The bottomline in my mind is that a religion that fails to keep its members around will fail. That doesn't mean realistic or interesting, so long as it doesn't violate any rules against cheating or the social contract. So if it turns out that a supremely boring and contentless religion can be sustained for many years, and there are no shenanigans about, then what exactly is the issue? We aren't exactly here to police the roleplaying elements of this game, except maybe on Dwilight.
In addition, if you want to be serious about the religion, good for you. In fact, I would congratulate you for contributing to the atmosphere of BM over those who perpetuate a seemingly boring and empty religion. So? If you want recognition for it, then it'll come, but I think the argument here is similar to that which asks us to be good people, even if no one praises us. Just because some, or maybe a lot, of people around us don't do something well, doesn't mean we shouldn't. On the other hand, what gives us the right to say that our way of going about religions is the right one? Maybe we could try to understand what makes "hollow" religions still tick and the players' views on them.
You are losing all respect I had for you. As with the threat about the Zuma, you prove that you have very little interest in improving the game. You feel we should just let everything be, everything is absolutely perfect the way it is. God bless BattleMaster, we shouldn't add a single more feature or tweak as single mechanic because we have finally achieved the perfect state.
What gives us the right to act on how religions work is the same thing as what gave us the right to act on how the military or oaths work. To force religions to have content will make the hollow ones much less competitive (we have already discussed this aspect of vanilla religions earlier in the thread). Therefore, the more interesting ones will more easily flourish. They will then have the power they need to create interesting events and situations in the game. Time has told us that the status quo favorises the bland religions that add absolutely nothing to the game, that even reduce the fun factor by undermining the atmosphere.
One of the main problems I found when trying to run a religion is just the general lack of interest from other players. Whether that is a failing all my own in not creating a compelling enough religion or just what is seems, a general lack of interest in the religion option, I dont know. Since so much of it is based off roleplay I think I just found it difficult to rally too many players around it.
While I always tried to find a way to fit religion into every aspect of BM life (trying to define why things happened based on the beliefs of the faith), as it were, it becomes difficult to fully develop anything without the interaction of others. And I know other religions do not necessarily have that problem, but at the same time some of the most successful religions I've seen don't really seem to be religions. I forget who it was, but whoever mentioned SA is probably a good example of that, I think. From my brief time in the SA it seemed to be a purely political machine wrapped in a think layer of "We do this because of faith."
Which made for a very interesting group to follow, dont get me wrong, but not a very interesting religion.
The failure can be your own, but not necessarily. If you don't work, you are sure to not get any followers, but indeed even if you work really hard it is extremely hard to gain meaningful numbers of followers except in new realm scenarios. This is the result of the overabundance of religions.
