Title: Report Heresy
Summary: Allow characters to report another character's message as "heretical," making a system like the vulgarity feature, but within religions. Have messages be judged by randomly-selected elders of the religion.
Details:
All messages a noble sends would have a "Report as Heretical" option like the "Report as Vulgar" option. If it is clicked and reported as heretical, it will be reported to the elders of the sender's religion. If the sender has no religion, then it has no effect (ALTERNATIVELY: pagan nobles could just not have the button be presented). Whichever elders receive the flagged message (maybe 3 randomly selected elders?) would then judge it, exactly like vulgarity– except they would judge it for a criterion of orthodoxy, not politeness. If ruled as heretical, the sender would lose some small amount of H/P. Also, there would be a random probability of an automated message going out to members of a religion saying, "Rumors that Noble X has been saying troubling and unorthodox things have begun to spread" or some similar statement.
Some kind of limitation on use could be necessary. A cooldown-time on reporting heresy, a frequency limit on how frequently elders can define something as heresy, and a minimum number of elders would all be necessary to prevent abuse, as described below in the "possible exploits" section.
Alternatively (or additionally), a cap on punishment for heresy could be set. Namely, a character cannot suffer an H/P penalty for heresy more than once a week. Elders can still vote on their messages of course, to no effect other than their own satisfaction, but no penalty is applied until messages from at least a week after the first heretical message are being condemned. The intervening messages have no effect.
Benefits:
This allows religions to "operationalize" doctrines without requiring some set of arbitrary game-defined doctrines. Players will be able to make doctrines a substantive and "real" force without replacing RP, without exceptionally burdensome or complex internal systems. The question of "what is heresy" will be determined by what players think heresy is: but this will provide a mechanic which can easily be used to generate some lower-level conflict, can be used to incentivize players to seek elderships in religions, and can be used to flesh out religions. If a player's message is declared heretical, it may encourage elders to explain their decisions, leading to further social elaboration and conflict. These are all beneficial game effects which, simultaneously, avoid creating some kind of game-defined doctrinal framework.
The possible exploits can be managed. The system seems unlikely to be very burdensome to code, given that much of it seems, from a layman's perspective, like it could be duplicated from the vulgarity system. It has a clear benefit of creating a social mechanism for players to utilize to act out existing and new RPs, without forming an arbitrary constraint on such RPs. As such, it seems, to me, like it would be an excellent addition to the religion game– and one that would include everyone, not just priests, in that game. Anybody can call their neighbor a witch.
Possible Exploits:
A cabal of elders with a political agenda could repeatedly report one person's messages as vulgar, and repeatedly orchestrate their being ruled as such. On the one hand, this would be cool– you could basically vaporize a person's reputation if they were heretical by having a monopoly on the elders. On the other hand, that would discourage powerful characters from joining religions, and just be grossly unfair.
This situation could be prevented. Only allow religions with, say, at least 6 elders (thus at least 3 priests) to use this feature. Tiny religions just aren't influential enough to hurt the reputations of powerful nobles. Only allow a person to report a message as heresy once every week, to prevent system-spamming (or create a penalty for frequent reporting). Another option, and one I dislike, would be to limit how frequently reported messages can be ruled heretical. This could be a hard cap, which creates problems of how to resolve the "waiting list" of messages, or some kind of penalty for frequent declarations: if you declare lots of things heretical, then peasants will start abandoning your religion as it gets too restrictive.
