I started working on different creeds for logovores in my game Emergence, and and it ocurred to me that many logovore beliefs, ambitions, and "lifestyles" should be reflections of the beliefs, goals and lifestyles of the humans that created them.
In Emergence, logovores are our godlike inheritors and their ideologies have a lot to do with our own.
And I happen to know for a fact that gamers are an eclectic lot. I asked one guy to play Planescape with me and he refused to because his god, Shiva was depicted in the game with the alignment, Chaotic Evil.
So before I post something incorrect and offensive about someone else's beliefs or ambitions or lifestyle, I'll post something about mine, so when I get stuff wrong you'll know where I'm coming from, and cut me some slack.
I was born in New Jersey. My mother moved here from Germany. Her mother is from Rostov na Donu, but when the Germans conquered Rostov in WWII, she, and many other young girls, were conscripted to work in a work camp and moved to Munic. Although her family lived in Rostov (in Russia, then The Soviet Union), they were Armenian, and had relatives in Armenia and Kazakhstan.
My maternal grandfather assumed a fake identity during WWII, so I can't say anything certain about him. I think he was the son of a Czech politician, and he escaped execution by changing who he was. He never changed back to his real name, so he must not have had anyone left alive to go back to.
My father was also born in New Jersey. His father was Polish, and his mother was Dutch and French. I didn't know them much, but I think my paternal grandmother was also born in America.
My family grew up nominally Catholic (we only went to church on Easter and Christmas). To this day I still feel that Christianity is this ornate counter-intuitive religion that I know only the smallest bit about.
Incidentally, my father bought D&D when I was 8, he was 36, in 1981, and I spent more quality time with my dad playing D&D in his friends' basement around a franklin stove than we ever spent in church.
My family eventually converted to Episcopal, and became regular church goers, but I was already largely independent, spending my free time staying with friends or at my grandmother's in Jersey City, from where I could take the train 15 minutes and be in the heart of New York City.
I learned about Buddhism, but when I went to University of New Orleans, I converted to Islam. It was because of a tiny chapter tucked way in the back, Sura 109, The Sura of the Unbelievers. Its only six lines long. I can recite it in Arabic without looking. It says, tell the unbelievers that you may never be able to convince each other so just live however you want to live. (I don't know what's wrong with Al Qaeda. It is a small chapter, and it is way in the back. Maybe they just missed it.)
After college I went back to Jersey City and got an apartment with two friends. I met Kemba, the woman who would become my wife, in Manhattan.
Although I have a deep interest in science fiction, for some reason, the majority of my role playing experience has been in fantasy games. About this time was when I got into rules lite games. With Manhattan right across the river, there just wasn't time to play more detailed games. I was working, going out, playing music (I make and play bamboo flutes. Although I can make and play the shakuhachi, I prefer the Egyptian Ney), and when I got a chance, playing some lite RPG. One of my roomates kept bringing back bottles of rum from Jamaica, so I remember we were seldom sober enough to play more complicated games than Risus. (I know its forbidden, but who actually follows it that strictly? A friend of mine from Pakistan once told me, "You write poetry, you play the flute, you drink. There are actually many characters like you all over the middle east. It is part of Muslim culture that these three things go together.")
On September 11, 2001, I was across the river from the twin towers, in Jersey City when they went down. I could see them burning. Kemba was in Battery Park. I was in such shock that I actually still went to work that day.
I moved in together with Kemba in Brooklyn and then we both moved to Atlanta, where we started our marketing business, and finally got married (at the courthouse. She's a Christian, although the church doesn't even see her on Christmas and Easter).
When my wife and I aren't running our business, we can be found playing backgammon in coffee shops. By clicking on my name, you can see a picture of me and my wife at the Marshes of Glynn in southern Georgia.
Recently, my music has gotten me back in touch with gamers. I've joined a band that plays original gamelan compositions, and some of the guys also play RPGs, and I played Persian ney at a wedding and the groom used to role play and is willing to help me playtest Emergence.
Just wondering.
Are you planning on using current beliefs or making up ones that would occur in the future? Or both?
I could really see a technology religion in the near future, especially as MMORPG's increase in popularity and more people spend increasingly larger chunks of their life in a virtual world.