Abandon all religous morals, ye who enter here

I really like that TSR/WOTC has tried to keep Christianity/Judiasm etc etc out of the books. I feel like all it would do is create more stereotypes...and would force a complete overhaul of planar such and such's.

I mean, where would the Christian God live? Lawful good? Neutral Good? Who decides what that good is? blah blah blah

It's what I call the 'hot topic' decision - the decision comes down to an evaluation of how much trouble prublishing something is going to bring to you and yours from the folks who don't like or agree with you - and if you are going to be actually able to handle said trouble.

And yes, there is a gradient there - but there's no 'halfway point' between publishing and not publishing something so at some point you really do have to draw that line. It's not a matter of fairness/equality/ethics/etc - it's just a matter of practicality.

(In a simular fashion, I have to watch threads to make sure they don't endanger the community health. It's something we all do to some degree or another in most of our social interactions.)

Just because Jack Chick and his band of incompetants doesn't hold sway doen't mean a publishing company can be too reckless. If WOTC were to publish articles relating to Judeo-Christianity, depending on the nature of the articles, they might precipitate the return of the Chick Brigade.

A hypothetical: Jack Chick's team is currently ineffectual and often ignored. They claim Dungeons and Dragons is out to subvert Christianity.

WOTC publishes controversial books about Christianity. Some Christians believe these books undermine their faith.

Jack Chick conveniently returns to remind people of his original method. People come to think of Jack Chick as at least slightly competant.

I think the main trouble is that Christianity is monotheistic - one big god, believe in him or else - while Planescape is decidedly polytheistic - lots of gods, pick one or more to venerate, or maybe none at all, nobody's really going to care.

A bunch of different polytheistic deities can all play together. A monotheistic deity doesn't play with anyone else. So, where would we put YHWH? We can't really make him fit anywhere.

It's debatable.

That's the charm of it. Lots of mythology gets damaged by throwing it all together in the same Great Wheel, tying everything to the power of belief, and adding in things like modrons and elementals. That's what makes Planescape fun.

There's really several issues going on here.

One is, would Christianity in Planescape be fun? This is what the *original* post was about, after all. ;^) The answer is entirely a matter of personal opinion, combined with the viewpoints of one's gaming group; one of the longest-lived Planescape sites on the web, pathguy's, is strongly Christian in its interpretation of Planescape, even to the point of offering optional rules that slant the setting toward LG Christian characters. Christ never appears onscreen, but the interpretation is clear to any reader. And -- assuming I knew what I was getting into when I joined the group -- I'm sure I could have fun with him GM'ing. Other people I know would be offended.

Which brings us to a second question, namely, is monotheism really doable in Planescape, or in an RPG at all? The answer to the latter question is certainly yes -- whole games have been written about the theme with varying degrees of reverence or irreverence, from a game whose name I cannot, alas, recall, about saving souls for Jesus, to the fantasy setting Banestorm from Steve Jackson Games, which uses real-world religions, to the positively flippant In Nomine, where the characters can play angels or demons (or pagan spirits, which are mechanically less powerful; or humans, which seem even less powerful but might not be). Is it doable in *your* Planescape? Same answer as the previous paragraph.

Now, the Urban Planescape Project is a little different, of course, and there's a thread over in the UPP forum about "Monotheism in UP," although it hasn't gotten a post for a while. Another take on religion in UP is in the same forum, a bit lower, under "Modern Gods."

A third question is, if you want to, *how* you do it. Does the monotheist god overshadow the lesser gods? Do they acknowledge him? Is he interventionist? Was he the Creator? Is there an Adversary? There are a lot of ways to do this, and you can pick a favored answer:

* direct worship of an Overpower via revealed Scripture, like Islam. "His" clerics' powers could be explained as arising from philosophical devotion, and "his" petitioners arrive on their appropriate alignment plane in no specific god's domain; highly noninterventionist, one might wonder whether the Overpower was paying attention at all. Alternatively, the Overpower is worshiped via the intercession of a Messiah, as in Christianity. The Messiah interacts with PCs more like traditional Planescape gods (i.e., he has clerics and a Domain), if a bit more aloof. (Or not; see first post in thread.) A Messiah who appeared in human form, died, resurrected himself, and thereafter ascended to Jovar (apparently *alive*), and who now grants spells and responds to Commune (although he can give no details on Jovar), would be a very Christ-like figure for a Planescape game.

* a dualistic system with a Supreme Being and an equally powerful Adversary; Ahura Mazda and Ahriman of the Zoroastrian mythos are in fact canonical, if I understand correctly, although I have no idea what their status is with relation to other gods. Their afterlives could be anywhere you choose, and their clerics would have a "real" god to worship. They could engage occasionally in displays of power that exceed even the other gods, explaining their status; the only reason Ahura Mazda wouldn't rule completely was that dealing with Ahriman took up so much of his resources.

* a branch of druidic pantotheism that at some point incorporated a notion of a personal Supreme Being -- the "clerics" would be druids, with the usual array of alignments.

* There are many others. You have options for monotheism that don't involve modern religions, options for using modern religions, and more. Jack Chick isn't gonna picket your house if you want to rewrite the pantheons with Jesus running a liquor shop in the Lower Ward. ;^)

no real reason to make him an overpower. his big claim to fame is creating the world and humanity, which are items on quite a few pantheons' resumés. he does, according to his own mythology, beat the pants off of every other god in town, but that might just mean that he has an unusually high divine rank (or that his contemporaries are unusually weak).