Religion is missing something?

[Silverhawk]

it is, don't worry, ppl still follow it :P. Although I must say the priniciple of the "Great Death" thats in there is pretty fun and solid.

but come on people, lets be honest, is there even one original religion? In my oppinion every religion will be based one way or another on something we are familiar with.

[Indirik]

2) Clean up of the religions - religions based on other games being prohibited.

I don't really see a reason to do this. So long as the religion is period-appropriate, what's the problem?

Also, who gets to make the determination as to how much a religion has to be based on something else before it is not allowed? Does a single name count? Or how about no common names, but a common theme? What happens if no one notices, and the religion becomes big and powerful, then someone finds the obscure 1957 sci-fi book on which it was based, do we instantly delete the religion?

This kind of a restriction is impossible to completely enforce, and will almost certainly cause much anger and resentment among the players as they argue over whether or not some triviality constitutes "based on".

3) Enforced the politics to have religions based on BM and SM things;

See above.

4) Limitation at the fantasy of religions: an amorfic god wich lives on the space is acceptable; unknown gods dressed to kill in plate armors, wielding explosive javelins is something over the limit;

Mrh? This doesn't make any sense. A war god that throws explosive javelins is completely within the setting of BattleMaster. It's a simple variation of Zeus and his lightning bolts. OK, if the players try to claim that the javelins are made of C4, that would probably be outside the scope, but what's wrong with a god who wields magic exploding javelins? Heck, the god could very well have created the world. What's wrong with a few magical explosions?

5) Put priest as a subclass of the game: much of the historical preachers was warriors and members of the govern;

I do like the idea of some form of warrior/priest thing. I think it would be rather appropriate for the Priest/Hero combination. It would also reinforce the "no turning back" aspect of becoming a hero.

7) Adaptation of the benefits of being a priest;

Please explain. I'm not sure what you mean.

8) Change of the rules of the religions: the option to turn it really "evil", "good" ou dicotomized (as the most politheistics religions);

Would any religion really consider itself as "evil"? That does not sound very realistic to me. Maybe if you're some extreme devil worshiping cult, maybe. But I don't think that really would work for anything else. I think just about any religion in the game would classify itself as "good".

9) Religiousity benefits: random things that could improve the memebership of religions, as the miracles to revive while declared dead (as  the thing with newbies), a vision that improve your skill for an action, heavenly help to kill rogue, etc, etc. People worship gods because they do believe they will have some benefit, some help, a thousand virgins to !@#$ in heaven, etc. While characters do not know about their destiny and the gods, players are discouraged to adopt religions, because they see it as a place to put their golds without a benefit, no one.

This kind of thing is not really appropriate for the low-fantasy world of BattleMaster.

9) Non limitation for the religions: Despite the limitations we have on BM about emigration, religiousity should be an exception. With a religion to spread at the globe you can start to enforce yours, not search for a new one when you change of continent. The limitation for priests to emigrate should be taken as well.

This is a game mechanics limitation. Individual islands are segregated into separate DBs. Trying to enable mechanics support for cross-island religions would be a massive undertaking, prone to all kinds of bugs, probably. I'm fairly certain this has been flat-out rejected.

You are, however, welcome to found the same religion across multiple islands. Or a variant of it. It's been done before.

10) Peasants claimming to their lord become a follower of their religion start to be a thing to matter. Today, it is just a phrase at the notifications, but, when production stops as the people is celebrating a religious hollyday, things should go bad as the lord will ask for workers.

Some kind of religious holiday that affects regions that follow that faith would be an interesting idea. Allowing religions to designate a certain number of holy days. When they occur, the effects (both good and bad) could be based on the percentage of followers of that faith in each region. It's probably completely impractical, though.

11) Characters be able to become atheistic

No. This has been categorically rejected. There are no atheist characters in BattleMaster.

12) Possibility to merge and tear a religion

Schisms are something the devs have planned, and have worked out some ideas about. It's just a big project, with a lot of details. It's "o the drawing board", so to speak. But don't expect it any time soon.

13) A common class to religious characters - to me, this is something tha could be added: a common preacher.

As an extension to the advy game? I doubt this would ever happen. BattleMaster is about nobles, not commoners.

14) Implement of stupid cool things: a noble could have his funeral made at the temple of his former land or were his family lives.

I'm no really sure how this would work, or what it would add. Unless it was some kind of list of people buried at a temple that would persist for as long as the temple was still there.

15) Possibility to hire a crew - a preacher could have the option to hire some men, to his protection, but, as the hero, from the peasants of a place.

Meh, could be interesting to allow priests to hire non-combat guards for personal protection. Keep them from being infiltrator training dummies. There would have to be some disadvantage for it, beyond just some small gold cost. Perhaps longer travel times, or some chance to get detected by any militia or combat troops in a region when traveling in enemy lands, etc.

However, you can RP your character as having any retinue you want them to have. You want your priest to travel with 12 slaved to carry his trunks full of dress robes? Go for it.

[vonGenf]

I do like the idea of some form of warrior/priest thing. I think it would be rather appropriate for the Priest/Hero combination. It would also reinforce the "no turning back" aspect of becoming a hero.

I always found this niche was nicely filled with warriors Elders of religion. Being an elder gives you some religious powers: power to expand temple, power to fiddle the ranks of those below you, power to play with people's debts. It's not much, but it is something.

I don't think warriors should be able to preach. Or, if that's the case, then I want to play a priest/ambassador/infil/hero.

[Indirik]

I always found this niche was nicely filled with warriors Elders of religion. Being an elder gives you some religious powers: power to expand temple, power to fiddle the ranks of those below you, power to play with people's debts. It's not much, but it is something.

That's all just administrivia. Anyone can do this, regardless of class.

I don't think warriors should be able to preach. Or, if that's the case, then I want to play a priest/ambassador/infil/hero.

Maybe not preaching. Or at least not as effective preaching as a priest. But there should be something that we could give them that would make the P/H combo some kind of warrior-of-the-faith kid of thing in a way that is more than simply RPing your character that way.

[Bedwyr]

Two things:

1. The continent separation makes major problems, because people, with good reason, have their characters all follow a religion from their first realm...That doesn't show up anywhere else.

2. Until and unless religions gain the ability to passively gain resources, nothing will change.

If you don't believe me, look at the new tax system.  I don't know about all realms, but I haven't heard of any major fights over the Crown suddenly leveling taxes on the Dukes except in connection with ongoing disputes.  Why?  Because the game now allows it, and it happens passively.  Three months ago you couldn't have pried that gold out of the Dukes with a crowbar, because 1. the game didn't say the Crown could, and 2. it took weekly effort.

Weekly effort doesn't happen in this game if there is any way to avoid it, it's just that simple.

[Indirik]

Three months ago you couldn't have pried that gold out of the Dukes with a crowbar, because 1. the game didn't say the Crown could, and 2. it took weekly effort.

This is not really true. The Crown could tax dukes, and do it automatically. But it required the duke to consent to the tax, and set up the automated transfer himself. i.e. he had to tax his own region with a decently large duchy share, then the realm would tax that duchy share. The duke could completely avoid the entire issue by just not setting a duchy tax on his region. From what I understand, Riombara used this method of duchy taxes to generate a rather large realm share, didn't it?

The new system does not add automatic taxation, it adds unavoidable enforcement of the crown's right to tax a duchy.

Weekly effort doesn't happen in this game if there is any way to avoid it, it's just that simple.

I agree. Any system which requires players to do some trivial thing on a regular basis will be something that  soon fails to get done at all.

[egamma]

Two things:

1. The continent separation makes major problems, because people, with good reason, have their characters all follow a religion from their first realm...That doesn't show up anywhere else.

2. Until and unless religions gain the ability to passively gain resources, nothing will change.

1: Perhaps we should work on identifying a religion that would possibly be portable. SA, obviously, although I think it would gain massive resistance. Maybe MAE, Apostles of the Abyss? A lot of wiki documentation would be helpful.

2. Maybe increase the peasant temple contributions, double them?

[Chaotrance13]

Armok is not happy that you got his name wrong.

All will bow before Armok, Khorne, or Khaine. Whichever you prefer.

Anyway, on the subject of portability: I wonder personally whether the CoH would work. I suppose the wiki documentation would need updating and expanding, but it's a thought.

[Bedwyr]

1: Perhaps we should work on identifying a religion that would possibly be portable. SA, obviously, although I think it would gain massive resistance. Maybe MAE, Apostles of the Abyss? A lot of wiki documentation would be helpful.

2. Maybe increase the peasant temple contributions, double them?

Not MAE under the current implementation, though if Jenred and Arella can ever get things rolling it might work.

[vonGenf]

That's all just administrivia. Anyone can do this, regardless of class.
Maybe not preaching. Or at least not as effective preaching as a priest. But there should be something that we could give them that would make the P/H combo some kind of warrior-of-the-faith kid of thing in a way that is more than simply RPing your character that way.

Sorry, I took you meant the warrior class when you mentioned warrior.

What if P/H could fight personally, e.g. in duels? Or can they already? In that case, I think it would keep the balance of having priests unable to have a unit, but still keeping a "warrior" feel to them.

[egamma]

Sorry, I took you meant the warrior class when you mentioned warrior.

What if P/H could fight personally, e.g. in duels? Or can they already? In that case, I think it would keep the balance of having priests unable to have a unit, but still keeping a "warrior" feel to them.

Priests and Infils cannot duel.

[Chenier]

Apparently not enough players.
Just like it's easy for people to come to the forums and whine about how their pet religion never got powerful enough to tear down entire realms.
That's a very good question. (Assuming I can parse that correctly...) I've often wondered why, if there are so many people here on the forum complaining that no one (other than them) takes religion seriously enough, they don't all get together somewhere and make a religion that they actually take seriously.
The reason that most religions, even the ambitious ones (especially the ambitious ones?), fail to inspire and take hold is the way they are founded. Almost every one of them has the same basic pattern: Some noble rediscovers and ancient religion that used to really big and powerful at some unspecified time in the past, and brings it back. They work hard to create some huge mythology with funny names, and then hand it all en masse to the world as a fait accompli. The entire thing is a completed work, and everyone is expected to study it, and go along with everything that it says, and that's the end of it. No one else bothers picking it up and running with it, because it's not their creation. They're not invested in it. Someone else made it, so it's their responsibility to shepherd it and make it grow. Other people don't want to keep referring back to the wiki to figure out how to spell, for example, Tlaxacoaltitchili-whatsis, so they can swear an oath on the battlefield to the god of war, famine, headaches, apple pie, and the color blue.

(No offense intended with that example. Seriously. You put an incredible amount of work into the Cult, and it's unfortunate that it didn't survive. But the titles you used are so outside my experience, I don't think I could ever get used to them, and thus could never really get into it as an IG organization, let alone trying to become a serious member.)

IMNSHO, that's one of the things that the founders of SA did that guaranteed its success. (And no, I wasn't one of the founders. I didn't get to join for several weeks after it was founded, because I was stuck doing region maintenance, and drafting soldiers... :(  But there are only two or three people left that have been in SA longer than Brance.) Yes, it was the only religion on the island at the time, and that helped. But we ran up against other religions before we could spread too far. The Seven right next door in Springdale had quite a few adherents. As did Torenism over in Everguard and the Libero Empire. Plus VE in Caerwyn stopped us cold for several years.

Crap...I drifted away from my point a bit there...

Anyway, what SA did right was that it did not pre-define an entire mythology that it expected everyone to pick up, learn and be enthusiastic about. It used a very simple concept that you could learn as fast as you could read "Austere, Auspicious, Maddening". (OK, maybe a little longer if you needed to look up the definitions of Austere and Auspicious, but still...) Jesse (the player of Deverka) nailed it dead on. And Rick's (Mathurin's player) move to continue along in the same manner of letting the people in the religion develop it, with very little guidance from the top, played right along with it. The simple concept of three stars, each with a simple defining aspect, and nothing else let people feel like they could pick it up and contribute to defining what it is, and what it would be and grow into.

We still have the occasional massive theological debate over the nature of the Stars, the various aspects, etc. Just recently we had a big debate over the possible existence of a fourth star, or the Dark Star, or whatever it was called. That's the kind of stuff I've never seen in any of the predefined packages that most players try to impose on their member nobles.

The key points, as I see it, that lead to SA's success:

• Simple names
• Simple concepts
• Room to grow and for new people to contribute in a meaningful way to the theology
• A willingness to take a friggin' stand on religious matters, instead of "can't we just cooperate and be friends?"
• A few players willing to actually subjugate their influential characters to the faith, instead of demanding the faith do what they wanted.

Those last two items are at least as important, if not more so, than the others. Brance wasn't set on killing Caerwyn. He thought that perhaps if we could force a regime change in Caerwyn that they could be allowed to live, and Allison could be sent to colonize Flowrestown instead. But the Elders of SA demanded that the new colony be in Golden Farrow. Brance had no choice but to go along with it. The Elders of SA were willing to stand up and tell a realm (multiple realms, actually) what to do, and our leaders were willing to go along with it and do what they were told. Even though two of us thought that perhaps that was not necessary.
I agree. You have to have good circumstances. I think that the right players, with the right concept, can make it work. But not enough people are willing to do what it takes to make it work. Too many new religions are just the same old realm-supporting faith with a new name and a new set of gods. And the players in the realm know this, and only pay it the minor lip-service they need to give it in order to get on playing "the realm game".
Adding new game mechanics to force players to be in a religion, or to give religions a bit more power to hurt regions, is not going to change anything. It will only reinforce the same bland, realm-centric empty shells that we've seen so often. You simply cannot force people to be active, willing participants in the religion aspect of the game.

I'm not sore that the Blood Cult didn't progress any further. I shut it down myself because I had gotten bored with it. I consider it a success, really. It attracted many very active people who contributed to establishing a great library of RP and IG dynamics. It failed when it started losing members as they got executed or as the players left the game. At which point, I never managed to renew the membership with other such ambitious and active people. Indeed, I can't really seem to find any ambitious and active people anywhere anymore, for whatever purpose.

As for SA, I don't buy it. "Blanks for people to fill" are, in my eyes, pretty much "blanks forever so as to not ruffle any feathers". May as well praise Eretzism for "leaving blanks for people to fill". SA still doesn't have a vision on the afterlife, as far as I know, which would be the number one concern of any religious person. All it has is vague theology that doesn't really force anyone to do anything they wouldn't like to do. All can basically "worship" the stars in whatever way they wish. In my eyes, that's a hollow religion. Follows the same mold as all other "successful" national religions on other continents, except that it came first on the continent, and in a theocracy that would eventually colonize a lot, and at a time where the metagame was really pushing for religion to be taken seriously. That doesn't make it a good model, in my eyes.

As for fewer old religions... A lot of them died on BT. I don't see any improvement.

[Chenier]

Is the one based on MechWarrior still around? Probably not...

Yes, sadly.

Thank your neighbourhood Riombara for that.

[Silverhawk]

except that it came first on the continent, and in a theocracy that would eventually colonize a lot, and at a time where the metagame was really pushing for religion to be taken seriously

Yup, I have to agree on that. SA was just the "right time right location".

my two cents to the religion debate.

In my oppinion most players seek to "improve" their characters. A religion does not offer anything physical to use. It´s mostly RP and lets be honest, a lot of the players seek something to improve their char and a good RP is not part of that. Very bluntly said, a new noble seeks to become a region lord in the shortest way possible (or some other title/position). Religions mostly can't offer this. SA, due to it being large and state religion in many realms has the possibility to offer such physical improvemends.

[Chenier]

Yup, I have to agree on that. SA was just the "right time right location".

my two cents to the religion debate.

In my oppinion most players seek to "improve" their characters. A religion does not offer anything physical to use. It´s mostly RP and lets be honest, a lot of the players seek something to improve their char and a good RP is not part of that. Very bluntly said, a new noble seeks to become a region lord in the shortest way possible (or some other title/position). Religions mostly can't offer this. SA, due to it being large and state religion in many realms has the possibility to offer such physical improvemends.

Indeed, now SA has become large enough to have similar appeal to rulers in normal realms. In other words, people are willing to suck up to it in hopes of rewards or protection.

And agreed on your first point as well. Religions are drains in every sense. Lots of spending (especially now that they are taxed) with about no reward. As a result, hardly anyone involves himself in the religion game. It's easier not to, after all, and I could think of a thousand better ways to spend one's gold and time.