LotC Development II: Faith and Nations

[Aesopian 1124]

I did not expect more than 200 replies to my other poll, so I'm going to take advantage of the attention to get specific thoughts from the community on a number of topics, because I want to know what you think. I'll probably make some more polls like this on the other topics, too.

 

 

So, people seem to want some religion-related mechanics, but they're pretty split on it. Let us see if we can make something work. I am going to create some draft mechanics below, and you can respond in the poll above, section-by-section, to give your opinion.

 

Please note that all costs and the magnitude of effects (e.g. Deus Vult lasting 2 months) are not final.

 

Faith

 

Characters now have two additional components to their persona card: an outer faith, which is visible for other players who /persona view you, and an inner faith, which is visible only to you and the plugin. You can select both of these independently from each other. You can at any time essentially 'create' a new religion, by just writing in a new string of text for either of these values. 

 

Mods will be able to make certain religions synonymous for the sake of bookkeeping, e.g. Cannonism, Church of the Cannon, High Pontiff, which will all be treated as the same religion mechanically.

 

In roleplay, your outer faith should roughly correspond to what your character outwardly displays, and your inner faith to what your character inwardly holds to be true. You could be a secret Arugula worshipper despite outwardly acting as a nice halfling Knoxite, for example.

 

Nations

 

Nations now have 'approved faiths', and the NL of a nation has control of its approved faiths, and can, at any time, remove or add faiths. 

 

For each player character, if their outer faith corresponds with an approved faith of that character's nation, the nation gains 0.2 faith points each month, and if their inner faith corresponds with an approved faith of that character's nation, the nation gains 0.8 faith points each month. This gives a maximum total of 1.0 faith points given to that character's nation each month, if they have an inner and outer faith which are approved by that nation. The amount gained is then divided by the cubed root of the # of national faiths. For a character to contribute faith points to a nation, this requires that player have been active for at least 20 hours in the previous month on the character. 

 

Example 1: A character has the outer faith Canonism and the inner faith Ibleesism, and belongs to the nation Haense. Haense approves of Canonism, the Red Faith, and Wonkism. The player is active on that character more than 20 hours a month. So, Haense gains 0.2/(3^(1/3)) = 0.2/1.44 = 0.14 faith points per month from this character.

 

Example 2: A character has the outer faith Aspectism and the inner faith Aspectism, and belongs to the nation Malinor. Malinor approves of Aspectism, Canonism, Wonkism, Manism, Voidism, Pastafarianism, Dirtism, and Carbism. The player is active on that character more than 20 hours a month. So, Malinor gains 1/(8^(1/3)) = 1/2 = 0.5 faith points per month from this character.

 

In roleplay, the approved faiths of a nation should roughly correspond with the faiths that nation approves of (obviously).

 

Religious Leaders

 

You can, if you so choose, set another player character as your religious leader, of which you can have one for your external and internal faith. If they accept, they will gain 0.2 faith points per month if your external faiths are concordant, and and 0.8 faith points per month if your internal faiths are concordant. This number is then given a 10% bonus. If they have a religious leader of their own, they can pass these points along to them using the same mechanism, and receive the 10% bonus, but this bonus can only stack 5 times.

 

If a religious leader has no character set as their own leader, they can either (A) donate these points to a nation at any time, or (B) spend them as described below.

 

In roleplay, this should roughly correspond to the hierarchy of your religion. You might go to church (and have faiths in accordance with) pastor Bob, who is your religious leader, and he works under archbishop Dave, who is his religious leader, and he works under High Pontiff Ted. This chain would give Ted 1.33 faith points per month.

 

Spending Faith Points: Nations [SAMPLE, NOT FINAL]

 

Nations can spend faith points on the following actions:

 

• Deus Vult (200 Faith Points): Halve the cost of all warclaims for your nation, for the next two months. 
• Treasury Contributions (100 Faith Points):  Add 1000 mina to your nation's treasury.
• Religious Activity (40 Faith Points): Waive the activity check for your nation, once.
• Holy Knights (20 Faith Points per Player): Waive the cost of a mercenary for your nation for one warclaim.

 

Spending Faith Points: Religious Leaders [SAMPLE, NOT FINAL]

 

Religious leaders can spend faith points on the following actions:

 

• Religious Wars (200 Faith Points): Enable a revolution casus belli for any member of this faith who is a member or owner of the target tile.
• Relic Expedition (200 Faith Points): Request the ST run an eventline pertaining to your religion, during which one item with a mechanical effect from the following list will be spawned (Sharpness II, Sharpness I, Fire Aspect I, Feather Falling IV, Unbreaking IV, Protection II, Protection I, Thorns I). 
• Declare Sacred Site (150 Faith Points): Declare a tile as sacred to your faith, of which only one can exist at any time. Characters of your faith who fight on this tile as defenders in either a siege or field battle gain Strength I. 

 

In theory, you could have a secret inner faith (perhaps you are an Iblees worshipper) and contribute enough points to your cult leader to allow them to attempt to trigger a revolution inside a nation. 

[DISCOLIQUID 1963]

As a religious leader, this is exactly what I want & would like to give to my nation

[Borin 5259]

On the one hand cool features on the other hand i feel vehemently against more placing rp into restricting ooc management plugins like the realms plugin. Discounts to war stuff could prolly be worked out manually according to cassus belli without putting more rp into ooc boxes - otherwise fully behind religion featuring more prominently in wars, and I mean religion not some silly sods holy magic where the only aspect is *gets items and magic 

 

I do also worry staff are bad at religion events and will screw shit up and not care abt the consequences. Its one thing messing with something staff-driven but its a whole other thing messing w something player-driven like Canonism or Red Faithism. (God egg shit retarded)

[MeteorDragon 2822]

My nation's religion is everythingism, you can practice anything

 

@.everyone @.citizen pls put your inner and outer religion as "everythingism"

[psychra_notte 115]

I think the concept for this sounds cool enough in its own regard, but I do have some concerns similar to what Borin said. My main two points are following:

One: As cool as it is to have a system in play for religion and faith, the question is do we really need a mechanical feature for religion? I think as of right now, Religion isn't in a terrible spot, and I don't really think we need more mechanical systems in play on the server, especially ones that will affect how Nations interact with their playerbase. I can already imagine various activity checks or carrd checks for players for nations to gain faith points.

Two: How many religions would use or need this function? There are some that I can think of that would heavily benefit from a system like this, but some others that I have a hard time seeing benefitting as they are almost magic systems in themselves? That creates another mechanically layer ontop of a religious magic system that might not be needed.

[Itz_Cookie 1735]

Worship pixel God, worship Xan, but most importantly, worship Iblees  

[chacmul 274]

 in which nations will minmax the shit out of their playerbases religions

[beetle 2760]

i think religion/faith in rp is FINE but it gets to a point where it's just TOO much

 

religion/faith rp gets pretty harmful and abused for the wrong reasons, players feel restricted in certain nations because of the religion, and it causes unnecessary conflict

[pomegrad 98]

I have more opinions than I thought I would on this:

1. Faith should not be a mechanic; it sounds cool on paper, but in practice, I feel that it could restrict player creativity in the creation and management of religions since they will have a corresponding effect on nations if we're going off the nations aspect of this post. It feels like religion becomes less of a roleplay aspect and more of an incentive for PvP.

 

2. I do not think faith points should be implemented in nations. Similar to @psychra_notte's concerns, the idea of faith points in a nation feels like it could gradually turn into activity checks or pressure for players to be on certain personas, as the sample mentions a quota for hours in order to generate faith points. How would current or future nations that don't have an official religion be affected?

2.5. I actually do like the idea of nations having approved religions in-game, but in a different context, I guess? I know you can do /nations or /realms and see the different nations in LotC. If there was ever the ability to get a more in-depth look at them in the Realms List, I think it would be neat to see their official religions listed.

 

3. I don't think religious leaders need to exist in-game if it's solely for the purpose of faith points or mechanical benefits. It'd be cool if nations had state religions listed in-game and their corresponding leaders listed too, similar to how NLs and their personas are listed on the Realms List, but I think that's as far as it should go.

 

4. I do not think that faith points should have a mechanical influence over warclaims and PvP. Again, I feel like it takes away from the influence and impact it has on roleplay and reduces it to a PvP benefit.

 

5. Similar to nations spending faith points, I don't think religious leaders spending their faith points should be implemented as a mechanic. It feels like some of the ideas listed for this can be done through staff or player-led events instead and don't need mechanical benefits. By implementing the system, wouldn't that restrict what activities religions can do? Or muddle the lines between what can be done with and without points?

 

-

 

7. I think it would be great if there were event-lines that catered to religious roleplay too. There's definitely the concern of misinterpretation on staff behalf, but if religious leaders and lore writers for the religions could work with staff in the process of the events, I think it'd be pretty awesome to see. It feels like some of the faith point spending/goals for religious leaders could just be roleplay-oriented events instead.

 

8. Not sure how I feel about mechanically impacting artifacts. Do they generate more faith points like the sample emphasizes? What would they do? It feels like relics, even if they are an item, should be roleplay-oriented, but this point feels pretty vague. 

 

tl;dr religion for rp not pvp

[PrinceJose270 740]

If Faith is going to be a mechanic then Every faith outside of canonisms going to get choke slammed by the mentioned faith due to it being the number one faith. Trying to turn faith into "points" and adding it as a physical mechanic resource make it strive away from it being rp at that point. Tl DR, Religion for Rp. We already get wars on faith as is. Though when spirits having their wars tho 😔

[Benleft 887]

Do not try to turn this server into some paradox-style state management sim. Nations don’t make LOTC tick, players do. Maximize player agency, not that of the OOCly enforced state. 
 

Surveys should be run more, but they should be run with great care and from an official station with an official purpose. 

[HurferDurfer1 2584]

i dont want some dickhead pestering me to get twenty hours of minecraft in this is a bad idea

[Puglord 190]

love the idea of making religious RP more impactful but i agree with others in it shouldn't be made a mechanical part of the server. 

[Poor_Fellow 812]

21 minutes ago, Benleft said:

Do not try to turn this server into some paradox-style state management sim. Nations don’t make LOTC tick, players do. Maximize player agency, not that of the OOCly enforced state. 

My thoughts exactly. The less hoops you make players go through in order to actually roleplay, the better. Adding abstract currencies like faith points that influence roleplay is not conductive to healthy roleplay at all. We have had this problem since warclaims and nations became more OOC-focused, and it completely killed the fun conflict between nations the server enjoyed before Axios/Atlas. Doing more polls of this type is a great idea, though.

[warlord of filth 7714]

23 minutes ago, HurferDurfer1 said:

i dont want some dickhead pestering me to get twenty hours of minecraft in this is a bad idea

so real