It's been said on this board and in person innumerable times that our game (and all "high fantasy" analogues) draws extremely heavily from world-wide mythologies, and that due to the nature of myth and religion, there will always be grey areas and situations in which a given symbol can be construed as being a real-world religious icon. This is unavoidable - it is nigh impossible to tell a fictional story without incorporating symbolism that relates in some way to someone's myths, legends, and dogma.
That being said, it is in all of our best interest and that of the game to agree by certain unspoken spirit-of-the-rule rules, and one of those is the avoidance of symbols and concepts that can be construed as religiously significant by casual observation of a layman observer.
In other words, use common sense - avoid crosses, stars of David, crescent and moons, pentagrams, swastikas (really? Really?) mentions of demons or devils, or anything that someone driving past your camp might write an angry letter to the community association about. ("Sorcery is a sin! Dungeons and Dragons ate my baby!" shut up.) For less obvious stuff, such as what a person might have to look up on Wikipedia to know whether or not they should be offended by it - it might be better if we as a community simply waited until somebody saw fit to complain.
If I ran the zoo, a simple red symmetrical cross on a white field ("Argent, a greek cross gules throughout") would be nothing more than heraldry, but a red Latin cross (the common Christian cross) would be a no-no. However, I'm just a man with an opinion and twenty free minutes to kill at work, entreating the company at large...
That being said, it is in all of our best interest and that of the game to agree by certain unspoken spirit-of-the-rule rules, and one of those is the avoidance of symbols and concepts that can be construed as religiously significant by casual observation of a layman observer.
In other words, use common sense - avoid crosses, stars of David, crescent and moons, pentagrams, swastikas (really? Really?) mentions of demons or devils, or anything that someone driving past your camp might write an angry letter to the community association about. ("Sorcery is a sin! Dungeons and Dragons ate my baby!" shut up.) For less obvious stuff, such as what a person might have to look up on Wikipedia to know whether or not they should be offended by it - it might be better if we as a community simply waited until somebody saw fit to complain.
If I ran the zoo, a simple red symmetrical cross on a white field ("Argent, a greek cross gules throughout") would be nothing more than heraldry, but a red Latin cross (the common Christian cross) would be a no-no. However, I'm just a man with an opinion and twenty free minutes to kill at work, entreating the company at large...