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[Resmisal]

Thank you for your reply, Eric Blank. I love wordy posts! Your post encompasses everything I wanted to express in the first post of this thread.
Currently the game defaults on monolatry which means they choose one of the generated individuals and revolve their lives around them in a delimited manner. Historically, many-godded societies didn't freely choose their gods and goddesses that occupied their pantheons and the now mostly lost rules and opaque literature paint a past of persons tending to almost all deities their culture had to offer. Pre-Greek Roman society was surprisingly similar to Japanese pagan life where they made little difference between spirits and higher powers: for you, your ancestors were as much gods as the sun and the weather, and you happened to have a shrine to unnamed, unseen ghosts just to be sure nobody felt left out. You're right that monotheists don't need to hate, e.g. the Monist school of ancient India allowed for other powers to be aspects and emanations. What I had in mind while writing the opener post was the theory of urreligion, a hypothesis that posited that humans started with monotheism - visualizing all of reality as god - and slowly deteriorated changed into the other systems; alternatively, one can think of an evolution in favor of the aforementioned reality-as-a-whole from many components into one whole. The former is mono, the latter poly.
So in a monotheistic world, your civilization, a priest, or even a random dwarf, could get very sad over neighbours paying "too much respect" while venerating a saint (an ascended mortal in a spiritual mind) or an angel (a lesser god in a Zoroastrian mind) and falsely calling them gods. Or your fort is accused of such.
In a polytheistic world, pantheons become the norm. Hopefully the game can handle syncretisms: one elven war god being similar or the same as the dwarven war god, imagine that!
Also Armok needs to be canon in-game.

And thank you for your reply, Jipehog. All I'm thinking about right now is carving out one temple versus making hospitals and schools and banks temples as they were in ages past, and make civilizations revere most deities instead of only one. One's life isn't only war, or working farming, or learning from books, or family, it's all of it and more.

And thank you for your reply, PlumpHelmetMan. The world gen as it currently stands works fine. I've been told I make roleplaying games complicated by introducing little known details such as eclipse cycles. Ancient peoples loved - and feared! - natural phenomena. They love them so much they gave them names.

Edit: typo.

[jipehog]

Early religions didn't have institutions that grappled with metaphysics, but mainly focused on human experience in the vast unforgiving world around them, which resulted in many familiar motifs in myth around the world (e.g. everyone had some sort of flood myth) and assumed the existence of superhuman forces (ancestors/spirts/gods/etc) that had agency over them.

In such world anything from solar eclipse to the booming voice of thunderstorms can be seen as these agents venting their anger at some human misdemeanor that require placating. But as our understanding of the world around us grew, our beliefs adopted. People started looking to the stars, understood seasons and made crop calendars rather praying for seasonal rain or fearing the wrath of sun god might leave them in endless night. Slowly religion took other roles and social functions.

A vital role to this process was cultural exchange, Human thought evolved and spread through out the land. The fertile crescent, the cradle of civilization, was also a cultural crossroad (food for thought?) and we find that it was the common origins for many myths from different cultures. Some more real life religious trivia, some might want to skip:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

In Mesopotamia, the god Marduk rise to power is closely connected with the political rise of Babylon from city-state to the capital of an empire, he was an amalgamation of some 20 other local gods. Interestingly, Marduk was known as Baal in early Israel(canaan), one of prominent gods in the local pantheon. Interestingly, the Israeli pantheon was ruled by El, THE Hebrew/biblical word for god. Interestingly, the Bible speaks of the mighty who gave nations their lot, setting up boundaries to separate the children of god, and Yahweh (name of Jewish god, not just god, not the mighty) receiving its lot. Later there are plenty of talk about prophets advocating Yahweh over the local pantheon and eventually Yahweh subsumed them all and become the only god, El. Syncretism?

And here is the crux of the issue, in RL setting we should be able to model the evolution of myth and belief as some sort of complex genetic model roughly like DF own knowledge and lies idea, but I don't know how it would look like in a world where there is magic and real gods.. some sort of random god trope generator?

[Red Diamond]

Correct me if I'm wrong as Bible study is hardly my field...but to my knowledge, while it doesn't paint them in a particularly positive light, the Bible (the Old Testament, at least) also doesn't outright preclude the existence of beings that would be called gods by a polytheistic culture. It's just that they're all subservient to the one true God and not worthy of worship in their own right (hence Monotheism).

It doesn't discuss the matter of what the gods of the unbelievers actually are.  At one point god 'punishes the gods of Egypt', but it is unclear what those gods are, they could just be idols and the thing a reference to the period when Egypt became Monotheistic.

Yes, that is the biblical black and white narrative, that relies on some revisions and interpretations. But like I said there is not a single mention in the bible of the belief in only one deity, an all-supreme and universal. On the contrary it is rife with hundreds (thousands?) references to other people gods (not in negative manner) (as well as references that Jewish god was worshiped along with the other gods) can be found in every book in the bible including the poetry sung in the temple. And overall you can see how traditions evolved and ideas slowly spread to rural folks over the centuries. Similarly we seen with Egyptians where gods started from natural phenomena and slowly got more complex domains like justice, and Greeks who copy&pasted some Egyptian gods with different names, etc etc etc

The point being that polytheism is the natural progression and the only things that make sense to me for world gen.

There doesn't need to be any such reference, as it is taken as given by the narrative that you believe in such a being and to it is attributed the creation of the whole world.

To worship the other god's is on part with murder, stealing and adultery (it is against the 10 commandments). 

My point is that the transition between Polytheism to Monotheism is not harmonious and evolutionary, it a pretty disruptive and violent thing.  At a certain point people have to actively reject the old gods, they do not gradually fade away peacefully.   

I think, given the fact that the bible consists of the compiled accounts of many different authors writing over the course of countless centuries, one will be hard-pressed to find many universal messages or attitudes which can be applied to every book (including the treatment of non-Abrahamic/polytheistic religions and validity thereof).

But seeing as we're drifting from the thread's initial suggestion into the realm of fruitless nattering (or so it seems to me), I just want to say that I agree the polytheistic approach to world gen works fine as is and I don't really see any need to change it.

It contains a historical narrative and an underlying belief system. 

[Nordlicht]

My point is that the transition between Polytheism to Monotheism is not harmonious and evolutionary, it a pretty disruptive and violent thing.  At a certain point people have to actively reject the old gods, they do not gradually fade away peacefully.   

But that's not how missionaries work. No sane or sucessful missionary would try to convince people that worshiping their god is part with murder, stealing and adultery. Except they can do so by raw force. They gradually cooperate the new believe system into the existing one, and try to show the new god as more powerful than the old forces that work against humans, as can be seen in Fairy tales that use Christian symbolic against forces that antagonize humans. There may be a demonization of certain forces that used to be good, but I've never read of a demonization of old gods.
Also old religions tend to sneak into new ones.

And the Christianization of Europe took Centuries, with some people arguing it still hasn't really happened.

This of course is focused on Europe, and colonized countries with an enormous power imbalance got not so lucky.

[Red Diamond]

But that's not how missionaries work. No sane or sucessful missionary would try to convince people that worshiping their god is part with murder, stealing and adultery. Except they can do so by raw force. They gradually cooperate the new believe system into the existing one, and try to show the new god as more powerful than the old forces that work against humans, as can be seen in Fairy tales that use Christian symbolic against forces that antagonize humans. There may be a demonization of certain forces that used to be good, but I've never read of a demonization of old gods.
Also old religions tend to sneak into new ones.

Raw force is exactly what happened, according to the Bible.  The Isrealites enslaved/killed everybody who wasn't them, creating a regime of slavery and genocide that lasted until the death of Solomon basically. 

[voliol]

Dwarf Fortress is a fantasy world simulator as much as a real world simulator, and as many-a fantasy story has a monotheistic base it should be able to generate worlds that are monotheistic metaphysically - with a single creator/upholder of reality, with lesser powers being emanations, servants, or unaffiliated parts of the creation.

I don't think that monotheistic deity should ever be Armok though, unless it's something the random name generator comes up with, or the user specifies themselves. With the Mythgen, Tarn has talked about some kind of "editors" allowing us to make pre-defined content for the myth generator to use. The example I recall is that someone could make a custom map of the Olympus, and connect it to an also user-defined pantheon of Olympic gods like Zeus. He also showed some kind of myth "raw files" some years ago with the mythgen demo, where custom objects like "the gnomes" and a "comet" could be added. Depending on which parts of this plan come true, I forsee people creating a custom "Armok" god and putting it at the top of creation. Still, it shouldn't be a default. The game being called "Slaves to Armok" is a mythology gag, in the TV Tropes way, harkening back to Armok I. With the current plans of generating myths for the underdeveloped deities that do exist, there is not really any room for Armok in the worlds.
Sure, people can always imagine Armok is above it all, creating whatever "in the beginning" of all worlds. But it should remain a community interpretation.

[Resmisal]

Thank you for your reply, Jipehog. Your idea of an evolutionary model would best fit into a polytheistic world in which the deities had an active presence so as to simulate their subjugation or disappearance; in a world that already sees no gods (besides one) there's no priest in no temple to say otherwise. Currently the only effects they have is necromancers. That's all they're good for now.

And thank you for your reply, Red Diamond. Do you think the game can handle overarching narratives seeing the current advances in AI chat algorithms? Hopefully it's more imaginative than the world two thousand years ago.

And thank you for your reply, Nordlight. In no way am I suggesting that only one belief system is the model for a video game. Our discussion was teetering heavily into henotheism, anyways.
Power imbalances happen and in Dwarf Fortress, your dwarves are more likely than not to use power imbalance against elves.

And thank you for your reply, Vollol. Of course there's no need for Armok in-game. Forgive my quip. I'm still somewhat bad at raw file editing.
What I was trying to say was: the game could handle a little more realism. Right now new immigrants add religions rather than mythological figures to a pantheon. And they should have temples, each one of them.

Edit: I forgot a line.

[Red Diamond]

And thank you for your reply, Red Diamond. Do you think the game can handle overarching narratives seeing the current advances in AI chat algorithms? Hopefully it's more imaginative than the world two thousand years ago.

I don't think the game works that way.  The real issue is that if we create an objectively Monotheistic world, everyone is going to to end up Monotheistic, which departs from history considerably and is far less bloody.

The problem is always, "where do false beliefs come from?".

[jipehog]

With the Mythgen, Tarn has talked about some kind of "editors" allowing us to make pre-defined content for the myth generator to use. The example I recall is that someone could make a custom map of the Olympus, and connect it to an also user-defined pantheon of Olympic gods like Zeus. He also showed some kind of myth "raw files" some years ago with the mythgen demo, where custom objects like "the gnomes" and a "comet" could be added.

Interesting, do you have a link? This could help us focus the discussion.

And thank you for your reply, Red Diamond. Do you think the game can handle overarching narratives seeing the current advances in AI chat algorithms? Hopefully it's more imaginative than the world two thousand years ago.

I don't think the game works that way.

@Resmisal,  I think that approaching the question of religion as matter of narrative is right choice. I am unfamiliar with 'AI chat algorithms', can you elaborate a little on that and what they might do in game?

@Red Diamond, how do you think the game does work?

There doesn't need to be any such reference, as it is taken as given by the narrative that you believe in such a being and to it is attributed the creation of the whole world.

One should beware of preconceived notions when talking about what is given in context of ~2500years old culture. The bible is not an historical document but a collection of myth, written\edited by an unreliable narrators (some times hundred years after the fact, relying on songs passed down through generations, manuscripts written without punctuation or even in different languages) 

To understand what people were like one should look beyond the preconceived notions and intent of the editors (better yet go beyond the bible) looking at text as whole using a diachronic approach, I think I already showed enough to support my argument about the evolution of myth and belief, mind you this isn't unique to the Bible there are plenty examples in Christian and Islamic myth as well, and presumably in any old narratives.

My point is that the transition between Polytheism to Monotheism is not harmonious and evolutionary, it a pretty disruptive and violent thing.  At a certain point people have to actively reject the old gods, they do not gradually fade away peacefully.

This is predicate on the biblical narrative, the conquest of Israel rooted in God's covenant fits well into the standard plot\themes, but regardless of how the victory of faith is described and how disruptive and violent these events might have been, the Biblical text show plenty of examples of polytheistic beliefs among the Hebrew hundreds of years past.

Otherwise, what you say could be useful to world events, unfortunately I don't know much about wars, their causes, and religious transition of the time to make any generalization but I hope you have something more to rely on than the Biblical text on the topic, which naturally biased toward the events and POV of its audience, with archeology painting a different picture.

[Red Diamond]

@Red Diamond, how do you think the game does work?

The game just makes stuff at random and then models what would happen.

A chatbot style of AI makes things up that sound good to human ears.  It has however no ability to determine what the meaning of anything it has made up actually is, which means it cannot help Dwarf Fortress myth-gen at all; myth-gen needs to know what everything it just created actually means.

One should beware of preconceived notions when talking about what is given in context of ~2500years old culture. The bible is not an historical document but a collection of myth, written\edited by an unreliable narrators (some times hundred years after the fact, relying on songs passed down through generations, manuscripts written without punctuation or even in different languages) 

To understand what people were like one should look beyond the preconceived notions and intent of the editors (better yet go beyond the bible) looking at text as whole using a diachronic approach, I think I already showed enough to support my argument about the evolution of myth and belief, mind you this isn't unique to the Bible there are plenty examples in Christian and Islamic myth as well, and presumably in any old narratives.

The Bible is a historical document, as it contains a historical narrative; just one with details that we subjectively regard as implausible/mythological.  In that regard it is quite different from the myths of the Greeks, Romans or Norse, as it directly connects to the mundane present of the people who wrote it.

This is predicate on the biblical narrative, the conquest of Israel rooted in God's covenant fits well into the standard plot\themes, but regardless of how the victory of faith is described and how disruptive and violent these events might have been, the Biblical text show plenty of examples of polytheistic beliefs among the Hebrew hundreds of years past.

Otherwise, what you say could be useful to world events, unfortunately I don't know much about wars, their causes, and religious transition of the time to make any generalization but I hope you have something more to rely on than the Biblical text on the topic, which naturally biased toward the events and POV of its audience, with archeology painting a different picture.

It is a common and false belief that archeology paints a different picture, but it doesn't.  The Bible does not say they succeeded in eradicating Polytheistic beliefs, it says that they failed and were ultimately reduced to a rump-state called Judea. 

In any case, the problem with the game is that none of this could ever really happen.  The RNG would decide if there are one god or many and all the belief systems in the world would be based upon that myth; the "problem of false beliefs".  Somebody has to be wrong in order for the Monotheism/Polytheism conflict to happen.

[Resmisal]

I'm starting to think I need to refrain from posting ideas as they come up and regret to come up with something better later.

Thank you for your replies, Red Diamond. To answer your question succintly: differing beliefs would be called heresies or heathens in a world (only) the player surely knows to be one-god'd; cults would revere demons, angels, titans or forgotten beasts, either as falsely guided veneration of the one deity of the world - or they'd reject the [creator] mundi who they believe to be idle and thus follow materially real creatures who're close by and not far away. Either your dwarves know the truth and your civilization or a random noble wants you to change convince your neighbours, or your fort will be subject to missions and a totally new fun event.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Religious intolerance may be as old as humankind. Romans wanted to eradicate Karthago pretty badly over what's recently discovered to be a historical fact in the Bible.

From an Judaic perspective, false faiths come from a continuation of Nimrod's mother-wife's claim that her son-husband was a god which spiraled out of control in subsequent generations; in Christian eyes, pagans fell for superbly charismatic fallen angels; Hinduists call Buddhists heretics, etc.
You encompassed in your last line what I had hoped to express: the RNG will decide whether there's one or many, and if there's many you need more pylons temples.

And thank you for your reply, Jipehog. I'm only interested in what the procedural generator can come up with, is all, and currently text algorithms have made in-credible progress.
My original suggestion was: polytheisms have pantheons and there ought to be more temples. We're diverging pretty far from the initial post, aren't we?

Edit: typo.

[jipehog]

I'm only interested in what the procedural generator can come up with, is all, and currently text algorithms have made in-credible progress.

I am still not clear what is myth in DF, can you elaborate in broad strokes on how something like that might work. Are we talking about procedural generator entity and procedural generated histories? like world generation history currently work, for exmaple:

Entity
* The dark demon Xurapra-Eth: A god of destruction, it seeks to rule all of existence. Creator of our universe. Beholding it would instantly drive a human insane.
* The chaos monstrosity Yoggos: A being of chaos, it seeks to conquer everything. This entity has the form of a huge blob. Its fifteen eyes are brown and have round pupils, and its brown skin is slimy. Its fifteen eyes stare at fixed points in space, and it moves in smooth, fluid motions.

History:
* In the beginning there were two entities: The dark demon Xurapra-Eth, and the chaos monstrosity Yoggos.
* The dark demon Xurapra-Eth created our universe.
* The chaos monstrosity Yoggos attacked dark demon Xurapra-Eth. The Xurapra-Eth fled from Yoggos, but was hunted down anyway. After intense fighting,  Xurapra-Eth defeated Yoggos. Both combatants survived the fight.

If so would any of that of that be presented to the player? as description of religion, books, adventure inscriptions? It could be interesting if the narrative used isn't omniscient but generated from the perspective of someone within DF universe and was prone to errors of bias and guesswork. This would allow to add uncertainty, mystery and flexibility in narrative, maybe some mystery artifict hunt to piece the story together of an entity first seen, believed to be etc

Religious intolerance may be as old as humankind.

Maybe. Tough is it necessarily Religious intolerance or intolerance in general? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war#Applicability_of_religion_to_war
What is the source of different races ethics? Elf attitude toward trees can be explained by their beliefs, but where do Dwarfs ethics in regard to slavery and capital punishment come ?

Might be interesting to introduce some sort of a diversity of thought parameter that affect civilizations (not races). Which would encompass both religion and ethics and affect how they interact on the world map. If we could convince someone to convert their religion, why can't we convince them to change their attitude toward death punishment? making their integration (peacefully or otherwise) easier.

[jipehog]

There are many ways to acquire historical knowledge about the past, manuscripts are just one of them (they even check lice dna). Naturally not all text have same value, for example sale record tend to be most accurate, while stories suffer from unreliable narrators prejudices, biases and or limited perspective of the world; so it is best to have several text from different sources to unravel the past. This might seem obvious, but for a long time people ascribed greater historicity to their stories (particularly those they relate to, define or have faith in) by virtue of "mine is better" with nothing but their faith guarantying its truth and value.

As slave to Armok, or someone who watch fake-news on tv, one should know that a good story don't have to be "true" to sway people. Greek stories have had huge influence on culture and their traditions of story telling still pervade in our daily life, regardless of the extent of their stories historical basis, which btw isn't much if Homere epics were a movie it wouldn't be a documentary but tagged between fiction and based inspired by sketchy stories more than four centuries of oral tradition removed. This is the same category that on many occasions the Bible falls into, like the exodus story (and i don't mean just the implausible/mythological parts, but all of it) it still a fantastic founding myth that works on many levels.
 
One reason Greek stories have had such impact is that they talk about aspects of human nature like love, power and ambition. Amusingly most people never consider these factors when thinking about unreliable narrators/editors, usually assuming only unwitting mistakes of copy and interpretation rather than intentional adaption to changes in dogma or political interest of later editors to portray the ruling dynasty by divine right as unbroken chain for example.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It would be foolish to assume there weren't intrigue during Biblical times, we even have examples of foreign meddling in the form of assignations. Interestingly, during the several hundred years of the Biblical "kings period" in each kingdom (Israel and Judah\Jerusalem) were ~20 kings and ~half of them were murdered, but while in Israel in each case this led to dynasty change, in Judah it never had (there is more shenanigans)

There is also a theory that the biblical 'united kingdom' was a fiction to provide narrative continuity along with Yoshiyahu attempted reform and turning Jerusalem as the center of ritual for the Jewish god. Note that at the time kingdom of Judah was backwater compared to the prosperous kingdom of Israel and there is basis to suspect that the ark of the convent resided there, but then Asyria conquered Israel turning it into its tributary, presumably leading to migration to Judeah, which resulted in some syncretism and the Bible setting on Judah\Jerusalem as being the center of all with backdated embellishments.

And I am just scratching the surface here..

Note that in Greek stories you also see progression as Titans, the former gods, replaced by a new Olympian order (btw iirc Titans represented the early Greek tribes but I might be confusing stuff with Egypt, it have been awhile). Despite some difference in narrative we seen similar thing in Mesopotamia as new empires and gods rise to power replacing older ones and become more universal through syncretism. Similarly in the Bible, early on you have many gods and polytheistic ritual (in both Israel and Judea, some even represented by statues) with examples of ordalia and god/prophets convincing that the Jewish god can do what the other gods in the Canaanite pantheon can, the Biblical narrator use different literary devices than the Greeks but they serve the same purpose.

Otherwise, I can't speak to your beliefs and interpretation of archeological findings. Only that science wasn't kind to the pervading beliefs about the historicity of the bible, many understanding from past millennia's have been changed, today the vast majority of scientific community do not regard the Bible as historic document, and there are several events for which biblical narratives are considered as either fiction or have competing interpretation with at least as much evidence.

In summary, outside of things like whether the earth is flat, I don't think that there is any meaning to 'false beliefs' in the context of what we were talking about.

[Resmisal]

What if I had waited a day to improve the opener, I wonder.

Thank you for your reply/replies, Jipehog.
In broad strokes, faiths in the real world rely on many mythological figures which may - or may not - have been historical figures, individually or individuals fused together into a narrative archetype. AIs have proven able to make coherent storylines which are essential to the plurality of myths a culture needs to place itself in its environment.
This ties into my original motivation for the thread - in the real world, many-godded peoples didn't choose who they followed and there were as many deities as there were needs and syncresies. You are more than a worker or a survivor, a father or a mother, a conqueror or defender, and alone by that line I have listed six potential spots in a pantheon of a fortress that has barely overcome a goblin horde after a failed attack on a tower. For every single one your dwarves may request seperate temples, within or without certain established structures, as was common in ancient times. Have you seen the staff of Asclepius? Chances are, you were near a hospital. Have you entered an Asian restauraunt lately? Chances are, you find a small shrine inside.
We differ in a key aspect: whereas you see/m to see/ religion as a negation of worries, I see faith as a positive reinforcement. Tell people something is right(eous) and they may follow; Tell them invisible powers* will punish them and they will follow.**
I think the comments about archeology were originally directed at me as I was the one who first stated how left overs can aid or harm established ideas about the past; e.g. Phoenicians did sacrifice children and the Hitties did exist, give or take some willful inaccuracies about their often theophoric and thus inadmissible names. For Westerners and those who have interactions with the Anglophone world, Biblical narratives are the sine qua non. Were we elsewhere, we'd be discussing the impact of Ashoka's edicts in Cambodia or other "exotic" (hi)stories. Or maybe I'm a fan of temple buildings.

Now I want to say I love to entertain the conversation and yet I really need to reign myself in. We're on a website dedicated to a video game that's right up my fortifications-building alley.

*Invisible powers include abstractions such as: ancestors, the law, nature and environment, society, etc.
**No guarantees.

Edit: typo.

[jipehog]

We differ in a key aspect: whereas you see/m to see/ religion as a negation of worries, I see faith as a positive reinforcement. Tell people something is right(eous) and they may follow; Tell them invisible powers* will punish them and they will follow.**

Not necessarily, there are many aspects to religion and faith, but I only focused on the evolution of mythology underpinning it because I think it might be useful for world gen. Using RL as model, DF should be firmly polytheistic, with possibly of civilization worship of one deity or pantheon at time while not rejecting the existence of other god, I believe this suits well the setting and gives the most flexibility in generating myth around deities and the world around them.

However, much like with the original suggestion, I find it very hard to comment on anything more specific because I am largely clueless about the parameters here (e.g. the existing mechanics, lore, plans) and rather not waste time on something intangible. For example here I don't even know if any invisible powers have power punish (or had during the Age of Myth) or all deities regard as idle, what about their supernatural minions..