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[GoblinCookie]

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[GoblinCookie]

Another common logical fallacy is to believe that correlation implies causation. Simply because Hinduism is one of the oldest extant religions on the planet is no reason to think that it's the Colonel's secret blend of humanity & divinity that has made it so. It's far more likely that it survived because its major worship centers happened to be located in an area with a historically low sociopolitical metabolism.

If the fire god becomes overly inhuman then there is a danger that it will simply become the same thing as fire and will become redundant.

Let's discuss the most impersonal example of this that I can think of: The Force. There most likely *is* an intelligence behind it, as users can be guided by its influence. But if so, it is an intelligence that apparently lacks a bodily avatar, and even a name; the god has merged with what it controls. But that hardly means that it's ceased to be a functioning religion, what with its thousands of clergy and at least one major schism (were the Jedi and Sith ever a single body?) to its name. But there is no actual worship, per se, and its rituals seem to be purely functional--you don't meditate to be closer to your god, you meditate to clear your mind of clutter that might make you lose a fight. Does this make the Force (or its sects) a less effective religion, at least in terms of the spiritual energy paid to its god(s)? Perhaps.

If the fire god becomes overly human then there is a danger that the clergy will simply become regents of the fire-god, authorities in a sense but also lacking in authority at the same time; a deadly mixture.  The personal nature of the religion requires a personality to head it, but the fact that the fire-god is not physically present undermines the effective authority of it's own priests; an authority it vitally needs.

The most humanlike god that comes to mind is Bacchus / Dionysus. Dude was throwing outdoor orgies everywhere he went, and people were freely doing likewise on his behalf when he wasn't around. Did the lack of his direct presence somehow weaken him, or his worship? Somehow, I doubt it.

Hinduism is interestingly 'strong' because it is a pagan religion that did not succumb like it "should have" according to the apparant rules of historical evolution.  This makes me think that what killed off paganism was a kind of intellectual 'poison', which Hinduism was isolated from which preceded the rise of the monotheistic religions and indeed facilitated their rise by weakening the competition.

Whether the Force does or not work as a religion depends upon whether the force is simply a physical thing that follows completely predictable laws or has some kind of intelligence to it with which people can relate.  In the former case, the religion is pretty much dead the moment that some kind of Star Wars version of Newton can codify the "Laws of the Force". 

[cochramd]

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[LMeire]

...  This makes me think that what killed off paganism was a kind of intellectual 'poison', which Hinduism was isolated from which preceded the rise of the monotheistic religions and indeed facilitated their rise by weakening the competition.
...

I'm not exactly an expert on the region, but India is anything but isolated, from "intellectual poisons" or otherwise. It's part of the "Crossroads of the World", and was thus exposed to every major philosophy from both the East and West at least since Alexander the Great conquered the subcontinent in 325BCE.

[GoblinCookie]

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[cochramd]

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[LMeire]

I'm not exactly an expert on the region, but India is anything but isolated, from "intellectual poisons" or otherwise. It's part of the "Crossroads of the World", and was thus exposed to every major philosophy from both the East and West at least since Alexander the Great conquered the subcontinent in 325BCE.

Alexander the Great did no such thing, though he certainly tried. ...

He kinda did, founded a bunch of cities while he was there too.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[SixOfSpades]

He kinda did, founded a bunch of cities while he was there too.

So, he conquered India in the same sense that the British won the War of 1812. Yeah, they burned the White House, but . . .

Another common logical fallacy is to believe that correlation implies causation. Simply because Hinduism is one of the oldest extant religions on the planet is no reason to think that it's the Colonel's secret blend of humanity & divinity that has made it so. It's far more likely that it survived because its major worship centers happened to be located in an area with a historically low sociopolitical metabolism.

Hinduism is interestingly 'strong' because it is a pagan religion that did not succumb like it "should have" according to the apparant rules of historical evolution.  This makes me think that what killed off paganism was a kind of intellectual 'poison', which Hinduism was isolated from which preceded the rise of the monotheistic religions and indeed facilitated their rise by weakening the competition.

Are you using "pagan" to mean "non-Christian", or to mean "pantheistic"? Words like pagan, heathen, and infidel are almost defined by their connotations of "Not a member of OUR religion," which is useless in this discussion because we're not speaking from the framework of a shared faith.

"Hinduism is strong because it did not fall" is indeed a tautology. You would have been perfectly fine if you had said, "Hinduism is interesting because it did not fall," so for the sake of good manners, I shall pretend that you did. Even so, I still directly disagree with your proposal, that Hinduism endured as a direct result of some ideal ratio of Celestial Approachability possessed by the majority of its gods. While it is true that strong faith sincerely held can indeed strengthen a culture's courage and tenacity, that doesn't change the fact that a civilization defines its gods, NOT vice versa. Religion is a recreational activity practiced by a society that has the leisure to do so. Hinduism still stands not because its gods wait the appropriate amount of time before calling you back, it stands because
Alexander the Great uses CLASSIC BLUNDER--LAND WAR IN ASIA!
It's not very effective.
It stands because India is just so heavily populated, it's pretty much impossible to conquer. It stands because polytheistic religions are excellent (even more so than modern Christianity) at assimilating aspects of other faiths. It stands because it has stood--the older the faith (and the longer that your family has been part of it), the greater the pressure to carry it on.

(removed)

Let me elaborate a bit: each of the elements feeds another element . . . and controls another element.

Yeah, I did the did the research too (a couple of ago, for an entirely unrelated project, but that's another matter). Whether you go by the Greek setup of 2 pairs of opposing elements or the Chinese layout of 5 (although some versions have more) elements interconnected by symmetrical chains of creation and destruction, both plans have their own internal consistency and balance--precisely as you'd expect from a good cosmology, one stable enough to allow creatures as frail as dwarves/humans to flourish. But when you allow the god of 1 element to spread & control another element, the symmetry is broken and the structure seems likely to fall. So, when you said that

water and fire are no more or less sensible than any other elemental combination

I agreed, in the sense that I don't really think ANY of the primal elements should be allowed to combine, even in cases where they might collaborate nicely. Now, what exactly constitutes a "primal" element isn't absolutely clear (the DF spheres list Metal as being a subordinate subset of Earth, but Chinese cosmology holds it as separate and equal), but I think it's agreed that we'll let Toady be the judge of that.

With that said, I do disagree with Toady on one count: (paraphrased)

A deity will never choose a parent/child sphere of any of the spheres they already have.

This seems unnecessary, and at times quite awkward. Why shouldn't the deity of Courage control Valor as well? A goddess holds domain over Art, but not Painting? And it was this rule that allowed one of my favorite gaffes, when the god "Rain Rainflew the Rainy Sky-Heaven of Rain" held sway over the entire sphere of Weather--until "Fragrance" came along and stole his favorite sub-sphere of Rain right out from under him. To me, it makes far more sense to arrange the rules so that if a god claims a parent sphere, its daughter spheres come along for the ride . . . at least, until we can arrange stricter rules for demigods.

[cochramd]

Yeah, I did the did the research too (a couple of ago, for an entirely unrelated project, but that's another matter). Whether you go by the Greek setup of 2 pairs of opposing elements or the Chinese layout of 5 (although some versions have more) elements interconnected by symmetrical chains of creation and destruction, both plans have their own internal consistency and balance--precisely as you'd expect from a good cosmology, one stable enough to allow creatures as frail as dwarves/humans to flourish. But when you allow the god of 1 element to spread & control another element, the symmetry is broken and the structure seems likely to fall. So, when you said that

water and fire are no more or less sensible than any other elemental combination

I agreed, in the sense that I don't really think ANY of the primal elements should be allowed to combine, even in cases where they might collaborate nicely. Now, what exactly constitutes a "primal" element isn't absolutely clear (the DF spheres list Metal as being a subordinate subset of Earth, but Chinese cosmology holds it as separate and equal), but I think it's agreed that we'll let Toady be the judge of that.

I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree, though I will remark that such combinations are on the "requires a damned good explanation to work" list.

With that said, I do disagree with Toady on one count: (paraphrased)

A deity will never choose a parent/child sphere of any of the spheres they already have.

This seems unnecessary, and at times quite awkward. Why shouldn't the deity of Courage control Valor as well? A goddess holds domain over Art, but not Painting? And it was this rule that allowed one of my favorite gaffes, when the god "Rain Rainflew the Rainy Sky-Heaven of Rain" held sway over the entire sphere of Weather--until "Fragrance" came along and stole his favorite sub-sphere of Rain right out from under him. To me, it makes far more sense to arrange the rules so that if a god claims a parent sphere, its daughter spheres come along for the ride . . . at least, until we can arrange stricter rules for demigods.

It seems to me that the problem there is that we don't have gods that are subordinates to and/or children of other gods. That way, once a god claims a parent sphere only their offpsring and subordinates may claim child spheres. No one blinks at Apollo and Artemis being the deities of the sun and moon respectively while Zeus was the god of the sky, and I think your example would've made sense if the weather god hadn't had rain mentioned so many times in his name and Fragrance was his daughter.

[GoblinCookie]

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[Toady One]

I spent some time cleaning the thread because I figured it was worth saving.  If there's any more bickering between the main parties to the argument here, that'll be it for you on this forum.  Please familiarize yourself with the forum guidelines, try to stay on track, and don't go out of your way to insult each other.

[Batgirl1]

I like the idea of "imperfect knowledge", where the game rolls up a pantheon and cultures obtain pieces of the puzzle as gods manifest or otherwise reveal themselves to members of that population, with falsehoods cropping up due to the passage of time, conversations with other beliefs, and false prophets.  For example:

Urist McDiety is the god of vinegar.  He looks like a slugman, has wings, and carries an onyx crossbow.  (just go with it for now).  He appears once on a continent, with the following results:

Dwarves depict Urist McDiety as a bronze colossus with wings and an onyx crossbow.
Humans depict him as a slugman with wings and a wooden training sword.
Elves depict him as a two-headed bear with an onyx jug.

Later, further appearances by this diety result in more accurate depictions, although if he doesn't appear, a dwarf conversing with a human might conclude that, hey, maybe the wooden sword is right after all...

[Dirst]

The only problem is that your dwarves can perceive the material, quality and wear level of every goblin sieger's underwear from several tiles away.  It's unlikely that details could get that mangled without rewriting quite a bit of the game engine.

On the other hand, that's likely to happen at some point.

[SixOfSpades]

I like the idea of "imperfect knowledge", where the game rolls up a pantheon and cultures obtain pieces of the puzzle as gods manifest or otherwise reveal themselves to members of that population, with falsehoods cropping up due to the passage of time . . .
Later, further appearances by this diety result in more accurate depictions, although if he doesn't appear, a dwarf conversing with a human might conclude that, hey, maybe the wooden sword is right after all...

I was going to point out the necessity of the game having perfect knowledge of the gods, even while their worshipers might not (as opposed to the game generating the gods piecemeal, with each detail coming into being as it's discovered by a mortal), but I also like the flavor of the gods altering themselves to best suit what their faithful expect of them. Maybe an amalgam of the two would work best, where the god of Hospitality randomly gets assigned a hoe as a tool, but later on might choose to swap that out for a spindle if he has no other spheres that would take him outside the home.


I've been thinking about gods & demigods, and about spheres & domains. (I should point out that I want to swap the last two terms--a "domain" sounds like something that you control, and "spheres" are the various qualities associated with that domain. e.g., the domain of Fishing would have ties to the Water, Animal, and Food spheres, and so a deity with the Fishing domain would do well to pick secondary traits that were also associated with those same spheres. But I'm aware that I'm probably in the minority here, and I will try to stick to proper DF terminology in this respect.)
Demigods certainly aren't essential to a good pantheon, but given the vast range of potential importance, it's almost a given that somebody's going to get short shrift, relatively speaking. (I think I once got one who was the god of muck and salt. That's it.) Those could be the "Primeval" demigods, those who were born not-great.
Another type of demigod could be a former (possibly still?) mortal. If you defile a temple, that god will curse you. But if you hallow a once-profaned temple, that god will probably take you as a Priest. Perform another such service, and become a High Priest. Do one more act that's extremely pleasing to the same deity, and they might take you on as a demigod, and assign you a sphere from their own portfolio. (To prevent this from becoming commonplace in Adventure mode, the 3rd task would have to be REALLY discouraging, like "Live as a hermit for 6 years" or something.) These could be the "Transcendent" demigods, those who achieved not-greatness.
And interactions between the gods could produce a third type. If Legends mode treated each pantheon as something akin to a distant colony of its civilization, it could simulate events there--though at a noticeably slower pace than Fort mode. Gods could form and break friendships, marry, etc. Children of gods would need spheres to control, so at least 1 parent would have to surrender something. Some gods might have spheres stolen from them by other gods. Deities so impoverished could be the "Olympian" demigods, those who have not-greatness thrust upon them.
I'll have more to say about this "Godville" later on.


As for the Elemental spheres, my current thoughts are that they all preclude each other (to prevent any 1 god from grabbing too much & unbalancing the structure), and are all of equal power/importance--except for Earth. Earth is the parent sphere of Metal, which stands on a par with the other elements, and of course dwarves would favor Earth anyway. (Humans, meanwhile, place Weather at the top, elves think Wood is most important, and dwarves might not even recognize Wood as an element at all?)

But that's on the Preclude list. What seems to be called for in this thread is a cheap fantasy Preclude list generator: During worldgen, before history starts ticking, the game runs through the Divinity section of the INIT file and comes across a snippet that looks something like this:

SPHERE_ART
     SPHERE_VANDALISM[45:-40]
SPHERE_FUTURE
     SPHERE_PAST[100:13]

That would mean that if a particular civilization has a god of Art, then they have a 45% chance of also having a god of Vandalism, and there's only a 10% chance (50/50 odds, minus 40%) that both spheres will belong to the same god. Meanwhile, a dwarf civ that has a god of the Future has a 100% chance of also getting a god of the Past, and these have a 63% chance (50/50 odds + 13%) of being the same god. Once that's done, the game checks two of the advanced worldgen settings mentioned earlier: the Pantheon Weirdness, and the Weirdness Deviation. Pantheon Weirdness would affect every civilization on the map, equally, and could potentially invert the commonality between the spheres: if the PW is set to 100, then it will take each individual sphere-relationship and go 100% of the way towards reversing the relationships, so that the Art god now has a 90% chance of controlling Vandalism as well, while Past & Future are now only 37% likely to belong to a single deity. Weirdness Deviation, on the other hand, is calculated independently for each civ, and imposes a random modifier (with the WD setting as the upper & lower limit) upon the global PW. So the Pantheon Weirdness determines how different the world's gods are from the settings described in the INIT file, and the Weirdness Deviation allows the various cultures to be different from each other. Once all those numbers are crunched, that creates a new Friend/Preclude list--one for each civilization, in fact, and the RNG can populate that with gods as it does currently.
I realize that my text snippet doesn't include a value for how likely Art & Vandalism are to be Friends (if they don't happen to be Precluded or identical), but you get the idea.


Back to Godville: Gods might be able to craft/discover unclaimed spheres, and either take them for themselves or trade them to other gods. Gods might even kill each other, at which point the lost spheres might be up for grabs, or vanish. This gets really interesting when you consider that the game might have events in Godville reflect what's happening in your fort, so that if you wall in and focus on feeding your population & making babies, then your gods of Agriculture & Birth would be more likely to acquire additional (related) spheres, while those controlling War, Fortresses, Hospitality, & Trade would wither away, losing worshipers in the process. This would give gods a whole slew of motivations to have their respective Priests make demands of you. Also possible would be deities from other civilizations migrating to your civ's Godville . . . perhaps filling a void, perhaps merging with (or even deposing) a native god. This seems like an interesting way to simulate a spreading religion, or at least the assimilation of certain elements of same.

That's enough blathering for now.

[cochramd]

I realize that my text snippet doesn't include a value for how likely Art & Vandalism are to be Friends (if they don't happen to be Precluded or identical), but you get the idea.

If graffiti were a thing, more likely than you think. Graffiti is a form of both art and vandalism; sure, the art god would feel inwardly conflicted whenever graffiti defaced other art, and the vandalism god's inability to understand that inner conflict as well as the obvious conflicts of interest between the two of them are going to put serious strains on their relationship. But there would still be times when they could get along.

Friendship between gods could probably be handled like friendship between mortals; even if gods are not given full blown personalities, their domains suggest certain personality traits and personal values.