What are some useful roleplaying notes for portraying a moderately religious, Hindu, female character from Delhi in an urban fantasy setting?
Where can I read advice on portraying such an ethnicity and a religion without devolving into stereotypes?
What are some of the more subtle details to include about their general culture and outlook?
How much does the caste system actually matter? This character was going to be brahmin or kshatriya if it matters, and actually upper-class and wealthy too.
No /pol/ or "designated shitting streets," please. We already know how bad it is.
It depends a bit on what you understand by "moderately", if it by western standards or their standars.
An important facet of her religious life will be purity. Which means that she normally wouldn't want to touch things that are contaminated by lesser castes, especially wouldn't want to eat food that is made by one of the castes below her. If she's westernised she might be more relaxed about such things, but maybe the food might still be a problem.
What god or what pantheon of gods she worships might be a family tradition. Of course they believe all those gods exists, a believer of Vishnu still would pray to Shiva for some ritual or something like this. Though goddesses like Sati and Lakshmi are popular with women and can be their role models.
Hindu religion doesn't offer women much when it comes to afterlife and religious prestige. It's their duty to be the perfect wife for their husband, the greatest joy they could attain is to be placed on their husbands side in heaven. Their greatest duty is to bear a son, because he will continue the family line. If the husband dies before she does, it can be seen as if it was her failure, because they are both connected in a spiritual way. A widow might be regarded as a burden, or even already dead.
There is probably a lot more, but I'm not so big into such ethnographic things.
Brody Walker
>if it by western standards or their standars Probably their standards.
Bentley Sanchez
Well then, ask away, but it's not my field of expertise, especially if it's a modern setting.
Oh, something important I forgot! The ideal of beauty for a women is to basically appear as white as possible. I'm not doing some /pol/ stuff here, but she would want to look as pale as she could, all the lower castes, those are the smelly brown people, but if she's a kshatriya or bhraman women, she's one of the aryans, that conquered those brown people long ago! I saw an add once for a skin creme with the desired effect of making the girls less brown. Families advertise their daughters for marriage by commenting how white their skin is. Because Delhi is pretty far up north, she might even have not completely black hair! Blonde is possible, but rare.
If crossing the sea causes anyone to lose their varna (caste), then that means any Hindu who has ever gone to America or Britain has lost their caste, right?
Luis Price
Yeah, kinda. It's especially a big deal if they die overseas. I'm surprised there is nothing in this article about the indian soldiers of WWI. Though I don't exactly know what would happen if an indian dies overseas, but Bharata khanda is their holy land, where all the holy rivers are.
Jason Sullivan
>female character from Delhi in an urban fantasy setting? >female character from Delhi
She got raped.
Brandon Davis
That's pretty good, congrats for a good post.
Tyler Young
What happens if an Indian is born overseas? What is their caste?
Aaron Morgan
>What happens if an Indian is born overseas? Honestly I don't know. >What is their caste? Depends on the parents.
Benjamin Harris
>five posters and nobody's talking about poop yet Wow, I am amazed at the level of maturity in this thread. Are all the underageb&s out hunting Pokémon?
Henry Garcia
you wish.
John Miller
>What are some useful roleplaying notes for portraying a moderately religious I'm assuming you're a white guy who basically only has a christian background and looking for a new shiny thing to play with. My advice just don't, it's not worth it and you have half a chance of pissing off one of your players unless they're all gated community fucks like yourself.
If you have actual experience with a religion seeing these sort of GMs "spice up" a setting with derivatives of said religion is as cringe worth as reading through Legend of the Five rings RPG. Just don't do it, stick to fucking up viking or christian lore as no one gives a fuck about that.
Parker Davis
some one is bitter.
OP do what you want.
Josiah Jenkins
>But if she's a kshatriya or bhraman women, she's one of the aryans, that conquered those brown people long ago!
Is this actually true?
Carson Reyes
That's the myth they tell themselves, but they're as mudbutted as the rest.
Wyatt Wilson
There is no archaeological evidence for that, but it's true in their own myths. What's true is that they speak an indo-germanic language, while the indigenous people speak or spoke dravidian languages. Also their myths, gods and vocabulary in the sanskrit make it seem like they come from northern places.
Blake Jackson
Let's be honest, we probably know more about Hindus than Vikings.
Jayden Bell
>Oh, something important I forgot! The ideal of beauty for a women is to basically appear as white as possible. I'm not doing some /pol/ stuff here, but she would want to look as pale as she could, all the lower castes, those are the smelly brown people, but if she's a kshatriya or bhraman women, she's one of the aryans, that conquered those brown people long ago! I saw an add once for a skin creme with the desired effect of making the girls less brown. Families advertise their daughters for marriage by commenting how white their skin is. Because Delhi is pretty far up north, she might even have not completely black hair! Blonde is possible, but rare.
What's the view on an Anglo-Indian girl with really fair skin?
Is she some kind of goddess of beauty, or is she a cheater for being kutcha butcha?
Owen Perez
I don't understand this viewpoint. OP is attempting to broaden his horizons, but you seem intent on dictating what OP can/cannot do because you don't believe, based singularly on your own assumption of the color of OP's skin(!!!) that OP is incapable of ever understanding this group that he wants to legitimately learn more about. The kind of bigotry you've displayed here not only is straight up putrescent but violating of Global Rules #3 and 6, and Veeky Forums rule #1 of being excellent to each other.
I have no intention of reporting your post, however. If someone else wants to take up that task, then they may. I think that messages like these ought to be kept. In truth, I'd go so far as to say that these kinds of spewing strings of hate-speech ought to be kept for the board's posterity as a reminder.
A reminder of what bigotry reads like.
Lucas Flores
>I don't understand this viewpoint. user is trying to get a rise out of the other posters in this thread by pretending to be insulted on behalf of other ethnicities.
Asher White
>I'm assuming you're a white guy who basically only has a christian background and looking for a new shiny thing to play with.
Filipino, actually.
Jeremiah Rivera
Poo in loo.
Xavier Rogers
You're confusing Delhi with Cologne.
>weird hindu nationalist racist stuff
OP said no /pol/ shit! Now go sit in your designated shitting street and think about what you've done!
Brief guide to hinduism:
Hinduism is polytheistic, but what that means in practice is that particular families, neighbourhoods and castes associations tend to worship particular gods in particular, and follow particular rituals at particular temples run according to particular sects - hence things like Hari Krishnas who technically worship vishnu, but mainly in his form as Krishna, while Shivaist sects worship various different incarnations of shiva, etc...
Then there's the hanuman and ganesh temples and similar.
Basically do some research in which hindu sects would best fit your character's background, and especially if there's any notable difference in how Dharma shakes down - dharma is the sort of thing that provides some nice juicy hooks to hang role playing off of so pay especially good attention to that, even if the character is fine with violating them or doesn't care too much about them, it still provides a ruleset whose violation you can build character quirks or help make ic decisions on.
Robert Long
I thought that "Hinduism" was such a broad term that encompassed so many different schools of thought that there are even atheist/"nastika" Hindu schools?
