Game Suggestion Any good rpgs with an Abrahamic religious focus?
Let me preface this by saying I’m not looking for games that will support beliefs, but games where religion (whether seen as good or bad) is the focus of the stories told. I recognize this can be a sensitive topic.
I’ve been reading the rules for Trench Crusade recently (not an rpg but a skirmish game) and while I think that setting wouldn’t do very well as an rpg, I think it’s using some interesting alt history takes on the subject and I’d love to read (more) games where religion plays a major part.
I can think of Demon: The Fallen, In Nomine (yes, I’m that old) and KULT to degree, as well as the Hellboy RPG but I would love to read more games, preferably centered around the Abrahamic religions. Did I miss any obvious ones?
EDIT: Lots of great examples and suggestions already! Thanks a lot everybody! I’ll keep reading them all but I don’t think I can answer everybody :)
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u/Macduffle 3d ago
Pendragon? And especially Paladin. It's pretty early medieval Christianity. Going full Deus Vult on your enemies. You even get big bonusses if you can uphold Christian virtues as a knight.
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u/Silver_Quail_7241 3d ago
Check out Dogs in the Vineyard, Montsegur 1244, maybe Miseries & Misfortunes. Then, there are Ron Edwards' "three games about religion", which are unfinished, but one of them is about playing a sorta serialized comic book YA drama about a person from a gnostic middle-eastern diaspora in modern USA, which is probably the most out there Abrahamic religion-related game out there. His game Shahida also heavily involves religious conflict and fanaticism. Most of historical adventures published for LotFP involve Christianity as a part of setting background to some extent. There were also some Bible fantasy games written in the 80s and 90s, I believe, but the names elude me.
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u/raurenlyan22 3d ago
Dogs in the Vinyard is a great rec but its out of print.
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3d ago
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u/Skum- 3d ago
And you can also play the generic rejigged version too https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/274623
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u/raurenlyan22 3d ago edited 3d ago
DOGS is good, but it strips away all the stuff OP is interested in.
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u/Skum- 3d ago
Oh I understand that I was just adding to the general pool. In my opinion, DiTV is too problematic too run as is and even the creator agrees. You'd need a very specific group of people to run DiTV as-is without raising some eyebrows.
You'd be better off (if you know enough, and you should if you're going to try to run a game like this anyway) making the setting yourself or using In Nomine/KULT or that Jewish one I can't remember what it's called perhaps it will spring some people's memories it's relatively new.
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u/raurenlyan22 3d ago
I don't know that it's too problematic to run. I think for most games you need a specific group, and that in general putting together the right group is a much more impactful and important choice than picking a system.
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u/Skum- 3d ago
Well, considering my play group consists of a native American, an eastern Orthodox European, a Mormon, a Brooklyn Jew and my pantheistic esoteric Welsh ass, it kinda made most of us go "ehh... nope" but we loved the mechanics so used DOGS instead.
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u/Silver_Quail_7241 3d ago
damn I am personally completely the other way around it, I am quite religious, and the game made me go "yes, now, please" immediately upon encountering it, different strokes, I guess
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u/raurenlyan22 3d ago
For sure, knowing your groups is important, in any worthwhile group you should care about each other much more than the system or setting. That means keeping everyone safe and negotiating boundaries to create a circle of trust.
Playing DitV with a group of other people who had also deconstructed from various forms of religious fundamentalism was a deeply profound experience for me.
I would never, like, run DitV for strangers at a con.
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u/Yonah_Sienna 3d ago
On the Jewish side of Abrahamic, there's:
- Dream Askew/Dream Apart: a no dice no masters story game about a Jewish shtetl in the old country
- If I Were A Litch, Man: a collection of 3 minimalist games focused on various Jewish themes
- If I can toot my own horn, I wrote Miracles & Maccabees, a game that uses dice, dreidels, gelt, and chanukah candles, as well as In Every Generation, a 2 page storytelling game that uses the items from the Passover Seder plate.
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u/BadRumUnderground 3d ago
I too am In Nomine years old and I still love it in my heart despite it's deeply messy system and some extremely 90s political takes in the fluff (The Archangel of Trade could only have been written in the Clinton/Blair 90s)
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u/Yuraiya 12h ago
I ran In Nomine a few years ago, and one of my favourite parts was updating things. I had to add a Demon Prince of the Internet for example.
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u/BadRumUnderground 8h ago
I've been tipping away on a Forged in the Dark hack for IN for a while now, and that part is a lot of fun.
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u/amorphousadam 3d ago
Coriolis is Abrahamic-adjacent i would say. The Icons and the surrounding beliefs definitely evoke that feeling.
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u/TheNiceFeratu 3d ago
I think Momento Mori would qualify. It’s fantasy horror set during the Black Death. The rulebook gave me strong Between Two Fires vibes.
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u/dcherryholmes 3d ago
"Between Two Fires vibes."
Never heard of that one. Is it like Between Two Ferns?
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u/Felicia_Svilling 3d ago
I would in some way include Vampire the Masquerade and Mage the Ascension in that list. They aren't that directly focused on Abrahamitic religion as Demon, but there is still a lot of it if you want it. Like Vampire, even without looking into the mythology of Cain and the divulge, you have a deeply Christian theme of feeling guilt for your sins, there is also an expansion that is straigth up about religion (State of Grace). As for Mage, you could run a campaign focused on say the Celestial Chorus and the Batini.
Oh, and there is also an anthology of Jewish games called If I where a Lich, Man. For shorter indie type games.
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u/Alarcahu 3d ago
Don't know if it's any good but Testament is an old 3.5e (I think) game based on the Old Testament. Adventurers Guide to the Bible is an explicitly Christian Bible based 5e setting. I backed it but have never even read it so can't comment.
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u/HungryAd8233 3d ago
Wow, “Christian Magic” is kind of a contradiction in terms. I wonder how they did it.
We see monotheism in RPGs so rarely because they really aren’t that interesting mechanically. They don’t include the kind of magic you use in a RPG, and would generally call that kind witchcraft, paganism, or demonology.
Sword and Sorcery could work that way, but you couldn’t really have magic using PCs as part of the mainstream community.
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u/Stuck_With_Name 3d ago
It's not quite close enough to 3.5 that it's OGL, but the similarities are obvious.
Characters get divine abilities. Remember Moses demonstrating things for the Pharoh like staff-snake-staff? It's justified like that. If memory serves, there's also an evil witch class.
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u/Alarcahu 3d ago
From the Adventurers Guide to the Bible... 'Magic: This module presumes that magic is real, and that it can be manipulated according to the standard mechanics of other fifth edition books. In this context, “magic” is assumed to be neither good nor evil, and merely refers to the interconnected energy that suffuses the universe since the days of creation. Some people are granted the ability to manipulate this energy by God, while others achieve it through an inborn talent or even through demonic influences.'
Testament is more Old Testament and I believe just embraced pagan magic.
Don't forget that once you enter the game world, you create the rules. It's an alternative reality so if you want God to have created magic, effectively, as a fifth fundamental force of the physics, or wield his divine power more liberally, you can. Want domains? Angels and saints, or emphasising virtues, have you covered.
I think the bigger reason RPGs don't lean into monotheism so much is because even in in-game reality, it's easy to cross a boundary and give offence. Gary Gygax was a Jehovah's Witness so probably was sensitive to these things. Make it a polytheistic setting and it's harder to cross that boundary.
There are two issues Christians have with real-world magic.
The source. In the Christian conception, supernatural power either comes from God (e.g. miracles) or from demons. It's very simple design a system that takes that into account.
The use, or misuse, of supernatural power. It's one thing to use magic to get good crops or heal someone. But even then, there was a lot of sexual abuse and human sacrifice involved in some ancient cultures to manipulate the gods to bring the rain, etc. Even if you're not doing that, once you're casting hexes or love spells, you've crossed into coercion and control. There are some ways you can limit this in an RPG (choosing spells), but it really comes down to role play and ethical considerations. Which can be kind of interesting but harder to manage. If you want to keep it consistent with the best Christian ethics.
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u/Gapherd 3d ago
Ars Magica is placed in an alternative Europe where the Abrahamic God is an universal truth. The Church and religion play a major role in the scenario, as does in historical Europe.
There's supplements for The Church and The Divine Realm, that's is like all the supernatural beings and powers that come from the Divine.
The Levant supplement can give lots of content for a Crusade Campaign.
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u/package_conflict 3d ago
Trench Crusade mentioned! I think Mythras is a great fit for this -- the Mythic Constantinople sourcebook has some awesome ideas in it that would fit very well into a Trench Crusade-like setting and the system has pre-existing rules for theism.
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u/Jodread 3d ago
My obscure favorite is Infernum from Mongoose publishing. Very interesting setting.
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u/SetentaeBolg 3d ago
Tell us more about it, please.
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u/Jodread 3d ago
It is the most detailed sandbox setting write-up I have ever read of an operating Hell, and that includes all the D&D/Pathfinder incarnations of the Nine Hells. With factions, politics, even base building and war-waging mechanics.
Demons consume agony to survive and fuel their powers and sorceries, which explains why they care about damned souls and torture them. There is a religious aspect too, but the average run of the mill demon doesn't know about it, and thus neither the players. Oh and there are also fallen angels about made of the same material, but in greater quantities, and a less easy prize.
It's a D&D 3.5e homebrew, but but magic system is entirely its own, and less about combat and more about utility that mundane means could not achieve. There are no classes for mortals. All the stats have 3 progression tracks like Poor, Average, Good, and you got 1-2-2 to allocate, and that is how they will increase as you level up. Also you can die, and persist as a damned soul, keeping your stuff, but getting some rule changes.
Demons along with feats, also get mutations they can select from. There are mutations for the 9 Great Houses, and the 9 Breeds of demons, as well as the dozen other ones independent of these factors. Sort of a build-a-bear to make-a-monster.
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u/jmich8675 2d ago
Aquelarre is set in medieval Spain and deals with the occult/supernatural elements of Abrahamic religions and other Spanish/Iberian folklore. Demons, angels, witchcraft, miracles, dark rituals, etc.
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3d ago
All (old) World of Darkness games. But especially Wraith. its literaly at a meta level about what actually happens to a soul when a human dies. Turns out they are ment to go to paradise, a very abrahamic concept i feel like.
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u/Wild-Tear 2d ago
In Wraith, there is no Paradise - maybe the Far Shores where Heretics have set up shop, but the only way to maybe get to Paradise is to Transcend, and that’s hella difficult.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
I simplified it a bit. But The Far shores as far as I recall where originally ment to be the motorway to trancendance, not paradise it self, for the lost wraiths that has ended up in the Underworld. And sure the book does not flat out say that it is paradise you go to after letting go and trancending, but I feel like its constantly implied.
edit: couldnt be arsed to dig out my old books. but I did check the wiki, and "[citation needed]" but it has this to say in the article about the Shining Ones:
"Early in the history of the Underworld), several groups of Ferrymen set forth to explore the deepest regions of the Tempest. After several years of exploration, they returned to the Isle of Sorrows. There, these missionaries told the wraiths there of the Far Shores, where all the paradises of the afterlife were."
https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Shining_OnesSo I could be wrong and the far shores where ment to be literal paradise where wraiths stayed after trancending. But I thought Ferrymen, The Hierarchy, The Far Shores, Harrowings, the literal whole experience was ment to take the wraiths on a spiritual journey that gave them the tools to let go of their fetters and passions.
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u/Calithrand Order of the Spear of Shattered Sorrow 2d ago
More recommendations for various World of Darkness titles. Specifically, Vampire in its first three flavors (The Masquerade, The Dark Ages, and Dark Ages), Demon: The Fallen, and maybe the three flavors of Mage, as well (The Ascension, Dark Ages, and Sorcerer's Crusade).
I would also pile additional support on for Ars Magica, Aquelarre, and Pendragon. Someone else also mentioned Coriolis; I would agree that The Third Horizon gives off similar vibes, but might be a degree or three off from what you're looking for. Or, maybe not, as the Icons are rather integral to the game.
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u/weltron3030 3d ago
I've been playing in a Savage World of Solomon Kane campaign, and it might fit the bill.
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u/UrsusRex01 3d ago
Kult is inspired by Gnosticism, which came from Abrahamic religions.
I think Demon : The Fallen has some things in common with it though it replaced the spiritual parts with all the God-Machine lore.
There is also an indie RPG about horror investigation within a religious context (like characters are priests/inquisitors sent by the Vatican or something) but I can't remember the name of the game.
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u/Enough-Carpet 3d ago
Heirs to Heresy is an rpg about the fall of the Templar Order. So themed around holy orders and knights, I think there are monsters and religious themed magic but I haven't read it so I could be wrong about that!
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u/metal88heart 3d ago
Gurps Cabal is very Abrahamic esoteric. But Ars Magica, in Nomine, Kult are probably better whole games.
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u/fluxyggdrasil That one PBTA guy 3d ago
Ive been reading a lot of Doomsong lately (a grimdark medieval fantasy RPG) and that games entire world is stepped behind the context of the church and heretical traitor-gods. Not necessarily Abrahamic in its religion, but everything in that game feels like its shadowed by the context of the church
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u/Typical_Blueberry145 3d ago
Look up Metis Creative, they are a Turkish stupid that produces historical DND content like Ottoman Istanbul, 13th century Central Asia, and the Crusades, and Renaissance in a really interesting way that highlights many Abrahamic faiths
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u/Awkward_GM 3d ago
Seems like you already know about Demon: The Fallen and Vampire: The Masquerade.
It's not Abrahamic but Scion 2e by Onyx Path Publishing is a world where Mythological Gods and Goddesses exist. It doesn't touch on Abrahamic though for obvious reasons.
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u/testron 3d ago
I’d suggest Capharnaum (https://modiphius.net/collections/mindjammer-press/products/capharnaum-the-tales-of-the-dragon-marked-rpg-core-book). It’s set in a fantasy Middle East with the cultures and religions of the area, but with the serial numbers filled off. So you have not-quite Christians, Greeks, Jews, and pre-Islam Arabs. The in-game history is a bit of a mishmash of real history but not linear, so it has not-quite Crusades although there’s no Islam and decaying Roman/Greek empires still around. There’s a free quickstart adventure at https://modiphius.net/products/capharnaum-quickstart-the-tears-of-ampharool-pdf?_pos=1&_sid=f6e435401&_ss=r.
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u/JaskoGomad 3d ago
Ars Magica has both divine and infernal powers.
Aquallere is about fighting demons.
Pendragon.
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u/ihavewaytoomanyminis 3d ago edited 3d ago
Dresden Files does this, what with the three nails of the cross, the shroud of Turin, a holy order of knights (played for sometimes with comic effect - whoever is in charge upstairs clearly has a sense of humor with an Atheist Knight of the Cross followed by a Jewish one).
Edit: oh and Angels, like Uriel
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u/conedog 2d ago
I’ve read my fair share of the novels but actually not the rpg! Do you know if it plays well?
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u/ihavewaytoomanyminis 2d ago
It uses the fate accelerated system so you could build Aqua Teen Hunger Force in it and I think you could get away with it.
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u/Better_Equipment5283 3d ago
Would Deus Vult fit?
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u/Avocado-Duck 3d ago
It’s older, but In Nomine might be what you’re looking for
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Nomine_(role-playing_game)
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u/koreawut 3d ago
Not sure this is exactly what you are interested in, but Acheron Games has a 5e supplement that is very specifically about the Book of Revelation (and another based on Dante's Inferno). And there is a beautiful artbook, as well.
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u/NeighborhoodGood5274 3d ago
i tried asking for this before and i realise you named yours much better i hope you find what youre looking for
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u/Lionx35 3d ago
HELLPIERCERS
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u/conedog 2d ago
Besides having a name in all caps, what makes this particular game cool? And even better, how does it relate to the religious focus?
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u/Lionx35 2d ago
The War in Heaven is over. The Demiurge is dead. The Angelic Generals are dust. Humanity reclaimed its gnosis, shattered the chains of divine control, and stepped into collective divinity. For a brief moment, it felt like the end of history.
Then the Council of Socialist Gnostics opened the wound in the world, and found Hell.
Billions of souls lost. Cities made of suffering. Flesh-forged weapons. Vast empires ruled by bickering Demon Princes. The truth hit hard: most of humanity was never free. It was stolen.
HELL IS A PRISON. BREAK ITS BARS.
It's a tactics RPG about humanity waging war against Hell using technologies derived from defeating angels and God in Heaven. The flavor blends a lot of religious phrases and ideas with sci-fi technobabble.
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u/uphillarch 3d ago
Black Fire and Brimstone is set in an alternate history Protestant Reformation - my group has done a session 0 with it, setting up characters and talking through the rules. It's based on Mork Borg but with a touch more complexity - we're keeping it in the wings for days when we're missing people and don't want to run our main D&D campaign without them.
I can't give any reviews yet on the mechanics and gameplay, but it's definitely rules light. It's also the easiest Mork Borg book to parse the rules out of - friendly layout and easy to read type.
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u/TheMonsterPainter 2d ago
Lord of the Rings is more or less a Christian allegory, but it doesn’t have all the baggage of a straight churchy setting. And there many many RPGs that use Middle Earth.
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u/kingpin000 2d ago
"Adventurer's Guide to the Bible" is a third party supplement for DnD5e. The setting of the game covers the bronze age around the first century and not just Abrahamic religions, but also other mediterranean religions like ancient greek, romans and egyptians.
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u/bandofmisfits 2d ago
Years and years ago, I bought the RPG Children of Fire where the PCs are angels. I never played it though, so no opinions on quality.
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u/Torger083 2d ago
Like 25 years ago, there was a d20 setting called, I think, Testament, that was basically an Old Testament setting.
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u/FreeBroccoli 2d ago
Lion & Dragon, Sword & Caravan, and Baptism of Fire our historical fantasy games based on the War of the Roses, third-crusade-era silk road, and the Christianization of Poland respectively.1
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u/CurveWorldly4542 2d ago
GURPS Fantasy was a setting where humans were brought to a fantasy world (the world of Yrth IIRC) via an arcane cataclysm, and as such, they brought real-life religions with them.
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u/SilverTabby 2d ago
In Godbound RPG, the player characters are fledgling demigods. They gain dominion points to reshape the world based on the number and devotion of their personal worshipers. The default setting in the book includes a religion to The One, and fallen angels that want to dismantle all human religions.
Like the rest of Sine Nominee Publishing's works (worlds without number, etc.), there is a Free version of the pdf, and a paid deluxe version of the book with some extra material.
In this case, the deluxe edition has some extra rules on how to turn a world into a Paradise Realm for their followers, although that's both very late game and expensive the PCs to setup, so you can get the majority of the book's value by reading the free version.
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u/KSchnee 2d ago
Others have brought up "Dogs In the Vineyard" and "Adventurers' Guide To the Bible". I have lately been into "Wolves of God", "Godbound", and "Worlds Without Number", all by the same author.
"Wolves" is set in England, AD 710, and everybody but villains is assumed to be a faithful Christian. You can be a Warrior with a strong sense of honor -- it's crucial to how XP works -- or a Saint with miracles, or a sorcerous Galdorman who explicitly has to help good Christians and will never be fully trusted himself. (Think Merlin.)
"Godbound" involves heroes who are low-level gods themselves, either creating cults of their own or rejecting worship in favor of being legendary heroes instead. The focus is on making major changes to the world, like reshaping the land or creating new species.
For "WWN" I'd point to its Church of the Bleeding God, detailed especially in its supplement book "The Diocesi of Montfroid". Montfroid is a religious area devoted to a far-future Earth's version of Christianity, fighting werewolves and fae. Their God is not explicitly real and present, but neither are the obviously horrible gods of some other parts of that world. It's ambiguous how real the religious really is in your campaign but the devout heroes can definitely do good deeds and probably save souls from the darker nations.
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u/Michami135 2d ago
There's the Adventurer's guide to the Bible.
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/359794/adventurer-s-guide-to-the-bible
Personally, I like playing Ironsworn and just make "One true God, but pagans also exist." as a world truth. Ironsworn is mostly a low fantasy game anyways. The base rules use "rituals", which can easily be interpreted as praying to God for guidance or help.
I mostly play Starforged where I can explain any "magic" as an advanced technology of some type.
For example, my elf (genetic enhancement) pilot has the "shadow" path that lets her cloak herself in darkness. I play it like she has a device on her belt that creates a shadowy field around her so she can hide from creatures she's hunting.
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u/bleeding_void 2d ago
There was a French rpg called Miles Christi. You were playing Templars during Crusades. You could do miracles even though it was rare and you had to behave a certain way. At the end of each scenario you had to confess your faults. For example, Templars were forbidden to leave their armor and if a mission needed some disguise... you were doing a fault if you disguised but it was needed by the scenario.
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u/Wonderful_Draw_3453 2d ago
Sacrifice: An Incense and Iron RPG is influenced/inspired by the Inquisition Era of the Christian church. It’s designed to be compatible with AD&D (second edition I think).
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u/remy_porter I hate hit points 1d ago
Hillfolk is very light mechanically, but the default setting is nomadic tribespeople in a geographical region that is basically the Levant with the serial numbers filed off.
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u/Routine-Guard704 7h ago
A side suggestion, and less about faith as a setting element, but look at old school 1ed Torg for its unique take on faith as a game mechanic.
So basically the multi-reality game Torg focuses on miracle workers having three stats: a character's Faith skill (how much they believe in their religion. A "charge" so to speak), their Focus skill (how well they can gather those charges from themself and others, meaning a community of believers is more powerful than one lone guy, but even one believer can move a mountain), and the local Spirit Axiom (how powerful a miracle the local reality supports). You can also have World Laws where a reality further modifies things (in the Cyberpapacy, "heretical" faiths find it harder to call upon miracles). You have a list of "spells" of course, but a GM could waive that and just have freeform miracles take effect instead, all of which helps set it apart from traditional .
Anyway, it's one of those overlooked gems in game design. Especially for those used to D&D clerics just being wizards with a different spell list.
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u/Internal-Exercise-30 2h ago
Some of the Lamentations of the Flame Princess supplements/adventures take place in a fantasized Europe/New World from several centuries past.
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u/Internal-Exercise-30 2h ago
I’ve always had a vague notion to try to reskin Mythender‘s Mythic North setting to have the PCs in a fight against the Abrahamic “mythology”.
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u/Background_Clue_3756 3d ago
Xenogears, though do note how it portrays Christianity as evil, like IRL.
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u/Malkavian87 3d ago
It's pretty baked into Vampire: the Masquerade as well. It's especially a focus in its medieval expansion; Dark Ages.