Illarion.org

Grim wrote:OH LAWL!

I look forward to the day when a few bored GMs that at the moment dont pay enough attention, get their God chars PKd! Lets see what turn IG religion takes that day, hahaha

--> Morrowind

Alli Zelos wrote:Don't limit your roleplay, though There are some non-believers out there.

*eagerly raises his hand* oh! oh! most of my characters are non-believers! Augham, Orlog and Ram for that matter...Turga sorta believes..got no choise in the matter..force roleplay annyone..? *grumbles* even in real life we non-believers are called idiots...go figgure...takes on to know one, innit?

ON TOPIIIIIIC: da vladivostok there is "gods" in illaheroin played by gm's as they've allready said...well at least i stayed on topic sortsa! it's a roleplaying game, YOU decide if your character believes in some god or not. no one else. and that's that.

Olaf Tingvatn wrote: even in real life we non-believers are called idiots...go figgure...takes on to know one, innit?

Sheep don't like us foxes Olaf

orgis wrote:

Olaf Tingvatn wrote: even in real life we non-believers are called idiots...go figgure...takes on to know one, innit?

Sheep don't like us foxes Olaf

hehe, true dat..aaaaahhhh NOW i know what that whole " ah shell biii y'alls sheppurd and wha'tnawt..." *nods several times*

Ok, I understand about forced RP and nobody ever said that you are forced to choose one or any gods to follow or even believe in. The question is this, at what point does the accumulated mythos of this world even matter at all to your RP considerations? The mythos of this world is that there are deities that show themselves enough that there is absolutely no question at to if they exist. There is no "logical justification that they don't exist" from an outside point of view and most characters living within this world should feel the same way so long as they actually come from this world (as all of them do) and so long as they don't have some extremely good reason for not believing (as almost none of them do).

It all comes down to this: My telling you that they should recognize at least the existance and reality of the gods is not forced RP, that is pointing out bad RP on your part.

That's a ridiculous assertion. If your char has never had ANY kind of experience with the gods at all, and can blaspheme openly without any ramifications, and the only evidence to suggest they exist is vague chattering from people, "The five be with you", how can you say it's being a bad roleplayer for them to be apathetic about the concept of gods? That's a rather holier-than-thou attitude to take.

How dare you Flux.

It should be obvious that anything falling slightly outside of my personal preference and vision for the game is terrible RP.

While my own is, of course, perfect in every way.

Flux, your wise.

I think it is quite unusual for any character in the world of Illarion to be never confronted with the gods, their doings and their lore and religions. Do not forget that ALL races are followers of one or several gods and their lore and history is quite well considering their appearance in the ingame world.

None of the existing races and cultures in the game background would justify a char who never had any kind of experience with the gods and the beliefe around them. the only reasons may be someone who lived in solitude and never had any contact with his or her own culture. Every culture and race in the game background has strong influence of religion and the beliefe of the gods.

And on Gobaith we got plenty of signs and actions of the gods. Beside many smaller miracles we also got a few big ones. Like:

Silverbrand being moved to a new spot by Irmorom
Tol Vanima being raised from the ocean by the avatars of the five
Oldra appearing infront of a gathering of peoples
Irmorom striking with lightnings someone down who was speaking blasphemic in his temple at a dwarven ceremony
The drought being ended by the gods after the whole isle hold a ceremony
and, and, and

Flux wrote:That's a ridiculous assertion. If your char has never had ANY kind of experience with the gods at all, and can blaspheme openly without any ramifications, and the only evidence to suggest they exist is vague chattering from people, "The five be with you", how can you say it's being a bad roleplayer for them to be apathetic about the concept of gods? That's a rather holier-than-thou attitude to take.

Um, exactly? You say that the only evidence is the vague chattering, and yet one showed up in vanima for a dozen or so people to see. How does that not count as evidence? The clerical system has not been finalized but characters should RP as though there are users of clerical magic around (even if they aren't on this island or however you want to work it), so that also serves as proof of the gods. Apethetic is one thing and might be justified by someone running to such a remote location as Golbaith, but disbelief is something else entirely. On those grounds alone you show that your character should have evidence.

As for being able to openly blaspheme the gods, that is another issue entirely that would require it to be taken up with the GMs. Do the gods just not care about personally taking on blasphemy but would rather deal with more important things and leave that issue to their followers to deal with? Is this similar to the whole issue of "don't ignore the NPC guards just because they don't attack you"? Perhapse they have been doing something and you just don't notice (do you crit less often, others crit on you more, do you get more negative random bonuses than average, do your tools fall apart more quickly, or any number of other things that would be difficult to quantify)? I usually RP it as the first and sometimes suggest that the third could be true as well, but that might also depend on the particular deity you are blaspheming. Perhapse the infighting between the lessor gods allows blaspheming to go unpunished since they take as much pleasure from you insulting the others as they take indignation at you insulting themselves. Who knows? It doesn't change anything about if they exist, however.

I don't see a problem with a character who does not believe in the gods. Like Flux said, if a character has not had any experience with the gods at all, all that character can rely on is other people's accounts, word of mouth; which he or she can either choose to accept or reject. That doesn't mean the character is bad at RP. It just means that they haven't witnessed anything, haven't experienced anything, and that leaves room for some interesting RP amongst a character who does not believe, and those many characters who do believe, and GM's who can control god characters.

David Turner wrote:

Flux wrote:That's a ridiculous assertion. If your char has never had ANY kind of experience with the gods at all, and can blaspheme openly without any ramifications, and the only evidence to suggest they exist is vague chattering from people, "The five be with you", how can you say it's being a bad roleplayer for them to be apathetic about the concept of gods? That's a rather holier-than-thou attitude to take.

Um, exactly? You say that the only evidence is the vague chattering, and yet one showed up in vanima for a dozen or so people to see. How does that not count as evidence? The clerical system has not been finalized but characters should RP as though there are users of clerical magic around (even if they aren't on this island or however you want to work it), so that also serves as proof of the gods. Apethetic is one thing and might be justified by someone running to such a remote location as Golbaith, but disbelief is something else entirely. On those grounds alone you show that your character should have evidence.

Read the red text. Not only was every char not there, I've not even heard seen word of this event spoken on the public board or amongst characters in Bane. There will be plenty of chars who are completely unaware that that ever happened.

As for being able to openly blaspheme the gods, that is another issue entirely that would require it to be taken up with the GMs. Do the gods just not care about personally taking on blasphemy but would rather deal with more important things and leave that issue to their followers to deal with? Is this similar to the whole issue of "don't ignore the NPC guards just because they don't attack you"? Perhapse they have been doing something and you just don't notice (do you crit less often, others crit on you more, do you get more negative random bonuses than average, do your tools fall apart more quickly, or any number of other things that would be difficult to quantify)? I usually RP it as the first and sometimes suggest that the third could be true as well, but that might also depend on the particular deity you are blaspheming. Perhapse the infighting between the lessor gods allows blaspheming to go unpunished since they take as much pleasure from you insulting the others as they take indignation at you insulting themselves. Who knows? It doesn't change anything about if they exist, however.

If you're religious, go blaspheme really terribly right now and I give you my word that you lightning will not smite you to the ground. Why would the Illarion gods be any different in that respect, but if you do it consistently and you notice that it makes no difference, and you're in a world where there's magic, so that can account for all phenomena, and you've never had any personal experience with a god, what's wrong with being skeptical about others? If you told me you'd been visited by God I would say you're delusional. To assume a skeptic could not exist and state it's bad roleplay to play one is just a ridiculous attitude. Call them a lunatic ingame, and I'm not saying there should be a tonne of atheists around (I've never played one, just being the devil's advocate), but you can hardly criticise the roleplay of that.

*coughs*

http://illarion.org/community/forums/vi ... hp?t=33548

The appearance of Oldra got mentioned there

Yeah, I clicked it and decided it was too long to bother reading.

Flux wrote:Yeah, I clicked it and decided it was too long to bother reading.

Same... and it was in purple! ... Or was it pink? Purple... ya.

I would say a purplish pink

Flux wrote:

David Turner wrote:

Flux wrote:That's a ridiculous assertion. If your char has never had ANY kind of experience with the gods at all, and can blaspheme openly without any ramifications, and the only evidence to suggest they exist is vague chattering from people, "The five be with you", how can you say it's being a bad roleplayer for them to be apathetic about the concept of gods? That's a rather holier-than-thou attitude to take.

Um, exactly? You say that the only evidence is the vague chattering, and yet one showed up in vanima for a dozen or so people to see. How does that not count as evidence? The clerical system has not been finalized but characters should RP as though there are users of clerical magic around (even if they aren't on this island or however you want to work it), so that also serves as proof of the gods. Apethetic is one thing and might be justified by someone running to such a remote location as Golbaith, but disbelief is something else entirely. On those grounds alone you show that your character should have evidence.

Read the red text. Not only was every char not there, I've not even heard seen word of this event spoken on the public board or amongst characters in Bane. There will be plenty of chars who are completely unaware that that ever happened.

Read the blue text. There are more evidences than just that one instance. Characters with a background that includes any normal settelment would have had access to this and other evidences, there is no excuse to not believe they exist. For a character to not put their faith in them is different and justifiable within this context depending on their background. For a character to not realize that these beings exist requires them to either be incredibly naive or incredibly dense (and either way should damage their credibility with other characters).

Flux wrote:

As for being able to openly blaspheme the gods, that is another issue entirely that would require it to be taken up with the GMs. Do the gods just not care about personally taking on blasphemy but would rather deal with more important things and leave that issue to their followers to deal with? Is this similar to the whole issue of "don't ignore the NPC guards just because they don't attack you"? Perhapse they have been doing something and you just don't notice (do you crit less often, others crit on you more, do you get more negative random bonuses than average, do your tools fall apart more quickly, or any number of other things that would be difficult to quantify)? I usually RP it as the first and sometimes suggest that the third could be true as well, but that might also depend on the particular deity you are blaspheming. Perhapse the infighting between the lessor gods allows blaspheming to go unpunished since they take as much pleasure from you insulting the others as they take indignation at you insulting themselves. Who knows? It doesn't change anything about if they exist, however.

If you're religious, go blaspheme really terribly right now and I give you my word that you lightning will not smite you to the ground. Why would the Illarion gods be any different in that respect, but if you do it consistently and you notice that it makes no difference, and you're in a world where there's magic, so that can account for all phenomena, and you've never had any personal experience with a god, what's wrong with being skeptical about others? If you told me you'd been visited by God I would say you're delusional. To assume a skeptic could not exist and state it's bad roleplay to play one is just a ridiculous attitude. Call them a lunatic ingame, and I'm not saying there should be a tonne of atheists around (I've never played one, just being the devil's advocate), but you can hardly criticise the roleplay of that.

Ok, I understand your point here, but seriously. This is not real life. The rules of how things work are different in this universe than it is in real life. Farming does not take around 3 hours to get a crop in RL, nor can a grown man so easily survive off of the food portions that constitute a "good meal" in game for one not doing work. These and a lot of other things are just different. Also, this game is not finished. In the same way that you don't just ignore the NPC guards because they don't come after you, you should not go around trying to piss off the NPC gods assuming that they will never come after you either.

That said, I never said that a skeptic could not exist or that it would be bad roleplay to make one (assuming that they had a seriously really good explanation for why they believed that way and so long as other characters treated them like the crackpot that they would appear to be). I said that a player who assumed that any character in this setting could just have never seriously interacted with the gods (either directly or indirectly) is being a bad roleplayer considering the games mythos. Read through the history of any of the races, of any of the areas, of any of the gods, or even a good history of Golbaith will reveal many times when the gods have interacted with mortals. Good roleplayers have setting appropriate characters (among other things) and by extention a setting inappropriate character is made by someone who is being a bad roleplayer.

This is a rather pointless arguement.

To be quite honest, characters can believe in any happenings they see or hear of, or not. This is all a matter of both the PO and the attitude of the ingame character.

If one of my characters read of the gods granting Vanima trees, she would be ecstatic, and instantly believe it. If one of my other ones (now deceased) read that, she would instantly doubt the sanity of all those that partook in the ritual.

As for clerical magic, it *hasn't* been created. This means that no one on Gobaith uses it. We can assume people on Illarion DO use it, but if our characters haven't met a cleric... Well. Who says they believe their powers are true?

As an added note, any RP background a char has can be used to explain their disbelief in the gods. It's really not that hard to come up with something. If I played an atheist ingame, and someone called me out on bad RP... You'd certainly have a lot of OOC flaming going on.

The 'gods' could exist all they want.... but they ain't buying my pies or making my life any easier so I can throw belief in them to the wind

David Turner wrote:That said, I never said that a skeptic could not exist or that it would be bad roleplay to make one

David Turner wrote:It all comes down to this: My telling you that they should recognize at least the existance and reality of the gods is not forced RP, that is pointing out bad RP on your part.

Flux wrote:

David Turner wrote:That said, I never said that a skeptic could not exist or that it would be bad roleplay to make one

David Turner wrote:It all comes down to this: My telling you that they should recognize at least the existance and reality of the gods is not forced RP, that is pointing out bad RP on your part.

Kinda reminds me of my philosophy class... Theres always one twa....

I think that this must be something more than just bad RP. It is not restricted to a handful of cases, like poor roleplay is. Everyone ignores the Gods and their influence. I have met maybe three or four characters who properly acknowledge the Gods, and they were all priests who only stuck around for a month or so. This game actually has some really decent roleplayers, and they are just as guilty as the rest. It is absurd to suggest that this just happens to be the one aspect where every single person fails.

I also see a similar problem in people sticking to the backgrounds of characters. How many elf POs actually play their characters as near-immortal, mild-tempered, passive, wise, patient beings who very rarely find themselves in an argument?

Perhaps the lack of information is a problem? After 10 years, I would expect to have some decent guides offering direction on how certain types of characters should be played.

Grokk wrote:I think that this must be something more than just bad RP. It is not restricted to a handful of cases, like poor roleplay is. Everyone ignores the Gods and their influence. I have met maybe three or four characters who properly acknowledge the Gods, and they were all priests who only stuck around for a month or so. This game actually has some really decent roleplayers, and they are just as guilty as the rest. It is absurd to suggest that this just happens to be the one aspect where every single person fails.

I also see a similar problem in people sticking to the backgrounds of characters. How many elf POs actually play their characters as near-immortal, mild-tempered, passive, wise, patient beings who very rarely find themselves in an argument?

Perhaps the lack of information is a problem? After 10 years, I would expect to have some decent guides offering direction on how certain types of characters should be played.

>.> ...What? Everyone ignores the gods? lol?

Everyone does ignore the Gods, to quite a significant extent.

I just searched through my chat logs. Out of over 1,030,000 words there, the following figures show how many times each God was mentioned. These figures included alternative names (All-Mother, Bone Lord, etc).

Ushara: 25
Bragon: 36
Eldan: 26
Tanora/Zelphia: 38
Findari: 9

Nargun: 8
Elara: 72 (More than 60 of these were said by my own character, and as part of a farewell.)
Adron: 12
Oldra: 4
Cherga: 37 (The majority of these were from Flux's quest characters.)
Malachin: 11
Irmorom: 27
Sirani: 15
Zhambra: 8
Ronagan: 2
Moshran: 31

God/Gods/Goddess/Godly: 1,692 (The vast majority of which were curses, utterances of disbelief, and the general ramblings of Brer.)

To put this in some kind of context, 'Mandrel' was mentioned well over 2,000 times, and only within the second half of the chatlog. At 32 mentions, the new 'goddess' who has only existed for the last 24 hours has been discussed more than all but 4 of the deities.

Reminds me of Artimer trying to appease the dragons by making a sacrifice of gold nuggets at Bragon's shrine. Half the people there just followed because they saw a crowd walking somewhere and had so little respect for that holy place, I really wished a GM would have watched and burned us all in an inferno of flames.

Not saying everyone is a bad roleplayer and all that, just one horrible situation, that comes to mind reading this thread.

Grokk wrote:Everyone does ignore the Gods, to quite a significant extent.

I just searched through my chat logs. Out of over 1,030,000 words there, the following figures show how many times each God was mentioned. These figures included alternative names (All-Mother, Bone Lord, etc).

Ushara: 25
Bragon: 36
Eldan: 26
Tanora/Zelphia: 38
Findari: 9

Nargun: 8
Elara: 72 (More than 60 of these were said by my own character, and as part of a farewell.)
Adron: 12
Oldra: 4
Cherga: 37 (The majority of these were from Flux's quest characters.)
Malachin: 11
Irmorom: 27
Sirani: 15
Zhambra: 8
Ronagan: 2
Moshran: 31

God/Gods/Goddess/Godly: 1,692 (The vast majority of which were curses, utterances of disbelief, and the general ramblings of Brer.)

To put this in some kind of context, 'Mandrel' was mentioned well over 2,000 times, and only within the second half of the chatlog. At 32 mentions, the new 'goddess' who has only existed for the last 24 hours has been discussed more than all but 4 of the deities.

Maybe it's the group you hang with. :/

In my 5 year chatlog 50mb big on my main, Ronagon occurs 5 times.

How many of those Findari/Bragon/Tanora/Usharas were related to my quest?

Duh! Wanna state something, too!
And please be so kind to remind that I merely state my personal opinion, without the intention to offend someone.

I as player (so no one who has any influence at all) think that playing a character not believing in the gods is breaking the almighty rules of this beautiful game in most cases.
If reading the background, the only place where "usually are not very religious" is stated are the gnomes, just in the same sentence that Imorom is the god they usually pray to. At all other races and sometimes even mentioned in cities (there mostly about differences from the usual religious behavior or changes in the past) there is more or less detailed information who and how people pray to and believe in.

Assuming Illarion is a medieval-orientated world where the Gods even show themself from time to time there should be almost none "Did not see a god, don´t believe in them"-caracters.

Recently the lovely statement "The background of Illarion is binding." was changed to "Regardless... engine...blabla.. one has to adapt the behaviour of a character to the game world.", what hopefully still does include the background. Else I maybe should start a Viking wanting to burn down anything to hail Loki.

Silo wrote:Maybe it's the group you hang with. :/

I don't have a group

Well, everyone who passes through Troll's Bane at some stage, I guess.

Flux wrote:How many of those Findari/Bragon/Tanora/Usharas were related to my quest?

Wow, I completely forgot about that. There were 2 Findaris, 11 Bragons, 12 Tanoras, and 17 Usharas that were only mentioned because of the names of items within your quest.

One remark: Just because you see a god's name on the online player list, your character can't know a divine being cares about the smut in the ocean, called Gobaith... Be a bit more ICly when it comes to gods, please.

And yes, the gods play no role in this game. This will change.