religion and motives

One area where the religion in world-building is weak is in the arena of character motivations.

First ran across it in D&D when I would announce, while we rolled up characters, that I was willing to play the cleric, and lo and behold always got to play the cleric.  (Indeed, I could sometimes get some really interesting stuff because the DM wanted to keep me happy because -- I would play the cleric!)  The commonest reason was that they didn't want to play a puppet.  No matter how long they had played in the same group as me, merrily playing along with motives and all that stuff. . . .

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