Religious Super Heros PC or otherwise

[Hermit]

Another thread got me to thinking a bit about religious super heroes. They do occur in comic books. Some it barely gets mentioned, some few are quite devout in their faith. Examples that come to mind are Nightcrawler, Firebird, and Daredevil. Both Kitty Pryde and Ben Grim are Jewish.

 

Within Champions own Universe, we get a plethora of infernal and dark villains to twhart and confound our heroes. While a brief mention is made in the CU book itself on relations between super heroes and religions, there are few if any superheroes that seem to have faith in their lives.

 

Some would see it as too serious a thing to tackle for games like this, others would see it as totally unimportant so I can understand why it doesn't get broached much.

 

Still, I have to ask if anyone has used such things in their games? Either for NPCs, or for a PC?

 

The only player in my group who has such a character has a mentalist. That character happens to be a Pagan, and took the name "Wytch".

 

I know someone on these forums (I think Storn) has played a Muslim character. D-Man has a Jewish character (Anthem I believe?) and so on.

 

How much or little does your typical super human in your campaign (or game if you are a player) let his/her faith affect his/her life especially AS a super hero?

[Enforcer84]

Not much really.

 

Organized religion and myself are often on separate pages. However, I have made a few NPC's with heavy religious leanings. I lack knowledge about religions to make them "authentic" I believe, but at least I no longer relegate religion to the dark side (out right evil & Corrupt, or insane and prejudiced).

[McCoy]

I have had players play Christian, Wiccan, and Satanist characters. My characters tend to be either agnostic or Buddhist. Right now I'm working on some fanfic with Marvel's Legion, David Charles Haller Xavier, who is a devout Sunni Muslem and lassez faire Jewish at the same time. The wonders of multiple personalities.

[Rook]

In my current game I play a character whose actions are dictated by strongly held religious beliefs. He is a living shadow and has some very strange beliefs that I'm slowly dropping hints about. I would say more but other members of my group post here and I'd prefer not to spoil the surprise.

 

In the past I've had a character who was a disciple of a paranormal claiming to be Christ (he was later revealed to be a fraud).

[GestaltBennie]

I've had a fair number of religious PCs; my longest standing PC had his faith affirmed after a visit to a comic book style Hell. Heck. even my PC in the PBeM that I'm in with Hermit is a practicing Mennonite, though with his chronic swearing, promiscuity, and psychotic episodes it's often hard to see his faith. :-)

 

Scott Bennie

[GenreFiend]

DC Comics had Zauriel, an honest-to-God Angel as a member of the JLA for a while. I've also played Angel PCs in a few games. Two of my characters were Catholic priests, and I had one guy in a Shadowrun game who spent most of his down-time in confession. Most of my characters tend to be non-Bible-thumping, laid back Christians with some Pagan influences (kind of like me;) ). My big question is: given the encounters with demons, spirits, and out-right miracles, how can any comic book or RPG character NOT have religious faith of some kind? I also always wondered: why isn;t everyone in the Marvel Universe an Odinist? I mean, Thor is right freaking there for anyone to see!

[Trebuchet]

My character Zl'f is devoutly Russian Orthodox, and I try to play her that way as best I can within the bounds of my admittedly limited understanding of Russian Orthodoxy.

 

She wears a Russian Orthodox crucifix even in costume.

 

Mentor's current character, Prodigy, is an ordained Roman Catholic priest; in fact he was a founding member of the Knights Templar.

[Christougher]

My religion(s) beats your religion

 

My entry in the religious faith category is Darkchilde, a Goth who's rather a lot like Benny from the Mummy - one of every religious icon - except for one thing. 20 pt Psych Lim: True Believer.

 

She's on the New Orleans superhero team, along with a vampire, werewolf and fairy...

[Trebuchet]

Re: My religion(s) beats your religion

 

Originally posted by Christougher

My entry in the religious faith category is Darkchilde, a Goth who's rather a lot like Benny from the Mummy - one of every religious icon - except for one thing. 20 pt Psych Lim: True Believer.

 

She's on the New Orleans superhero team, along with a vampire, werewolf and fairy...

That's almost got to be the Noir campaign here inEl Paso. Are you the same Chris who sat in at our MidGuard adventure a couple of months ago (The one at Dale & Loren's house)?

 

Just out of curiosity, what kind of difficulties does "True Believer" cause for Darkchilde? And how the heck can she "truly believe" a half dozen religions?

[Lord Liaden]

As a player and GM, I can't say that religion has been a significant factor for player characters in my games. Perhaps I just tend to hang out with heathens , but I can't remember anyone creating a character for whom religious faith was a major motivator.

 

OTOH, NPCs with strong religious views are not uncommon in my campaigns. For example, some time ago I developed a group briefly mentioned in the first edition Champions Universe supplement, "The Right Hand," who protect the Middle East. All are devout Muslims, and some believe that their powers are divine gifts. Then there are the characters with extreme religious views which lead to extreme actions, like Nimbus, a self-proclaimed "avenging angel" who punishes the "sinful" a la the Harbinger of Justice.

 

Purely for game purposes I adopted the theological conceit that Dean Shomshak proposed in The Ultimate Super Mage: deities are given form and substance through the belief of their mortal worshippers, and sustained and empowered by that worship. Hence all the gods of myth, and conceptions of godhead in modern religions, as well as their antithetical opposites like devils, asuras, titans and jotuns, do or did exist; but none of them is the true supreme deity. So it was perfectly possible for demons and angels to be NPCs or even PCs, although no one in my groups ever took that option.

 

Since I made it clear that this conceit applied only to the game world, nobody had a problem with it.

[Hermit]

Originally posted by GestaltBennie

Heck. even my PC in the PBeM that I'm in with Hermit is a practicing Mennonite, though with his chronic swearing, promiscuity, and psychotic episodes it's often hard to see his faith. :-)

 

Scott Bennie

 

For some reason, that's almost too scary beyond words

[RDU Neil]

Faith vs. Religion...

 

The political and social implications of organized religion being either supported or undermined by the wild reality of a superhero universe has always been a factor in my games. The Catholic Church and it's use of devout paranormals is a major theme, currently. It began years ago, when a player made up a swashbuckling swordsman type, who was a devout Catholic wielding the Sword of God... a rapier that could cut through anything. Great character, Argentinian, who became a world renown celebrity to the masses of Catholics around the world... but was struggling secretly with the corrupt machinations of secret Papal organizations.

 

Of course, this doesn't even begin to address the fact that at least one PC is in the process of developing a religion around himself as a god who will save humanity.

 

I love messing with belief systems. It generates great role playing. Then again, in my world, organized religion and Republicans are inherently evil, and... oh yeah... same in the real world too.

[johnflang]

In the Champions games I play in religion is not a factor. However, in the Hero games set in modern/fantsy time, religion has/does play a role depending on the campaign. The fantasy is obvious with clerics. Modern horror can make a person religious real quick.

 

In one campaign I play a author who is a lapsed Christian. After getting sent back in time and mistaken for a holy man and help raising King Arthur, he is now a more devout Christian.

 

Religion in superhero with my groups is not common. In other genres it can show up in unexpected ways.

[McCoy]

Should also mention that my games take place in an alternate Marvel universe, one player did worship Apocalypse as a god, another was a time traveler (and Magneto's great-great-granddaughter) who had a religion founded by Sam Guthre worshiping Professor X, Magneto, Cable and Apocalypse.

[OddHat]

The Catholic church has been the center of several of my campaigns, and cults are favorite villain groups; wiccan and other pagan covens have played parts as well. There have been a few good and evil Jewish, Hindu, Shinto and Islamic groups as well. Plenty of Voodoo / ritual magic practitioners too. Magic is almost inseperable from religion after you get past the most surface level comic book or modern fantasy treatments of the subject; I can't imagine having a magic heavy campaign without religious themes.

 

As to current characters, one player is running a dimension hopping Jewish ex-atronaut, one is running a practitioner of Taoist magic, and I've had Catholic priests, Shinto priests and Rabbis in recent campaigns.

 

So a Priest, a Rabbi, and a Voodoo Hogun walk into a Viper nest...

[lemming]

Can't say too many of my characters have had any sort of set beliefs.

Though one campaign had practically all alien characters worshipping the god of electricity. Who was a PC in a future game, but had gone to the past briefly. One of the other PCs started the Church. The other players ran with it.

I don't do much with religion probably because it can be a touchy subject. A couple of my characters have religious backgrounds, but none are devout.

[Cybernaut]

Unless it's a substantial part of their character concept, the religious aspect either doesn't come up or is just an interresting footnote somewhere in their dossier. If religion does come up in a campaign I try to treat the subject as evenhandedly as possible since I've gamed with people from a wide range of backgrounds. Same rule applies to politics.

[Myrmidon]

Interesting responses so far.

 

I ran a pbem around an offical Catholic superhuman team for a short time. My approach was pretty simple, that for all the individual failings, cockups, career builders, and idiots, the Church tries to do the right thing. Of course being large and powerful attracts lots of nasty attention.

 

My reponse was grab the Order of Malta (the Hospitalers under their latest brand name 8) and make a superhero team from it. Already plenty of fancy uniforms, spiffy traditions, shiny boots and legal right to declare war 8) [A benefit of being signatories to a whole whack load of treaties and keeping around, its difficult to prove that they aren't sovereign when 19th century powers treated them like they were]

 

Of course the main focus was protecting the Vatican and Rome from evil villians, but I was managing to try and include a little political scheming in too. 8)

 

As for my personal experiences playing religious heros, its the small things that count, that and using it to really fill in background.

[Graviton]

Religion doesn't come up a whole lot in our games, but it does occasionally. One of my wife's PCs is a very devout Navajo, a mutant/shaman who has major-league healing abilities. I ran a small sub-plot involving the victim of a plane crash whom she healed. He equated her power to heal with that of Christ and formed a cult to worship her. Great roleplaying! It caused her to become extremely judicious in her use of that power. Which in turn caused the PC team leader to squawk because he could no longer just rush in with guns blazing and not worry about getting hurt. Hehehehe....

 

I also run a Dark Champions campaign deeply steeped in voodoo. The PC, Deathwatch, wears a mask created years ago in a dark ceremony that containes the souls of several hundred people. His primary nemesis is based in New Orleans and is constantly throwing zombies and other voodoo-themed threats his way.

 

In other words, except for my cult sub-plot, we basically deal with "comic book" religion, rather than real-world religious issues.

[assault]

Originally posted by GenreFiend

My big question is: given the encounters with demons, spirits, and out-right miracles, how can any comic book or RPG character NOT have religious faith of some kind?

 

Even if the existence of such things is indisputable, it doesn't follow that any of these demons and spirits are worth worshipping or treating as anything other than something dangerous that is best avoided.

 

"Demons? Yeah, I've run into things that claimed to be demons. I don't know what they really are. I don't really care."

 

Alan

[Lightray]

Way back, we had one character -- Seraph -- who was supposed to be an angelic being. She was a minister in her secret ID, no particular denomination (Unitarian angel, I guess). Her player did a fair job of portraying her religious vocation in her character's off time.

 

Now that we've restarted the campaign over 10 years later, that character is gone, but we now have a Zoroastrian "angel" -- Fire Angel -- in the game. I haven't devoted much campaign time to off-duty activities, as it were. And that's a good thing -- both the player and I found out we knew very little about the Zoroastrian religion.

 

Fortunately, I already had the "comic metaphysics" worked out for Seraph, so it was easy to fit Fire Angel in.

[Blue]

The PCs do not seem to be religious at all. In fact, last game an NPC asked them, "Do you believe in God?" And only one character fessed up. My primary NPC for that game is Catholic, mostly because it gave her some color.

 

This is going to come out wrong, but generally speaking, the villains are more religious than the heroes in my campaign. Of course one of he heroes probably worships Horus. That count?

[OddHat]

Originally posted by Blue

Of course one of he heroes probably worships Horus. That count?

 

Yes.

[Trebuchet]

Since simple things like going to church and shopping for groceries generally take place "off camera" in superhero campaigns, they probably don't impact most campaigns much. I would generally expect superheroes to reflect to some extent the religiousness of their nation or culture, although obviously that won't always be true. American heroes would be more probably typically religious than European ones, but not by any huge margin.

 

On our team, MidGuard:

 

Zl'f - Russian Orthodox (Devout)

Cyberknight - Protestant, probably Lutheran (Casual)

Prodigy - Roman Catholic (Devout, a priest)

Sidestep - Protestant, probably Lutheran or Presbyterian(Casual)

Eagle Eye - Unknown, probably Buddhist

Catseye - Roman Catholic (Casual)

Thunderbird - Avatar of an Apache diety (REAL religious, a shaman)

Silhouette - Unknown, probably Protestant (Casual)

 

We're probably more religious than most teams (or players for that matter!)

[Lupus]

Originally posted by Lightray

Way back, we had one character -- Seraph -- who was supposed to be an angelic being. She was a minister in her secret ID, no particular denomination (Unitarian angel, I guess). Her player did a fair job of portraying her religious vocation in her character's off time.

 

Now that we've restarted the campaign over 10 years later, that character is gone, but we now have a Zoroastrian "angel" -- Fire Angel -- in the game. I haven't devoted much campaign time to off-duty activities, as it were. And that's a good thing -- both the player and I found out we knew very little about the Zoroastrian religion.

 

Fortunately, I already had the "comic metaphysics" worked out for Seraph, so it was easy to fit Fire Angel in.

Mmm, yeah. Isn't fire evil in Zoroastrianism? It's either fire=evil and earth=good, or perhaps the other way around. I forget.