Pantheon - Discussions on the Future

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balon!
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Post by balon! »

I tried pretty hard to make a doomsday storm, and got close enough. Cracking Halym was pretty cool. :D
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Post by Fist and Faith »

My apologies. :oops: Definitely shoulda mentioned that! Heck, I even nominated you for a Watchy for that! It was a thing to behold! :D

I just got one of the Tempestes back, btw. I called out, in case any survived. One did, and is now coming home, asking for forgiveness. :lol: Mom's legacy lives on in yet another way! :mrgreen:
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

Fist and Faith wrote:Definitely randomly distribute the portals. Even if we can say, "The god of Air will have a portal in a temple found on top of a tall mountain, accessible only by flying creatures.", which is a good idea, don't let us decide where the mountain ranges are, or in which range the portal is.
Agreed. We should get no control of who's near us. But some influence on the immediately nature of what's right around the portal would be great.
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Post by uKulwa »

Agree with Fist about the doomsday button. And let's please retire the World Breaker huh? :lol:
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Post by I'm Murrin »

I think we should all agree that if Creator ever mentions the Alpha or Omega again then he should have all his characters in all games erased and the game histories altered so that they never existed in the first place.
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Fist and Faith
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Post by Fist and Faith »

Cool! :D
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Post by Xar »

P4 will take place in a brand-new world, so no fear of the World Breaker - or any doomsday buttons built into the game. The only way to destroy the world there will be through divine actions - and it'll take a LOT to do so ;)

Regarding portal distribution, the location will be appropriate to the deity, I think. But portals will be fixed - i.e. it will be nigh-impossible to move the location of a deity's portal. They will be in many ways the weak spots of deities - and probably will help in preventing massive colonization sprees ;)
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Post by Fist and Faith »

All sounds good! :D Wish I knew more, though, so I could get to work on my Revelation. :mrgreen:
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Post by Xar »

Fist and Faith wrote:All sounds good! :D Wish I knew more, though, so I could get to work on my Revelation. :mrgreen:
I'm keeping much about P4 under wraps until I figure out how to solve the little kinks that are left... and until P3 is over, of course. Very likely, once P3 is done we'll have a short pause, then I'll start posting basic rules and taking registrations for P4, and then once registrations are completed, the game will begin and all will be known ;)
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Post by uKulwa »

So some time in the next couple of years huh? ;)
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Post by Menolly »

*still hoping the players get to decide when P3 is done and that most want to continue*
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Post by The Numen »

So, would we get any choice in what our map colors are? Next time around, I'd like a really imposing black or something, but keeping the Carolina Blue accent is fine. (Not orange!)
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Post by Xar »

I've been tinkering with the rules of P4 to solve a few kinks (it's a hobby ;) ). In the process, I gathered all the comments from this thread and tried to see whether the current P4 rules solve them or not. This in turn has led to certain ideas I had not anticipated.

Again, I should point out that many rules for P4 will not be revealed until after P3 is over. However, here are a few things from my current musings. I'll be posting more thoughts in the next few days.

1) On a tangentially related note, in order to ensure that people manage to get on the player list and not penalize those who may be on holiday, or temporarily away when P4 should begin, I thought that instead of opening registrations straight away when the time comes, I could first post a "forewarning", say, a week before. This way people know when the registration will open, and can make provisions to register or be registered when the time comes.

2) I've revamped the concept of Courts, which now borrows much from the real-world idea of different pantheons. It goes like this: deities within a Court are part of the same "pantheon" in the world (i.e. mortals see them as coexisting deities, and while they may have a specific Court patron, they tend to pay a modicum of respect to all). This means that each Court deity gains a small amount of power from the worshippers of all other deities in the same Court. Similarly, a Court deity can loan or borrow power only to or from members of the same Court. For the mortals worshipping that Court, there are no other gods: the other Court(s) and/or neutral deities are, at most, malevolent demons or false gods. Neutral gods on the other hand represent monotheistic deities, philosophies or possibly dualistic religions; to their worshippers, everyone other than their god is a pretender deity or a demon - unless the god has a loose alliance with other neutral gods. This means that neutral deities cannot loan or borrow power from Court deities, but only from other neutral deities; similarly, they don't gain power from the worshippers of other gods, but neither do they lose power if those other gods see their worshippers slaughtered. Most importantly, the realms of Court deities would be discrete regions of a single "Court realm"; this means that while a raid on one Court deity's realm would face larger opposition than otherwise it would, since the defenders from other Court gods would lend their help, a successful raid would weaken not just the attacked god but, to a lesser degree, all others as well.
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Post by Menolly »

Are you willing to make note if players choose to tell you that overall they are totally dissatisfied with the Court system? And would prefer they be done away with entirely? Even if they play within it?

...just sayin'.
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Post by Xar »

Menolly wrote:Are you willing to make note if players choose to tell you that overall they are totally dissatisfied with the Court system? And would prefer they be done away with entirely? Even if they play within it?

...just sayin'.
Sure, but overall it seems to me that people appreciate the need for Courts as a tool to ensure that player alliances do not always occur according to whether you know another player or not. Court participation in this context would be voluntary, but randomized (i.e. you could say "I want to be part of a Court", but then I would randomly assign you to the Court in question). They also ensure that some players can play more socially interactive deities and gain solid advantages from helping each other out by splitting a city between them, for example, or helping a weaker Courtmate to proselytize.
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Post by [Syl] »

I like the pantheon idea and think I'd be much happier with that kind of system than the court system. A question, though: will courts be decided by region or vice versa? Either way would seem to make more sense than having gods in a pantheon whose collective worshipers live scattered across the map. It would also help prevent banding for OOC or arbitrary reasons while not forcing gods whose personae may preclude that kind of behavior to go it solo.

I think it also makes sense for monotheistic gods not to belong to such groups... though I can see monotheistic gods having roots in them before leaving or being kicked out.
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Post by I'm Murrin »

I, too, like the idea of Pantheons, but I feel that they'd need to share something more than just random assignment or geographical. Will there be any provision to allow gods to be aligned by their domains, belief systems, or methods of acting?

(The god slowly growing in my mind is one that would be quite at home acting as part of a larger collective, but only if all were aligned to similar goals. I can't see it cooperating otherwise.)
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Post by Goatkiller666 »

I also like the idea of pantheons like this... but I start to worry about the random nature of it entirely. It seems like having a "Fire Court" and a "Death Court" would be really interesting, thematically... especially since we now might have several people with the fire or undeath / death domains. But we probably wouldn't have several of them adjascent to each other, or even in one geographic area.

So instead of making rules to disallow for OOC collusion, I'd suggest to build such collusion into the rules, so that it isn't a surprise. If Menolly and Murrin and I are all planning on playing gods with different flavors of fire (Menolly has Light, while Murrin is a fire-based War god, and I'm a Sun god.), why not allow us to start near each other on the map, and form our own fire court from the start?

It wouldn't be unbalancing if everyone had that kind of option as well. And someone with an ice or water domain could join as our Adversary / Loki god, just to add flavor.
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Post by Menolly »

The one problem I see with the idea of a domain or region based grouping is that favored cliques, such as the group of friends who comprise the Eclipse Court to no one elses knowledge and have been working together in such similar ways since at least the last Age, if not since when the game first started for some of them, could then look at the map and/or list of domains and choose ways in which they will still all be grouped together. From what Xar seems to be suggesting, his whole purpose of this is precisely to prevent that.

I strongly feel all such mandated groupings should be done away with. Let the players choose for themselves who they wish to interact with and freely donate power to. Anything else is too limiting.
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Fist and Faith
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Post by Fist and Faith »

My suggestion is this...

Our Houses decide our Courts. God of Forests is House of Earth. Goddess of Earth is House of Earth. They are in the same Court - regardless of who the players are; where the deities operate; or any other consideration. Since their domains are closely related, it makes sense that they could loan each other power, yet not be able to with the Goddess of Light. Could be they - players and/or characters - can't stand each other! :lol: Tough luck. You have closely related domains, so you can loan power with each other. Doesn't mean you have to. Could be you exchange favors with non-Earth deities much more than you exchange power with Earth deities.

Any DRDRP considerations Xar has in mind could work with this system.

I know that I wouldn't change my domain before the game started simply because of who my House/Court-mates would be. If I want Seas, and have great ideas I want to do with it, I'm playing Seas.
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