Author Topic: The War  (Read 101950 times)

Chenier

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Re: The War
« Reply #210: December 21, 2017, 06:12:26 PM »
I remember when I created the Bloodspeakers in Melhed... I tried to incentive people along the idea of "regional" gods, so the Lords or Knights of a specific region can created his own "Old Gods".

Guess what... I had to do everything almost alone. Even in Sirion, most of time I was the only one using religious reference.

Yea, a few people tried to do that, I don't think trying to involve people not all that vested in the religious game into being responsible of it all frequently worked. The "DYO God" religions seemed to mostly revolve around the founder trying to beg people to join and add their content, with very little success.

The Blood Cult used a slightly different spin, as I didn't target random people to make their own gods, I targeted people already or previously involved in religions. Priests and ex-priests, largely, or people I knew had played religious characters. Then I offered them a framework into which it was easy to port material, without it all just kind of hanging out in the void.

Had some advanced talks with members of existing religions to merge, but not much success, as merging implies losing one religion's temples, treasury, members, followers, and sovereignty. I had much more success with people involved in unofficial religions or with deceased religions, and that came to be the active core of the religion that had tentacles over half the realms and some meaningful direct power in specific areas (despite an utterly "in your face" evil dogma), where mutual compromise and collaboration meant everybody got to do their thing while also furthering a collective agenda.

In my opinion, this is the most effective strategy, but I've not really seen others do it. Religions are usually handled in one of two extremes, either "here I wrote the whole bible you should all praise my creation" or "here I've got an empty book you should all fill it for me".

It's somewhat ironic that the game's most successful religion, from my perspective at least, never really interested people much at all. I don't remember really hearing much passion favorable to SA's theology, but it was just really at the right place at the right time. People wanted *a* religion, and it offered a frame that was not overly unpalatable to anyone. A whole new continent opening, with huge hype about it and its roleplay potential, and it was the only theocracy of the land. Perfect circumstances, really.

But even this is, largely, an extension of the strategy I mentioned above. For a religion to go far, you need to attract players who care about the religion game. Priests, but not only priests. A pious duke can be much more of a boon than a lazy priest.
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