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[nenjin]

Rather than just assigning a religion with something like 'this deity relates to the sphere of Wealth, so having more money is good', a mythological reason for the deity favoring a certain set of actions should exist: 'According to legend, Urgard the Coinsmith hammered out the first coins and imbued them with his power, then cast them into the well of the sky, where they became the stars, moons, planets, and the two suns. As a sign of respect to Urgard, his temples mint coins bearing heavenly symbols. It is said that casting such a coin into a well once a day brings about the favor of Urgard.'

Well, to be fair....is that more a procedurally generated backstory that still ends up at "having money is good?" Or are the different ways to gain favor and worship going to be a product of the procedural gen that results in ultra specific stuff like "casting such a coin into....."

Would each aspect or sphere just be pulled out of the generated backstory...or would it work in reverse? 

As actual specific stats, to me it's not necessarily about dictating religion through stats. More like an opportunity to write rules into reality for creature creation that sort of supercede the religion portion. Like all life has some fundamental relationship to the axis of power. You'd ask why a frog would have a need for a magic stat, but it's not necessarily that a frog needs to cast magic. In general, large numbers of creatures would fall in the middle with no special relationship. But having a stat that does, at times, provide for some special relationship would just add another branch to the creature morphology, beyond limbs and adaptations and such. Think of it like D&D Psionics. Everything in the world is placed somewhere in the hierarchy of psionic ability, and most sit at the bottom. It's just one more trait that is global among all creatures.

[squeakyReaper]

Random thought.  For most creature species, Magic could be skewed far to the left; that is, not being affected by magic.  For any creature that randomly happens to be farther to the right, however, their evolution takes more liberties.

Say for example a creature rolls a 75.  Perhaps they are able to be able to communicate to other pack members through smells?  Not just simple smells either, I mean they can have entire conversations by changing their breath.  This is impossible, normally, but magic took place in their creation.  It could also create deformities, like a toad being able to breathe fire because it interacts with the magical world in some way, or having wings that let you fly despite being too heavy.

[Frajic]

On the topic of civilizations, if there are several species that happen to gain sentience, will the more developed and/or powerful species gain a bonus when expanding their territory? And while on that page, if they can communicate(I imagine there are extreme language barriers between species), may they even be friendly to each other? Of course, this is unlikely, but there are a whole lot of stuff to keep track of and simulate when it comes to species and civs and such. Especially when you might have deities that spice things up(helping/destroying species, the world, maybe even some miracles going on).

Hm, I need to get a clearer picture of how gods/religions/cults will work.

[Lord Dullard]

Lots of great input. I'll respond to as much as I can tomorrow morning if at all possible. For now I need sleep.

[Neonivek]

Lots of great input. I'll respond to as much as I can tomorrow morning if at all possible. For now I need sleep.

Take your time

[Lord Dullard]

Religion can be complicated and I have yet to see a game REALLY use all aspects. Afterall there is Ferver, Favor, and Zeal.

Yep, that's part of the reason I settled on using religion in Cult - I can't really recall any games that handled it in a way that was imaginative, in-depth, fun, and not particularly allegorical or intent on making a statement about RL religions.

For example you didn't include: Beaks and Proboscouses (or however you spell it)

Thanks, and good spots! They shall be added.

Will you seperate magical abilities from magic spell ability? Will spirits be involved just like old fashioned magic?

I think there will definitely be a gap between 'sorcery' and deity/religion-given abilities, yep. Although there may perhaps be some overlap (I can imagine that the Cthulhu-esque deities would encourage the use of sorcery, and there's no reason other gods couldn't, too). I can't remark too much on this, though, because it's just not that fleshed out yet.

On the topic of civilizations, if there are several species that happen to gain sentience, will the more developed and/or powerful species gain a bonus when expanding their territory?

Yes, I think nation expansion and conflict will get a big leg-up when I'm a bit further along with finishing creature/god generation and integrating all the different parts of worldgen that need to be integrated for these sorts of things to emerge.

It looks good.  I understand and appreciate the attention to detail you're giving.  Having deities with so much detail is...  Awesome.  Most statically made deities aren't so detailed.

So, will magic be an important part of the game?

Thanks, and yes, it will be.

I think it'd be interesting to form a cult, or have cults form on their own, that are opposed to deities and seek to remove them from power by force and/or disbelief (Without making it a one-sided commentary on RL religion).  While it'd be cool to be able to do that using pure physical prowess, fighting a being equated with godhood with just a bit of muscle and cunning on your side would be a bad idea.  Having magic would also solve the tools thing, since magic, or psychic powers (Avoiding the "Is magic magical if it's understood and controlled" thing) is a very potent tool, and would also allow for creatures that can't talk communicate mentally.

Interesting thought. I think it would be pretty difficult to take down a god - most of them won't manifest in any sort of physical form, I suspect, except for on very rare occasions. It's much safer to maintain your existence through a following of mortals. I could see that if their following became diminished enough, they might be forced to make a choice between coming to the mortal realm and attempting to inspire belief in themselves or fading into obscurity and legend, which could mean they'd never be resurrected (unless a player character happened to stumble across one of their ancient, buried shrines and decided to bring them back into existence, that is!). I don't think that gods would 'die' if they didn't have believers - rather, they depend on believers to maintain a link between themselves and this realm of existence.

I could definitely see warlike gods manifesting into a temporary physical form and going on a rampage or whatnot if they felt threatened enough. 

On that note, how far will people be able to progress physically?  Far more than here on earth without magical assistance?  How realistic do you plan on wounds to be?

More than on earth, yes. Maybe not as much as in a traditional RL, where a single player can hack through literal hordes upon hordes of powerful monsters, but that will be offset by being able to recruit and maintain parties and eventually armies.

I do not think the combat and wounding system will be as complex as DF's. Not that I see anything wrong with it, I just don't think it would be necessary. Besides, designing internal organs for imaginary procedural creatures would be... daunting, to say the least. I might be persuaded to add things like broken bones/damaged limbs/etc. just for the sake of variety, only because I could see tying medical needs into the game in such a way that it would be beneficial to gather ingredients from plants/corpses/etc. to treat such wounds, or to maintain your party/army.

Finally: Do you have some sort of plan for how and when you're going to do this?  I just realized that that's one of the things I see in most successful indie games, but I didn't know if you had one or not.  I'm asking these questions more for myself than to help with the design process, but I guess the result is the same.

Do which part? The whole game? For now, I just want to focus on getting worldgen done; when I start designing gameplay I'll probably put something more akin to a long-term design plan up.

So have you decided what to do about having world gen decide which creatures become sentient?

It will most likely be based on the presence of certain types of body parts and their functionality, yep. I hadn't considered also weighting chances for complex communication, that's a good idea. I don't think 'imagination' would be quite as sensible, mostly because it would be hard to determine what an invertebrate without a brain would be using for such a purpose. Maybe a very complex nervous system functioning as a primitive brain, I don't know - but I'll leave that up to the imagination of the player, I think.

Well, to be fair....is that more a procedurally generated backstory that still ends up at "having money is good?" Or are the different ways to gain favor and worship going to be a product of the procedural gen that results in ultra specific stuff like "casting such a coin into....."

"Having money is good" might or might not be an aspect of such a religion; each should probably have general as well as very specific actions that lead towards favor.

Would each aspect or sphere just be pulled out of the generated backstory...or would it work in reverse? 

It would probably work in reverse. Generating a backstory without some sort of relative basis of ideology would be difficult. If I know a god is somehow related to the sphere of Water, I can plug it into procedural story generation and have the engine come up with something, but it at least needs to be able to pick from a selection of water-related story elements to throw something sensible together. I suppose I could generate stories and then assign gods spheres based on them, but I think it would probably make them too random and mish-mash.

...it's just one more trait that is global among all creatures.

I'll think about it; I'm just not sure it's how I want to handle magic and spirituality.

[Lord Dullard]

Tails, wings, shells, proboscises, trunks, and beaks are finished, though I'm still tinkering with shells a bit. Having a look at some of the field guides to seashell collection has sent me on a bit of a crazy spree for adding weird shapes to the shell dictionary.

It occurred to me while I was writing some of the morphological traits in that, since I am not using a 'Charisma' stat, I should probably have something else stand-in for the relative 'attractiveness' of creatures, objects, et cetera. What I settled on was that each sentient species should have a list of qualities that they innately like and dislike that should roughly align with their own appearance and the things they feel comfortable with. Subterranean races should like architecture featuring confined spaces and dim lighting. Creatures with soft, plush fur or tufts of hair should (probably) like fuzzy things, just like the animals that we humans tend to think of as 'cute' tend to be mammalian.

[nenjin]

That sounds like a perfectly logical compromise. I think as humans we're more likely to interact with things that display our own biomorphs, than some psychic pile of jelly and tentacles.

[Knight of Fools]

But would that Psychic Pile of Jelly and Tentacles find humans more attractive than members of its own race?

From the perspective of the PPJT race, would that be some sort of twisted form of bestiality?

...Actually, let's not delve too deeply into this subject.


Thanks for keeping us updated.

[squeakyReaper]

Yyyyyyyyyyyeah, let's not.  xD  Still, it'd be interesting to find a non-humanoid creature around.  A tribe of large vultures who survive by just being incredibly intelligent could be fun to meet.

[Fniff]

I think creatures should be able to have randomized sounds. It'd be like this.

The Red Mekal goes "Raaaaan-K!"

So, if the creature becomes sentient, this will be peppered throughout their speech!

[Mephansteras]

Sounds help name creatures as well. In many languages the word for a lot of creatures is just the basic sound they make.

[Fniff]

So, the Red Mekal would probably just be the Red Rank?

Maybe there could be things. Like it could be COLOR SOUND, or BODYPART SOUND, or BODYPART COLOR, or whatever!

[nenjin]

A set up occurred me to.

Say that whether one race likes another (talking the macro level here) is 1/2 the differences in their morphology, and 1/2 the impact or difference of their likeability stat (Charisma.)

When creating racial opinions of each, the game would compare their morphological traits and give a higher score (up to 1/2 the score needed for "we love you guys) for each match. No matches implies the two races are constructed totally different.

Charisma would be what allows two totally different races to become friends, although it would have to be a lot of charisma to over come the differences between PPJT and a human.

Certain morphologies or adaptations could give a bonus or minus to this calc, regardless of whether it matches the other race.

Then, on the micro level (i.e. individual to individual interactions, nation to nation interactions) religious and cultural differences would come into play, further modifying the base "gut reaction" relationship between two entities.

[alfie275]

Sorry, havent read the thread much, so if it's been suggested, stupid me, but heres an idea:
Maybe worship could create the god, not the other way around, like, a species could worship a symbol, and a god grows from that. (Yes I have been reading terry prattchet lately).