Christian Fantasy General?

The books in the Apocrypha are probably more friendly to world building for game purposes. Book of Enoch is a good place to start, but there's a lot more out there concerning Angelology, the role of Satan, miracles, etc.

Angelology in general would be another good place to start if only because it implicitly gives structure to Creation outside of Heaven>Mortal Plane>Hell (I'd throw purgatory in there if I was running a game, but that's take it or leave it). The role of angels in your setting also determines the low fantasy vs high fantasy approach. Are angels everywhere messing with creation on their own? On behalf of God? On behalf of Man? Are they limited in power? Etc.

CS Lewis's Space Trilogy

This giy touches on something else that would need to be addressed, is it strictly Christian or abrahamic?

I think a lot of the cool parts of the mythology are Old Testament in flavor. Allowing for Jewish and Muslim mythologies to share space, perhaps like we would think of schools of magic in a traditional fantasy setting, introduces some interesting story/conflict/setting opportunities.

One of the most interesting topic, in my humble opinion, are demons.
There is such diversity in Christian cultures, in artwork, scriptures and legends, that it gives us a vast amount of material, for any kind of fantasy work.
Of course there are interesting Demons in other religions, like Daevas in Zoroastrianism (though it is technically included in christianity) or Rakshasas in Hinduism, but Christian tradition is best in this subject, I think.

(is that giy)
The Old Testament is largely a series of stories about the interesting conflicts when those schools of magic come into conflict. Elijah having a cleric-off with the preists of Ba'al (and Ashera iirc). Moses having a wizard-off with the egyptian mages. Judges is a low powered game of Exalted with only one PC at a time.

Indeed, Book of Enoch is a good start. However, It certainly has a reason of being regarded as apocryphal work.

Angels are mainly thought to be absent of free will, at current state. After Lucifer rebelled and fell from grace, loyal Angels lost the free will and have sole purpose to serve God and do his biddings.
This is the exact subject, that makes book of Enoch out of Picture, we see Azazel, and other Gregori, that disobeyed God (which is impossible, if you don't have a free will). Not talking about topics about interbreeding with humans (Angels are thought to be asexual). Then again, Book of Enoch is considered to be canonical by certain churches (ex: Ethiopia).

How about further back? Why not discuss Caananite religion and practises like the sacred whores of Asherah and the sacrifices of the first born males to El?

>Built in a lot of Jewish and Christian references in my cosmology
>Buried under numerous other belief systems held by a variety of factions
>Have to make it very subtle because the last time I had a directly religious person who was less than cooperative I had to suffer through a 30 minute OoC tirade from one of my players about how you can't trust religious people
>PC's are getting closer and closer to the truth; they don't know how they all stand but they've met most of the big players
>I am Catholic, some of them know
I feel like I am spiraling towards disaster and am goibg to shatter the friend group over this

I offset all the names (e.g. Sheol is a group not a place) but I don't know how long until I get called out by the more attentive players.

Speaking of Asmodeus and Old testament, please read book of Tobit, it is fairly interesting adventure themed book, that is worth to review, in my opinion.

That makes a juicy plot point in history. Loyal angels gave up their free will. But do humans know that? Can they trust them? Are their bloodline descendants of angels running around in the world? There's a lot to tinker with story wise.

I'm not dismissing that at all, I'm all for including the different shades, but as a GM approaching a campaign, where do you draw the line in scope? If it's going to be relevant, include it.

How far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?

Because even with mainline Nicene Christianity you have all Augustine, Aquinas, the Church Fathers, and the Bible itself. Plus you can toss in Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant writing as you go.

Then you can get into the Heresies, which is an entirely different can of worms. I honestly wouldn't start on the Jewish extant writings until you have the Christian mainline down.

>Are their bloodline descendants of angels running around in the world?
Do you mean Half-Angels (Nephilim)? According to book of Enoch, flood mainly happened to kill off nephilim, that were man eating abominational Giants. It would be fun (but I think a bit obvious) plot, that nephilim are sealed off after flood. and they might rise again to inherit earth once more. And they try to free their ancestors, the Gregori...
It may sound boring as we talk now, but I think it has a good potential

Many traditions have Goliath being a descendant of the Nephilim, which would involve some number of Nephilim surviving the flood. Also, the canonical description of Nephilim has them being 'great heroes', not the humanity-destroying gluttons of some later Jewish thought.

Book of Enoch generally makes really good material for fantasy or sci-fi settings. Unsurprisingly it's a favorite with Ancient Aliens and other conspiracy theorists.

That actually sounds amazing. I like you. Pre-flood machinations of all kinds rising again seems like good background noise for the setting to open plot hooks.

I would imagine that if we're making RPG campaigns this is happening in a Crusades Era understanding of the myths. Ideologies and motives falling in line with those of the time.

Isn't there an RPG about Nephilim by makers of CoC? No idea if it's good though.

Thanks
+As it is known, Bible is book of metaphors, sort of speaking.
So for this fantasy setting, we could interpret the scene of flood, not as actual rain-sealevelrise-drawn, but rather Flood of divine energy to wash off every danger to humans from this plain of existence to another realm (be it purgatory, or similar).

Well, Diablo 3 revolves around Nephilim, but Nephilim there are offsprings of Demons and Angels, and are ancestors of Humans (so technically Diablo Humans are degenerate version of HalfAngel-HalfDemons)

I mean, the actual story of the flood is about allowing the Chaos of the Universe, the waters above, Tiamat, the waters put in the sky during creation, back into the world. She wasn't let back into the world to protect humans, she was let back in because humans had become wicked and needed purging.

>Diablo universe humans are offsprings of Inarius and Lilith
>Lilith Is daughter of Mephisto
so basically

That's quite interesting.
Though I'm bit concerned how would Tiamat be described in Christian inspired lore. Could it be another name for demon Leviathan? Or just nonsentient manifestation of divine force?

I'm kind of okay with there being a full on flood. Maybe not an all-encompassing, drown it all and start over flood.

Maybe Noah isn't the only one who knew about it. Some fled to the tops of mointains, some built arks of their own, while others found other outs.

Maybe thr pyramids, in this setting, were tombs for the Nephalim to ride out the flood in. This doesn't really jive with the timeline, but the Pharaohs claiming to be living gods because of their angelic lineage, that they corrupt to their ends and has been perverted through generations, gives them a level of power and awe. Until Moses shows up and slaps them with some plagues.

But I think the subtle twisting of things like that could go a long way. You can't do it with everything. There needs to be non-believers. But if it's a world, like D&D, where the religion is a true, tangible thing some changes will need to be made.

I generally do this myself. You and I happen to share a Church. Players generally like it because It adds something mythical and beyond understanding to what are otherwise straight laced games. I also usually have it err on the side of ambiguity as to if it's actually happening or not.

I had to kick a player out of my house once because he went on an out of character tirade after they met a priest in game who was siphoning funds and running a drug empire, and he seemed to think that because I made an evil character that happened to be religious I shared his opinion that all religious leaders where essentially evil masterminds duping the masses. The picture of Benedict on my fridge should have been a clue.

I always though it could be cool to have flood being nanobots or something that looks like actual flood of water, but eats life away. Then they die and decay into common materials explaining lack of evidence of them.

And yeah the flood was never about protection. It was a purge meant to kill of anyone else than Noah, his family and animala he gathered.

Leviathan isn't a demon, it's a physical being, and comes from the Book of Job which predates Genesis (in writing, not in chronology if we're to take either literally). Also, you need to remember that the Job story, and the Flood story both exist in the region predating Judaism. The Jews simply took the stories and made them appropriate to their culture and beliefs. El speaking from the whirlwind taunts Job by basically saying that his pets (Leviathan and Behemoth (who may be the Bull of Heaven from Gilgamesh)) that he made for shits and giggles are so far in power beyond what Job can imagine, that it's ridiculous for Job to pretend to tell El, or any of the Elohim how to do their job.

Well, Yeah, I'm orthodox christian and follow mainstream teachings.
But what I've wrote was meant to be sort of the plot twist for fantasy universe, lost knowledge some sort, lost thousand s of years ago.
typical "that if its there not to keep something out, but to keep something in" plot twist

She's quite sentient. Re-read the Noah story with the knowledge that "the Flood" is a proper noun, IE, a name, not a description.

I like the idea of The Flood being an amorphous being/tool that God holds in check just in case Creation gets away from him. It has a Hindu flavor to it.

This is kind of what Too Human was toying with, except with Norse in place of Christian.

Angels become golems of holy power. Demons are rampant AIs. Biblical heroes are just utilizing technology no one understands etc. Etc.

Yeah, but at the end, He promises to never let the Flood "destroy all flesh" ever again, and He hangs up His war-bow in the sky to show that He's gonna keep His promise.

It's called Ancient Aliens and was invented by a guy called Erich von Däniken to be originally serious explanation of ancient mythologies from a scientific perspective, but it soon took turn towards more like science fantasy.

Also, it's hard to make this stuff work and be actually good. Ancient Aliens (the show) is an example of that.

Hopefully my players will take it as well as the most of yours.

>tfw you just now made the connection to the Flood in Halo
It's so on the nose how could I be this retarded

Heh, indeed. I thought it was hamhanded as well, but was surprised by how few people got it.

I know.

I kind of liked AA as a guilty pleasure but...eh...

Speaking of these things. I really need to get my hands of Morning of Magicians. It seems that book is greatest inspiration for like 90% modern conspiracy, paranormal and occult stuff.

Also, I think it has Nephilim in it too.

I think if I were to run it modern it would almost have to be at that Constantine level of plausible deniability.

Or take Dan Brown style conspiracies and apply them to everything.

>Tolkien
>heavily Christian inspired

I don't think you can call Tolkien's books particularly heavily inspired by Christianity compared to other fantasy writers.

Yeah, I never really found much Christian things in LoTR, but maybe I haven't looked hard enough. If anything it's more like Germanic and Norse mythologies.

I think this association of Tolkien with christianity has more to with the guy himself being a devout Christian rather than his works.

The entire cosmology is Christian, as well as the moral themes of the book being completely colored by Catholic thought. The first however, is more apparent in the appendices and Silmarillion.

That said, the influence of pagan and Norse myth is readily apparent and more visible, but it all has an undercurrent of Christian thought. Gandalf for example is based on Odin visually, but his role is of a guardian angle. He is even brought back from death by God, not Manwe (who is the standard PIE Sky Father archetype) .

Tolkien also straight-up copied at least one scene in Silmarillion from Kalevala, only changing the names. There are tons of influences in his work, the Christian influences just tend to be more obvious to most people, since that's the mythology they're the most familiar with.

The lambas bread is the ucharist.

If we're going Abrahamic, I'm running a West Marches campaign themed after Judaism and Jewish apocrypha. It's going pretty well.

Lady Elbereth is the Virgin Mary

Melkor is Satan in his wrathful aspect while Sauron is Satan in his corrupting/trickster aspect

Golem falls into the lava through divine grace

For Old Testament translations that stand on their own, get a Jewish one.
To really help understand how we got the bible that we have today, I suggest Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus. I have yet to read his other books, so I can't speak for those.

>NIV is fine

The Douay–Rheims Bible is the only acceptable English language bible. Excellent translation of the OT, as well as extremely faithful translations of the original Greek in the NT.