Hypocrisy of Worship - A suggestion for balancing Gods and Blessings

[Smilexile]

This is a suggestion related to how God’s and Followers interact in the game right now. Other than increased farming duties, there is no real disadvantage to worshipping multiple Gods. I suggest a hidden stat called “Hypocrisy”.

Hypocrisy and Major Deities

• This stat would increase when you worship more than one Major God… the amount it would increase would depend on the Gods involved. Mitra in combination with any other God would create a larger boost to this stat… especially Set and Derketo. Set and Derketo would create less Hypocrisy when worshipped in tandem with each other, since they are allies.

Hypocrisy and Magic

• Hypocrisy could also be used to balance against Magic… certain types of Magic, when used, would give a temporary boost to hypocrisy, depending on the God’s you worship and the magic you used.
• Right now there is Alchemy, Specialized Food/Drink, Tattoos, and certain Magic that generates corruptions. They could create schools of magic that have different compatibilities with Gods expressed by Hypocrisy. (Example: Zath might generate Hypocrisy with followers who use Obelisks or get exposed to corruption.)

Hypocrisy and Crom

• Crom can only be singularly worshipped… adopting another God will drop your worship of Crom. Adopting Crom eliminates all existing worship of other Deities… if they even bother to give us the ability to back out. They might NOT, which mean’s Crom can only be chosen at Character Creation.
• Followers of Crom get combat bonuses when facing against players or thralls who have a Hypocrisy Stat. The Bonus scales with the size of the Stat. While Thralls naturally have the same Hypocrisy their Master’s have, Pet’s do not worship anything, and thus are immune to this. A Follower of Crom’s thralls also get bonuses against Hypocrites, but again, Pet’s do not, since they can’t worship Crom either.
• If Magic was added, Crom would be generally unimpressed by it, generating Hypocrisy for his own followers who use it… players might specialize in a magic type by choosing the right God to avoid Hypocrisy. (Example: Crom believes in rubbing dirt on your wounds and toughing it out. Mitra, however, doesn’t mind his worshippers using healing magic.)

Hypocrisy and Future Gods

• Major Gods have Temples and Require Orthodox Worship, but with the addition of Hypocrisy, some players might feel limited by the fear of dealing with Crom’s Followers. Established players/clans, in particular, would have to worry about New players on the server choosing Crom and punishing them for having massive mega temples to every Major God.
• Minor Gods could be an alternative in the future for additions to the game.
  1. Minor Gods would have small Shrines/Statues instead of upgradable Temples. Shrines would track a player’s current Zeal with the minor deity and dispense blessings/favors.
  2. Minor Gods would track player’s game behaviors instead of traditional worship. Certain behaviors would gain their favor, while other behaviors may cause their favor to drop. (Example- If Bel, God of Thieves, Chaos, Trickery, and Death were a Minor God, the player would gain Zeal with Bel each time they looted an unconscious or dead human, each time they looted a box they don’t own. However, any time they do legitimate business with NPC Merchants, they lose Zeal.)
  3. Minor Gods wouldn’t summon Avatars for attacking enemy holdings. Instead the top reward would be a Guardian Statue that could be placed in a players holdings and would guard against Raids. The Statue would come alive when the Base is under attack. (Example- Dagoth, the Dreaming God. Player could place a statue of Dagoth, which would appear like a classical Greek God in white marble… but when the base comes under attack, Dagoth’s Statue would crumble and the horrific creature underneath would go berserk and attack the enemy)
  4. They could add more Minor Gods to the game without risking unbalancing the game with too many options for Avatar God Strikes. Minor Gods would also generate less Hypocrisy, with players being able to worship on average 3 different Minor Gods without having any Hypocrisy as opposed to 1 Major God before Hypocrisy becomes a concern. Minor Gods would essentially be more defensive.
• Deeply Established Players/Clans can choose to be massive Hypocrites and Worship every God in the game, but at the risk that a Crom Noobie will fart in their general direction and cause it all to come crashing down. A Clan culture develops around what the priorities of worship are… it becomes a measured strategic choice.

Hypocrisy and Blessings

• With these new limits in place, it’s easier to balance blessings in game. The more exclusive Gods can have more potent blessings. Major Gods can have better blessings than Minor Gods… should they implement them. (Example- Mitra, who has low tolerance for other Gods, may have that high cost of hypocrisy balanced with improved (or restored) blessings. Ambrosia could be un-nerfed… maybe?

Final Thoughts

What determines status as a follower of a God?

1. Is it knowledge of how to build their temples?
2. Is it having their temples built?
3. Is it Generating Zeal with that God?
4. Accepting Blessings?

Maybe each of these things fractionally/exponentially contributes to the final determination. Followers of Crom would have no religious knowledge, nevermind any temples built. A player’s Religious Affiliations would be superseded by their clan’s active practices. If they leave their clan, they are returned to being judged by what they know/believe or have built.

Perhaps there could be a Crom Potion of Forgetting all religious knowledge… for players who are tired of being Hypocrites or surrounded by Hypocrites.

[Tuffman]

What benefit to gameplay does this provide? Religion is already largely a throw away aspect of the game save for a couple of useful items and this is just a complicated attempt at forced role playing.

[Glurin]

You realize that many ancient cultures and indeed some modern ones are polytheistic, right?

That is they believe in and worship more than one god. Praying to Zeus for strength did not preclude you from asking Aphrodite for a little help in the love department.

[Smilexile]

@Tuffman
And that’s the problem with it. It’s throw away, it barely affects the game… as time goes on, it will be even more so, because there is no balancing factor. They keep dancing around whether or not they will give Crom anything and this is as indirect as you can get about it, I think… without Crom remaining featureless. If you want to roleplay, then so be it… but if you think so little of this, then it really wouldn’t affect what you are doing at all, would it?

@Glurin
Which is why different Gods have different Hypocrisy ratings between them. It’s also why I suggested Minor Gods… so players can have that MultiGod experience without worrying about Hypocrisy. However, we know that Worshipping Mitra OUGHT to preclude worshipping Set (and vice versa!) but that Priests being less than Faithful is something that happened often in Conan. The Gods wouldn’t ignore their hypocritical followers or deny them blessings, because this might poison more worshippers against them… but they might remove their protections against… say… a follower of Crom, who expects nothing from his God, as Ironic Justice. Again, different combinations of Gods would result in different Hypocrisy ratings. There is plenty of room for (Hypocrisy Free) traditional pantheons… or a person can make their own with very LITTLE Hypocrisy involved… or they can take a risk and do whatever they want… It’s a deeply flexible system that gives the game makers room to make Religion mean something in this game… instead of continuing down the path of just nerfing the daylights out of it.

It doesn’t force you to Roleplay anything, unless you are too cowardly to deal with Players or NPCs who might follow Crom and make you pay a gameplay price. It’s very likely there will be many servers where people never notice it because they might not have a single Crom following threat to deal with.

Of course, this could be a toggled feature, certainly since the game already “works” without it. Any benefits they give to Gods as balance for Hypocrisy mechanics would be tied to that toggle.

[Tuffman]

No, it wouldn’t. Which is why it’s kind of nonsensical to devote development time to introduce something so utterly pointless.

[Firecrow]

[quote=“Smilexile, post:1, topic:172230”]
Minor Gods wouldn’t summon Avatars for attacking enemy holdings. Instead the top reward would be a Guardian Statue that could be placed in a players holdings and would guard against Raids. The Statue would come alive when the Base is under attack. (Example- Dagoth, the Dreaming God. Player could place a statue of Dagoth, which would appear like a classical Greek God in white marble… but when the base comes under attack, Dagoth’s Statue would crumble and the horrific creature underneath would go berserk and attack the enemy)
[/quote]Haha yes, THAT would be awesome!

Generally though I kind of agree with Tuffman. It’s a bit too in-depth for what is just one aspect of a multi-faceted game. More the sort of thing you’d expect in a mod?

[quote=“Smilexile, post:1, topic:172230”]
What determines status as a follower of a God?
[/quote]In this game everything flows from the feats, so you get to choose how devout your character is. You spend the points, you have the knowledge of a high priest and the potential to summon gods. But when you’re naked in the desert with your base in ruins it’s just knowledge.

Edit: I don’t understand why the quote function works sometimes and not other times

[Smilexile]

Perhaps it could be a mod. It’s a suggestion anyway, so anyone who runs with it gets the brass ring.

It occurs to me that Major and Minor Gods might swap depending on the base map, which would represent the idea that the Gods have more interest or influence over certain territories… That of course, would be much more complicated.

[Lucidique]

Something akin to Skyrim’s Wintersun mod on Nexus could work.