History IllegalReligion / TabletopGames

** In [[VestigialEmpire Taldor]], the worship of the NeutralGood sun goddess Sarenrae was outlawed for decades because of politics. Sarenrae is a solidly benevolent deity, but she's also the patron god of Taldor's greatest rival, and the Taldan emperor worried that the faith harbored treasonous foreign influences.

*** In the Theocracy of the Pale, the only legal religion was worship of Pholtus. All other religions were forbidden.
*** In many areas, religions based on evil deities were officially forbidden because of the death and destruction their worshippers tended to cause. Chief among them is the worship of Tharizdun, due to him being an OmnicidalManiac so evil that [[EvenEvilHasStandards even the other evil deities cooperated]] to [[SealedEvilInACan trap him]]. His worshipers tend to be trying to free him.
*** ''Greyhawk Adventures'' supplement. Incabulos is a NeutralEvil deity whose worship services are carried out in underground or remote forest areas to avoid detection. His priests are secretive in order to avoid those who hate evil. The temples of the NeutralEvil deity Nerull operate secretly in underground vaults to avoid the authorities because his ceremonies often involve HumanSacrifice.
** ''TabletopGame/{{Forgotten Realms}}''

*** Supplement [=FR1=] ''Waterdeep and the North''. The city of Waterdeep forbids belonging to any religion that kidnaps or sacrifices living beings, steals their property, or carries out attacks on non-worshippers.
*** Supplement ''Forgotten Realms Adventures''. Temples and shrines of the NeutralEvil deity Cyric are not tolerated in most cities. They're only allowed in Evil-aligned or very tolerant areas. Churches of the LawfulGood god Ilmater are ruthlessly persecuted by the authorities in Evil areas such as Zhentil Keep and Mulmaster.
*** Supplement ''Ruins of Zhentil Keep'' area card "Secret Temple". Temples of the deities Bane and Cyric in good-aligned lands are hidden from view because their followers know that the governments of those areas would attack the temples if they knew where they were.
*** ''Magazine/{{Polyhedron}}'' magazine #131 article "Pillars of the Realm". Religions that have an Evil CharacterAlignment are forbidden in the city of Ravens Bluff. The religious order of knighthood called the Pillars of the Realm try to discover evil religions operating within the city and deal with them.

** ''Magazine/{{Imagine}}'' magazine Special Edition, which explains the Pellinore campaign. In the County of Cerwyn, the Council of Guardians does not tolerate Chaotic (ChaoticGood, ChaoticNeutral, ChaoticEvil) religions.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}''
** In the backstory, the Emperor outlawed all religion during the formative years of the Imperium (except for the [[MachineWorship Cult Mechanicus]], because the Mechanicum was necessary and their religion was probably deemed "acceptable"). He promoted state-enforced atheism, publicly because religion was a superstition and a hindrance, privately because he hoped to quash Chaos Cults an attempt to [[GodNeedsPrayersBadly starve the Chaos Gods to death]]. Unfortunately, it didn't work due to a research failure on his part: the Chaos gods are fueled not by prayer, but by emotion. A galaxy at war was great for the Chaos Gods in the short term, but they knew they had to do something and banded together to break the Imperium.
** As a corollary to the above, the Emperor sent his [[TrulySingleParent "sons"]] to unite the galaxy into Imperium. One of them, Lorgar of the Word Bearers, chose to evangelize the cult of the Emperor in spite of his father's decree against religion. After a time, the Emperor publicly and painfully censured Lorgar, who turned to his homeworld's old religion which followed Chaos, and it was enough of a foot in the door for Chaos, [[Literature/HorusHeresy but that's another story]]. Ironically, the illegal Imperial Cult started by Lorgar was institutionalized shortly after the Emperor's [[OnlyMostlyDead "death"]]. Other religions are still ruthlessly suppressed.
** There are actually countless variations on the cult of the Emperor, as establishing a single version on the million worlds of the Imperium is impossible. Instead, whether or or not a particular cult is heretical or not is basically up to the local governor/Ecclesiarchy, and the Inquisition intervenes if they think they're getting too lax. This has the unfortunate side effect of allowing genestealer cults to flourish under certain circumstances, as unlike Chaos cults, who are dead-set on toppling the Emperor and whose acts are rather obvious, the genestealers are allowed to keep worshiping a bastardized version of the Emperor as a father figure, which then leads to the Tyranid fleets attacking.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'':
** For the most part, only the cults of Chaos are outlawed by the church of Sigmar, as most other religions have non-AlwaysChaoticEvil gods (for example, there's a FriendlyRivalry between followers of a WarGod and a bear god). There are, however, occasional bans on specific cults and their practices for even non-Chaos gods, although they are predominantly imposed by the Empire's secular authorities: good examples would be cults of Khaine, a particularly dangerous war god to the High Elves, god of murder and assassination to everyone else; cults of Nagash, the Lord of Undeath (even before his ascension to actual godhood, there were a few); the cult of Stromfels, a god of piracy, sea monsters, and rule of force by the strong over the weak; and those who worship Ranald, god of luck, in his aspect as the patron of gamblers, swindlers and thieves tend to find their actions curtailed. Those that worship Ranald in his aspect as Handrich, god of merchants and commerce, don't have that problem.
** In neighbouring Bretonnia, the official position is that only the state religion, venerating the Lady of the Lake, is an actual religion, everything else is peasant superstition to be wiped out when the local lord deigns to notice. However, the majority of peasants worship Shallya, goddess of mercy and healing without interference from their overlords, anyone from outside the kingdom is permitted to worship any non-Chaotic gods as they wish (on the grounds that "foreigners don't know any better"), and the coastal towns and cities worship Manann, god of the seas as a pragmatic defence against storms and tidal waves.
* ''TabletopGame/WarhammerAgeOfSigmar'' is similar to the situation in ''Fantasy''; Chaos cults are still outlawed (and have an entire organization dedicated to rooting them out) as is worship of Nagash, the God of Death (other, less troublesome death gods, like Morrda, are allowed). Aside from them, the Cities Of Sigmar tend to be surprisingly religiously diverse for an empire with a [[PhysicalGod literal]] [[GodEmperor God-King]], with temples to Teclis, Tyrion, Allarielle, Grungni, Malerion, and even Morathi being common sites.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Shadowrun}}'': The elven nation of Tir Tairngire banned the Universal Brotherhood cult within its borders. They had good reason to: the organization in question is devoted to converting human beings into insect spirits. Aztlan revoked the Roman Catholic Church's tax-exempt status in 2027 and then outlawed it in 2041, in order to promote Aztechnology's Aztec revival religion. Yes, they banned Catholicism in what used to be Mexico. This has gone over as well as expected.

** The worship of Rovagug is banned pretty much everywhere for very good reason. Rovagug is a DestroyerDeity that every other god wants to keep imprisoned. Worshipers of him want to free him so he will destroy all of creation.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Ironclaw}}'': Two of Calabria's four major houses have outlawed their ancestor's pre-[[CrystalDragonJesus S'allumer]] faiths. House Avoirdupois drove the Heliodromencer's underground some 700 years ago while House Bisclavret's "savage" cousins in the Phelan tribes still follow the {{Druid}}s out beyond the reach of the Church and its' fanatics. There's no real trace left of whatever House Rinaldi worshiped before Saint Helloise came to them, while House Doloreaux never converted as a whole and still practices the old faith of Lutarism.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Mindjammer}}'': The New Commonality of Humankind has not only banned most religions, but also memes such as democracy, communism, fascism, and [[BrainUploading "the Transmigration Heresy"]]. Despite the whole "collective memory" thing and the fact that the Commonality is basically a communist dictatorship.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': for the most part, only the cults of Chaos are outlawed by the church of Sigmar, as most other religions have non-AlwaysChaoticEvil gods (for example, there's a FriendlyRivalry between followers of a WarGod and a bear god).
** There are, however, occasional bans on specific cults and their practices for even non-Chaos gods, although they are predominantly imposed by the Empire's secular authorities: good examples would be cults of Khaine, a particularly dangerous war god to the High Elves, god of murder and assassination to everyone else; cults of Nagash, the Lord of Undeath (even before his ascension to actual godhood, there were a few); and those who worship Ranald, god of luck, in his aspect as the patron of gamblers, swindlers and thieves tend to find their actions curtailed. Those that worship Ranald in his aspect as Handrich, god of merchants and commerce, don't have that problem.

* On Mars in ''TabletopGame/RocketAge'' the chief religious order, the Orthodox Fellowship, considers ''every other Martian religion or sect heretical and illegal''. Whether their influence actually spreads that far is debatable, but they enforce their bans as much as possible.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Ironclaw}}'', two of Calabria's four major houses have outlawed their ancestor's pre-[[CrystalDragonJesus S'allumer]] faiths. House Avoirdupois drove the Heliodromencer's underground some 700 years ago while House Bisclavret's "savage" cousins in the Phelan tribes still follow the {{Druid}}s out beyond the reach of the Church and its' fanatics. There's no real trace left of whatever House Rinaldi worshiped before Saint Helloise came to them, while House Doloreaux never converted as a whole and still practices the old faith of Lutarism.
* In ''TabletopGame/{{Mindjammer}}'' the New Commonality of Humankind has not only banned most religions, but also memes such as democracy, communism, fascism, and [[BrainUploading "the Transmigration Heresy"]]. Despite the whole "collective memory" thing and the fact that the Commonality is basically a communist dictatorship.