Title: Report Heresy
Summary: Allow characters to report another character's message as "heretical," making a system like the vulgarity feature, but within religions. Have messages be judged by randomly-selected elders of the religion.
Details:
All messages a noble sends would have a "Report as Heretical" option like the "Report as Vulgar" option. If it is clicked and reported as heretical, it will be reported to the elders of the sender's religion. If the sender has no religion, then it has no effect (ALTERNATIVELY: pagan nobles could just not have the button be presented). Whichever elders receive the flagged message (maybe 3 randomly selected elders?) would then judge it, exactly like vulgarity– except they would judge it for a criterion of orthodoxy, not politeness. If ruled as heretical, the sender would lose some small amount of H/P. Also, there would be a random probability of an automated message going out to members of a religion saying, "Rumors that Noble X has been saying troubling and unorthodox things have begun to spread" or some similar statement.
Some kind of limitation on use could be necessary. A cooldown-time on reporting heresy, a frequency limit on how frequently elders can define something as heresy, and a minimum number of elders would all be necessary to prevent abuse, as described below in the "possible exploits" section.
Alternatively (or additionally), a cap on punishment for heresy could be set. Namely, a character cannot suffer an H/P penalty for heresy more than once a week. Elders can still vote on their messages of course, to no effect other than their own satisfaction, but no penalty is applied until messages from at least a week after the first heretical message are being condemned. The intervening messages have no effect.
Benefits:
This allows religions to "operationalize" doctrines without requiring some set of arbitrary game-defined doctrines. Players will be able to make doctrines a substantive and "real" force without replacing RP, without exceptionally burdensome or complex internal systems. The question of "what is heresy" will be determined by what players think heresy is: but this will provide a mechanic which can easily be used to generate some lower-level conflict, can be used to incentivize players to seek elderships in religions, and can be used to flesh out religions. If a player's message is declared heretical, it may encourage elders to explain their decisions, leading to further social elaboration and conflict. These are all beneficial game effects which, simultaneously, avoid creating some kind of game-defined doctrinal framework.
The possible exploits can be managed. The system seems unlikely to be very burdensome to code, given that much of it seems, from a layman's perspective, like it could be duplicated from the vulgarity system. It has a clear benefit of creating a social mechanism for players to utilize to act out existing and new RPs, without forming an arbitrary constraint on such RPs. As such, it seems, to me, like it would be an excellent addition to the religion game– and one that would include everyone, not just priests, in that game. Anybody can call their neighbor a witch.
Possible Exploits:
A cabal of elders with a political agenda could repeatedly report one person's messages as vulgar, and repeatedly orchestrate their being ruled as such. On the one hand, this would be cool– you could basically vaporize a person's reputation if they were heretical by having a monopoly on the elders. On the other hand, that would discourage powerful characters from joining religions, and just be grossly unfair.
This situation could be prevented. Only allow religions with, say, at least 6 elders (thus at least 3 priests) to use this feature. Tiny religions just aren't influential enough to hurt the reputations of powerful nobles. Only allow a person to report a message as heresy once every week, to prevent system-spamming (or create a penalty for frequent reporting). Another option, and one I dislike, would be to limit how frequently reported messages can be ruled heretical. This could be a hard cap, which creates problems of how to resolve the "waiting list" of messages, or some kind of penalty for frequent declarations: if you declare lots of things heretical, then peasants will start abandoning your religion as it gets too restrictive.
QuoteThis situation could be prevented. Only allow religions with, say, at least 6 elders (thus at least 3 priests) to use this feature. Tiny religions just aren't influential enough to hurt the reputations of powerful nobles. Only allow a person to report a message as heresy once every week, to prevent system-spamming (or create a penalty for frequent reporting). Another option, and one I dislike, would be to limit how frequently reported messages can be ruled heretical. This could be a hard cap, which creates problems of how to resolve the "waiting list" of messages, or some kind of penalty for frequent declarations: if you declare lots of things heretical, then peasants will start abandoning your religion as it gets too restrictive.
I am not sure where you get the idea that you can only have twice as many elders as you do priests but I don't believe that to be true. H/P hits could still happen with smaller religions it would just be a smaller hit, with hits being proportional to the size of the religion. Honestly I don't like the idea of prestige hits as someone being declared a heretic would make them more known and perhaps more prestigious.
I don't know how vulgarity works. Whatever vulgarity does, just do for heresy.
I'm 99% the number of non-priest elders is capped at the number of priests in the religion.
I also recently ran into the priest to non-priest elder cap. The only time there can be more non-priest elders than priest elders is if priests start dropping out.
It works like this: if at least half the elders are not priests, then no non-priests can be promoted to elder rank.
Quote from: Indirik on January 20, 2013, 12:04:00 AM
It works like this: if at least half the elders are not priests, then no non-priests can be promoted to elder rank.
Ok, thanks for the info.
Quote from: Indirik on January 20, 2013, 12:04:00 AM
It works like this: if at least half the elders are not priests, then no non-priests can be promoted to elder rank.
Oh; that's even stricter than I thought.
So it's not "ratio of non-priest elders to priests" it's "ratio of non-priest elders to priest elders." Interesting.
Anywho– anybody have anything to say about the request itself?
Quote from: Vellos on January 20, 2013, 01:41:58 AM
Anywho– anybody have anything to say about the request itself?
Requiring three elders for it to happen which would also weed out all religion's considered too small, IMO.
I like the idea. The link, though, should only appear if the sender and recipient are the same religion.
Quote from: Indirik on January 20, 2013, 02:23:09 AM
I like the idea. The link, though, should only appear if the sender and recipient are the same religion.
See, I like the idea of pagans being able to report it.
If a Christian conspires with a Muslim and, in the process, denies Christ, then the Christian double-crosses the Muslim, the Muslim can totally publicize the Christian's heresy. It might not get the person expelled– but we're just dealing with rumors here.
The problem is that leaves it so wide open to abuse. It could also potentially flood the elders with spurious or abusive reports. Imagine going into a big battle, and in the post-battle trash-talking, one side reports every message the other side sends. *bam* the elders get blasted with 50+ messages.
Meh, it just doesn't make sense to me that people outside the faith could be reporting you for heresy. Keep it inside the religion.
Would that make it much/at all harder to code?
...why would someone not in the religion know what's heretic.. and faithfully report it to the elders of that outside faith... with anything but malice in mind?
Could be a concerned follower of a variant faith.
Quote from: Draco Tanos on January 20, 2013, 01:15:11 PM
Could be a concerned follower of a variant faith.
A variant faith is, ipso facto, heretical in the first place.
Quote from: Norrel on January 20, 2013, 01:34:20 PM
A variant faith is, ipso facto, heretical in the first place.
um, no?
Variant is a friendly setting.
Quote from: Vellos on January 20, 2013, 05:23:25 PM
um, no?
Variant is a friendly setting.
Variant is a variant and nothing else is otherwise predetermined. SA has seen variants they seem to similar to them as heretical. An example is the Blood Fruit Cult thing (I have a bad memory at times), where SA activists were trying to have a crusade declared based on Glaumring's original description where it was basically SA but with eating Blood fruit, which gave you powers.
Quote from: Penchant on January 20, 2013, 05:28:00 PM
Variant is a variant and nothing else is otherwise predetermined. SA has seen variants they seem to similar to them as heretical. An example is the Blood Fruit Cult thing (I have a bad memory at times), where SA activists were trying to have a crusade declared based on Glaumring's original description where it was basically SA but with eating Blood fruit, which gave you powers.
It's declared as "Ignore," not Variant.
Variant's effects on conversion are not at all like those of misguided or evil. You can't persecute them either.
If you're using variant as a hostile setting, you;re very confused.
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Point is, sure, limit heresy reports to members of the religion. But be absolutely sure it can still cover PRIVATE messages between members of a religion.
Quote from: Vellos on January 20, 2013, 05:30:07 PM
It's declared as "Ignore," not Variant.
Variant's effects on conversion are not at all like those of misguided or evil. You can't persecute them either.
If you're using variant as a hostile setting, you;re very confused.
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Point is, sure, limit heresy reports to members of the religion. But be absolutely sure it can still cover PRIVATE messages between members of a religion.
I said it was considered a variant based on Glaumring's description but moving on. Variants effect on conversion should be easier because hostile or otherwise you only have to convince them on a lot less points because their regular priest does half the work for you. Also, just because the game doesn't currently allow persecution of variants doesn't mean they shouldn't allow it though if you do consider the variant faith heretical I would most likely declare it evil anyways.
Quote from: Vellos on January 19, 2013, 08:53:37 PM
Possible Exploits:
A cabal of elders with a political agenda could repeatedly report one person's messages as vulgar, and repeatedly orchestrate their being ruled as such. On the one hand, this would be cool– you could basically vaporize a person's reputation if they were heretical by having a monopoly on the elders. On the other hand, that would discourage powerful characters from joining religions, and just be grossly unfair.
The obvious solution to that would be to leave the religion that keeps declaring you a heretic. Basically, I think the protection against such an exploit works like this: you shouldn't lose H/P so fast that you don't have the time necessary to travel to a temple and leave the religion before it seriously hurts you.
No more than one H/P hit per week seems sufficient. If you go on a spree and send a bunch of heretical messages on a single day, you don't get one hit per message, you get one hit for the whole thing.
From a RP and gameplay perspective, I really like the idea.
Quote from: vonGenf on January 21, 2013, 10:45:51 AM
The obvious solution to that would be to leave the religion that keeps declaring you a heretic. Basically, I think the protection against such an exploit works like this: you shouldn't lose H/P so fast that you don't have the time necessary to travel to a temple and leave the religion before it seriously hurts you.
No more than one H/P hit per week seems sufficient. If you go on a spree and send a bunch of heretical messages on a single day, you don't get one hit per message, you get one hit for the whole thing.
From a RP and gameplay perspective, I really like the idea.
Agreed, that's simple enough. Steady loss should be possible, not rapid. And if you can stab/capture/otherwise prevent someone from reaching a temple for a long time, while holding the Elders of a religion in a lock, then I think you deserve to destroy someone's reputation one nibble at a time.
Quote from: Bedwyr on January 22, 2013, 04:02:22 AM
Agreed, that's simple enough. Steady loss should be possible, not rapid. And if you can stab/capture/otherwise prevent someone from reaching a temple for a long time, while holding the Elders of a religion in a lock, then I think you deserve to destroy someone's reputation one nibble at a time.
Aye.
So you can't be punished for heresy more than once a week.
That seems pretty fair.
I'll add it to the proposal.
Why is this necessary? There are already ways for Elders to punish members. Kicking them out or fining them weekly... If there is no way for a religion to grant you H/P why should there be a mechanic for them to take it away?
I would rather see schisms coded before something like this.
Because most faiths in the game don't have the secular governments under lock and key. It isn't to say they aren't influential and powerful, its just that especially outside DWI most judges go out of their way to keep church and state seperated. Its a good system which will encourage more religious activity and RP. I like it. And from a layman's point of view, much easier and quicker to put together than schisms.
Quote from: dustole on January 25, 2013, 02:13:56 AM
Why is this necessary? There are already ways for Elders to punish members. Kicking them out or fining them weekly... If there is no way for a religion to grant you H/P why should there be a mechanic for them to take it away?
I would rather see schisms coded before something like this.
Because this gives a natural way of creating functional in-game doctrines without some arbitrary system. It's not about punishing members, per se.
In light of recent discussions of ways to improve religion, I'm gonna cast a spell of necromancy on what I still think is a good idea.
And my other religion proposals too.
Because these never really got a clear response from the Devs.
Quote from: Norrel on January 20, 2013, 01:34:20 PM
A variant faith is, ipso facto, heretical in the first place.
Not necessarily. Methodists don't believe Baptists are heretical for example. Misguided perhaps.