Bay 12 Games Forum

I like everything you said, with 2 caveats.  You are assuming a world where the gods are relatively unknowable (agnosticism or atheism is a valid position) and a world in which beliefs shape gods.  For the first, it's like you're proposing a 'believes in rain' tag...  it's a valid thing, as long as all dwarves live in the desert.  As far as the second, I'd almost rather belief have no affect on the divine, which means that the processes you describe need to be extended to interactions between actual actors.  (I'm ok with a Pantheon system that doesn't support Hermanubis if the gods in it are real)

Seriously though... given those two caveats, I like what you said.

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So what I'm hearing is that the religion sphere is really three things.  Morals(actions, right and wrong), Beliefs(Metaphysics, shouldn't really affect play), and Structure (Holidays, Priesthoods, etc).  Am I missing anything?

You misunderstand. I do not assume a system of metaphysics where belief changes gods; I propose a system robust enough for such a system to be toggled in the raws, without either option being considered incomplete.

Likewise, the way people think about gods will need to vary depending on what sort of gods they have, and how clear a view they have of them.

A system for randomizing the rules would be awesome, but the ability to choose your own metaphysics at worldgen is a key component (and one of the key advantages of) of variable metaphysics.

"Agnostic religion" is probably poor word choice, as the followers of the sort of religion I was referring wouldn't have to be agnostic.

It's the religion itself that refuses to make a commitment to any particular god or idea about God or gods.

Some sects of Buddhism, for a potentially volatile RL example, decline to comment on the existence or non-existence of the divine, preferring to focus entirely on moral and karmic concepts. If your religion doesn't have any teachings that are mutually exclusive with nirvana and transmigration, they don't see any reason why you can't be a member of both. Other religions, naturally, rarely see it quite like that.

In order to counter that these sects usually bill their teachings as a "philosophy" or something to that effect, in an attempt to woo members of traditionally exclusive members, but if you want to talk about word games...

Whatever you want to call a sect that dispenses spiritual teachings grounded in non-empirical systems of belief, there's no reason to split them into separate structures, just because one group tends to have gods attached to it from the top side, and the other might possibly have gods attached to it from the bottom side.

Just picture some divine being, seeking to atone for some personal failure of divine proportions, joining some sort of penance-contemplation-and-hard-work type monastery and meditating on a rock all day, instead of doing the usual god type stuff. The other gods don't have to buy into it, and might even get angry, if he's showing support for a religion that they see as siphoning away coveted followers.

It isn't a thing that I feel is an absolute must-have feature, but it's a possibility that deserves more than cursory exploration.

You might also try to make us look literate, if you really want to go the extra mile.

Sorry, it's late and I'm tired, but I still shouldn't have said that.

When you get down to it, it all has to be broken down into a set of binary switches anyway, so we might as well leverage that to work for us instead of against us.

I labor under the assumption of a modular system of metaphysics, where a thing either is, or is not possible, depending on what universe you occupy. Weighting factors that determine how strong a particular effect is would add a lot of possibilities to such a system, but don't affect my proposal on the fundamental level.

The system does not need a huge number of rules to create a combination explosion effect.

Take the Hermanubis problem I mentioned before. While the situation could be made more fine grained, there are four basic possibilities that need to be covered: 1. The two gods fuse into a single entity, incorporating some or all of the history of both characters(Beliefs can fuse gods). 2. A new god is created, leaving both of it's parent gods intact(beliefs can create gods). 3. Both gods acquire all the powers attributed to the other, but retain their identities(beliefs can alter existing gods). 4.The beliefs of the followers has no effect at all(none of the above are true).

This is essentially three rules that can be turned on or off, and effect the religions of the game in a fundamental and interesting way. Three becomes irrelevant if one or two is true, and four can only occur if the other two are false, so the only potential weirdness comes from the combination of one and two. The pros and cons of the various solutions to this conflict are too great a digression for this paragraph to continue.

A [RANDOM_METAPHYSICS] would be the best thing a religion simulator ever had.

Before you declare me completely gung ho, I implore you to note that I don't dare to suggest allowing metaphysics themselves to change over time.

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That said, I feel that grouping philosophies and religions together as sub-classes a belief system entity is perfectly reasonable, saving on code and still allowing for interesting interactions.

This does beg for giving dwarves the ability to believe more than one thing, so long as the two are not mutually exclusive, but there is only one programmer.

Just because I self-identify as a Christian doesn't mean I can't glean wisdom from Confucius and Quantum Theory. Modeling this in DF would be non-trivial, but it would also be awesome.

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Of course, all that means nothing if it doesn't have some effect on the ground. In a world with active tags like [GODS_EXIST], [MATERIAL_GODS], [INVINCIBLE_GODS], [GODS_INTEREST_IN_MORTAL_AFFAIRS:ALWAYS] and so on, that's pretty easy to do. e.g. The impious king of the elves is struck down by his tree gods and replaced with a crusader who will wreak vengeance on the hated dwarves (or die trying ).

In a world with less visible (or even non-existent) gods, religions need to be able to stand on their own and do something interesting. This is probably more important to fortress level play, than the flashy stuff, since it's something the player can shape, and it happens all the time, regardless of any effect, up above the clouds.

Individual dwarves observing, altering, joining, abandoning and creating new religions, are the meat of the thing.

There are plenty of threads, detailing suggestions on how dwarves might observe their religions. The most frequent suggestions include such things as funerals, holidays and regular temple services. These are mostly good, but I won't waste your time by repeating them here.

However, I'd like to see the religions delve into things that give them more texture, like smaller superstitions. Kiss your amulet for good luck, bestow alms on the poor to alleviate guilt, or bow every time you pass a statue, depicting your god's favored form. These things could give tiny happy or bad thoughts for doing them, or not doing them, based on a variety of factors. i.e. Urist McDoubter could get "He was pleased with himself, for not following a silly superstition," while Urist McPious might feel guilty if he was unable to fulfill one of his duties. A superstition personality trait for this sort thing might help, but then it might do more harm than good.

More important to the long term building aspect, cults need to crop up, and we need to be able to encourage or crush them, based on our personal whims. I'd like to see dwarves from inside the fortress grow into philosophers and prophets, though divine revelations, deep contemplations (perhaps just nobles and clergy), or good, old-fashioned lying. These individuals get the idea for a new religion, and start trying to convert others.

"Urist McHeretic has launched a revolutionary new school of thought!"

The superstition system above could be expanded to include items like "Inquisitors should hammer heretics" and "all adherents should turn heretics over to the inquisition." Not all religions should have these, and what it takes to make one religion anathema to another is a complex issue that will need to be simplified for game purposes, but the potential for Fun makes it worthwhile.

If a cult can survive long enough to grow to a respectable size, they could start demanding whatever facilities the other religions ask for. They might need to be able to get legal protection from their hammer waving neighbors (to prevent religious conflict from being a single fork path). One way or another, whether or not the city council accidentally routes a magma flow bypass through their sanctuary will impact the world for generations.

This is a rare, but momentous opportunity  and the player should have an entire toolkit of options for dealing with it. There should be more ways to interact with what may be the fulcrum point for a world's history than dumping lava on it, or not dumping lava on it.

Designating temple areas is a great start, and there are a lot of ways to add nuance to it. Larger, nicer temples mean you can support more and happier followers, who will collect more donations and recruit more clergy, leading to a nice equilibrium effect, where churches grow, until there's standing room only, and then people stop inviting their friends.

If a religion has no legally sanctioned temple, they should try to make do with covert services, held in their members' homes and workshops. This could cause unhappy thoughts, while increasing the commitment of the attendees, leading to the potential for violent revolutions, or (for peace loving religions) protest martyrdoms that attract the attention of potential converts.

HammerHand:

While religions certainly change over the number of years considered in world-gen, how many of us play a single world that long?  Is it really so important to see the religions change?  Is it really so important to chart that change throughout history?

Is the reason so few people play a world that long, that these types of events do not happen? Is there a reason we can't try to make at least a few of these ideas practical enough to be worth using?

Has it occured to you that the 3 squares a wagon needs being exactly one square more than the widest door you can make is not coincidental?

I refuse to believe that Toady's vision, for the world's most complete fantasy world simulation, does not include cities with gates wide enough to drive a cart through.

That said, I'd very much like to see building destruction tie into the systems for items taking damage, that is currently seeing expansion. DF1.0 should be a wholly unified work, and redundant code should be eschewed when practical. Treating buildings as if they were creatures, with their various construction components as body parts seems like the most obvious choice, though doing so wouldn't be as simple a change as it might seem. Plus it saves memory, and forces players to replace/repair damaged components to keep their defenses reliable (some system for automating this would be nice though i.e. mechanics carry fresh hinges to damaged doors and swap the damaged components out).

Currently, dwarven buildings are held together with abstraction, hope and dwarven elbow grease. There's no material properties for the joints, seams, or hinges of a given door. Pegs, glue, nails and fitted constructions will react differently to impact stresses, and people are going to want to see that modeled. Ideally, one would tear a statue free from it's foundation, rather than smash it to powder. (This specific example also calls up specters of statues with individual body parts and the ability to wear armor. A thought as tantalizing as it is foreboding.)

I'd like to see doors (and possibly other buildings) with optional extra components to make them stronger. This allows the ease of the current system (a door is made from a door) combined with the fun customization of adding locks and bars and custom hinges, unto the limit of the player's resources and tolerance for complexity.

The most basic feature would probably be a bar or log used to bar the door. This doesn't demand any new items to be created, and makes decent logical sense.

Another change that doesn't require a lot of new items is sandwiching doors for composite strength and features. A lightweight, compressive, wooden door might be veneered in attractive and scratch resistant granite. This opens up such possibilities as nobles with temperamental pets needing doors that are steel on the outside and their favorite stone on the inside(Fun ensues). This does require the game to recognize which side of the door is which, unless you just want to have a core and a single sheath that covers both exterior surfaces of the door.

After that things get more complicated, like with the aforementioned hinges, glues and nails.

People's ideas about gods need to be connected to, but distinct from the gods themselves.

Currently, a church dedicates itself to one god, and builds it's religion/faction around his actual spheres. Dwarves each worship a given god, but don't have any real connection to the religions.

I recommend a system, where each religion has a sphere list all of it's own, and attempts to collect a list of gods to fill in all of it's spheres (either by assimilating foreign gods, inventing new gods, or adding spheres to existing gods). Which might be bound directly to the spheres of the gods(beliefs about him directly alter his properties), or completely independent, depending on the local physics.

Once these two pools of data exist independently, the number of ways they could interact with each other and the peoples around them are practically infinite. I'll try to hit the high points in this post, without digressing too much.

In this abstraction, each dwarf has a religion in place of his current worshiped deity, but I'm open to more intricate systems if someone can make one feasible. This relationship can grow or decay in the same way as personal relationships, based on the social actions of people who represent that religion.

Ideas would need to be able to evolve over time. This is the random sort of evolution that doesn't imply that later states are inherently superior; if a generally good god, creates a generally good religion, it would be just as possible for evil or false concepts to creep in as the opposite.

Religions that are founded by gods would have a sphere set based on that of the god. Perhaps quite loosely, if the quality of the revelation is poor, or a lot of ideological drift occurs.

Religions that are founded by mortals, either through superstition or philosophical intent, could have a sphere set based on the type of people who created it and their environment (fire dominant regions would be more likely to have the fire sphere, etc).

If the gods really do band together in pantheons and tribes, then they might work cross-promotion into their divine revelations, leading to the addition of gods to pantheons that aren't really interested in their spheres.

For added complexity, religions could also maintain an enemy list. This would be gods that were, not only disallowed entry to the pantheon, but actively opposed by the religion. A god of light might encourage his followers to smite the goblins of a shadow demon cult, a high priest who hates elves might declare an elven deity to be the devil, or two gods who got in a bar fight might encourage their followers to fight with each other.

The Hermanubis scenario could play out a wide variety of ways depending on the number and nature of local religions, even leaving aside the interesting metaphysical solutions to the issue.

If the deity list can contain rituals and rules about each god, in a sufficiently fine grained manner, the previous paragraph might be rendered redundant.

It's considerably more complicated than that. More than just the power levels of the gods, but the rules that define them could someday become variables.

What if you generate a world, where gods can literally absorb smaller gods? What if this event happens as a result of changing belief structures on the world? What if it happens regardless of people's beliefs?

Shouldn't we propose a system robust enough to support a world where two separate religions can worship the same pantheon, only one group believes that the god's are all one god, and the other supports them as separate entities?