Rudimentary Priest Magic

Here you can make and discuss suggestions to improve the game. / Hier kannst du Vorschläge einreichen und diskutieren um das Spiel zu verbessern.

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Vern Kron
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Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Vern Kron »

Would it be possible to implement some rudimentary priest magic? Then we would have a basic balance of the three systems.

Going with some of the similar thought process behind the idea of what the gods magic stuff would be:
There would be 5 holy symbols (similar to how there are 5 (well, really 6) wands). You can only have one holy symbol in hand at a time, operating.
Each one of the symbols impacts an attribute. The priest designates if this is a buff, or debuff.

The benefits are that this process would be somewhat slow, so a priest could not just be a attribute buff bot for all needs. As the priest skill increases, the impact on attributes could increase to +2, or maybe even +3. On the other hand, the debuff would be capped at -2. This would prevent a person from being completely stripped of strength and unable to move.

This is a really rough proposal, but might be a quick and dirty method of putting in some form of priest magic, giving the basic concept some form to the game.
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snus-mumrik
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by snus-mumrik »

I would propose having a symbol per (yonger) god that can only be used by a priest of that god and would have some unique power.
For example:
- Elara - magic resistance buff
- Cherga - a "wand" with damage only to undead
- Oldra - skill boost or similar blessing for farming
- Adron - brewing skill boost or maybe bottle multiplication
- Irmorom - boost for crafter skill
- Malachin - attack buff
- Zhambra - defence buff
- Moshran - perhaps great attack buff with defence debuff or injury
- Sirani - maybe a"wand" that damages victim's weapon
- Ronagan - a difficult one, would be a stealth buff, but stealth skill doesn't exist yet
- Nargun - a tricky one, must be something strange or even funny. maybe giving strong but random effect of other priest items
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Estralis Seborian »

You can review the current plan for priest magic here: http://illarion.org/mantis/view.php?id=9823

Chapter 6.2 should pretty much cover what you propose here.

A general remark: Temporary/rudimentary implementations take the same effort as final/proper implementations. The key requirement for a feature to get implemented is that someone with the necessary skills and spare time just starts the development. Magic is designed as a modular system, so parts can be developed step by step. We do no need a big magic VBU. I think every mage would have been happy with just two or three spells to start with. All temporary solutions have to be reworked later, resulting in actually twice the work without any benefit. Generally, we do not lack ideas what to do. Just when ;-).
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by CJK »

Beginning to introduce components of the priest magic system mentioned by Estralis is a chief goal for me this year. There may be some minor variations and some parts will come long before others, but I have a few solid plans on how it will be approached.


I promise that this year I will do my best to make the basics of being a priest mechanically supported IG. Mostly because I really want to play one. :wink:


It's a really big and really complicated job though, so a lot of patience will be needed.
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Karrock
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Karrock »

The casting low and average priest spells should not need special items (if you play a paladin in example). The great spells should need special items like: A stick or book of prayers.
Just my few coppers.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Estralis Seborian »

We don't plan spells for priests. Spells are for mages ;-). See link above.
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Karrock
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Karrock »

So will not be possible to cast effects like "Cure of disease" or "heal" or "bless" or similar by templars?
I asked for this only to be sure that after magic update my char could be a paladin (technically paladin).

EDIT: And I read that technically priest to get power would need a group of followers. This is great idea, but not for low and average effects.
This would support only a few chars. I doubt my char could even find a group of followers. And yes I am not interested in powerful effects.
Most paladins follow their values despite of pushes, others influences (I think).

EDIT2: There is also one thing I haven't found informations about. Scrolls. The prayers or spells written on them which could be used by those with minimum points in mental attributes. So if even someone would be not mage but in example would have 8 points in INT could read them. Are there any works or would be a works on this concept?
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Dantagon Marescot »

Karrock, I am talking to ltgmkay about this. We have been bouncing ideas back and forth for a few weeks now. He says relay any concerns to him via PM. This is still an end of 2017 goal and he is currently in exam week. :wink:
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by snus-mumrik »

Hi.
Several thoughts regarding the priest part of the concept:
  • Paladins as group leaders
    • Very original idea, never saw such before.
    • Just as Karrock said, this fits priest/preacher character but not monk/hermit. And I think these should also benefit from the big magic update. Perhaps the >3 persons limit should be eliminated, so that a single priest could also perform a ritual and get some benefits for himself.
    • The whole part about how close should each person be in order to remain part of the group sounds like a lot of hassle (all those checks and warnings and timeouts), to me it sounds unbearable. It seems much simpler to just disable the effects for a char that is out of range and re-enable when he comes back, without timeout (with one global timeout on the whole ritual). The corresponding influence on the whole group (magnitude of effects and mana drain) can either be immediately performed (and restored if he comes back), or not performed at all. I personally think that it is best not to account for characters that left. Even if people come only to participate in the ritual and then don't go into battle (thus making the effects stronger but shorter), it seems ok to me, as if they came to bless the warriors before the upcoming battle.
  • I understand that rituals that "always succeed" are important for the groups to be reliable, but it seems counter-intuitive. Mythology has endless examples of gods not accepting sacrifices/prayers, and in some cases whether it was accepted remains unknown to mortals . So I think there should be some randomness, either as chance of success or randomized magnitude.
  • I think there should be a little bit more diversity for paladins of different gods. For example it seems that now followers of Oldra also get the ability to summon undead slaves, which is weird. Now, I understand that making the system so symmetric also simplifies the balancing. But in the lore gods do not appear to be of equal and some have more followers than others, so I think sacrificing perfect balance for getting more diversity might be reasonable.
  • The lack of a possibility to be paladin of Tanora seems a serious problem (especially for lizardmen)
    • Perhaps all old gods should be enabled as possible deities for priests, but with some serious restrictions. For example the probability of success would be close to zero, or the benefits would be not very useful. And Tanora would be more helpful the other old gods, and perhaps a little bit less than the younger ones.
  • It would be good if chance/magnitude of ritual would also depend on time. Like rituals during the month the corresponding god. That would give more feel of time of the year in game. Perhaps for some gods it should also depend on time of day (night for Moshran, day for Oldra etc).
  • The gods relation circle seems a little bit dull, and it also implies that if god A likes god B and B likes C, then A is ok with C. But this is not always the case in lore, e.g. Irmorom-Nargun-Ronagan.
    • A full table of relationships between gods could be used, like faction relations in Morrowind (http://en.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Facti ... tion_Table). But it seems like an overkill.
    • Each god could have several "friends", but without implying that friend of a friend is also friend. Just as an example to show my point, we could define 2 "best friends" (big bonus) and 2 "regular friends" (small bonus), and make it fit a symmetric 11-point star, to make some interesting mix (sorry for not drawing the diagram):
      'Nargun': {'best': {'Moshran', 'Ronagan'}, 'regular': {'Cherga', 'Malachin'}},
      'Adron': {'best': {'Sirani', 'Oldra'}, 'regular': {'Elara', 'Zhambra'}},
      'Moshran': {'best': {'Nargun', 'Cherga'}, 'regular': {'Irmorom', 'Ronagan'}},
      'Sirani': {'best': {'Adron', 'Zhambra'}, 'regular': {'Malachin', 'Oldra'}},
      'Cherga': {'best': {'Moshran', 'Irmorom'}, 'regular': {'Nargun', 'Elara'}},
      'Zhambra': {'best': {'Sirani', 'Malachin'}, 'regular': {'Adron', 'Ronagan'}},
      'Irmorom': {'best': {'Elara', 'Cherga'}, 'regular': {'Moshran', 'Oldra'}},
      'Malachin': {'best': {'Ronagan', 'Zhambra'}, 'regular': {'Nargun', 'Sirani'}},
      'Elara': {'best': {'Irmorom', 'Oldra'}, 'regular': {'Cherga', 'Adron'}},
      'Ronagan': {'best': {'Nargun', 'Malachin'}, 'regular': {'Moshran', 'Zhambra'}},
      'Oldra': {'best': {'Elara', 'Adron'}, 'regular': {'Irmorom', 'Sirani'}}}
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CJK
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by CJK »

I can't really respond to most of your points because, well, I am probably 9 months away from working on most of them. I somewhat refuse to talk about things which are so far away from relevancy. It just bogs down development and gets everything trapped in bickering. (Believe me, nobody is guiltier of that than other staff.)

I have some intentions that would break from the current system proposed by Estralis. I don't want to divulge too many details until I am further along in development, but some of your concerns will be address.

I will really focus on making sure some sort of monk play is possible, although it will be very heavily RP dependent and generally receive little engine rewards. They will be able to gain favor and do work like blessing items. After all, I buy all my religious things (books, iconography, etc.) from monasteries so it makes sense to me that monks will be able to make things.


Some of your notes on things being technically frustrating (groups) are valid issues to resolve when we get there, some are necessary to deal with real problems (can't break up a party just because the priest went down the steps or DCed), some hopefully will be unnecessary.


Certain diversity will exist between priests of different gods. I don't know who will get what. I don't actually care who will get what. I don't care how we will know who has what. I can't even begin to code that until about three thousand lines away from where we are. I will care about these things in October, I hope.


I will go public and say that I'm breaking with Ars Magicka by intending to allow devotion to the Five. Estralis can PM me about this if he doesn't see why. The main issue for me is that we would need to build in too many exceptions to fit the reality of Illarion: Lizards need Tanora, Orcs need Bragon, Elves need all of the Five. I won't divulge too many details on what this will look like, but the intention is that it will make there be fewer Elder god followers "naturally" by making it harder to follow them, but certain races will get buffs to follow certain gods. I don't like it when we say "this is the wrong way to RP, you can't do it" instead of saying "this is the atypical way to RP, not many people should choose it."

Months will matter, birthdates will matter.

I'm working on how the gods will relate, because I sadly can't code a circle. Something between the Ars Magicka circle and the table you mention is likely the outcome.
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Estralis Seborian
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Estralis Seborian »

ltgmkay wrote:I have some intentions that would break from the current system proposed by Estralis. (...) I will go public and say that I'm breaking with Ars Magicka by intending to allow devotion to the Five. Estralis can PM me about this if he doesn't see why.
Na, I will post here. Do not deviate from Ars Magica - improve it! I want to fight the impression that it's Estralis' very own concept, not to be touched and not to be realised. I gathered pieces of all former ideas/concepts and we intensively discussed in the team about the content. So if you want to add the Five to the existing priest magic, draft a list of changes so we can address them. The purpose of a concept is that it is clear to all who work on magic where the road goes. Of course, during actual implementation, we'll have to deviate in many ways from the implementation details of the concept, but the goal should remain clear to all.

Some might know I regard the Five the source of arcanian magic. Fire magic, Brágon the God of Fire - suspecting a connection there appears quite reasonable. But if you want to bring the Five and the Eleven on the same level, it's not too difficult to propose the necessary changes to the concept. Mind that others (like me) could start to work on parts of the concept and we should avoid non-compliances to prevent unnecessary reworking. Do it right the first time ;-).
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Q-wert »

Lizards (official Website) - Culture based on belief in Tanora: Not interested in arcane magic. Have 'paladins' and priests.
Norodaj (official Website) - Only Human culture also following an Old God (Tanora): Afraid of arcane magic.
Flame Orcs (in game books and NPC's) - Culture based on belief in Bragón: Well known for monstary fortresses and paladins.

I don't see how the hard line planned in the Ars Magica thus far (priestly and paladiny stuff exclusively for Young Gods, arcane magic exclusively for Old Gods) meshes with the game world.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by CJK »

Estralis Seborian wrote:So if you want to add the Five to the existing priest magic, draft a list of changes so we can address them. The purpose of a concept is that it is clear to all who work on magic where the road goes. Of course, during actual implementation, we'll have to deviate in many ways from the implementation details of the concept, but the goal should remain clear to all.

Here are the very basics of how I would like to integrate the Five into the priest system without necessarily undermining the predominance of the Eleven:
  • The Eleven remain 'jealous' as detailed in Ars Magicka, but entirely toward one another. They don't pay attention to what the Five think of you, and the Five (probably) won't pay attention to what the Eleven think of you. The Five are not at all jealous of one another.
  • Divine Favor (a slightly expanded version of 'Devotion' you have detailed) is only tracked by one of the Five when you become a devotee of one of them. There should be no minimum Favor to become a devotee, because anybody can pray. There will be some non-zero minimum to be a priest, because you can't call on a god if that god hates your guts. A whole thread could be made about my thoughts on devotion and divine favor, because I would really like to see the entire system revolve around this point. This is also what I intend to develop first.
  • When you are a devotee of one of the Five, your favor will rise more slowly and fall more quickly than it would if you followed one of the eleven. If you want to be a follower of Eldan, I will make you work for it because the game says he should have very few followers. However, he doesn't have zero followers.
  • The exception to the above will be modifiers. Certain races will get certain modifiers making it easier for them to follow one (or or any for elves) of the Five. It should be easier for a Lizard to follow Tanora than for that Lizard to follow Malachin.
Now I admit I don't know the exact implementation details of how playing a priest to one of the Five will "taste" different than being a priest of Adron, but that honestly falls back into the category of "Things Mkay Does Not Care About Yet."
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Teflon »

The reason why the older gods were left out from the priest system was because we thought they should not be controlled by scripts but GMs, similar like rituals for magic currently, which need to be checked and discussed with GMs in order to allow more freedom but also to avoid abuse. If we script the older gods and their behavior, I think we would pretty limit the RP for the interaction with them and they should stay as something more abstract and mystical.
I'm also wondering how you justify that the older gods don't care about the younger gods and their thoughts but would care about some mortals and their actions?
Furthermore, the idea of the priest system is to place priests as an important center for groups and to motivate people to gather as (bigger) groups, since we expect that it will result in more RP. If one requirement for certain gods is to have only very few followers, it opposes the idea of bringing people together.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Vern Kron »

Teflon wrote:The reason why the older gods were left out from the priest system was because we thought they should not be controlled by scripts but GMs, similar like rituals for magic currently, which need to be checked and discussed with GMs in order to allow more freedom but also to avoid abuse. If we script the older gods and their behavior, I think we would pretty limit the RP for the interaction with them and they should stay as something more abstract and mystical.
I'm also wondering how you justify that the older gods don't care about the younger gods and their thoughts but would care about some mortals and their actions?
Furthermore, the idea of the priest system is to place priests as an important center for groups and to motivate people to gather as (bigger) groups, since we expect that it will result in more RP. If one requirement for certain gods is to have only very few followers, it opposes the idea of bringing people together.

I think you bring up a few valid points.

The first, is that the five should be outside of the scripts for more 'freedom' from the gm side. While I understand a desire to allow gm's more freedom in creating quests, that does not that they are suddenly being exported by the scripts. Wand magic did not suddenly shove gm's out of position for rituals. Even in the later magic system, gm's would still be needed for various rituals and events. Why would this decision be any different with the gods? If anything, it gives the gm's an opportunity to see who has actively sought favor from the five or other gods, and who are just suddenly and randomly deciding they would a piece of the cake, without being invited to the party. Besides this, the current system proposed would not actually bring the gods themselves into the game. That is something that is still strictly within the gm's control. At the same point, with the currently limited staff, is it truly fair to make the players completely dependent upon the gm's for basic interactions, and is it fair on the gm's to suddenly be swamped by atleast 18 new characters wanting attention and rituals? If there was only one priest for every god IG (not including demi-gods), and each scheduled on a different day, the result would be that there would be a unique ritual happening every RL day, likely multiple times through the day, and if limited: some priests don't get to hold a service in an IG month.

As for the idea of the older gods not being jealous of the younger gods, it's similar to how popularity works IRL. As an adult, you generally do not concern yourself with the thoughts of your popularity in the eyes of children. You have more important matters, such as doing whatever tasks are needed in order to maintain your standard of living. As far as I can see from a lore perspective, this is similar to the case with the five: For the most part, they are busy keeping the world actually together, and from fending off the 'grand evil'. If a mortal wishes to appeal to the five, then they are going to have to work for it. Similarly, since the younger were previously mortal as well, they likely have a great respect for these elder gods and would not decide to randomly be vicious to them. Do not bite the hand that feeds you, so to speak.

As for the concept of the priest system to be a core unit of bringing people together: Let's not kid ourselves. There is always going to be people who want to play with only a few people, and times in which the game simply isn't as populated. Creating a system that operates only with a large group of people eliminates most of how the game currently operates. On one hand, we need to plan and design for the game we 'want', and on the other the game we 'have'. The priest system, like all other systems in the game, should require an element of dependence upon others. It should not be reduced to a point that it can only operate when others are around then. When a new player arrives in the game, does whatever it is they do to become a priest, they should not then have to wait hours on end for some other player to show up and participate. Not only is that disheartening, it's poor design. Some of the gods from the very beginning design of the lore were meant to be more isolated creatures. Cherga is a good example, Moshran another, Ronagan as a third (depending on viewpoints), Nargun as a fourth, and this list doesn't even include the elder gods. The reason these are 'less followed' is primarily because of their functions: There are significantly more doctors in the world, then there are morticians. In the US, it's 5x-10x as many. Why? Simple: Living people like to focus on living people, generally. Cherga is of the same station: She is less popular because she deals primarily with death. That is how the lore is written. On the other hand, Eldan is -extremely- reclusive. We are led to believe in the lore that supposedly most don't even know of his existence (but since all of our characters do, here we are.) The challenge then is either make Eldan as active a force as the other gods, or make him slightly harder to impress. This does not mean it is impossible, it just means that instead of simply tossing money to Eldan, maybe you have to offer a wand. (These are completely made up off the top of my head.)

Basically: The concept behind this system seems to be opening up a few different avenues for roleplay, with an actual system, rather than make everything require a gm, or multiple people, to be present. It won't hinder the RP of the gm's, and most likely, can be designed in a way that gm's can also manipulate the favor a god has towards a player. There is no reason to feel that RP will be prevented, hindered, or stripped away from the gm's in this station. It is simply an overt tool used to help shape the game, where previously it had been untouched and in many ways, undeveloped.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by CJK »

Teflon, I am really worried I may not be able to respond to that without flaming.
Teflon wrote:The reason why the older gods were left out from the priest system was because we thought they should not be controlled by scripts but GMs,
similar like rituals for magic currently, which need to be checked and discussed with GMs in order to allow more freedom but also to avoid abuse.
When was this reasoning discussed and developed? 2012? Earlier? I was not at all around or involved with development at the time, this much is certain. Had I been, I would have had many words for such an excuse to mechanically gimp the only consistently high effort religious RP throughout Illarion's history: lizards, orcs, elves, and the Bearers. Most of my commentary on this must be reserved for private discussion. However, the most basic responses are:
  • ¿Por que no los dos?
  • I will try to never create systems that restrict GMs, but rather that build out the role, tools, and support of GMs.
  • Will rituals cease to exist once real magic starts coming into the game? Of course not. Will the role of GMs in the representation of any gods cease to exist simply because the game starts mechanically supporting priests? Of course not. Only if the system is horribly scripted, the characters horribly RPed, or the GMs horribly negligent. Bad scripting is likely because I am a bad scripter, but thank goodness this is a GPL project where others can collaborate and improve on my failures. Bad RP is probable if I happen to be playing, but I will not assume the least of any of our other players. How GMs will thrive within the game is entirely up to yourself, Slightly, and Silverwing. There is nothing I wish I had the time and competency for more than to provide you with more tools to be successful.
  • If a player has to type"!gm" before every single prayer to any one of the Five, then that is a critical failure. If they cannot pray to and interact with their primary gods without detailed and exact GM approval and cooperation every time then we need to eliminate the Five, eliminate the role of the Five from the RP of our players, or elevate a dozen more GMs. Otherwise, devotees to the elder gods will be utterly unplayable when coexisting with the heavily supported younger gods. When the priests of Sirani get all sorts of cool tricks they can do at any hour of the day and the priests of Tanora are stuck sucking their thumbs until a detailed plan can be ironed out with a GM and a rare mutually appropriate hour can be achieved, the only natural outcome will be the near elimination of Tanora priests in favor of Sirani priests.
If we script the older gods and their behavior, I think we would pretty limit the RP for the interaction with them and they should stay as something more abstract and mystical.
You're right, but don't take it far enough. This reads as saying something may not be abstract, mystical, and well RPed if it has any scripted support. In order to meet this expectation, I will be sure to push an update to dev that removes all magic and the basics of any of the gods from the game. Who knew two of three magic systems could be implemented so easily by just falling back to the GFX and SFX of the GM tools instead of needing to build anything?

If it is impossible to RP something abstract, mystical, and that is empowered by high quality and highly active GM work, then this is the only outcoem I can think of. Anything less is detrimental to the RP of the game, apparently obviously.
I'm also wondering how you justify that the older gods don't care about the younger gods and their thoughts
The only important thing is that the Five are not jealous of one another or of the Eleven. I am not opposed to the idea that having Malachin hate you (because you keep killing his priests or something) will have Bragon hate you by extension.

but would care about some mortals and their actions?
Because a religion in which the gods do not care in the slightest bit one way or another about mortals would be dreadfully, mind-numbingly, boring to play.

Gods, any of them, have to care about mortals and their actions if we want priests of those gods to exist in our game. I am unfamiliar of almost any religion that has ever existed in which they believed that their deity or deities had utterly no regard whatsoever for mortals.
Furthermore, the idea of the priest system is to place priests as an important center for groups and to motivate people to gather as (bigger) groups, since we expect that it will result in more RP.
I agree 95%. I do not think the only good RP exists in large gatherings of people. In fact, the better RP situations I can remember have never happened with more than 20 characters present. If anything, the sheer reality of reading and responding to many characters makes for a generally terrible time unless 90% of people present are bumps on a log.
If one requirement for certain gods is to have only very few followers, it opposes the idea of bringing people together.
Please update all websites and books for Ushara, Bragon, Eldan, Findari, Nargun, Cherga, and Moshran. They are all mistakenly stated to have fewer followers than the other gods. Clearly, this is destroying the game by driving people apart. The Central Planning Committee will look forward to quotas proposed to efficiently allocate characters so that all gods have an equal number of followers. Or, alternatively, the mandate for all characters to accept pantheism by law so that all characters follow all gods equally.

Slightly less sarcastically, I am not at all saying that the Elder gods would be required to have few followers. Indeed the whole reason I take such issue with excluding them is precisely because they have so many followers. I am trying to remove requirements that hamper quality RP, not create them.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Teflon »

First a tip. If you like to convince people of your ideas, you better save any flame or sarcasm for yourself. All I wanted was to give you some background where the Ars Magica concept comes from and on what it was based on. The links to the discussions, drafts, suggestions, etc. should be in Estralis' thread about Ars Magica in the dev forum. Sorry that I don't have more time to look them up for you or present them or my points more detailed because I just don't have the time for it. So again just a few lines.

If you implement them in the scripts, you will run the risk of never reaching a balance. I would already consider balancing 11 gods as pretty difficult. In this discussion I mentioned above, some even suggested to cut the numbers of gods. Leaving out the Five was some kind of compromise. Now you want to add them, which are actually considered as more powerful than the 11. If you represent their power in your scripts, sooner or later everyone will only follow the older ones and ignore the younger ones. Well, that would allow us to remove the 11 altogether. So, if the older gods receive the same support as the younger ones, I bet with you that the youngers will disappear and then you can truly change the background. If we keep them out, players will focus on the 11. (Regarding the balance. The same will also happen to any of the 11 who is not in balance with the other 10. That might be fine for Moshran or Cherga but with the other 9, it becomes more tricky because we should keep the factions balanced as much as possible as far it goes regarding scripts. That players have different preferences and therefore will pick their gods accordingly is fine but we should not want that everyone follows god A because this gods gives the best boosts like it was with the mines after the VBU went online or the gems or serinjahs in the past).

I also don't see the older gods as very responsive to mortals and their wishes. Actually the very opposite. They may help, they may not help. They will definitely be more responsive to faithful followers but even them can't be 100% sure because their minds are mostly somewhere else. Thus I would call them more abstract, mystical. There is no understandable reasoning of their logic for mortals. Maybe arrogant would be more fitting. They are just superior and don't care that much about mortal things. Thus just another reason to keep them out from scripts.

And to be more specific about the limitations of RP. I don't fear that the RP of GMs will be limited or suffer by it because we can "overrule" scripts if needed. Based on my experience as GM, I'm more worried about that it will affect the player's RP and so far you didn't illustrate how quality RP would result from your suggestion. I don't see it coming but you are very welcome to provide a proper concept with arguments how it will improve the RP, despite I would prefer not to have the x-discussion about it but to move on with what we have agreed on. I actually would like to help you writing the devotion-system but time and no access to any scripts are not very helpful. I, therefore, hope I can help you with my feedback to head into the wrong direction and lose time.

PS: I didn't say that it would cause good RP (whatever it is defined) but more RP. Usually, these big groups break into smaller groups, where the RP that most consider as qualitative RP develops. More players would just be part of something that actually happens in the game and things/stories can develop from there.
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Karrock
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Karrock »

Teflon wrote:Furthermore, the idea of the priest system is to place priests as an important center for groups and to motivate people to gather as (bigger) groups, since we expect that it will result in more RP. If one requirement for certain gods is to have only very few followers, it opposes the idea of bringing people together.
Yeah then existing of my char has no sense because sense have only chars who can fit to situations like cameleons. (I always thought priests should have own strict codes, because faith is not shopping in the market).
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Teflon »

Karrock wrote:
Teflon wrote:Furthermore, the idea of the priest system is to place priests as an important center for groups and to motivate people to gather as (bigger) groups, since we expect that it will result in more RP. If one requirement for certain gods is to have only very few followers, it opposes the idea of bringing people together.
Yeah then existing of my char has no sense because sense have only chars who can fit to situations like cameleons. (I always thought priests should have own strict codes, because faith is not shopping in the market).
I don't understand what you mean? Can you explain please why you can't have your own strict codes or have to be like a chameleon?
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Karrock
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Karrock »

Because my char is mechanically low priest, but I try by years get followers with no success. If power of priest will be depended on amount of followers then my char will be hopeless.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Teflon »

Yes, a priest without followers hasn't been and will not be powerful. It has always been essential for priests to have followers but with the new system as it is drafted, people will be more interested in following priests, which should make it easier for you to get followers.
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Karrock
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Karrock »

I find it rather much unfair because I doubt any players will create chars who would be similar to mine (and mine is hated by most because he is albarian). In this system will success only chars who will follow any wanting of surrounding and current fashions. We will see chars who will be changing beliefs day by day to get members. I don't know other priest character who follow own standards with such conviction like mine by years despite of others pushes. Now I hear that will be working like trade market where priest will work like simple dealer of bonuses.
I'm sure priests will be saying what people would want to hear in this system.

Followers should adjust to priest, not priest to followers.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Teflon »

Ever heard this saying? "If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then let's take Mohammed to the mountain". ;) It isn't a one-direction approach for only one side. Both will need to move to find each other. I'm also not sure if you have read the whole priest concept in Ars Magica, because it will not be that easy to change beliefs and build up the relations to a god day by day. So, no idea where you have this idea from.
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by CJK »

I'm in agreement with Teflon on this. Powerful priests will be hinged on two things: staying in the good graces of their god, and being able to bring a group of people together. The system absolutely must push for social rather than antisocial behavior. If your character cannot under any circumstance bring people to want to be around him, then he will not be an effective priest. Which is more or less fine, because I've never met a good priest who was hated by his followers.

This seems like an IC issue really.
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Karrock
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Karrock »

Then explain this to catholic church what is not changing his beliefs to get more followers from protestants and others. They could accept free-relationships, in vitro, love before marriage and rights of gay people and other things, but they don't do that and in current state in western Europe churches are empty.
"If the mountain won't come to Mohammed, then let's take Mohammed to the mountain"
Now I say to you that you are Peter (which means 'rock'), and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.
To below: This was an example not attempt to change topic...
Last edited by Karrock on Mon May 08, 2017 3:40 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Teflon
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Re: Rudimentary Priest Magic

Post by Teflon »

This goes totally off-topic if we are going to discuss the state of the catholic church. Please discuss the failures of the catholic church and the effects of enlightenment and liberalisation somewhere else. Thank you.
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