Religions

[Shenron]

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

[De-Legro]

Alluran was present on both BT and the colonies, but I'm not sure how significant it was on either continent.

[Indirik]

Alluran on BT was a hollow shell. There was never any content in it whatsoever.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

Torenism on one of the War Islands and Dwilight. It seems like religions that can cross continents die in short order though.

[Indirik]

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?

[Perth]

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

[Chenier]

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.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

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.

[Chenier]

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.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

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.

[Chenier]

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.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

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.

[Ender]

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.

[Chenier]

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.

[songqu88@gmail.com]

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?