How would you make a campaign with the pope as the big bad?

It's starting to be a catholic thing as well.

I would probably make him more of a politician than a fanatic or something like that.

Actually, as a atheist, I would be more tempted to make religion irrelevant rather than straight up evil. A temptation I should probably fight as it may being too restricting.

Unironically the plot of Assassin's Creed 2.

The Pope is demanding humans, elves, and dwarves import an inherently violent and evil race of orcs or whatever and threatens to send the inquisition after anyone who doesn't. The Pope is probably being mind controlled by some evil dude.
Just for laughs the mind controller has the pope lick the feet of [race] and has him advocate everyone else do the same, for further humiliation of the people he's pretty much already defeated by controlling their powerful leader.

Dark Souls 3

There have been some pretty fucking heretical popes. Orgies in the vatican and shit.

Yeah, honestly, one of the most annoying things about atheists is the idea that religions are either irrelevant or a crutch. They're really, really not. If you see your whole world through a certain lens, it has titanic impact upon your actions. That's why we couldn't have modern science until Christianity came along. Priests spent centuries eradicating pagan superstitions. You cannot do science if you believe that there's capricious spirits in every tree, rock or whatever. By saying that power only belonged to a logical, reasonable God, the epistemological door was opened for a rational, methodological understanding of the universe.

One of the things you can do to make religion way more interesting is just asking "Given these fundamental beliefs, how would people act, on average?"

>new most jesus like pope is the antichrist
>not the one that was actually nazi
The state of the catholics

I wouldn't. It'd be too fedora.

Very easy, the Crusades portrayed realistically. Pope was the Hitler of Middle Ages.

>wants to import violent people to rape and pillage
He's the perfect "puppet for secretive evil mastermind" archetype. It's like if Gondor had some powerful advisor controlled by Sauron to brainwash everyone into embracing the Orcs and sabotaging their own defenses.

Not really, the Popes occasionally objected to the bullshit. And nothing they did was any different from what other people did when it was bad, kind of arbitrary to call anyone the "hitler of middle ages", in fact, is retarded and shows how uninformed someone is of the nature of those times.

Funny how it's denouncement of the fantastical led to it's own downfall.

A dragon is ravaging the countryside, but instead of a dragon its the Pope.

Easy.

Oh. Too late.

No need to be edgy though. It's just History.
Many popes were mad motherfuckers. Most, actually.

Dictatus papae
Pull this shit on the players and they will be itching to stab mr big hat.

What was the pope who dug up his predecessor from the grave, tried his rotting corpse for his supposed crimes and then had it executed?

> Have a gigantic hoard
> Kidnap young virgins
> Fight knights
> Demand that even kings kneel before them
Damn. Does he have an excommunication breath?

Honestly, same. Final boss fistfight with the pope is something I'd love to run.

He also actually acts to care for the sick, and condemns pedophilia in priests as well as other common abuses of power. More importantly, he wants to give homes to refugees. In case you forgot, not everyone in that corner of the world is a sharia law zealot, most just don't want to get shot or bombed.

And, y'know, stands by all the shit he has to do as pope. Even down to not wearing mixed cloth. I think you're just a faggot.

Final Fantasy X. Just replace Yu Yevon for Jesus.

>I just want to give homes to those orcs raping and pillaging everywhere they go
>*licks green feet*

>the crusades were a bad thing
I bet you believe that Galileo was unjustly imprisoned for promoting science too.

No, it was the redefinition of God as a being of pure Will and Power, rather than the actuality of the Ultimate personal reality that is by nature, Good, that lead to its downfall.
Also fuck the Enlightenment. It was full of hacks, and caused the French Revolution that should have once and for all proved that a society based on "reason" was worse, or at least no better than one based on a transcendent moral foundation.

>Logic is derived from an act of god
Creationists literally tout that the reason for dinosaur bones, carbon dating, and sediment layers is because God arbitrarily changed physics after the Great Flood.

>Logic is derived from an act of god
Logic isn't directly derived from God, and apparently God forgot to give you reading comprehension when he gave you a mind, because that isn't what I said.
I said that Science (not logic, they're different) is impossible with an animistic worldview, Before Christianity, Europeans had such a worldview. Christianity removed it, and replaced it with Christianity, which not only removes Animism, but contains, fundamentally, the idea that the world is ordered in such a way that is comprehensible to human minds.

I recall they elected one pope thinking he was simple minded and easy to control-then they found out he was totally mad with power, so they deselected him and voted in another pope, so for a few years there were two popes denouncing each other and excommunication the factions on each side, then came the reformation

Honestly, I'm Protestant and I think this pope is pretty based. Especially with how he sticks up for the poor.

Funnily enough, I feel like most Catholics I personally know don't like him very much.

Pope Stephen VI, who exhumed Pope Formosus in 897 and had a synod retroactively strip Formosus of his Papacy, mutilate the corpse by removing the fingers used in blessings before reburying it and then digging it up for a second time to be dumped into the Tiber.

Hilariously, it was Formosus who made Stephen VI a bishop so by his own ruling he was never legally ordained as such.

For more Papal fun, research the Pornocracy.

Make the pope a secret Muslim. It was a great twist in a recent Crusader Kings LP: he took over the Catholic Church and tried to take over Europe.

>one pope over saw every crusade

I think that interesting characters can be made with the idea that religion is irrelevant, my pragmatic politician not-pope would probably have a "Pray all you want, I will do the thing" mentality and I think it can be interesting.
But yeah, you can't do only that, if you're going to have religion as a theme you need genuine faith at some point, for the better or for the worse.

Actually I think the difficult part isn't even making genuine believers, but making self-evident believers. We are used to question faith today, it's difficult to imagine people whose beliefs are as natural to them than the sun rising every day. People than wouldn't even consider most of their belief as faith as we would understand it. I'm not even sure the word faith would have the same meaning to them.

The whole "Communion" thing would be pretty hard for a secret Muslim pope to do, since alcohol is generally seen as forbidden in Islam.

Muslims are allowed to break the rules if it's necessary for jihad.

By making him a pedophile

"Every religion began with a lie..."

>faith
Well yeah, it doesn't mean the same thing. Today most people will say some retarded thing like faith meaning "Believing without evidence." You can thank atheists for that.
Faith isn't that. It's not a way of knowing something.
Let me break it down for you.
Faith has 3 parts:
>Notitia
The notion; what the faith is in, the propositional statement. The content.
>Assensus
Assent
Evidence and that leads to the conviction that the proposition of the content is correct. stories and explanations passed on from elders is a part of this since usually the object of the faith isn't present. The fact it worked and got the this far is another factor.
>Fiducia
This is the part that many don't get. The easiest way to understand it is "trust." if you have compete faith, you take that personal act of resting upon the knowledge that is contained in the previous 2 parts, and structuring it into your life.

You can have faith in something that you can see every day. Like your wife, for example. People talk about a faithful spouse. This usage is much much closer to the old definition of faith.

>tips fedora
Every religion began with something true, or it wouldn't have gone anywhere.

>Not really, the Popes occasionally objected to the bullshit

I wonder what went through the pope's head after the crusaders attacked Constantinople.

Kult, Pope is a lictor. Alternatively, Call of Cthulhu(or Delta Green), Pope is some other kind of horror.

You could also have the PCs be protestants fighting the influence of Catholic church, or in service of an anti-pope.

Yeah I'm sure a guy created the world by wanking into a river.

Every religion began with a lie is a maxim, you absolute autist. Don't take it personally about your religion.

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"Why are these fucking retards doing this? Holy shit this is not even remotely what this was supposed to be. I can't believe they actually did something worse than when they sacked that Catholic city in Croatia. Holy shit I'm surrounded by fucking idiots and manipulative greedy merchants." was actually what he was thinking, Redditor.

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I'm talking about every religion. EVERY one. Not mine. All of 'em. Did you not read what I said.

>Buddhism: You make your own suffering
This is true.
>Christianity: If you give yourself up, you'll gain yourself and more.
This is true.
>Hinduism: If you work to make things better in accordance with society, they'll get better
This is true. (I'm sorry to any Hindus reading this, I can't express striving for dharma properly.)

All of these statements are true. They all let you navigate the world. Of course I'm being very reductionist but all these statements do somewhat get to the heart of a religion, and they ARE expressed at the founding of said religion. Every religion begins with something true.

It would take the most euphoric party imaginable.

Look me in the eye and tell me that a crusade-leading Pope is a bad fit for a BBEG. Not even fedora tipping, it's just a religious version of "foreign king invades land for resources."

Like the one who had small boys in his swimming pool to chase around, or possibly the pope with the chesnuts, the chandelier and the prostitutes?
The one that used to have midgets he employed to beat critters to death on hunts? That'd be a good fight, couple of halbediers and a couple of midgets with bejeweled oak clubs.
The one who dug up another pope, long dead, to put him on trial?
I mean go through some 11th to 14thC history, all there for you

>for resources
>implying the Crusades were a resource benefit
>implying they weren't to make sure the Muslims didn't invade AGAIN
The Crusades, Charles Martel, Vienna and a couple of others are the only reason that the entirety of Europe isn't acting like the Balkans.

He said "began," not "their core tenet is."

Benedict wasn't a Nazi, he was a German who happened to be of the age to be conscripted during world war 2.
Educate yourself about Catholicism in Nazi Germany, you might be surprised what can be learnt.

user user anon. Everyone alive in Germany at the time of the Nazi rule, including people who had no ability to vote in the Nazi party, was a Nazi. To say otherwise is antisemetic.

Scientology.

>Very easy, the Crusades portrayed realistically.
You mean as mostly defensive wars against islamic expansion in europe?

If you want money, start a religion

This is true.

>failed to retake the Holy Lands
>sacked Constantinople
Yeah, those Crusades sure were great huh

Not all of them. Just roughly about 3 quarters of them.
Surely we should not judge people based on the majority however.

I support the idea of converting the heathens, but in order to accept them, they MUST renounce Islam. Through Jesus you can be saved. If you just start giving stuff to heathens for free, then you have less to help the poor christians who ARE in need.

You know, like the ones stuck in fucking muslim countries but can't get out because all refugee slots are taken by moderate beheaders?

Final Fantasy 13

>If you want money, start a religion
or start a business.

Scientology did both. At the same time.

You're kind of not factoring in the fact that there's actually no room and not enough resources to sustain the millions of unskilled non-westerners without the system later spiraling into a violent collapse.

Does Square Enix have beef with the Vatican

>implying the First Crusade was literally anything other than a power play by a butthurt Pope
Come on now, let's not pretend like the Crusades were a good thing all around. They weren't the horrible, evil child-raping things fedoras paint them to be, but they were hardly unilaterally good, ESPECIALLY the shitshows that were the Peasant Crusade and the First Crusade. And it doesn't matter that they weren't for material resources, a military invasion is still a military invasion, and someone somewhere is going to regard them as the bad guys.

They did take the Holy Lands, and blaming the Venetian war with Constantinople on "the Crusades" is painting with a brush broader than the entire canvas.
>hurr they didn't win in the end
Guess they never should have tried then, and guess Constantinople was an even bigger failure.

>Scientology did both. At the same time.
Hate all you want, the clever bastards at the top played the system and made out like bandits.

Look to history my boy. And in general terms of good and bad, look past that and focus on good/bad in terms of different perspective

>The middle eastern crusades
>The European crusades
>Any war that involved the papal states

The important thing to know, assuming that this isn't a stealth-/pol/ thread (which I know it is), is that the Vatican was one of the longest standing political powers from the mid 700s to the 1800s. They had shit tons of spiritual power, i.e. "If you oppose us, you're going to hell." on top of a shit ton of land, military power, and monetary tributes to the church that had been happening since the Roman Empire had been around.

And on top of all of this, almost a thousand years worth of wars to work off of for your material.

Players are druids.

>power play by a butthurt Pope
Nothing wrong with reclaiming Christian lands from the Muslims. And the idea that the Romans ever thought the Greeks were "The" Roman Empire is anachronistic fanboying for the Byzantines.
Based on their own understanding of power relations, I don't even understand what you're saying the "power play" is. The Papacy always held itself higher than either "Roman Empire", and the Muslims were always the enemy.
Also the First Crusade was not a shitshow, it was the most successful one.

>Guess they never should have tried then
Yup. Think of all the progress that could have been made had they not bled so many men and so much materiel on some dismal piece of foreign desert before the development of oil.

>German Jews were Nazis all along

Well, Sulyvahn wasn't the campaigns big bad, but he was pretty much responsible for everything

Protestant detected.

They're called ashkenazis for a reason.

...

>Also fuck the Enlightenment. It was full of hacks, and caused the French Revolution that should have once and for all proved that a society based on "reason" was worse, or at least no better than one based on a transcendent moral foundation.

The problem with the FR was the fact it was basically a game of paranoia and the republic was friend computer. Dechristianization and the cult of reason were symptoms of the insanity. Maybe literally insanity in Robespierre's case since he seems to have had a pyschotic break right before the terror

True, which is why we need to crusade the shit out of the middle-east and wipe out the mohammedian heresy.

Eyep, one was in France, one was in Rome. Both excommunicated the other and accused the other of being the anti christ

> and they ARE expressed at the founding of said religion.
Reading. Comprehension

Is a cult.

Easy.

>Is a cult.
And Christianity began as a jewish death cult.

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GOD FUCKING DAMN IT WHY IS SHE SO CUTE IT IS LITERALLY MAKING ME ANGRY

...

I like you. But think you've got the symptoms and the causes reversed. The FR and Enlightenment ripped out the core of the culture (Dechristianization), said that it was evil (cult of reason), and then expected things to NOT become a game of Paranoia with the Republic as Friend Computer.

>, I feel like most Catholics I personally know don't like him very much.

No one minds the pope when he's sitting in his Pope chair doing Pope things, but the moment he asks you to do something more than show up for mass on the holy days of obligation everyone is pissed

I'm not even mad, I'm impressed.

Look to the Borgias. A family rife with decadence, greed, and corruption, selling the mercy of the church to line their own pockets. The heroes could be righteous crusaders working to restore the sanctity of the papal state, or Robin Hood brigands who see the sale of indulgences as another tax on the poor and destitute.

You can usually guess how much someone likes him based on how much they dislike Catholics.

Dechristianization did not come until fairly late in the revolution. In fact Robespierre hated the athiests and hated their process of Dechristianization. The Revolution was set up against the Catholic church for a strictly financial reasons. they were horrendously in debt and they had taken to seizing Catholic Holdings to sell in order to try and make money. They had been doing this since before they even deposed the king. This was justified by how corrupt the bishops were in France at the time.

Robspierre, in the midst of his absolutely brain fucked high of murdering everyone, took time to start a new religion to replace the cult of reason - the cult or the supreme being. Many on the mountain thought belief in a higher power was important, particularly Robespierre

>things to do when you have no argument and know you're wrong

I mean, it wasn't really a death cult

Arguably, it was original Judaism that was the death cult. David got up to some shit at gods behest