Should atheist players be able to play religious characters?

Should atheist players be able to play religious characters?

.............yessssssssssss???
You don't honestly believe in the gods of tabletop games do you?
Shouldn't be hard to play a character that does.

Stop posting bait threads.

is every character you play an exact replica of you

>2017. Clerics atill exist.

I want clerics removed from Fantasy RPG. They are triggering me. Mage shoudl get Divine magic because Magic is Fantasy Science and Science is the only True Faith.

As an agnostic, I love playing religious characters.

A key strength of roleplaying games is playing people who are different to me, experiencing at least a glimpse of a different way of thinking and being.

I've always found the idea of faith fascinating. I've never really had it in real life beyond the basic faith in humanity deal. The idea of an ideal you could hold onto with absolute certainty... In a world where everything has always seemed extremely uncertain and ambiguous, it's a compelling idea.

With religious characters, I always find it extremely interesting to see how that kind of anchor affects their actions. How having strong, deep faith in something outside of rationality or evidence can be a source of strength and of weakness, how it can influence your actions in ways that might not make sense to others but are rooted in certainty due to your beliefs.

Then again, OP's question also deserves a more general response, in that who you are IRL should have absolutely no influence on the characters you are 'allowed' to play in an abstract sense. In specific cases, if a group doesn't want one guy to play a certain archetype due to a bad experience in the past, it's fine, but sweeping generalisations are just bullshit.

I had a christian dude in by dnd group who never played anything but atheist characters. One time he intimated to me that playing a character that worships another god is dangerously close to apostasy.

How can you accurately depict a character that possesses faith when you lack any faith?

You're going to inevitably fail at it, just like white men inevitably fail at playing female characters or characters of another race. Either you're going to self-insert your own beliefs and behavior (in which case, why play something different from you at all) or your misunderstanding of something you're fundamentally incapable of comprehending will lead to you playing your character as little more than a caricature.

Have a (You) since you're trying.

My experiences differ significantly from yours in that respect, and I doubt anything I can say will really have an impact. In groups I've played in I've seen men play women, women play man, people play characters of vastly different backgrounds, belief systems and cultures and all do so competently, creating compelling and engaging characters who properly represent or emulate traits that they themselves lack.

Would you let a religious character playing an atheist?
Would you let a woman playing a man ? (People are especially hypocritical with this one)

I'm pretty sure I've told you the story of the atheist cleric before. He was one of the coolest characters I've ever seen.

>Would you let a woman playing a man ?
I'd discourage that because more often than not it entails shitty roleplay and magical realm. These are just facts.

>white men inevitably fail at playing female characters
>white men
>white

At least have some subtlety.

Well if you apply this rule both for men or women I'm ok with it.

Troll or idiot confirmed. Ignore and move on.

Then your understanding of women, men, those vastly different backgrounds, belief systems and cultures are weak, weak enough that you were easily impressed by people that don't even have a working knowledge of what they're trying to emulate.

Here's an experiment - get someone to try and accurately emulate you. As in, get them to behave exactly as they think you would for like, an hour or so. See how much you cringe at them.

That's what any religious person you're playing with has to put up with whenever you play a religious character as an agnostic.

Who?

Should human players be allowed to play elves or dwarves?

It's about giving it a try, whether you end up succeeding or not. For example religious thought interests me even though I'm incapable of maintaining faith in real life.

Except emulating faith is way easier than another person and their mannerisms. It's just holding a strong conviction in particular ideal.

You are locking out many game options in many games (D&D classes for example) and in most fantasy settings, being agnostic or atheistic is not credible.
And you could say "Atheists and agnostics in fantasy settings just refuse to worship gods even if they real" then you are making an horrible generalization about all atheist or agnostic players.

I'm an atheist and I play very often religous characters. I'm an avid Warhammer 40k player after all...
I try to base my characters on real people like Maximilian Kolbe.
I remember a fun Dark Herresy group. I played as a Crusader who was against slavery and treated Mutant well. He worked very well with the psyker who was inspired by Grim Dark Mrs Mcgonagall. Everyone else were a bit mean.
To conclude:
Can an atheist player play a religious character? Yes. Thats why we have Veeky Forums.

That's about as accurate as saying "being a black man is just being a kleptomaniac with an IQ of 70 and a fixation with fried chicken and water melon."

?

It is the same for me. I simply don't feel religous. the mythology, the thoughts and aesthetics always fascinated me. Teilhard de Chardin for example or the Advaita Vedanta are so interesting. But in the end I don't believe them truth.

Go to bed Jerry

If OP had his way religious characters and classes would have to be removed from the European printing of any RPG. Which any sane, reasonable person would agree is insane.

In Northern Europe at least atheism is the norm under 30 yet these people still play RPG's.

Where did this meme that "Northern Europe is the most atheist" come from? Nordaboos? They're as atheist as America. Czech Republic is the most atheist country in the world.

There should be more atheists in the world.

Wikipedia says:
>15% identified as atheists, and a quarter as agnostic.
>34% answered that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force".

Heh, haven't seen this thread in a while.

>Still less than 50%

FFS

>implying 'religious' people aren't just RPing anyway

I agree with you. Only players who can actually produce divine miracles through prayer should be allowed to play clerics.

There are several studies worldwide so i can err
Anotehr Wikipedia site says:
>Countries with the greatest proportion of people without religion (including agnostics and atheists) from Irreligion by country (as of 2007):

Czech Republic 70-81% (78%)
Estonia 71–82% (76%)
Japan 64–88% (76%)[58]
Denmark 72%
Sweden 46–82% (64%)
Vietnam 44–81% (63%)
Macau 62%[59]
Hong Kong 57%[60]
France 43–64%[61] (54%)
Norway 31–72% (52%)
China 47%[62] (details)
Netherlands 39–55% (47%)
Finland 28–60% (44%)
New Zealand 42%[63]
United Kingdom 31–52% (42%)[61] (25% England and Wales)[64]
South Korea 30–52% (41%)
Germany 25[65]–55%[66] (40%)
Hungary 32–46% (39%)
Belgium 42–43% (39%)
Bulgaria 34–40% (37%)
Slovenia 35–38% (37%)
Russia[67] 13–48% (31%)

>How can you accurately depict a character that possesses faith when you lack any faith?

How can you accurately depict a fighter when you have no fight in you?

Should blind people not be allowed to play people who can see? Same thing
>tipsfedora.jpeg

>Should atheist players be able to play religious characters?

No. Roleplaying is about creating characters that resemble and behave exactly as much as their real life counterparts as possible.

and people cant cast magic in real life

do you also ban people from playing casters?

most people dont know how to properly wield a sword either, do you ban them from playing characters that use swords unless they know real swordsmanship?

>Czech Republic 70-81% (78%)
I don't fucking understand

This.

All my games I just have all my players play as themselves.

Literally we roleplay us being transported to the world of D&D

"Grind up the universe, put it through the finest sieve and you will not find one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. These things do not exist, but you must pretend they do, only then can they"

being an atheist doesn't mean you don't believe in anything, or don't have your own ideals

Absolutely not.
Those Godless, heathen, misanthropes would be more fit to masturbate with a fork to Richard Dawkins than to dare tarnish the name of clerics in a game about fantasy roleplaying!...

If they are even permitted at the table!
As the only table they are worthy of is the Rack!

My bait reaction pics folder doesn't have fish offended enough for this, OP.

You don't even deserve a (You).

This is arguably one of the dumbest questions I've seen on Veeky Forums in a good long while, and I want you to really take a moment and understand the full insinuations of that statement.

So....totally accurate?

The issue is with emulating a trait you have no understanding of, when in the presence of people who have more understanding than you.

Playing the role of a character that performs magic is okay, as there are no magicians that can correct you. But if you do play a fighter around a HEMA enthusiast, he has every right to mock you and cringe whenever you describe your character's awful fighting technique.

When roleplaying, you will always incorrectly emulate aspects of the character. The key to getting away with it is to do it with people that have as little knowledge of the subject as you. If you are roleplaying something you have little understanding of around people who do possess understanding (or at the very least, more than you do), you're knowingly breaking their immersion and making the game worse for them.

>he doesn't honestly believe in the gods of tabletop games

Burn yourself heretic.

Don't be a faggot OP it's called a role-playing game for a reason. Not every character is supposed to be an exact copy of you or your beliefs.

That's pretty hilarious. Did he know that the game isn't real?

Never mind, I guess Christians have trouble telling reality and fiction apart.

We have hated Christianity ever since the Hussite Wars.

Personal experience? It is so rare to meet someone my age who actually holds religious beliefs that its surprising every time.

For some reason lots of people who hold no religious beliefs and never go to church put 'Christian' on surveys.

What kind of assholes are you playing with who can't suspend their disbelief and avoid freaking out if the people they're playing with aren't 100% accurate? That's just being a dick.

In the past, when I've been playing a character and someone in the group has known more about it than I have, the general response has been to make helpful suggestions or offer pointers on improving, helping my roleplay and letting me get more into the character. Y'know, friends working together to create an enjoyable experience for everyone involved?

Tell me: in these games, are you all normal people with no great skill at fighting and no supernatural powers? Do you maybe open a tavern in the town where you start and listen wistfully to the tales your patrons tell?

Or do you actually get out there and wreck shit up wholesale like proper adventurers? Because unless you are all stone-cold killing-ass motherfuckers in real life (ideally with a good balance between martial, arcane, and divine skills), the latter does not qualify as "playing yourself." Instead you're playing a role, almost as if this were some kind of role playing game.

And having faith in a D&D world is easy because the gods are demonstrably real. They give power to clerics and intervene in the world all the time. Being a D&D cleric is less like being a believer in the real world and more like getting a job working for a powerful but aloof boss.

Dobrý den, soused.

Sure. YOU, on the other hand, should not be allowed anywhere near a gaming table.

Should OP be able to play straight characters?

I dunno about that, atheism's fucking depressing.

Source: I am an atheist.

>no less then 3 different descriptions for the exact same fucking thing
Why?

...

What in the fuck is a "convinced atheist". They should just ask "do you believe in god?" and if they say no put them down as atheist or if you're triggered by that word (lots of people are for some reason, I blame the commies) use "non-religious". This shit really isn't that hard to measure.

Atheism is a statement of faith. You actively believe that God, or an entity of that kind, does not exist.

Agnosticism is a statement of uncertainty. You do not know, and it is beyond your ability to really say either way.

If they aren't a shithead about it, sure.

I had an atheist player who wanted to play a cleric but refused to believe in a deity even in character. They were a massive cunt and I don't game with them anymore.

Otherwise it's fine.

No. And you're not allowed to play combat ready characters without military experience, sages without PhD, and magic users without local psychiatrist permission.

>Atheism is a statement of faith. You actively believe that God, or an entity of that kind, does not exist.

Wrong, the word literally translates to without god, you just don't beleive in it, there's nothing about an active belief inherent to the word just the absence of a particular one.

>Agnosticism is a statement of uncertainty. You do not know, and it is beyond your ability to really say either way.
And what exactly does this concept specifically have to do with believing in god? Using agnosticism as an answer to the question "do you believe in god" is just nonsensical, I wasn't asking you your level of certainty I was asking you your current position, important difference.

Underrated post

>Atheism is a statement of faith. You actively believe that God, or an entity of that kind, does not exist.

No, that would be anti-theism. Atheism just means that you do not actively believe in a god or gods.

'Does God Exist' is a question without a rational answer. There is no evidence or basis for declaring it either way. Any answer you give, whether positive or negative, is fundamentally a statement of faith.

Agnosticism, meanwhile, is acknowledging the question as unanswerable.

>'Does God Exist' is a question without a rational answer. There is no evidence or basis for declaring it either way. Any answer you give, whether positive or negative, is fundamentally a statement of faith.

That's not the topic at hand, and only madmen claim to know the answer for sure. The question is not "Does god exist", but "Do you BELIEVE that god exists."

That is not how it works, the default stance without evidence is disbelief. Otherwise you would be an insane person who went through life unwilling to lack belief in fairies, reptilian overlords and monsters under the bed because its impossible to disprove them. 'I do not believe in trolls' is not a statement of faith, its a rational response to the lack of any evidence.

Calling atheism an active system of faith is nothing but an attack on it, same as the butthurt people who claim its a religion.

>'Does God Exist' is a question without a rational answer. There is no evidence or basis for declaring it either way. Any answer you give, whether positive or negative, is fundamentally a statement of faith.
And yet some people would answer yes because despite this they take that leap of faith. Other people, such as you and I evidently, don't for whatever different reasons and so are classified as atheist for the simple reason that we are not theists. Sometimes there are binary distinctions, this is one of them.

Also there's nothing wrong with faith, we all have faith in the idea that our sense correspond with objective reality, even though we don't really know that for sure. Life without faith is a logical impossibility, everyone has to take that leap to some degree even if it is only to trust their own senses.

>Agnosticism, meanwhile, is acknowledging the question as unanswerable.
Agnosticism is acknowledging that ALL questions are unanswerable, not just ones concerning the existence of god. So to use it as your answer to the question "do you believe in god" is nonsensical, you're not really answering the question because you can be an agnostic theist as well as an agnostic atheist, you're not being specific enough.

>be christian foreverdm
>love emphasizing tragic flaws of gods
Yes because every character should be allowed to be disappointed by Pelor equally. People seem to forget the gods are just normal fucking people who got picked to be the big dicks of the cosmos.

If we're gonna get into philosophy nothing is completely verifiably true.

And would you let a religious person play an atheist character? Or a non-white woman play a male character? If you want to criticize people playing something they aren't on a fucking role-playing game because you want to virtue signal then I'm really sorry for any one who plays with you.

Most rational people believe there is no such thing as 100% certainty of anything, and as a result all strongly held beliefs should be taken as statements of probability rather than absolute certainty. Just because you can't know for sure whether there is a god, it does not necessarily follow that the probability of god existing is 50/50.

what

Depends on what system you're using. In D&D, clerics draw power from the diety they serve. In D&D, an athiest would be someone who refuses to follow a diety, as in D&D, dieties factually exist and this isn't questioned.

Oh, I misread the question. Yes, non-religious people should be able to play as religious people. That's a stupid question.

I have faith in your parents because they were able to raise a complete fucking retard.

Well, to be more exact, it's [a somehow smaller infinity]/infinity.

This tbqh

...

Wouldn't an atheist draw power from a god of entropy?

Go away, Varg.
I mean Hekaton.
Eat a dick.

Why would they? In this setting they apparently don't like gods or are ideologically opposed to worshipping them.

>Should atheist players be able to play religious characters?

Should atheist players be able to play religious characters?

...

No bait this obvious should be nearing 100 replies.

Not bait

I don't come down to where you work and knock the dick out of your mouth asshole.

t. OP

He believes that everything in a 2-6 millennia old book about bronze age goat herders happened. Why not?

We have a cleric played by an atheist in a group with a christian. The christian has never seemed uncomfortable with the cleric. We have had men and women play the opposite in groups with the opposite.

People getting upset over stuff like that is a red flag and you probably should avoid playing with people like that.

I do in 40k.

YOU BET YOUR ASS I DO.

Did you ever consider that most people on this site have nothing better to do?

> I played as a Crusader who was against slavery and treated Mutant well.

Okay I think you may have missed the point of 40k.

You say some shit about my eternal Lord and Savior heathen scum?

Because that's ok.

I didn't even learn about the concept of "God" until I was like eight.

I love to play religious characters, I do it constantly.

Someone should make a thread about nothing but people who don't get 40k, I've heard of it happening before as well.