BattleMaster Community
BattleMaster => BM General Discussion => Topic started by: Perth on March 05, 2011, 05:36:28 AM
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It seems I have read a lot of discussion lately about some of the weaker points of the game, and areas where things tend to fall stagnant and produce stale game play. One of the larger contributors to this seems to be complaints about stale, boring and lame religions. Particularly those that are "successful" in a mechanics sense, but possess no real atmosphere or drive.
I would like to open some discussion about what makes a good religion, as opposed to these boring ones that many of us would claim only hurt game play. There are several notable ones in game, what defines them and what has set them apart from other religions? Is creating solely state-supporting religions the big problem? Is the recruiting of uncaring nobles it? Does it merely depend upon possessing confrontational and active leaders? No? Then what?
Very curious to see some analysis on this, as religion has the potential to be perhaps one of the largest drivers of game events, conflict, roleplay, etc. in the game and it is a shame to see it fall so short of this at times.
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I think there are a few things that would vastly improve religions. Not all of these are required, but would be quite helpful.
1. Deep mythos that makes some sort of sense.
2. Actual rituals and observances for the religion to make people feel as if being a part of it means something.
3. Specific goals (convert everyone, destroy this evil, support this good).
4. Concrete stands on various issues (no one gets fired up for wishy-washy religions).
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Because so much of religions lies in the RP, a "good" religion is one that gives people something that they can get their RP teeth into. It's hard to get excited about promoting an empty faith. Our BM faiths need the same things that real world faiths have (albeit on a smaller scale!)
1) Stories (particularly origin stories, tales of gods and heroes)
2) Rules and Rituals (dietary restrictions, body modifications, ways to pray, how to dress, who to hate)
3) Holidays and Celebrations
4) Philosophy (Why are we here? Where are we going? How do we get there?)
5) Prophecy (The end of days! The Chosen One!)
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Can you guys point to any religions that are like that?
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Can you guys point to any religions that are like that?
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/The_Blood_Cult
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Can you guys point to any religions that are like that?
Sanguis Astroism (northern Dwilight), the Blood Cult (Beluaterra), and hopefully a couple of new religions on Atamara and southern Dwilight, but until they are founded and have some time to prove themselves we'll have to wait.
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Sanguis Astroism (northern Dwilight), the Blood Cult (Beluaterra), and hopefully a couple of new religions on Atamara and southern Dwilight, but until they are founded and have some time to prove themselves we'll have to wait.
Isn't it interesting that both of those religions are demonized and feared by people who aren't in them?
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Isn't it interesting that both of those religions are demonized and feared by people who aren't in them?
(grins) Of course they are. Good religion provokes passion, either for or against.
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Sanguis Astroism (northern Dwilight)
Come on, from what I've read in the wiki Sanguis Astroism is one of the faiths that offers nothing for you to grab on to(no rituals, no concept of afterlife, barely anything comparable to gods, barely any concrete teachings, nothing on how we maybe came to be..you know, those important bits most religion tend to try to answer). Having been a part of it for a while all you did was scheme politics there. Sure, it's successful, but far from being a well rounded religion as far as actual teachings go(even Darkanism and Estianism have more to offer in that regard).
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Come on, from what I've read in the wiki Sanguis Astroism is one of the faiths that offers nothing for you to grab on to(no rituals, no concept of afterlife, barely anything comparable to gods, barely any concrete teachings, nothing on how we maybe came to be..you know, those important bits most religion tend to try to answer). Having been a part of it for a while all you did was scheme politics there. Sure, it's successful, but far from being a well rounded religion as far as actual teachings go(even Darkanism and Estianism have more to offer in that regard).
SA isn't as much evil through the religion as the people who control it. The "crusades" they are going through with in the north of Dwilight is pretty brutal. First Ravian Empire, Thulsoma, now Averoth? Caerwyn is threatened, etc.. I can't reveal much, but I know SA is one of the worse religions via their actions than their actual religion.
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SA isn't as much evil through the religion as the people who control it. The "crusades" they are going through with in the north of Dwilight is pretty brutal. First Ravian Empire, Thulsoma, now Averoth? Caerwyn is threatened, etc.. I can't reveal much, but I know SA is one of the worse religions via their actions than their actual religion.
Nothing wrong with being an religion of violent crusades against unbelievers. If you've gotten to a point where you can systematically pull that off that's great. If anything more religions should try and go for something like that, instead of being content at leaving others alone.
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Nothing wrong with being an religion of violent crusades against unbelievers. If you've gotten to a point where you can systematically pull that off that's great. If anything more religions should try and go for something like that, instead of being content at leaving others alone.
Touché :)
If you look at actual history, Medieval Europe defined itself, and saw itself, as unified by its Christianity (Christendom). It's perfectly feasible for a religion to try and be domineering and use it's religion as a reason for military crusades. It is an interesting roleplay point. I admit it would be boring if SA conquered the whole of Dwilight which is why I think the other, non SA dominated realms, need to be a little more aggressive.
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Qyrvaggism, in Beluaterra, used to have holidays that were periodically celebrated, as well as rules on when wars were allowed to be fought. Not so anymore, at least as far as I can tell.
I've always enjoyed Way of the Warrior Saints in Atamara as well, though I felt it was underused.
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Come on, from what I've read in the wiki Sanguis Astroism is one of the faiths that offers nothing for you to grab on to(no rituals, no concept of afterlife, barely anything comparable to gods, barely any concrete teachings, nothing on how we maybe came to be..you know, those important bits most religion tend to try to answer). Having been a part of it for a while all you did was scheme politics there. Sure, it's successful, but far from being a well rounded religion as far as actual teachings go(even Darkanism and Estianism have more to offer in that regard).
On the other hand, SA does offer something for you to look to when deciding how to act: actual stars which change from day to day.
SA does have pretty intense theological debates, but they tend to focus on extremely minor points. Part of the reason is that these are the points we can actually argue about and bring in-game arguments that make sense.
After all, if one character says "The gods have talked to me, and they said they have created the world in an epic battle three thousand years ago", then what can you say to argue? Unless the BM gods are actually OOC talking to you, there is nothing to grasp to. You can make up a whole mythos, but you just make it up yourself. A minimalist mythos allows things to develop by themselves.
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Nothing wrong with being an religion of violent crusades against unbelievers. If you've gotten to a point where you can systematically pull that off that's great. If anything more religions should try and go for something like that, instead of being content at leaving others alone.
Perhaps, but their means of waging wars is a little over the top. I would like to see more role-playing like Dwilight is meant to hold, rather than all-out war and little correspondence.
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http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/The_Blood_Cult
...and that took a *great* deal of work to make it into what it became, and even then we discovered the "state religions" such as Order of the Golden Feather and that sham of a religion Enweil came up with were very, very, very difficult to penetrate.
Qyrvaggism, in Beluaterra, used to have holidays that were periodically celebrated, as well as rules on when wars were allowed to be fought. Not so anymore, at least as far as I can tell.
Qyrvaggism used to have a lot that it no longer does, so far as I can tell. It's somewhat disheartening to have seen such a well fleshed-out religion diminish like Qyrvaggism has.
I've always enjoyed Way of the Warrior Saints in Atamara as well, though I felt it was underused.
Which reminds me of the Barony's Hörgr of Makar (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Barony_of_Makar/H%C3%B6rgr_of_Makar), which is something I've always intended to flesh out myself or come up with a replacement... maybe it's time I got around to that...
Edit: Good lord, the page still has the filler text I used when I first created it!
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http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Via_of_Filiolus (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Via_of_Filiolus)
I'm trying to revive this religion, with some success. It used to have 25 members--all of Wetham--but when Wetham fell, is shrank rapidly to 8 members in Giblot. Recently, I had my second char become a priestess, and the religion has gone from 2 temples to 4, and added 2 members as well.
I'd like for the religion to reclaim its' former glory, and even spread beyond Giblot. The problem, of course, is that the other realms have their own state religions, and convincing them to give them up is not going to be easy--anyone have any experience with that?
I'd like to flesh out the religion, but I'm unsure what to add. Outer Tilog has the "evil" religion role already, the Colonies don't need a second one. Festivals, mentioned earlier in the thread, sound like a good idea.
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I think there are a few things that would vastly improve religions. Not all of these are required, but would be quite helpful.
1. Deep mythos that makes some sort of sense.
2. Actual rituals and observances for the religion to make people feel as if being a part of it means something.
3. Specific goals (convert everyone, destroy this evil, support this good).
4. Concrete stands on various issues (no one gets fired up for wishy-washy religions).
All of these can and are done in some religions. Did it with the Blood Cult, seen it elsewhere. There's only so much you can do with text to really make people feel like they are doing something, and not writing something.
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Because so much of religions lies in the RP, a "good" religion is one that gives people something that they can get their RP teeth into. It's hard to get excited about promoting an empty faith. Our BM faiths need the same things that real world faiths have (albeit on a smaller scale!)
1) Stories (particularly origin stories, tales of gods and heroes)
2) Rules and Rituals (dietary restrictions, body modifications, ways to pray, how to dress, who to hate)
3) Holidays and Celebrations
4) Philosophy (Why are we here? Where are we going? How do we get there?)
5) Prophecy (The end of days! The Chosen One!)
Yet those that satisfy these criteria are usually marginal while those who are successful typically satisfy none of these.
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Yet those that satisfy these criteria are usually marginal while those who are successful typically satisfy none of these.
Interesting to say that, examples of each?
And if these aren't keys to success, what would you say are?
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...and that took a *great* deal of work to make it into what it became, and even then we discovered the "state religions" such as Order of the Golden Feather and that sham of a religion Enweil came up with were very, very, very difficult to penetrate.
Qyrvaggism used to have a lot that it no longer does, so far as I can tell. It's somewhat disheartening to have seen such a well fleshed-out religion diminish like Qyrvaggism has.
Which reminds me of the Barony's Hörgr of Makar (http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/Barony_of_Makar/H%C3%B6rgr_of_Makar), which is something I've always intended to flesh out myself or come up with a replacement... maybe it's time I got around to that...
Edit: Good lord, the page still has the filler text I used when I first created it!
I've heard good things of what Qyrvaggism used to be, though I never witnessed it myself.
As for The Blood Cult, I'm proud of what I accomplished, but I lost too many core members of the team and it has now degraded to being somewhat like Qyrvaggism (mind you with a lot more developped texts and philosophies).
The mythology for the cult was part just making stuff up by myself without any debate or the like, sure. Didn't have much of a choice, though, except for our short-lived golden age we were always rather limited in membership. It did, though, result in great study of aztec mythology and society. I adapted my own version, but it has a lot of common elements with the real thing. I managed to get a certain understanding of the aztec way of life and philosophy, and therefore engineered different contexts to produce similar results. Then, a second part was just adding random elements. After all, you need a foundation to grow upon, so some aspects were chosen just for the randomness of it to eventually create interesting theological questioning and debate. For example, the Cult always proned blood sacrifices, but it was confronted with the serious question of what to make of the Servants of the Light when they showed up and started asking it. A pity the Netherworld had slain all of the other elders with whom I could have argued over this by then. Another very important factor was IG realities. Actually, it was probably the biggest factor of them all. Our myths evolved from the BT invasions, and everything caused by NPC actions on the other islands. Some myths record GM events that I believe almost everyone has already forgotten, in its own way. Other events are just straight up in the archives.
Finally, the Blood Cult lore and especially philosophy had an important chunk of deduction. Using multiple elements of lore existing from wherever and producing new knowledge from it. That's how the libraries (what's on the wiki and what was unfotunately never saved) was formed.
So what's a good religion? A well-thought of and developed religion, even if it is so marginal it has no impact on the continent? A religion with a vague concept of stars affecting your mind but has an imposing impact on the continent?
I personally feel religions aren't given the love they require. Great effort were made to make oaths matter, but nobody really bothered to try to make people care about religion. The way I see it, a lot of people, either directly or indirectly, enjoy the impacts of interesting religions on the game but since there are no game-mechanics reasoning for them to submit to one, they'll never bother participating. And for as long as so many people don't care enough to participate, religions won't become meaningful.
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Well, it can rather depend what you mean by successful. To be successful in terms of having lots of followers (both noble and commoner) and big temples, then really all you need is backing of a suitably well established realm. If you mean successful in terms of being fun and active in character, then you need a group of committed and active people who are willing to really drive things.
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Interesting to say that, examples of each?
And if these aren't keys to success, what would you say are?
Eretzism, Order of the Druids, the Church of the Dragon, Hemaism... etc. All these faiths took over a whole realm, when not more, with very little theological content. The religions I've seen with satisfactory content never manage to really get a majority anywhere.
The Blood Cult did get a majority in one realm and thriving (though rotating) minorities in many others, but I consider there is something dramatically wrong one needs to put the amount of effort I did to get such results. In the end, I think my efforts into developing the Cult into something respectful granted more pleasure to our opponents (in the form of having something to do, and that something not being against a faceless and boring opponent) than it did to our members. In fact, my realizing this, in conjunction with losing all the other major players, is what caused the Cult to steadily decline over the last months (year? not too sure, I'd have to look up the archives for that).
A problem with faiths is that the more values and doctrine you add to them, the less people can fit in the mold. That's why national faiths are so vague, so that everyone, no matter what they think, can "fit in".
So really, we have two questions to ask ourselves. What is a *good* religion, and what is a *successful* religion, knowing that faiths are usually one or the other, if not neither... and which is best? Good religions that are too exclusive to gain significant power, or religions with significant power but no reason to ever use it?
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The biggest problem with religion is when priests need a permit from a region’s lord. That prevents freedom of religion, or real competition among religions.
When priests lack freedom to preach or build churches, there is not much interesting for them to do within game mechanics. Prohibiting priests from doing their work defeats their choice of class.
Is that fair?
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A problem with faiths is that the more values and doctrine you add to them, the less people can fit in the mold. That's why national faiths are so vague, so that everyone, no matter what they think, can "fit in".
This. This is what has always bothered me. Vanilla religions have the advantage, because "specialized" products, like mythologies, unique religious structures, interesting moral positions, gain nothing, yet may alienate some people. They have a hard time mobilizing passionate players, but an easy enough time surviving with members.
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The biggest problem with religion is when priests need a permit from a region’s lord. That prevents freedom of religion, or real competition among religions.
When priests lack freedom to preach or build churches, there is not much interesting for them to do within game mechanics. Prohibiting priests from doing their work defeats their choice of class.
Is that fair?
This is indeed a good question. And I would be in favor of allowing religious freedom everywhere so this battle can take place, but given the political benefits of retaining the faith of the lord as the majority many people just don't want to bother with unwanted priests.
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The biggest problem with religion is when priests need a permit from a region’s lord. That prevents freedom of religion, or real competition among religions.
When priests lack freedom to preach or build churches, there is not much interesting for them to do within game mechanics. Prohibiting priests from doing their work defeats their choice of class.
Is that fair?
You need permission from a region lord because he /owns/ that land (or controls it on behalf of the realm/ruler...save that debate for another thread.) It does make it harder to get your priestly foot in the door, but there's nothing unfair about it. Priest class is different; it says so right on the tin: This class is strongly a roleplaying class. There is less to do in game terms than for other classes, but more options for interaction and roleplaying.
I think a lot of the "vanilla" religions have just been around a long time. Some (most?) since the introduction of religion when (I've heard) realms scrambled around to set up "state religions" to combat the incursion of other realms' state faiths. They truck along because they're there. People join the "official" faith to be political or because they want the religion RP aspect and that's what's there. That's a lot of dead weight to move out of the way.
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This. This is what has always bothered me. Vanilla religions have the advantage, because "specialized" products, like mythologies, unique religious structures, interesting moral positions, gain nothing, yet may alienate some people. They have a hard time mobilizing passionate players, but an easy enough time surviving with members.
Personally, I think we should force religions to adopt a series of theological stances. Is the faith monotheistic or polytheistic? Is there an afterlife or not? What are the names of the gods? How was the world created?
This should all be game mechanics. Religions should be *forced* to adopt positions that will be saved. A series of questions on key theological questions needing answers of at least 1500 words be asked at the founding.
Since vanilla religions can too easily fit everyone in, we should just force some flavour into them, so that they lose their edge over developed religions (who will then shine for their activity and increased investment).
Wouldn't solve everything, but it'd be a damn good start.
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This should all be game mechanics. Religions should be *forced* to adopt positions that will be saved. A series of questions on key theological questions needing answers of at least 1500 words be asked at the founding.
Since vanilla religions can too easily fit everyone in, we should just force some flavour into them, so that they lose their edge over developed religions (who will then shine for their activity and increased investment).
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).
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I've always been fond of the Chaos Requiem, and though lacking in creativity for a long time in its doctrine, its members and the conflicts they brought with them were always fun.
Speaking of which, I am updating the doctrine, and come a long way since the days of the Diablo 2 ripoff. Its now heavily based on a modified christian demonology, which I have recently begun researching to bring more flavor to the CR.
Behold:
http://wiki.battlemaster.org/wiki/The_Chaos_Requiem
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Personally, I think we should force religions to adopt a series of theological stances. Is the faith monotheistic or polytheistic? Is there an afterlife or not? What are the names of the gods? How was the world created?
This should all be game mechanics. Religions should be *forced* to adopt positions that will be saved. A series of questions on key theological questions needing answers of at least 1500 words be asked at the founding.
Since vanilla religions can too easily fit everyone in, we should just force some flavour into them, so that they lose their edge over developed religions (who will then shine for their activity and increased investment).
Wouldn't solve everything, but it'd be a damn good start.
This is something I've wanted for years. I think we could add fields as we go along, and require religion elders to fill in short answer fields within a month of implementation or start losing temples.
Easy fields:
Mono/Polytheistic (options are 1-9, and polytheistic)--radio buttons
afterlife (hell, paradise, reincarnation)--make these 3 checkboxes, so that more than one can be selected
sacrifices (none, grain, animal, human)--3 checkboxes
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I feel that limits the potential for creative persons founding a religion far too much.
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Easy fields:
Mono/Polytheistic (options are 1-9, and polytheistic)--radio buttons
afterlife (hell, paradise, reincarnation)--make these 3 checkboxes, so that more than one can be selected
sacrifices (none, grain, animal, human)--3 checkboxes
Not easy at all.
Polytheistic/monotheistic is not complete. What about pantheism? What about religions like Buddhism that may not be properly "theistic"?
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.
In my mind, probably the simplest thing would be a list of, say, 20-30 game actions, and the elders can select a "moral" rating for each one. So looting (and various types of looting), tournaments, festivals, secession, good marks/bad marks, infiltrator actions, trader actions, priest actions, rebellions, spellcasting, dueling, retiring from positions. A scale of maybe "very good" to "very bad" for each thing.
It wouldn't cover tons of theology, but would be a start that can be built from.
The VERY cool thing would be if it would then take all "very bad" things and, when a noble did a "very bad" thing, it had some chance of telling the elders what they did. Your religion doesn't like assassinations? Well, if you get spotted killing someone, it will also be reported to the religion... and even if you don't get spotted by the guards, there is some small percentage (IF the religion regards such a thing as very bad). Maybe reporting of "very good" things would be nice too.
Just kind of brainstorming here.
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SA isn't as much evil through the religion as the people who control it. The "crusades" they are going through with in the north of Dwilight is pretty brutal. First Ravian Empire, Thulsoma, now Averoth? Caerwyn is threatened, etc.. I can't reveal much, but I know SA is one of the worse religions via their actions than their actual religion.
These statements demonstrate that you really don't know a lot about what really happened in these scenarios. The Raivan Empire and Libero Empire were the ones that started that war. They engineered the entire thing using Aquilegia as their scapegoat. They lost because they were horrendously bad at war.
Thulsoma also actively antagonized SA. (IF you look on the wiki you can see somemessages from the player where he practically brags about it.)
Averoth as well set about engineering their war with Astrum. They wanted it. They just didn't want it to turn out the way it has so far.
I'm not saying that SA is the victim in all these. We brought a lot of power to the table to fight them. But then what would you expect? If you poke the 800 pound gorilla, you better be able to take his punch.
And as for Caerwyn, they also are choosing to do some poking, too.
But, what fun is life without a litlle bit of poking back and forth, right?
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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.
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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.
Sometimes I think you don't read anything that anyone writes.
You do realize you just disagreed with me... then proceeded to agree with me, right?
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Sometimes I think you don't read anything that anyone writes.
You do realize you just disagreed with me... then proceeded to agree with me, right?
No I think the meaning of what he said is hard to decipher through text rather than being spoken to. I think "What about the details and more complex scenarios...?" was a simple rephrasing of your question so that he could answer.
The Vellos contention is that complex afterlife's are too difficult to categorize.
The Dominic contention is that complex afterlife's can be cut down to a short description and then simply a reference to a wiki page.
8)
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The problem then is that the religion ends up entirely constrained by the founder; that's not going to help people engage with religion.
One problem I have with religion with a large amount of lore on the wiki is that I feel I may end up having to read all of it, then simply apply it as it already defines everything. Simple religions, on the other hand, allow more IC arguing about the religion itself. It ends up being defined over time, and evolving as the characters change.
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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.
Great RP though. I had a lot of fun in Latlan after the fall of Vice just making up doctrinal disputes between surviving Hedonists, Hedonist factions and other faiths. It's the sort of thing that adds a lot of flavour. I'd love to see that enshrined in mechanics. In those regions where morale and loyalty are in free fall, why not have it explained by sectarian tensions between rival faiths in the region? Something other than tax, war/looting and distance from capital for peasants to get angry about. The players themselves can choose to flesh out the how and the why of what the peasants were fighting about, if they want to at all.
Personally, I think we should force religions to adopt a series of theological stances. Is the faith monotheistic or polytheistic? Is there an afterlife or not? What are the names of the gods? How was the world created?
This should all be game mechanics. Religions should be *forced* to adopt positions that will be saved. A series of questions on key theological questions needing answers of at least 1500 words be asked at the founding.
That's asking too much I think. What about all new characters being able to choose a religion (or not) when they're created? They'd be able to see the public board same as if they physically visited a temple (which is no different than looking at realms and realm descriptions) with the onus being on faiths coming up with something engaging in that little space rather than 'Welcome to the Eretzism Temple, please come in and look around.'
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The problem then is that the religion ends up entirely constrained by the founder; that's not going to help people engage with religion.
One problem I have with religion with a large amount of lore on the wiki is that I feel I may end up having to read all of it, then simply apply it as it already defines everything. Simple religions, on the other hand, allow more IC arguing about the religion itself. It ends up being defined over time, and evolving as the characters change.
Details can later be changed, details wouldn't be asked at the beginning. But religions just don't switch from saying "there is an afterlife" to saying "the afterlife is a lie, we all reincarnate". If there is such a change in position, then it's a new religion altogether. If the change is merely "you don't go to the underworld alone, but are rather now escorted by a dog", then that's the kind of stuff that would have went on the wiki anyways. It's the bare minimum that would be asked, these building blocks that everyone needs in order to develop upon.
And my experience is that undefined religions remain undefined, forever, and that church elders are not interested in debate or enriching church lore.
That's asking too much I think. What about all new characters being able to choose a religion (or not) when they're created? They'd be able to see the public board same as if they physically visited a temple (which is no different than looking at realms and realm descriptions) with the onus being on faiths coming up with something engaging in that little space rather than 'Welcome to the Eretzism Temple, please come in and look around.'
That's the very strict minimum every religion should have.
The problem with being forced into a religion (though the idea has merits), is that if the religion you picked ended up sucking, and the closest temple is far away, it'll be hard to switch to something more interesting, or joining a newly founded religion. It also raises the question for immigration, and how some characters follow a certain faith that doesn't exist (anymore) on their island.
No I think the meaning of what he said is hard to decipher through text rather than being spoken to. I think "What about the details and more complex scenarios...?" was a simple rephrasing of your question so that he could answer.
The Vellos contention is that complex afterlife's are too difficult to categorize.
The Dominic contention is that complex afterlife's can be cut down to a short description and then simply a reference to a wiki page.
8)
I could have used quotation marks, so boo on me, but otherwise what he said.
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I like the idea of religions persisting across continents. I know, the official answer is that "you can create it, but the game will treat them as separate." Fine by me! But that would give all of my characters the opportunity to join the same religion, which is quite common in real life.
The larger benefit would be that the same wiki pages would be used by more islands, which means more development. They could easily keep separate lists of temples, or just add a column "Island" to the existing list.
Question is...which religions are developed enough to survive a transplant?
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What about all new characters being able to choose a religion (or not) when they're created? They'd be able to see the public board same as if they physically visited a temple (which is no different than looking at realms and realm descriptions) with the onus being on faiths coming up with something engaging in that little space rather than 'Welcome to the Eretzism Temple, please come in and look around.'
I have always wanted this.
However, it shouldn't be a complete list. It should be a list of religions in that realm. That way, you don't have the problem Chenier mentioned: what if there is no temple nearby. Moreover, this would give religions an incentive to span realms: having one temple in a foreign realm gets you a shot at its new nobles.
Alternatively, new characters could pick island, then religion, then be supplied a list of realms that have temples of that religion. But now I'm just dreaming.
But, the first idea, of new characters having a religion-selection menu during character creation, seems like a worthwhile thing, and not that hard to code.
Immigrating characters could be given an "opt-out." New characters cannot have an "opt-out." Which makes sense: a new 18 year old character is not a prophet of a new religion. Jesus was in his 30's, folks. He had built up his honor and prestige for quite some time through training his oratory and carpentry skills at the academy.
Err....
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I wonder what class I have to be to train my carpentry skill? Thaumaturgy also sounds good.
It might not be so simple to implement that though. Religions can sometimes disappear in short time. What happens when a dying faith suddenly gets kept alive because a bunch of new players/characters, for whatever reason, join it. It just sounds a bit easy to exploit for some unintended consequences is all I'm saying.
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How would that help a religion?
If new players join, it is presumably because the religion's ad attracted them. If they choose to become priests and invest in temples, then the religion is being revitalized: and that is a good thing. That's what we want. If they join the religion and do nothing, it will continue to die anyways. Nobles being in a religion do not keep it going. Nobles giving money and converting peasants keep it going.
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I have always wanted this.
However, it shouldn't be a complete list. It should be a list of religions in that realm. That way, you don't have the problem Chenier mentioned: what if there is no temple nearby. Moreover, this would give religions an incentive to span realms: having one temple in a foreign realm gets you a shot at its new nobles.
Alternatively, new characters could pick island, then religion, then be supplied a list of realms that have temples of that religion. But now I'm just dreaming.
Most realms only have 1 religion. And crossing borders into new realms is no easy task, even for the active.
The second would be interesting.
But I stand by my opinion that religions ought to have to declare a few of the fundamentals. A religion that doesn't even know if there's an afterlife does not deserve temples and game-mechanic support, it's not going to attract thousands of followers. Want a religion that doesn't know what the hell it believes in? RP it, you don't need a game-generated one.
Want thousands of followers, and the power to claim regions and spread unrest among your followers? Then establish some core principles by which you will reach their hearts. "Vanilla religions" are nothing more than pseudo-religions, fabrics of a political ambition.
We had a massive crack-down to enforce oaths, marshals, and other similar things. If we really care about religions, if we really want them to be fun and immersive, then we need to take out strong measures for it.
Force religions to make sense, and force players to make sense in their choice of religion.
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I like the idea of religions persisting across continents. I know, the official answer is that "you can create it, but the game will treat them as separate." Fine by me! But that would give all of my characters the opportunity to join the same religion, which is quite common in real life.
The larger benefit would be that the same wiki pages would be used by more islands, which means more development. They could easily keep separate lists of temples, or just add a column "Island" to the existing list.
Question is...which religions are developed enough to survive a transplant?
I tried transplanting the Magna Aenilia Ecclesia back in 08 but unfortunately that coincided with me loosing interest in BM so it never picked up.
I'm back now :) but I've lost interest in transplanting MAE :(
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Alluran was present on both BT and the colonies, but I'm not sure how significant it was on either continent.
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Alluran on BT was a hollow shell. There was never any content in it whatsoever.
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Torenism on one of the War Islands and Dwilight. It seems like religions that can cross continents die in short order though.
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Torenism was actually a very well defined religion. The main player driving it was very motivated and creative. It was very detailed and well written. If my character had not already been iin SA iit would have been fun to join.
However, I think it also falls under the banner of well-defined but ultimately a flop. After we pretty much wiped it out, I talked to one of its members OOC. It turns out that most of the Torenist followers had no clue what the wiki said about their faith. They had no clue that their faith basically commanded them to convert or kill everyone. Or that the only way they could get to Toren heaven was to personally be responsible for converting or killing many thousands of nonbelievers.
So, it was well defined, but no one who was in it cared enough too know anything about it?
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Torenism was actually a very well defined religion. The main player driving it was very motivated and creative. It was very detailed and well written. If my character had not already been iin SA iit would have been fun to join.
However, I think it also falls under the banner of well-defined but ultimately a flop. After we pretty much wiped it out, I talked to one of its members OOC. It turns out that most of the Torenist followers had no clue what the wiki said about their faith. They had no clue that their faith basically commanded them to convert or kill everyone. Or that the only way they could get to Toren heaven was to personally be responsible for converting or killing many thousands of nonbelievers.
So, it was well defined, but no one who was in it cared enough too know anything about it?
Doesn't some of this in large part fall on the Priests of the religion? Sure, a Priest's job is to convert all the little peasant NPC's, but I think they also have a large obligation to convert Nobles and then preach and inform them of their faith as well. Unless of course, even the priests didn't know all of this, either. lol
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Why can people found "religions" that have more to do with a frat house than any respectable religion in all liberty, while using the "duel" game mechanic for a friendly joust can result is severe reprimand?
Why are duels sacred, and not the single most important social construct of the middle ages?
I'd say religions are worse off now than when there were no game mechanics for them. There was no incentive to create hollow religions back then that would compete with the serious ones at least.
Religions only gain power over realms when the realms will it so, usually when the realm founder creates it so, because of the current context of BM religions.
If we control religions more tightly, force them to act and resemble actual religions, then we'll have a drop of SMA everything, a more serious and immersive atmosphere where active and energetic people are much more competitive then lazy and uninterested ones.
Most current religions should be nothing more than *guilds*. If a faith can't bother to write what's good and what's wrong, then it shouldn't exist at all, and it should outright be removed from the game to leave room to other more interesting ideas and religions.
This is the only way to make religions a greater vector of interest, change, and fun.
For as long as Tom and the Devs don't take the issue as seriously as they took the usage of "Question nobility", of duels, of the military hierarchy, of character names and of oaths, success stories as for as religions go will remain isolated to where context and coincidence allowed a unique and non-replicable situation to arise.
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A lot of that is really up to the players though. There's no real mechanic that would force something like "Make your religion interesting", and even so it would be horribly complex. This isn't something that can be solved by a couple lines of code. Furthermore, we wouldn't want to turn off people who might have real-life issues with religions by making them too serious.
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A lot of that is really up to the players though. There's no real mechanic that would force something like "Make your religion interesting", and even so it would be horribly complex. This isn't something that can be solved by a couple lines of code. Furthermore, we wouldn't want to turn off people who might have real-life issues with religions by making them too serious.
It's roleplaying. If you take issue to roleplaying, then get out of BattleMaster. You do go to war where you kill people and loot, yet I don't see anyone complaining about that.
That it's really up to the players *is* the problem. When oaths were up to the players, nobody cared for them. A few individuals, like myself and some others I played with, did take it seriously and RPed accordingly. But in the big scheme of things, our dedication didn't influence the mainstream attitude. For most others, oaths just officialized friendship ties.
And no, it doesn't need to be overly complex at all. Doesn't need to be anywhere near as complex as the estate system. It can be extremely open-ended, where you can describe whatever stance you want to a set series of questions. Just having to pick a public stance would make hollow religions much less competitive to lively ones.
I would, however, encourage to go full-steam with a system as coercive as estates. It would be worth it.
You can't force religions to be interesting, but you can force them to be realist and authentic. Then, the interesting religions will have a much easier time to get to the top and to crush the stale ones.
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Well now, what would you say would be a "realistic and authentic" Medieval European religion? Seriously it'll get bad if we really try to make religions graphic, even in RP. The reason fewer people might complain about the killing and warfare is because this game is called Battlemaster. I would imagine anyone clicking on the link to join would have in mind what the game entails.
On the other hand, notice the game is not called "Faithmaster" or something of that nature. In fact, you don't even hear about religion (last time I checked) in any startup guides or tutorials to start.
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Well now, what would you say would be a "realistic and authentic" Medieval European religion? Seriously it'll get bad if we really try to make religions graphic, even in RP. The reason fewer people might complain about the killing and warfare is because this game is called Battlemaster. I would imagine anyone clicking on the link to join would have in mind what the game entails.
On the other hand, notice the game is not called "Faithmaster" or something of that nature. In fact, you don't even hear about religion (last time I checked) in any startup guides or tutorials to start.
The guides are awfully old, and outdated.
It's also generally recognized that invoking the game's name is an extremely poor argument. The game isn't called TournamentMaster, yet there's an IR to protect that. It isn't called TradeMaster, yet most realms can't survive without it. Nor is it called OathMaster, or DuelMaster, or FeudalHierarchyMaster, but these are all strongly regulated and important parts of the game.
I don't even ask it to be european style for non-Dwi continents. A realistic and authentic faith is one that takes *positions* on a series of *fundamental existential questions*. No vision, no religion, it's that simple.
Since you are interested in what players who join are presented, here's a few quotes:
BattleMaster is a team-oriented browsergame merging strategy and roleplaying. It is set in a low-fantasy middle-ages world and players take the role of nobles and lords.
playable on many levels, from order-following noble to the global politics playing king.
I think it's clearly stated that the game is more than just leading troops to battle.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Oh boy, without getting into mean talk, I'll simply say thus:
I am quite interested in improving BM, but I do so via methods that stand a chance of working. Crying out about it, insulting people, does not help the process.
And...back to the topic...
@Ender: Which religion did you found/lead?
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Oh boy, without getting into mean talk, I'll simply say thus:
I am quite interested in improving BM, but I do so via methods that stand a chance of working. Crying out about it, insulting people, does not help the process.
No, you are discrediting ideas that aim at correcting what is generally agreed upon (that religions are not what they could and ought to be) by ignoring obvious trends and the limited successes of those who tried what you preach (many fun and interesting religions were created over time, yet you don't see them representing a meaningful share of the existing religions).
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?
I was going to rephrase this, but it can't be any more painlessly obvious. You said it quite clearly: you don't care if boring entities take up all the space and prevent interesting ones from taking over.
You pretend to want to improve things, while discrediting every suggestion to actually make it so. You sound like the government talking about the environment.
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@Ender: Which religion did you found/lead?
The Trinity of the Far East. I founded it as a splinter of the Trinity from the Colonies, but honestly spent most of my time in the Far East taking the core concept of the Trinity and trying to develop it into something different.
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To force religions to have content will make the hollow ones much less competitive.
I highly dispute that assertion. All you will force people to do is generate reams of boilerplate crap that they then ignore. You cannot force the generation of content. Nor can you force involvement.
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.
I disagree with your opening statement, and agree with your closing statement. :)
It doesn't matter how many reams of theological mumbo-jumbo you write. The vast majority of your noble converts won't ever read it, even if they know that it exists.
If you're bad at attracting and holding interest, your religion will fail. You can get that interest many ways.
- You can position your religion as a tool of the state. Nothing wrong with that. It's even a bit historically accurate in some cases, isn't it? But this will cause you problems as you attempt to expand outside the parent realm.
- You can attempt to differentiate yourself from the realm structure. Your success at that point can depend on your realm's permissiveness. Some are very permissive, some will burn down your temple instantly.
- You can differentiate yourself from the other religions in the area. Take a stance for or against them.
- Take a stance on something. Don't be the usual BattleMaster-standard "live and let live" religion. You need something to fire up the congregation. Get them involved and interested in doing something. A rich and vibrant theology (i.e. reams of crap on the wiki) will not get people interested in your religion. The in-game speech you give about the Evils of Keplerism will get people interested.
- Go for the top. Get the leaders of your realm, and hopefully other realms, interested in your faith. This is the key to power in religion. Covering the bigwigs in the political community to your faith. No matter what you do, if you have no influence in the political sphere, your religion will be marginally influential, at best.
Also, perhaps one of the most important factors of the success of the religion is who founds it, and who runs it. To take up a theme I used earlier, it doesn't matter how many reams of crap... err... theology... you write, if other characters don't like your character, your religion will be a failure. You need a popular, well-liked character. And he needs to be able to attract other popular, well-liked characters. I think this is something that a lot of people forget.
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Also, perhaps one of the most important factors of the success of the religion is who founds it, and who runs it. To take up a theme I used earlier, it doesn't matter how many reams of crap... err... theology... you write, if other characters don't like your character, your religion will be a failure. You need a popular, well-liked character. And he needs to be able to attract other popular, well-liked characters. I think this is something that a lot of people forget.
All of what you wrote makes sense (and is great advice by the way), though this one in particular struck me. My character who led the church was not always a particularly popular character since I played him that way on purpose, and I bet that could have had a negative impact on growth.
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The religion game is highly interactive between player characters. From the very beginning you have to convince people to join you. The only tool you have is a text-based message. If your character is grumpy and insulting, or you have a bad reputation from past actions, how do you expect to convince them to support your cause? Your family history counts here, too. People will tend to not interact with a family with which they have a past bad experience.
But if you can sell ice to an Eskimo, you'll probably do very well at the religion game.
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One simple option to raise the profile of religion is to append a character's religion and their position in it to their message signature..
Severn Da Hadez
Count of Eurotan, Marshal of the Northern Guard, Sigrid's Warrior of Darkanism
I like the idea of having optional commandments similar to realm laws with a chance of getting caught breaking them dependant on the number of followers/temples/priests in the region. You would be reported to the Elders of the religion for transgressions. Priests could have a 'conduct inquisition' option where they have a higher chance of spotting transgressions occurring that day in the region.
Commandments could include things like resting on certain days, not duelling, not performing certain types of looting, not evading or retreating from battle and so on.
Nobles would have a 'piety' statistic. Religious elders would have a limited amount of marks (say 1 per member per week) with which to reward or punish members. The effects of good or bad marks on piety score would be related to how strict the religion is, making it easier for members to gain/lose prestige the stricter the religion's commandments are. Moving above or below certain piety thresholds would have honour/prestige effects for the noble
There is no reason the religion could not enforce additional commandments/requirements outside game mechanics though there would be no automatic reporting for those.
This would give players a tangible stake in their choice of religion and their adherence to it as well as adding depth to the religion and adding more potential for interaction between elders and members. It would also add another click-able thing for priests to do.
This could be added incrementally to the game (maybe add the piety system first then add mechanics for commandments),
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One simple option to raise the profile of religion is to append a character's religion and their position in it to their message signature..
Severn Da Hadez
Count of Eurotan, Marshal of the Northern Guard, Sigrid's Warrior of Darkanism
This would force nobles to disclose their religious status. From what I understand, this is intentionally not public information for anyone but priests and lords.
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What is the official reason why we would want to avoid public disclosure of religious preference?
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What is the official reason why we would want to avoid public disclosure of religious preference?
I'm guessing because religions like the Blood Cult and the Chaos Requiem actually add to the game experience, and this would be their death warrant.
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I'm guessing because religions like the Blood Cult and the Chaos Requiem actually add to the game experience, and this would be their death warrant.
Good point! ;D
Though it would be interesting as an optional feature. Though I have no clue if its possible to implement something like that.
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I think a huge part of the success or failure of religions depends on their ability to make players invest in them in some way shape or form. Many of Indirik's suggestions are excellent in that regard. Stand for something! I for one refuse to join religions with no purpose and no agenda, which include most "state" religions.
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Though it would be interesting as an optional feature. Though I have no clue if its possible to implement something like that.
"variable signatures" is something that is often brought up. Some way to choose how your message is signed, perhaps on a case-by-case basis. I can see how this would be useful, especially in a theocracy. You might want your religious title used if you are addressing the realm on a matter of religious authority, but use a Marshal title when sending order to your army.
I'm pretty sure this one has routinely been turned down.
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I'm guessing because religions like the Blood Cult and the Chaos Requiem actually add to the game experience, and this would be their death warrant.
Yes, that's pretty much it. Not only that, but it would severely hamper the spread of certain religions in regions where they would be unwelcome. Like Sanguis Astroism in Caerwyn or Madina. Church of Ibladesh in Perdan. Flow of the Balance in Sirion. Darkanism in Tara. I'm sure you can fill in many other religion/realm pairs.
Making it harder for religions to spread is really not a good idea.
And if you want to be proud of your religious faith and advertise it, you can always type a signature yourself in your messages.
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"variable signatures" is something that is often brought up. Some way to choose how your message is signed, perhaps on a case-by-case basis. I can see how this would be useful, especially in a theocracy. You might want your religious title used if you are addressing the realm on a matter of religious authority, but use a Marshal title when sending order to your army.
I'm pretty sure this one has routinely been turned down.
Though I like the idea, I can see why if it is a pain from the design perspective. Even if it wasnt, there are more important features to add aside from variable signatures I'd say.
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If anything, wouldn't we want to make this game less complex? Already there have been so many new features that it's no wonder new players might find this game hard to get into.
I am of the firm opinion that we shouldn't fix things that aren't broken, nor add legs to snakes (Comes from a Chinese saying the snake legs part). What exactly is so frightfully lacking in the current religion system? I see that SA remains fairly successful, and in fact has become more or less the definition of northern Dwilight. Is that an exception? Who knows. Same as in the real world, I guess. There's a ton of mediocrity and the truly exceptional stuff is rare.
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I like the idea of religions persisting across continents. I know, the official answer is that "you can create it, but the game will treat them as separate." Fine by me! But that would give all of my characters the opportunity to join the same religion, which is quite common in real life.
The larger benefit would be that the same wiki pages would be used by more islands, which means more development. They could easily keep separate lists of temples, or just add a column "Island" to the existing list.
Question is...which religions are developed enough to survive a transplant?
Would love to see this. Then priests wouldn't need to go warrior/etc before emigrating. They could head to other continents and spread the faith.
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They could head to other continents and spread the faith.
Battlemaster Missionaries! ;D
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No, you are discrediting ideas that aim at correcting what is generally agreed upon (that religions are not what they could and ought to be) by ignoring obvious trends and the limited successes of those who tried what you preach (many fun and interesting religions were created over time, yet you don't see them representing a meaningful share of the existing religions).
I was going to rephrase this, but it can't be any more painlessly obvious. You said it quite clearly: you don't care if boring entities take up all the space and prevent interesting ones from taking over.
You pretend to want to improve things, while discrediting every suggestion to actually make it so. You sound like the government talking about the environment.
If boring entities are beating out the interesting religions, then they obviously are offering something that those players/characters WANT over what the "interesting" religion offers. Since the point of religions was never to "take over" anyway a interesting religion should satisfy the prime aim of religions, which is to offer a great RP experience to its members, I really don't see the issue. If you want to measure the success of your religion by the amount of members and regions you control, you will need more then just an interesting mythos.
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It could be that the concern is that religions would disappear without enough of a following, particularly in priests. I don't know about many economic systems, but the one I am familiar with goes that a business that can't beat its competitors usually folds or gets taken over, no matter how "interesting" it is. I'm not sure how much more realistic we want for our religions than the simple "stronger religion wins". It happened with real religions too...
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That is my point, for all the complaining about the religion being boring, they obviously have a bigger in game following and from that point of view are stronger. I see no reason to hamper them with restrictions just so someone else's idea of what a "good" religion is can dominate. Besides what would this series of questions really add, the "fake" religions will just pick random answer, or a bland/non offensive combination and move on. We want good content for the RP and background in this game, not forced content. What next, should we appoint a panel that decides if a religion has a good enough mythos to be allowed to form in game?
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My opinion, which seems to have caused some dislike, is that the current religion system is already quite flexible and works for the purposes of this game. Maybe some things could be tweaked, such as ranks, but those were already brought up before. From what I can see and have experienced with religions, there is nothing glaringly lacking right now that would need such fixing, and I am very confident that religion does not play a significant role in drawing in new players, or keeping the interest of new players who have played less than a month.
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I totally agree. The current system is flexible and works. I think that in some cases religions are good for drawing in new players, but only in the same way that an exciting realm is. If you happen to join a realm that has access to a religion that appeals to you, then obviously that will encourage the player to continue.
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Would love to see this. Then priests wouldn't need to go warrior/etc before emigrating. They could head to other continents and spread the faith.
Just out of curiosity, do you lose your preaching skill when changing class away from Priest?
Honestly, it takes no time at all to be able to switch classes to priest compared to some other sub-classes like infiltrator. The only benefit I could see of having the priest class persist during emigration is if you lose preaching skill in the process.
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Skills don't just disappear when you change classes.
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For me the issue of changing class isn't about the inconvenience, its about breaking the immersion of the game. Having to change class because of a game mechanic reason then changing back just breaks the flow of the character for me. I also detest when I've been asked to drop my courtier sub class to better help a war effort with a bigger unit. I pick my classes for a reason and don't just swap and change at need.
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For me the issue of changing class isn't about the inconvenience, its about breaking the immersion of the game. Having to change class because of a game mechanic reason then changing back just breaks the flow of the character for me. I also detest when I've been asked to drop my courtier sub class to better help a war effort with a bigger unit. I pick my classes for a reason and don't just swap and change at need.
When were you asked to do that? Sounds like an IR violation to me.
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That actually is a fair point for the three main classes. Those are three ways of life one would probably be unlikely to just drop for a few weeks at a time. With the sub-classes though, it makes perfect sense why those arent immediately open in a new realm.
People asking you to switch Courtier for Warrior to help out a war effort is annoying, especially considering class choice is a player choice. I never like seeing things like that thrown around even if they are meant as suggestions since that alone sort of breaks into OOC territory as far as Im concerned.
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Emigration doesn't change any classes though. The only discernible reason why priests can't emigrate is because right now religions are handled locally on each continent. If we are to have intercontinental religions, and also allow for the fact that some religions cannot or will not go to any other continents, that task does not sound like a very simple feature to implement. However, a real programmer might have a reliable opinion on that.
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When were you asked to do that? Sounds like an IR violation to me.
It certainly would have been if they had ordered me, or tried to punish me for not changing. As it was I just had to endure endless OOC messages about not being a "team" player.
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Emigration doesn't change any classes though. The only discernible reason why priests can't emigrate is because right now religions are handled locally on each continent. If we are to have intercontinental religions, and also allow for the fact that some religions cannot or will not go to any other continents, that task does not sound like a very simple feature to implement. However, a real programmer might have a reliable opinion on that.
The main problem as I would see it, the database was not designed to link religions across islands. Without actually seeing the database this is all speculation, but it is likely to require a fair bit of change to the database before you can even start writing the code to handle it all.
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It certainly would have been if they had ordered me, or tried to punish me for not changing. As it was I just had to endure endless OOC messages about not being a "team" player.
That's a very, very clear IR violation. Extremely clear. Putting pressure on, especially OOC, is a violation.
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^ What he said. While I can understand, IC, asking that you take a more active role in the war effort (not ordering), the OOC bit is what strikes me as a no-no personally.
Battlemaster Missionaries! ;D
Exactly.
Just out of curiosity, do you lose your preaching skill when changing class away from Priest?
Honestly, it takes no time at all to be able to switch classes to priest compared to some other sub-classes like infiltrator. The only benefit I could see of having the priest class persist during emigration is if you lose preaching skill in the process.
It's also immersion breaking and annoying.
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The main problem as I would see it, the database was not designed to link religions across islands. Without actually seeing the database this is all speculation, but it is likely to require a fair bit of change to the database before you can even start writing the code to handle it all.
What I understand is that each island is a separate database. Tom could delete Beluterra (for example) and it would have no affect on the other continents.
There's no burning need to do any linking, is there? Just create a religion with the same name, internal boards, rank structure, etc., and you're good to go.
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What I understand is that each island is a separate database. Tom could delete Beluterra (for example) and it would have no affect on the other continents.
There's no burning need to do any linking, is there? Just create a religion with the same name, internal boards, rank structure, etc., and you're good to go.
That has been done. However the separate databases is what causes a priest to have to change class to emigrate, even if the religion has "spread" to the island they wish to travel to.
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That has been done. However the separate databases is what causes a priest to have to change class to emigrate, even if the religion has "spread" to the island they wish to travel to.
That's correct, and it's not going to change.
There is no way to link religions across continents.