I believe I proposed this on the D-list a long time ago.
It's a neat idea, but difficult to implement. Though maybe if we collaboratively came up with 8 or 10 "doctrine" fields with 3-4 options each?
I've also thought about if doctrinal differences should have effects ("Peasants in Keplerstan riot in the streets about whether there is an afterlife or not, Boogeyists say there is, Garbleists say there isn't"), but I ultimately don't think so. It'd be fiendishly hard to code.
I think the only game-effects should be penalties for lack of doctrines (failure to select an option).
Indeed, the idea was thrown a while back. But with it came the suggestion of a forced pantheon (which I think Tom brought forth), which was widely regarded as a bad idea and pretty much caused the whole ship to sink.
I don't think these stance should have any special mechanics, I don't think it needs to be fiendishly hard to code. A few drop-down menus, a few text boxts, penalties if they aren't set. At most, the drop-down menus could influence follower "happyness" over official stances on other religions. But that's hardly necessary, and that may become complicated. Just make filling out the "form" mandatory in the religion-creation process, and give existing religions 1-3 months to write up missing lore.
*If* you want to further complicate things, then you can have it so that you are forced to set character philosophy at character creation, and that he can then later only join matching religions and where it'd be really hard to change philosophy. This might be good, but this sounds like a lot of coding.
I feel that limits the potential for creative persons founding a religion far too much.
Rubbish. Non-theistic/Pantheistic/Monotheistic/Polytheistic. If you can think of something that can't fit in one of these categories, then just say it. Hell, if pantheistic is there, I wouldn't really see a need for non-theistic.
If the options granted in the few drop-down menus available are exhaustive (leaving the more complicated questions with text blocks instead), the only restriction to your creativity would be to its absence.
And nothing would prevent religions from saying "True, we are mostly X, but...". Most religions don't even mention a single word of the afterlife, which is basically the core founding block of every religion.
Afterlife is also more complex. If there is a hell, that still doesn't show who goes there. What about religions (like Qyrvaggism, for example) that teach a more complex afterlife?
It's a neat idea, but it's difficult to figure out how to have it, as Stabbity noted, not limit creativity too much.
Same complete rubbish. What about the details and more complex scenarios...? Uh, what about the wikis? Or even integrated text blocks? How would being forced to sum up your religion in a few key words and paragraphs prevent you from doing everything you do now?
We are talking about forcing people to adopt positions, from drop-down menus when these can be exhaustive and from text boxes when it would be impossible to do so. We are not talking about pre-making a few texts and forcing everyone to chose among those.
