Not being able to kick out priests of a religion

[Tom]

Ok, several things go criss-cross here.

One, there's an IR for class choice. IMHO we can completely ignore that, it isn't touched. Yes, you have the IR to play a priest if you want to. You do NOT have the IR to be a member of the religion of your choice.


Two, the design decision is that it shouldn't be a click-of-a-button matter to get rid of a priest who doesn't suit the leaders anymore. There ought to be room for conflict, heresy, minority opinions, etc. within a church. If we allow the elders to simply kick any priest they don't approve of, we have another issue of boring, one-minded, tyrannical game-entity.


Three, griefing is an OOC matter and should be taken to the Titans, end of story.



I do agree that the 100% perfect eternal immunity isn't perfect. Given that it's been in the game for several years now and this is the first time (that I remember) that we've had this discussion, I don't think it's too much of a problem, really.

[Anaris]

Given that it's been in the game for several years now and this is the first time (that I remember) that we've had this discussion, I don't think it's too much of a problem, really.

It is not the first time.  There have been at least three major discussions I can recall, and more minor ones. I think most of them were more on dev issues like "what do we do with paused elder priests?" but until this discussion, your answer was always some variant of, "They have the inalienable right to be a priest, and so we must not force them out of being a priest. Because we also will not permit pagan priests, this means you cannot force them out of the religion."

Because of that, most times when people have come to me asking about the issue—which has happened on numerous occasions—I have told them that you were very firm on the issue, and that complaining about it wasn't likely to make a difference. I considered it to be essentially as firm a decision as the decision not to allow rogue infiltrators.

If you are open to the idea of allowing dissenting priests to be removed, just not with a single click and without a kefuffle, then I propose we implement a solution incorporating the idea of religious sects that was discussed some time back as a good way to implement religious schism. If a priest wants to preach views contrary to those of the establishment of the religion he's in, he can start a separate sect, and we can give members of other sects within a religion certain protections against summary excommunication.

[Geronus]

I updated my previous post with some further thoughts.

Since we do not have a mechanic for actually schisming a religion, I don't think it's fair to not allow religions to control their membership. As you said it, being in the religion of your choice is not an IR.

If you want to make intra-religious conflict a bigger part of the game, we need more mechanics to support things like schisms, not this arbitrary refusal to allow Elders to defrock a priest that's making trouble. You're making both sides powerless to pursue the conflict. A rogue priest can grief the religion he's in and make life very difficult for the Elders, but lacks any ability to truly split the religion a la Martin Luther. The Elders on the other hand have no power at all. They can't even levy punishments like fines, let alone defrock the guy who's making a mockery of everything their religion stands for. All they can do is scold and then basically beg the guy to leave and hope he has the grace to do so.

[JPierreD]

Yeah, from a gamey perspective, that sucks. From a roleplaying perspective, it has great potential.

Honestly? I don't see any fun roleplaying perspective. You have a Priest as member of a Church that has rejected him, who even the Prophet of the religion considers a heretic, who possibly doesn't even hold any of the tenants of the religion true. And the Church cannot even prevent him from messaging everyone or receiving all messages without quite cumbersome OoC effort (manually selecting the recipients leaving him out).

Two, the design decision is that it shouldn't be a click-of-a-button matter to get rid of a priest who doesn't suit the leaders anymore. There ought to be room for conflict, heresy, minority opinions, etc. within a church. If we allow the elders to simply kick any priest they don't approve of, we have another issue of boring, one-minded, tyrannical game-entity.

Religions are about faith and dogma. Sects, heresies and dissidence are great in my book, but they do not belong all in the same Church. When past a point there has to be a break. I lead an extremely tolerant religion, the third one of Dwilight (Aetheris Pyrism), but not being able to expel heretical Priests makes a big hole in the authority of the Church.

We roleplay a lot, and I have tried to avoid direct involvement in politics both because there is a heavy lack of religions in Dwilight, so I really welcome OoC new ones starting and actually seeing RPs flow, and also to avoid the best as possible being like the many state-religions whose only purpose is being a political tool, extension of the realm, to avoid other realm/religions from taking over our lands. This is why I say that while political conflict is great (we walked the thin line between tolerance and persecution for long), this feature really provides very little enjoyable conflict potential.

[fodder]

surely sect thing would be a way to lead to schisms.. similarly, one could imagine sects merging (eg.. pope, anti pope splits into 2 religions after schism, priests get to align themselves to the other one, etc...)

especially if the follower pop part is based more on individual priests rather than global.

[JPierreD]

It is not true that there is nothing you can do. You can ask the priest's realm to ban him; you can eventually execute him. You can have him stabbed.

If the priest in question has powerful backers, then he won.

The religion game is not completely separate from the rest of politics. Religions must find ways to get secular authorities to do their bidding.

Now, I don't oppose some way to perform an excommunication - I do think it would make a lot of sense, but I don't think the game is broken without it.

Sure, if yours is a state religion. I like to play a RP-based religion game that is not just a tool for the realms to use in war. I was once ordered by a marshal to go help with a TO by calming down the population, which of course I refused. I'd like to see religions having different goals than their realms, because that is what makes for interesting conflict. Religions are already quite weak themselves, making them further dependent of realms does nothing for the Priest game, an already very unpopular Class to play.

Wasn't there a thread about empowering religions rolling around?

[Perth]

Why not simply have a button that every single Elder of the religion must press in order for the Priest to be kicked out?

It allows a truly troublesome priest to be kicked out, but also requires a significant consensus to do so. It allows the possibility for arguments and conflict, because if the troublesome priest has just one ally on the Elders, then he can't be kicked out.

Therefore, it would get rid of 100% immunity but also not make it an easy or wishy-washy matter to simply boot a priest.

[Draco Tanos]

Why not simply have a button that every single Elder of the religion must press in order for the Priest to be kicked out?

It allows a truly troublesome priest to be kicked out, but also requires a significant consensus to do so. It allows the possibility for arguments and conflict, because if the troublesome priest has just one ally on the Elders, then he can't be kicked out.

Therefore, it would get rid of 100% immunity but also not make it an easy or wishy-washy matter to simply boot a priest.

*demotes all elders*
*kicks out priest*
*repromotes elders*

[Vellos]

Or, make it just one button click, but make it cause unrest among religious followers.

So, for example, to kick a priest out might cause ((Rand%)*X)% of followers in various regions to abandon the faith, where X is some integer representing how long the priest has been part of the religion, or maybe how long they've been a priest (if the game tracks that). Maybe that value could also diminish outside of the excommunicee's home realm or something.

That way, religions will think twice about excommunicating priests (especially if they are long-standing members), but can still do it.

Of course, that priest could just rejoin the religion. Some kind of re-join block (or some kind of lag where, if the last time you excommunicated the same priest was very recently, there is no penalty for doing it again) would have to be put in place.

[fodder]

... much more interesting if those peasants join the heretic faith, than going pagan.

[Tom]

As I said, it should be possible, but so painful that it won't get used at the first sign of trouble.

I'm thinking along the lines of requiring some cumulative work, like bad marks, basically something that simply takes time (real-world time) so there is time for people to roleplay the trouble. It should take at least a week. And after that, there should be the possibility that you lose temples because they decide they like the heretics version of the faith more.

[Geronus]

As I said, it should be possible, but so painful that it won't get used at the first sign of trouble.

I'm thinking along the lines of requiring some cumulative work, like bad marks, basically something that simply takes time (real-world time) so there is time for people to roleplay the trouble. It should take at least a week. And after that, there should be the possibility that you lose temples because they decide they like the heretics version of the faith more.

I think that's fine, but if you're going to tie the excommunication of one priest to major systematic religious upheaval, I would ask that you go the distance and fully flesh out mechanics for religious strife including schisms. After all, the guy we're kicking out might just be a totally insincere priest who's literally only there to spy and/or sabotage things, as opposed to the BM incarnation of Martin Luther. Who would follow someone like that? The ranks of cults and heresies that were stamped out or massacred by the Catholic Church with little to no repercussions far outnumber the sects that successfully split away to form rival Churches. Not every crackpot priest who defied the Pope went on to found a major religion of his own. A priest should have support from fellow *players* to accomplish that level of trouble. They should not be able to put a religion through the ringer just by their choice of class and when every single other character in the religion would just as soon be rid of him.

We have had two instances of this type of thing happening in SA, with priests no one liked or supported being priests just to cause trouble with the buttons they got. Someone like Allison on the other hand *should* be able to wreak religious havoc, as she has a substantial personal following of nobles within the religion and represents a branch of belief that really could form into a schism if she only had the game mechanics to support that.

[Duvaille]

So how about this: Any priest can create a schism which triggers a kind of a vote where every member of the religion votes. If a certain threshold of votes is gained, a completely separate religion is formed that gets the name that the wayward priest entered at the time of declaring the schism, and the priest becomes the "prophet". Those who voted for him switch religions, and the peasants of the lords doing the switching swap religions as well, as do temples in their regions. If the threshold is not reached, the initiator is kicked out of the religion and reverts back to warrior.

Alternatively an elder can declare a priest heretic. This triggers a schism, which prompts the "heretic" to write a name for the potential new religion. If he gains enough support, he forms a new religion with the mechanism mentioned above. If he does not gain enough support, he is driven out as a heretic.

So if a priest actually enjoys some support (at least one lord with a temple in his region + others) there is a true danger he will take some of the religion with him. But if he is just annoying, he's going to get kicked out.

Also, when the schism is going on, he "heretic" would try to convince as many followers to his side as he can, and vice versa. This creates interesting interaction. Perhaps also the timing of the split would not be set in stone, but would be somewhat random and would depend on the members choosing their sides. Perhaps the schism would last as long as some percentage of the followers have made up their mind (default would be to follow the old creed). While the schism is going on, there are drops in peasant following, and perhaps violent outbursts among the peasants, and perhaps even some temples being destroyed in the process.

The larger the split and the longer it takes, the more there would be these nasty consequences. Would that not work?

[Penchant]

I like it except the last paragraph.
Edit:Also if enough of the members vote for the priest, he becomes the sole elder of the religion while the rest who disagreed become the schism.

[Bedwyr]

So how about this: Any priest can create a schism which triggers a kind of a vote where every member of the religion votes.

Just a note, schisms have been approved and a nice way of handling them worked out, they were just not a coding priority.