Tabletop Community Watch

[Godzilla1984]

So its true, Games Workshop is full of shit. Literally.

We all know the real reason.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Games Workshop HQ closed due to major sewage collapse

Games Workshop headquarters in Nottingham shut 'until further notice' due to major sewage collapse​

It is unknown when the workshop will reopen.

Work is underway to fix the issue (Image: Jack Watson)
Games Workshop's Nottingham headquarters in Lenton is closed 'until further notice' after a major sewage collapse.
The company which produces Warhammer products at its Nottingham factory and offices site, confirmed its headquarters and Warhammer World building in Willow Road is shut after the collapse yesterday morning (Monday, November 22).
The incident meant the road had to be completely closed off, resulting in the closure of the popular store.
Work is currently ongoing to tackle the problem.
In a statement issued on its Facebook page yesterday, Games Workshop: Warhammer World said: "Due to unforeseen circumstances Warhammer World will be closed until further notice.
"We have had a burst water main on the corner of Willow Road and Lenton Lane and the council have completely closed Willow Road which allows no access.
"We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and will continue to update you here as soon as we are able to reopen."
In an update today, it added: "Please note Warhammer World remains closed until further notice."
A Highways alert issued by Nottingham City Council confirmed Willow Road had been closed at the junction with Lenton Lane, as well as the area of Lenton Lane outside the sewage pumping station, Nottingham.

So its true, Games Workshop is full of shit. Literally.

Bullshit merchants having a sewage breakdown. Never let it be said that God is without humor.

Possible culprits are disgruntled employees or rat men making their way to the surface.

It could also probably be disgruntled old fans given that they seem deadset on being as shitty as possible. Either that or Papa Nurgle decided to play a joke.

Why not both? I'm sure some OG fans of 40K work at Games Workshop and are unhappy with how GW treats the 40K fandom. Perhaps they were just biding their time and waiting for the right moment.

Or, maybe it's because GW spends so little outside making models (ie. their homebrew animations look cheap as fuck) so that caused the literal shitstorm in their building; the signs were probably there, but they were too cheap to call the plumbers.

 

[Synthetic Smug]

40K was called satire by the creators early on but more than anything it was pastiche. It took elements from a lot of sources and mixed them together in a setting that was meant to be nihilistic. Things were changed enough to both fit in with the setting and to avoid legal trouble. Rogue Trader had a big emphasis on DIY as well.

I think as the game grew and people became more invested in the game (both monetarily and in terms of time and thought) players picked up varying degrees of empathy with how it would feel to be part of these armies and fight the good fight in the face of inescapable doom. I don't think a lot of the GW leadership really understood this. There was a John Blanche interview where he talked about going to art school and mocking being inundated with existentialist this-and-that without it ever being adequately explained. He mocked existentialism while having his work absorb its precepts: That we must decide what is right and wrong ourselves and be prepared to deal with the consequences in the face of an uncaring universe.

I think aesthetically 40K has a lot in common with Laibachkunst and the healthy impulse to acknowledge the power of totalitarian imagery. If you don't admit in the words of Lemmy 'it's beautiful for all the wrong reasons but it's still beautiful' you leave yourself open to being manipulated if you can't acknowledge that the relationship between beauty and what's right is nuanced at best. It's like that scene in Cabaret when the Nazis walked in and everyone went silent. You don't like it, but you have to acknowledge the power of appearances. I think in many ways fantasy allows us a sort of dead culture vaccine against mass aesthetics or at least complete vulnerability to them. I have a pet theory that this was a big component to tying Dungeons & Dragons to the 80's satanic panic. There's a very naïve and theatrical thread that runs through evangelical Christianity that equates feeling with faith. Suspicion at being able to rouse deep emotions from people playing a storytelling game was probably only natural.

I think that Spanish fellow was making a sideways point in the most trollish way possible that Franco ruled Spain until 1975 and that reducing political extremism to the simplicity of capeshit is dishonest. NOTE: He is still fat and I would not have sex with him.

 

[Morethanabitfoolish]

Hope nothing serious got damaged in the building issue.

That said if they don't make a crack about it being skaven their social media person needs slapping.

 

[HTTP Error 404]

Now SJWs want Games Workshop to just stop doing any kind of 40K stuff.

That has always been the unstated goal of SJWs. Remember, Post-Modernists believe in the completely and utterly discredited "Media Consumption" theory, which states basically "You are the media you consume." That's why they're obsessed with shoving childhood sexuality (read: normalizing pedophilia), representation, lefty politics, etc in everything they touch -- they literally think they're brainwashing viewers into believing it. Remember how every 6 months or so they come back with some utterly batshit insane, completely worthless, unreproducible study about how Violent Video games cause kids to become violent? They NEED that to be true because it is is in line with their pseudo-religion.

They can't put you in reeducation camps (yet), but they can manipulate the media you -- or rather, your kids -- consume, which is good enough.

Maoists also have a theory that anything they take over must either be destroyed so the enemies of the party cannot use it, or converted to further the party's goals. Since these types are all cultural maoists (two minutes of hate, entryism, etc etc) well...

And of course, there's the whole ritual humiliation aspect of it, where if they can force the changes -- make you eat shit, basically -- and then get you to say how much you love the taste of shit, well, it's even better. That's what a conquering force does to a population it's suppressing, after all.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

40K was called satire by the creators early on but more than anything it was pastiche. It took elements from a lot of sources and mixed them together in a setting that was meant to be nihilistic. Things were changed enough to both fit in with the setting and to avoid legal trouble. Rogue Trader had a big emphasis on DIY as well.

That's the one thing I've always found fascinating, especially when 40K fans accuse other franchises of stealing from them. Damn near everything in their franchise is a pastiche of something else, from Religion, to fantasy, to science fiction tropes and things taken literally from Tolkien and James Cameron. Hey, at least George Lucas is honest about "taking inspiration" from things like Kurosawa, Flash Gordon, and Joseph Campbell.

I think as the game grew and people became more invested in the game (both monetarily and in terms of time and thought) players picked up varying degrees of empathy with how it would feel to be part of these armies and fight the good fight in the face of inescapable doom. I don't think a lot of the GW leadership really understood this. There was a John Blanche interview where he talked about going to art school and mocking being inundated with existentialist this-and-that without it ever being adequately explained. He mocked existentialism while having his work absorb its precepts: That we must decide what is right and wrong ourselves and be prepared to deal with the consequences in the face of an uncaring universe.

Basically, yes. We are meant to think about the brutality of the Space Marines and how they treat people like shit, but years of playing games with Space Marines against the various threats against the Imperium created an us-vs-them scenario. Plus, in action movies, it's not that hard to sympathize with the main character, like those played by guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger, not only because we sympathize with their plight, but them being muscle-bound heroes blowing through hordes of enemies with sheer firepower is, for lack of a better term, AWESOME.

So it stands to reason that the muscle-bound buffoons who emulate Rambo and John Matrix, walking around with cool-looking armor and explosive ammunition, would get people to not only sympathize with their plight of having to fight a half-dozen enemies of mankind to keep the lights on, but also get people to see them as cool. They're like action heroes, except better since they have cooler armor and ammo that explodes. And there's a whole culture that encourages people to become like them. What's not to love?

I think aesthetically 40K has a lot in common with Laibachkunst and the healthy impulse to acknowledge the power of totalitarian imagery. If you don't admit in the words of Lemmy 'it's beautiful for all the wrong reasons but it's still beautiful' you leave yourself open to being manipulated if you can't acknowledge that the relationship between beauty and what's right is nuanced at best. It's like that scene in Cabaret when the Nazis walked in and everyone went silent. You don't like it, but you have to acknowledge the power of appearances. I think in many ways fantasy allows us a sort of dead culture vaccine against mass aesthetics or at least complete vulnerability to them.

Fascists used such imagery on purpose because it looks badass and cool. The reason why people remember the German SS more than the Imperial Japanese Army is because while the latter just had functional uniforms that weren't at all flashy, the former had uniforms designed by Hugo Boss. The caps with the skull and bones, the flashy uniforms, the aesthetic that follows a philosophy which invites death and yet celebrates dying for the state as some kind of heroic gesture to inspire millions to come, all of that was designed on purpose to evoke a sort of "rule of cool", and 40K's Imperium copied that and gave it power armor, while also adding in the aesthetic of medieval knights, which made it even cooler.

I have a pet theory that this was a big component to tying Dungeons & Dragons to the 80's satanic panic. There's a very naïve and theatrical thread that runs through evangelical Christianity that equates feeling with faith. Suspicion at being able to rouse deep emotions from people playing a storytelling game was probably only natural.

I've always been confused by that panic. If Jesus Christ is your Lord, and He is God on High, there is nothing for you to fear, especially from some stupid board game with scary-looking demons and magic. Just say a prayer and let God take the wheel. Instead, these yahoos get scared of a damn board game and try to use religious media and communities to stamp it out. No wonder so many people in the late 00s turned atheist. Evangelicalism in the west is half-reliant on emotion, and the other half relied on bullshit.

I think that Spanish fellow was making a sideways point in the most trollish way possible that Franco ruled Spain until 1975 and that reducing political extremism to the simplicity of capeshit is dishonest. NOTE: He is still fat and I would not have sex with him.

Franco was the only fascist to actually make things work. Maybe because he was flexible on economic matters, and he didn't go on bullshit wars once he secured his power base. Also, mixing politics and capeshit is always bullshit. Unless you're willing to make the story far more complex than it is, most capeshit stories are simple as fuck, and politics requires a ton of nuance and critical thinking, something that most capeshit fans are unable to have nowadays.

That has always been the unstated goal of SJWs. Remember, Post-Modernists believe in the completely and utterly discredited "Media Consumption" theory, which states basically "You are the media you consume." That's why they're obsessed with shoving childhood sexuality (read: normalizing pedophilia), representation, lefty politics, etc in everything they touch -- they literally think they're brainwashing viewers into believing it. Remember how every 6 months or so they come back with some utterly batshit insane, completely worthless, unreproducible study about how Violent Video games cause kids to become violent? They NEED that to be true because it is is in line with their pseudo-religion.

I consume lots of media where I play as the evil empire and crush the enemy with overwhelming firepower and military might. Does that mean that I have an innate desire to enforce uniformity in real life and force dissidents to face the wall? Also, what does this say about SJWs who watch violent sex-filled series like Game of Thrones and Watchmen? I suppose that makes them violent, degenerate perverts? Or that those who play The Last of Us 2 have violent revenge fantasies? It can apply to the SJWs as much as it applies to the right, but I suppose they didn't notice that. ;P

They can't put you in reeducation camps (yet), but they can manipulate the media you -- or rather, your kids -- consume, which is good enough.

Basically, they'll turn the schools, the media, and the country at large, into one giant, reeducation camp.

And people are wondering why parents love putting their kids in private schools when they have the chance.

Maoists also have a theory that anything they take over must either be destroyed so the enemies of the party cannot use it, or converted to further the party's goals. Since these types are all cultural maoists (two minutes of hate, entryism, etc etc) well...

Why am I not surprised that these people take inspiration from the kind of mass-murdering prick who makes that failed Austrian painter look like a school bully by comparison?

And of course, there's the whole ritual humiliation aspect of it, where if they can force the changes -- make you eat shit, basically -- and then get you to say how much you love the taste of shit, well, it's even better. That's what a conquering force does to a population it's suppressing, after all.

I've seen this in other parts of media. Much of the modern SW media today that is touted as groundbreaking (Bad Batch, Mandalorian, Rebels) is mostly just OK, but after forcing the fanbase to suffer through the sequels, these series are seen as a breath of fresh air, as if just simply not shitting your pants is somehow a sign of excellence and competence. The fact that an average game like Fallen Order gets praise from the fanbase today goes to show that their taste buds have acclimated too much towards shit taste thanks to the Sequels and large parts of the NuCanon.

It's going to happen to Warhammer too, trust me. They'll force shit on the fanbase again and again, then give you something that's somewhat competent, and people will praise the latter as some kind of excellent product even though back in the day, it'd barely be average.

 

[Ghostse]

There was definitely a legitimate origin source in the Satanic Panic, no matter how overly out of proportion it got blown out or over-reactive the over reaction to it was.

The Cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons, before Satanic Panic, low key was a parallel universe where Satan killed the Abrahamic God, He Who Was, if you do a read-between-the-lines of Asmodeus. He Who Was being the 'human' god, extremely powerful and good, etc. Which somewhat ironic it was also low-key suggesting that reviving He Who Was the solution to all of the D&D universe's problems, and that He Who Was had to be off the board for there to be any meaningful adventure for the players.

There was also a lot of cribbing from "real-world" demonology. But, that was also a bit like the Satanic Panic over Doom - these were not your buddies, they were usually who you were fighting and keeping from clawing off your face.

But really the problem was with Magic.I spent some time getting raised in that sort of environment. I had a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style book that was sort of D&D Inspired and got punished for having it because you could choose to be a knight or a wizard in it. Didn't matter I only picking the Knight's path, just having the option of sorcery was too sinful to process.
(But somehow I managed to get away with having The Hobbit; go figure)

There were real issues with the ultra-hard core Christian base about magic, or any descriptions there of, since you got strong Old Testament warnings about sorcerers and necromancers. Wicca-styled witches were portrayed as an existential threat. Which again was sort of ironic because demonizing it only made it mysterious and curious, as I'm pretty sure just actually putting a 200-lbs 40 year old goth on stage and giving her two hours to talk about crystals would have done more to keep us children from falling into the clutches of Witchery than any of the scare talks/films.
There is a reason all the Occult books say to do your magic in seclusion or only supported by truebelievers. Any normie is going to tell you just how ridiculous and gay your shit is.

 

[Flexo]

There was definitely a legitimate origin source in the Satanic Panic, no matter how overly out of proportion it got blown out or over-reactive the over reaction to how it was.

The Cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons, before Satanic Panic, low key was a parallel universe where Satan killed the Abrahamic God, He Who Was, if you do a read-between-the-lines of Asmodeus. He Who Was being the 'human' god, extremely powerful and good, etc. Which somewhat ironic it was also low-key suggesting that reviving He Who Was the solution to all of the D&D universe's problems, and that He Who Was had to be off the board for there to be any meaningful adventure for the players.

There was also a lot of cribbing from "real-world" demonology. But, that was also a bit like the Satanic Panic over Doom - these were not your buddies, they were usually who you were fighting and keeping from clawing off your face.

But really the problem was with Magic.I spent some time getting raised in that sort of environment. I had a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style book that was sort of D&D Inspired and got punished for having it because you could choose to be a knight or a wizard in it. Didn't matter I only picking the Knight's path, just having the option of sorcery was too sinful to process.
(But somehow I managed to get away with having The Hobbit; go figure)

There were real issues with the ultra-hard core Christian base about magic, or any descriptions there of, since you got strong Old Testament warnings about sorcerers and necromancers. Wicca-styled witches were portrayed as an existential threat. Which again was sort of ironic because demonizing it only made it mysterious and curious, as I'm pretty sure just actually putting a 200-lbs 40 year old goth on stage and giving her two hours to talk about crystals would have done more to keep us children from falling into the clutches of Witchery than any of the scare talks/films.
There is a reason all the Occult books say to do your magic in seclusion or only supported by truebelievers. Any normie is going to tell you just how ridiculous and gay your shit is.

There were also rampant urban legends of things like kids losing themselves in it to the point of killing themselves when their character died.

I can remember Focus on the Family putting on a radio play once about D&D where the play group ends up trying to sacrifice a member to bring back their character that died in game.

Ah fun times.

Then you look at tumblr and some of the other crazies online and start to wonder if the old scares had some point to them. (Except it is all faker and gayer.)

 

[Adamska]

Reminder that the war on DnD was due to a single cunt who blamed her son's suicide on the game, even though he did it because he had gay thoughts that he knew she would've violently rejected him if he admitted to them. And that she was the main and pretty much only person bitching and complaining on all the shows that would've accepted her. Basically this one idiot is responsible for all the bleating and honking you heard and got repeated.

 

[Ghostse]

Reminder that the war on DnD was due to a single cunt who blamed her son's suicide on the game, even though he did it because he had gay thoughts that he knew she would've violently rejected him if he admitted to them. And that she was the main and pretty much only person bitching and complaining on all the shows that would've accepted her. Basically this one idiot is responsible for all the bleating and honking you heard and got repeated.

Gays really do ruin everything.

 

[Corn Flakes]

Gays really do ruin everything.

Nah. I'll give this one to the Karens. His mother was clearly one. A fundie Karen at that.

 

[Kabuki Actor]

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

There was definitely a legitimate origin source in the Satanic Panic, no matter how overly out of proportion it got blown out or over-reactive the over reaction to it was.

The Cosmology of Dungeons and Dragons, before Satanic Panic, low key was a parallel universe where Satan killed the Abrahamic God, He Who Was, if you do a read-between-the-lines of Asmodeus. He Who Was being the 'human' god, extremely powerful and good, etc. Which somewhat ironic it was also low-key suggesting that reviving He Who Was the solution to all of the D&D universe's problems, and that He Who Was had to be off the board for there to be any meaningful adventure for the players.

There was also a lot of cribbing from "real-world" demonology. But, that was also a bit like the Satanic Panic over Doom - these were not your buddies, they were usually who you were fighting and keeping from clawing off your face.

But really the problem was with Magic.I spent some time getting raised in that sort of environment. I had a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style book that was sort of D&D Inspired and got punished for having it because you could choose to be a knight or a wizard in it. Didn't matter I only picking the Knight's path, just having the option of sorcery was too sinful to process.
(But somehow I managed to get away with having The Hobbit; go figure)

There were real issues with the ultra-hard core Christian base about magic, or any descriptions there of, since you got strong Old Testament warnings about sorcerers and necromancers. Wicca-styled witches were portrayed as an existential threat. Which again was sort of ironic because demonizing it only made it mysterious and curious, as I'm pretty sure just actually putting a 200-lbs 40 year old goth on stage and giving her two hours to talk about crystals would have done more to keep us children from falling into the clutches of Witchery than any of the scare talks/films.
There is a reason all the Occult books say to do your magic in seclusion or only supported by truebelievers. Any normie is going to tell you just how ridiculous and gay your shit is.

I never understood why the fundies are that alert about magic. I mean, come on, there's the difference between Wicca and fictional magic. Many fairy tales and epic fantasies written by practicing Christians like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis had magic in them. These fundies who fuel the moral panic about magic are a lot less like practicing members of the faith, and more like the caricatures the left has of the faith. Whenever leftists or neo-pagans or atheists want to make fun of Christians, they no longer need to make up some caricature of the faith, they just point to the fundamentalists and Karens within American Christendom as examples why they left the faith.

It kind of explains why a lot of role-playing games and tabletop games have very atheistic, pagan, or nihilistic tones to them, either veering close to dark fantasy in games like the Ultima series, or in the case of Warhammer 40K, outright diving into the dark fantasy genre and creating a world where the universe is shaped by evil deities who are out to get you. They got picked on by the fundamentalist right and called satanic, and they decided, instead of allaying the fears of the religious majority, to become that which people accused them of. It wouldn't be that strange to imagine some of them saying "You thought standard D&D was demonic? I'll show you demonic!"

 

[Corn Flakes]

I never understood why the fundies are that alert about magic. I mean, come on, there's the difference between Wicca and fictional magic. Many fairy tales and epic fantasies written by practicing Christians like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis had magic in them. These fundies who fuel the moral panic about magic are a lot less like practicing members of the faith, and more like the caricatures the left has of the faith. Whenever leftists or neo-pagans or atheists want to make fun of Christians, they no longer need to make up some caricature of the faith, they just point to the fundamentalists and Karens within American Christendom as examples why they left the faith.

It kind of explains why a lot of role-playing games and tabletop games have very atheistic, pagan, or nihilistic tones to them, either veering close to dark fantasy in games like the Ultima series, or in the case of Warhammer 40K, outright diving into the dark fantasy genre and creating a world where the universe is shaped by evil deities who are out to get you. They got picked on by the fundamentalist right and called satanic, and they decided, instead of allaying the fears of the religious majority, to become that which people accused them of. It wouldn't be that strange to imagine some of them saying "You thought standard D&D was demonic? I'll show you demonic!"

You're overthinking this a bit.

Yes, there was a measure of "screw you, dad!" in those themes, but most of it was simply genuine exoticism. It's the same reason why most kids go through a dinosaur phase. They're cool and interesting and huge and not here anymore. For kids born in the 60s and early 70s, and often raised in traditional, religious households, reading stories featuring wizards, knights, dragons and demons when they reached their teens was something new and exotic, and the writers of these books held on to it as they went into their 20s and 30s.

Once you get into the 90s, though? That's when you start seeing a lot more edgy shit that's edgy just for the sake of it. Ironically, a lot of it was backlash against the sanitized direction more "traditional" forces were trying to push society at the time.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

You're overthinking this a bit.

Yes, there was a measure of "screw you, dad!" in those themes, but most of it was simply genuine exoticism. It's the same reason why most kids go through a dinosaur phase. They're cool and interesting and huge and not here anymore. For kids born in the 60s and early 70s, and often raised in traditional, religious households, reading stories featuring wizards, knights, dragons and demons when they reached their teens was something new and exotic, and the writers of these books held on to it as they went into their 20s and 30s.

Once you get into the 90s, though? That's when you start seeing a lot more edgy shit that's edgy just for the sake of it. Ironically, a lot of it was backlash against the sanitized direction more "traditional" forces were trying to push society at the time.

I suppose I am overthinking it, but a lot of dark fantasy and sci-fi just seems to me to be the "fuck you dad" genre. Moorcock, 40K, Ultima, Conan, and so on, most of the adult fantasy works disagreed with the Tolkienish idea of there being an absolute God or an absolute good, and more towards just dark powers roving about and people trying to survive them. In the classical fantasy and fairy tales, good triumphs over evil, and evil is punished, whereas from the 80s onward, I seemed to notice a trend of role-playing fantasy that was less grounded on a strong basis of morality, and more towards just power and malevolence, where the strong do what they please, and the weak suffer what they must.

So the moral panic against magic dated as far back as the 60s and 70s? Even though there were works about magic at the time that were written by devout Christians? I thought that moral panic shit started at the late 70s and early 80s.

I mean, Lord of the Rings was exotic for its time, but role-playing fantasy from the 80s onward seemed to move the opposite direction from Tolkien. Where there was once an absolute good that stands against evil, there later was only differing degrees of evil, and no absolute good to rally around. It got more pronounced in the 90s since the more traditional side of society tried to assert itself and stop proliferation of ultra-violent media towards the kids, so the edgelords became even more encouraged to buck the norm.

 

[Flexo]

So the moral panic against magic dated as far back as the 60s and 70s?

I'm sure we could have fun debating whether it dates back to Salem.

 

[Ghostse]

I never understood why the fundies are that alert about magic. I mean, come on, there's the difference between Wicca and fictional magic. Many fairy tales and epic fantasies written by practicing Christians like JRR Tolkien and CS Lewis had magic in them. These fundies who fuel the moral panic about magic are a lot less like practicing members of the faith, and more like the caricatures the left has of the faith. Whenever leftists or neo-pagans or atheists want to make fun of Christians, they no longer need to make up some caricature of the faith, they just point to the fundamentalists and Karens within American Christendom as examples why they left the faith.

It kind of explains why a lot of role-playing games and tabletop games have very atheistic, pagan, or nihilistic tones to them, either veering close to dark fantasy in games like the Ultima series, or in the case of Warhammer 40K, outright diving into the dark fantasy genre and creating a world where the universe is shaped by evil deities who are out to get you. They got picked on by the fundamentalist right and called satanic, and they decided, instead of allaying the fears of the religious majority, to become that which people accused them of. It wouldn't be that strange to imagine some of them saying "You thought standard D&D was demonic? I'll show you demonic!"

Regarding the religion in RPGs, Honestly a lot of it is just simply as implied by the D&D Prime Pantheon; if you install (or revive) an all-powerful, all-good God....what is there for players to do? There are no threats to save the world from.

I don't know if fundies still have their knickers in a bunch about magic, but when I had the inside view they very much did. And I think it was about Wicca making inroads. Part of it is the overlap of Prayer and Magic; another part of it is telling the Papists and their Saints & Candles to go suck it.

But most of it just completely irrational.

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

I'm sure we could have fun debating whether it dates back to Salem.

It probably does. Honestly, moral panics have been ingrained in America's DNA at this point. Ever since from the start, with those witch hunts.

Them picking on D&D is just another result of religion in America being primarily driven by emotion, instead of theology and apologetics based on millennia of tradition that those pesky Papists back in Europe preached.

Regarding the religion in RPGs, Honestly a lot of it is just simply as implied by the D&D Prime Pantheon; if you install (or revive) an all-powerful, all-good God....what is there for players to do? There are no threats to save the world from.

Lord of the Rings somehow found a way. Eru Illuvatar is all-powerful and good, but people can still be dickheads, and that includes the Maiar and the Valar. They're your threats. Same thing in Star Wars: the Light is, in the end, stronger than the Dark Side, and those who fully master it can conquer just about anything. It's just that such a task takes a lifetime of work, and people would rather be dicks or go the easy route, and most of the bad guys chose the latter instead of the long, hard road to enlightenment.

I don't know if fundies still have their knickers in a bunch about magic, but when I had the inside view they very much did. And I think it was about Wicca making inroads. Part of it is the overlap of Prayer and Magic; another part of it is telling the Papists and their Saints & Candles to go suck it.

But most of it just completely irrational.

What did you expect? If their way of thinking relies mostly on emotion, then it doesn't matter if they're a Tumblrina SJW, an alt-right neo-pagan, or an Evangelical Fundie, they're going to be irrational.

 

[Creepuscular]

if you install (or revive) an all-powerful, all-good God....what is there for players to do?

Go on a crusade?

 

[LORD IMPERATOR]

Go on a crusade?

DEUS VULT! GOD WILLS IT!

Especially when you get combat bonuses for praying, and you're fighting for the cause of the Almighty, so all your previous crimes of your scoundrel character get forgiven, and he gets a stat bonus when he undertakes a class change to become a warrior! And maybe, down the line, he can be upgraded to a knight if he impresses his noble liege.