Ultimately, I'm so familiar with the Fading Suns material that reading through the first chapter really goes through a lot of material I already know. So I'm skipping ahead to the character creation section instead, and will start getting into it that way.
In fact, I think I'll create a character for each 'faction', starting with the priests.
Priests of a Feather
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| So, an Urth Orthodox, Brother Battle, and Eskatonic walk into a Cathedral... |
One of the most common stereotypes I run into is the 'bad priest'. It's in books, movies, comics, TV shows. And some portrayals are not without basis, I'm sure. Another common stereotype: the 'wise priest'. He's warm, insightful, and almost a smiling saint every time we see him. Sadly, this one is a lot rarer to encounter in real life.
But priests are an integral part of the Fading Suns setting, so it should be interesting to create several characters that are meant to be Player Characters without falling into either.
Yes, I've known a number of priests in my life. And I've also heard about a number of those who passed before my time as well -- and I've read about a number of truly interesting ones as well. We'll see how many of them make it into the final characters I build. I'd love to recreate a Father Brown or an Inigo de Loyola, but I might not have enough points.
"Has it never struck you that a man who does next to nothing but hear men's real sins is not likely to be wholly unaware of human evil?" -- Father Brown
You make a very good point about the limitedness of usual "priestly" stereotypes. I game where they show show up commmonly really needs more nuance.
ReplyDeleteThanks! I suppose that because I had to create a variety of NPCs when running it, my mind always jumped to the types I'd seen on TV or movies -- and those two stereotypes seemed to dominate my memory.
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