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[LuckyKobold]

Has anyone played Sierra's Pharaoh?  It's an old ancient egypt SimCity kind of game that is similar is premise to Dwarf Fortress but very different in execution.  One of the features of Pharaoh was its religion system.  Each city had a Patron deity, plus other local deities.  In the early levels, you might have only your patron god, then 1 or 2 local deities, then eventually you'd have to balance all 5.  You had Osiris, god of farming (specifically the inundation), Ra, god of trade and social standing, Ptah, god of industry and craftmandwarfship, Set, god of war, and Bast, god of the home and health.  You had the ability to appease gods by building small shrines, large temples or by building a festival square and holding a festival to honor a specific god by spending money and beer.  (Fun fact, ancient egypt also ran on booze)  An appeased god would give you some sort of blessing, for example, Osiris would increase the inundation and thus crop yields, Bast would fill your homes with pottery and beer that the bitches keep complaining about, Ptah would materialize raw materials in your workshops, Set would smite enemies the second they set foot on your soil and Ra would increase the kingdom rating, which was how you won the game.  A neglected or jealous god on the other hand would damage your city according to their theme. 

I enjoyed that aspect of Pharaoh and I think it would translate to the worlds of Dwarf Fortress easily enough.  Since money doesn't mean anything to a dwarf and the consumption of alcohol is a given, I would suggest sacrificing some kind of item that is meaningful to the deity's realm of influence.  Here are some Fun ideas:

God of Metal
Sacrifice: Metal bars, metal objects or metal ores
Boon: Randomly changes existing stone on the map to metal ores; Drops metal bars from the sky; Metal bars in stockpiles come to life and befriend dwarves; type of ore/metal based on what ores are sacrificed. 
Smite: Changes existing metal ores to stone; Drops metal bars from the sky; Metal bars in stockpile come to life and attack dwarves; Metal bars in stockpile turn into charcoal. 

God of Fire
Sacrifice: Charcoal, coke
Boon: Creates lava tubes; Delivers coke/charcoal; Rains magma from the sky; Protects dwarves & buildings from fire;
Smite: Starts fires; Turns magma under magma workshops into obsidian; Rains magma from the sky;

God of the Wild
Sacrifice: Meat, living animals,
Boon: Sends tame animals to join your fortress; Protects your animals from harm; Animals have more babies; Wild animals attack invaders; Dwarves can control themselves as werebeasts;  Change domesticated animals into wilder versions, i.e, dogs into wolves, cows into buffalo, cats into lions, etc. 
Smite: Sends unfriendly savage animals to attack your fortress; Protects unfriendly animals from harm; Untrains animals (even domesticated ones); Turns dwarves into werebeasts;  Wild animals besiege the fortress; Change domesticated animals into wilder versions and make them unfriendly

God of Farming
Sacrifice: Food, Booze,
Boon: Increase crop yield; Increase yield from milking/shearing/butchering;
Smite: Destroy crops; Kill livestock;  Destroy food in stockpiles; 

God of Battle
Sacrifice: Prisoners, weapons, armor, blood
Boon: Dwarves perform well in battle; Invaders drop dead, go blind, can't move, etc; Dwarves gain fighting skills more easily;
Smite: Dwarves fight poorly; Powerful enemies, ie ogres, dragons, attack the fortress;

God of Crafts
Sacrifice: Crafts, raw materials i.e. wood, stone, glass, clay, bones, cloth
Boon: Stockpiles fill with materials; craftdwarves' skills improved; Strange moods more common and more successful;
Smite: Raw materials vanish from stockpiles; craftdwarves lose skill levels; Strange moods less successful;

God of Health
Sacrifice: Splints, crutches, thread, traction benches
Boon: Dwarves heal faster; Dwarves resist illness, infection; Dwarves' physical attributes increase, ie, tougher, faster, stronger, etc;
Smite: Syndrome plagues; 

God of Undeath
Sacrifice: Dwarves, prisoners, coffins, slabs
Boon: Creates friendly undead; Turns dwarves into vampires; Ghosts less likely to damage dwarves;  Ghosts attack invaders/wild animals; 
Smite: Zombies; Destroys burial sites, resulting in Ghosts; Turns dwarves into vampires;

God of Destruction
Sacrifice: Dwarves, prisoners, animals
Boon: Turns dwarves into vampires; Turns dwarves into werebeasts; Dwarves gain mutations like claws, stingers, fangs, web spitters, fire breath, etc; Dwarves gain happiness and nourishment from destruction;  Dwarves resist destruction themselves; 
Smite:  Dwarves go berzerk; Syndromes;

God of Wealth
Sacrifice: Coins
Boon: Coins rain from the sky; Masterwork crafts more likely;  Materials in stockpiles become better versions, ie, clay becomes fireclay, glass becomes crystal glass, stone becomes obsidian, metals become gold or steel, etc;  God Merchants appear;  Brokers gain skills faster; 
Smite: Lead coins rain from the sky;  Brokers lose skills;  Merchants get zapped or don't show up;  Materials in stockpiles downgrade; 

God of Justice
Sacrifice: Chains, Cages,
Boon: Thieves become caged;  Invaders become caged;  Dwarves that go Berzerk or turn into werebeasts or whatever become caged; More happy thoughts from settling disputes, complaining to leaders, etc; 
Smite: Random Dwarves become caged; Creatures escape from cages and chains;  Thieves appear; 

God of Love
Sacrifice: Clothing, booze
Boon: Dwarves become "good looking"; Dwarves get happy thought from seeing "good looking" dwarves;  Dwarves more likely to get married or pursue relationships;  Less unhappiness in general;
Smite:  Dwarves become depressed or insane; Dwarves become "ugly", causing bad thoughts; 



I'm thinking that gods are actually generated with more than one of these fields of influence.  So if a given world has 3 gods, I reach for my d12 and generate:  Goddess of Destruction and Metal, Goddess of Health and Battle, and God of Undeath and Wealth.  That's going to be a Fun planet. 

A Kobold Thief Approves of this message!

[Ngosp Umbabok]

With regards to the post about the pharaoh game and the ways there could be a similar system implemented in dwarf fortress I think those are some good ideas but if they were to be present in the game they should be toned-down and pretty rare.

Right now the atmosphere in the game is that while there are fantasy-based creatures in abundance, true magic is rare. I don't know exactly how prevalent Toady wants magic to be but I think I recall him posting about he wants to avoid the whole "industrial magic" feel where magic is everyday commonplace and people don't think much of it.

For the temple in a players fort to cause the gods to enact some sort of miracle should be a rare and momentous event that is recorded in history and maybe happens once or twice in a forts existence, if that. That way it would keep divine acts significant instead of feeling cheap and arcadey. It should be an exciting suprise for the player when it happens instead of the player feeling like "okay I've done this and that so this god did so-and-so and now I have to do this in order to get this god to do that".

[Batgirl1]

With regards to the post about the pharaoh game and the ways there could be a similar system implemented in dwarf fortress I think those are some good ideas but if they were to be present in the game they should be toned-down and pretty rare.

Right now the atmosphere in the game is that while there are fantasy-based creatures in abundance, true magic is rare. I don't know exactly how prevalent Toady wants magic to be but I think I recall him posting about he wants to avoid the whole "industrial magic" feel where magic is everyday commonplace and people don't think much of it.

For the temple in a players fort to cause the gods to enact some sort of miracle should be a rare and momentous event that is recorded in history and maybe happens once or twice in a forts existence, if that. That way it would keep divine acts significant instead of feeling cheap and arcadey. It should be an exciting suprise for the player when it happens instead of the player feeling like "okay I've done this and that so this god did so-and-so and now I have to do this in order to get this god to do that".

Agreed.  This sounds very right.

[AceSV]

I would agree with that philosophy as well.  Gods that are too powerful would change the nature of the game entirely, so players should absolutely have the ability to opt out.  A "Godly Intervention" parameter at world gen would be a great idea.

An sneakier approach to god powers would be to give gods influence over invisible realms, for example, a Farm God would increase the chance of good crops, or a Battle God would increase a dwarf's ability to dodge or strike, but they don't do anything on the scale of "Set has disemboweled thine enemies, bro" and the player is never told specifically when or if a god is influencing events.  All a player can do is build a Battle Church and pray to Battle God and hope it works.  And like gods in the real world, the dwarf gods are generally indifferent and only impact events on a whim. 

So if we talk numbers for a second, let's say a god's appeasedness level can go from -5 to 5.  A Battle God's effect is to increase the % chance a follower's attack will hit.  Regardless of appeasedness value, the Battle God will only grant this boon 5% of the time (Nat 20).  Appeasedness influences how good the boon is, let's say 10% increase per appeasedness level, so if the Battle God's appeasedness is 3, 1 in every 20 of Urist McBattlePriest's attacks will have a 30% increase in accuracy. 

Another mitigator could be that Gods are very specific about who or what they bless.  A Farm God might bless one particular farm plot, or a Battle God might bless one particular dwarf or one particular sword or shield.  Gods might also send figures like Hercules, Rama, Buddha, Jesus or Brynhild or items like the Ten Commandments, Holy Grail, Sword of Mars or Amulet of Yendor. 



Also, since we have Good and Evil biomes already, what about God-biomes or Holy Lands?  Each Holy Land would be different depending on the god that influenced it.  For example, a Fire God's Holy Land would have rivers and pools of magma, a Farm God's Holy Land would be teeming with wheat, rice and hemp, a Craft God's Holy Land would be full of fire clay, obsidian and rock crystal, and a Love God's Holy Land would be full of oysters, rabbits and rose petals.  Keep in mind, each God has two domains, so you'd really be getting something like a Fire-Love-God's Holy Land of magma and rabbits.  A god should also be extra aware of any dwarves that enter their holy land and maybe also extra powerful in the vicinity. 

Another thing that occurs to me is that gods should have personality generators just like dwarves do.  If you're a fan of mythology, you'll often see gods having very distinctive moods and ways of dealing with their problems.  Some gods might be extra indifferent, while others are nosy and try to intervene a lot, while others just smite dwarves out of boredom. 

[LuckyKobold]

I would agree with that philosophy as well.  Gods that are too powerful would change the nature of the game entirely, so players should absolutely have the ability to opt out.  A "Godly Intervention" parameter at world gen would be a great idea.

An sneakier approach to god powers would be to give gods influence over invisible realms, for example, a Farm God would increase the chance of good crops, or a Battle God would increase a dwarf's ability to dodge or strike, but they don't do anything on the scale of "Set has disemboweled thine enemies, bro" and the player is never told specifically when or if a god is influencing events.  All a player can do is build a Battle Church and pray to Battle God and hope it works.  And like gods in the real world, the dwarf gods are generally indifferent and only impact events on a whim. 

So if we talk numbers for a second, let's say a god's appeasedness level can go from -5 to 5.  A Battle God's effect is to increase the % chance a follower's attack will hit.  Regardless of appeasedness value, the Battle God will only grant this boon 5% of the time (Nat 20).  Appeasedness influences how good the boon is, let's say 10% increase per appeasedness level, so if the Battle God's appeasedness is 3, 1 in every 20 of Urist McBattlePriest's attacks will have a 30% increase in accuracy. 

Another mitigator could be that Gods are very specific about who or what they bless.  A Farm God might bless one particular farm plot, or a Battle God might bless one particular dwarf or one particular sword or shield.  Gods might also send figures like Hercules, Rama, Buddha, Jesus or Brynhild or items like the Ten Commandments, Holy Grail, Sword of Mars or Amulet of Yendor. 



Also, since we have Good and Evil biomes already, what about God-biomes or Holy Lands?  Each Holy Land would be different depending on the god that influenced it.  For example, a Fire God's Holy Land would have rivers and pools of magma, a Farm God's Holy Land would be teeming with wheat, rice and hemp, a Craft God's Holy Land would be full of fire clay, obsidian and rock crystal, and a Love God's Holy Land would be full of oysters, rabbits and rose petals.  Keep in mind, each God has two domains, so you'd really be getting something like a Fire-Love-God's Holy Land of magma and rabbits.  A god should also be extra aware of any dwarves that enter their holy land and maybe also extra powerful in the vicinity. 

Another thing that occurs to me is that gods should have personality generators just like dwarves do.  If you're a fan of mythology, you'll often see gods having very distinctive moods and ways of dealing with their problems.  Some gods might be extra indifferent, while others are nosy and try to intervene a lot, while others just smite dwarves out of boredom. 

Good Point, Perhaps there should be a parameter to determine how much Gods actually care about the world you've generated.

[vjmdhzgr]

Also, since we have Good and Evil biomes already, what about God-biomes or Holy Lands?  Each Holy Land would be different depending on the god that influenced it.  For example, a Fire God's Holy Land would have rivers and pools of magma, a Farm God's Holy Land would be teeming with wheat, rice and hemp, a Craft God's Holy Land would be full of fire clay, obsidian and rock crystal, and a Love God's Holy Land would be full of oysters, rabbits and rose petals.  Keep in mind, each God has two domains, so you'd really be getting something like a Fire-Love-God's Holy Land of magma and rabbits.  A god should also be extra aware of any dwarves that enter their holy land and maybe also extra powerful in the vicinity.

Not all gods have multiple spheres, and two isn't the maximum amount possible. I looked at five random human civilizations from the same world in world generation and got 38 total deities. 13 had only one sphere, 14 had two, 6 had three spheres, 2 had five spheres, 1 had six spheres, and 2 of them had a total of seven spheres. So the amount can vary a lot, and I doubt seven is the maximum amount, though that would be interesting to know. Also most of the time gods have related spheres. You probably won't find a god of fire and love, and you for sure will never find one of fire and water. Generally if you get a god of love it'll also be something related to that like fertility, or pregnancy, then from there it could also have birth or children as spheres. In my experience the ones with huge amount of spheres are gods of fertility, and pregnancy, and all that, or something like twilight, dreams, lightning, nightmares, and spheres related to those.

[Untelligent]

It would be neat if some gods required specific objects or decorations in their temples, with more important temples having additional requirements. For example, the Old Testament actually spends more page space describing how the Ark of the Covenant, the enclosing temple/tent, and priestly clothes should be all be decorated than it does on the story of Noah's Ark.


EDIT: More on this train of thought. Much of it may have to wait until more work on global economic stuff. A god might define temple requirements at the start of history, or it could decree them in rare events at a later date. Any material requirements would be things available to the civ at that time of the decree, or known by the civ to exist in a nearby location -- a particularly religious civilization might start wars to appease a god if they don't have any microcline for the sky god's temples but the folks across the river do. This could also tie into starting scenarios, making a new outpost to mine zinc for brass statues because your civ's running out.

[IndigoFenix]

At one point I made a DF hack script that worked kind of like the Pharaoh system you described, however it worked on a 'gods need prayer badly' system.

Basically each god has two values describing their relationship with a site: influence and happiness.  Influence determines how much power a god has over a site, while happiness determines how it feels about the site.  Both increase as your dwarves serve in the temple, and both decrease as you neglect service, but happiness goes up and down faster than influence.  So if you never set up a temple in the first place, nothing happens.  If you serve for a long time, you get more powerful blessings.  However, if you stop worshipping a god that was already highly influential, you can suffer some nasty smiting for a while.  But if you endure the smiting, eventually the god's influence level fizzles out.

Of course, the spheres involved can make some gods trickier to deal with than others.  Gods related to fire are particularly fun, since they tend to 'help'  you by lighting enemies on fire, which can easily start wildfires.  And war gods make sieges more common whether they are trying to help you or hurt you (but for blessings they increase the luck of your soldiers, for a curse they do the opposite).  Of course if you choose to worship a god of war you probably enjoy fighting.

[Dirst]

Also, since we have Good and Evil biomes already, what about God-biomes or Holy Lands?  Each Holy Land would be different depending on the god that influenced it.  For example, a Fire God's Holy Land would have rivers and pools of magma, a Farm God's Holy Land would be teeming with wheat, rice and hemp, a Craft God's Holy Land would be full of fire clay, obsidian and rock crystal, and a Love God's Holy Land would be full of oysters, rabbits and rose petals.  Keep in mind, each God has two domains, so you'd really be getting something like a Fire-Love-God's Holy Land of magma and rabbits.  A god should also be extra aware of any dwarves that enter their holy land and maybe also extra powerful in the vicinity. 

Another thing that occurs to me is that gods should have personality generators just like dwarves do.  If you're a fan of mythology, you'll often see gods having very distinctive moods and ways of dealing with their problems.  Some gods might be extra indifferent, while others are nosy and try to intervene a lot, while others just smite dwarves out of boredom.

Good and Evil biomes are definitely a placeholder, destined to break out into Spheres at some point.  I'd like to see every creature/plant/material tagged with Sphere weights to lend additional flavor, but that's a separate suggestion. 

Sphere-related gods should definitely have their power affected by the Sphere ratings of a biome.  The other type of god in the game, Forces, are currently limited to specific geographic features... maybe their influence is more all-or-nothing than the Sphere gods.

I also like the idea of a personality generator for gods, though it shouldn't be a carbon copy of the mortal personality engine.  The complicated bit comes when deciding whether gods can affect each other, or only act through mortal proxies.  Heavenly battles sound heroic and all, but it seems unfair and unfun having the batteries run out of the fort's intricate mega-temple for reasons beyond the player's control.

[IndigoFenix]

I also like the idea of a personality generator for gods, though it shouldn't be a carbon copy of the mortal personality engine.  The complicated bit comes when deciding whether gods can affect each other, or only act through mortal proxies.  Heavenly battles sound heroic and all, but it seems unfair and unfun having the batteries run out of the fort's intricate mega-temple for reasons beyond the player's control.

What if the results of the struggles in the heavens could be influenced by actions taken in the material world?

If gods grow stronger the more they are worshiped, a player might be able to increase the chance of a god winning a particular battle by increasing that god's worship.  This could, in turn, affect that god's 'sphere effect' on the region.

[Dirst]

I also like the idea of a personality generator for gods, though it shouldn't be a carbon copy of the mortal personality engine.  The complicated bit comes when deciding whether gods can affect each other, or only act through mortal proxies.  Heavenly battles sound heroic and all, but it seems unfair and unfun having the batteries run out of the fort's intricate mega-temple for reasons beyond the player's control.

What if the results of the struggles in the heavens could be influenced by actions taken in the material world?

If gods grow stronger the more they are worshiped, a player might be able to increase the chance of a god winning a particular battle by increasing that god's worship.  This could, in turn, affect that god's 'sphere effect' on the region.

Oh I agree, this is a very fun avenue for a player to pursue.  I just don't think it'd be very fun to have it happen to the fort's god because of a bunch of stuff happening off-screen.  Allowing the player to do it but not suffer from it seems gamey.

Now, maybe just scale the range of effects with the general god-influence game setting and it becomes an acceptable risk for the player... just keep the default something noticeable but not debilitating.

Ultimately, I'd love to see the alternate-planes-of-existence feature set allow an Adventurer to lead an army to storm a god directly.  Defeat would be highly likely, and very painful.  Victory could wipe out almost all of a religion.  Almost, because some of the faithful will persist anyway.  As Stargate SG1 put it, "They have to be fanatics to be worshiping a dead god."

[AceSV]

This suggests to me that certain civilizations go on Crusades.  Your fortress might be besieged by foreigners who don't like your religion. 

[Amena Ralikema]

I think it would be fun if it's possible to donate/dedicate artifacts and masterwork goods to temples - either by the player, or, in the case of artifacts, by their creators, if they are devoted enough. The gifts should be appropriate for the particular god's topic (e.g. weapons and armor for a war god) and kept in an appropriate container in the temple.

God-pandering like in Impressions games (Caesar, Pharaoh, etc.) can be skipped at first or at all - temple gifts don't necessarily have to produce supernatural effects to be useful. Like in the real world, they also have mundane applications, such as producing happy thoughts in worshipers who visit the temple and increasing its prestige/influence. Urist McReligious can feel really warm and fuzzy inside about that masterwork gold helmet on the altar, or, alternatively, get upset when it's nicked by a cutebold or destroyed by a Forgotten Beast. (Do they actually destroy stuff?)

[Lord_lemonpie]

I think it would be fun if it's possible to donate/dedicate artifacts and masterwork goods to temples - either by the player, or, in the case of artifacts, by their creators, if they are devoted enough. The gifts should be appropriate for the particular god's topic (e.g. weapons and armor for a war god) and kept in an appropriate container in the temple.

I like the idea of this. A special strange mood could even be created for people wanting to create something for their favorite diety. If there are ever going to be temple-related skills, this mood could instantly boast the stats in them to legendary+, together with the crafting skill used. Or maybe dwarfs who have completed this mood become prophets or high-priests.

[GoblinCookie]

Based upon how things work in human religions I would propose that things work as follows.

Religious dwarves get unhappy if they do not have a temple in which to pray to one of the gods they believe in.  A temple in order to work but have a priest and must meet particular requirements, say a particular material which can be randomly generated. 

Once you set up a temple you must appoint a high priest.  Once a high priest is appointed then a new religion is formed that will recruit people that worship their god and attend their temple.  The high priest is given a possibly silly name like the existing high priests are as well (Supreme Baby comes to mind).  Without appointing a priest however temples do not function and you cannot appoint a priest unless you have a high priest.

As you build more temples you appoint more priests to attend them.  This is all managed on the nobles screen, priests are considered nobles and religious work is considered noble position work.