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[Sen Rojo]

Hello,

1) I think that it would be better if gods could only have an effect on you if you are exposed in some way to it like spiritual conversions or meaningful interactions with creatures that are in some way connected to the god's sub/consciousness ( including the god itself ), forging a long lasting yet gradually fading "mortal connection" to the god. So that: gods with conflicting agendas don't repeatedly curse and bless players into confusion; gods will rarely act on mortal affairs until they have enough "mortal connections" to become interested in the drama or comedy or cruelty or something (I'm thinking that maybe interactions with mortals corrupt a god's divinity until it begins to vicariously feel "mortal emotions" like greed, jealous, love, and hate so much so that it willingly takes a mortal form itself ( possibly sacrificing immortality or dominion or something like that ( which could fill the plot hole regarding the player playing as a god ) ) )(Or it could be just the opposite and the god is infatuated with the clarity of our motives and innocence of our actions compared to the god's own hidden motives and tarnished innocence ); a player that wish to play as a secular can play without random gods making it a pain ( there is still a chance that a god will connect to you by freak occurrence ).  

2) Divine magic should be impossible to those who are not divine in nature. On the other hand, I would also fail to rationalize magic itself so these comments in a fantasy game hold little water.

3) It would be cool if legends of historical creatures/people could become part of religious text of become figures in a religion.

4) Speaking of religions, I think that gods and religion should have only a vague connection ( ie: Dwarfion sees fire. Dwarfion thinks about fire. Dwarfion thinks how fire came to be. Dwarfion imagines great-fire-creator. Dwarfion spreads ideas about great-fire-creator. (). Dwarves worship Fire-Creator-God conceptualized by Dwarfion. Unbeknown to the Dwarves, the real god that dominates fire is completely different than what Dwarfion imagined. The Dwarves continue to worship Fire-God. Eventually creating rituals that can create a "mortal connection" with sacrificing magic-creatures("meaningful interactions") or something to that effect, but religions don't always have real gods and gods don't always have religions.

[Mikademus]

The thing is, we should take everything through a "Spirit of DF" filter. And as such, it should be a balance between us being able to control some of it and a lot of it being up to the dwarves or chance.

It is therefore I liked the idea of dwarves sanctifying their workshops and one possible divine intervention could be bestowing fey-ish moods on the worshiping crafsdwarf.

This of course would not preclude and in fact should work well with construction of, or spontaneous making of, "pure" temples.

[Neonivek]

quote: If the idea of divine-power-linked-to-number-of-worshipers is implemented, expect one god to outcompete every other one and attain absolute power

That can be said about ordinary creatures... that and religions already compete.

On a side note I say we define our terms when using "Divine Magic" because there are two areas which are easily confusable.
1) People using magic comming from divine sources
2) Making miracles happen

The difference is the level of control.

[ June 03, 2008: Message edited by: Neonivek ]

[Karlito]

On to the issue of "worship" and "prayer".

Creatures should pray to their gods but not in sense that we think of it(unless it was a God of Silent contemplation or something).  A Dwarf that worships a god should do things that fall under a God's sphere.  For example, a worshiper of the Fire God will go around and light things on fire.  A particularly fanatic worshiper should go around and light everything on fire until you're whole fortress is consumed in flames and everyone is dead.  Of course a more down-to-earth type worshiper would probably be content burning incense in their house or something.
I like this idea because it would work without Gods actually existing (except in the minds of the worshipers) which is kind of what I like.  So rather than a God destroying your fortress, its just a bunch of crazy dwarves, like always.

[Neonivek]

So what you mean... is that perhaps worship comes in the form of their worshippers fulfilling their domains?

So it isn't so much that worship is empowering the gods but rather what the worshippers are doing to worship them?

[Karlito]

Well I imagine that if a God of Fire did exist then his goal would be to light EVERYTHING on fire, rather than assign quests, or hand out healing magic or whatever.

[Neonivek]

quote: rather than assign quests

I don't think there are many gods that assigning quests don't apply to.

[Sen Rojo]

quote: Mikademus said:
The thing is, we should take everything through a "Spirit of DF" filter. And as such, it should be a balance between us being able to control some of it and a lot of it being up to the dwarves or chance.  

Was that directed towards me? I was just putting up here some ideas on how mortals and gods would interact, it doesn't involve player control unless it is in adventure mode.

quote: Karlito said:
A Dwarf that worships a god should do things that fall under a God's sphere.  

Fanatics burning/flooding/gassing your fort seems like it suck if it happened too much. What if when a creature is on the verge of zealotry it will be likely to act strangely and join a or found a cult (some dwarves stay up at night at a special meeting place to discuss the finer points of arson) so that there would be signs before it just starts burning stuff.

[Dae]

Perhaps we could restrain gods' area of influence to a zone around where they have a priest of themself, meaning someone who has decided alone to completely devote his life to a god.

This could lead to some cool situations :
     - A migrant priest of Fire coming to your fortress where the dominant religion is towards the goddess of Plump Helmets, Alcohol and Parties. By coming, his god could start acting in your fortress, so you'd probably want to make him see how hot is magma before a civil war breaks out.
     - When under siege, the enemy will have to bring at least a priest of their god so as to be under his protection (if it pleases him to do so). So you'd have to kill the priest first - just in case.
     - It would be really meaningful for a civ worshipping a minor god to flee somehere where there is nobody from another religion : there, they could live in peace, far from gods' wars.

I was thinking, about the motivations as a god : being a god, you'd more or less like everything to be up to you, so that the world would be your ideal world. This is a reason good enough not to want other gods to mind your business, except if their vision doesn't bother yours.
OR, as it's been suggested above, prayers and denial of their sphere of influence could cause them pain. They could make pain disappear by satisfying prayers or making people do more jobs related to your sphere of influence.
In any case, gods would like to see jobs related to them done. When a dwarf is sad, he could do one or several of these jobs hoping his god will bless him.
A god wcould like his followers protected, cause they help him (either in making the world the way he wants, or in handling pain), that's why he'd want them to believe in him and why he'd want to protect them (because if he doesn't, they won't believe in him).

On the other hand, an extremely sad dwarf would be angered at his god, destroying things the god is related to or turning his will to the opposite of his former god (and, perhaps in rare cases, becoming a priest of this opposite god, thus unleashing chaos into your fortress).
Yet, dwarves taken in a godly crossfire would want gods calmed down, so they could do sacrifices to them, please them, or just kill the priests if they ant (this could be cool once grudges are in - one dwarf that everyone hates because he made the god of Chaos, Madness and Indecency enter the fortress the day his dog died)

So, a god's blessing is more likely to happen if your dwarves content him, and a god's curse is more likely to happen if you don't content him, or worse content another god he doesn't like. Yet, in this case, the latter would protect you from other gods.

[Neonivek]

gods should as always have personality so everything they do isn't part of some huge eternal chess match.

Also as a suggestion: If miracles are particularly rare (like a once or twice a year sort of thing)... they should show up in the legends.