounds awfully like Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials series.
Got some good worldbuilding those books, but it kinda loses traction about act two of the second book.
>>44458826
Sorta sounds like Supernatural made into an RPG with some modifications.
I'd play it.
>>44459595
I'd play it
Even nge did eldritch horror demons. You could run it sci-fi conspiracy like that with better justification.
You could run it like dark souls' lore, but all the bosses are fallen angels. Humans have to find God to regain humanity or something. Or maybe the second coming is how fire is brought back?
Have it be modern day and the party are Vatican agents working to bring down fallen angels on behalf of God?
America was founded by Christian Deists, so yes.
>>44458826
what is World of Darkness/ Chronicles of Darkness?
>this complete disagreement on tech level
huh, hadn't seen that coming
I'm starting to think that /tg/ can't handle a thread that isn't shitposting or fetishbait.
>>44458826
my campaign sort of works like that, it's perfectly working, just use saints and demons as "minor gods" for extra domain variety.
I think it would be rather neat
>>44458826
>>Pagan Gods are just angels gone rogue
Oooh I like that!
>>44462034
No quite, but close. WoD does like to forefront it's own lore within other lore.
>>44458826
>, body of fire, seven wolves for limbs with wings of black spears, it can sink into the ground and be indistinguishable from a shadow until it consumes the monsters it hunts, using their bodies to regenerate itself endlessly.
Calling in a drawfag
Anyone else got eldritch angel ideas? And not the classics.
I fucking love Christian mythology settings.
Stuff I like throwing in when I do this:
>Devils and demons are distinct beings: devils are Hell's natives, demons are fallen angels.
>The seven princes of Hell (Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Mammon, Belphegor, Asmodeus, Leviathan).
>Cain, an immortal killing machine still around and antagonistic to the players for whatever reason.
>Lilith in a similar situation to Cain, maybe working with him.
>Ancient North African/Middle Eastern kings and sorcerers, with actual magic, worshipping either actual lesser gods or independent angels
I quite like my angels actually being beautiful winged people in robes seeing as Christianity has plenty of those as well as the bizarre ones. If you do go with the bizarre ones though I think it's important that they're actually majestic and not just Lovecraft/NGE inspired chimeras for the sake of it. They ought to have forms which have a lot to do with stuff like divinity, strength or purity - fire, lions and lambs being the obvious examples for each of those.
An idea that also got thrown out on /tg/ for a Christianity setting a while back was that the New Testament God was actually Archangel Michael, who took up the reigns after Old Testament God either got bored and left or was sealed away by some other power. This is why NT God isn't quite so fire and brimstone.
Though, I've actually been reading the Old Testament lately and God doesn't seem that bad. His main issue is that he doesn't seem to be paying much attention and just takes the word of assholes like Abraham on everything.
>>44469323
I was listening to Christian radio in the liquor store the other day, and the preacher said something that stuck with me as a cool idea: God occasionally renames his people (or a certain person) based on a new contract he makes with them.
I think this has a lot of potential for a setting. Names be powerful.
>>44459517
>Hell is very well established to exist
And some brave or mad ones has been there. Stories are told that some of them even returned.
What about heaven? Abadoned plane of angels or locked paradise?
>>44469404
This is true. Both Abraham and his wife originally has different names.
Also something that could be pretty heavy in a Christianity campaign is power through bloodlines or birthright. The Old Testament is incredibly heavy on this stuffbecause it was written by Jews[/spoilers], having lots of people who are divinely entitled to land and titles due to their family.
>>44458826
reminds me of the Shin Megami Tensei games
>>44469323
If w'ed picture angels as beigns capable of making their own decisions (maybe because of God's absence), your perfect ones could be those still close to God's ideals, opposed to OP's eldritchs, who have fallen both from heavens and God.
>>44469404
That sounds right - most of the names given to people in the Old Testament have some serious significance anyway. I think Israel was named after some guy wrestled with an angel.
>>44469586
I think angels have free will even when God is around. They're not just extensions of his will. Lucifer lead a rebellion, after all.
>>44469917
the bible is unclear on that
>>44469586
The appearance of an angel should reflect their inner reality.
This means that an angel whose worldview changes dramatically changes form as well, which allows for wheels of fire, horny demons and shiny cherubs, without creating different subspecies of angel. They're beings of pure spirit.
>>44470160
Nah man, angels were made task specific. Their bodies reflect the task they were made for. Their color reflects their world view.
I'm working on a late medieval setting taking inspiration from the biblical Tower of Babel
A king in biblical times was told by what he believed to be an angel to rebuild the garden of Eden in the form of a wondrous city.
The king threw his great empire into the building of the city, construction aided by angelic beings and wondrous powers. As it nears completion the designs becoming so abstract, bizarre and malevolent that it is clear that they were not angels at all but demons in disguise. The king is driven mad by the increasing demands of his otherworldly adviser, whose true intention was to build an anti-Eden that contained all of mans hubris and sin in a blasphemous defiance to Gods work, attempting to regrow the tree of knowledge in the centre to reestablish dominance over mankind.
The city struck down is now in ruins, the kingdom long gone and the builders, according to scripture, turned into demons and banished to another dimension, the remains of the city are now populated by bizarre and abstract beings leftover from the construction without purpose, fumbling into groups and towns of their own, intermingling with a cursed populace of former residents trapped for all time.
Pilgrims and adventurers alike travel to this Great Work, some hoping to bring back a portion of the cities wonders or simply to bring the light of god to that unhallowed place.
>>44471004
So, what's in this tower of babel dungeon?
>>44471298
An apple.
>>44471306
Isn't it up for grabs what the forbidden fruit was? It could have been a fig or something.
Makes me wonder what the other abrahamic and monotheist religions think of it all.Sikh Paladins?
>>44471306
It doesn't really matter, it's symbolic anyway.
Apple is just the most recognizable.
>>44471298
The original divine language, or at least the means to understand it and by doing so control all things. Also vast libraries of occult knowledge that would put Alexandria to shame, weapons and technology far too advanced to have been built by ancient people and that would turn the tide of any battle and of course, exotic and carnal pleasures beyond all senses.
Or at least that's what some strange travelers have promised they had seen there.
>>44471503
wasn't intended to be real life
And what is with everyone's hardon for the Sikh?
>>44469917
In the Catholic Tradition, angels have free will, but they only had one fundamental choice to make: to serve God or to not serve God. Once they made that choice, they stuck with it forever.
>>44458826
I'm sure there's a Supernatural RPG if you look hard enough and don't feel like playing Hunter the Vigil at tier 1 forever.
Coolest thread on tg right now. I'd play the hellfire out of a game like this.
>>44469323
>seven princes of hell
>Leviathan instead of Abaddon
I watch card game anime unironically and even I'm not this fucking weeb. Get the hell out of here.
>>44475752
>Dat poor slap-execution
Holy shit, the cringe.
What would a harvest angel look like?
I'm thinking it's actually made of water and can only be observed at winter, when it freezes solid as a massive, 5 meter tall centaur like creature. It's limbs are barely a hand's span across, the body of a deer, and antlers made of ever shifting snow flake patterns. It's body is as pale as the snow it treads upon, able to disappear into it at will. During spring, summer, and fall, it's fluid, existing in the aquifer. But in Winter it wanders the forest, healing ailing trees and its face shines with the light of ten lanterns, calling out to those lost to guide them home.
When they go rogue, they turn their realm into festering bogs and their crystalline bodies become solidified with detritus.
>>44468035
Look at it this way: Lucifer didn't rebel alone, he got 30% of the vote. That's gotta be a lot of angels.
But now they're evil, and evil doesn't like to share. So upon Michael booting them out of Heaven, they immediately balkanize. The factions spread out over the globe, and before they separated they basically all had the same ideas going: pretend to be God, get humans on our side.
Zeus, Odin and Izanagi and Izanami did it schoolyard-style too, so everybody got someone from every department. Ra, Amaterasu, Phoebus Apollo and Tonatiuh were super pissed, they're old friends from the solar divison and didn't want to split up.
Now they also sort of tweaked how they did things. According to Ra, he's the creator, he's a cool guy, you can trust him. According to Odin, the creator was evil, Odin overthrew him and he's in charge now, he's a cool guy, you can trust him. According to Zeus, the creator was evil, his creation overthrew him, but he was evil too and Zeus overthrew him, Zeus is in charge now, he's a cool guy, you can trust him.
Ra is Lucifer himself, Odin was one of Lucifer's chief lackeys, and Zeus was one of the lackey's lackeys.and yes I'm implying those are actually their real angelic names
>Hell is very well established to exist
Nope, you just made it way needlessly edgy.
How about Saints?
They all do some awesome fucking things.
>St. Denis: after being beheaded by pagans, he said fuck that and picked up his head, walked his way to paris, preaching the Gospel
>St. Moses the Black: Samuel L. Jackson of the Ancient World.
>St. Christopher: Dude was a werewolf.
>St. Olga of Kiev: Burned a city down with Doves she lit on FIRE!
>St. Lawerence: While being roasted on a grill as his execution, he told the roman prefects: Turn me over, this side is done.
>St. Nicholas: At the Council of Nicaea, he disagreed with Arius so passionately, he walked over and punched him in the mouth in front of Constantine.
>>44476308
>what is Greek Mythology
>what is the implication that people go to Heaven all the time, it's just one way
>>44469712
Israel is in fact Jacob, son of Isaac, grandson of Abraham, father of the twelve tribes, the con artist and the conned himself.
Jacob is waiting for morning on a riverbank because he fucked up and decided to send all his family and belongings across a river near sundown instead of going with them.A stranger comes up to him. For whatever reason (I'm guessing boredom) they decide to duke it out. Jacob knows his way around a fight, the fight lasts until daybreak, and the stranger finally wins by magicking his hip to dislocate. Stranger resets the hip and Jacob asks for a blessing. Stranger does so, while also implying that he was actually God in human form - think of it as a preview of Jesus himself. Stranger then says that now he will be called Israel, because he has wrestled with God (which is what "Israel" means).
The more you know.
>>44471430
It probably wasn't any fruit we know of, considering it was literally supernaturally powerful.
It's only depicted as an apple because in Latin
>apple = malum
>evil = malus
It's just a pun.
>>44476308
>Hell being an objective reality is edgy
Is Christianity edgy, then?
>>44458826
This sounds pretty fun tbqh
>>44458826
Should the players be humans, different classes of Monster/angel hunters or what?
>>44474404
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikhism
>>44476923
I vote warrior scholars
Maybe something like Mushishi with swords?
>>44477470
Warrior scholars that travel the world to understand the eldritch horrors that are Angels and anything of that realm that resides in the mortal world, and vanquish anything that has become twisted and is a danger to itself and humans.
Nephalim fall into thsee settings?
Half breeds?
>>44477654
of course, but extra rare due to most angels being eldritch monsters
>>44476587
As written and in most forms? Yes.
Hell only works as a temporary punishment, either as a punishmemt for only the worst crimes for a set number of years or as a holding place for reincarnation or for the eventual rapture. Torturing anyone endlessly for temporally limited life is wrong and extremely edgy.
>>44458826
I would replace
>Hell is very well established to exist, but no one comes back from Heaven to confirm
with
>Neither hell nor heaven exists.... yet. People are resurrected with no memories of any afterlife, but the angels insist that upon the apocalypse, God will enact a mass ressurection, and bring those worthy to his domain, leaving the unworthy (evil mortals and fallen angels alike) to wallow in the undying hell of the fallen land that will surely result without any good men or good angels. What constitutes "worthy" is up for debate, and wars have been fought over this.
>>44476319
Definitely put in some bonkers-ass saints, although I'd worry about how that would mesh with the whole "deist" thing, seeing as how God wouldn't be interfering Himself in such a setting.
No, because it makes it too easy and obvious as to what is not only the 'good' side but also who is both correct and the strongest. Nobody would want to be evil or even conflicted
>>44477884
well, this may as well get mixed with bigger than life heroes and shit like Beowulf. Doesn't have to be intervention, just bad ass people.
>>44476539
That wasn't just anybody. That was the pre-incarnate Christ who also makes an appearance at the burning of the Jewish three.
>>44477739
So then Hell is essentially Purgatory, then?
>>44469502
i was about to say the same desu
>>44458922
No fuck that I want to play a witch who worships one of those pagan gods.
>>44478889
I don't think beowulf was a witch m8y
>>44476539
>>44478353
This is called a Christophany. It is a also theorized that the priest-king Malchizedek (Christians are called "priests in the order of Melchizedek) was one of the earliest such appearances.
Calvary chapel represent, yo.
Anybody got any Bible questions?
>>44478926
I don't want to play Beowulf.
>Unironically studied the bible and religions
How does it feel to have wasted years of your life on this?
>>44478955
who are you talking to anon?
>>44478955
Would spending time and resources studying an alternative history of the world and its mystic underpinnings have been less of a waste if it came with little sheets of statistics and tiny unpainted dolls, anon?
>>44478999
That would have been just as much of a waste of time AND a waste of money.
>>44458826
>God hasn't enacted his will since the dawn of time but angels insist he's still around
I loved this in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.
God is dead or destroyed in a way, only the Demiurge remains.
I always had this idea of Lucifer, Helel and Satan being a trinity of sorts.
Lucifer being Helel before the fall
Satan after his fall
Helel being his "Good" or "Pure" self separated from Satan, and ally of Mankind, neutral (but kind of opposed) to God
The Infernal Trinity, dualistic to the Holy Trinity
In a way the same, yet also separate being like the Holy Trinity.
>>44458826
Breddy gud.
>>44458922
Throw some Gnosticism at that shit. God might have had his creation stolen/there is a second god/creation was a mistake/ruse.
>>44478648
No. Though it really depends on your denomination.
>>44469438
>Few have claimed to have seen heaven, almost all have differing accounts but more than one has told of a wall, infinitely tall and long, upon which is impaled countless angels, dying for all eternity.
>>44479182
>Mfw God is feeding of the suffering of his Angels impaled upon the wall to maintain his existence ever since he almost lost it all after he created the world.
>>44475752
The Lanterne of Light vs Binsfield, the latter might be closer to Deist sources?
Weren't there poems about men going to Hell and back to claim something stolen?
Or am I thinking of Greek mythology?
>>44480349
You're thinking of Greek mythology.
>>44480349
The Divine Comedy is basically an EPIC rpg campaign just waiting to be played
>>44476560
l could be wrong, but where those story derived from those who spoke latin? Though the new testament was greek/arabic or something, but of coarse the old testament is much older.
>>44475752
That's Binsfield's classification of demons from 1598, you dumb fucking cunt.
>>44481784
IIRC, in the original Hebrew, the term used in the Book of Genesis is just "fruit" -- so there has been lots of speculation as to what specific fruit it was.
>>44477742
>>44477742
Depending on how dark you want the game to be you could go the route that medieval christianity always rejected;
See, in medieval christianity, there was a minor split around the concept of the soul - one faction held that the soul was mortal and died with the body, to be resurrected along with the body at judgement day.
That "mortalist" faction lost out in the end, with the concept of the soul being "immortal" and NOT dying at death along the body being held by most main christian sects.
the trouble is that the reason the mortalists existed is that once you posit the soul doesn't die with the body, to lead to a situation where the soul is awake, and concious, and trapped underground with its decaying corpse until judgement day. Part of the way this was worked around to make death less horrifying was the notion of souls experiencing a "soul sleep" where they were immortal but after death lost conciousness until judgement day and the resurrection.
The slight problem is that "soul sleep" is built on very shaky theological ground so in reality theologically speaking you have two choices - mortal souls or immortal but constantly screaming trapped within a decaying corpse souls.
Of course the notion that the soul immediately went to an afterlife is fairly recent, so having some people report the sensation of being trapped in their dead body while others have no memories of death after resurrection would be fun.
>>44482889
Source on that? Not trying to be an ass, I just find really interesting what you just said and would like to read more about it.
>>44481784
The Bible was originally written in Hebrew. It can be read in its original by people who speak hebrew (israeli hebrew was revived only recently based on biblical hebrew so it works fine for this).
The christian parts were written in aramaic (a kind of pre-arabic vernacular spoken by semitic peoples in the roman era), and ancient greek.
The translation to ancient latin (the vulgate bible) was considered "holy" by the catholic church so as far as they're concerned it's canon. For centuries, "vernacular bibles" translated into local languages were considered religiously suspect.
The translation to english on the orders of King James was similarly declared inspired and holy. It is a very good scholarly translation but included some intentional mistranslations put in there for political reasons. "Thou shalt not kill." in the original hebrew translates better as "You shall not commit murder." "Suffer not a witch to live." was at James's request because he was supporting witch trials at the time, it translates literally as "Suffer not a poisoner to live."
Most Jewish bibles (called a chumash) have the original hebrew, then translation of the passages to one side, then notes on the translation underneath, and then interpretations and commentary under that. Some also have "transliterations" which show you how to pronounce the words using english letters.
And, no, nobody knows what the forbidden fruit actually was. Besides apples, i've heard all kinds of other fruits proposed, even wheat.
