What elements do you need for fantasy not!India besides war elephants, crazy gods, really elaborate temples...

Musical numbers. Alternatively, just watch Baahubali 1 and 2, though the 2nd movie is better. It's a generation-spanning story of epic REVENGGGEEEER.

Extremely complex and elaborate social orders and rules with multiple levels of different identities: Varna's, casts, clan and tribal allegiances, citizenships, religious associations etc. Most of the problems should really be related to navigation of complex and rich social landscapes.

Religious plurality and ambiguity: multiple different religious cults and interpretations overlaping. Old gods vs. new gods vs. imported gods vs weird outlier cults of each.

Major religious conflict between groups from entirely different religious cannons coexisting in one space.

Cults consisting entirely of castrated beggars.

Ritual and magic diseases stemming entirely from inappropriate social or physical contact. Basically everything you do - talking to the wrong person, picking up the wrong type of food with the wrong hand, getting off the wrong foot: can result in disease or a curse.

Insane esoteric cults with cosmologies and philosophies that make fucking Gnostics look tame and grounded.

Giant and overcrowded cities of humans, and strange, unplayable but oddly pragmatic civilizations of nagas and similar shit living just behind the borders of them. Under water.

Massive mountain ranges on the north of the country inhabitated by wise but cruel dragon kings.

Asceticism coming as an entire set of gameplay mechanics.

Magic largely based around body physiology. Self-transformations.
Fecal magic.
Sexual magic.

SELEE like evil sect desiring to elevate humanity to a new level of being by forcing them to abandon physical bodies and unite all their minds into one shared consciousness.

Pic unrelated.

Just don't confuse caste with varna, please.

Give me the overarching themes of Indian religion and the creation story and I’ll give you the best of the best

Ahaha... you don't know much about Indian religious systems, do you?

Protip: there is no "Indian religion" (singular) and their mythological and religious landscapes are insanely complex and rich. It's pretty much impossible to even categorize it, much less give anyone the overarching themes and creation story.

well if you are looking for surface level themes.
>tell me everything about an entire religion and culture and I will blenderize it for two
Bahubali
good idea. user, watch this movie and pick some of the aesthetic.

>well if you are looking for surface level themes.
Even on surface level, knowing the difference between varna and caste (jati) is pretty god damn vital.

It's like not knowing the difference between a social class and nationality.

well the game is going to be played by some suburban kid with his friends
They don't need to know the finer points of jati, varna and even profession. They just want want something exotic that they are familiar with.

>americans think that kali is a demon

Not him. Tell me the difference. I know jati (I think) but not varna. My knowledge of India is very superficial, mostly coming from a friend who likes bollywood dances.

Jati = caste system that everyone knows and familiar with
Varna = the original system as it was supposed to be in post vedic india.
Basically you can have a different Jati than a Varna. For example I am a Kulin Brahmin that is also an Ethnic Bengali
The Kulin brahmins are supposed to be the highest order of brahmins and we have specific ritualss that other brahmins are not supposed to follow. For example, we are not allowed to beg, our sacred thread is longer than other brahmins and we were traditional landowners over a thousand years ago

>Basically you can have a different Jati than a Varna. For example I am a Kulin Brahmin that is also an Ethnic Bengali
That doesn't explain anything

Think of Jati as a Y axis, Varna as an X axis

Lot's of weird demons as enemies (check out Tibetan Buddhism).
Don't think the undead are big in their mythology, maybe because it conflicts with resurrection somehow.

>well the game is going to be played by some suburban kid with his friends
Don't underestimate the kids, and don't dumb down interesting ideas, especially when they can both be interesting to play and an opportunity for the kids to learn.

Actually, wrong.
Varna is what most people know and mistakingly call "Caste":

It's the 4+1 division of Indian society - all of Indian population can be divided in this (4+1) types.
"Varna" literally means "Color", and it refers to rules that members of the four main social classes were supposed to wear. The four varna's are (in order of importance top to bottom):
Brahmins - intellectual and spiritual leaders, priests, teachers
Kshatriyas - warriors, rulers, but also administrators and bureocrats.
Vaishyas - farmers and craftsmen
Shudras - laborers, servants, service-providers

I said 4+1, the last category being literally "those who don't fit any of these categories, Varna-less". Those are who we know as Untouchables: beggars, people performing ritually unclean work (work with blood, dead bodies, fecal matter), deviants, castrates etc...

Varna is a very theoretical way to divide society.

Jati - or Caste - is actually a very pragmatic division. It's a division in to smaller social groups, most often based on specific occupations, but also considering kinship relationships, religious beliefs location where you live and so on.
There are literally thousands of casts in India - each region may have it's own unique caste divisions and specifics. Nobody outside of India knows much about Jati because they are WAY too complex and rich in their nature.

There are however, only Four plus One Varna's and everybody knows those - or at least everybody knows "Brahmins and the others".

user, the reason why many people confuse Jati and Varna is because it seems Jati is simply more thorough subdivision within larger Varna. Therefore they sound like parts of the same thing. You are Brahmnin with more specific rights than other Brahmins but are there Vaishyas who can perform things normally attributed to other Varna because of their Jati? If there are none then it solidifies this image of Jati and Varna being part of the same system and distinction being unimportant.

Jati is used for caste in how it is represented in india.
They don't ask me for my Varna while going to the temple, they ask me for my jati and my gotra (clan name).

Hell, the entire system of affirmative action in india is built off the jati division rather than the varna based ones.

>Vaishyas who can perform things normally attributed to other Varna because of their Jati?
yes
There were rituals for moving your entire clan from a Varna to another.
A ritual that was called the golden womb was performed when a ruler had enough power and wanted to legitimize himself as part of the Kshatriya caste.

You're talking about how it is in India, he's talking about how its perceived in the west. Being a westerner, he's right, we use Varna for our definition of Indian castes.

>A ritual that was called the golden womb was performed when a ruler had enough power and wanted to legitimize himself as part of the Kshatriya caste.
Now that sounds interesting but don't tell /d/ about it

>They don't ask me for my Varna while going to the temple, they ask me for my jati and my gotra (clan name).
True, but you are indian. In practical life in India, jati is far more important, as knowing which jati you are makes it generally easy to infer what Varna you as it's the more detailed, practically established division. When indian talk about what matters to them, they talk about jati - the castes.

However, here in the West, people got confused. As we don't have generally the insights into the concrete social reality of jati, we barely bothered to read something about those four and one groups and that already scared us. So most people outside actually think "caste" refers to this 4+1 thing - they assume that if somebody talks about caste, they talk about being Brahmin or Kshatriaya.

This is the difference between external and internal perspective. To you, it's obvious that caste is much more complex and nuanced and practically oriented than varna - but external observers will stop on the simpler external level.

That is the reason why I brought it up - to point out that our western understanding of "caste" is actually different from the actual use of the word in india. Hence the whole "please don't confuse varna and caste".

it is a ritualistic rebirth
They didn't shove their ruler inside a golden bagina and push him out again

>They don't ask me for my Varna while going to the temple, they ask me for my jati and my gotra (clan name).
Is it polite to ask those questions in Hindu temples? Do you just greet a guy and ask what Jati he belongs to? Or you ask it first and then treat him according to his position?

How is it done? Can you move from Shudra to Kshatriya in one go?

not really. Because old temples are public grounds that are renovated by the Archaelogical Survey of India, you have actual policemen there. Its open to all people who want to visit the temple. Doesn't matter if you are hindu, muslim, foreigner or whatever. As long as you pay the ticket price, you are in.
Of course they kick you out if you cause a ruckus like some abrahamic autists usually do.

They basically ask your gotra (clan name) and varna (caste) so that they can properly do the service in your name. Earlier it used to be that untouchables could not enter the temples.

It gained prominence in the Gupta era when a bunch of merchants made the most powerful hindu empire in india. Basically it was made as a way to legitimize your rule if you were not from the ruling caste.

>They basically ask your gotra (clan name) and varna (caste) so that they can properly do the service in your name. Earlier it used to be that untouchables could not enter the temples.
I take it foreigners like myself couldn't get service because we didn't have a proper name?

You would. It just will be part of the general service of the temple, not one particularly made by you asking for the wellbeing of your family and clan.

Do you know specifics of the ritual? It sounds different from our normal coronation ceremony.

no. All I know is that the founder of the rashtrakuta dynasty crowned himself as one,

I see, that's more open system than I expected

Now talk about how the west has a really fucked up and misguided understanding of karma.

That's unfortunate, that name gave me the impression of some fabulous ceremony

it must have been.

Look it up. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't at least pour water on the dude.

thehindu.com/features/magazine/Of-cows-courts-and-princes/article14630727.ece

Ok, I was wrong. Its literally /d/ tier
Do note that the Nayak is a south indian surname for a lower ranking feudal lord

I didn't watch the second, the first was a bit 'eh' for me. Is it that much better?

the relevant section

>The principal ceremony was the hiranyagarbha — the rite of the golden womb which allowed the Nayak a ‘rebirth’ without having to go through the inconvenience of dying in the first place.

>In other words, freshly sanctified with holy waters, the man entered the golden cow through its mouth. He then spent a duration inside its ‘womb’, awaiting his second coming while court Brahmins chanted mantras and pelted the cow with flowers etc. And then, before the auspicious hour expired, the Nayak tumbled out in his new avatar.

>When the vanquished Nayak emerged at the other end of the cow, born as its human offspring, he was no longer the man whose legitimacy was under stress after battlefield embarrassments; he was valorous once more, with a second shot at kingly glory. He also had to display tears. The wife of the chief priest was strategically planted near the cow’s tail so that when the Nayak landed in her lap, he could bawl like a healthy baby, while she caressed him, fed him milk, and played her part in this ceremonious charade.

This is stunningly theatrical

yes, thats what rituals are.
theatrics

Or theatre developed from rituals
I mess up their connection sometimes

still, acting like a giant calf for a few minutes to regain your honour is kinda cool. Like a North Korea tier LARP

I don't think people really cared to differentiate between the two. It's when people started taking shit too seriously that definitions needed to be set.

>Now talk about how the west has a really fucked up and misguided understanding of karma.
OK, if you wish. If the Indian fella is in, please feel free to correct me on this, I'm an outsider with very limited knowledge though.

First, to be honest the understanding of karma is kinda divisive even among hindu/buddhist societies. Both agree that Karma is essentially an account of our actions across Saṃsāra: the circle of our existence, and at the same time, it's a force that binds us to the samsara.

That said, the way we were taught this, there are essentially TWO different interpretations of Karma. One is "esoteric" understanding of it, the other is pragmatic.

Pragmatic understanding of karma is that it's essentially a fucking currency that you use to buy yourself out of shitty situations. There is good karma and bad karma: bad karma burns by making your life miserable, good karma is used to make your life better. You can also literally GIVE OR SELL your karma - typical example would be buying good karma by donating to temples and monasteries or giving wealth away to the poor.
The bad thing about karma in general is that across the samsara, good and bad karma is balanced. Meaning that at one point of your existence, you will always have bad one, and another part of your existence that will be balanced out. Every virtuous brahmin has been also a lowest of beggars and vice versa. However, since people are pratically concerned with short term well-being, they are trying to accumulate as much good karma as they can within their individual lives, and just hoping they are lucky.

The esoteric understanding of karma rejects the notion of karma being good or bad: instead, according to them - KARMA IS INHERENTLY A BAD THING. It's bad, because it ties us to samsara - forces us to continue the cycle of reincarnations.

Cont soon

Now, to us westerners, the idea of reincarnation generally tends to be an optimistic one. We are trained to fear death - either because we fear the nonthingness and definitiveness of it (if we are secular) or because we fear the potential infavorable judgement if we are Christian.

To Hindu or Buddhist people, however, reincarnation is... less uplifiting perspective. It basically means you are trapped FOREVER in a life that is going to be inherently fucking painful. And it IS going to be painful, because as established, "good" and "bad" karma is generally balanced across Samsara - there is always going to be at least equal amount of suffering across your life as good things happening. You are doing well now? Well, fuck you - you are going to be miserable in one of your eventual lives. And it will go on and on for ever. No fucking escape. And all thanks to the fucking karma, forcing us to keep being re-born.

Except: there is an escape. You can escape by GETTING RID OF KARMA ALL TOGETHER. That will allow you to step out of the cycle of samsara. Now: hindu and buddhism (and different buddhist sects among each other) disagree on what will follow if you get rid of your karma. Oldest Buddhist teachings suggest LITERAL NOTHINGNESS will happen. Buddha himself was a pretty dark guy it seems, and the teachings most close to his own say that essentially, what we all seek is death - true death, similar to the one secular people believe in. Just plain, absolute non-existence.

Védic Hindus and many later Buddhist schools are somewhat more optimistic. Some believe that by stepping outside of samsara, we will become one with pan-god, Brahman: experience absolute unity with the world and all existence, transcend suffering and reach a state similar to absolute bliss. I think they are morons though.

Anyway, that is what - in my understanding - is Karma in Hindu and Buddhist beliefs. Now you can compare to what you people thought it was, and see how well it fits.

You obviously need !notJainists, !notMuslims, !notBuddhists, and a whole lot of other religions.

About jainists : Their religion is centered around reincarnation. The idea is that every living thing can be a reincarnated person, and it matters like a lot. Not only they don't eat any kind of meat, but the more orthodox ones must sweep the floor right in front of them so as to not step on an insect. When they can afford it, they get hindus servants to do that for them. My knowledge of them is limited but think of them as the "jews" of India. They get some privileges for being out of the indian caste system and not having to obey their rules.

nah, they aren't the "jews" of the the subcontinent.
Parsis are the Jews of the subcontinent.
And actual jews.

All the things they don't bring 2 the loo.

Actually, rituals in which people pretend to be babies as part of rite-of-passage are pretty damn common across the world. Very often as part of social class transition, as in this case. I can't remember where it was, but I vaguely remember a society in which grown-up men who were adopted into higher-social-status families were dressed up in diapers, pretending to be little babies and sucking milk from their adoptive mothers tits for a while as part of the adoption process.

More or less, anyone that doesn't have a caste and isn't a muslim is the jew of India.

Psionics/Chi/Ki casting. Lots of lasers and blasts or just plain anomalous stuff.

kek, muslims, jains and buddhists in india have castes all the same pal. Its not part of their religious doctrine but it exists nonetheless.

You are God and you can do anything but you don't realize it

Actually, the idea of godlihood here does not mean "you can do anything". That would be a serious projection of European ideas of divinity onto the belief.

Yes, you are a god (or at least part of you is divine in nature), but being a god in this respect means that you lose all desire to do anything. It's very much like (in fact, it is exactly that) the Human Instrumentality Project in Evangelion: realization of your own divinity mean also realization your identity will all other living things, and finding absolute content with the state of the universe as it is, because YOU ARE THE UNIVERSE.

>insanely complex and rich
You act like it's the only religious system like that. It's definitely possible to boil it down. It may not turn out super pretty, but it's possible.

bahubali

>You act like it's the only religious system like that.
No, but it's perhaps the most extreme example of complexity and diversity of religious practices we can currently talk about.

>It's definitely possible to boil it down.
Not on a format like Veeky Forums without utterly and absolutely missing every single interesting or relevant point - thus making the whole exercise pointless to begin with. The main problem with boiling shit down like this is that it almost universally ends up with you replacing the interesting, exotic concepts with more familiar ones you project into it in an attempt to make it easier to explain. But then you end up with a mirror of your own cultural perceptions, and that defeats the point of studying and borrowing an exotic foreign society in the first place.

Well there's no point explaining shit in terms that aren't understood - if you have to explain an idea in an inexact way to make it comprehensible (obviously the media you use imposes limitations, but you shouldn't really need more than a few posts - the main practices of most religions involve the masses of the "general public", thus will never be THAT deep) then that slight lack of accuracy is certainly excusable

Ah, so its where MK stole CHIM from

Wow, this thread is packed full of amazingly useful information. I even got to see a couple of bruised apples.

Thanks everybody!

The second is way better. I agree that the first was 'eh', because the main character wasn't that interesting. His dad, however, is rather more interesting and most of the film's focused on him. Then there's the final battle, which is basically two Exalted fighting it out. (It steals choreography from basically every Marvel movie, I think. Sort of like how Baahu used those God of War gauntlets in the first movie.)

well no shit. As a practicing hindu, I never found TES so deep until I got into the lore of other western settings.

>Ah, so its where MK stole CHIM from
This idea actually appears in multiple different cultures and ideologies. MK probably got the idea from Gnosticism.
As for where Gnostics got it, that is debatable. They were no doubt heavily influenced by Neo-Platonism and Platonism - people like Plotinos and uh... Plato.
Others claim that Plotinos was only a secondary inspiration for Gnostics, and that their ideas came directly from India.

It's also possible that Plotinos/Platon got the idea from India themselves.

Either way, it's a bit long mess of inspirations and correlations that most likely, but not with certainity all have their roots in Indian Védic philosophy.

>You are God and you can do anything but you don't realize it
It's worth mentioning that ALL LIVING THINGS are god. So while it's kinda cool, it does not make you particularly unique and makes the idea of being a (part of) God less bad-ass.

>Plotinos
I like their pizza rolls

OK, you made me double-check. The correct English spelling is indeed Plotinus, not Plotinos. However, the original greek spelling is Πλωτῖνος, with omikron before the sigma, meaning that the spelling "Plotinos" which is common in my country is more accurate.
I also apparently wrote Platon instead of Plato. It's the same case - in greek the name is spelled Πλάτων not Πλάτω. Why does english spelling fuck up simple Greek transcription?

Depends on the period.

Like ancient India's basically BUDDHIST IMPERIALISM LOOK AT THAT AFGHANISTAN WE CONQUERED AND DESPAIR ANGLOS

Medieval India's all LOL I AM THE GOD-KING OF THIS HOVEL AND I CAN DO WHATEVER THE FUCK I WANT ALSO WHY ARE THERE MONGOLS AND MUDSLIMS IN MY HOLY TEMPLE

And early modern Indian's like THUGGEES ON MY ROADS IDGAF, WRESTLING MAFIA TAKING A CUT FROM REAL ESTATE TRADE IDGAF I GOTTA SHOW THAT I CONTROL NATURE BY MEANS OF HUNTING OUTINGS WHAT ARE THOSE NEPALESE AND SIKH DOING

But hill tribes coming down to axe questions and iranian duellists looking for a fight seemed to have been a constant.

>What elements do you need for fantasy not!India besides war elephants, crazy gods, really elaborate temples, reincarnation, and gurus?

Gambling. Lots of Gambling.

>arrows of indra
>not a comete ripoff of Empire of the Petal Throne
kys AoI is fucking garbage

Wacky spirit powers. Just real weird shit, like getting good at stretching and breathing lets you shrink down to the size of an atom or astral project into God's sock drawer to look at his porn

>it does not make you particularly unique and makes the idea of being a (part of) God less bad-ass.
As long as other parts of You don't realize it You can play with Yourself all You want.

Demon Kings, Sword Whips, Poop

Let off of your sense of scale.

>As long as other parts of You don't realize it You can play with Yourself all You want.
The point is that the realization literally means "abandoning the notion of "You" all together". The realization means that you no longer suffer the delusion of partiality and division.
The idea that there is "You" and "Not you", that you could be described as a lot of different parts: that is the GREAT DELUSION, and abandoning such silly, absurd misconceptions is the process of ascending to godhood.
Literally, the false idea that there is some kind of "self" and "other" is what prevents you from being god in the first place. It does not matter if "they" realize it or not.

The country has severe economic inequality with most of the people in such abject poverty that they literally defecate on the streets in public. Also trash outside piled up into literal hills

I actually love India’s culture, but I’m reminding you of the problems

Wow, thank you! Where would be without you!

Confront me like a man.

nah, we get better every year.
But none of that has to do with using indian myths to flesh out someone's game.

Well, I'm not entirely sure what you expected reminded us self-righteously about shit that every fucking child knows, but isn't really in any way relevant to what the thread is about.

We’ll have your not!India be a paradise. I don’t really care what you do

What.
The actual fuck.
Are you talking about?

We all know how future India will look like.

user, I don't want to start lengthy debates about the nature of things. I just want to point out that under the same premise and general cosmology we can have different points of view, creation myths, etc, which is one of the coolest things about not!India. Brancing out in not!Persia and not!China while getting influx of foreign beliefs and gods as well. These things are not exclusive to each other. You may say abandoning these delusions is the right path, others may say embracing them and being content with such delusions and goals is the path, both with the their own arguments.

>just want to point out that under the same premise and general cosmology we can have different points of view, creation myths, etc, which is one of the coolest things about not!India.
The point is that the plurality of these concepts is what makes them interesting. I could tell you that Indian mythology claims that the universe was created by act of sacrifice of the Cosmic Man, Purusha who was cut into pieces: part of him was burned which created the Older gods, such as Indra, while another part became physical world, another spiritual world, while another part gave birth to later gods, such as Vishnu and Shiva. Clear, simple description of the process.
Also utterly misleading about the actual state of Indian views of cosmogony and general tone or themes of their views.

As you said, the plurality of views makes it interesting. But it also the thing you can't simply or dumb down and present in such a limited space.

>I could tell you that Indian mythology claims that the universe was created by act of sacrifice of the Cosmic Man
I certainly heard other versions as well but the key part is in the end it's inhabited by more or less recognizable ensemble cast of divine actors. But again that's the great advantage of high functioning polytheism.

bigass ornamental rings affixed to your back

now that you mention it...how is exalted not all over this sillyness?

>khan
>ethnically indian
lol no

>noonien singh

Empire of the Petal Throne by M.A. Barker is what youre looking for.

Also this is incredibly true. Arrows of Indra is a fucking dumpster fire that rips off the worst of Petal Throne and smashes all sorts of modern philosophical and moral bullshit to sate the authors lust for inclusion at all costs. The cost, in this case, is a good rpg product.
Then again, if you want your not!India nation to be a utopia of modern bullshit with a paper thin layer of setting on it, then by all means Arrows of Indra is for you.

Meant to quote: in that second part.