20
Before
I moved to California in the fall of 1978, I encountered a cult within Dungeons & Dragons (DnD) named—with a prefixed “True”—after a branch of a real-world major religion. The label made me uncomfortable. Later I read about the Temple of the Frogs cult in the DnD book, Blackmoor,1 owned by the Dungeon Master (DM) of the games I played before 1984. In worlds that same DM created, the players’ characters (PCs) took the goddess Bast and elevated her importance—probably beyond the vision of the DM. These examples show three possible sources of cults or any other theme in DnD, and generally in tabletop2 role-playing3 games: a commercial publication—here, the Temple of the Frogs; a DM’s creation— here the one I was uneasy about; and the joint creation of the players and the DM—the Bast example. There are other combinations like DM-modded commercial modules. Thus, doing cults in DnD so everyone is happy is tricky: You may have to clean up a commercial module, and in every case, you must be sensitive to your players’ creative input. You and all your players may accept something today that some of them are uncomfortable with tomorrow—not to mention on reading a game’s written log a decade later—people change! And some players may only appear to go along. So, what should you watch out for?
The Unification Movement (Moonie) - Founder: Sun Myung Moon, Founded: 1954, Membership: 1-2 Million
