Trader Religion: Capitalism, the game!

[Dishman]

I'm wanting to build a priest and thought of a little game that could be played with the religion mechanic. It could make good RP as well as act as a kind of mini-game within BM.

A merchant religion based around a gold idol god “Auz”. Beyond that, I'm still fleshing out the flavor. Essentially it would be a recruitment/tribute scheme built around "traders" at the bottom paying slight tithes for "brokers at the top", with an elected "arbiter" at the top controlling the game.

Traders are non-members, paying into the game. Traders can become brokers with the advocacy of a new member to the game. With various levels of brokerage for advocacy, each broker takes an allotted piece of the pot, but leaving at least half the pot for the lottery. The highest authority (the Arbiter) is tasked with the melting down of excess gold and redistributing it among the traders through lots. The Arbiter chooses an arbitrary number and traders who guess the closest are granted payouts.

Thoughts, suggestions, or interest in helping with the idea?

[Tom]

Love the idea of capitalism as a religion so much that I'm necro'ing this topic. :-)

[Chenier]

I thought about this for a while on Dwi, but figured it would break SMA. Also pretty sure I heard a dev say it'd be an abuse, a way to circumvent guilds being taxed more than religions.

Dwi was the only place where trading really mattered, but much less so nowadays with all of the region rebalances and the hordes.

Also, priests can't have the trader subclass.

[Dishman]

I took a hiatus from the game before I could really explain further or even attempt it, but looking back my explanation was horrible. Simply put, its a worship of the circulation of gold.

Followers join and pay a routine fee. The full members (who attain membership by recruiting a few followers) don't pay a fee and split half of all incoming fees from the followers. The elders/founder decide some semi-random game (like guess the number) and all regular followers play. The winner of the game gets the other half of the fees paid into it. So roughly, followers (referred to as traders) are at the bottom and have a chance to win big; full members (referred to as brokers) get extra income dependent on the ratio of traders/brokers; and the elder/s (Arbiters) would need to decide what game to play and pour some of their own money into the game like benevolent game masters.

RP wise, it should be kosher cause it would be the worship of the great and powerful Auz (Au as in gold, Oz as in a sham...which I thought was clever at the time). It would function like a cross between a gambling den and a pyramid scheme, and would only really require a few convenient temples and generally to hell with the peasantry (cause they don't have gold).

So now I just need to find a place where this might work, entirely rebuild my characters to the point where they can create a religion, and/or find a sugar daddy for this.