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[viskaslietuvai]

Sorry, kinda long post.

So I'm sort of casually designing a game. It was originally supposed to be a pen and paper rpg affair, but I decided to have it computer based so as to allow for more complexity in the world generation.

Some quick background, the world is actually a prison for the gods of the world, (they did a verboten thing) but the inhabitants don't know it. They also don't realize that their collective belief in these gods basically sustains their deities. (if anyone has a way to make this have the same result without sounding too much like Discworld or Black and White, I'm all ears) As a result there are four factions of gods and all the gods have made themselves sorta known to the various cultures of the world through dreams, prophets, omens and other classic methods, with different degrees of success. The four factions have their goal/philosophy determined by two characteristics, one: whether to let the mortals know explicitly of their existence and two: the esteem they hold for the mortal folk who are essentially their lifeblood. This results in the abbreviated Enlighteners (let mortals know, high esteem for mortals) Protectors (Secrecy, High Esteem) Parasites (Secrecy, Low Esteem) Enslavers (Full Disclosure, Low Esteem). That part I'm fairly content with. The reason why full disclosure has not just been done is that there is a tenuous truce after the last time a crazy Enslaver god blew up most of the world during a deity war. No one wants that to happen again. The name of the world is Thera. Get it? I thought it was kinda funny.

Here's the dilemma: I like the 4-way power struggle. 2 factions seems kinda like the Transformers, and 3 factions kinda seems done to death as a way of variety. So I wanted extend the 4 factions theme to the mortal realm and I don't want explicit evil, 'cause I don't really believe that reality has absolute good or evil, and relatability is important to making something unrealistic interesting.
The best I could come up with was Mages, (individuality, supernatural) Clerics, (order/hierarchy, supernatural) Alchemists, (individuality, material world) Laymen/Everybody Else (order, material world).

The weak link in my mind is the alchemist thing. The first two seem fairly sensical given the archetypes. The laymen one comes from the normal world we live in today with societal structure, but that kinda leaves a hole in the individual/material world category.

Suggestions?

[Armok]

If they are sustained by the belief, how can they be against people knowing about them, wouldn't they then starve? Perhaps they feed on any faith, not only that in gods, so that is someone has faith in another person, or in a theory, or in the usefulness of an object (aka, duct tape, or linux, or DF... except those examples are bad as this is a mideval tech level), that can feed any god that hapens to be close by.
Actually, that makes a brilliant potential plot device: Evil villainous kidnaps someone, or many people, to feed on their faith in that they will be rescued (which the god knows can't happen, and then happens anyway).

Summarizing what you said;
Gods:

	Mortals are People	Mortals are Food
Disclosure	Enlighteners	Slavers
Secrecy	Protectors	Parasites

Mortals:

	Independent	Social
Supernatural	Arcane arts	Religion
Material	Technology	Mundane

The gods work well, but the mortals seem to have a strange connection between science and individualism, so i propose a third dimentions:

Mortals:

Progressive:	Independent	Social
Supernatural	Arcane arts	Transcendentalism
Material	Technology	Democracy

Traditional:	Independent	Social
Supernatural	Mysticism	Religion
Material	Criminality	Feudalism

Generally, independent is more powerful than social, supernatural more powerful than material, and progressive more powerful than material. However this is in how many % are powerfull, so a wizard is not precisely more or less powerful than a king, it's just that there are many more peasants per king than there are noob mages per powerful wizard.
None of these alignments are a moral judgement: a criminal might be good-ish (robin hood), or a democratic person evil-ish (powerful corrupt corporation boss).
Both the Progressive Independent alignments are scientific, tech is either realistic or steam punk, and arcane is scientific study of the supernatural. Tech does not necessary require you make the seting more modern than the medieval one you have thought of: tech can mean crossbows instead of slings, or Leonardo da Vinci contraptions, and the ancient Greeks had democracy.

[RAM]

Having the "Laymen/Everybody Else" category seems interesting, and potentially troubling. But it could be fun to have the general population fundamentally opposed to everyone with power...

I don't see any problem with alchemists, it does feel awkward, but they are basically inventors with a cooler name, and there is plenty of capacity for people to hide their inventions from the populace, especially if they are instinctively opposed to technology... I say just give it enough support in the setting and it should be smoothed over quickly enough...

[viskaslietuvai]

Armok: So yeah, that was one hole (the belief issue) that was definitely not fleshed out as much as it should have been. The conception I have in mind is that the disclosure idea is the revelation that the gods are not, in fact, gods but rather just really bloody powerful and extraordinarily difficult to kill beings. The Enlighteners would pretty much come clean, the Enslavers would not let the whole "can be killed" thing slip to the dominated populace but would like to be able to openly dominate. The secrecy proponents would feel that either of these propositions would be dangerous to the deity class of being.
As to why they need belief to survive in the first place, it all has to do with the terms of the gods prison sentence. It's seen as a punishment to depend upon these lesser mortal creatures for life. Also, though I do kinda like the idea of faith in anything, I have no idea how I could incorporate that into a game program. I could see quantifiers for "God believed in" and "Level of Belief" dependent upon relative quality of life and basic personality parameters, but a "Faith in Anything" would have a lot of potential inputs I would think.
Also I really like the third dimension of mortals idea. It kind of kills the 4-way theme, but adds to the overall depth of possibilities for philosophical conflicts which of course spill over into hit-the-opponent-with-the-stick conflicts. So much appreciation on that one.

RAM: It wasn't really meant to be viewed as a free-for-all deathmatch style of opposition but rather power struggles and intrigue with enough opportunity for senseless violence to be interesting without seeming completely ridiculous.
Think how power and "factions" work in real life. There are Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians etc. Muslims, Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Atheists, etc. Conservatives and Progressives. Though their philosophies are different, it is seldom that it becomes a brawl. Typically, they argue and do everything they can to mold their world in their image but still end up having to coexist. And that, ideally, is where the player finds himself in this alternate world. They can try to aid a faction, switch factions, be entirely independent and go kill monsters, or just scream out in frustration and punch an apple vendor. Also, it was my hope to try to make non-martial skills a viable strategy towards a rewarding game.
All the same, thanks for the comment, and if I try what Armok suggested, then the "alchemists" (to be renamed) would still totally be in.

[Ampersand]

I'd suggest changing mundane to Militaristic. Also, to balance out the Independent vs Social, you should probably adjust the way populations are generated such that Independent oriented groups generally have a smaller population, to balance out their individual talents and power.